One of the numerous reasons why Mike Trout’s latest injury — a torn meniscus in his left knee, requiring surgery that will sideline him for at least four weeks and perhaps longer — is such a bummer is that the three-time MVP and future Hall of Famer was off to a pretty strong start. While his .220/.325/.541 slash line is nothing to write home about within the context of his career — indeed, his 141 wRC+ would be his second-lowest mark, after last year — he had hit 10 homers before the end of April for just the second time (2018 was the other). That total was enough to share the major league lead with Gunnar Henderson, and it put him on pace to challenge his career high of 45 homers, set in 2019. Even within an offensive profile that’s undergoing some evolution as he ages, that’s impressive.

That goes doubly given that through the end of April, league-wide home run rates were down more than 15% relative to last season. Where in 2023 teams averaged 1.21 home runs per game, through the end of April they had averaged just 1.02 homers per game. Note that we’re still early enough in the season that a single day’s slate of games can bump that last decimal in one direction or another; with 20 homers in 30 team-games on May 1, the season-to-date average fell from 1.018 homers per game to 1.007. All of which is to say that while the situation deserves a closer look — particularly with league-wide scoring having decreased from last year — this should be considered a preliminary investigation.

If the home run rate from this March and April holds up — and hereafter, I’m going to lump all games before May 1 into what we consider April, just as we do in our splits — it would represent the largest year-to-year drop since 1987–88, when the per-game rate fell from 1.06 homers per game to 0.76. If you’ve been following along with home run history, you know that the 1987 season was an outlier that marked the first time home run rates rose above 1.0 per game. While rates immediately fell back below that threshold and remained there through the next half-decade, that season served as a preview of what was to come from 1994–2009, when home run rates were above that threshold every year, likely due to a confluence of factors that ranged from expansion and newer ballparks to the widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs and changes to the baseball itself. Read the rest of this entry »

Wilyer Abreu has been one of the top rookies in baseball this season. Along with playing above-average defense in right field, the 24-year-old Boston Red Sox outfielder has logged a 155 wRC+ while slashing .316/.396/.519 over 91 plate appearances. His 1.1 WAR ranks second among rookie position players, behind Baltimore’s Colton Cowser. Granted, less than a month’s worth of games is hardly enough time to know if he’ll keep this up, but Abreu’s strong start is encouraging nonetheless.

He similarly impressed last year in a 28-game cameo. Debuting in late August, Abreu went 24-for-76 (.316) with two home runs, the exact same numbers he had this April. There’s juice in his bat. Eric Longenhagen wrote last summer that Abreu “has above-average raw power,” and the youngster’s production has backed up that prose. By the time of his call-up, Abreu had gone yard 22 times, with a 135 wRC+, at Triple-A Worcester.

His path to the big leagues included more than your typical climb up the minor league ladder. The Red Sox acquired Abreu from the Houston Astros, along with Enmanuel Valdez, in the trade for Christian Vázquez on August 1, 2022 — but that’s also only part of the story. The Maracaibo, Venezuela native had intended to sign with Boston in 2016, but the Red Sox were locked out of the international amateur market in 2016-17 as punishment for violating international-signing regulations. Abreu subsequently signed with the Astros in 2017; he waited an extra year to sign because he was told he’d get a better offer if he did.

He’s evolved as a hitter since inking his first professional contract. Read the rest of this entry »

I won’t sugarcoat it for you, friends. It’s a tough time to be a major league starting pitcher. Their ligaments are under threat like never before. Their workloads aren’t far behind. For a variety of reasons, the old style of starting pitcher is quickly headed toward extinction and we’re transitioning to a new way of doing things.

That all seems like the obvious truth. But I decided to go to the data and make sure. As Malice of the Clipse (and yes, fine, Edgar Allan Poe) memorably said, “Believe half what you see, none of what you heard.” I’m not sure exactly where that leaves you, since I’m going to be telling you what I saw, but that’s an epistemological question for another day. Let me just give you the data.

