We first encountered Joe Musgrove’s one-seam sinker around the All-Star break, when the Houston Astros right-hander was kind enough to show us the grip before his appearance in the Futures Game. I’d never seen a one-seam grip before, unless you count the one Zach Britton showed us. While we could spot glimpses of the sinker in the Futures Game and in his minor-league games, it wasn’t until Musgrove came up and started pitching in the big leagues that we could truly put his pitch in the context of other big-league sinkers. It’s weird.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Reds are bad, and the Dodgers just clobbered them. As a part of that clobbering, Adrian Gonzalez socked three dingers. Here, you can watch them all! Each is impressive in its own way, I suppose. They’re most impressive as a group.

There was a time when Gonzalez’s power was absent. He hit three home runs in April. He hit three home runs, combined, in May and June. The fairly obvious culprit was a back injury, and it takes no imagination at all to figure out how an achy back could affect a swing. Gonzalez got some treatment. He insisted his back felt better. The numbers still didn’t quite show up.

Now they’re showing up. From the looks of things, Gonzalez is indeed healthy again, and it simply took him a short stretch to re-find what previously had made him successful. Adrian Gonzalez is looking like Adrian Gonzalez again. The most compelling evidence is probably what follows, as drawn from Baseball Savant. Here are nearly two years of Gonzalez’s batted balls, as tracked by Statcast. This plot shows rolling average launch angles.

That dip is impossible to miss, as an injured and compromised Gonzalez plummeted toward 0. He’s reversed that, again successfully putting batted balls in the air. And he’s once more hitting with authority. Here’s a rolling-average plot of hard-hit rate, and this doesn’t include Monday’s game, not that it would make a huge difference:

Gonzalez is getting his swing back, and he’s also showing a better ability to hit the ball hard to right. Of course, at his best, he’s been more of an all-fields threat — and Monday, he pulled two homers while sending another the other way. I know it was a day game in Cincinnati against the Reds, but big-league homers are big-league homers. Gonzalez can hit them again, and he can do other things, and suddenly he’s up to a 123 wRC+. That’s in line with where he’s been for a while.

The Dodgers are still playing without Clayton Kershaw. The Dodgers are still winning without Clayton Kershaw. The Dodgers, of course, would love Kershaw back, but since the All-Star break, Gonzalez has been a key part of what’s been the best offense in the National League. Kershaw’s important. He’s pretty far from being everything.

The Giants faced Noah Syndergaard Sunday night, and they tried to steal two bases. Both times, they were unsuccessful. That’s notable because Syndergaard, this year, has been horrible about controlling the running game. It’s been his one drawback — before Sunday, runners in 2016 were 40-for-44 in their attempts. The Giants assumed they’d be able to take advantage of his vulnerability. Plans went awry and for those reasons, and others, the Giants lost.

The first runner to get thrown out was Trevor Brown. Brown, as you might know, is a catcher. Before Sunday in the majors this year, Brown was 0-for-0 in trying to steal. He doesn’t run. He was trying to test the limits of Syndergaard’s weakness, and Brown got himself out, after Rene Rivera made a strong throw to second.

There’s nothing too interesting about that. Syndergaard was slow to the plate. Rivera did his job well. Brown got a bad jump and he doesn’t sprint well to begin with. That caught steal is almost a direct result of other players not getting caught stealing. The weakness encourages non-runners to run. Just as Syndergaard is slow enough that any decent runner can advance, some runners are slow enough that even Syndergaard can’t be exploited.

I’m more interested in the second runner to get thrown out. That was Eduardo Nunez, and, unlike Brown, Nunez has had a big year in swiping. He’s an obvious running threat. Here’s Syndergaard’s first pitch after Nunez reached:

And now, here’s the second pitch:

You see that? Nunez had seen enough. He read Syndergaard and took off on the second delivery. Rivera was excellent here — he was quick to his feet and his throw was outstanding. So, Rivera absolutely played a role. But Syndergaard also showed Nunez a twist. The first pitch:

The second pitch:

Syndergaard lowered his leg lift. He mixed up his timing, and while for the first pitch I had him close to 1.7 seconds to the plate, on the second pitch he was at almost 1.4. He shaved roughly 15% off his time, and though he was still short of the 1.3 mark that most pitchers want to achieve, that’s a healthy leap forward. Syndergaard gave Nunez a different look, and he gave his own catcher a chance. Nunez easily could’ve wound up safe if Rivera’s throw were any worse, but what matters is just that there was a possibility he’d be out. This is something Syndergaard’s been working on, and getting Nunez out is an encouraging step.

