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 »

Say this for Jordan Walker: He knows how to put together a hitting streak. The 21-year-old rookie has only played in 39 major league games, and in that brief amount of time has recorded two streaks — a career-opening 12-gamer and now a 15-gamer — that together account for more than two-thirds of that run. His bat has suddenly become a bright spot in an otherwise frustrating season for the Cardinals.

Indeed, the reigning NL Central champions remain a hot mess despite winning five of their last seven games and salvaging a split in the London Series against the Cubs after being spanked 9–1 in the opener. The Cardinals have nonetheless been worse in June (7–13) than May (15–13), producing their lowest monthly rate of scoring runs (4.05 per game) along with their highest rate of runs allowed (4.88 per game), and falling from five games out of first place to 8.5 back. That’s hardly been Walker’s fault, though.

Recall that Walker, who ranked 12th on our 2023 Top 100 Prospects list, hit his way onto the roster in spring training, bypassing Triple-A Memphis, and opened the season as the regular right fielder, a situation that was somewhat surprising given the team’s apparent outfield depth. The move guaranteed that Tyler O’Neill, Dylan Carlson, and Lars Nootbaar would all get less playing time than expected — not the worst thing in the world given the subpar performances of the first two last year. The presence of fellow rookie Alec Burleson only added to the crunch. Yet Walker turned heads by collecting hits in each of his first 12 games, batting .319/.360/.489.

Once the hitting streak ended, however, Walker didn’t get a very long leash as the league adjusted. He went just 5-for-26 over his next eight games, four of which featured multiple strikeouts. Meanwhile, his poor jumps and bad throwing decisions served to remind that he was still a work in progress on defense as well; a converted third baseman, he had just 51 previous professional games in the outfield, including in last year’s Arizona Fall League. Still, it felt odd when, on April 26, the Cardinals optioned him to Memphis, with club president John Mozeliak deciding that the outfield of the 9–15 team was suddenly too crowded. “[G]uys just aren’t getting into rhythm, [with their] expected playing time,” he told reporters, adding that he and manager Oli Marmol envisioned less playing time for the rookie in the near future and figured it made little sense for him to idle on the bench. More understandable was the team’s desire for Walker to work on his approach and hit the ball in the air more often to take advantage of his 70-grade raw power. Read the rest of this entry »

Roch Cholowsky is one of the top high school shortstop prospects in the 2023 draft class, and one of the few potential first-rounders to do the full battery of drills at last week’s MLB Draft Combine. Attending the combine was unusually convenient for Cholowsky, who went to high school in Chandler, Arizona, less than half an hour from Chase Field.

It’s a very, very good place for a young ballplayer to grow up. In the suburbs east of Phoenix you’ll find six teams’ spring training complexes, plus Arizona State. This part of the world has no shortage of high-quality baseball infrastructure, and is crawling with scouts on the lookout for the next Gold Glove shortstop.

“Moving here was the best decision my parents ever made,” Cholowsky says. Read the rest of this entry »

Isaac Coffey is rapidly emerging as a prospect to watch in the Red Sox system. Drafted in the 10th round last summer out of Oral Roberts University, the 23-year-old right-hander logged a 2.83 ERA with 86 strikeouts in 60.1 innings at High-A Greenville before being promoted to Double-A Portland a week ago. His profile is unique. Our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen has described Coffey as having “a funky, drop-and-drive, low-slot delivery (but his arm action is super short, not typical of low-slot guys) that creates big lateral divergence between his fastball and slider.”

Coffey discussed his four-pitch arsenal and his atypical arm slot prior to a recent game at Portland’s Hadlock Field.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with the self scouting report. What is your arsenal?

Isaac Coffey: “I’ve got a four-seam fastball. A lot of people think it’s a sinker or a two-seam, but with the release height and my slot — I spin it between 2:15 and 2:30 on a clock, with 100% spin efficiency — it tends to look like it’s rising, even though it has more run than ride. It plays up in the zone because it’s coming from that lower slot. It averages around 89 [mph], topping out at 91, but my command of it is pretty good. I can place it on both sides of the plate and use it whenever I need to.

“My changeup is a four-seam, basically a circle change. I spin it really good, and it’s got 100% spin efficiency, too. I spin it at like three o’clock to 3:15, and that creates a lot of run. It’s basically straight sideways but sometimes with a little negative drop. It’s always been my best off-speed pitch.