So far this year, there have been 452 games, and thus 904 starts. Starters have completed 4,735 1/3 innings, or 5.24 innings per start, and they’ve thrown an average of 86.2 pitches to get there. They’ve averaged 94.1 mph with their four-seamers, yet despite all that velocity, they’ve thrown fastballs of any type just 54.9% of the time. This isn’t Opening Day starters, or anything of that nature; it’s just whoever has picked up the ball for the first pitch on each side.
Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re going to spend big on a free agent closer, you should probably shop at the top of the market. That’s what the Astros did this past offseason, shelling out $95 million over five years to bring Josh Hader home. Last season, Hader was unhittable, with a 1.28 ERA in 61 appearances and 33 saves in 38 opportunities.

This year, not so much. His ERA is 6.39, and was over 9.00 on Tax Day. He’s only had two saves, which is partially his teammates’ fault, but Hader has also blown a save and taken a loss. The Astros, meanwhile, have struggled to find spots to use him. He’s had only one save opportunity since the first week of April, including a weeklong stretch in which he didn’t pitch at all. Tuesday night, Hader had his first two-inning regular-season relief appearance since 2019. Not the start either Hader or the Astros envisioned, I think we can all agree. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday night, in his 26th game of the 2024 season, Alex Bregman hit his first home run. It didn’t come a moment too soon. Over his first 25 games, Bregman had run a wRC+ of 65. Until this year, he’d never had a stretch of 25 games in a single season in which he’d hit so poorly. Even in his worst season, an injury shortened 2021 campaign, he still finished with a 114 wRC+ and 2.1 WAR. So far this season, Bregman has been worth just 0.2 WAR. A cursory look at Bregman’s numbers over those first 25 games tells a very simple story: zero home runs, .268 SLG, .052 ISO. That’s not just a power outage. That’s a catastrophic grid failure. Only once before has Bregman posted an ISO this low over a 25-game stretch: In 2017, in the 54th through 78th games of his entire career, his ISO was .044. Because he’s been an impact player for so long, it’s easy to forget that Bregman is just 30 years old. It’s not as if Father Time has suddenly caught up with him, and he’ll surely bounce back at some point. But what’s going on right now?

Bregman has always had a somewhat odd offensive profile. As Houston hitting coach Troy Snitker told reporters, “He doesn’t hit for power because he hits the ball harder than most guys; he hits for power because he hits it in the air more than most guys.” In his entire career, Bregman has posted an above-average hard-hit rate just once, and he’s never broken 40%. However, he has impeccable plate discipline and bat-to-ball skills, and he’s constantly pulling the ball in the air. Although he’s recorded an above-average barrel rate just once, he’s never once had a below-average sweet spot rate. If you’re pulling the ball in the air, especially at Minute Maid Park, you don’t need to hit the ball hard enough to qualify for a barrel; you just need to hit it hard enough to get to the Crawford Boxes. Since 2015, Bregman has hit 18 home runs at or below 95 mph, second in all of baseball to Didi Gregorius with 19.

Snitker saw Bregman’s approach as an opportunity. “So with guys like that,” he said, “if you can have any small improvements to how hard the ball is coming off (the bat), he benefits the most, because he’s already getting the most balls out there.” This offseason, Snitker proposed weighted bat training in order to increase Bregman’s bat speed, with the goal of adding just a single mile per hour in exit velocity: “Just his batted-ball profile with 1 mile an hour is worth a lot in production,” said Snitker. Bregman explained that the focus was “trying to move (the bat) as fast as I could.” After four months of training, Bregman said, his bat speed numbers increased significantly without having any adverse impact on his mechanics. Coming into spring training, Bregman said he felt like his swing was “in the best spot that it’s been in years.”

Needless to say, the results have not been there. Bregman’s hard-hit rate is down, as are his average exit velocity and his 50th percentile exit velo. However, his 90th percentile EV is doing just fine and he’s nearly matched his max from last season. It’s not that he can’t hit the ball as hard as he used to; it’s just that he’s not doing it as often.

But it’s not just his contact quality; it’s his entire batted ball profile. Bregman’s groundball rate has exploded while his pull rate has cratered. His pull rate hadn’t been below 42% since his rookie season, but this year it’s at 33.7%. Only once before has he had a groundball rate as high as 40%; this year he’s at 42.7%. Look at his spray charts from 2023 and 2024. There’s so much less in the outfield, especially to the pull side.

