Baseball can be slow to change. We’ve had this idea for decades that certain pitch types have platoon splits, and that you should avoid them in certain situations because of it. Righties, don’t throw sliders to lefties! It’s Baseball 101.

Think of the changeup, too. “Does he have a changeup?” or some variation on the theme is the first question uttered of any prospect on the way up. It’s shorthand for “can he be a starter?” because we think of changeups as weapons against the opposite hand. A righty will need one to get lefties out and turn the lineup over, back to the other righties, who will be dispatched using breaking balls.

As with all conventional wisdom, this notion of handedness and pitch types should be rife for manipulation. Say you could use your changeup effectively against same-handed hitters, for example. You could have a fastball/changeup starter that was equally effective against both hands, despite the history of platoon splits on the pitch.

To the innovators go the spoils. And we’re starting to see some innovators.

Read the rest of this entry »

With Danny Santana headed to the disabled list, the Twins have recalled outfielder Max Kepler from Triple-A. Kepler figures to slot in as the team’s fourth outfielder, backing up Byron Buxton, Miguel Sano and Eddie Rosario. Kepler got some love from prospect evaluators last winter, with virtually every outlet ranking him in their various top-100 lists. Baseball America was the highest on the German-born outfielder, ranking him 30th overall. Newcomer 2080 Baseball was the low man on Kepler. They placed him at #100. Other outlets ranked him closer to #30 than to #100.

KATOH loves Kepler, projecting him for 11.9 WAR over the next six years — a figure which placed him seventh among all prospects heading into the 2016 season. KATOH ranked him ahead of several more well-regarded outfield prospects, including Kepler’s teammate Byron Buxton and the recently promoted Nomar Mazara. Although he’s not a consensus top prospect, it isn’t hard to see why KATOH — a stats-based projection system — is all over him. He slashed .332/.416/.531 in Double-A last year, and also kicked in 18 steals. It’s incredibly hard to poke holes in Kepler’s 2015 performance. He made lots of contact, walked more than he struck out (14% versus 13%, respectively), hit for power and stole bases. Simply put, he did it all.

Read the rest of this entry »

From time to time, every year, I like to look at bad called strikes and bad called balls. The availability of PITCHf/x information makes this fairly easy, and, when isn’t it fun to examine the extraordinary? The point generally isn’t to rip on a given home-plate umpire. It’s more about trying to figure out why what happened happened. What has to take place for a ball to get called a strike? On the flip side, what has to take place for a strike to get called a ball?

This is the post about last year’s worst called ball, as determined by distance from the center of the strike zone. The pitch was thrown by Jeff Samardzija, and it missed the very middle by 1.2 inches. Still, while it was down the pipe, it was ruled in the hitter’s favor. A distance of 1.2 inches is a very small distance, so you can see why that was extreme. Now skip to 2016! This season is only barely underway. They’ve played less than four percent of the games, but we might’ve already seen the worst called ball. A pitch was ruled a ball even though it was to about the same spot as Samardzija’s, and the pitch was thrown just last Saturday by Clayton Kershaw.

Read the rest of this entry »

Contract extensions during arbitration seasons aren’t terribly common, especially when a player is just two seasons from free agency. Since Elvis Andrus signed his eight year, $120 million extension in 2013, there have been just three contract extensions handed to players who’ve recorded similar service time. One winter ago, Giancarlo Stanton signed his 13 year, $325 million deal. And over the last few months, the San Francisco Giants are the only club to take part in such an agreement. In November, the Giants signed Brandon Crawford to a six-year extension worth $75 million, and this past weekend they doubled down on their infield, signing Brandon Belt to a similar six-year extension for $79 million. While these extensions are uncommon, Belt and the Giants have achieved a reasonable common ground.

Without the new contract, Belt would have been eligible for free agency after the 2017 season heading into his age-30 season. That would have been Belt’s one big chance at a major contract. His new deal with the Giants will pay him $79 million over six years, which includes the roughly $6 million he was already expected to make this season. Now Belt won’t hit free agency until after his age-33 season, likely precluding him from signing a mega-contract given his age.

Signing a huge contract was actually never a certainty for Belt — with or without the present extension. Power pays and Belt has yet to hit more than 18 home runs in a season — although the raw power numbers are mitigated by San Francisco’s AT&T Park. Belt has recorded just 23 of his 64 career home runs at home, and San Francisco’s park factor indicates that it is the toughest park in which to hit home runs by a pretty wide margin. It isn’t that Belt lacks power; indeed, his .185 ISO since 2011 is among the top-third of all batters regardless of park. He has roughly the same amount of extra base hits at home (98) compared to the road (99), but when he is out of San Francisco a lot more balls leave the yard.

Read the rest of this entry »

We just wrapped up the first week of regular-season baseball. It’s always one of the most blissful weeks of baseball, because the games count again, but people aren’t yet really nervous. It’s like when you first dip into a hot tub. The immediate sense of relaxation just washes over you, and you feel like you belong right where you are. The first stretch of the season feels like a transition period, in between pointless baseball and real baseball. It’s comfortable and mostly anxiety-free, because a team still has the whole season ahead of it. I’m here now to make you feel more anxious. Sorry. Stress never sleeps.

