If the season ended today, it would be chaos. There would be significant protestation from players, owners, and fans alike, all parties confused by the suddenly truncated schedule. But if matters were allowed to proceed from there, the National League would have the Mets grab one wild-card slot. The other entry would be determined through a different one-game playoff — that one played between the Pirates and the Phillies.

The Phillies! It’s understood that anything can happen on any given day. What that means is that anything can also happen during any given month. And here the Phillies sit, tied for baseball’s fifth-best record. The Phillies came in as a clear contender for baseball’s worst record, but they have a better record than the defending champs. They have a better record than everyone in the AL West, and also the NL West. The Phillies have won six games in a row — baseball’s longest active streak — and they’ve completed series sweeps against the Nationals and Indians. A handful of teams in the league are rebuilding. The Phillies have had the best start of any.

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You’d rather have the Rangers’ problem than the Braves’ problem. See, the Braves problem is that they just don’t have enough competent players to field a competitive major-league baseball team. The Rangers problem seems to be that they’re soon to have too many competent players. An embarrassment of riches isn’t necessarily a problem, per se, but it’s something of an inefficiency, and it’s the kind of thing that can result in at least one deserving employee feeling less than pleased by his role in the workplace.

Nomar Mazara wasn’t supposed to be in the big leagues this soon, but Shin-Soo Choo’s strained right calf accelerated Mazara’s timeline, and now that the 21-year-old rookie is here, it doesn’t seem like he’s going away any time soon. In Mazara’s first game, he homered. Through his first 17, the preseason consensus top-25 prospect has run a 127 wRC+, showed a knack for controlling the strike zone, impressed scouts with his ability to adjust, and even made an impact with the glove. The Rangers are in the business of competing for a World Series championship this year, and when a team is in the business of competing for a World Series championship, it does so by fielding a 25-man roster comprised of its best 25 players. Nomar Mazara is one of those players.

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It is no secret that baseball is in the midst of a youth revolution. Mike Trout and Bryce Harper are, of course, two of the best players we’ve ever seen at their respective ages. They both look like they’re on the path to inner-circle Hall of Fame careers, barring health problems. They are the Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle for our generation.

But the depth of remarkable young talent around the game doesn’t stop at Trout and Harper. In another time, where those two superstars weren’t dominating the sport, the simultaneous rise of Manny Machado, Nolan Arenado, and Kris Bryant would lead to numerous stories about the sport entering a golden age of third baseman. Except third base might not even be the most loaded position right now, as the young shortstops breaking into the game now include Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor, Xander Bogaerts, Corey Seager, and Addison Russell, with J.P. Crawford, Trea Turner, Orlando Arcia, and Dansby Swanson representing a pretty remarkable next wave; the first three of those four will likely arrive in the majors later this summer.

The future of the sport is clearly in good hands, but the most amazing thing about the present group of young players flooding the game is that they aren’t just hype and potential; they’re already some of the best players in the game. In fact, in terms of early career production, this may be the best young group of hitters the game has ever seen.

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A casual stroll down the stacks of the FanGraphs hitting leaderboards for outfielders yields many interesting takeaways, but perhaps none more interesting than this: among the top 10 outfielders by wRC+, there’s a 23-year-old who played only 45 games above High-A before being called up to the majors last year. He came into this season with the expectation of being a left-handed platoon bat, and now he’s leading the majors in hard-hit rate and hitting third everyday in the sixth-best offensive lineup in baseball. A year can change a lot of things, and it has changed more for Michael Conforto than for just about anyone else in baseball.

Conforto had about as successful a short stint in the majors during 2015 as one could hope for out of a young player with little experience in the high minors — he posted a 134 wRC+ in 56 games, hit a few important home runs in the playoffs, and outperformed the established historical expectations for players in his position. Conforto was good for 2.1 WAR in those 56 games, and the Mets went from a .505 team without him — 3.0 games back in their division — to a .631 team with him, comfortable winners of the National League East. The August/September 2015 Mets weren’t just Conforto, of course, but the Mets needed an offensive jolt, and he provided it. Conforto’s introduction represented a tidy dividing line between mediocrity and wild success, and we’d be fools not to at least recognize the narrative convenience of that line.

That type of introduction to the major leagues is hard to live up to — and yet! Here we are, a month into the season, and Conforto has lived up to them. More than lived up to them, in fact. He’s probably created new expectations, and they’re even loftier, almost impossible ones. We know how easy it is to be wrong about April numbers. It’s folly to think that April assures us of what’s going to happen for the rest of the season. But, while we shouldn’t necessarily expect this current level of production out of him moving forward, he’s showing us a few real improvements so far this season that merit some attention. Conforto isn’t truly this good (no one is), but there’s a reason he’s currently this good.

