One of my biggest regrets in the years I’ve been covering baseball is that I never got John Sterling’s list. You see, in addition to our mutual love of baseball, Sterling shared my appreciation for film noir. I don’t remember how it came up, but I learned of Sterling’s noir kick in the summer of 2023, when Yankees beat writer Chris Kirschner, of The Athletic, suggested I talk to the longtime Yankees radio broadcaster about it. I had never met Sterling before, but the next day in the Yankee Stadium press box dining room, I introduced myself. He was so excited to know that this 27-year-old kid also loved noir, and he immediately asked me what my favorites were. Right away, I rattled off In a Lonely Place, Out of the Past, and Double Indemnity, which looking back on it, must have made me seem like a noir novice, as if I said my three favorite Springsteen songs were “Born to Run,” “Born in the USA,” and “Dancing in the Dark.” But Sterling didn’t think anything of it. Or if he did, he didn’t show it. Instead, his face lit up, and in his baritone voice, he beamed about Bogart and Mitchum and MacMurray. We chatted for a few minutes before I asked him for his recommendations. He had to get back to the booth — it was almost game time — but he told me to come find him next homestand and he’d make a list for me. Unfortunately, I didn’t see him for another month or so, and when I did, I didn’t ask him for the list. We didn’t really know each other, and I didn’t want to bother him with something so trivial. He retired early the next season.
Growing up a Yankees fan from the Hudson Valley, I listened to Sterling for most of my life. His voice is woven into the fabric of my baseball fandom. It’s not a stretch to say that all those years spent listening to him on the radio contributed to my becoming a baseball writer. And yet, when I saw the news that Sterling had died on Monday at age 87, the first thing I thought about was the brief time we spent talking about film noir in front of the press box coffee machine that summer day in 2023. I never got the list, but I did get a wonderful memory. I’ll cherish it forever.
There’s no natural transition to the mailbag from there, so let’s just get to it. This week, we’ll be answering your questions about Austin Hedges’ unexpected hot start at the plate, the most efficient pitchers on a per-pitch basis, teams that register a .500 OBP in a game, and the largest percentage of career stolen bases coming in the shortest span of time. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »
I don’t pay too much attention to the standings in April. I look at them, of course, but that’s more a matter of routine than a desire to learn something substantial. It’s hard for teams to pull ahead of the pack this early in the season, and I’d rather not read too much into the fact that, say, the banged-up Blue Jays are a few games below .500, or that none of the five teams in the NL Central has a losing record. It takes time for these things to sort themselves out.
And yet, upon checking the standings Friday morning, I found myself pondering the significance of what I saw: specifically, that only three teams in the American League had a winning record. After a dizzying 20 minutes of digging, I lifted my head from my laptop in a daze, wondering how the heck I ended up staring at Baseball Reference’s playoff odds for the 14-18 White Sox. I think seeing the number 16.1% is what snapped me out of my stupor. (For what it’s worth, our Playoff Odds gave the South Siders a 2.2% chance to make the postseason, double their odds on Opening Day.) Anyway, about those three AL clubs above .500, the Yankees (20-11) were expected to be one of the best teams in baseball, so their place atop the standings wasn’t surprising, but the strong starts of the Rays (18-12) and Athletics (17-14) caught me a bit off guard. I thought Tampa Bay was destined for last place when the season began, and our Playoff Odds agreed, projecting the team to finish with 79.7 wins and giving it a 28.9% shot to reach the postseason. Entering May, the Rays have only added about two wins to their median projection (81.9), but they now have a 45.6% chance of making the playoffs. Meanwhile, I believed the A’s would be better this year, but better meant maybe a third-place finish in the AL West and an outside shot to snag the final AL Wild Card spot. Still, I figured they were more likely still a year or two away from true contention. Our preseason Playoff Odds tabbed them for 78 wins and a 21.4% shot at the playoffs. Now, they’re up to a projected 81.3 wins and 43.1% odds. I still don’t think either team will play postseason baseball this year; according to both their Pythagorean and BaseRuns records, the Rays have played more like a .500 team than one that’s on pace to win 97 games, while the A’s simply don’t have enough pitching. Remember, it’s only the start of May. There’s so much more baseball still to be played.
