The Rays have been really good this year, but their bullpen has not. And this has come despite them largely sticking to their strategy of deploying relievers with a wide variety of different release points: two sidearm righties in Kevin Kelly and Ryan Thompson, one sidearm lefty in Jake Diekman, an over-the-top righty in Pete Fairbanks, and an over-the-top lefty in Jalen Beeks. This strategy has succeeded in the past: from 2020 to ’22, Rays relievers have never posted an ERA higher than 3.37; their collective ERA of 3.31 in that span is second only to the Dodgers (whose bullpen also happens to be struggling this year); and their FIP of 3.71 ranks third.

This year, things are different. Even with some modest improvements of late, Tampa Bay’s 12th-ranked 3.83 ERA belies ugly peripherals, including a 4.43 FIP that ranks sixth-worst. The rotation has been ravaged by injuries, forcing the team to turn to the bullpen earlier in games; Rays relievers have tossed 1.26 innings per appearance on average this season, the fourth-highest in the league. But some of this is due to the usage of followers, which is nothing new; perhaps what’s behind the drop-off is simply too much of an emphasis on forcing opposing hitters to deal with different looks.

The Blue Jays, perhaps unintentionally, have taken this lesson to heart. Having signed one of the best splitter-throwers in Kevin Gausman prior to 2022, they traded for another this past offseason in Erik Swanson. Despite the league-wide increase in splitter usage due to its potential as a platoon-neutral offering for pronating and sweeper-throwing hurlers, only 2.2% of all pitches thrown so far this year have been splitters. Given the uniqueness of the pitch, the Jays should have Gausman and Swanson throw on different days to maximize the surprise factor, right? Just as the Rays might save two similar sidearmers for different days? Read the rest of this entry »

The Rangers haven’t played in the postseason since 2016 (and haven’t even finished above .500 since then), but they’ve been atop the AL West for almost the entire season and are now 49–31, with a six-game lead over both the Angels and Astros. They own the majors’ largest run differential (+160) as well as its most potent offense (5.98 runs per game), and thanks to a revamped pitching staff, they’re third in run prevention as well (3.98 per game).

An underrated part of that run prevention is the team’s defense. By my evaluation of a handful of the major defensive metrics — Defensive Runs Saved, Ultimate Zone Rating, our catcher framing metric (hereafter abbreviated as FRM, as it is on our stat pages), and Statcast’s Runs Prevented (which I’ll call Runs Above Average because their site and ours use the abbreviation RAA) and catching metrics for framing, blocking, and throwing (which I’ll combine into the abbreviation CRAA) — the Rangers rate as the majors’ second-best defensive team thus far this season. The Brewers, who are in the midst of a dogfight for first place in the NL Central, are the only team ahead of them.

I’ll explain the methodology behind this conclusion below, but first a bit more about the Rangers. With Jacob deGrom sidelined after just six starts due to a UCL tear that resulted in Tommy John surgery, the team’s pitching staff has the 13th-lowest strikeout rate in the majors (22.2%), but it also has the third-lowest BABIP (.274), in large part thanks to the team’s fielders (the pitchers haven’t been especially good at preventing hard contact). Second baseman Marcus Semien is the only past Gold Glove winner of the bunch, but he’s one of five Rangers defenders with at least 5 DRS thus far, along with first baseman Nathaniel Lowe, outfielder Travis Jankowski, right fielder Adolis García, and catcher Jonah Heim. Lowe, Semien, and center fielder Leody Taveras all have at least 4 RAA, and Heim is 3.7 runs above average in FRAM and +6 in CRAA.

Not all of the metrics are as favorable for the aforementioned players, but it’s worth noting that of the 10 Rangers with the most defensive innings played at a single position, the only negative run ratings are those of shortstop Corey Seager and left fielder Robbie Grossman (both -2 RAA) and Lowe (-2.6 UZR); every other Ranger with at least 161.1 innings at a position rates as average or better. To be fair, 161.1 innings is still a small sample, and for that matter, even the 697.1 innings of Semien at second is less than ideal for a full evaluation, though we can feel better that his DRS, UZR and RAA don’t wildly contradict each other. Particularly at this stage of the season, with teams having played 78–83 games, it’s better to bear in mind the range of values reflected in an individual’s fielding metrics rather than focusing on a single one. To return to Semien: his 6 DRS and 5 RAA are contrasted by his 0.8 UZR; it’s not a matter of which one is “right” so much as it is understanding that he shows up somewhere along the spectrum from slightly above average to solidly above average.