“I also have a slider and a cutter, both of which I developed this offseason. The cutter is just an offset four-seam that I try to throw hard. It gets a little bit of arm-side run, but compared to the fastball… it probably has perceived cut, but not actual cut on the Trackman numbers. I’m getting more comfortable with that and have been using it more and more each outing.

“My slider is also getting better as the season goes on. It’s got that nine o’clock sideways spin. The command is getting a lot better, so I believe I can use it in a lot of counts right now.” Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re like me, this year’s bumper crop of pitching prospect debuts has overwhelmed you. I write about baseball for a living, and it still gets to be too much for me sometimes. Mason Miller, Bryce Miller, Taj Bradley, Bobby Miller, Grayson Rodriguez, Andrew Abbott, Michael Grove… you could almost make an entire starting rotation just out of Millers. Some of these debuts have been spectacular. Some have been lackluster. Some are works in progress. It’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s hype.

That leads me to Eury Pérez, our top pitching prospect and perhaps the most anticipated debut of the year. It’s easy to equate all debuts, or at least to think of them as quite similar until a pitcher does something to set himself apart. Don’t fall for that trap, though. I’m here to tell you: Pérez is amazing, and it’s time to start paying attention to him if you’ve been missing out.

One thing is almost universally true about the heralded pitching debuts this year: these guys have stuff coming out their ears. I don’t mean that in an ‘ew gross earwax’ way, either: they’re tooled up like you wouldn’t believe. I think that’s just the way the world works now. Teams are better than ever before at applying objective measurements to individual pitches. In the past, a guy toiling in Hi-A with so-so numbers wasn’t going to the bigs regardless of how much vertical break he imparted. Now, if you’re throwing a fastball that looks at home in the majors, your team knows right away. Read the rest of this entry »

The Angels did some bargain shopping over the weekend, adding veteran infielders Eduardo Escobar and Mike Moustakas to the roster from the Mets and Rockies, respectively. Escobar, who has triple-slashed a .254/.305/.432 line this year and was a part-timer in New York after the team turned to rookie Brett Baty as the starter at third base, was acquired for two pitching prospects, Coleman Crow and Landon Marceaux. Moustakas has performed adequately as a role player for the Rockies this year, splitting time between first and third and pinch-hitting, and fetched minor league pitcher Connor Van Scoyoc in return.

Assuming the Angels aren’t simply quickly acquiring third basemen from 2018 as part of some mad scavenger hunt, the urgency here reflects their desperate need for infielders. In most seasons, the preseason plan to have Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani and precisely nothing else go wrong with the other 24 players has gang aft a-gley by this point of the season, like most of the best laid plans of mice and men, despite Disney selling the Angels to Arte Moreno 20 years ago. Nobody writes a paean to a team with a .537 winning percentage, but this ordinary level of respectability, if the first half ended today, would represent the franchise’s best first-half winning percentage since the 2015 season. At 42–37, Los Angeheim stands just a game out for the last wild card spot, so now is pretty important.

“Now” is also a bit of a problem when it comes to the roster. While this may be the season the Angels finally write the proof to the hypothesis “.500 Team Plus Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout = Playoffs,” parts of the roster have crumbled in recent weeks. And while the lineup has scored 5.3 runs per game in June, more than 20% of that total came in Saturday night’s 25–1 humiliation of the Rockies; the Angels are at a decidedly meh 4.4 runs per game in recent weeks otherwise. The infield increasingly looks like a rickety structure that could collapse with a firm gust of wind. Jared Walsh, who looked in 2021 as if he could hold down the fort at his peak for three or four years, struggled in 2022 with thoracic outlet syndrome, and his return this year was poor enough that he was sent down to Triple-A Salt Lake. Read the rest of this entry »

If not as momentous as the rediscovery of the coelacanth after a 65-million-year absence, the return of the knuckleball to Major League Baseball was still an occasion worth noting. On Saturday, the Padres recalled Matt Waldron to make a spot start, and the 26-year-old righty became the first pitcher to throw a knuckleball in a regular season game since the Orioles’ Mickey Jannis in 2021.

Waldron threw only 13 knucklers from among his 62 pitches, mixing the fluttering pitch into a more standard arsenal, but he got good results with the offering. All told, he performed respectably, allowing just two runs — both via solo homers off his four-seam fastball — in 4.2 innings to the Nationals. Unfortunately, the Padres didn’t score at all, and fell 2–0.