OK, that’s enough about the Rays and A’s in this week’s mailbag. Today, we’ll be answering your questions about how good Shohei Ohtani would be at basketball, whether James Wood is one of the best lefty batters ever at hitting the ball the other way, which batter has the most hits against a pitcher without recording an out, and what would happen if ZiPS forgot about 2020. But before we get to all of that, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »
A question popped into my head as I edited Ryan Blake’s column on the Nationals Friday morning. In the piece, shortly after noting that James Wood ranked third in the majors with a 170 wRC+, Ryan mentioned that Wood’s teammate, CJ Abrams, was sixth with a mark of 168. Upon reading this, I pulled up our leaderboards to see if the Nationals were the only team to have two players in the top 10. Turns out that, yes, they are. I thought about that for all of two seconds before something else caught my eye. Just below Abrams on the list was Mike Trout, who also had a 168 wRC+. This prompted me to wonder: Can Trout return to form? Can he both stay healthy and produce this year?
I’m hardly the only one who spent the bulk of the 2020s dreaming on a fully healthy season from Trout, just as I’m not alone in having abandoned that hope as the injuries piled up. But after watching him blast home run after home run last week from the Yankee Stadium pressbox, I felt the pull of the past encroach upon the present, and perhaps against my better judgment, I started dreaming again. He sure looked as healthy as ever as his broad body barreled up baseballs and roamed center field. The best way to describe the way Trout moves — really, the way he has always moved — is that he lumbers and boulders; for all of his natural athleticism and breathtaking blend of speed and strength, he does not glide gracefully. I put that dream of a Trout renaissance on ice when the Angels left town, only for it to come back a week later. This time, though, I considered whether, at 34, he still has one more MVP season in him. He entered this weekend slashing .239/.417/.557 with eight home runs, and has posted 1.2 WAR in 25 games. He’s walking more than he’s striking out, and he’s already stolen four bases. His BABIP is a mere .228, 111 points below his career mark, so we should expect his batting average to see some positive regression. (Even if we know batting average isn’t all that indicative of player performance, it still matters for MVP voters.) His .483 xwOBA is second in the majors and 62 points above his wOBA. His defense has been below average so far, but if Trout keeps hitting like this, his glove won’t matter much for his MVP case. The narrative would certainly be in his favor.
I just answered two of my own questions from Friday in this mailbag, so I guess it’s time to get to yours. What if the Astros blow it all up? How might the Pirates benefit from a Houston fire sale? Why don’t teams develop bench players to be knuckleballers? What the heck was Austin Warren doing in the game with the bases loaded in the Mets’ 12th straight loss? We answer all these questions and more in this week’s mailbag. Plus, Jay Jaffe remembers Garret Anderson. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »
What-ifs are a central part of being a baseball fan. We love to consider how differently things might’ve turned out if a star player hadn’t gotten hurt, or if a team had signed one free agent instead of another. Some what-ifs are the stuff of legend, like the fabled night in the late 1940s when, during a drunken dinner with Tom Yawkey at Toots Shor’s Midtown Manhattan joint, Yankees owner Dan Topping nearly traded Joe DiMaggio to the Red Sox for Ted Williams. Others aren’t revealed until decades later, like when Barry Bonds said on the Opening Night Netflix broadcast last month that he would’ve played for the Yankees instead of the Giants if George Steinbrenner hadn’t given him a take-it-or-leave-it offer.
We all have our own personal picks, too. Here are a few of mine: What if the New York City newspapers hadn’t gone on strike in 1978? What if Eric Gregg hadn’t been the home plate umpire for Livan Hernandez’s start in Game 5 of the 1997 NLCS? What if Dottie Hinson hadn’t dropped the ball, or Jimmy Dugan had just laid off the booze? Some of the most significant what-ifs could’ve had a massive impact on the world beyond baseball. What if the Black Sox hadn’t thrown the 1919 World Series? What if Curt Flood hadn’t challenged the reserve clause? What if George W. Bush had been named commissioner of baseball?