Bregman’s line drive rate has cratered. When he hits the ball on the ground, he’s rolling over the it and sending it to shortstop rather than ripping it down the line. His fly ball rate is nearly the same, but when he puts it in the air, he’s often dropping his back shoulder, resulting in a weakly hit ball to right field.

If we combine the contact quality and batted ball profile, the picture becomes more clear. In 2023, Bregman’s hard-hit balls had an average launch angle of 13.6 degrees, and his balls that weren’t hard-hit were at 20. This year, those numbers are 10 and 26.8. As it’s currently constituted, Bregman’s swing just doesn’t seem as optimized as it once was for hard contact in the air. In the launch angle charts below, I’ve highlighted the exit velocities above 80 mph. In 2023, his average EV was that high on just about anything except popups and balls hit straight into the ground. This year, not only is he hitting the ball at optimal launch angles less often, when he does, he’s hitting it softer.

So that’s the bad news. Now let’s look at some reasons for optimism. First of all, it’s still April (or at least it was while I was writing this). Bregman usually starts slow, though not this poorly; his career 110 wRC+ in March/April is his worst of any month. And maybe he just needs some time to get used to his new swing. Second, a big reason for Bregman’s problems is that his line drive rate cratered, and line drive rates are notoriously fickle. Third, Bregman has been seeing tougher pitches this season. Because he succeeds by lifting the ball to the pull side, it’s no surprise that pitchers have always tried to attack him away and down. However, they’ve done a much better job of hitting that outside corner this season. He’s seen more pitches on the edges of the zone and fewer pitches right down the middle than in any previous season. The heat maps below show the location of the pitches he saw in 2023 and 2024.

After looking at these, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that Bregman has made worse swing decisions and had a harder time pulling and lifting the ball. Assuming pitchers don’t remain that precise all season, this could be something that evens out over time.

When a player stops pulling the ball, it also makes sense to check whether they just can’t get around on the fastball anymore, but that doesn’t seem to be the problem. Although he’s had poor results against four-seamers, a pitch he usually crushes, Bregman is both chasing and whiffing against them less often than he did last year. It’s breaking and offspeed stuff that’s giving him fits, and players don’t usually forget how to hit soft stuff after eight excellent big league seasons. That lends credence to the idea that Bregman has merely been struggling with timing issues. That his homer last night came against a changeup should make it all the more encouraging.

Let’s assume that Bregman’s weighted bat work did give him some more power. Maybe we should be encouraged by the fact that his exit velocity hasn’t fallen all that drastically, considering the fact that he hasn’t really been swinging at the right pitches or making the kind of contact he wants. Maybe when he does figure those things out, that extra power will announce itself.

It’s also worth noting that Bregman’s batting stance looks different this season. His stance was slightly closed in 2023, but this year he’s squared up to the pitcher and a little more upright. Additionally, his leg kick is often less pronounced now than it was last season. In the stills below, I captured Bregman at the moment when his knee was at its highest; it’s subtle, but you can see that it’s a bit higher on the left, in 2023. Despite these changes, by the time he gets his foot down, it looks to me like he’s in pretty much the same hitting position that he was last year.

I don’t want to come anywhere near blaming Bregman’s struggles on his new stance or the changes he made to his swing. There are a million things that could be affecting his performance, and it would be facile to seize on the few that I can see or read about in the Houston Chronicle. That said, these are a lot of changes to make to a swing in a single offseason, especially when that swing has been so effective. Maybe Bregman just needs some time to get used to facing big league pitching with this swing, or maybe he needs to consider returning to what was working for him before. After a two-hit perforamnce in Mexico City on Sunday, Bregman noted that he something seemed to click when he tried getting into his load earlier. Either way, things are bound to pick up sooner or later, if for no other reason than that they couldn’t get much worse.

Roughly a month’s worth of the 2024 season is now in the books. The American League East looks great. The Brewers and Guardians are standing up for the Central divisions. The White Sox can only beat the Rays, and the Astros somehow can’t beat anyone. Enough time has passed that I feel confident saying all of those things. On the other hand, it still feels too early to be certain about which players are over- or under-performing. But that doesn’t mean our opinions can’t change a bit. There’s enough data to make some educated guesses, so let’s put on our speculation caps. Yesterday, I looked at four players — two hitters and two pitchers — who have gone up in my estimation. Today, I’m examining the other side of the ledger.