It’s going to take more outs before runners stop trying. And it’s worth noting that, when Syndergaard lowered his leg lift, he threw his slowest fastball of the first five innings. The Mets don’t want for him to sacrifice too much, and they need to keep an eye on his mechanics. But for the time being, Syndergaard is coming off an outstanding start, and in that start, runners trying to steal went 0-for-2. One of those runners even knows how to run. It’s something to build on.

Last week, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred declared in Houston that the problems most plaguing Major League Baseball’s current product are an excess of defensive shifts, an excess of relievers and the lack of a pitch clock. I’m not here to debate the specific merits of any of Manfred’s arguments. If you read this site on a regular basis, you likely know the arguments for each forwards and backwards. But I am troubled by the constant insistence that the game needs to be tinkered with in order to make it more appealing to new generations of fans.

No matter what is done to speed up the game, or make it more appealing, the core product is going to remain relatively unchanged. Games are still going to hover in the area of three hours. We’re not going to see a 30-minute reduction in game time. We often hear about the greatness of Game 7 of the 1991 World Series as a spectacle — a 10-inning, 1-0 affair that only featured two pitching changes. It took three hours and 23 minutes. The average game time for the World Series that year as a whole was three hours, 14 minutes. The game has lasted about three hours for roughly 30 years. We are not getting back to the days of two hour, 30 minute game times unless the league institutes a seven-inning game. Even then it might be dicey.

Instead of fretting over the game’s minor details, the game should be out marketing what makes its sport best — its players. This is something baseball does precious little of. Instead, the league is more worried about what I call the NFL Rules Committee-ification of the game. The NFL continuously churns out new rules, designed to make its game more appealing. Sometimes, they do. But the unintended consequences can be significant. Perhaps you remember the Dez Bryant catch? If you don’t, go ahead and watch it again at that link, I’ll wait.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes things don’t work out. For example, this morning, I dropped my bagel when I was climbing the stairs. Had things gone according to plan, I would have not dropped my bagel when I was climbing the stairs. Unfortunate for me. Arguably unfortunate for the bagel.

And then, sometimes, things do work out. For example, last Friday, I chatted a little bit about Keon Broxton. Then while I was away for the weekend, Broxton came through with five hits, including three dingers. It can be hard to know what to write about on the other side of a weekend. Broxton is making it easy. Now I have all the excuse I need to urge you to jump on the Keon Broxton bandwagon. Before too long this train could pull away from the station.

Read the rest of this entry »

Aaron Sanchez was optioned to High-A Dunedin over the weekend, though of course that’s not indicative of his performance at work. Sanchez is a legitimate Cy Young contender this year, maybe even the frontrunner in the eyes of some, and while players typically get sent down to the minors because their organization doesn’t care much for what they’ve done on the field, Sanchez was optioned because the Blue Jays care too much. He just turned 24, and he’s a massive part of the organization’s future, and the move was simply made to skip one of his turns in the rotation in an effort to limit the workload of Toronto’s prized, young arm.

That workload requires monitoring, of course, because no one expected Sanchez to do what he’s done this year. You likely know the Aaron Sanchez story by now. You know he spent the majority of his first two seasons in the majors working out of relief, and now that he suddenly looks like an ace, that he’s already exceeded his previous season-high in innings by more than 20. And if you know about that, then you know about the sinker that leads Sanchez’s arsenal.

Read the rest of this entry »

There ought to be no shame in a pitcher struggling at Coors Field. Many of the greatest pitchers on the planet have been humbled in that stadium and, last week, Stephen Strasburg became merely the latest among them. Allowing nine runs before being pulled in just the second inning, Strasburg posted what was far and away the worst performance of his career. He’d never previously given up more than seven runs in a game and his game score of 1 was not only his lowest mark ever, but is tied for seventh worst in baseball this season. Ideally, this could be written off as a Coors fluke for one of the game’s best pitchers, but instead it’s served to illuminate the frustrating reality that Strasburg has struggled mightily of late.

Over his last six outings, Strasburg has given up 26 runs in 30.2 innings pitched. Crunch the numbers and you’ll find that works out to a decidedly un-ace-like 7.63 ERA. These six outings have caused his season ERA to rise more than one full run, from 2.51 to 3.59. The good news is that there’s more than a little hope to be found in his peripheral stats. Over this awful stretch, his FIP is a massively more palatable 3.25, largely on the strength of a solid 29.1% strikeout rate and a roughly league-average 7.8% walk rate. It also likely won’t surprise you to learn that he’s posted an inflated .388 BABIP during this rough patch. Unfortunately, this is not to say Strasburg’s swoon has been entirely devoid of red flags.