Given all of this alphabet soup dished out in small servings, I set out to look at team defense by aggregating the aforementioned metrics, which reflect differing methodologies and produce varying spreads in runs from top to bottom that owe something to what they don’t measure as well as how much regression is built into their systems. Pitchers don’t have UZRs or RAAs, for example, and the catching numbers are set off in their own categories rather than included in UZR and RAA. I’ve accounted for the varying spreads, which range from 86 runs in DRS (from 42 to -44) to 25.6 runs in FRM (from 13.8 to -11.8), by using standard deviation scores (z-scores), which measure how many standard deviations each team is from the league average in each category. I don’t proclaim this to be a bulletproof methodology so much as a good point of entry into a broad topic. The Rangers, who entered Wednesday (the cutoff for all of the data below) tied with the Blue Jays for the major league lead with 42 DRS, score 1.86 in that category but “only” 1.37 in UZR and 1.13 in RAA (13.4 runs in the former, 10 in the latter, both fourth in the majors), and so on. Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox got a diamond in the rough when they chose Chase Meidroth in the fourth round of last year’s draft. Splitting time at third and second base, the 21-year-old University of San Diego product is slashing .309/.453/.445 with six home runs and a 155 wRC+ between High-A Greenville and Double-A Portland. A patient hitter who had more walks than strikeouts as a collegian, he’s logged 44 of each in 243 plate appearances.

Currently No. 15 on our Red Sox Top Prospects list as a 40+ FV prospect, the Manhattan Beach, California product isn’t built for power, but he is bigger than the 5-foot-9, 170 pounds that most publications are listing him at. As he explained prior to a recent game, he is now a solid 195 pounds. Long gone are the days when he was a lightly-recruited 5-foot-8, 150-pound prep performer. What hasn’t changed is the dirt-dog attitude that has prompted at least one Red Sox staffer to offer a Dustin Pedroia comp.

Chaim Bloom didn’t volunteer any comparisons when I asked about the club’s decision to draft the under-the-radar infielder, but he did touch on the process behind the pick.

“There are some people in this world who can just flat hit, and he’s one of them,” Boston’s Chief Baseball Officer told me. “The combo of ability and makeup really caught our scouts’ eyes. This is somebody who, coming into our meetings before we really knew how our board would fall… we felt like there was a good chance we might end up with this guy. There were a lot of good indicators there. Our scouting opinions and the work we do to understand players analytically all converged.” Read the rest of this entry »

In 2021, the Mariners called up Logan Gilbert, their no. 3 prospect at the time; he has compiled a tidy 7.0 WAR across nearly 400 innings over the last three years. Last year, the Mariners called up George Kirby, their no. 3 prospect at the time; he was a key member of the rotation that helped break Seattle’s two-decade-long postseason drought. With Luis Castillo joining the rotation at the trade deadline last season and then signing a five-year extension in September, Robbie Ray heading into the second year of his five-year deal he signed prior to the 2022 season, and Marco Gonzales eating innings at the back of the rotation, Seattle entered this season with a starting five that appeared to be the biggest strength on the roster.

Things haven’t gone exactly according to plan. Ray injured his elbow in his first start of the season and underwent season-ending Tommy John surgery in early May; Gonzales has been out since late May with his own elbow issues. But despite losing two members of the Opening Day rotation, the Mariners have barely skipped a beat, thanks to the efforts of two more top prospects who have graduated to the majors this year: Bryce Miller and Bryan Woo. Seattle’s starters have the fourth best park- and league-adjusted FIP in the majors, and a park- and league-adjusted strikeout-to-walk ratio that ranks inside the top 20 among all 300 team seasons over the last decade. Only the Twins are outpacing them in those two categories in the American League.

After trying to fill Ray’s spot with a combination of Chris Flexen, Tommy Milone, and Easton McGee, the Mariners called up Miller on May 2 to make his debut against the light-hitting Athletics. He dazzled across six innings, allowing just two baserunners and one run and striking out ten. Across his first five starts in the majors, he allowed just 17 baserunners total, giving him the lowest WHIP (0.51) through a pitcher’s first five career starts in MLB history. A rough pair of outings against the Yankees and Rangers have been the lone blemish on Miller’s ledger; he’s bounced back with three excellent starts since then. Overall, he’s compiled a 3.88 ERA and a 3.36 FIP with a fantastic 4.45 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

