This is a big year for the MLB rulebook. After decades of tiny incremental changes, the league made three huge ones in 2023. They instituted a pitch timer, changed the size of the bases, and restricted defensive positioning for the first time in modern history. But how have these new rules changed how the game looks on the field? I broke down each one to find out.

Games Are Shorter

The biggest change to the game this year was the introduction of a pitch timer, and it’s had a huge impact on game length. Per Baseball Reference, the average nine-inning game has lasted two hours and 37 minutes this year, down from three hours and three minutes last year. You have to go back to 1985 to find a shorter average game length.

Despite that drastic change, the amount of action in a game hasn’t changed much. Plate appearances per game are roughly unchanged: there are 75.6 this year, quite close to the 76.4 average in the 21st century. Pitcher per plate appearance are stable: 3.9 this year, 3.9 for the last 10 years on average.

The difference is all pace. Per Statcast, pitchers are taking three fewer seconds to throw with the bases empty and 4.5 fewer seconds to throw with a runner on base. The bases-empty change is welcome but only gets us back to the numbers that prevailed 15 years ago or so. The change with runners on base is far more important; we’ve likely never seen a faster pace when pitchers are holding runners, though the data only goes back to 2010. Read the rest of this entry »

The drama of a superlative catch at a crucial point in a game is one of baseball’s great narrative moments. A ball is struck and everyone – fans, baserunners, sprinting outfielders – holds their breath for a few seconds waiting for it to hit either leather or grass, sending those baserunners and swinging the game in one direction or the other. It’s baseball’s version of a three-pointer heading towards rim or net, or a wide receiver and a cornerback extending for the same airborne pass – a moment of suspense in the most literal sense of the term, during which the only thing drawing us closer to a conclusion is gravity.

Now, because there’s nothing baseball fans love more than taking a beautiful moment of athleticism, emotion, and aesthetics and distilling it into numbers, I’ve been mulling how to appropriately credit an outfielder for a play like this – particularly with respect to how it impacts the game in that moment. We have a pretty good measure for what a batted ball is worth if it falls in for a hit or is caught for an out, adding to one team’s chances of winning depending on the score and base-out situation – Win Probability Added. But what about when the ball’s in the air and it’s up to the outfielder to track it down? How much credit (or blame) is owed to the outfielder? How do we measure how much the outfielder’s defense itself swung the game? Read the rest of this entry »

Everton-Bournemouth stands out among today’s Premier League matchups, as the former will secure a return to England’s elite division with a win (they could also survive with a loss or a draw, but only if both Leeds and Leicester City likewise fail to win). Everton FC, which is located in Liverpool, was last relegated below the top flight in 1951.

As most EPL fans are aware, Everton’s home grounds, Goodison Park, are located less than a mile from Anfield, the historic home of Liverpool FC. They also know that the principal owner of Everton’s longtime arch rival is John Henry, whose Fenway Sports Group purchased the more-ballyhooed of the two clubs in 2010.

According to a new book by Bruce Schoenfeld, the acquisition happened only after initial reluctance from FSG’s ultimate decision-maker. As chronicled in Game of Edges: The Analytics Revolution and the Future of Professional Sports, Henry proclaimed the following during a business meeting held to assess the possible purchase:

“But I don’t want to own a soccer team.” Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to say this bluntly because it’s something that most should agree with: Harrison Bader’s defense in center field is special. Unfortunately for Bader and baseball fans, he has never totaled above 430 plate appearances in a single season, so we’ve never had the privilege to see him run around the outfield for a traditional full season and rack up defensive value. But even with this limitation, he’s still at or near the top of just about every aggregated defensive metric leaderboard for the last few seasons. If you watch him roam the outfield — and I mean really watch him — you realize that this is a player who does everything correctly out there and has an unflappable baseball IQ. If you could write a script on how to be the perfect outfielder, all you would need to say is “be Bader.”

Let’s start by addressing where Bader ranks next to his peers this season in terms of defensive metrics. I’m only going to focus on Outs Above Average (OAA) for this piece. Defensive metrics are a great starting point to a conversation like this, but they are a complement to video analysis that will show us the details of a player’s fundamentals and decision making.

