Paul Goldschmidt’s 2022 was a year for the ages, literally: the Cardinals’ first baseman defied senescence to post a 7.1 WAR and 177 wRC+, numbers which respectively tied for the 25th-best season among hitters 34 and older and the 15th-highest among those same elders with at least 500 plate appearances since 1920. This year, the slugger has largely picked up where he left off, with a 164 wRC+ through his first 186 trips to the plate. And according to xwOBA, he’s been significantly better than last year.

In case you’re not familiar, Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA) evaluates overall offensive performance in one stat, using linear weights to measure the relative value of each offensive outcome and then putting that number on the same scale as OBP. xwOBA, a product of Baseball Savant, combines a hitter’s walk and strikeout numbers with a prediction for how they should have faired on balls in play based on launch angle and exit velocity.

Last year, Goldschmidt put up a career-best wRC+, but xwOBA was telling us that some of that was smoke and mirrors: his .367 mark was well shy of his actual wOBA of .419. That 52-point divergence was the fifth-highest overperformance among hitters with at least 500 plate appearances in a single season since the introduction of xwOBA in 2015. Entering his age-35 season and due for some regression, I dismissed the idea of another big year from the first baseman. Read the rest of this entry »

The Chicago White Sox really ought to be praying to whatever deity is currently tormenting them with plagues of locusts and pestilence, and thanking her that even more conspicuous travesties against baseball are occurring in St. Louis and Oakland.

A couple weeks ago, Jay Jaffe wrote about the terrible goings-on over in Chicago in general terms. I would’ve titled that piece “And I Looked, and Behold a Pale Hose: and His Name that Sat on Him Was Death, and Hell Followed With Him.” Jay opted for the more direct “The White Sox Are Utterly Terrible,” which they were then and are now.

Their failures this season have been so complete that it’d be unfair to blame any one player or coach, and at any rate that’s not the purpose of this post. That purpose: to examine a player once viewed as a unique talent, for whom things have gone badly off the rails. Michael Kopech is in the rotation full-time — a rarity in his Bright Eyes concept album of a career — but things are not going well. Read the rest of this entry »

Players the caliber of Juan Soto are rarely available via trade, so when the Padres acquired him via trade last summer from the drowning Nationals, it made a huge splash on the level of dropping a Sherman tank into your neighborhood swimming hole. But rather than continue his previous level of superstardom, he struggled to meet expectations in San Diego. His .236/.388/.390 line was still enough for a solid wRC+ of 130, but relative to his normal level of excellence, it’s hard to call that line anything but a disappointment.

Soto’s start in 2023, though, pales even next to his post-trade performance last year. April 17 may be the nadir of his career in San Diego: the Padres were shut out for the second game in a row, and he put up his fifth consecutive hitless game, leaving him with a triple-slash of .164/.346/.361. For the calendar year ending on that day, he was hitting .230/.391/.435 and had compiled 3.5 WAR — good enough for mere mortals, but not entities made of sterner stuff.

Around this time, Harold Reynolds talked a bit on MLB Network about Soto’s swing and the changes he was making. While I’ve criticized Reynolds plenty for his general analysis when it crosses into the jurisdiction of analytics, I bookmarked this video at the time, as the analysis rang true to me. He believed that Soto’s tinkering would pay dividends, and whether it’s a coincidence or not, he’s looked a lot more like the Soto we love over the last month. In 23 games since then and through Sunday’s action, he hit .321/.447/.571 and amassed 1.2 WAR, the kind of MVP-level production we’ve expected to see from him in mustard and brown and largely have not. Read the rest of this entry »

Anthony DeSclafani put up a clunker last Monday. He gave up five runs and 10 hits over seven innings — to the Nationals of all teams — and the Giants lost 5-1. That’s nothing out of the ordinary; good pitchers have bad outings all the time. DeSclafani has been solid in San Francisco, but he’s more above average than elite. Giving up five runs is hardly an earth-shattering outcome.

Would you find that start more interesting if I told you that all five runs came in the first inning? Probably – that’s a lot of runs to give up in one inning followed by six clean sheets. On the other hand, that’s baseball: sometimes you’re the steamroller, and sometimes the other team has your number for 15 minutes.

Afterwards, though, Maria Guardado’s game story had an interesting detail:

“After the rough start, DeSclafani convened with pitching coach Andrew Bailey in the dugout and learned that he wasn’t getting his optimal shapes on his slider and his two-seamer. He made a mechanical adjustment between innings, tweaking the way he took the ball out of his glove…”

For 100 years, that wouldn’t have been a particularly interesting quote. That’s just the kind of thing that pitchers and pitching coaches say after bad outings. “Oh, I/he was doing this thing wrong, as you can see from the runs. But then we changed that thing, as you can see from the lack of runs afterwards.” But these days, we can go to the tape. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2023 season isn’t off to the best start for last year’s AL Cy Young finalists. Reigning winner Justin Verlander missed the first five weeks with a shoulder strain and now faces the unenviable task of rescuing an ailing Mets rotation. Runner-up Dylan Cease has had his moments but an equal number of surprisingly poor outings. Finally, third-place finisher Alek Manoah is struggling most of all. His ERA has doubled, his WAR is in the negatives, and his 1.28 K/BB ranks last among qualified major league pitchers.

Manoah’s slow start has been difficult to watch. Last season, at just 24 years old, he established himself as the ace of the Blue Jays’ staff, securing his first All-Star selection and earning the nod for Game One of the Wild Card Series. Six months later, he was awarded the Opening Day start, making him the youngest Opening Day starter in the American League. The analytics crowd (myself included) might have argued Kevin Gausman was the true no. 1 in Toronto, but the Blue Jays clearly chose Manoah, and it wasn’t hard to understand why: Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday night, Drew Rasmussen baffled the Yankees, holding them to just two hits in seven scoreless innings and only getting to a three-ball count once; he didn’t walk anybody while striking out seven. Within 24 hours, however, the Rays all but announced that the 27-year-old righty’s season was in jeopardy, placing Rasmussen on the 60-day injured list with a flexor strain and putting yet another damper on the team’s hot start.