Matt Waldron, Knuckleball. ? pic.twitter.com/kpmpuXQKzB

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) June 25, 2023

Where the knuckleball generally had at least one or two standard-bearers with secure spots in the majors at any time from the mid-1960s up through 2017, the pitch has become an endangered species in recent years, as I’ve noted a few times in this space. Brothers Phil Niekro (who pitched in the majors from 1964 to ’87) and Joe Niekro (1967–88), Wilbur Wood (1961–78), and reliever Hoyt Wilhelm (1952–72) all thrived with the pitch (some for longer than others), with the elder Niekro and Wilhelm both making the Hall of Fame. Charlie Hough (1970–94), Tom Candiotti (1983–99), and Tim Wakefield (1992–93, ’95–2011) became staples of the rotation if not stars, and Steve Sparks (1995–96, ’98–2004) and Dennis Springer (1995–2002) found sporadic success. R.A. Dickey took the baton from Wakefield and gave the knuckleball its last burst of prominence. He turned to the pitch in 2008 after finding little success during his sporadic appearances in the majors from ’01 to ’06, finally solidified a spot in the majors in 2010, and two years later became the first knuckleballer to win a Cy Young Award; that year, he was the only true pitcher to throw a single knuckleball in the majors according to either PITCHf/x or Pitch Info.

Dickey lasted until 2017, when he was 42 years old, but aside from him, every knuckleballer who came and went more or less hung around on the major league margins. Steven Wright, who debuted for the Red Sox in 2013, spent parts of seven seasons in the majors, but a knee injury and a suspension for domestic violence limited him to 60 innings in 2018–19, the first years of the post-Dickey era. Since then, the pitch has become the province of position players pressed into mop-up duty, with Ryan Feierabend (2019 with the Blue Jays) and Jannis the only true pitchers to try it at the major league level. That they combined for just three appearances, allowing 14 runs in nine innings, only underscored the pitch’s decline in popularity.

Hence the interest in Waldron, whom Cleveland drafted out of the University of Nebraska in the 18th round in 2019, then sent to San Diego as the player to be named later in the Mike Clevinger blockbuster in November 2020. Waldron taught himself a knuckleball way back in Little League, figuring it out with twin brother Mike, who had this to say about it when interviewed on MLB’s broadcast:

“[It started] just out of curiosity… It was one of those things that you’re like, ‘Hey, that’s pretty cool. We’ll go ahead and see what we can do, throw it around.’

“It kind of became one of those fun pitches we’d throw around when we were at practice or something, just something to mess around with. To see it work at this level … it’s unbelievable, really.”

Waldron turned some heads in Padres camp throwing the knuckleball in warm-ups in 2021, and so the team encouraged him to feature the pitch, which sat in the low 80s and contrasted well with his 92–94 mph fastball, slider, and changeup. Exactly how much he threw it is unclear, but according to Baseball America, “As Waldron got more comfortable with the pitch, he pushed its usage over 70%.” He pitched to a 4.25 ERA, walking 35 and striking out 103, in 103.2 innings split between High-A Fort Wayne and Double-A San Antonio.

Unfortunately minor league pitch usage data for Waldron isn’t easy to come by, as the pitch is so rare that auto-tagging systems usually label it as a slider or changeup; check out his spin rates for the pitch, and occasionally you’d see one that’s 2,900 RPM or so instead of sitting in the 100–400 range, where he was in his most recent start for Triple-A El Paso on June 16. According to Synergy Sports, which manually tags each pitch, Waldron threw knuckleballs just 9% of the time last year while getting smoked for a 6.26 ERA in 113.2 innings split between San Antonio and El Paso. He walked 39 and struck out 96 but served up 14 homers, including 12 in just 69.1 innings for El Paso. This year, he was up to 22% in his knuckleball usage; based on various reports and his own comments, he was throwing it more often to lefties than righties. “I use it coming out that same tunnel [as the fastball],” he told reporters.

