CLEVELAND — In case you’ve not been logged into your social-media account in the past several days, Indians pitcher Trevor Bauer has been outspoken about rampant use of pine tar (and other grip-aiding substances) in the game.

Bauer’s position is basically that the playing field ought to be level: either MLB better enforces the pine-tar rule or it makes grip-aiding substances legal. And Bauer knows it would be about impossible to enforce the current rule. Bauer says he has tested pine tar in a lab setting and said it significantly increased his spin rate. He claims it has a greater effect than steroids on performance.

“I’ve melted down Firm Grip and Coca-Cola and pine tar together,” Bauer told reporters Wednesday. “I’ve tested a lot of stuff. At 70 mph, when we were doing the tests, spin rates jumped between 300–400 rpm while using various different sticky substances. The effect is slightly less pronounced at higher velocities — more game-like velocities — but still between 200–300 rpm increase.”

As many in this audience are aware, the greater the fastball spin rate, the more “rise” effect the pitch has, the more it resists gravity, the more swing-and-miss it generates. More spin equals more swing-and-miss. That’s been proven by Driveline Baseball, where Bauer trains, and FanGraphs’ own Jeff Zimmerman.

There is incentive to add spin. And now with Statcast and its TrackMan Doppler radar component in all major-league stadiums, pitchers have had the ability to measure their spin to better understand some of the underpinnings behind their performance in game environments.

Read the rest of this entry »

Between West 124th and 125th Streets on St. Nicholas Ave. in Harlem rests a street-level commercial space situated between a Dollar Tree and a Chuck E. Cheese’s, and it is where Adam Ottavino might have saved his career last winter.

The space was a solution to a problem. He lived in the city in the offseason with his wife and two-year-old daughter. In previous offseasons, he had traveled out to Long Island to work and throw at a facility, but the commute and practice time away was beginning to strain his family.

Moreover, Ottavino’s previous throwing partner, Steven Matz, had left the city and moved Nashville, Tenn., after becoming engaged. Finding a throwing partner and facility in Manhattan, the most prized real estate in the country, wasn’t easy. He knew Matt Harvey was one of a few major-league pitchers living in the city in the offseason, so he asked Harvey if he was interested in finding a place to throw, but Harvey declined.

“At that point, I was kind of screwed,” Ottavino said. “I didn’t know what to do.”

Ottavino, a Brooklyn native, required a productive offseason. He was left off the Rockies’ Wild Card roster weeks earlier after an awful 2017 season when he walked nearly seven batters per nine innings, leading to a 16% walk rate. He was in the final year of his contract. He had spent some time at Driveline Baseball after the season ended. He thought he had now had some solutions. He had bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment with which to try and make himself a better pitcher. But he needed a place to experiment.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Last Friday, in the second inning against the Rangers, Robinson Cano went where no man, at least no infielder, had gone before.

Cano, the Mariners’ nominal second baseman in this instance, was situated in an alignment in which he began 221 feet from home plate against Joey Gallo. Read the rest of this entry »

Among the early-season strikeout leaders, one finds many of the usual names, pitchers like Chris Sale, Max Scherzer, and Noah Syndergaard. But sandwiched between Syndergaard and Justin Verlander, at seventh overall, is a bit of surprise: J.A. Happ. The veteran lefty has struck out 33.6% of batters faced so far this year.

Because strikeout rate begins to stabilize before almost any other metric, this is a possible first sign that something about Happ is fundamentally different. His swinging-strike rate — another predictive figure — has also jumped, up to 14.1%. He’s never reached double-digits by that measure over the course of a full season.

Read the rest of this entry »

For most of his professional career, now in its 10th season, Christian Villanueva has been largely irrelevant.

He appeared on Baseball America’s top-100 list in 2012 — but as the last player on that list.

He was the “other guy” in the deal the that sent Kyle Hendricks — and Villanueva — from the Rangers to the Cubs for Ryan Dempster on July 31st, 2012.

While putting together a solid 2013 season in Double-A, he observed as the Cubs selected University of San Diego third baseman Kris Bryant with the second overall pick in the June draft. While Bryant was a level or two behind Villanueva in 2013 and 2014, the former soon passed the latter en route to the majors.

As Bryant was fashioning a Rookie of the Year campaign in 2015, Villanueva slashed .259/.313/.437 in Iowa with 18 home runs over 508 plate appearance as a 24-year-old in Triple-A. Not only was he blocked, but he wasn’t performing like someone who appeared to be a future regular. In 2016, he suffered a broken leg and missed the entire season.

At the end of the 2016 season, with seemingly no place for him in the Cubs’ infield or on their 40-man roster, Villanueva was granted free agency. He signed a minor-league deal 10 days later with the San Diego Padres.

At that point in time, Villanueva wasn’t particularly relevant in baseball circles. He wasn’t particularly relevant last season, either, when he slashed .296/.369/.528 with 20 homers in Triple-A, a trying year personally after his brother died in the spring.

He was a relative unknown for the first nine years of his professional career. That’s changed early this season.

A player with whom few were acquainted a month ago now leads baseball in wRC+ (236) among hitters with 70 or more plate appearances and is eighth in WAR (1.4) as the season approaches May.

