Tyson Ross was always supposed to have bad command. Just look at his mechanics! He’s huge! Look at his minor-league walk rates! Then, Ross came up and — for his first 300+ innings in the big leagues at least — proved the doubters wrong. An better-than-average walk rate happened, at least.

Now, though, Ross has regressed in that category. But figuring out why a walk rate has grown is not the simplest affair. Swings and misses can turn balls into strikes, and changes in pitching mix can bring on command problems. Tentative approaches can turn aggressive stuff into long plate appearances that end with a free pass. More runners on base can beget more runners on base. Ross himself shakes his head at it, but we did our best to try and figure it out together.

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Among the many complains of Mets fans at the moment is that the defense hasn’t been doing enough to support a pitching staff that carries the burden of trying to do everything. It stands to reason, if you’re going to be built first and foremost around run prevention, you’d want to do as much as you can to, say, prevent runs. It’s not a total surprise the Mets have had some defensive issues; they’ve had Wilmer Flores at shortstop, after all, and Michael Cuddyer in an outfield corner. More of a shock is what’s been taking place in the outfield middle. Juan Lagares has been playing defense like a normal and mortal person.

Which a team can’t afford, when said player has Juan Lagares’ bat. The Mets wouldn’t have signed Lagares to a five-year contract if they didn’t believe in him. They were clearly comfortable with the idea of a starting center fielder who does most of his helping on defense. But Lagares, right now, would be evidence to the contrary of the idea that defense doesn’t slump. How much of this seems like a real thing, and how much seems like just a few bad breaks?

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The Mets have lost seven games in a row. It’s never a good time to lose seven games in a row, but a particularly bad time is when the rival Nationals decide to win five games in a row. So it is that the Mets have ceded control of the National League East, falling perilously close to the surprisingly competent Braves. Now, if you just fast-forwarded from the start of the season to now, these standings wouldn’t be a surprise. The Nationals were supposed to run away with the division. The Mets were supposed to be okay, and the Phillies were supposed to suck. Outside of the Marlins, it seems mostly normal. But sequences of events matter, and the way the year has gone for the Mets makes this current situation feel desperate. A season feels like it’s slipping out of their grasp.

There’s an awful lot of pressure on Sandy Alderson to make a move. Alderson feels it, and he’s been in communication with other front offices. Here’s one move, that just showed up literally as I was writing the above paragraph:

Source says #Mets calling up Matz. Two different club officials declined comment when asked. Team again could be pondering six-man rotation.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) June 25, 2015

This has been coming. Fans knew Steven Matz was on the way. But, consider the first tweet response to that:

Young Ideas ?@DickYoungsGhost 23m23 minutes ago

@Ken_Rosenthal Unless Matz can bat .400 and play all other positions, still doesn’t help the @Mets.

During the losing streak, the Mets have scored nine runs in seven games. They’ve had a bottom-five NL offense for the year, and a bottom-five NL offense the last month or so. Pressure isn’t on to make any move — pressure is on to make an offensively-minded move. It’s understandable, given how the Mets have looked. But it might very well be prudent for Alderson to keep on taking the boring approach.

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The Miami Marlins are about to get a lot better as a baseball team. Jose Fernandez, one of the most exciting and superlative pitchers in major-league baseball, is set to return next week. Martin Prado and Michael Morse should be back shortly. Henderson Alvarez, who has made just four starts all year, is progressing in his rehab. Mat Latos, who struggled mightily to begin the season, is beginning to show signs of life as the velocity on his fastball continues to creep forward. The Marlins should soon have the team they expected to enter the year with — the team that some, this author included, thought would make the playoffs as a wild card. The problem for the Marlins is that it is already too late this season, and the team needs to start thinking about next year.

The Marlins began the season as a .500 team and the Fangraphs Playoff Odds gave them a 27% chance of making the playoffs. As they were missing their best starter at the time, but his return was factored into those odds, it is fair to assume that the team was not going to be very good to start the season and that they would actually be a below .500 team for the early part of the season. They started the season poorly enough that they fired their manager and replaced him with the general manager. Often times, a team that fires its manager makes that move because the team is underperforming, and the managerial change appears to work as the team tends to play up to its talent level. For the Marlins, the team’s record has not improved with the managerial change. Read the rest of this entry »

In this age of Hitf/x and StatCast, batted-ball velocity is a hotter topic than ever. We only have had access to such data for a limited period of time, but the hypothesizing regarding the loudest contact-makers in the game’s history has been going on as long as the game itself. A similar debate regarding the quietest contact-makers has been, shall we say, a bit more quiet. Earlier this week we used contact scores to run down the most authoritative hitters of the modern era. Today, let’s flip the script and look at the bottom of the contact authority list.

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Keith Law did not like this week’s trade (ESPN Insider article) that saw Touki Toussaint and Bronson Arroyo go from the Arizona Diamondbacks to the Atlanta Braves. It’s not that Law didn’t like the trade from the perspective of one team or the other. It’s that he didn’t like the spirit of the trade, period: it was, indisputably, a swap of contracts instead of an even exchange of on-field talent.