We won’t be examining any of the above what-ifs in this week’s mailbag, but three of the four questions we’re answering below are rooted in an alternate reality, one in which Mookie Betts was always a shortstop, Ford Frick didn’t run Bill Veeck out of baseball, and a starting pitcher was exactly league average at everything except throwing strikes. The lone non-hypothetical question, which is where we’ll begin, looks at whether teams have more success when they hit a grand slam than when they score at least four runs without one. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »
I went to the Nationals-Cardinals game on Wednesday afternoon at Nats Park to check in on the two rebuilding clubs early in the season. Washington has been in a perpetual rebuild for pretty much the entirety of the 2020s, while St. Louis just tore its roster down to the studs this past offseason. And yet, with Chaim Bloom installed as the new president of baseball operations, a deep farm system, and several young position players starting to come into their own, the Cardinals seem to be closer to their next winning season than the Nationals.
That’s certainly how things played out on Wednesday, when the Cards beat the Nats, 6-1, to take two out of three in the series. St. Louis first baseman Alec Burleson, the team’s second-longest tenured position player, went 3-for-4 and knocked in three runs, and second baseman JJ Wetherholt made several slick plays in the field. Wetherholt, who entered this year as the 12th-ranked prospect in baseball, has reached base in all 11 of his starts this year, and he has at least one hit in 10 of them. (He went 0-for-4 with a walk and a run on Wednesday.) The big story, though, was Jordan Walker, who hammered his fifth home run of the season in the fifth inning. It was the 17th time in franchise history that a player has homered five times within his first 12 games to start the season. After two below-replacement-level seasons, it seemed less likely that Walker would ever make good on his former top prospect pedigree, but now he looks like a completely different player. He seems way more confident and is making much better swing decisions; he’s lifting the ball, while walking more and striking out less. Yes, it’s only been 12 games, but the early returns are promising. He enters Friday night’s game against the Red Sox slashing .295/.367/.682 with a 192 wRC+.
I’ll talk more about the Nationals in my answer to the first question below. We’ll also answer your questions about the World Series teams whose players accumulated the most and least WAR by the end of their careers, the potential injuries that would stop the Dodgers from being World Series favorites, and the most successful three-true-outcomes pitchers of all time. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »
It took all of a week for the Pirates to call up shortstop Konnor Griffin, the top prospect in all of baseball, to make his debut in their home opener Friday afternoon. Batting seventh, Griffin went 1-for-3 with a walk in Pittsburgh’s 5-4 win over the Orioles, with the highlight coming in the second inning. He stepped in with a runner on second and one out against Baltimore right-hander Kyle Bradish. The first pitch was a slider well off the plate that Griffin chased and missed. He took the next pitch, a slider even farther away, for a ball, whiffed at yet another slider low and away for strike two, and barely got a piece of a fourth-straight slider outside the zone to stay alive. Then, finally, he got a pitch to hit, a curveball on the black away. He scorched it into the left-center gap for a double to drive in the first Pirates run of the game. Two pitches later, he showed off his 70-grade speed, blazing around third to score on a single to shallow right field.
If you’re reading this Members only mailbag, you almost certainly know all about Griffin and his tantalizing, franchise-altering potential. Our prospect team described him as a “freaky five-tool player” when they ranked him no. 1 on our preseason Top 100 list and assigned him a 70 FV. He doesn’t turn 20 until the end of this month and immediately raises the floor of this Pirates team significantly, even if he struggles some out of the gate. Michael Baumann wrote about Griffin on Thursday afternoon, and I’d encourage you to read it if you want to learn more about what Griffin brings to the Pirates and why, after just five games at Triple-A, they decided it was the right time for his big league career to begin.