He got our attention early with a three-homer game on April 3rd.

As seen here:

https://gfycat.com/MiserablePhysicalAdouri

And here:

https://gfycat.com/UniformWellgroomedDairycow

And here:

https://gfycat.com/VapidRewardingEuropeanpolecat

Villanueva doesn’t have exceptional exit velocity like his teammate Franchy Cordero, the latter perhaps representing the greatest curiosity in the majors. He ranks 193rd in exit velocity on fly balls and line drives early this season, according to Baseball Savant.

But he is doing several things unusually well.

For starters, he’s been air-balling since before air-balling was a thing. The only time Villanueva hit more ground balls than fly balls at a professional stop was in Rookie ball in 2009. Villanueva has the 23rd-lowest ground-ball rate (29.3%) in the sport.

His average launch angle of 19.4 degrees ranks ranks 30th and his 11 launches between 20 to 30 degrees ranks 30th, as well.

And it’s not just that he’s putting balls in the air, it’s where he’s directing them: to his pull side and in an extreme way.

As you’ll notice in the above clips, he’s even been able to hook breaking balls on the outside part of the plate over the left-field wall in a Gary Sheffield sort of way. He’s covering the whole plate and with power.

Villanueva leads the majors in pull percentage on fly balls and line drives (62.1%) and that’s in large part why he ranks first in the majors with a 36.8% HR/FB rate.

Can he continue to pull fly balls and line drives at such a rate? It’s rare. Since 2007, only 37 batters have accomplished it, including the aforementioned Sheffield twice.

If he can, he’s interesting. This isn’t just a bat-only corner bat, it’s one that plays third and one with which the Padres have even considered experimenting at shortstop.

Might this be for real?

It’s a unique batted-ball profile, one that should lend itself to constant home-run power so long as he can make contact and pull air balls. Another key is that Padres manager Andy Green said Villanueva has tightened up his strike zone.

“It’s been great to see Villa make the adjustments he’s made,” Green said. “When he got to the point where he was swinging at everything, you know that’s not going to play well in the long run. Seeing him make that adjustment, be a bit more patient, means more to me than seeing him hit three homers in a game.”

Maybe Green is seeing something from dugout level, but Villanueva doesn’t seem patient by the numbers: he’s swinging at out-of-zone pitches at 40% rate. While he never had major contact issues in the minors, he’s striking out on 30% of his plate appearances thus far in the majors. He has a swinging strike rate of 17.4%.

While he’s crushing fastballs and changeups, he’s swinging through an awful lot of curveballs and sliders. He’s not going to continue to see fastballs at a 56% rate.

If there isn’t yet a book on Villanueva, one is being written by opponents as we speak. He’ll have to make some adjustments now that he’s no longer a secret, now that he’s no longer irrelevant.

Read the rest of this entry »

PITTSBURGH — For as long a there have been coded messages designed to secretly pass information before prying eyes, there has been someone trying to break the encryption, from the Babington Plot to the Zimmerman Letter. For as long as there have been signals in baseball, there has been an opponent trying to identify a pattern and steal the signs. And with every game televised, with cameras everywhere, teams have never before been more paranoid about protecting their messages.

Complicating matters is the commissioner’s concern about pace of play, which has manifested itself this season in the form of a limit on mound visits. Now a pitching coach’s capacity to deliver a message directly is even more constrained. Pitching clocks might be on the horizon. The need for signals is even greater.

In the face of all this, at least one club appears has responded with their own innovation.

Last Sunday, the Washington Nationals broadcast noticed an unusual card sheathed in clear plastic on a wristband that was adorning the left arm of Rockies catcher Chris Iannetta. The MASN cameras zoomed in for a close-up in an attempt to satisfy the curiosity of color man F.P. Santangelo and to discern the contents of the card.

This author went into investigative mode, paused the television, pulled up the game on my laptop via MLB.TV, and took a screenshot of the image.

Attempts to unlock the code via crowdsourcing on social media were unsuccessful.

Is the cipher unbreakable? The Rockies think so.

Read the rest of this entry »

This author spent a fair amount of his 2017 documenting the Fly-Ball Revolution. Of the 330 posts this author published from January through the end of last season, 49 included the term “launch angle.” I looked it up. Overkill? Perhaps. But as a devout believer and documenter, I thought it would be irresponsible not to follow up early this season.

In a piece for The Hardball Times Annual this winter, I wondered aloud if the fly-ball revolution would follow the trajectory of shifts. Shifts were a relative curiosity in 2011 and then enjoyed growth rates of 94.8%, 50.4%, 92.2%, 34.8%, and 57.8% from 2012 to -17, jumping from 2,350 shifts in 2011 to 28,130 in 2016. Shifts fell in total volume for the first time last year, to 26,705. The idea and practice of shifting spread dramatically and rapidly. Just about everyone bought in.

Read the rest of this entry »

PITTSBURGH — As defensive shifts — or, at least, infields shifts — have become an everyday part of the game, it takes a lot to get our attention. The Diamondbacks’ shift against Rockies second baseman DJ LeMahieu last season got our attention.

In case you’ve forgotten, borrowing from a post from last season detailing the alignment:

That gets our attention.

Read the rest of this entry »