Archive for Best of 2024

Author’s Note: Sunday Notes is off this week due to a health scare — I’m now home recovering — so my annual Best Quotes compilation is being bumped back from the 31st to fill the void. As always, thanks for reading.

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In 2024, I once again had an opportunity to interview numerous people within the game. Many of their words were shared in my Sunday Notes column, while others came via an assortment of Q&As, feature stories, and my Talks Hitting series. Here is a selection of the best quotes from this year’s conversations, with the bolded lines linking to the pieces they were excerpted from.

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“When you say hitting, I’m assuming that you mean striking the ball. There is so much that goes into the striking of the baseball. There are a lot of moving parts mechanically [and] mentally that culminate into the perfect storm of creating that compression between the barrel of the bat and the ball.” — Triston Casas, Boston Red Sox first baseman

“When you’re not hitting… I mean, who likes being bad at something? Hitting is hard. So, it’s fun, but you have to embrace the struggles. As a hitter, you know you’re going to struggle. You’re also going to not struggle.” — Julio Rodríguez,, Seattle Mariners outfielder

“The guy I talked to about doing it was doing some analytics stuff and video scouting for us at the time. It was [current Reds GM] Nick Krall. I loved talking with Nick before he was the big dog. I mean, there was the manager getting some information from one of the lowest guys on the totem pole. I think the talk shows probably would have died if I told them who I was getting information from.” — Jerry Narron, former Cincinnati Reds manager

“How much should you really value analytics versus guys who go out on the field and get outs consistently? If a guy has Stuff+ metrics that are off the chart — this guy shouldn’t get hit — but the hitters tell you different, versus a guy that maybe has below-average stuff but he goes out and carves every time out. Which matters? You have to be able to pitch.” — Tarik Skubal, Detroit Tigers pitcher

“I’m a heavy supination pitcher. When I drop down and throw that supinated pitch, it creates the seam shift for everything — the two-seam and the changeup. I didn’t know about any of this until I got with [Bannister] in spring training. He kind of showed me how it worked.” — Logan Webb, San Francisco Giants pitcher

“I wanted to throw it back in the day, in the minor leagues with the Giants, but I was fresh from being drafted and they said, ‘Save that for when you need it, maybe when your stuff starts slowing down a little bit.’ I was like, ‘All right. Cool. Whatever.’” — Zack Wheeler, Philadelphia Phillies pitcher

“I’m not into French Impressionism as much as, say, modern abstract. That’s one that I like, but I wouldn’t say I’m pigeonholed into one genre. I’ll see something and be, ‘Man, I really like that,’ or maybe it’s, ‘I think that’s a little overrated.’ I guess that’s just like any of us when it comes to art.” — Dylan Cease, San Diego Padres pitcher

“I think it would be disingenuous for any scouting director, or front office, to say that they don’t pay attention to mock drafts by respected third-party publications, especially as you get closer to the draft. Now, do we rely on our internal data to make draft decisions? Yes, of course.” — Dan Kantrovitz, Chicago Cubs VP of Scouting

“One of the reasons we maybe walked past an Aaron Judge… I mean, our evaluations were really strong, but the fact that he struck out so much in college was a bit of a red flag. I think we learned a little bit from that. At the same time, guys who strike out generally strike out.” — Eric Kubota, Oakland Athletics Scouting Director

“Tim Wilken once said to me, ‘Don’t laugh at mine and I won’t laugh at yours.’ Another one he would always say is, ‘Once you see a guy good, don’t go back.’ But there I was in Philly and Mike [Trout] was right down the road playing. So I went to see again and the look wasn’t as clean.” — Tom Allison, Los Angeles Dodgers special assignment scout

“D-Train. He was another competitor, a plus competitor and a good athlete for a big guy. Unconventional delivery, right? He had the big leg kick, almost up over his head; probably not the type of mechanics that you would teach, but it worked for him.” — Mike Redmond, Colorado Rockies bench coach

“Green light. If I gave him a red light and told him not to go, I don’t know what the hell would happen. He’s got a green light even when he’s got a red light. He doesn’t care. He’s running.” — Kevin Cash, Tampa Bay Rays manager

“There are a handful of games where I’ve felt that way, like, ‘Man, this is a really good baseball game going on.’ When you come out on the bad end it kind of sucks, but you try to have that appreciation for ‘That was a really good one.’” — Aaron Boone, New York Yankees manager

“I don’t have good hop. My four-seam performs like it has hop, but it actually doesn’t have it. I throw it from… I like to call it ‘throwing it from the basement’ as opposed to throwing from above your head. That’s where you find the vertical approach that is more down to up.” — Spencer Arrighetti, Houston Astros pitcher

“If all you’re looking for is ‘stuff,’ you’re completely misunderstanding the game. Eventually the game will either force you to understand it, or you’re just going to be out of the game. You have to understand the art of pitching.” — Chris Bassitt, Toronto Blue Jays pitcher