Spencer Torkelson, 1B, Detroit Tigers
Torkelson is going to end up giving FanGraphs analysts whiplash. We loved him as a prospect, then he started slow and we adjusted our expectations down. Then he got hot at the tail end of last year and made a raftload of loud contact; both Dan Szymborski and I were high on him again coming into 2024. Now he’s off to one of the worst starts in baseball, and I’m back out.

Two things have changed my view. First, Torkelson’s approach at the plate has regressed. I’ve generally liked his swing decisions; he looks for something to drive and doesn’t chase breaking balls. But his swing rate in the heart of the strike zone is down meaningfully this year, and he’s not drawing walks at a rate that makes that sacrifice work out for him. If you’re going to be passive over the heart of the plate, you better absolutely crush the ball when you do swing, or at least possess a Soto-level batting eye so that pitchers are either tempting fate or walking you. Right now, Torkelson isn’t doing either of those things. Read the rest of this entry »

When Matt Waldron made his major league debut for the Padres last June 24, it was a noteworthy event. While a few position players had thrown the occasional knuckleball ast a goof after taking the mound for mop-up duty, no true pitcher had thrown one in a regular season game in two years. The last one who had done so, the Orioles’ Mickey Jannis, made just one major league appearance. Mixing his knuckler in with four other offerings, Waldron bounced between the minors and majors for a couple months before sticking around in September. Now he’s a regular part of the Padres’ rotation, and he’s having success… some of the time.

Through six starts totaling 31 innings this season, Waldron owns a 4.35 ERA (111 ERA-) and 4.06 FIP (103 FIP-), which won’t put him in contention for the Cy Young award but is respectable enough to keep him occupying a back-of-the-rotation spot. For what it’s worth, within the Padres’ rotation he’s handily outpitched both Michael King (5.00 ERA, 6.30 FIP), whom the Padres acquired from the Yankees as one of the key pieces in the Juan Soto trade, and Joe Musgrove (6.94 ERA, 6.59 FIP), who last year signed a $100 million extension.

Waldron is striking out a modest 19.7% of hitters but walking just 7.3%; his 12.4% strikeout-walk differential is second best among Padres starters behind only Dylan Cease’s 18.7%, and Waldron’s 1.16 homers per nine sits in the middle of the pack among their starting five (which also includes Yu Darvish) — and a vast improvement on his 1.67 allowed per nine at Triple-A El Paso in 2022–23. He’s done a very good job of limiting hard contact, with his 87 mph average exit velocity placing in the 78th percentile and his 33.3% hard-hit rate in the 75th percentile. Read the rest of this entry »

They don’t have a division lead to show for it, but the Phillies have been one of the top teams in baseball to start the year. Alec Bohm and Trea Turner have carried an above-average offense despite some slow starts from the other usual suspects, and the pitching staff has lived up to its projected excellence, sitting a full win ahead of the field entering play Tuesday. Philadelphia’s substantial investments — from the newly extended Zack Wheeler and the re-signed Aaron Nola to the army of high-leverage bullpen arms — are paying off with interest, with Wheeler leading all NL pitchers in WAR. But sitting just a hair behind him is a teammate who may be having an even finer season: Ranger Suárez.

Suárez first rose to prominence in 2021, a season in which his role transitioned from mop-up reliever to co-closer to the rotation over the course of just a few months. After he recorded a diminutive 1.36 ERA across 106 innings in his breakout year, he earned a permanent spot in the rotation entering 2022. Over his first two seasons as a full-time starter, he’s put up a 92 ERA-, making him a solid mid-rotation arm but a clear step below Wheeler and Nola.

That’s changed this year, as the emergence of Suárez has given the Phillies a third ace to follow up their dominant duo. Case in point: Suárez’s eight-inning, one-run gem on Saturday constituted his worst start in weeks, snapping a 32-inning scoreless streak that included a complete game against the Rockies on April 16. And a quick glance at the numbers shows his superb month was no fluke.