Let’s start with who he was in 2015. Describing Conforto as a dead-pull hitter in 2015 wouldn’t be accurate, but he was close: he ranked 35th from bottom in terms of batted balls to the opposite field (out of 361 qualifying hitters, min. 190 PAs). Interestingly, he had a hole in his swing, and it was on the inside part of the plate — not really where you’d expect to find it for such a pull-happy hitter. Take a look at his isolated power per pitch location from 2015:

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In 2011, in his first year at the helm in Atlanta, Fredi Gonzalez led the Braves to 89 wins. The following year, he led them to 94 wins. In 2013, that total climbed to 96. Bobby Cox’s replacement was skippering one of the best squads in baseball.

Things have changed. Gonzalez wears the same uniform — there’s still a tomahawk on his chest — but his team has been stripped of its stars. The Braves are in full rebuild mode, and while that’s not his doing, wins are nonetheless at a premium. Fair or not, Gonzalez has a target squarely on his back.

Nothing appears imminent, but it’s not unreasonable to believe that the Fredi-must-go movement will ultimately get its wish. In his own words, the club is losing in “all kind of different ways.” Regarding their record, he added that “Nobody expects us to win 120 games and boat race the division, but my expectation is that we’re going to be competitive; I want to win games.”

He isn’t winning many. Atlanta heads into May a worst-in-baseball 5-18. Gonzalez knows the score. He also wants to stay. Read the rest of this entry »

As Susan Slusser with the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Wednesday, Sean Manaea will be called up to start Friday’s game in Oakland against Mike Fiers and the Houston Astros. Manaea made a decent case for making the rotation out of spring training, tallying 16 strikeouts in 14.1 innings, but the seven walks allowed over the same period gave the A’s enough reason to start him in Triple-A Nashville.

Across three starts in Nashville, he has been lights out on the mound. Only three runs have crossed the plate against him in 18 innings pitched, while 21 batters have struck out and just four have reached via free passes. That level of performance was enough for Oakland to feel comfortable bringing him up to the majors in lieu of a fourth appearance for the Sounds. But what can we expect from him out of this start, and (presumably) those going forward in an A’s uniform?

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A.J. Pierzynski has played baseball for a very long time. He’s one of the few players to predate not only the PITCHf/x era (2007-present), but also the Baseball Info Solutions era (2002-present). He’s one of just six active players who played in the 1990s — the others are Carlos Beltran, Adrian Beltre, Bartolo Colon, David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez. They are all well celebrated and beloved players. Pierzynski does not fit in that group.

If you’re familiar with Pierzynski, you likely know that his opponents generally have not been all that fond of him. A Google search for “A.J. Pierzynski hate” turns up plenty of results. Rather than focus on that, I thought it would be fun to find some nice to things to say about Pierzynski.

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Major League Baseball is now in its second decade of testing and suspensions, so we should be past surprises when it comes to the type of players getting caught for using performance-enhancing drugs. The controversy surrounding Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire might have made PEDs famous in baseball, and Rafael Palmeiro, Manny Ramirez, Ryan Braun, and Alex Rodriguez have all been suspended by MLB for PED use, but there’s no single type of player using PEDs. Bartolo Colon, Freddy Galvis, and Dee Gordon have all tested positive, as well — Gordon representing the most recent case after testing positive for exogenous testosterone and clostebol. In most cases, a suspension is held up as an example that the system works and that MLB is catching users. Given Gordon’s contract situation, however, that might not be the case here.

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I gave Royals’ right-hander Chris Young a bit of an incredulous look — “You’re throwing the slider a ton this year!” He shrugged. Sure. “It’s okay, you can throw it inside and out, and it’s been good. But it moves a little differently depending on where you throw it.”

Young then mimicked the release point when trying to throw a slider inside to a right-handed hitter, and then he showed where the release point might be when throwing it outside to a right-handed hitter. One was straight to the plate, and the other had more side-to-side finish to it.

If you’ve pitched competitively — or, at least, possess more experience than my own, which is limited to throwing a whiffle ball to my kid while he imitates Julio Franco — this may be old hat to you. But to me, it was surprising and also totally logical at the same time. I immediately wanted to know what this looked like.

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It’s always a little dicey writing negative articles. Pointing out deficiencies simply isn’t as fun as pointing out strengths, and there’s something that just feels, well, a little wrong about basing work on something a player is trying so hard to do well. That doesn’t feel like it pertains to this article about Joey Votto, however, mostly because he’s always been extremely good at baseball, and will almost certainly be extremely good at baseball in the near future. Votto has a great contract, an incredible career under his belt, and the prospect of many more wildly successful seasons. The dude is smart and awesome, and we’re simply not too worried about him. However — and the however is important — for really the first time in his career, Votto has been terrible at the plate for almost a full month. That’s at once unbelievable and utterly fascinating, and it’s the reason why we’re here.

So let’s start with a chart. Here’s a readout of Votto’s monthly wRC+ figures since he was called up to the majors in September of 2007. We could have gone with a rolling average, but the monthly delineation gives us a few clear reference points. Mouse over the chart for more information:

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