“I think that as the baseball world evolves with technology, you kind of see what’s important and what’s not. I’ve kind of followed that path. For me, it’s not ‘I don’t think this is important,’ but more so ‘This happens because of this.’” — Rhett Lowder, Cincinnati Reds pitcher

“Their stuff is off the charts. Jones has a chance to be really, really good. His pitch mix, his velocity, his athleticism. And then Skenes came as advertised with some of the more dominant combinations that you’ll face from a young pitcher.” — A.J. Hinch, Detroit Tigers manager

“I’ve probably held a million baseballs in my life. I mean, as a person who holds a lot of balls — for lack of better words — I can tell you very minuscule details that are different. I have to. Think about how precise we have to be with throwing them, how much we have to spin and locate.” — Marco Gonzales, Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher

“My basketball game was somewhat similar to my baseball game. I kind of did the right things. I knew what to do. I knew where to go. I averaged around 15 points in high school. It was [a big school]. We had over 2,000 kids. There are a lot of big schools in Georgia.” — Dansby Swanson, Chicago Cubs shortstop

“I love to play soccer. I love to watch soccer. I played until I was 15, I want to say, right before I signed to play professional baseball. I got a lot of goals. Number 9 [traditionally the number worn by strikers/center forwards]. Both feet.” — Eugenio Suárez, Arizona Diamondbacks third baseman

“I’m a left-knee-down guy, and I go to two feet if a runner steals. Growing up, and even now, you find people who don’t understand why catchers are on one knee. It allows you to be in better positions to pull strikes and get in front of balls. It makes catching a lot easier, overall. — Kyle Teel, Boston Red Sox catching prospect

“I never got the half-ass award, but I did have a big one. You know those big green Physio Balls you work out with? Danny Jansen and I were in the cage before a game, and he kicked one to me. I swung at it with my bat, and when I hit it, the bat came back and gave me 11 stitches above my eye. It knocked me out.” — Rowdy Tellez, Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman

“When the elevator doors open, Bruce Kimm, the Braves manager is there. He had knots, shiners, black eyes. I said, ‘Man, I didn’t know we got you that good.’ He looked like he’d been hit by Mohammed Ali 25 times. I felt bad. But yeah, that team got in a lot of fights.” — Doug Glanville, ESPN broadcaster

“You can’t fix hop. That’s ‘pow!’ You can fix dip. What I mean by dip, the ball is going at their feet; it’s going down. You can fix that type of stuff. But you can’t fix hop. Hop just has that in it.” — Ron Washington, Los Angeles Angles manager

“I’d had one home run all year, and then in our three-game conference tournament I had three, including two in the championship. And again, I pitched seven innings. I was Shohei Ohtani that day. That’s the way I like to think of it.” — Zack Littell, Tampa Bay Rays pitcher

“A fly ball gets hit down the right field line, and the kid starts running. Then he stops at the line. He reaches into foul territory, trying to catch the ball like a football guy trying to stay in bounds. The ball landed out of his reach, foul. In the dugout, we were like, ‘What just happened?’” — Fredi Gonzalez, Baltimore Orioles bench coach

“Growing up, I knew every batting average. I could tell you the starting lineup for probably every team in the big leagues. Even coming up [as a player], watching the game the way I did, that was the case. Getting into coaching, I could tell you every coach on every team as well. There’s a lot more turnover now.” — Bob Melvin, San Francisco Giants manager

“We got in on Wednesday night and Boston was playing Baltimore on Thursday. So, I bought a ticket in the center field bleachers and floated around, watching the game. I wanted to realign my perspective and watch as a fan.” — Logan O’Hoppe, Los Angeles Angels catcher

“[After I retire], it will probably be tough watching just as a fan. That’s the hard part. The game is always so much easier sitting on the couch. I’ll try to keep the perspective of a player, knowing how hard this game really is, but at the end of the day, I’ll be sitting at home wondering what I’d do with this hitter. That’s always going to be in me.” — Kyle Hendricks, Chicago Cubs pitcher

“We get calls on a lot of our players and we have to listen. We have to hear the conversation… What we tell every team is, ‘Listen, we’re open to being creative.’ We can’t rule anything out before we hear it, no matter who the player is.” — Derek Falvey, Minnesota Twins president of baseball operations

“I was like, ‘I get stuck, because internally I feel like I have the ability to be crafty, but it’s also my nature to just be a power pitcher. That’s my competitor, my inner competitor. That’s kind of what fuels my fire.” — Garrett Crochet, Chicago White Sox pitcher

“A lot of the time I’ll throw a pitch and it gets misclassified; a certain pitch will be called something else. I’m still the same pitcher — I’m fastball, slider, curveball, changeup, sinker — but sometimes the slider gets a little bit cutter-y and sometimes it gets a little bit sweeper-y. That’s kind of been the case my whole career.” — Max Fried, Atlanta Braves pitcher