Here are the leading outfielders in terms of OAA this season:

One of these is not like the others! Given that OAA is a counting stat, a player with at least 16 fewer games played (usually more) should not be on this list, but Bader only trails Robert this season in OAA, and that is mainly due to his Success Rate Added. That gives some more insight into how valuable he has been in his limited sample this year. Read the rest of this entry »

It may not have ended the slump he’s fallen into since mid-April, but Trea Turner picked a very good time to snap out of a 2-for-20 skid that began last weekend. On Wednesday afternoon against the Diamondbacks, the Phillies were trailing, 5–3, and down to their final out, in danger not only of being swept in the three-game series but also of losing for the eighth time in 10 games. Then José Ruiz hung a curveball that Turner didn’t miss, pounding it for a game-tying two-run homer. The Phillies won in 10 innings, but whether this the start of a turnaround for Turner — who, like Manny Machado, is off to a rough start on his new $300 million contract — remains to be seen.

The homer was Turner’s fifth of the year and his first since May 6. Even with it and Thursday’s subsequent 0-for-5 against the Braves, his offensive numbers look a whole lot more like what the Phillies got from their shortstops (Didi Gregorius, Bryson Stott, Johan Camargo, and Edmundo Sosa) last year than what Turner did with the Dodgers:

Turner has been frank about his struggles. After Monday’s loss to the Diamondbacks, he told reporters, “I’m honest with myself, I’ve sucked.” While that may be overstating the case a bit, he hasn’t offered anything close to his superstar-level play of the past two seasons, and only through respectable (if small sample) defensive metrics at shortstop (1.6 UZR, 1 OAA, -2 DRS) is he above replacement level. Using our UZR/OAA inputs, his 0.6 WAR prorates to 2.0 over a full season — more or less average — but using DRS, his 0.3 bWAR prorates to just 1.0 WAR, or decidedly below average. Read the rest of this entry »

It seems like all of our coverage of the 2023 Diamondbacks here at FanGraphs has focused on the pitching, and it’s not hard to see why. Zac Gallen has looked phenomenal (at times historically so), Madison Bumgarner was abominable (eventually too abominable to roster), and the D-backs have given some intriguing young arms the chance to prove their worth in the big league rotation.

Yet all that being so, the real story of the 2023 Diamondbacks has been the offense. They lead the National League in hitting and rank third with 257 runs scored. They’re fourth in OBP, fourth in slugging percentage, and fifth in wRC+. By and large, the pitching staff has performed as expected – Gallen good, MadBum bad, everyone else somewhere in between – but the offense has been more potent than anyone could have envisioned.

It’s been a team effort in Arizona; among the nine Diamondbacks hitters with at least 100 PA, seven have been above-average at the plate. Corbin Carroll is off to the races. Lourdes Gurriel Jr. has taken a massive step forward. Ketel Marte and Christian Walker have been predictably solid, while Gabriel Moreno and Pavin Smith are holding their own. Leading the way, however, has been none other than Geraldo Perdomo, who is pacing the club in OBP, wRC+, and WAR. What? Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday night, an eight-run seventh-inning outburst against the Yankees catalyzed another Orioles win, bringing their record to 32–17, second best in the majors. Among the highlights in the frame: Adam Frazier brought home three with a shot off the foul pole, and Gunnar Henderson plated two with a pinch-hit double. Understandably lost in the scrum was the first hit in the rally, a 109.6 mph scorcher off the bat of Austin Hays that snuck through the infield.

With two hits in four at-bats Wednesday, Hays brought his season slash up to .308/.351/.484 and his wRC+ to 131. The excitement that has come along with the Baby Birds — namely Henderson, Adley Rutschman, and Grayson Rodriguez — has overshadowed what looks to be a breakout season for the left fielder despite his own former prospect status. It’s easy to forget that back in 2017, Hays homered 32 times as a 21-year-old between High-A and Double-A, earning a call-up without a single Triple-A appearance. He was the first 2016 draftee to make the majors. Read the rest of this entry »

Carlos Correa has foot problems. No, we’re not talking about the concerns that scuttled his preliminary agreements on a pair of contracts in excess of $300 million this past winter. Those centered around the risk of future problems with his right foot, a legacy of the fractured fibula he sustained in 2014. Correa, who was scratched from the lineup for Tuesday’s game against the Giants and sat out Wednesday as well, is currently dealing with issues in his left foot and is likely to wind up on the injured list, stalling his recovery from a very slow start to his second season with the Twins.

On Monday night at Target Field, Correa roped a double to left field off the Giants’ Sean Manaea. He came into second standing up, but as he explained on Tuesday, he took an odd step rounding first base, whereupon his left heel began to bother him. He gutted out the remainder of the game but was in more pain the following morning and, after undergoing an MRI that revealed inflammation in his heel, was scratched from Tuesday’s game.

