MLB’s 86th All-Star Game is just over a month away, and if you’ve been paying attention to the early voting, you know you can actually skip the event and just watch any random Kansas City Royals game instead; it will basically be the same thing. The Royals have turned out their voting bloc in droves, and unless the other franchises make a late move, the American League is going to try and bunt, steal, and defend their way to a 1-0 win in Cincinnati next month.

Just as the game itself is an annual tradition, so too are summer columns suggesting ways to “fix” or “improve” the Midsummer Classic. Even Jonah Keri, an absurd optimist who probably has Everything Is Awesome as the only song in his Spotify playlist, hates the current All-Star format:

Jonah Keri: I’m the most positive guy you’ll ever meet. Also, I love baseball. Adore it. Bathe myself in it.

But All-Star week — the Home Run Derby, the actual All-Star Game, and especially the four days with no real baseball — are freaking terrible. Uh-oh. Here comes Angry Jonah.

Why the hell does this game “count”? It’s a total farce. AL All-Star manager John Farrell has already said he won’t use any pitcher for more than one inning under any circumstances. How is that managing to win? Why should that count?

I’m with Jonah. All-Star Week sucks. The Futures Game is fun and worth doing, but the rest of it doesn’t interest me at all. And MLB’s attempt to make the game “count” is silly, and has done nothing to change the fact that this is still an exhibition game designed solely to make a lot of money for the league. But I also recognize that it’s good for MLB to market itself on a large stage, giving people a mid-season event to turn into, especially where the game’s best players are all assembled together. But the All-Star Game isn’t really a baseball game, and it doesn’t show off what is good about the sport.

So I’d like to make a proposal to overhaul the All-Star Week. This idea still allows MLB to gather its best players in one location — in fact, even expands the number of players who get to participate — while also giving us three actual baseball games, with actual baseball rosters, played under normal baseball conditions. The concept? Battle of the Ages.

Read the rest of this entry »

So much of the analysis we do in baseball follows a pretty simple formula. We notice a player is getting different results, we look for explanations for the change, and then we speculate about whether the latter caused the former and if it will continue. Baseball includes so much random variation and you have to make decisions all the time about how much information is enough to rule out randomness as an answer. When it came to Phil Hughes in 2014, we didn’t have to worry too much about randomness as an explanation.

Hughes rattled off the best K/BB ratio of all time and was somewhere between very good and excellent for the first time in his career. While we can chalk lots of leaps up to random variation, Hughes seemed immune because he was such a drastically different pitcher in Minnesota compared to New York. It appeared to be quite clear why Hughes was so much better. He stopped issuing walks and pounded the strike zone. He bumped up his strikeouts as a result, and seemingly cut his home runs because he was in better counts and not in Yankee Stadium.

Read the rest of this entry »

Major League Baseball has seen its fair share of television-related litigation over the last few years. On Thursday, there were significant developments in two of these lawsuits.

First, the legal proceedings surrounding the failed CSN-Houston regional sports network took a new turn when the bankrupt station filed suit against Comcast, accusing the cable provider of a variety of misdeeds. If successful, the case could potentially allow the Houston Astros and the National Basketball Association’s Houston Rockets – the two primary owners of the defunct station – to recover hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

Meanwhile, the long-running Garber lawsuit challenging MLB’s television blackout and pay-per-view package policies took an interesting turn as well, when the parties in a companion case challenging the National Hockey League’s analogous TV policies reached a tentative settlement. Although this settlement does not directly affect the suit against MLB, the deal nevertheless has potential implications for the Garber case.

Read the rest of this entry »

You know who’s bad? The Phillies! They’re the kind of bad that knows they’re bad, so they’re looking to sell off some pieces. Everyone saw this coming. Even them. You know who’s been a different sort of bad, the kind of bad that still wants to be good? The Mariners! The Mariners refuse to give up; it makes sense they could be a buyer. This all brings us to the rumor that’s spiraling out of control at the moment on the web, courtesy of Bob Dutton:

The Mariners inquired into the availability of Philadelphia outfielder Ben Revere, as first reported by CSNPhilly.com, but talks quickly stalled when the Phillies asked for either Taijuan Walker or James Paxton in return.

You recognize that as a pretty silly trade rumor. So has everyone else on the Internet, which means it’s been another opportunity to make fun of the Phillies and Ruben Amaro. It’s not that Revere doesn’t have his uses — it’s that, yeah, you don’t pay $20 for a box of Ritz crackers, unless you do only have $20, and literally the only sustenance available is a box of Ritz crackers. This is a funny thing to read. But, how ought you move forward when you see a thing like this? I have a two-step suggestion.

Read the rest of this entry »

I think we’ve established by now that it’s the year of Bryce Harper. He’s the current major-league leader in Wins Above Replacement, and in case you’re not a real big fan of WAR, Harper’s also the leader in wRC+, and wOBA, and slugging percentage. This is the year we’ve been waiting for, and this is the year that makes it exponentially less silly to draw comparisons between Harper and Mike Trout. This healthy version of Harper has climbed within sight of his ceiling, and he’s still 22 years old. He’s younger than Kris Bryant, Joc Pederson, Jorge Soler, and Noah Syndergaard. Harper-is-young facts are the oldest of hats, but then, they’re almost as old as Bryce Harper, who is young.

Harper’s been written about. We’ve all taken our turns, digging into his breakout that at this point appears undeniable. No one would dare pass up an opportunity to get into detail on baseball’s newest emerging superstar, so by now you should consider yourself mostly informed. Yet now I feel like there’s more that needs to be added. Since getting hot, Harper hasn’t really cooled off. He has, however, changed what he’s been doing. You could say he’s performed more like himself.