“We get the kinematic sequencing, the front leg blocking, the horizontal abduction — the AB deduction of the elbow — pelvis rotational speeds. Every biomechanical piece out there. Our biomechanist gives me a good report on each guy, what they’re doing stride length, stride width, whether they’re landing closed or more open.” — Scott Emerson, Oakland Athletics pitching coach

“You’ve got outliers. You’ll see [Yoshinobu] Yamamoto go out deep before a start. At our park, he went from the foul line all the way to the right field bullpen, which is maybe 240 or so, He may have gone further if he had space. Trevor Bauer used to go foul pole to foul pole. Gerrit usually won’t go past 100-120.” — Matt Blake, New York Yankees pitching coach

“It’s like a one-seam gyro spin that catches. It’s a bigger horizontal break than a regular gyro slider. It’s not depth-y, but shoots to the left pretty good. A sweeper is going to have side spin. Gyros have bullet spin. A gyro sweeper is bullet spin, but with one seam… one seam that catches. A seam-shift gyro.” — Seth Lugo, Kansas City Royals pitcher

“Those guys have pop. They can hit it farther than me. Colton Cowser. I joke around with him. ‘Bro, you’re a skinny dude. You crush the ball. Wow. How do you do it?’ I don’t have that kind of pop. But I can hit in the game.” — Anthony Santander, Baltimore Orioles outfielder

“Even though you’re 0-for-20, you’re still going to put the cleats on. You’re going to go out there thinking, ‘OK, today it shifts. I’m going to go 10 for my next 10.’ So, yeah, hitting is fun. It’s always fun.” — Tre Morgan, Tampa Bay Rays first base prospect

“I kind of took [Kodai] Senga’s grip a little bit. It’s like a mix of Senga and [Kevin] Gausman. I have the horseshoe rotated here [on the ring side of the middle finger] and then the other one kind of splits between the lace. I actually found it on a Tread video on YouTube.” — Bryce Miller, Seattle Mariners pitcher

“You see guys from my slot throwing sinkers and it’s predictable. You know which way it’s going to move. But with a four-seam from my slot, it’s not predictable. You don’t expect the ball to move that way, and that’s where hitters kind of get messed up with it.” — Tayler Scott, Houston Astros pitcher

“I don’t think I’m a guy who can throw one pitch and say, ‘Here it comes, try to hit it.’ Statistically, I don’t know that I actually have a best pitch.” — Tyler Holton, Detroit Tigers pitcher

“We’re not allowed to have cell phones, but if somebody comes out to the ‘pen late, we’ll be asking, ‘Hey, what did so-and-so do?’ or whatever. We can also maybe ask a fan or a security guard, ‘Hey, what’s going on with the Cowboys game?’” — Chris Martin, Boston Red Sox pitcher

“The kick change… basically, you kick the axis of the ball into that three o’clock axis. You kind of get that saucer-type spin to get the depth that a guy who could pronate a changeup would get to. You’re not using a seam-shift method. You’re not truly pronating. It’s kind of this cheat to get to that three o’clock axis.” — Davis Martin, Chicago White Sox pitcher

“I truly try everything. I catch one knee, catch two knees, left knee up, left knee down, both knees down. I’m trying it all. I’m figuring out what works best for me. But I can catch however. I’ll use all three in the same game.” — Ethan Salas, San Diego Padres catching prospect

“Growing up, I kind of had a natural, sweet lefty swing, As I kept getting bigger I had to keep working at it, working with my coaches back home, working on trying to stay short. Consistency is the biggest key, especially for a guy my size.” — Bryce Eldridge, San Francisco Giants, first base prospect

“In the 2024 baseball universe, our starters are pretty optimized. And I think there is a distinction between optimized and maxed out. We’re not looking to max out and get every possible pitch out of our starters, we’re looking to optimize the performance of our team.” — Justin Hollander, Seattle Mariners GM

“I think the line between starter and reliever is blurring… I don’t think it will be hard to replicate what we did last year if we choose to pursue that nontraditional pitching strategy of a reliever starting a game, then a starter-type pitching the bulk innings, and then relievers coming in at the end of a game.” — Scott Harris, Detroit Tigers president of baseball operations

“At times there have been pursuits of bat speed and bat speed development programs. There have also been feedback loops related to swing decisions and quality of approach. Ultimately, we are emphasizing the things that we want to value. At the end of the day it’s about run creation.” — Ross Fenstermaker, Texas Rangers GM

“To me, hitting is not so much about swinging. Obviously, you have to swing to hit the ball, but swinging isn’t hitting. Hitting is making the right decision. It’s knowing the pitcher. It’s knowing what the situation calls for. The swing comes last.” — Mark Loretta, San Diego Padres special assistant

