Zac Gallen couldn’t even wait until the sun went down to thumb his nose at my attempt to sort out the NL Cy Young race — or at least at the notion that he was out of it. While I mentioned Gallen in passing in a piece focused on Spencer Strider and a few other pitchers who appeared to have the best statistical cases for the award, I had little to say about Gallen, who spent much of this season as the league’s frontrunner but has faded in the second half, and was coming off back-to-back bad starts that had further puffed up his numbers. On Friday afternoon, the 28-year-old righty threw a three-hit complete-game shutout against the Cubs in a 1-0 win, prompting me to take a second look at situating him within the race as the candidates head into the home stretch.

Building off a 2022 campaign in which he posted a 2.54 ERA, 3.05 FIP, and 4.2 WAR en route to a fifth-place finish in the Cy Young voting, Gallen jumped out to the front of the race early this season. He ran off a streak of 28 consecutive scoreless innings from April 4–26, with an eye-opening 41-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio along the way. He finished June with a 2.72 ERA and 2.06 FIP, led the NL in FIP (2.85) and fWAR (3.8) at the All-Star break, and earned the starting nod for the All-Star Game opposite Gerrit Cole. He’s been the consensus pick for the Cy Young in four monthly polls of MLB.com voters.

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The Baltimore Orioles have the best record in the American League, and youthful talent is a big reason why. Gunnar Henderson is the odds-on favorite to capture Rookie-of-the-Year honors, while Adley Rutschman has already reached star status in just his second MLB season. The dynamic duo are the first-place team’s co-leaders in WAR.

They aren’t the only players making an impact. The well-balanced Mike Elias-constructed club has also received meaningful contributions from the likes of Anthony Santander, Ryan Mountcastle, and Austin Hays. On the pitching side, a mix of veterans and less-established arms have more than held their own, in some cases outperforming expectations. From the better-known to the lesser-known, a multitude of players have played important roles in the 90-wins-and-counting success.

With that in mind, who has been the most-underrated player on the 2023 Orioles? I asked that question to four people who see the squad on an everyday basis — two broadcasters and a pair of beat writers — prior to yesterday’s game at Fenway Park.

Nathan Ruiz, who covers the team for the Baltimore Sun, chose Danny Coulombe.

“A lot was made of the All-Star combo of Yennier Cano and Felix Bautista, but Coulombe has come in and kind of been that main left-handed reliever all season,” said Ruiz. “He’s been really good with inherited runners, which is something they have generally struggled with. Cionel Pérez was really good for them last year, but they felt they needed another lefty so they acquired him [from the Minnesota Twins] for cash around the cusp of the season and he became a solid piece for them right away. He’s been dependable at the back end of the bullpen.”

Melanie Newman went with Kyle Bradish.

“He’s got an ERA that’s sitting there with Gerrit Cole right now,” the Orioles broadcaster opined. “We all talk about Yennier Cano and Felix Bautista, and our back end — what they’ve been able to do so far — but Kyle has been consistent. For whatever reason, when we’re on the road in a big spot, those are his best moments. That’s what you want out of a guy, and you forget that he’s only in his second year. His breaking pitches are disgusting. I don’t think he gets enough credit.”

Danielle Allentuck opted for Ryan O’Hearn.

“He has kind of been the guy who, whenever they need the big hit — he’s either coming off the bench or already in the lineup — has been providing it,” the Baltimore Banner reporter told me. “He’s been that kind of spark for them. He’s turning his career around here. We’re talking underrated, and I don’t think a lot of people know about him. He’s not the big name. He wasn’t a big superstar, but he’s come here and turned things around for himself, and the team.” Read the rest of this entry »

Spencer Strider may be comically overpowering, but his bid to win the NL Cy Young is anything but a cakewalk. Over the course of his past two outings, he’s been hit for 10 runs in 8.2 innings, elevating his ERA from 3.46 to 3.83, higher than any pitcher who has won the award. The truth is that with less than four weeks to go in the season, no NL pitcher — not Strider, Blake Snell, Justin Steele, Zac Gallen or Zack Wheeler, just to run through a partial list of names — has a particularly strong statistical case to win. While each candidate’s remaining few starts may provide some clarity before voters send off their ballots, the race as it stands is worth a closer look.