As soon as Gonzales hit the IL with his injury, the Mariners quickly turned to another one of their youngsters. Woo made his debut on June 3, though his introduction to the big leagues did not go as well as Miller’s; given the assignment of slowing down the Rangers’ high-powered offense, he lasted just two innings, allowing six runs on seven hits and striking out four. He’s been much better over his last four starts, allowing just six runs total and posting a 5.60 strikeout-to-walk ratio. If you lower the bar far enough, Woo has the fourth-highest strikeout rate among all starters with at least 20 innings pitched this year. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s no longer early. Whether or not one considers the preseason prognostications about the Cardinals being contenders entering the 2023 season to be well or ill-conceived, they’re certainly not contenders now. Reassurances that it was still early in the season no longer work with baseball approaching the halfway point and the All-Star break. Wednesday night’s collapse in the eighth inning against the Astros dropped St. Louis to 33–46, giving the team a four-game cushion in the ignominious contest to be the worst in the NL Central. The only silver lining is a sad one: in a sea of humiliations, nobody notices another bucket being bailed into it. The Cardinals’ playoff chances haven’t actually evaporated completely, but they more reflect the bland mediocrity that covers the division rather than any great merit of the team. For the first time in a long while, “what’s next?” may not be simply “second verse, same as the first.”

To describe the Cardinals in recent decades, I’d personally call them the best of baseball’s conservative franchises. One of the shocking things about the team is just how unbelievably stable and consistent it is. I was in middle school the last time St. Louis lost 90 games in a season (1990); only five living people on the planet were around for the last time the team lost 100. Even just looking at starts rather than entire seasons, this is one of the worst-performing Cardinals squads that anyone alive has watched.

The franchise has had worst starts, but most of those were in the days of very much yonder. Outside of a possible handful of 105-year-old St. Louis residents, we really only have two Cardinals teams in recent memory that got off to worse starts.

If you’re looking beyond 2023, the Cardinals are in a bit of a pickle. It’s been a long time since they either tore the roster down to its foundations or went whole hog in offseason investment, and they might find themselves in that awkward zone where they’re neither good enough to win now or later. Ken Rosenthal over at The Athletic wrote about this dangerous trap in which they’ve been ensnared, and it’s one of the reasons I’m writing this piece. To quote Ken: Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know if this happens to my colleagues, but I get attached to the players I write about. I can’t help it. Cormac McCarthy once wrote, “Things separate from their stories have no meaning,” and I’ve found that learning a player’s story, even if it’s just the story of why they need to lay off the slider, is enough to imbue them with an extra layer of meaning. Last year, I wrote about Jose Altuve after both the ALDS and the ALCS. It made me feel more connected to him, and during the World Series, whenever he came to the plate when my fiancée was in the room, I’d say, “That’s my little guy!” I really said that (and she really married me anyway).

Back in spring training, I wrote up our Positional Power Rankings for third base. It was a real crash course. We had projections for 149 different third basemen, and I needed to learn enough about each of them to articulate an opinion on what they’d do this year and why. I learned a lot about what I value when it comes to player performance. The exercise also informed the way I’ve watched the game this year. Diving deep into a league of third basemen, I formed attachments to all these players, especially the young ones, as I read prospect evaluations and beat reports and thought about their potential. Now that we’re nearing the halfway mark, here’s an update on the rookies I’ve been rooting for. Read the rest of this entry »

Want a good example of how tough it is to pitch? Look at Sandy Alcantara. He was the consensus NL Cy Young last year, with a 2.28 ERA accrued across a whopping 228.2 innings. Stamina, command, grounders, and strikeouts: what more could you ask for? I had him 10th on last season’s Trade Value Series and if anything, the consensus feedback I received rated him even more highly.

Of course, the good times didn’t continue, which is why I’m writing this article. Alcantara has been downright ordinary this year – he came into last night’s game with a 5.08 ERA. He’s walking more batters, striking out fewer, and getting fewer grounders. He’s averaging fewer innings per start. Every single bright light in Alcantara’s 2022 performance has been dimmed this year.

The reason why isn’t particularly hidden: as Robert Orr documented back in May, Alcantara’s changeup is the culprit. It was his best pitch last year. By pitch values, it’s been his worst pitch this year. At the time, he was throwing it in the strike zone too frequently, and batters weren’t chasing the pitch when he left the zone. He wasn’t getting the same downward bite as last year, either, which helped explain the other problems. Read the rest of this entry »

The image you just scrolled past is a photograph of professional baseball player Bryce Harper. You might remember him from home runs like this 2019 walk-off grand slam or his rain-soaked, NLCS-clinching blast. Indeed, Harper has hit 288 regular-season home runs and another 11 in the playoffs since making his big league debut. Only nine players have hit more in that time. His career .519 slugging percentage ranks 12th among active qualified batters, and his .239 isolated power ranks 15th. His maximum exit velocity has been in the top 10% of the league for seven years straight. Long story short, this Harper guy is one of the most fearsome power hitters of his generation.