“For a young kid reading this, my message would be to not try to be anything you’re not. If you’re a contact guy, don’t try to hit home runs. Be yourself, knowing that the best you can do is the best you can do.” — Colt Emerson, Seattle Mariners infield prospect

“With Fenway, they wanted you to use the Monster. They were working a lot on airside, pull stuff with me. That just wasn’t the type of hitter I was. Trying to do that, the power output never really went up. What happened is the swing-and-miss went up, and the hit-ability went down a little bit.” — Nick Yorke, Pittsburgh Pirates infielder

“Philosophically, we pride ourselves on the ability to co-design with our athletes. Our hitters have a say in their development. We’re not dictating to them what they need to do… As an organization and a department, we’re data-informed, but we’re not data-driven.” — Brenton Del Chiaro, Milwaukee Brewers assistant director of player development

“We take that crystal ball and try to incrementally improve it, decision after decision after decision… We never think we have this thing figured out. We’ve kept notes from prior meetings — 5, 10, 15 years ago — and they’re terrible. The goal for five years from now, if I’m fortunate enough to still be here doing this, is that we look back at our thoughts on what makes sense today, and think we’re idiots.” — Erik Neander, Tampa Bay Rays, president of baseball operations

Let’s play a little guessing game. See if you can identify the pitchers who produced the two seasons below.

Got your guesses ready? Awesome. The answer is… after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

“One of the best hitters in baseball – last three years, batting titles with three different teams.” That’s the first thing viewers heard about Luis Arraez this postseason, a quote from the bottom of the first inning of the Padres-Braves Wild Card series. Arraez singled and promptly scored on a Fernando Tatis Jr. home run. It was just how you’d draw it up, and San Diego won a 4-0 laugher. That’s the promise of Arraez – a near-automatic baserunner completely immune to strikeout pitching.

“He’s a tough dude to face… He could set the tone just like Ohtani could set the tone for their respective clubs.” That one comes from the last game Arraez played this postseason, as he was mired in a deep slump. After that first single, he went 2-for-8 with two more singles the rest of the Atlanta series. Then he went a desultory 4-for-22 (all singles) in the NLDS against Dodgers. He fulfilled plenty of the Arraez-ian promise we expect – just one strikeout in 31 plate appearances – but he simply couldn’t buy a hit.

It’s hard to learn much from a down series like that. Obviously, Arraez wasn’t contributing to the Padres offense – no one contributes when they post a 27 wRC+. But hidden in that statement is an unstated counterfactual: When Arraez goes, it is implied, the Padres go. His single-hitting prowess is the straw that stirs the drink for a fantastic offense that ranked eighth in the majors in runs scored this year despite playing in one of the toughest offensive environments out there.

There’s just one problem with that statement: It’s not true. Arraez didn’t stir the drink for the Padres this year, even as he cruised to his third straight batting title. That sounds crazy, but it’s true. There’s just something about that shiny batting average that messes with our ability to evaluate players. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday afternoon, across his seven innings of shutout work against the Cleveland Guardians in Game 2 of the ALDS, Tarik Skubal threw five pitches that moved to his glove side. His other 87 pitches — fastballs, sinkers, and changeups — went the other direction. Here’s what that looked like on a pitch movement plot:

Skubal’s “Oops! no breaking balls” approach was an extreme version of the arsenal that powered his Cy Young-caliber campaign, and may well be his primary plan as he takes on the Guardians in Game 5 of the ALDS on Saturday. Unlike most of our contemporary aces, Skubal doesn’t dominate with huge shapes or funky angles. There are no Sale-esque sweepers, knee-buckling splitters, gravity-defying heaters, or mind-meltingly flat vertical approach angles. Few pitchers thrive while concentrating 95% of their pitches in one quadrant of the pitch plot. But Skubal does. He excels by pitching like a turbocharged Kyle Freeland. Read the rest of this entry »

Pete Rose died on Monday at his home in Las Vegas, closing the book on an 83-year life that included an incredible, record-setting 24-year major league career that was soon followed by three and a half decades of wandering in a desert of his own making. Handed down by commissioner Bart Giamatti in 1989, his permanent banishment from organized baseball for gambling — a prohibition that dates back to predecessor Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis’ effort to clean up the game in the wake of the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal — prevented the all-time leader in hits and games played from cementing his legacy with enshrinement in the Hall of Fame, and from working within baseball in any capacity.

Backed by a sizable contingent of admirers and apologists — and a smaller faction of truthers, a group that at one point included Bill James — Rose spent decades denying his transgressions, lying to the public, to baseball officials, and to himself. Deprived of the financial windfall that would have come with election to the Hall, “The Hit King” chose instead to try making a buck with anything he could put his name on. That included everything from a 2004 no. 1 best-selling autobiography, My Prison Without Bars, in which he admitted in print to gambling while managing the Reds (he had done so in pre-publication publicity as well) to autographed balls with the inscription “I’m sorry I bet on baseball.”