I write this post early in every season. Literally this exact post. So the idea is anything but original, but the point is always this: Yeah, it’s absurdly early, but guess what! The games matter! The playoff races don’t start developing in July and August. They start developing last week. You want your team to make the playoffs, right? You want your team to be competitive? Well, it’s never too early to look at the standings. It’s never too early to start stressing out. Sure, the leverage of the season is only going to go up, but we’ve already seen shifts in the playoff picture. Don’t believe for a second that we haven’t!

Read the rest of this entry »

On April 6, Darin Ruf went 0 for 3 with a walk in Philadelphia’s 3-2 loss to the Reds in Cincinnati. The right-handed-hitting Phillies first baseman faced left-hander Brandon Finnegan in his first two at-bats. He later stepped into the batter’s box against righties Caleb Cotham and Blake Wood.

Ruf, who has a .943 career OPS against lefties, broke down his four plate appearances a few days later.

———

LEAD-IN

“Finnegan likes to throw a lot of fastballs, but I’d never seen him before, so I didn’t know exactly what it looked like out of his hand. I only knew the velocity. From video, I like to get a little bit of mental timing off of a pitcher. I try to see what his pitches do. For instance, is his slider a slider, or is it more of a slurve?

“Going into the game, I wanted to get a fastball middle, middle away. That’s something most lefties try to do. With guys like Kershaw and Bumgarner, who like to pitch on the inside part of the plate, I might have a different game plan. But against (Finnegan), I wanted to stay in the middle, opposite-field area.”

FIRST AT-BAT Read the rest of this entry »

I would be remiss if I wrote an article about a young player showing ridiculous power in the first week of the season and failed to mention Trevor Story. Consider him mentioned! Hand him the MVP and Rookie of the Year already, stop pitching to him, all that. He’s been great. But here’s someone who’s also been great: a 24-year-old shortstop-turned-third baseman for the rebuilding Cincinnati Reds by the name of Eugenio Suarez. He’s quietly hit four home runs in the first six games of the season. That’s a pretty good return, even if we already knew Suarez had the ability to hit for some power based on last year’s 13 homers in 97 games. However, there are some other things that Suarez has done in the early going — and in some cases, not done — that warrant attention from us.

First, a little background. Let’s look at some examples. Suarez first came up for the Tigers in 2014, playing 85 games at shortstop while showing an average walk rate and bad strikeout rate. He hit for a .097 isolated-power mark, which was below his average minor-league ISO but not exactly outside the realm of belief for a guy just making the jump. After watching a lot of examples, this is about a fair approximation of his 2014 swing, from a game against the Royals in late September of 2014:

A bit of an open stance (he seemed to vacillate between a more open stance and an almost square stance during 2014), a short stride and toe tap, and a nice clean single to left field.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Orioles are 5-0, Ross Stripling almost threw a no-hitter in his Major League debut, and Eugenio Suarez apparently doesn’t make outs anymore, but those were all just footnotes of the first week of the 2016 season. There’s only one big story in MLB right now, and no, that’s not another easy setup for a pun based on Trevor Story’s last name. Okay, maybe it is. They’re so easy!

But despite Trevor’s made-for-headline-writers last name, it’s his performance that keeps him in the news. After finally failing to hit a home run on Saturday, the first time in five big league games that he didn’t go yard, Story launched another one last night, bringing his season total to seven. No one else has more than four. 16 teams have fewer home runs than Trevor Story right now. He has as many long balls as the Mets, Marlins, Pirates, and Angels combined.

So, yeah, welcome to the big leagues, kid. It’s not often that rookie shortstops put on this type of show, and no player of any type has ever hit for this kind of power in their first week in the Major Leagues.

Read the rest of this entry »

So you want the designated hitter in the National League, eh? Well, you’re going to have to talk it over with this guy first:

Jokes aside, I’m not even sure Madison Bumgarner would mind if the designated hitter took over. It doesn’t seem like he particularly enjoys hitting. He doesn’t work on it in the cages or in batting practice and he wasn’t exactly champing at the bit to come off the bench as a pinch-hitter, as one might expect other #PitchersWhoRake would. And it would allow him to put more of his energy into what he actually does enjoy doing: pitching.

Bumgarner enjoys pitching, and we enjoy watching him pitch, but whether he enjoys hitting or not, we enjoy watching him to do that, too. Bumgarner’s actually a good hitter, and not your typical “good hitter for a pitcher.” No, he’s actually a good hitter. His career 47 wRC+ might lead you to believe otherwise, but between 2013 and -14, he seemed to flip a switch, and since then, he’s been the best-hitting pitcher in baseball. Consider:

Since 2014

Prince Fielder: 116 wRC+
Madison Bumgarner: 115 wRC+

— August Fagerstrom (@AugustFG_) April 11, 2016

That seems good.

There’s a reason I’m writing about Bumgarner as a hitter right now. This didn’t just come out of the blue. The reason is that, over the weekend, Madison Bumgarner faced Clayton Kershaw, undeniably the best pitcher on the planet, and Madison Bumgarner did this:

Read the rest of this entry »

On Sunday, with two outs in the bottom of the seventh, Boston reliever Noe Ramirez fielded a comebacker off the bat of Toronto center fielder Kevin Pillar. He flipped it to Hanley Ramirez for the putout. It wasn’t a particularly momentous occasion, but it got me thinking — was this the first ever Ramirez to Ramirez putout in major-league history? I probably would have let it go right there (I’m pretty lazy, after all) but Jim Reedy pointed out that there have only been 29 Ramirezes in major-league history, and that didn’t seem like to daunting of a number. So I dove in.

Read the rest of this entry »