Indeed, it was just about a month ago that the Rays lost another starting pitcher. Jeffrey Springs had allowed just one run in 16 innings over three starts while striking out 24 before he was sidelined by what was initially identified as ulnar neuritis and then diagnosed as a flexor strain, though it turned out he needed Tommy John surgery as well, knocking him out for the remainder of the 2023 season. Read the rest of this entry »

Caleb Durbin is an underdog’s underdog in an organization that boasts big-time star power. Acquired along with Indigo Diaz by the New York Yankees from the Atlanta Braves last December in exchange for Lucas Luetge the 23-year-old infield prospect is a former 14th round draft pick out of a Division-3 school. Moreover, he’s never going to be mistaken for Aaron Judge or Giancarlo Stanton. Listed at 5-foot-6 (he claimed to be an inch taller when I talked to him earlier this week), Durbin looks like a stockier version of Jose Altuve.

He’s currently hitting not unlike the diminutive three-time batting champion. In 112 plate appearances — 97 with High-A Hudson Valley and 15 with Double-A Somerset — Durbin went into yesterday slashing .319/.446/.385. His bat-to-ball skills have been impressive. The Lake Forest, Illinois native has fanned just nine times while drawing 15 walks.

Durbin’s numbers at St. Louis’s Washington University were even more eye-opening. With the caveat that D-3 isn’t exactly the SEC, the erstwhile WashU Bear batted .386 with 42 walks and 10 strikeouts in 439 plate appearances over his three collegiate seasons. Since entering pro ball in 2021, he has 70 walks and 62 strikeouts in 631 plate appearances.

“Low strikeout rates are something I’ve always had,” said Durbin. “That’s kind of been my elite tool, if you want to call it that. I feel like that’s always going to be there, so it’s just a matter of building on my contact quality.” Read the rest of this entry »

Position changes can be risky. The outcome depends heavily on the timing and circumstances of the switch, and the natural ability of the player. Sometimes, rookies need to carve out a roster spot for themselves and end up switching on the fly, like Jordan Walker. His shift to the outfield is a work in progress, just like it would be for most rookies. Then there are cases of a more experienced player moving due to roster construction, as with Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s move to center field.

Chisholm’s switch was precipitated by the Marlins’ offseason trade for Luis Arraez. With the sixth-worst offense (88 wRC+) in all of baseball in 2022 and good starting pitching depth, a pitcher-hitter swap to improve the lineup was highly logical, and the Marlins saw their best chance to obtain an impact bat in Arraez. That created something of an infield logjam. With Joey Wendle penciled in at shortstop and Jean Segura at third, the question became what they would do with their young star, who was slated to start at second base. Soon after the announcement of the trade, Kim Ng revealed that Jazz would be moving to center field, their most important position of need. His speed, athleticism, and lack of premium defense on the infield made it worth a try. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not going well for the Mets these days. Since jumping out to a 14–7 start despite a slew of injuries, particularly to their rotation, they’ve lost 13 of 17 amid a particularly soft stretch of their schedule. Now, just as Justin Verlander is settling into the rotation after recovering from a teres major strain that delayed his debut, Max Scherzer has been scratched from a start for the second time this month, which at least sheds light on his early struggles. Alas, the Mets’ problems hardly end with their co-ace.

On Tuesday, the 38-year-old Scherzer was scratched from his scheduled start against the Reds due to neck spasms; on Wednesday, he couldn’t even play catch:

Max Scherzer tried to play catch just now but it didn't last long or go well. His neck is still "in spasm," as he put it. But he feels better today than he did yesterday.

"It hasn't fully let go yet," he said.

The Mets plan to slot him in during the Nationals series.

— Tim Healey (@timbhealey) May 10, 2023

Scherzer was able to throw out to 90 feet in a flat-ground session on Thursday but won’t be able to start until Saturday at the earliest. That’s left the team’s rotation plans in apparent disarray…

Mets rotation looking dangerous ? pic.twitter.com/JBYudQGg0u

— B/R Walk-Off (@BRWalkoff) May 11, 2023

… not that a whole lot of good answers abound within a unit that ranks 12th in the NL with a 5.38 ERA, 14th with a 5.64 FIP, and dead last with -0.4 WAR. I don’t want to pile on here or overstate the obvious, but a $358 million payroll should probably buy more than that. Read the rest of this entry »

The bat waggle is by far the most popular way to stay loose at the plate. Presumably that’s because waiting for a pitch is one of the few situations when it’s socially acceptable to waggle something. Life just doesn’t offer that many opportunities to waggle. Also, it’s a two-fer. It doesn’t just keep you loose; it also keeps your bat loose. It’s all well and good if you’re body’s ready to hit, but good luck trying to catch up to a Justin Verlander fastball with a tight bat. (Fun Fact: It turns out that bats — you know, the actual winged creatures — have their own waggle.)

But even after you waggle your bat, those last couple seconds are tricky. You’re locked into your batting stance, and now you’re just waiting there at the mercy of the pitcher (and the pitch clock). You’ve got to do something to maintain attack readiness. Some players bounce the bat off their shoulder, or bounce a little bit deeper into their crouch a few times. They rock back and forth, raise and lower their hands, or grind the toe of their cleat into the dirt. Some even make sure their pelvis is loose. Like, really loose. Like, very, extremely, possibly even dangerously loose.

That’s an entirely different kind of waggle. Read the rest of this entry »