That assertion rang hollow given Rose’s apparent lack of contrition, his unwillingness to reconfigure his life as a precondition of his reinstatement by MLB, and his continued lies. Not until 2015 did he admit to gambling during his playing career, after ESPN’s Outside the Lines obtained copies of documents verifying his bets in 1986 while serving as the player-manager of the Reds. Elsewhere during the last decade of his life, a credible allegation of statutory rape dating to the 1970s, uncovered by prosecutor John Dowd during his investigation into Rose’s gambling, undermined his latter-day reinstatement effort while further chipping away at his public standing. It’s been a fall from grace without parallel, at least among baseball’s icons. Read the rest of this entry »

CHICAGO — I just couldn’t help myself. The heat index was 105 degrees when I hopped on the train in Downtown Chicago to head to Guaranteed Rate Field on Monday, August 26 — the day after the White Sox had lost for the 100th time of the 2024 season — and I had the sudden urge to send a snarky Slack message to Meg Rowley. “What are the odds that I’m one of 20 people in the stands today?” I also included a screenshot of the AccuWeather Minutecast.

After her response, two words that appropriately acknowledged the sweltering conditions, the exchange continued:

Matt Martell: Only the true sickos watch a team in August with more losses than the temperature.

Matt Martell: Is that my lede???

Meg Rowley: i think it is

I received my Certified Baseball Sicko diagnosis at an early age, but even I wouldn’t have endured that heat to watch the worst team in modern baseball history if I didn’t have to be there for work.

Chicago was the second stop on a cross-country roadtrip that had begun the previous Wednesday morning in Poughkeepsie, New York — about 20 minutes from Hopewell Junction, where I grew up and where my parents still live — and would end in Seattle 17 days later. My first destination was Pittsburgh, where on Thursday I saw Paul Skenes start, and wrote about his impact on the organization and its fans. The next day, I drove to Chicago to spend the weekend at Saberseminar with eight other FanGraphs staffers, including Michael Rosen, who detailed “the preeminent conference at the intersection of dingers and calculators” for Defector. I stuck around one more day to watch the White Sox play at home before driving to Minnesota on Tuesday to catch Wednesday’s Twins-Braves game.

Initially, I planned to ask a few dozen White Sox fans the same question: Why are you here? Of course, that is a question for the ages, one that could prompt a meditation on the meaning of life, but I was interested in a more specific context. Really, the connotation of my question was this: Why are you spending money to witness the team that you love degrade itself with such historical ineptitude? If that sounds needlessly harsh, well, that’s why I would’ve gone with the more philosophical and broadly worded version, but the purpose of my asking such a question wouldn’t have been cynical. Quite the opposite, in fact. There’s something romantic about cheering for a terrible team with the unconditional love that Roger Angell captured in his writings about the early-60s Mets. It’s the beautiful, irrational core of fandom that we sportswriters often overlook. That’s what I intended to do at the ballpark that night, anyway. Instead, the fans I encountered were there for a different kind of unconditional love.

After spending an uneventful top of the first inning talking with White Sox farm director Paul Janish, I left the press box for the stands. I never learned the journalist’s trick to estimate crowd size, so I can’t give you a number for how many people were in the ballpark for Davis Martin’s first pitch. What I can tell you is that the number was below the official 10,975 paid-attendance figure, and that I had no trouble finding good seats in the section behind home plate. I looked around and saw there weren’t many White Sox fans in the area: A middle-aged man and his not-quite-large adult son sat in the back and to the left of me — back and to the left — and one preschool boy who ran down the aisle before his dad caught up with him. That was pretty much it.

After another look, I realized that I was sitting among a sea of Tigers fans who all seemed to know each other. They cheered with every strike, but they also had a nervous energy that they were trying not to show; some were more successful than others. A few were clasping their hands together as if they were praying, while others were choking their beer cups instead of drinking from them. They grew more anxious as Andrew Vaughn stepped in with runners on the corners and one out; they offered reassurances after Vaughn’s sacrifice fly gave the White Sox an early lead. Finally, they erupted when Gavin Sheets grounded out to end the inning. The reaction seemed a bit excessive for a first-inning groundout against an opponent who at the time had a 31-100 record, but then I noticed something. Most of them were wearing a Tigers cap with the same lettering stitched into its side above the right ear: Ty Madden 8-26-24.

Ah, yes. That makes sense, I thought.

I pulled the Tigers’ game notes out of my pocket just to be sure. Yup, Detroit’s starter that night was Madden, a 24-year-old righty who had just been promoted from Triple-A Toledo. Unknowingly, I was sitting with his family and friends — about 50 of them, as one of his mom’s friends later told me — watching him complete the first inning of his major league career.