The previous version of Suárez possessed neither plus stuff nor control, instead thriving with a high groundball rate that limited extra-base damage on balls in play. As someone who doesn’t throw hard or spin a hammer breaking ball, improvements to his stuff would need to come from more subtle means than his raw pitch characteristics. If anything, PitchingBot and Stuff+ view his season thus far as a slight step back in that department. But while Suárez hasn’t added a tick to his fastball or learned a new pitch, stronger command and synergy of the pitches he already had have led to big results across the board.

Suárez has a kitchen-sink arsenal, throwing five pitch types with regularity and none more than a third of the time. He most commonly starts hitters off with his sinker, a tumbling seam-shifted wake offering with just 4.5 inches of induced vertical break, which is less than half the league average. It’s doesn’t miss bats, but it has enough run to miss barrels; it’s his best groundball pitch and has a negative average launch angle. It’s also a called-strike machine when Suárez lands it in the zone, which he does about two-thirds of the time.

After getting ahead in the count, Suárez likes to pivot to his curveball and changeup, the latter of which has elevated his performance the most this season. The synergy between any groundballer’s sinker and change is crucial to their success – hitters unsure of what’s coming are more likely to both swing over changeups that dip beneath the zone and watch meaty sinkers go by, both good outcomes for the pitcher. Previously, Suárez struggled to locate his changeup, amassing a -5 run value over his first two years in the rotation. But with a +4 value in just six starts in 2024, it’s clear he’s turned a corner with it.

You might not recognize one of the stats in the above table. JOtZ% doesn’t roll off the tongue like BABIP or xwOBAcon, but it stands for “Just Outside the Zone” percentage – a region I defined as outside the rulebook strike zone but in Statcast’s shadow region. The changeups that are thrown just a few inches off or below the plate are the ones most likely ones to draw chases, making JOtZ% a decent indicator of command. In 2022 and ’23, Suárez often missed too low when throwing changeups – directionally correct in hitting his spots, but so low that no hitters were fooled into thinking they were sinkers. By more consistently finding the few inches directly beneath the strike zone, his JOtZ% shot up, and the results followed.

Most hurlers of his archetype struggle to find an out pitch, but Suárez may have two lethal offerings in the bank. In addition to his better-commanded changeup, his already-good curveball creates an enviable package of secondary stuff. He most commonly uses his curve in 0-2 and 1-2 counts as he fishes for strikeouts, often throwing it in the dirt with success. While his changeup’s success relies on pinpoint accuracy, Suárez’ curveball indiscriminately takes down opponents regardless of location thanks to its excellent two-planed break, with over a full foot of drop and sweep compared to a pitch thrown without spin.

Across the league, Suárez is one of just four starters (along with Tanner Bibee, Jack Flaherty, and Jared Jones) with a 19% swinging strike rate or higher on two separate pitches, which makes it no wonder he’s on pace for a career-high strikeout rate. But Suárez gets his whiffs much differently than his competitors do. One of the best indicators of pure stuff is in-zone whiff rate, the number of hittable pitches that batters come up empty on. High-octane aces like Wheeler, Gerrit Cole, and Spencer Strider top the leaderboards over the past few seasons, as do Bibee, Flaherty, and Jones this year. But while his 27.8% strikeout rate is in the top quartile of pitchers, Suárez’s zone-whiff rate sits in just the 8th percentile.

You could look at Suárez’s struggles to earn whiffs on strikes as a sign that his numbers are unsustainable, but I disagree – because what he lacks in in-zone dominance he more than makes up for by controlling the area outside of it. Because most out-of-zone pitches are taken for balls, the median pitcher loses about two runs of value per 100 they throw. No wonder we consider pitches thrown outside the zone to be mistakes. Except, that’s not the case for Suárez.

Suárez is one of just two starting pitchers in the league to create positive value by throwing outside the strike zone. He uses his non-strikes purposefully, each one carefully placed in an attempt to generate a swing from the batter. Data-driven models are a fan of his approach, with his 108 Location+ ranking sixth in the league. So far, it’s worked wonders for his ability to induce weak contact, shattering his previous bests in wOBA, groundball rate, and barrel rate while leading qualified starters in xERA.