For as sound as his plan may be, Waldron had been rocked for a 7.02 ERA, 5.34 FIP and 11 homers in 66.2 innings when the call came. Those numbers obviously aren’t impressive, but it’s worth remembering that altitude is a significant factor in the Pacific Coast League. The Chihuahuas’ Southwest University Park sits 3,750 feet above sea level; the circuit also includes high-altitude parks in Albuquerque (5,100 feet), Reno (4,500 feet), Salt Lake City (4,230 feet), and Las Vegas (3,000 feet). Not only do batted balls carry further at such altitudes than at sea level, but knuckleballs also move less. Dickey never pitched at Coors Field (and only faced the Rockies twice) but did throw bullpens there and pitched against Triple-A Colorado Springs during his minor league years. In 2012, he explained the hazards of the knuckleball at altitude to sportswriter Dave Krieger:

“It is tougher to throw at those high altitudes because there’s not much humidity for the ball to kind of resist against. At sea level… if I throw a mediocre knuckleball, well, it’s still going to move, it just might not move as sharply or as much. If I throw a mediocre knuckleball in Colorado, it’s going to be a b.p. (batting practice) fastball right down the middle that I’m going to have to either dodge or I’m going to just put my glove up for the umpire to throw me another ball because that one just went 450 feet.

Thus the conditions make it tough to take Waldron’s numbers at face value, which the Padres surely understand when they turned to him for a spot start in place of Michael Wacha; he’s been the team’s best pitcher this year, with a 2.90 ERA and 3.78 FIP, but has also been notoriously fragile throughout his career and is currently dealing with a bout of shoulder fatigue. Waldron’s stay wasn’t expected to be a long one — and in fact, he was optioned back to El Paso on Sunday — but his outing did open some eyes.

Facing the Nationals, who rank 12th in the NL in both scoring (4.13 runs per game) and wRC+ (93), Waldron got ahead of leadoff hitter Lane Thomas using his four-seam fastball, then unveiled the knuckleball on a 1–2 pitch that Thomas fouled off; as it turned out, Thomas would be the only righty-swinger to see any of Waldron’s knucklers. Two pitches later, Waldron struck out Thomas swinging at a 93.8 mph four-seamer right down the middle. After getting Luis Garcia on a first-pitch grounder, he got ahead of switch-hitting Jeimer Candelario (who batted lefty) 0–1, then threw another knuckler, this one too low. Candelario took it for a ball, then crushed a 92.9-mph middle-middle fastball for a towering 395-foot solo homer, 107 mph off the bat, the hardest-hit ball Waldron would allow all evening. Here’s a look at the two knucklers, contrasted with the two payoff pitches:

Ouch. After the homer, Waldron recovered to strike out Joey Meneses to end the inning, using three four-seamers as well as a cutter and a slider, both of which were way outside the strike zone. He kept the knuckleball on ice until the fourth inning, after working around a leadoff single by Corey Dickerson (a lefty) in the second and serving up a solo homer to Thomas on a 92.4-mph first-pitch fastball in the third; he also issued a one-out walk to Garcia but stranded him.

In the fourth, Waldron threw back-to-back knuckleballs to Dickerson, who had fallen behind 0–1; he fouled off both, took a fastball for a ball, then grounded to shortstop on yet another knuckler. Waldron went back to the pitch for three out of the four offerings to the next batter, switch-hitter Keibert Ruiz (batting lefty), who finally grounded one to second base. Here are the floaters from that two-hitter sequence:

While it would have figured that Waldron might throw a knuckleball to lefty Dominic Smith, he didn’t need to, as Smith grounded out on an 0–2 fastball. In the fifth, righty Derek Hill grounded to short on a fastball after laying off two cutters well outside the zone. Lefty CJ Abrams, on the other hand, saw nothing but knuckleballs, flying out to right field on the fourth one.

That swinging strike had 20 inches of horizontal movement, Waldron’s highest measure of the game and one of four in double digits. Here’s a slow-motion view:

Matt Waldron, Knuckleball Movement. ?

20 Inches of Run. pic.twitter.com/oS3dce5VPd

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) June 25, 2023

Thomas took Waldron’s final knuckler for ball one before singling off a slider, at which point manager Bob Melvin pulled the rookie in favor of veteran lefty Tim Hill, who struck out Garcia. The Padres bullpen didn’t allow another run, but the lineup couldn’t muster any kind of heat, managing just four hits, all singles, and failing to take advantage of an additional four walks against starter Josiah Gray. The Nationals bullpen retired all 11 batters it faced, six by strikeouts.