I’m not a BBWAA voter in this or any of the annual awards this year, but I had been thinking about this race a bit lately thanks to a couple of questions from readers in recent chats and on social media. To that point, my default answer prior to those had been “Strider or Snell,” but I hardly had my mind made up. By a happy coincidence, all of this happened just as we introduced a Cy Young Projections leaderboard based on a simple model created by Tom Tango, using only earned runs, innings pitched, strikeouts, and wins — all counting stats, no rate stats. I know what the leaderboard says, and you can look as well, but I’ll save what it’s telling us about this race until later in this piece. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve always been fascinated by players whose skill sets don’t match their physical makeup. Look at Mookie Betts, a prolific slugger at a mere 5-foot-9. Conversely, there’s Oneil Cruz, a legit shortstop towering over the infield at 6-foot-7. Spencer Strider is one of the smallest starters in the league, and Zach Eflin is one of the tallest, yet the former is the power pitcher, and the latter thrives on finesse. Don’t get me wrong: It’s fun to watch Aaron Judge sock dingers, too. Still, I’ll always have a soft spot for the players who don’t fit the prototype. I suppose a childhood filled with sports movies has conditioned me to root for the underdog.

In the same vein, I’m a fan of slow runners who nonetheless wreak havoc on the basepaths. These players aren’t nearly as common as their opposite; there are far more fast runners who struggle to contribute on the bases. After all, it’s much easier to fail at something despite possessing a natural advantage than to succeed without one. We’ve all met a tall person who stinks at basketball, but you can count the number of average-height players in the NBA on one thumb. And indeed, the scarcity of such players is a big part of what makes them so easy to root for.

Of the 50 slowest runners by sprint speed in 2023, only six have provided positive value on the bases, and only one has a BsR that wouldn’t round down to zero: Ji Man Choi, who has been worth all of 0.6 BsR. Similarly, of the 50 most valuable runners by BsR, only four have a sprint speed below the MLB average of 27 feet per second: Freddie Freeman, Kyle Tucker, Jose Altuve, and Josh Rojas. Of those four, only Freeman and Rojas have accrued positive baserunning value according to every other major source; Tucker has been below average per Baseball Prospectus, and Altuve has negative scores at both BP and Baseball Savant.

BsR remains my metric of choice, but my point is to highlight just how few players with below-average speed have positive baserunning numbers across the board. Out of 225 qualified runners with a sprint speed below 27 ft/sec, only two are consensus plus baserunners. Freeman and Rojas prove that speed isn’t everything, but the other 223 players show that it’s still pretty darned important. Read the rest of this entry »

The Rangers have been sputtering, losing 15 of their last 19 since August 15 to turn a 3.5-game AL West lead into a three-game deficit, with the Astros, who just swept a three-game series from them at Globe Life Field, and Mariners both above them. Yet even as the team’s offense has dried up, Corey Seager has been on a tear. Since returning from a sprained right thumb at the beginning of August, the Rangers shortstop has homered 13 times in 30 games; this past week, he finally accumulated enough plate appearances to take over the AL leads in both batting average and wRC+. If not for Shohei Ohtani, Seager would have a pretty decent case for an MVP award, even with his absences.

Seager only missed nine games due to his thumb sprain, which he suffered on July 21 sliding into second base in a game against the Dodgers. That was his second trip to the injured list this year, as he also missed 31 games from April 12–May 17 due to a left hamstring strain. Yet the interruptions haven’t hindered him at all. Read the rest of this entry »

As somebody who grew up playing baseball and continued to play through college, I’m familiar with all the old school adages that this game has. As I tried to develop my own abilities, I needed to figure out which were true, which were false, and which had some grey area. Swing down, for example, is not necessarily what hitters do in practice, and I had to relearn that. Then there is the “squish the bug” cue for your back foot. That actually makes most hitters get too spinny and reinforces an incorrect interaction with the ground. These are just a few hitting examples. But for this piece, I’m going to focus on stealing bases.

When an aggressive base stealer is on first, they command a level of mental real estate in a pitcher’s mind, though it’s important to note not every pitcher is the same. Some are more equipped to handle a runner than others. That could be due to a good pickoff move, quick time to the plate, or simply because a guy remains unfazed no matter the situation. This is all common knowledge. What isn’t, and what I’ve been pondering as one of the grey area tropes, is whether pitchers change their pitch mix when there is a threat to run. In general, I always thought this was true, but I never went back and looked at any data to confirm it. But we live in a baseball world with solid data accessibility, and luckily, this question can be answered thanks to Baseball Savant. Read the rest of this entry »

On June 3, Aaron Judge made a spectacular running catch that ended in a clash with the right field wall at Dodger Stadium. The play safeguarded what was ultimately a 6–3 victory that brought the Yankees’ record to 35–25 and their playoff odds to 80.1%, but both sides of the collision — wall and player — suffered tremendous damage in the process:

The fence wasn’t supposed to open in that direction, but Judge’s right foot wasn’t supposed to bend that way either; no amount of Spike Lee celebrations could change that.