What does a league look like where plenty, if not most, trades are motivated by their financial implications? Well, it’s not the end of the world: this is what the NBA has been about for years. The NBA combines baseball’s almost entirely guaranteed salaries with a soft cap, like baseball, that, unlike baseball, is restrictive enough that even mid-market teams can unwittingly bump up against it. “Expiring” contracts — or, inefficient deals with less than a year remaining on them — have been a long-coveted NBA asset: salary albatrosses are willingly taken on precisely because they will end quickly enough for the team to have an even more valuable asset — space and flexibility underneath the cap — in time for the offseason free-agent market.

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Used to be, people would argue about whether Stephen Strasburg was really an ace. There was no right or wrong answer, since there is no consensus definition of an ace starting pitcher, but aside from that, where Strasburg was concerned, there was disagreement. Some people thought he was amazing; some people thought he was a letdown. Some people could squint and see both. That all concerns past Stephen Strasburg. There was no disagreement over 2015 Stephen Strasburg. That version sucked, and by some measures he was one of the very worst pitchers in baseball. It wasn’t like him, and after a start in late May, Strasburg hit the DL. He didn’t feel great. He also needed to work on his mechanics. The DL stint was a chance to work on both.

And a few days ago, Strasburg came off the DL and threw 94 pitches against the Braves. Many of them were pretty good pitches, and while this was a Braves lineup without Freddie Freeman in the middle of it, I’d still say it wasn’t easy for Strasburg to throw his five shutout innings. That was still a major-league opponent, so the outing was positive from start to finish. What sorts of things was Strasburg up to? We can make this easy, with just a few pictures. In some ways, Strasburg was his classic self. In some ways, he was completely different.

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You remember how the last year went, and ended. It was devastating — not only because the Royals came so close, but because no one could be sure when the Royals would have another opportunity. The following season didn’t appear so bright; while the team could survive losing, say, Nori Aoki and Billy Butler, it would be tougher to lose James Shields. The guy the Royals signed to replace Shields was Edinson Volquez, which is to say the Royals didn’t really get around to replacing Shields at all. Preseason opinions of the team were mixed, but everyone agreed it would be a struggle to get back to the playoffs.

Now, almost halfway through, the Royals have the best record in the American League. Practically their entire lineup is in position to be voted into the All-Star Game, and only a few of those selections would be terrible ones. The team’s done well to shake off last year’s defeat, and with their eyes set ahead, the future will soon bring the exhibition, and the trade deadline. Like every team, the Royals could stand to be better. Like every team, the Royals could use another one or two arms. Without question, the starting rotation is far from a strength. But as the Royals gauge the market, it’s worth asking — how bad is their need for another starter, really?

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Last year’s Rays were, objectively, a disappointment. Forecast to do pretty well, the team ultimately lost more games than it won, finishing fourth in a surprising division. Beneath the surface numbers, though, there was something a little more positive — by BaseRuns, the Rays should’ve gone 83-79. Over the course of the year, the Rays underachieved what they arguably deserved, so the team was more competitive than it looked. But hey, 2014 was 2014. Those Rays traded David Price. They traded Ben Zobrist. They lost Joe Maddon. Early this year, the Rays lost Alex Cobb. They’ve been without Drew Smyly. They’ve been without Desmond Jennings. Last year, the Rays were borderline competitive, and they moved forward without the same talent.

And now they’re 41-32. They’re leading the East by a couple games, and the only bad team in that division has been the Red Sox. BaseRuns puts the Rays closer to 39-34, but that’s not a meaningful difference, the take-home message being, the Rays are fine. They’ve survived a massive talent loss, and if anything, now they’re playing better. Per usual, the Rays have had to overcome a number of obstacles in order to remain a relevant team. What, precisely, has taken place in Tampa Bay?

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Since Tony La Russa and Dave Stewart took over baseball operations for the Arizona Diamondbacks last year, their moves have come under considerable scrutiny. Questions have been raised about the Diamondbacks plan, but not with as much regard to its execution. The questions surrounding the Diamondbacks’ moves have been confusing enough that some wondered if the Diamondbacks had a plan in mind at all. The club looked to be attempting a quick rebuilding process. How they plan to achieve that goal is finally becoming a little more clear.

When the Cubs and Astros took bad teams and completely deconstructed their rosters, choosing to lose for a while and re-stock the organizations, their plans were easy to see. After a full offseason, multiple in-season trades, and the recent major-league draft, the Diamondbacks’ plan, or at least their goal, has come into focus. The Diamondbacks are not interested in a long, drawn out rebuilding process. Their main interests look to be cutting salary and adding players who are ready to contribute now or will be ready to contribute in the near future. They might not be ready to win now, but they appear to be attempting a swift rebuild to make the team competitive.

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