All told, Waldron threw 27 four-seamers, 14 sliders, seven cutters and a sinker to go with his 13 knuckleballs. He got five whiffs and 10 called strikes with the four-seamer, which averaged 92.3 mph and topped out at 94.4. He got just one whiff out of seven swings via the knuckler, whose velocity ranged from 76.3 mph to 84.2 mph, as well as two called strikes; he had a 23% CSW for that pitch, compared to 37% for the fastball and 29% overall. Batters did chase three of the eight floaters he threw outside the strike zone (37.5%, and it’s worth noting that none of them escaped the reach of catcher Gary Sánchez, who was handling the pitch for the first time), but they also made contact with all five in the zone, though the only ones they put into play were the outs of Dickerson, Ruiz, and Abrams. Those three had an average exit velocity of 89.7 mph, an xBA of .137, an xSLG of .160, and an xwOBA of .125, though his overall marks — 92.2 mph exit velo, .294 xBA, .574 xSLG, .383 xwOBA — obviously weren’t as good. As his 50% hard-hit rate and 6.35 xERA attests, Waldron needs to do a better job of limiting hard contact if he’s to survive.

As for the knuckleball itself, the total of 13 that he threw on Saturday was fewer than those of seven position players who have broken it out for their mound cameos during the pitch-tracking era (2008 onward), not to mention all nine of the other pitchers who did so. Excluding the bastard sons of Wade Boggs, here’s how they stack up:

Waldron’s knuckler rates as the fastest in terms of average velocity, faster even than Dickey’s “angry knuckleball.” It’s mid-pack in terms of vertical movement, but tops in terms of horizontal movement. Unfortunately, I don’t have much in the way of direct comparisons for spin rate, since it wasn’t until Statcast switched to the Hawkeye cameras in 2020 that spin could be measured directly; Waldron’s knucklers averaged 295 RPM, which is lower than Jannis’ average of 407 but about double the ideal of 150, which translates into about one to one and half rotations from the mound to the plate. Neither Stuff+ nor PitchingBot even scored Waldron’s knuckleball, though both models really liked his slider (whose usage rate matches up with Gameday, which is to say the pitches aren’t being conflated), and PitchingBot found his other pitches to be at least average, though it didn’t score the cutter. Stuff+ saw his other pitches as pedestrian, which I believe better matches up with the general scouting perception. Small-sample caveats abound:

All told, I think it’s fair to say that Waldron demonstrated some promise with the way he used the knuckleball to keep hitters off balance, but that unless he can hone his arsenal and find a way to miss more bats, he’s likely destined to remain on the fringe of the majors rather than securing a regular job. I would absolutely love to be wrong about that, because even in his one-night cameo, Waldron’s knuckleball was a most welcome sight.

It’s not crazy to see someone make the jump from a great reliever to an elite reliever. Every year, there are a handful of stellar relief seasons that we simply just did not see coming. I was a fan of Alexis Díaz after his stellar 2022 debut (1.84 ERA, 3.32 FIP, 32.5 K%), but I did not expect him to be this dominant, as he’s taken big steps forward in more or less every stat. What’s behind it?

When it comes to pitching development, it’s important to be unique; you don’t want to look like or throw like anybody else. If you’re going to be elite, you must find what makes you special and lean into it. For Díaz, his outlier skill is his ability to release the ball closer to the plate than anybody in the world from an unorthodox angle. He doesn’t have overwhelming velocity, yet his four-seamer is one of the best in the game, and the extension is a huge reason for it. It’s as if the ball is being shot at you from a little league distance by a softball pitching machine.

Here’s how Díaz’s release point compares to other pitchers with comparable extension:

Focusing first on release point, you’ll see that none of the other four pitchers in this small cohort gets their arm as low as the Reds closer. Combine this with top-tier extension and consistently being up in the zone, and you have the explanation for how Díaz’s Vertical Approach Angle (VAA) is so flat compared to those on this list. Horizontally speaking, only Jordan Romano is as far toward the third baseline, but Díaz’s low slot arm angle is very different for hitters compared to Romano’s. In terms of spin axis, only Devin Williams is somewhat close to Díaz. The other three pitchers are more over the top. From a pitch design perspective, that would be ideal for building the perfect four-seamer, but as you can see, being different is exactly how Díaz has been successful. Read the rest of this entry »