That’s the last you’ll read about Griffin’s debut in this week’s mailbag. Instead, we’ll answer yours questions on the World Series teams with the most and least WAR on their rosters at the time of their Fall Classic, the dropped third strike rule, and players with the same name. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »
We did it everyone! We made it through the long offseason. Regular season baseball is back, and it has already delivered the goods. I attended Mets-Pirates at Citi Field on Opening Day to witness the highly anticipated pitching matchup between reigning NL Cy Young winner Paul Skenes and new New York ace Freddy Peralta. Naturally, Skenes had the worst game of his career thus far, failing to make it through the first inning, and Peralta didn’t pitch well either. The two teams combined for 18 runs in the 8 1/2 innings of play. I wrote about the Skenes start, the two defensive blunders by Oneil Cruz in center field that contributed to Pittsburgh’s first-inning fiasco, and the lineup’s surprisingly strong showing. You can read that here.
Because I was covering that contest, I didn’t get a chance to watch any of the other early games and saw only a portion of the later ones. That means I missed White Sox catcher Edgar Quero successfully challenge three ball calls in the first two innings before finally getting one wrong in the sixth inning. In that same game, which the Brewers won 14-2, Jacob Misiorowski struck out 11 Chicago batters. I also didn’t catch the pitcher’s duel between Orioles lefty Trevor Rogers and Twins righty Joe Ryan; Baltimore won, 2-1, and Adley Rutschman, not to be confused with Badley, went 2-for-4, though Tyler O’Neill’s Opening Day home run streak was snapped at six. In the later afternoon games, the Cardinals scored eight runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to secure a comeback win over the Rays, after allowing Tampa Bay to plate six runs in the top of the frame. JJ Wetherholt, who went 1-for-4 with a home run and two RBI in that game, was one of a number of prospects who shined in their big league debuts. Kevin McGonigle had four hits in the Tigers’ 8-2 win over the Padres, and Justin Crawford went 2-for-4 in the Phillies’ win over the Rangers. I actually got to see Mets right fielder Carson Benge blast his first homer, this after a dead bird had fallen in front of him in right field. It wasn’t technically his first major league game because he debuted in the postseason last year, but Cleveland’s Chase DeLauter bopped two home runs in a 6-4 win over the Mariners.
I ran through all those games up top because that’s the last we’ll be covering the Opening Day action in this week’s mailbag. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions about Matt McLain’s strong spring, Aaron Judge’s low squared-up rate, players who might benefit the most from ABS, and Tony Vitello. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »
In their Opening Day game against the Mets at Citi Field, the Pirates jumped out to a two-run lead two batters into the game. Their next three batters struck out, but they had National League Cy Young winner Paul Skenes starting for them. It was the first time in his career that Skenes, who entered the game with a 1.96 ERA, took the mound in the first inning with a lead of two or more runs. Heck, it was just the fourth time in his 56 career starts (29 on the road) that he’d thrown his first pitch with any lead at all. Maybe this year would be different after all.
It’s too early to say anything about this year, but this sure was a different game. Just not in the way the Pirates had hoped. For the first time in his career, Skenes did not make it through the first inning. When manager Don Kelly went to the bullpen with two outs in the inning, his ace had thrown 37 pitches, recorded just two outs and allowed five runs. He struck out just one batter, walked two, and hit one with a pitch. The impromptu bullpen game ended about two and a half hours later in an 11-7 Mets win. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s a great time to be a baseball fan. We just finished watching an exhilarating World Baseball Classic, which ended in a thrilling 3-2 Venezuela win over the United States, and we’re less than a week away from Opening Day. Part of the fun in the days leading up the start of the season is playing catchup with all the transactions that went down over the previous months. Sure, we all know that Kyle Tucker is a Dodger and Alex Bregman is a Cub, that Cody Bellinger returned to the Yankees and Pete Alonso joined the Orioles. We also don’t need to be told that Marcus Semien, Bo Bichette, and Luis Robert Jr. now play for the Mets, or that both Sonny Gray and Ranger Suarez slot in behind Garrett Crochet in the Red Sox rotation. But it can be hard to have a handle on how all these moves shape the outlook of teams across the league as we begin the season. The good news is that we at FanGraphs have been keeping tabs on everything throughout the offseason and spring training, so we’ve got you covered with everything you need to know about the coming year in baseball.