More importantly, Suárez’s out-of-zone pitches don’t just keep the ball on the ground; they also miss bats entirely. He throws his curveball and changeup — his two best pitches at getting swings and misses — in the zone just a third of the time; most offerings that earn so many swinging strikes land in the zone far more often than that. Out-of-zone whiff rate is often thought of as a consequence of good stuff rather than great command – the leaderboard over the past few seasons closely resembles the one for strikeouts – but better command can also boost it. Suárez has improved his out-of-zone whiff rate by five percentage points this season, a year-over-year improvement that ranks in the 91st percentile.

All these whiffs on pitches outside the zone are also allowing Suárez to pitch deeper into games. Over his first two years as a starter, he wasn’t exactly known for volume; he would often get into deep counts, which led to a high walk rate and an average of fewer than 5.5 innings per start. Six starts into the new season, he’s bumped that average to 6.8 innings per start without a significant change in pitch count in part because he’s getting more swings on pitches outside the zone. He’s increased his strike rate from 62% to 66% while slashing his walk rate by more than half. More length from him will be a welcome development on a roster that is, for now, rostering just seven (all single-inning) relievers to accommodate a six-man rotation.

We often think of the pitchers with the best command as the ones who dominate within the strike zone – those with the highest zone rate, those who can hit their spots within it, and those who can limit walks — but Suárez shows us that command is different than control (which is something Jon Becker pointed out in his Top of the Order column Monday). Command is about throwing pitches in the spots that induce weak contact, generate whiffs, and befuddle hitters into making poor swing decisions. Suárez’s improved command has taken him to the next level, and he’s done it with a new approach outside the zone.

It’s easy to take a totally nihilistic view of pitching prospects in general. You’ll get your hopes up over a 13-strikeout start at the College World Series, twiddle your thumbs as innings limits and service time shenanigans delay the path to the majors by two years, and be left scratching your head when the pitcher’s UCL gives out anyway, just two months after his big league debut. Next thing you know, you’re watching a 29-year-old, whose coming was once as breathlessly anticipated as the Messiah’s, toodle around for 140 lackluster innings a year.

Such a viewpoint would be facile, the type of cynicism that, to quote the author Joe Klein, “passes for insight among the mediocre.” But baseball fans come by their pessimism honestly; as anyone who’s read a Nick Hornby novel knows, nothing fosters obnoxious nihilism like repeated heartbreak.

MacKenzie Gore was the high schooler with the big leg kick and unreal velocity for a lefty. Then he was arguably the top pitching prospect in baseball. Then he was trade fodder — but still a key component of the deal that brought Juan Soto from Washington to San Diego. And in 2023, Gore was fine. He made 27 starts, threw 136 1/3 innings, and posted a 4.42 ERA. Did he look like a future Cy Young winner? No. Was this worth giving up on Soto and risking sending the franchise into a tailspin? No. But he was competent in a big league rotation, and not all pitching prospects even achieve that. Read the rest of this entry »

Roughly a month’s worth of the 2024 season is now in the books. The American League East looks great. The Brewers and Guardians are standing up for the Central divisions. The White Sox can only beat the Rays, and the Astros somehow can’t beat anyone. Enough time has passed that I feel confident saying all of those things. On the other hand, it still feels too early to be certain about which players are over- or under-performing. But that doesn’t mean our opinions can’t change a bit. There’s enough data to make some educated guesses, so let’s put on our speculation caps. Here are four players — two hitters and two pitchers — who have risen in my estimation over the last few weeks. Tomorrow, I’ll follow up with four players who have gone the other way.

Elly De La Cruz, SS, Cincinnati Reds
I already thought De La Cruz had the potential to be one of the best players in baseball before the season started. Quite reasonably, though, I was worried about the downsides. A guy who struck out 33.7% of the time last year is always risky, and that’s particularly true given how he did it. He swung more often than league average at balls and less often than average at strikes; he also made less contact than average. You can have one of those three things be true, or maybe even two of three if you make up for it elsewhere, but three of three? Yikes. Read the rest of this entry »