On Wednesday, Correa was diagnosed with a muscle strain in his left arch as well as plantar fasciitis, the inflammation of the thick band of tissue that connects the heel bone to the toes. The team has not decided whether he’ll be placed on the IL, and at least as of Tuesday, he harbored hopes of returning for this weekend’s series against the Blue Jays. Manager Rocco Baldelli was less sanguine, telling reporters, “I think we get to Friday and some of our decisions might be made for us.”

Even leaving aside the strain, plantar fasciitis isn’t something that’s going to dissipate in a couple of days. The Baseball Prospectus Recovery Dashboard contains 13 instances of players going on the IL for plantar fasciitis since 2016 (though none for 2020). Those 13 stints averaged 35 days, with a low of 12 (John Lackey in 2016), a median of 30, and a high of 85 (Harrison Bader last year).

Again, this is the opposite foot from the one that led the Giants and the Mets to pull their respective offers — 13 years and $350 million for the former, $12 years and $315 million for the latter — due to concerns that emerged during his pre-signing physicals this past winter. Those concerns could be traced back to 2014, when as a 19-year-old prospect at High-A Lancaster, Correa caught his cleat in a base as he slid, fracturing his right fibula, damaging ligaments, and requiring the surgical insertion of a plate in his ankle. Though he’s never missed a major league game traceable to those injuries, both teams got spooked. Once the Mets backed away, Correa returned to the Twins, with whom he spent 2022, via a six-year, $200 million deal that has vesting and club options that could reach a maximum value of $270 million over 10 years.

While Correa’s current woes aren’t related to those previous concerns, the fact does remain that he’s had a hard time staying on the field. He’s topped 150 games only once, playing 153 as a 21-year-old in 2016, and averaged just 116 games in the five non-pandemic seasons since. What still appears to be a Hall of Fame career in the making thanks to his excellent play at a young age — early in his age-28 season, he’s already tied for 34th in JAWS at the position, 10 spots ahead of Omar Vizquel, and could pass the likes of Miguel Tejada and Nomar Garciaparra by the time he’s 30 — can only withstand so many roadblocks on the way to Cooperstown.

If Correa winds up on the IL, he’ll fall short of 150 games again. Even if he misses a comparatively short amount of time — six of the 13 stints were 20 days or fewer — that’s a blow to the Twins, who at 26–24 lead the AL Central by three games but have been in a slide lately. After going 17–12 in March and April, they’re 9–12 this month and had lost three in a row and five out of six before beating the Giants, 7–1, on Wednesday. Kyle Farmer started at shortstop, as he had done on Tuesday and April 9–12, when Correa missed four games due to back spasms. Even with those outages, Correa entered Thursday tied with Byron Buxton for the team lead in plate appearances (192) and 41 innings ahead of any other Twin in defensive innings (376.1).

That said, Correa has been off to a slow start, hitting just .213/.302/.396 with six homers and a 94 wRC+, though lately he had been trending upwards, with a .227/.326/.453 (114 wRC+) line in May after a dismal .202/.283/.351 (77 wRC+) line in April. His numbers have improved notably since the point just over two weeks ago when he had a .185 batting average and conceded, “I’d boo myself, too, with the amount of money I’m making if I’m playing like that and I’m in the stands.”

Correa’s .244 xBA and .410 xSLG suggest his overall numbers should be at least a bit better. On Monday, Esteban Rivera examined the shortstop’s early-season struggles, pointing out that his Statcast percentile rankings — 67th for hard-hit rate, 80th for barrel rate, 94th for maximum exit velocity, with only a 50th percentile for average exit velo out of the ordinary — offer reassurance that he’s still hitting the ball hard. He’s hitting to the opposite field more often (32.8%, well above his career 27,1%), though Rivera was able to tease out of the data the likelihood that a flatter swing and contact deeper within the strike zone are contributing to less impactful contact even when pulling the ball — a matter of timing, but probably a transient one.

