On Wednesday night, Phillies left-hander Bailey Falter caught a little too much of the plate with a fastball and, well, kaboom!

Jake Burger does it again! pic.twitter.com/aRrcdEJUEL

— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) April 18, 2023

What an absolute rocket. With a 118.2 mph exit velocity, Jake Burger’s three-run dinger was the second-hardest hit ball of the season so far. Harder than anything that’s come off the bat of Aaron Judge or Yordan Alvarez in 2023. Hard enough that this ball went 417 feet with just a 21 degree launch angle. That’s not the launch angle of your standard-issue ballistic arc moon shot. Anyone who watched La Fleche Wallonne on Wednesday can tell you it’s possible to ride a bicycle up a 21-degree incline.

But that’s just the kind of week Burger’s been having. Since being recalled to the majors on April 6, Burger has eight hits. Seven of them have gone for extra bases, and five of those have been home runs. Of those five home runs, four have come in the past six days. Back in the day, the only way to display that much power in Chicago was to tilt a presidential election for John F. Kennedy.

It was not always ordained to be so. With a couple weeks to go in spring training, I asked Burger what he thought of his prospects for making the Opening Day roster. He came into camp facing entrenched starters at basically every position he’s capable of playing; if he was competing for anything, it was a spot on the bench. But with Luis Robert Jr., Eloy Jiménez, and Yoán Moncada at the WBC, he got all the playing time he could ask for in camp.

“I’ve been in basically every game,” he said. “I’m fortunate to be in that position and to be able to compete for a job. Take it day by day and just be myself. The rest will take care of itself.”

It’s the kind of answer that would make Crash Davis stand up and applaud, but Burger gave it with conspicuous confidence for someone whose major league career has been anything but a sure thing.

In 2017, Burger was the no. 11 overall pick out of Missouri State, where he played with future big leaguers Matt Hall and Dylan Coleman, fellow first-round pick Jon Harris, and a pitcher named Trey Turner. (Not to be confused with Phillies shortstop Trea Turner, former Virginia Tech wide receiver Tré Turner, or five-time Pro Bowl offensive guard Trai Turner.) Burger was one of the best mid-major hitters in the country over three years in Springfield, boasting back-to-back seasons of hitting at least .300/.400/.600 with at least 20 home runs as a sophomore and junior. He figured to rise through the minors quickly.

But four days into Cactus League play in his second pro season, Burger tore his Achilles tendon. Ten weeks later he tore it again. He missed all of 2019 with a heel injury, then all of 2020 due to the pandemic canceling minor league play. Concerns about Burger’s long-term suitability for third base were not alleviated when his ankles and feet betrayed him, and few young hitters can survive going three seasons without playing a competitive game.

In the meantime, the White Sox were stocking up on competitors for playing time. Moncada moved from second base to third base in 2019. Jiménez and Robert established themselves as big league regulars in the outfield, and Chicago spent top 10 picks on Andrew Vaughn and Zack Collins, a college catcher who profiled as a future first baseman or DH. When Burger did finally make it to the majors, he got hurt again, this time breaking his wrist in July.

Burger missed out on the Opening Day roster, but he didn’t have to wait long in the minors. Within a week, Jiménez tweaked a hamstring and went on the IL, and when he was ready to return, Moncada went on the IL himself with a back injury. Now, Burger is not only on the roster, he’s Chicago’s starting third baseman.

But even after the opportunity to play opened up, Burger wasn’t going to make much headway striking out 30% of the time. He was good at the plate when healthy — a 113 wRC+ in 183 PA last season — but not enough to force a more established player out of the lineup.

“Cutting down the strikeouts and working on bat-to-ball skills was a big factor in this offseason,” he said. “If I can consistently make contact, the ball is going to jump.”

In addition to making some mechanical changes, Burger also tried to refine his pitch selection. He said he wanted to lay off low pitches — even strikes — that he was more likely to ground out than hit hard in the air. Burger can hit the ball hard, as his home run off Falter would indicate, but it’s easiest for him when the pitch is either at belt-level or up in the zone and away. Pitches low in the zone have traditionally caused him problems:

Despite this, last season he swung at about two-thirds of pitches in the lowest third of the strike zone. That low-middle sector, with a 71% swing rate, netted Burger a contact rate of 79% but a slugging percentage of just .222 on the balls he did manage to put in play. He said his goal this past offseason was to work on “creating a floor in the strike zone.”

So how did he do that? Cool gadgets.

“I use WIN virtual reality, which is pretty cool,” he said. That system involves a bat sensor and a VR headset, which allows him to simulate at-bats off any pitcher in baseball. “Also, my training facility in Nashville has been huge, using an iPitch machine, and you can put in any pitch in the major leagues.”