In mid-June, Strasburg hit the disabled list with a back injury. Considering a back injury was the primary culprit in Strasburg’s first-half struggles last season, this latest DL stint was an unavoidably alarming development. Fortunately, he made a swift return to the mound. Any hopes that he’d escape the performance struggles which plagued him a year ago, however, have been derailed by his recent stretch. Whether those struggles are directly related to the injury is unknowable, but there are observable things about Strasburg which have changed since his return.

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in June, Eno Sarris discussed with Byron Buxton some adjustments the latter had made in his attempt to succeed at the major-league level. Then, about two weeks ago now, shortly after Buxton was sent back down to the minors, August Fagerstrom discussed whether any of the aforementioned adjustments had helped or hurt Buxton’s production. We know both that (a) Buxton has attempted to make adjustments and that (b) he possesses tools that have distinguished him, at points, as the top prospect in all of baseball. We also know that his stat line is pretty much terrible so far. Here I’d like to ignore the tools and focus only on that latter part. What does Byron Buxton’s awful stat line tell us about his potential for future success?

In August’s piece on Buxton, he mentioned Milton Bradley, Jackie Bradley Jr., Carlos Gonzalez, Brandon Phillips, and Miguel Tejada as examples of players who struggled and then recovered. Surely there are other examples of players who fit that description — and probably an even greater number of players who were terrible from the start and quickly found themselves out of the league. Before finding those players, we should acknowledge just how difficult the transition to major-league can be, especially for a player like Buxton, who’s still just 22 years old.

Even if Buxton doesn’t get another plate appearance this season — a scenario which seems unlikely given the possibility of a September call-up — he’ll end his age-22 season having recorded 356 career plate appearances. In the last 50 years, only 334 position players have reached 350 PA by the end of their age-22 season — or, roughly 13% of all players over the last 50 years who’ve recorded at least 350 PA total. Of those 334, only around 40% have produced even average offensive numbers (100+ wRC+), and just one-third of those players have actually excelled at the plate (in this case, recorded a 120 or greater wRC+). Out of all position players to record at least 350 plate appearances in the majors, the population to produce a line above 120 wRC+ by age 22 is under 2%. Increasing the pool to all position players — regardless of plate-appearance thresholds — drops the percentage of players who excelled by age 22 to under 1%. Essentially, simply making the majors at Buxton’s age and earning the playing time Buxton did is a feat unto itself, and success at that age is rare.

Read the rest of this entry »

Prior to changing organizations, Anderson Espinoza would sometimes be compared to a young Pedro Martinez. From a projectability standpoint, it wasn’t far-fetched. Signed by the Red Sox out of Venezuela two years ago, Espinoza was lanky with long fingers, and he possessed advanced feel for his off-speed pitches. Last year in the Gulf Coast League his fastball flirted with triple digits.

Espinoza is 18 years old now, and in the Padres system. Acquired by San Diego from Boston at the trade deadline in exchange for Drew Pomeranz, the high-ceiling right-hander is currently pitching for the Fort Wayne TinCaps in the low-A Midwest League. The raw stuff remains, but his physical resemblance to Pedro is fading.

Espinoza has gained 22 pounds since last season — “a lot of working out and a lot of eating” — and he now weighs a solid 202 pounds. “A strong guy who can get even stronger,” he aspires to better maintain his velocity deep into games.

Espinoza recognizes the value of velocity, but it’s no longer a main focus. Read the rest of this entry »

Dave Righetti was a good pitcher. In a 16-year career spent mostly with the New York Yankees, he threw a no-hitter and saved over 250 games. He might be an even better pitching coach. “Rags” has held that position with the San Francisco Giants since 2000, and in the opinion of many, he’s among the best in the business.

Righetti’s reputation is well deserved. Under his tutelage, Giants pitchers have made 22 All-Star teams, won two Cy Young awards, and thrown five no-hitters. More importantly, the club has gone to the World Series four times and captured three titles.

Righetti talked about his philosophies — and the repertoires and pitch selection of members of the Giants’ staff — when the team visited Fenway Park in July.

———

Righetti on location and changing speeds: “Changing speeds on any pitch is essential, even if it’s a 95-mph fastball. If you can’t back off on it at times and throw it 90, people are going to time it out. The last thing you want to do is throw your hardest fastball every pitch.

Read the rest of this entry »