The whole piece is worth a read. One thing I will note is that Correa’s oppo/pull imbalance was really an April thing (30.8% pull rate, 45.8% oppo) that had disappeared this month (47.2% pull, 15.1% oppo). Here’s a look at his rolling 15-game rates over the past two seasons:

And here’s a look at his rolling xwOBA:

Beyond his performance, Correa’s injury comes at a particularly inopportune time for the Twins. Second baseman Jorge Polanco, utilityman Nick Gordon, and corner outfielders Trevor Larnach and Max Kepler are all on the 10-day IL, and none has a clear timetable to return. Kepler and Polanco both have left hamstring strains, though both are considered mild. Larnach is battling pneumonia. Gordon is out with a fractured right tibia sustained when he fouled a ball off his leg and will be down for quite awhile. Additionally, Joey Gallo missed Wednesday’s game due to left hamstring soreness but is hoping to avoid an IL stint.

In Correa’s absence, the Twins are likely to continue rolling with Farmer, who’s currently hitting .274/.326/.405 (105 wRC+) and has split his time between third base, second base, and shortstop. The Twins acquired the versatile 32-year-old from the Reds with the belief that he would be their shortstop this year after Correa opted out of his contract, one year into the three-year, $105.3 million deal he signed shortly after the lockout ended in March 2022.

Given the slew of injuries, it’s worth noting that as of next Monday, Royce Lewis will be eligible for activation. The first pick of the 2017 draft tore his right ACL for the second time in a year and a half last June, just 12 games into his first stint in the majors (and three innings into his first major league appearance in center field), during which he hit an impressive .300/.317/.550 in 41 PA. While it’s tantalizing to imagine the Twins taking the wraps off of a player who placed 55th on our Top 100 Prospects list this spring, Lewis has just eight games of his rehab stint under his belt, the last six at Triple-A St. Paul, and while he’s hitting .333/.375/.700 through 32 PA, the Twins don’t sound inclined to rush him back. “We’ll see what he’s doing when the rehab assignment comes to an end and we have to make a decision, or whenever that time is when he’s physically and repetition-wise ready,” Baldelli said. More, via TwinCities.com:

“If Byron Buxton goes on the IL, the first day Byron Buxton is ready to come back, he’ll be back — and he’ll be hitting second or third or fourth. Correa, something similar,” Baldelli said. “But Royce, I can’t put Royce or any young player in that same type of conversation.

“He’s playing well right now, I think he’s swinging the bat well. He’s physically doing just as we would have hoped.”

If Correa does require an IL stint, obviously that increases the likelihood of Lewis turning up in the near future. In the meantime, the Twins have a difficult stretch of games ahead of them, with five of their next six series against teams with winning records: the Blue Jays (six games), Rays, Astros, and Brewers. The other is against the Guardians, who are just 21–28 and 4.5 games out of first in the AL Central but are probably the biggest threat to Minnesota in the division. If they’re lucky, the Twins will have Correa’s help for at least some of that.

I don’t know about you, but I was very excited about the Blue Jays’ outfield coming into this season. In December, the team signed veteran defensive wizard Kevin Kiermaier to take over in center field, pushing incumbent George Springer to right. Just a few weeks later, they sent catcher Gabriel Moreno to the Diamondbacks so that young defensive wizard and all-around rising star Daulton Varsho could play left. If you’re keeping score at home, that makes one George Springer and two defensive wizards. Most teams don’t have two defensive wizards. There just aren’t that many wizards running around, and the ones who play baseball tend to prefer the infield. The Blue Jays had three center fielders, two of whom were well-respected veterans with long track records on successful teams, two of whom were coming off four-win seasons, and two of whom could reasonably claim to be, when healthy, the best defensive outfielder in all of baseball. That’s a pretty exciting Venn diagram.

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in March, I used the Rockies’ signing of Brad Hand as an entry point into an interesting trend: the Rockies were stockpiling soft-tossing lefties. A couple weeks later, I went to Scottsdale and talked to Austin Gomber. And now I’m writing about the Rockies’ pitching staff again. And not their erstwhile no. 1 starter (Kyle Freeland) nor their closer (Pierce Johnson) nor the guy who was supposed to be the closer (Daniel Bard) nor the hard-throwing setup guy with the goofy slider (Justin Lawrence). I’m writing about Brent Suter, another finesse lefty. The most soft-tossin’ lefthander in all the land, as a matter of fact.

Why? Because I can, mostly. If you’re tired of reading about the Rockies’ bullpen, write your Congressperson. They can’t stop me either. But also because Suter seems to have cracked it. This 33-year-old, whose fastball is so slow passing motorists would give it the finger for holding up traffic in parts of Texas, has been one of the best relief pitchers in baseball this year. Read the rest of this entry »