It’s not the real thing, but it’s close enough for someone who’s finally catching up after three seasons on the shelf. It’s a small sample, but through Wednesday’s games, it appears that Burger’s time on the holodeck has paid off:

If this is a genuine reinvention for Burger and not just small sample noise, it comes at an interesting time. It’s been more than half a decade since the White Sox blew up the talented and cost-controlled core of Chris Sale, Adam Eaton, and José Quintana. And after back-to-back playoff appearances in 2020 and 2021 generated a grand total of zero advancements to the second round, the Sox look like they’re going backward.

Until now, it looked like Burger was just one in a line of homegrown players who failed to live up to (admittedly astronomical) expectations. And he might still be that. We’ll see. But that core is now in what should be its prime — including Burger, who turned 27 two weeks ago — and there are still open questions about Vaughn’s power and Jiménez’s ability to stay on the field, among other shortcomings across the roster. Soon, it might be time to tear it all down again, whether Burger keeps homering four times a week or not.

For the purposes of researching this article, I went through Baseball Savant and watched several of Luis Arraez’s hits from the 2023 season. You can tell what kind of a heater he’s on by how the broadcast booth reacts when he gets a hit. Marlins play-by-play man Paul Severino, declaring that Arraez was in the midst of yet another multi-hit game, would chuckle as the ball touched outfield grass. On one occasion, Phillies announcer John Kruk muttered, “Jesus!” as Arraez dropped a triple down the right field line.

Arraez is so hot it’s entered the realm of the absurd. Through 15 games, he’s 24-for-51, mostly on singles that army crawl past bewildered infielders or fall softly in front of outfielders. As of Monday afternoon, he has yet to hit a ball with an exit velocity of 100 mph or greater. Ryan Mountcastle, who’s hitting .217 to Arraez’s .471, has 25 such batted balls.

The obvious thing to do in this situation would be to point out all the ways Arraez is getting lucky. He’s a fringy runner with a ninth-percentile (ninth-percentile!) hard-hit rate and a BABIP of .500, and so on and so forth. And ordinarily, I am the kind of relentless downer who goes around ruining other people’s good time. (Hope you enjoyed those wonderful shrimp tacos you had for lunch; the sea is full of microplastics and you’re going to die someday.) But I’m declaring Arraez’s hot start to be a negativity-free zone.

So let’s get to it. Is Arraez some kind of a wizard, or is he just getting lucky? The answer is yes. Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, the Giants announced a five-year, $90 million contract extension with star right-hander Logan Webb. The 26-year-old Webb came to national attention during the 2021 NLCS, in which he allowed a single run across two starts against the Dodgers, striking out 17 and walking one over 14 2/3 innings. Across 2021 and 2022, Webb was 12th in baseball in pitcher WAR, one spot behind Gerrit Cole, and 20th in ERA among pitchers with at least 200 innings pitched, one spot ahead of Shane Bieber.

Webb was due to reach free agency after the 2025 season. This contract will buy out his two remaining arbitration years for a total of $20 million, then pay him $23 million, $23 million, and $24 million from 2026 to 2028. It’s a deal indicative of Webb’s special status in the Giants’ organization, and it could nonetheless be an enormous bargain for the team. Read the rest of this entry »

For half of Thursday’s game against Boston, it seemed like the good times had finally stopped rolling for the Tampa Bay Rays. The hitherto unhittable Jeffrey Springs left the game with ulnar neuritis—nerve irritation in his elbow, but it’s scarier when you say it like the name of the chancellor of a minor Star Trek world. Corey Kluber had held Tampa Bay’s vaunted offense to just one run through four innings.

Then the Rays burst out for seven runs as if out of nowhere. The highlight of the inning was probably Manuel Margot’s pinch-hit RBI bunt. Bunting for a hit with two outs and the bases loaded is the kind of thing you do when a mystical hooded figure grants you the power of telekinesis and you want to see if it’s real or you’re being pranked. That’s just how things are going for Tampa Bay right now.

But the biggest hit of the inning, according to WPA, was Brandon Lowe’s seeing-eye single three batters prior, which tied the game with two outs. If the Rays are actually going to continue on as the best team in baseball, Lowe is one of their most important players. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t like using absolutes when talking about sports on the internet. No matter how uncontroversial the take, there’s always someone out there whose whole personality is wrapped up in “No, actually Mike Trout isn’t the best center fielder in baseball” and you get yelled at.

So I’m not going to say that Nick Lodolo has been the best pitcher in baseball thus far this year. And even if I did, it wouldn’t be that momentous a statement, since he’s only made two starts so far and nobody else has made more than three. Still, through those two starts and 12 innings, he’s faced 51 batters, striking out 21 and reducing another nine to popups and softly-hit groundballs. He’s allowed just 10 hits and two runs, and has a strikeout rate over 40%.

