There are baseball stars, there are heroes and legends, and then there is Henry Aaron. The slugging right fielder is remembered mainly for surpassing Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record on April 8, 1974, but even that crowning achievement obscures the all-around excellence and remarkable consistency he demonstrated during his 23-year major league career.

What’s more, Aaron’s accomplishments can most fully be appreciated only with an understanding of the racism he encountered throughout his life and his career, as a Black man who began his professional career in the Negro Leagues, who became a star before half of the teams in the National League had integrated and a champion before the last teams in the American League did so, who emerged as a force for civil rights while becoming the first Black star on the first major league team in the Deep South, who surpassed the most hallowed record produced by the game’s most famous player while facing a nearly unimaginable barrage of hate mail and death threats, and who broke down further barriers after his retirement, as one of the game’s first Black executives and as a critic of the lack of diversity among managers and executives.

More than a Hall of Famer, Aaron was a true titan, an American icon in his own right. Sadly, he is the latest Hall of Famer in an unrelenting stretch to pass away. News of his death was announced on Friday morning, four days after that of Don Sutton, 15 days after that of Tommy Lasorda, and 27 days after that of former teammate Phil Niekro. He was 86 years old, and had been in the news earlier this month as he received a COVID-19 vaccination.

“Hank Aaron was one of the best baseball players we’ve ever seen and one of the strongest people I’ve ever met,” said former president Barack Obama in a statement released on Friday. Former presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush paid tributes in statements as well, as did President Joe Biden:

President @JoeBiden on #HankAaron’s legacy: “As a nation, we will still chase the better version of ourselves that he set for us.” pic.twitter.com/xL7AESxaek

— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) January 23, 2021

While Aaron’s story is often cast as that of a man overcoming or ignoring racism and hatred to achieve greatness with quiet dignity, it does the man a disservice to soften his edges and diminish the pain that he felt, and the scars that he bore — particularly given that he did not do so in silence. Surpassing Ruth “was supposed to be the greatest triumph of my life, but I was never allowed to enjoy it. I couldn’t wait for it to be over,” he once said. “The only reason that some people didn’t want me to succeed was because I was a Black man.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Giants continued to remake their starting rotation this week, signing former Dodgers swingman Alex Wood to a one-year, $3 million contract. Wood’s low salary reflects the fact that he’s struggled over the last two seasons, accumulating -0.2 WAR in 48 1/3 innings, courtesy of a bleak 6.02 FIP. The catch is that he was not truly healthy in either campaign, missing much of 2019 with back issues and a chunk of ’20 with shoulder inflammation. While he’s never been the picture of perfect health — he hasn’t qualified for an ERA title since 2015 — he was a key contributor to the Braves and the Dodgers, and before his disappointing 2019, his worst FIP over a season was 3.69 in ’15, a number many pitchers would be delighted to hit.

Similar to about 27 or 28 teams in baseball, San Francisco hasn’t made a splash this winter, but there’s been a real push to improve the starting pitching. Back when the Giants were winning a World Series every other season, a large part of the foundation was young, team-developed pitching. Few teams could match the accomplishment of producing Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum, and Madison Bumgarner over a rather short period of time. But since the team’s collapse in 2017, a year in which the Giants just barely avoided their second 100-loss year in franchise history, the rotation has been one of the worst in the league, ranking 25th in WAR. Any sort of magic at creating young aces seems to have dissipated, with a long list of names — Kyle Crick, Keury Mella, Tyler Beede, Ty Blach, Clayton Blackburn — failing to make an impact.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, the Mariners Player Development twitter account posted a graphic of Julio Rodriguez.

Hang it in the Louvre. ? pic.twitter.com/uIhzPuWppz

— Mariners Player Development (@MsPlayerDev) January 8, 2021

Adorned in a full uniform and sunglasses, Rodriguez’s bat is cocked just beyond his head as he begins his stride toward the mound; the #SeaUsRise hashtag in the lower left corner suggests a metaphor is at work. “Hang it in the Louvre,” the Mariners tweeted approvingly.

Compliments to artist Trevor Milless aside, this tweet stuck with me, mostly because it’s kind of odd. There aren’t many teams that retweet artwork posted on the club’s player development account, in part because most franchises don’t even have a player development account.

This is part of a pattern in Seattle. The Mariners have been rebuilding for a couple seasons and they’re not shy about promoting their good work. The major league broadcasts feature regular updates on the farm system, and the club’s TV network has aired a few minor league games. Jerry Dipoto even joined one of the broadcasts. All teams are proud of their minor leaguers, of course, but as far as I know, the Mariners are the only team to give one of them a YouTube show.

In a vacuum, there’s nothing wrong with this. Vibin’ With JRod isn’t for me, but hey, he’s a good prospect and I’m no marketer. Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of weeks ago, I was chatting with PitcherList’s Alex Fast about four-seam fastballs swinging strike rates (SwStr%) and their relationship to pitch height — or, perhaps more specifically, their lack of relationship. At the pitcher-season level (e.g., “2020 Clayton Kershaw“), the correlation between SwStr% and pitch height appeared weak at best. When you consider that no fastball is created equal and then introduce small-sample variance to the equation, the relationship could, understandably, become blurred at the pitcher level.

As a retort, I sent him the following graph, which shows SwStr% by pitch height for the three broad pitch classes as defined by Statcast, the source of the data. For reference, I’ve added black lines to indicate the average bottom, heart, and top of the strike zone:

If we zoom out and consider the question at the macro level, independent of context (what’s the average swinging strike rate for all fastballs by pitch height?), we can see that fastballs generate more swinging strikes up in the zone, a phenomenon our own Jeff Zimmerman touched upon here. This finding is mildly interesting in and of itself. But as I considered the matter further, the importance of swing frequency (Swing%) to SwStr% became clear (both use all pitches as a denominator). Regardless of efficacy, more swings will afford more chances for swinging strikes. As such, I anticipated that fastballs probably induce more swinging strikes up high than down low simply because hitters swing more frequently at high fastballs. Similarly (but inversely), non-fastballs would generate more swinging strikes down low instead of up high. The next graph all but affirmed my intuition:

Although the peaks of the bell curves cluster near the heart of the zone, we can see distinct differences in swing rate by pitch class at the thresholds of the strike zone. At its bottom edge, hitters are half as likely to swing at fastballs as they are at non-fastballs; at its top edge, twice as likely. Read the rest of this entry »