We won’t be talking about any of those topics in this week’s mailbag. Instead, we’ll answer your questions about whether Aaron Judge might finish with more career WAR than Mike Trout, where Juan Gonzalez’s 1996 season ranks among undeserving MVP wins, and which national soccer team would be the best at baseball. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve covered Red October playoff games in Philadelphia, and white out football games at Penn State. I’ve also attended professional games in Panama and covered plenty of Little League World Series games, giving me a taste of how different cultures enjoy baseball. But I have never witnessed a sporting event quite like Wednesday night’s World Baseball Classic game between the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.
It wasn’t just the chanting, the instruments blaring, or the dancing that made for such an exhilarating experience; all of those things were also a part of the previous Pool D games played by the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. I know what passionate fandom looks and sounds like, and this was something altogether different. Venezuelan and Dominican fans don’t merely watch baseball; they participate in it. It’s kinetic, and when the force of their fandom collided under the closed roof of loanDepot park, it created a unique, unforgettable energy. I hope all of you reading this can experience something like it at some point in your life, because getting to feel that power pulsing through the stadium is one of the great privileges of this job.
That’s the last we’ll talk about the WBC in this week’s mailbag. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions on how baseball would change if it were played exclusively left-handed, how often we might see an Ultimate ABS Challenge, and whether the 2026 Angels roster would’ve been a playoff team in 2024. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.
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How would baseball change if there was no such thing as right-hand dominance? All hitters and pitchers from the game’s inception to the present performed exactly the same, except now all as left-handed throwers and hitters, exclusively?
How different would that be from a baseball universe in which everyone was exclusively right-handed?
From,
“Transmission”
Michael Baumann: I’d like to begin by saluting you, Transmission — I’m gonna call you Mish for short — for submitting the best mailbag question I’ve ever received. Better than the dog first baseman one, better than the one about why God hates the Reds. Nothing’s even close.
The first thing that comes to mind is that if everyone in the world were left-handed we would absolutely be running the bases the other way. Most obviously because of the way the infield is oriented now, three of the toughest defensive positions are incredibly awkward to play as a left-handed fielder. So much so that you never see it past the dandelion-picking levels of Little League.
I know that lefties get an advantage over righties by being closer to first base, but there’s a logic in having the batter run to the base he’s facing. The big question is whether baseball’s founding fathers would have bothered to create a right-handed batter’s box at all. And conversely, would an all-right-handed baseball league have created a left-handed batter’s box? (For what it’s worth, if everyone threw with the same hand, I don’t think it’d matter which hand it was; all-lefty baseball would look the same as all-righty baseball, just in reverse.)
But if everyone in baseball hit from the same side of the plate, pitching strategy would be enormously different than it is in our ambidextrous world. The value of the platoon advantage was understood very early on in the history of the game; switch-hitters came into existence around the same time as the baseball glove, in the 1870s.
If every player in the league were left-handed, and it was understood that hitters fared better against breaking pitches that moved toward them, would anyone have ever developed the sinker or the changeup? Probably — even now, you see pitchers whose offspeed pitches are dominant enough to be effective against same-handed hitters — but the shape and deployment would probably be different. Creating screwball action would take a backseat to deception; for that matter, maybe breaking pitches would have developed on a continuum of shape and speed, rather than being distinct, the way we separate sliders and curveballs now.
But if I had to guess, I’d say that entirely left-handed baseball would have developed symmetrical batting positions, as ambidextrous baseball has in real life. I’m not aware of a stick-and-ball sport that forces the player to address the ball from a specific side — then again, we live in a world where right-handed people exist, which would not be the case in Mish’s hypothetical.
A left-handed grip on a baseball bat — which is to say, left hand on top, right hand on the bottom — is also a left-handed grip on a variety of tools that would’ve been familiar to 19th Century Americans: axes, brooms, shovels, even swords. It stands to reason that baseball would’ve evolved along those lines.
But maybe not universally so.