Regardless of superlatives, certainly he’s pitched well enough to warrant both praise and examination. Read the rest of this entry »

If the Marlins are going to jump into playoff contention anytime soon, it will be on the back of their young pitchers. Of these, they have assembled many, with varied results. Sandy Alcantara just won the Cy Young. Trevor Rogers looked like a future Cy Young winner for a little bit, though not so much anymore. Max Meyer got hurt but should be back soon enough. Sixto Sánchez got hurt and might not be the back ever. The Marlins even declared a surplus in this area, trading Pablo López (and Zac Gallen, if you want to broaden your time horizons a little) for position players. Braxton Garrett, Edward Cabrera, and a partridge in a pear tree.

But Miami’s most promising young starter at the moment, other than Alcantara, is Jesús Luzardo. He faces the Phillies on Tuesday night having allowed just one earned run in 12 2/3 innings over his first two starts of the season. Read the rest of this entry »

Of all the things that happened in baseball this weekend, the only one I cared about was a Double-A game between the Chattanooga Lookouts and the Rocket City Trash Pandas. Now, I know what you’re thinking. If an April Double-A game is worth caring about at all, it must be a real doozy. To have it overshadow a weekend of MLB action — the Rays went to 9-0, Jordan Walker tied Ted Williams’ record for longest career-opening hitting streak, Oneil Cruz got hurt — well surely I must be exaggerating.

Try this on for size: The Trash Pandas led 3–0 heading into the seventh and final inning of the game, having not allowed a hit. They went on to lose that game 7–5, still not having allowed a hit. “You can’t predict baseball” is a bit of a cliché; baseball has been around for more than 150 years. All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again. But allowing seven runs while preserving a no-hitter? That’s worthy of detailed examination. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re only a week into the regular season, which means it’s too early to do any serious analysis. Or, to spin things another way, it’s a perfect time to hurry up and write about something wild that’s happening before everyone regresses to the mean.

So let’s talk about Brian Anderson.

Anderson was the best hitter in baseball in the first week of the 2023 MLB regular season. Through Wednesday’s games, he led the league in wOBA and xwOBA, and was a close second to Adam Duvall in wRC+. Anderson probably won’t finish the season with a wRC+ over 300 — though if he does, I guarantee we’ll cover it — but he’s no Tuffy Rhodes. He was a very good player not too long ago, and this hot start might represent a return to form. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a lot to love about how the Padres built their roster, and I’m not talking about the obvious stuff like trading for Juan Soto or building a lineup entirely of shortstops or sneaking Xander Bogaerts out of Boston under the fuel tank of an Isetta bubble car. I’m talking about how they built their pitching depth. It’s a smorgasbord of guy-remembering, a combination of starters from the 2010s who are just hanging on and top prospects from the 2010s who are still trying to break through.

Look at the pitching staff of the 2023 El Paso Chihuahuas: Cole Hamels, Jay Groome, Julio Teheran, Anderson Espinoza, Aaron Brooks, and (pounds table) Wilmer (pounds table) Jetpacking (pounds table) Font! In a ranking of expensive San Diego-based nostalgia trips, I did not think anyone would beat Top Gun: Maverick so soon, but here we are.

One of those 2010s late bloomer prospects broke camp with the big league club. Brent Honeywell Jr., who not so long ago was one of the most interesting pitchers in the high minors, has now made two appearances in the majors for the Padres. Read the rest of this entry »

The actual process of cutting a major league baseball player on a guaranteed contract is easy enough in theory, but time-consuming in practice. The Mets designated Darin Ruf for assignment last Monday and had likely known he wouldn’t make the team for at least a couple weeks before that. But it wasn’t until this Monday that the 36-year-old former Creighton Blue Jay finally received his release. That ends the fifth act in Ruf’s career, one everyone would probably just as soon forget.

Ruf was one of several first base/DH types who passed through waivers just before the season, as teams weighed the potential for a bounceback against the downside of being on the hook for $3 million in his case, plus another $250,000 to buy out his club option in 2024 if things didn’t go well. Perhaps he’ll be more attractive at the league minimum or as depth in Triple-A if he accepts such an assignment, and we’ll see him in the majors again.

Even if this is the end of Ruf’s time as a major leaguer, he’s had a noteworthy career, spanning 561 games over parts of eight seasons across 10 years, on either side of a dominant three-year run in the KBO. I, for one, did not expect to be writing about Ruf in 2023, but he’s confounded my expectations and then some. Read the rest of this entry »