So why am I talking about a two-time MVP as if there’s any chance you aren’t familiar with his accomplishments? Well, as hard as it is to believe for an old-timer like me, millions of people around the world hadn’t even been born the last time Harper hit a home run. Granted, I doubt many of those babies between zero and 34 days old have found their way to FanGraphs just yet, but the point remains: 34 days is a long time. It’s the longest home run drought of Harper’s career. The last time he hit a home run, the Reds had the worst record in the National League and Shohei Ohtani ranked 21st on the combined WAR leaderboards. Five weeks later, the Reds sit on top of the NL Central and Ohtani is lapping the competition in WAR. Read the rest of this entry »

Time is flying. It seems like only weeks ago that Shohei Ohtani struck out Mike Trout with a picture-perfect sweeper to finish off the World Baseball Classic, the Rays started the season with a franchise-record 13-game winning streak, and the Pirates shocked the baseball world with a 20-9 April. But no – the calendar turns to July this weekend, those Rays just played their 81st game on Sunday, becoming the first team to reach the halfway point, and Pittsburgh has fallen into fourth place in the NL Central. The days are getting shorter, now, and so is the remaining calendar – by the end of the week, most teams will have more regular season baseball behind them than ahead of them.

If that’s the bad news, here’s the good news: We’re poised for an exciting run over these next three months. With July around the corner, there are 23 teams within six games of a postseason spot, and 19 within four. No division lead is greater than 6.5 games. According to our playoff odds, 21 of the 30 clubs – a full 70% – have between a 10% and 90% chance of ending up in the playoffs. At this point in the baseball calendar last year, just 12 teams fell in that range:

After play on July 3, 2022, when teams had averaged the same number of games – just over 79 – as they have now, the Yankees and Astros had division leads of more than 13 games, making them virtual locks to make the playoffs. The Dodgers, who led the National League with a .628 winning percentage, and the Mets and Braves, who were battling it out in the NL East, all had better than 90% odds, as did the Blue Jays. As of Tuesday, only the Rays and Braves, who lead their respective circuits in wins, have eclipsed 90% – both are north of 98%. The Dodgers and Rangers are over 80%, and Arizona sits at 75.9%, but none of the 25 other teams have a 3-in-4 shot or better:

Things may be even murkier among the bottom tier of the postseason hopefuls. On July 3 last season, 12 teams, or 40% of the league, had less than a 1-in-10 chance of extending their season into the playoffs. On Tuesday, just seven teams fit that bill – the White Sox, Pirates, Tigers, Royals, A’s, Rockies and Nationals. Most everyone else is going to head into the second half of their schedule thinking they have at least a shot to grab a Wild Card. By that measure, we have about as much uncertainty left to sort out in the back half as we did when the season began – our Opening Day playoff odds also had seven teams shy of 10%. Only the Reds have played themselves over that threshold, and only the White Sox have played themselves under it.

There are a good handful of teams in the 10-20% range right now, but I’d say the difference between below 10% and 10-20% is a meaningful one. In that 10-20% bin are the Reds, who lead their division and who the projections may be underrating; the Cubs, Mariners, and Red Sox, who are a hot week or two from a playoff spot (and who seem capable of stringing a couple of hot weeks together if things fall the right way for a stretch); and the Mets and Cardinals, who, for as bleak as the first half has been, are 8.5 and 8.0 games out of a playoff spot, respectively, with enough talent on their rosters to make a significant second-half improvement feasible:

In terms of the ultimate end goal, at this time last year, our playoff odds had just 10 teams with a 2% shot at winning the World Series – with the eventual NL champion Phillies notably not among them – with about two-thirds odds that it would be the Dodgers, Braves, Astros, Yankees, or Mets. This year, though we give about a 47% chance that it’ll be any of the Braves, Rays, or Dodgers, half of the league has a better than 2% chance.