The resulting injury to the towering right fielder’s big toe kept him out until July 28, and when he returned, expectations had diminished for both him and his team. The Yankees had gone just 19–23 in their captain’s absence, dropping their playoff odds to 32%. And there was no guarantee that the diminished version of Judge, who just three weeks earlier disclosed that the toe might never feel the same, would prop the Bombers back up. Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of weeks ago, I saw Jonah Heim take a called strike that he felt should have been a ball. As a catcher, Heim knew better than to argue. Instead, he performed the delicate dance of the catcher who wants to make a point without showing up the umpire. I’m not sure if the clip below is the exact pitch I saw, but it’s certainly representative of the conundrum a catcher faces when he doesn’t like the strike zone.

You can see Heim duck his head and furtively say something to home plate umpire Doug Eddings. I like to imagine that whatever he says begins with, “I beg your pardon, good sir.” He doesn’t make a show of his displeasure. He asks something, Eddings nods his head yes, and everyone moves on with their lives. Still, Heim thinks he’s seen ball two, and it’s hard to blame him. Even the person operating the score bug got fooled.

For some reason, that little moment has been rattling around in my head. I tend to think too much about the relationship between umpires and catchers. It doesn’t seem possible that they could spend every night doing what they do in the proximity that they do it in without developing a bond. Read the rest of this entry »

Bobby Miller was pitching in High-A when I first interviewed him for FanGraphs in June 2021. Drafted 29th overall the previous summer by the Los Angeles Dodgers out of the University of Louisville, the right-hander possessed both a high-octane heater and a lofty ceiling. Since making his MLB debut this past May, he’s met those expectations, going 9–3 with a 3.80 ERA and a 3.67 FIP over 17 starts. The 24-year-old is also coming off of his most impressive outing. Facing the powerhouse Atlanta Braves on September 3, he allowed just three hits and one run in a career-high seven innings.

Miller discussed his continuing evolution as a pitcher and his efforts to find consistency with his slider when the Dodgers visited Fenway Park in late August.

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David Laurila: We talked two years ago when you were pitching for the Great Lakes Loons. What has changed and what has stayed the same since that time?

Bobby Miller: “A lot of stuff is the same. At the end of the day, it’s still the same game. But the competition is obviously a lot higher. The hitters are lot more disciplined and experienced. Most of them have seen the game’s best arms, so when you’re out there, you’ve got to know that they’ve faced guys just as good or better than you are.

“Game-planning comes in a lot more at this level. I feel like game-planning is super important to learn in the minor leagues, studying hitters and all that, and I wish I’d have learned more before I came up here. While I had somewhat of an idea, I still have a lot of room to improve on that. I think that’s the biggest thing for me: how much time I spend looking at the upcoming lineups I’m going to face.”

Laurila: Basically, what hitters’ hot and cold zones are, and what they hit and don’t hit in certain counts.

Miller: “Yeah. What to avoid in certain counts. When they’re aggressive and when they’re not aggressive. How aggressive they are with runners in scoring position. At some point, I could get better at learning the baserunners, too. But at the end of the day, the most important thing is getting the batter out of the box. It’s about getting outs for your team.” Read the rest of this entry »

When the Phillies signed Trea Turner to an 11-year, $300 million contract over the winter, the second-largest contract in franchise history, they were probably prepared for Year 11 to be a bit underwhelming, not so much Year One. Turner got off to an excellent start in Philadelphia, beginning the season with 12 hits in the first seven games with two triples. Once his seven-game hitting streak was snapped, the next four months turned into an unbelievable slog: .225/.282/.354 with 10 homers. On the morning of August 5, his OPS hit a season-low .656. But over the last month, Turner has been one of the hottest hitters in baseball.

During the hottest months of the summer, one of the most common questions I got was some variant of “is Trea Turner broken?” My usual answer was that he’d probably be fine, even if expectations had to be lowered a bit, but it felt a little less convincing. The zStats I ran for hitters in early August as part of the “full-fat” ZiPS saw Turner as having a better season than was reflected in his overall numbers, with a .728 zOPS compared to that .656 mark. That wasn’t enough to make the leaderboard, headed by Spencer Torkelson (with a .975 OPS since then), but it was still a significant gap. And I doubt the Phillies or the fans would have felt much relief even with the .264/.309/.419 line that zStats gave him.

Back then, I re-ran Turner’s long-term projections to see what kind of bounceback ZiPS was expecting. While the computer saw a pretty good recovery in 2024, it was well off his preseason numbers. There was also a lot more risk in the mix, significantly pushing his numbers in future years down. Read the rest of this entry »