When I was growing up, the kids in my neighborhood would play street hockey every afternoon, from when school got out to when it got dark. Hockey has left- and right-handed shooting positions that correspond with the batting positions of the same name. I write right-handed, I throw and hit right-handed, and I play hockey right-handed. Most of the kids I grew up with were also right-handed and played baseball right-handed, but in hockey they shot lefty.
In both baseball and hockey, the fine control of the bat or stick is done with the top hand — that’s where you want your dominant hand. But because the baseball bat is held up, the top hand is further from the knob, while the hockey stick — held close to the ground — has the top hand at the knob. In order to put the dominant hand in control of the stick, a right-handed hockey player would have to shoot lefty.
Most of my left-handed-shooting friends learned how to play hockey before they learned how to play baseball, so if they were right-handed they were taught to shoot lefty. I came to hockey later, after already having committed to a right-hand-over-left baseball grip, so I played hockey with the same hand position.
The point is, it’s easier to hit right-handed if you’re naturally right-hand dominant, but not by much. It can be learned or unlearned fairly quickly; plenty of high-level ballplayers who don’t switch-hit in games will switch-hit in practice for their own amusement.
If a right-handed batter’s box were available by rule, it would take about 10 seconds for someone to try to figure out how to gain an advantage by using it. It would start with the kind of jailbreak swing you see from left-handed fast-pitch softball players. (Remember, we’re running the bases clockwise in this hypothetical.) Before too long, an enterprising switch-hitter would realize that he was having an easier time seeing left-handed breaking pitches and commit to hitting righty full-time.
Eventually, the entire league would follow suit. If every pitcher you face is left-handed, why would you ever subject yourself to a platoon disadvantage if you could avoid it? So eventually, some left-handed pitchers would experiment with throwing righty, which would be awkward but not impossible. Remember, Billy Wagner is naturally right-handed. (So is Michael Vick, if you want a non-baseball example.)
From the start of the National League in 1876, it took 119 years for Greg Harris to come along and pitch with both arms in a single game. That was a novelty act from a pitcher on the verge of retirement; it’d be another 20 years before Pat Venditte reached the majors. Soon, Jurrangelo Cijntje will come to the majors with conventional big league-quality stuff from both sides.
In a world where every pitcher throws left-handed and every hitter is left-handed but bats righty, the evolution toward non-dominant-hand pitching would not take nearly that long. Eventually, we’d see a mix of switch-pitching and switch-hitting players, and maybe even right-handed-throwing first basemen.
From there, how long until baseball players start trying to write with their non-dominant hand, too? Would baseball bring an end to this wholly left-handed world? Is this thought experiment inherently self-negating? Fascinating stuff.
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Dear Mailbag,
Let’s define the Ultimate ABS Challenge as the following: bottom of the ninth or later, bases loaded, two outs, full count, and either a walk or a strikeout is challenged. Is it possible to estimate the likely frequency of future UABSCs? We would be looking for past walks and strikeouts in that area in which Statcast suggested the ball was within, say, 1.5 inches of the edge of the zone on either side of it, I should think.
Thanks!
Andrew
Ben Clemens: What an incredibly specific query! The answer is that this is probably going to happen almost never. Forget the distance from the borders of the strike zone. From 2021 to 2025, there were exactly 23 pitches that meet the rest of your criteria: bases loaded, bottom of the ninth or later, full count, two outs, taken for a strike or ball. Here’s a Baseball Savant search string for that.
Out of those 23 pitches, 15 were taken for balls. Those balls were all pretty far outside the strike zone. The closest one was 1.7 inches off the plate, and that’s grading generously. Statcast measures the location of the center of the ball; I, of course, included the radius of the ball in my calculations. Sure, the Cardinals would have challenged that one, but I don’t think there’d be much drama. No one on either team thought that it was a strike.
Out of the eight pitches taken for a strike, only one had a location within 1.5 inches of being overturned on a challenge. That’s this bending changeup from Tyler Holton, and it would have been overturned. The closest among the others was this slider from J.B. Bukauskas that dotted the inside corner. I’m sure Amed Rosario would have challenged it, but the truth is that it was in the zone by a lot. It’s a strike if any part of the ball clips the zone, and the center of this one was in the zone. The inside edge of this pitch was nearly two inches into the strike zone; it wouldn’t have been close to getting overturned.