Admittedly, I didn’t know much about Madden other than his name, so I pulled out my phone and checked his FanGraphs player page and prospect report. Entering this season, Eric Longenhagen evaluated Madden as a “high-probability no. 4/5 starter,” assigned him a 45 FV, and ranked him the fifth-best prospect in the Tigers organization. Madden was bumped down to sixth when Eric updated the list midseason, after Detroit had drafted one prospect who ranked ahead of Madden and traded for another. (Colt Keith, who ranked third in the Tigers system before the season, exceed rookie limits during the year and wasn’t included on the latest list.)

While writing this story, I asked Eric for an updated evaluation of Madden based on his 2024 performance, and here’s what he said:

He’s had a pretty surprising uptick in walks this year, and when you put on the tape, he is indeed struggling with release consistency. But he’s sustained above-average stuff and has been durable amid multiple delivery tweaks since turning pro, and I think it’s fair to expect that he’ll eventually either refine his feel for his current delivery or keep making changes until things click. He’ll operate in a starter’s capacity for the foreseeable future during the regular season, but his current strike-throwing issues make him more of a multi-inning relief fit on Detroit’s playoff roster.

Madden had a much easier time in the second inning. He allowed a one-out single to Dominic Fletcher, who was erased two pitches later on Lenyn Sosa’s inning-ending double play. A woman a few rows in front of me shouted, “Yeah, Ty!” as he walked back to the dugout.

It was around this time that I decided I would stick with the Maddens for the rest of the game and skip the White Sox fans story. So many great pieces have been written about fans watching the team’s futility — Ben Strauss of The Washington Post has been sharing his favorites on Twitter all week, and I’d encourage you to check them out — and I’ve enjoyed reading them, but I figured I’d probably never again get the chance to see a major league debut through the eyes of his family and friends.

I knew I would write about watching the Madden Family Cheering Section watch Ty, but I didn’t want to intrude on their special moment, so I set a few rules:

1) I wouldn’t talk to them until Madden finished pitching, unless they said something to me first.

2) I would tell them exactly what I was doing as soon as I introduced myself, and if they weren’t okay with it, I would figure out another way to do this piece or come up with something else to write.

3) I wouldn’t interview them; they’d have enough going on without some stranger sticking a recorder in their faces. Instead, I would talk to them and take notes about what I experienced sitting there with them, but I wouldn’t quote any of them by name.

I think the beer started kicking in for the two White Sox fans sitting behind me in the third inning, because they suddenly became much more animated. Every time Martin threw a strike to the Tigers batters, the dad and his adult son would shout, “Yeah!” After the first few times it seemed to me that they were directing their voices at the Madden Family Cheering Section. The father and son weren’t mocking the Maddens, and their shouts weren’t aggressive, but they were crisp and targeted, as if to signal that they were going to support their starter more than the Maddens would support Ty. It was kinda sad, then, when it became clear that the Maddens weren’t paying them any attention. It was a fitting depiction of these two organizations in microcosm: The Tigers were beginning to mount their stunning surge to a Wild Card berth, and they couldn’t be bothered by the lowly Pale Hose.

The two Sox fans were interrupted by a beer vendor who was using the heat index as his sales pitch. “Miller Lite! Modelo! Water!” he hawked, sounding remarkably similar to the actor John C. Reilly. “Hey, let’s stay hydrated here!” One Madden family friend flagged him down for a Modelo as Martin struck out Matt Vierling to retire the Tigers in order in the third.

Madden worked into trouble again in the third, allowing a leadoff single to Chicago nine-hitter Brooks Baldwin, who swiped second, before walking Nicky Lopez. First and second, nobody out, Luis Robert Jr. at the plate. Welcome to the big leagues, kid.

Madden’s family and friends got louder. He said after the game that he’d blocked them out so he could stay focused, but that didn’t make any difference to them. They were behind him, no matter what. He buckled down; Robert grounded into a 6-5 fielder’s choice and Andrew Benintendi popped out. He wasn’t out of the inning yet, though. The next batter, Vaughn, blooped a four-seamer off the plate inside to right field. Vierling came up firing to home, but catcher Dillon Dingler — elite name — whiffed at the one-hopper as he tried to sweep-tag Lopez and the ball got past him. Madden was backing up, but he couldn’t field the errant throw either. Robert advanced to third and Vaughn moved up to second on the error.

The inning could’ve spiraled from there, but Madden refused to unravel. He missed low with a first-pitch changeup to Sheets, evened the count with a four-seamer that Sheets took for a called strike, and then got Sheets to swing over a tight slider dotted on the low-outside corner. His 1-2 offering was another slider that looked just like the previous one out of his hand and for most of its trajectory to the plate. Sheets took a healthy hack but came up empty as the bottom completely dropped out of the pitch. It was Madden’s first major league strikeout. His friends and family exploded, their cheers so propulsive it was as if they were daring him to look up at them, but he never did. He was locked in.