I largely opposed playoff expansion, and I still think it has made the postseason tournament too big, but that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate what it does offer, which is that it can keep middling teams motivated to win through this point of the season and beyond. But some of the particulars of this competitive landscape are due more to the quirks of division alignment – the same quirks that have brought us an AL East with five teams better than any AL Central team. This season, these quirks mean that the Wild Card races are populated almost exclusively by East and West teams in both leagues, but the Central races are tight enough that second- and third-place teams like Cleveland, Cincinnati, and the Cubs are still very much within reach of the playoffs.

This isn’t a good thing for the general fairness of playoff qualification. We could easily end up in a situation in which the first Wild Card team out in either league has a better record than their league’s Central division champion – right now in the AL, Houston (42-37) and Toronto (43-37) would be left out in favor of Minnesota (40-41). But it’s a great thing if you’re rooting for total chaos in the second half. More teams in the hunt and fewer teams running away with division titles means more meaningful games late into the summer.

To put it another way, with 21 teams left with less-than-surefire playoff odds one way or the other, a 15-game day on the schedule should include on average between 13 and 14 games featuring at least one of these teams. With only 12 teams in that no-man’s land, as was the case last year, a 15-game schedule would include on average nine or 10 games with at least one of these contenders. That’s about four more games with playoff implications every day for fans.

As much as this has to do with extra Wild Cards and quirky division alignments, it seems like some of the credit is owed to the shifting sands of the league, as well. This year, we’ve seen the Orioles, Rangers, Diamondbacks, Marlins, Angels and now Reds emerge as playoff hopefuls – or safe bets, as the case may be – many of whom seem poised to stick around for years to come. It’s an impressive influx of teams trending upwards, and quickly – while the Orioles’ resurgence started early enough last year for the team to finish with 83 wins, the other five clubs averaged just 69.2 wins in 2022 and are projected to improve by an amazing average of 17.1 wins this season:

On the flip side, most of 2022’s top dogs haven’t exactly ceded their spots – the Braves, Rays, Astros, Dodgers, Yankees and Blue Jays aren’t quite ready to give way. In the middle of the pack, the Brewers, Phillies, Red Sox, Mariners, Padres, Twins and Guardians are hanging on while they try to find a hot stretch the way the Giants have. And while there’s little joy in St. Louis and Queens at the moment, given the talent in those clubhouses, our playoff odds aren’t ready to write them off completely, either.

The next few weeks will be crucial for some of these teams on the cusp of contention. With such a competitive field heading into the month, we might soon be closing in on an August 1 trade deadline that could feature far fewer sellers than buyers. Even the teams with comfortable playoff outlooks will be looking to add, so asking prices will likely be high, and it’ll be interesting to see which teams bite at those high prices knowing their own chances of a deep playoff run might be diluted by the field around them, not to mention an extra round of playoff randomness.

Last September, I wrote about the lack of intensity in the chase for playoff spots, much to the chagrin of anxious Mets and Braves fans enduring a nail-biting division race. So far this year, it looks like we’re in better shape to send a number of playoff races into the deep summer and early fall, with some fresh faces to boot. There’s a lot to sort out between now and October, and the sorting out is the best part. Here’s hoping this season stays messy as long as it can.

As we know, baseball is a bit of an oddball relative to other ball-centric sports for several reasons. Prominent among them, the defense controls the ball at the start of each play, whereas in basketball, football, soccer, and hockey, to be on offense is to be the team with the ball. There exists a mindset difference between playing offense and playing defense, or rather between controlling the ball versus not controlling the ball. One is proactive, the other reactive. As players develop they, whether consciously or not, sort themselves into positional groups partially based on their preferred mindset (alongside their natural skills and physical attributes). Some need the comfort of control, while others thrive on guessing their opponents’ next move.

Pitchers and catchers fall in the proactive category, selecting pitch types and locations to best baffle hitters. Position players react both at the plate and in the field. On the basepaths, the roles reverse. Runners make the active decision to advance, leaving pitchers and catchers to react. It’s an abnormal experience for everyone involved.

Season four of Stranger Things hit Netflix on May 27, 2022; around Opening Day of the 2023 major league season, you finally got “Running Up That Hill” by Kate Bush out of your head. (If you don’t watch Stranger Things, just know that the song features prominently throughout the show’s most recent season.) And as the new season dawned, baserunners went wild on the basepaths and all the chatter about running wormed “Running Up That Hill” right back into your brain. Much in the way the show revived a song from the 1980s, changes to MLB’s rules regulating base sizes and pitcher disengagements revived ‘80s-esque stolen base rates. Read the rest of this entry »