Read the rest of this entry »

The prospects just keep on coming for the Houston Astros this year. First, it was Preston Tucker, who’s stepped in to produce a 110 wRC+ as the team’s left fielder. Then, along came Lance McCullers, who’s been one of the best pitchers in baseball over his first month in the majors. Another came on Monday,when Houston summoned Carlos Correa — arguably the best prospect left in the minors. Then, last night, the Astros graduated yet another impact prospect to the majors in Vincent Velasquez. The 23-year-old tossed five scoreless innings in his debut, striking out five while walking four.

Heading into the year, very few anticipated that Velasquez would make it to Houston in 2015, as he had zero experience above A-ball. He pitched reasonably well in High-A Lancaster last year, posting a 3.74 ERA and 3.96 FIP, but a groin injury limited him to just 51 innings of work. At year’s end, he reported to the Arizona Fall League, where he posted an unsightly 6.59 ERA before he was shut down with a lat strain. Velasquez looked as though he was still at least a year away from the show.

But something seemed to click for Velasquez between this year and last. After sitting out the first few weeks of the year recovering from his lat injury, the 23-year-old hit the ground running in Double-A Corpus Christi. In five starts, he pitched to a sparkling 1.37 ERA and 2.13 FIP on the strength of a 37% strikeout rate. Yes, that’s a small sample, but those numbers are about as good as it gets.

Read the rest of this entry »

With the draft officially in the books, we are now officially entering MLB’s trade season. Most teams prefer to take the first couple of months to evaluate what they have at the big league level, allocating their time and scouting resources to lining up their draft boards rather than considering significant trades in April and May. Once the draft ends, though, focus shifts to the 2015 roster, and teams begin to make decisions about their direction for the rest of the season.

In this age of parity, driven in part by the existence of the Wild Card play-in game, most teams now try to make a run at the postseason, or at the least, don’t surrender their chances unless they are left with no choice. And this year, the stars are aligning to create perhaps the most extreme seller’s market we’ve seen in a very long time.

In the American League, every single team still has a puncher’s chance at the postseason. The spread in the standings from the top spot (KC, .596 Win%) to the 14th spot (BOS, .450 Win%) is only 8.5 games, and while the A’s would normally be assumed to be dead in the water with a .393 winning percentage, their BaseRuns Win% is .556, 8th best in baseball; this is not a team that is going to continue losing six out of ten games going forward. They’ve probably dug themselves too large of a hole to climb out of, but it wouldn’t be that surprising to see them win 15 of 20 and climb right back into the AL West race.

The AL is the land of mediocrity, with no really great or terrible teams, and expected regression pushing things even more into the middle over the last few months. At least one or two teams will break out of this pack and win 90 games, but it’s pretty reasonable to think that any of these divisions could be won by a team that ends up with fewer than 90 wins. And along with two Wild Card berths serving as a fall-back plan, that possibility makes it unlikely that any non-Oakland AL teams decide to fold up their tents and move talent for prospects this summer.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s only been 35 major-league plate appearances, but Joey Gallo has already made quite the impression. The ball doesn’t fly off the bat any faster than it does off his, and he’s also second in the big leagues in three-true-outcome percentage (K%+BB%+HR%) — he’s a slugger’s slugger.

He’s also second in the big leagues in strikeout rate. “I’ve tried to cut down on them,” Gallo sighed when I asked. “I’ve tried. I promise.”

So we talked about the strikeouts, and what he can do about them, and why they have happened, and why they will continue to happen.

Read the rest of this entry »

Carlos Martinez is a starting pitcher now. He’s not some guy who throws 75 pitches and four innings a game. This year he’s often exceeded triple digits, and he’s one of the big reasons why the St. Louis Cardinals are where they are despite the loss of some important players. Before the season, there was some uncertainty surrounding Martinez, and it’s still not clear how he’ll hold up down the stretch. But after pitching well in Colorado on Wednesday, Martinez has turned in six strong starts in a row. His ERA is a hair under 3, and he has the peripherals to match.

With every starting pitcher who’s ever become good, the reasons behind the success are numerous. It’s never as easy as, “He replaced this pitch with this other pitch,” or “He added a tick of velocity.” So understand that, with Martinez, I’m sure there’s been a lot going on. Most conspicuously, Martinez is now throwing a changeup he believes in. Even though observers liked Martinez’s changeup in the minors, it wasn’t there for him in the bigs, and he had problems putting lefties away. That problem is in the process of being resolved, as Martinez has evidently found a changeup he likes.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a belief that, when a guy throws a no-hitter, that means that somewhere along the line a defensive player made a hell of a play to keep it alive. There are certain famous examples that prop the theory up, and without doubt, there are easier plays made, and more difficult plays made, every single time. One of the interesting things about Chris Heston’s no-hitter is that no defensive plays really stand out. Granted, because of the strikeouts, there were just 15 balls put into play, but all of those turned into 16 outs, and no one had to make an all-out dive. It was, in retrospect, an easy-seeming no-hitter, if that’s not an oxymoron. (It is, but, anyway.)

Heston’s not the best pitcher to ever throw a no-hitter. Nor is he the worst. In fact, we don’t yet really know what Heston is, because his big-league career is barely underway. All we know for sure is he’s something of a groundball machine. There are only so many ways to analyze a game like this, such that you’re in any way original, but then there is that new Statcast wrinkle. We’ve got some Statcast information for all of Heston’s balls in play allowed. That’s potentially useful.

Read the rest of this entry »