“Yeah, well, he still gave up a run,” the adult son behind me said loudly. He got no response and didn’t heckle the Maddens again, but that wasn’t the last we heard from him. In the bottom of the fourth, when once again Sosa was batting with Fletcher on first and one out, a foul ball went over my head and bounced off a stadium usher’s butt. “He got hit in the ass! He got hit in the ass!” jeered the son. The usher was fine. As was Madden, who got Sosa to pop out and then struck out Baldwin to end the inning.

Things got interesting with two outs in the top of the fifth, when Kerry Carpenter and Vierling singled to put runners on the corners and bring Keith to the plate. A three-run homer would give the Tigers the lead, and if Madden made it cleanly through the fifth and the bullpen closed things out, he would earn the win. Sitting there with his family and friends, I realized I was hoping for this exact scenario to happen. How weird it was for me, the associate editor of FanGraphs, to be rooting for a pitcher win. But I knew it would matter to everyone in the Madden Family Cheering Section. Beyond the fact that it would make this a better story to write if he were to win his big league debut, I felt a strange sense of loyalty toward these people, even though I had not yet introduced myself to them.

Alas, it was not meant to be. Keith didn’t blast a go-ahead dinger, but he did line a single into shallow left to drive in Detroit’s first run. Vierling went first to third on the knock, and Keith advanced to second on Benintendi’s late throw to third. Jace Jung came up with the chance to give the Tigers the lead with a base hit, but he struck out swinging. The inning was over, the White Sox were leading 2-1, and Madden was still in line for the loss.

The tension ratcheted up in the home half of the frame when Madden issued a two-out walk to Benintendi. He’d just thrown his 86th pitch, and I feared manager A.J. Hinch would go to the bullpen instead of letting Madden face Vaughn, who’d driven in both White Sox runs, for a third time. But Hinch stuck with his young righty, who rewarded his manager’s faith by getting Vaughn to pop out on a first-pitch cutter. The Madden Family Cheering Section, correctly assuming that was Madden’s last pitch, gave him a standing ovation. Once again, he didn’t hear them and kept his eyes straight ahead. He was in his element, and they wouldn’t have had it any other way.

The Maddens couldn’t exhale yet. Because the Tigers didn’t go to their bullpen in the fifth, Madden technically was still in the game, and if they took the lead here, he would be the pitcher of record. Spencer Torkelson doubled to lead off the sixth, but the next three batters went down in order. Madden’s night was over. His final line: 5 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 3 BB, 2 K.

Around this time, I introduced myself to the women sitting in front of me, who were friends of Madden’s mom. One of them told me they learned that Madden was getting promoted two days earlier, shortly after Madden got the news and phoned his parents — Brian and Misty — back home in Houston. His parents quickly assembled the members of the Madden Family Cheering Section, which they estimated to include 50 people, though none of them knew the exact number without taking a headcount. Many of them flew up from Houston for an eventful week that would only begin with Madden’s debut. The same woman said her daughter was getting married back home on Sunday, so the Madden Family Cheering Section would trade in their Tigers caps for their best suits or dresses and all be together again that coming weekend.

The Bally Sports Detroit crew came over to interview Brian, Misty, and Ty’s wife Breton, who was holding their sleeping three-month-old daughter Miller, live on the broadcast during the bottom of the sixth. While that was happening, Misty’s friend told me that the next day Brian and Misty would go to Toledo to help Breton with the move to Detroit. Madden told me after the game that the next day was also Breton’s birthday, so his parents would be with her for it while he was with the team for a home game against the Angels.

When Parker Meadows led off the seventh with a game-tying home run, a man in the Madden Family Cheering Section proclaimed, “No decision! That’s a no decision baby!” I never expected a no decision to stir such passion from a person; after all, the only thing more inherently neutral than a no decision is Switzerland. But I, too, was thrilled to see Meadows even the score and get Madden off the hook. The happiest man in Chicago then turned and gave me a thumbs up. I smiled and responded in kind.

The Tigers scored four more runs that inning and held on for a 6-3 win to sweep the White Sox, bringing their record to 66-66. The series feels like a turning point for their season; Madden is the last Detroit pitcher to start a game while his team had a losing record. Sure, that’s a specific bit of trivia that doesn’t really matter much, and yes, he has played a minor role for these Tigers, but he has played that role well. He has pitched four times since making his debut, all as a multi-inning reliever in games that Detroit used an opener. Across 23 innings, he has a 4.30 ERA and a 3.99 FIP, good for 0.2 WAR. He is a solid depth bullpen arm and swingman, and pitching-first teams like the Tigers need guys like that.