In other words, you might get a few challenges – five pitches in the last five years within two inches, for example – but probably not that many overturns. Maybe zero overturns, in fact. Batters don’t get into this situation — bases loaded, 3-2 count, two outs, bottom of the ninth — very often in the first place. And I doubt they’re going to suddenly start taking more pitches either. When batters swing at close pitches in these situations, it’s not because they’re worried the ump will botch the call. Rather, it’s because they’re tracking a spinning projectile in flight, making a swing decision well before they see where it ends up, and trying to approximate a trajectory. They don’t even know exactly where the strike zone border is. I don’t think this behavior will change much at all. No one’s that good at knowing where a pitch will end up before they swing; even Juan Soto chases. I hope that we see at least a few, but I’m glad that they’ll happen pretty rarely.
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The Angels are accumulating a large number of players who were good roughly a few years ago, mostly in 2023. Some are declining vets like Jorge Soler and Mike Trout. Some are young enough guys that only had one really good year, like Josh Lowe and Alek Manoah. Some probably had really good projections some spring but never launched, like Grayson Rodriguez and Vaughn Grissom and Oswald Peraza. Some blew out their arms, like Jordan Romano and Robert Stephenson. If you took the best preseason projections in the 2022-2024 period for each player you probably have a playoff team. Could you run the projections to see if my theory is true? — Jason
Dan Szymborski: Hi, Jason, I always appreciate an attempt to make the 2026 Angels seem like an interesting team. We elected to do this exercise for the current Angels roster with their projections entering the 2024 season. You’ll see why in a moment.
The time machine 2024 Angels, in a ZiPS simulation, continue to struggle in the current AL West, though they do improve. You get better projections from Mike Trout, Logan O’Hoppe, Jorge Soler, and Nolan Schanuel, but you also lose Zach Neto’s breakout. Alek Manoah gets a bit of a boost, but both Yusei Kikuchi and José Soriano lose some of their current projected value.
In the end, it’s enough to bump the Angels from what is currently a 69-win projection to a 73-win projection, and their playoff probability from 2.9% to 9.1%, but it’s a team that would still need an awful lot of things to go right.
However, since we’re already using a time machine to violate baseball’s rules, and possibly physical laws of the universe, how about we take the approach of “in for a penny, in for a pound” and also purloin Shohei Ohtani himself entering the 2024 campaign? After all, as Tom Verducci reported in a March 2024 Sports Illustrated cover story, that might’ve happened if Arte Moreno had been willing to match the offer Ohtani got from the Dodgers, deferrals and all.
Now, with Ohtani and the pre-2024 projections, the Angels project as an 81-win team with a 32% chance of making the playoffs in 2026. If that still feels a little disappointing, you have to remember that this is a team that could give a TED Talk about how not to build a good baseball team while employing both Trout and Ohtani, which is a little like losing the Tour de France despite being allowed to use a motorcycle.
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As someone fascinated by baseball player birthdays, I loved Ben’s response last week about birthday and WAR. It reminded me that a few years ago, I noticed that then-Diamondback teammates David Peralta and Jeremy Hazelbaker were born on exactly the same day (8/14/1987). They, in fact, batted back-to-back one game. It got me to wondering if – besides twins like the O’Briens or Rogers – what other teammates born the same day ever played in the same game as teammates?
Enjoying all of the great work. — jds
Jon Becker: Fun question! Upon querying our game-by-game database, I was surprised to find that this has happened more often than I would have guessed. Teammates with the same birthday (including twins) have played in the same game 4,477 times, with 10 of the 187 distinct pairs doing so at least 100 times:
Same-birthday-teammate games occurred 84 times last year alone, mostly thanks to two pairs: Brandon Nimmo and Clay Holmes, and Matt McLain and Hunter Greene. Nimmo and Holmes are no longer teammates, of course, but McLain and Greene — who’ve shared the field for the Reds 24 times already — will keep moving up the list when Greene returns from his elbow injury around midseason.