Now, five weeks after his debut, Madden has earned a spot on the Tigers’ roster for the AL Wild Card Series against the Astros in Houston, Madden’s hometown. His career, like his team’s competitive window, is just beginning, and we don’t know how long either will last. No matter what happens, whenever I see or hear his name, I’ll remember that gross, barely bearable August night in Chicago, when I sat in the Madden Family Cheering Section and watched him fulfill his dream of becoming a major league pitcher. That was as good a reason as any to be there.

In the early 2000s, the Oakland Athletics’ marketing department rolled out a promotional campaign that played on the team’s ubiquitous single-letter nickname. Billboards appeared throughout the Bay Area with images of the A’s squad, each one emblazoned with bold, white font stating “There’s No A in Give Up,” or “There’s No A in Ego”:

Over the course of several years, that basic format was toyed with in various creative ways. When I attended Jason Giambi’s first game back in Oakland donning Yankee pinstripes, I spotted several “There’s No A in Sellout” signs throughout the stands. A few years later, tee-shirts asserting that “There is an A in Streak” were unavoidable in the East Bay. But now, that once-fun ad campaign feels like a punch to the gut, as the Oakland fanbase reckons with the reality of a Coliseum with no A’s in it. Read the rest of this entry »

Martijn Verhoeven wears many hats. As the research lead for the Twins sports science department, he is in conversation with all sorts of people, including baseball operations staffers, coaches, hitters, pitchers, and the medical staff. Verhoeven is armed with biomechanical data from KinaTrax, and the insights from the data help all these people do their jobs.

For understandable reasons, the Twins want to keep these insights private. Baseball is a zero-sum game — only one team can win the AL Central, and so the Twins would prefer their divisional opponents not know what they’re thinking.

But there is one area where this tendency for teams to hunt competitive advantages might be working against their interests: identifying solutions to the pitcher injury crisis.

“We have this massive injury epidemic,” Verhoeven told me. “There are times where I wish [teams] could share more and collaborate more because ultimately I think everyone would benefit from just having the best players on the field longer and more often. You can tell that people who’ve worked with this data for a long time are sort of moving toward [asking], ‘What can we do from a collective point of view in terms of making some of this understanding available?’” Read the rest of this entry »

This all started because I hate losing. Especially to Ben Lindbergh.

Just before the season started, I took part in the annual Effectively Wild preseason predictions game, in which Meg Rowley, the Bens (Lindbergh and Clemens), and I each made 10 bold predictions about the 2024 campaign. The listeners voted on which ones they thought would come true, and we’d be awarded points accordingly — the more outlandish the prediction, the greater the reward if it happened.

One of my 10 predictions was that Spencer Strider would strike out 300 batters in 2024. As my predictions go, this one felt pretty conservative. Strider had struck out an absurd (and league-leading) 281 batters in only 186 2/3 innings last season. I attended Strider’s Opening Day start in which he debuted a new breaking ball and punched out eight Phillies in just five innings. I was feeling good.

Then Strider’s elbow started barking in his next start, and by mid-April it was announced that he’d need Tommy John surgery and would take no further part in the 2024 season. Scorekeeper Chris Hanel marked that prediction down as incorrect, and took 42 points from my score. Read the rest of this entry »

Heading into the year, everyone thought this would be the season that Shohei Ohtani, rehabbing from elbow surgery and DHing only, stepped aside and yielded MVP to someone else before resuming his place as the de facto favorite for the award in 2025. Instead, Ohtani decided to make a run at the first ever 50-homer, 50-steal season. The other primary competitor for NL MVP is Francisco Lindor, who isn’t chasing any statistical milestones and plays for a team whose most interesting narratives involve an amorphous fast food mascot, the musical endeavors of a part-time utility infielder, and the failure to extend Pete Alonso. And yet, Lindor’s position atop the NL WAR leaderboard demands consideration.

The marginal difference between Lindor and Ohtani’s WAR totals (7.4 and 7.0, respectively, at the time of this writing) creates a virtual tie to be broken based on the personal convictions of voters and anyone else with an opinion and an internet connection. For most, the choice between the two distills down to whether Ohtani’s 50/50 chase overrides his DH-only status. I’m not here to disparage Ohtani for not playing defense, but if you find that disqualifying for MVP recognition, I feel that. Then again, WAR includes a positional adjustment that does ding Ohtani with a significant deduction for not taking the field, and he’s still been keeping pace with Lindor on the value front anyway, so there’s not much more analysis to do there.

Instead, I want to explore how Ohtani’s one-dimensional role interacts with the value of a roster spot and the limitations that it places on how Los Angeles constructs and deploys the rest of its roster. In a two-way Ohtani season, he brings tremendous value to an individual roster spot as a frontline starter and an elite hitter who takes 600 or so plate appearances. But this year he contributes only as an offensive player. Read the rest of this entry »