We’re in a tiny lull in the baseball season, and honestly, I’m happy about it. July is jam packed with draft and trade talk, September and October are for the stretch run and the postseason, but the middle of August is when everyone catches their breath. There’s no divisional race poised on a razor’s edge, no nightly drama that everyone in baseball tunes in for; it’s just a good few weeks to get your energy back and relax.
For me, that means getting a head start on some things I won’t have time to do in September, and there’s one article in particular that I always want to write but never get around to. I’m not a BBWAA member, and I’ll probably never vote for MVP awards, but I spend a lot of time thinking about them every year nonetheless. When I’m looking at who would get my vote, I take Win Probability Added into account. Every time I mention it, however, there’s an issue to tackle. Plenty of readers and analysts think of WPA as “just a storytelling statistic” and don’t like using it as a measure of player value. So today, I’m going to explain why I think it has merit.
First, a quick refresher: Win Probability Added is a straightforward statistic. After every plate appearance, WPA looks at the change in a team’s chances of winning the game. We use our win expectancy measure, which takes historical data to see how often teams win from a given position, to assign each team a chance of winning after every discrete event. Then the pitcher and hitter involved in that plate appearance get credited (or debited, depending) for the change in their team’s chances of winning the game. Since every game starts with each team 50% likely to win and ends with one team winning, the credit for each win (and blame for each loss) gets apportioned out as the game unfolds. The winning team will always produce an aggregate of 0.5 WPA, and the losing team will always produce -0.5, spread out among all of their players. Read the rest of this entry »
Two months ago, if you asked me to name the most disappointing member of the phenom class, I’d have said Bobby Witt Jr. With barely a month of professional games past high school under his belt, he was invited to spring training in 2021 and hit three homers and put up an .851 OPS, creating chatter around baseball that he might start the season with the parent club. That was a bit premature, though he did spend the next six months terrorizing minor league pitchers into thinking long and hard about their choice of occupation. But in 2022 and early on in ’23, brevity was no longer the soul of Witt, as his whirlwind professional progress slowed to become one of those inevitably anemic breezes on an unpleasantly muggy July day.
Things appeared to reach their nadir in late June, when his OPS almost dipped under .700 once again. Since then, however, Witt has been on a tear, hitting .350/.385/.662, not only bringing his OPS safely over the .700 line but also getting it over .800. Since the morning of June 30, he’s been one of the absolute best players in baseball, providing a rare highlight for the 2023 Royals:
I’ve included BABIP here for a very good reason: when players are having hot streaks, BABIP is usually a big reason why. After all, players playing at their peak are more likely to be playing above their abilities than below. Witt is no exception here, with his numbers fueled in part by a .370 BABIP over that period. But I include that figure not to defuse my thesis, but to reinforce it. While a BABIP that high is hard to sustain over the long haul, ZiPS’ zBABIP thinks that .370 mark only barely outperforms what he’s actually done in the last month and a half. Read the rest of this entry »
Look, Juan Soto is going to be fine. In fact, he’s probably fine already. At some point during every season, we start worrying that Juan Soto isn’t performing like Juan Soto anymore, and then he starts performing like Juan Soto again. You know why? Because he was Juan Soto the whole time, and as we all know, Juan Soto was built by robo-umpires from the future and sent back in time to teach us the exact parameters of the strike zone. The robo-umps also gave him the ability to hit dingers and do a little dance in the batter’s box to help him blend in with us humans. Point is, Juan Soto will be fine.
I pitched this article on Monday afternoon, when Juan Soto was definitely not fine. He was in a bit of a slump, batting .121 with a -14 wRC+ over his last eight games. We’re talking about a very small sample here, but once there’s a minus sign in front of your wRC+, it’s not just bad for a time-traveling strike zone robot. It’s bad for a regular human, too. Still, that’s not what made me want to write about Juan Soto. This is what made me want to write about him:
Jeff Montgomery faced some formidable Cleveland teams while pitching for the Kansas City Royals from 1988 to ’99. Thanks largely to a robust offense, Cleveland averaged 94.2 wins annually from ’95 to ’99, making the playoffs all five years and twice playing in the World Series. No team in either league scored more runs over that span.
Montgomery, whose 304 saves are the most in Royals franchise history, now serves as one of the team’s broadcast analysts. He sat down to discuss the erstwhile Cleveland powerhouse prior to a recent game at Fenway Park.
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David Laurila:Mark Gubicza told me earlier this summer that the 1984 Detroit Tigers were the best team he played against. Which was the best team you faced?
Jeff Montgomery: “I look back at teams by how they stacked up against me personally, which is maybe a little different perspective. But those mid-to-late ‘90s Cleveland teams were really deep. They had so many different weapons. It seemed like every time you played against them, if you had a lead, there was a pretty good chance they were going to find a way to cut into it or even overtake that lead. I think their fanbase played a part in that. They created an environment that was almost hostile when you went to Cleveland to play them.
“One game in particular stands out. Our manager told me that I had the night off, so I was sitting out in bullpen that day. We had a left-handed reliever named Billy Brewer, and he goes in and gets what I think was his first major league save. After the game, he came up to me in the clubhouse and said, ‘Man, you can have that job. That’s not a lot of fun.’ [Closing] is different. Personally, it made me better in regard to focus, concentration, and eventually execution, because I knew how great it felt to be shaking teammates’ hands after a game was over. I also knew how bad it felt not to get that last out and feel like you’ve let your teammates down, that you’ve let the fanbase down.
“But again, going back to those days in Cleveland, they had the Alomar brothers, Carlos Baerga, Kenny Lofton, Travis Fryman, Omar Vizquel, Jim Thome, Paul Sorrento, Manny Ramirez… I mean, you could go on with the players they had during that stretch. That was right around the time the divisions were reorganized and there was now a Central Division. They became the team in the Central that was going to be a force, year in and year out. I’m not sure how many years they made it to postseason, but I know they were always contenders. For me personally, going into a game against Cleveland, especially on the road, was a real challenge.”
Laurila: Which player on those teams did you most respect when he came to the plate?
Montgomery: “Well, Albert Belle was such professional hitter. He could hit for power, he could hit for average, and he was also one of those players that loved to be in that big situation. I feel like he kind of got… I don’t want to say a bad rap, but from a personality standpoint… I mean, he was a really bright individual. I got to know him a little bit over the years, us having spring training close to where [Cleveland did], and playing some All-Star games with him. Again, a very bright guy. But he was a beast. He was a guy that was going to do everything he possibly could to try to beat you and help his team win a baseball game. So, he stands out quite a bit for the impact he had, how good he made their lineup.
“Another one, obviously, was Manny Ramirez. The way he was able to handle a bat from the right side… I mean, he was one of the best right-handed batters in baseball for a long time.”
Laurila: Can you share any Albert Belle stories?
Montgomery: “Again, he was a beast. I remember one time, I’m going to guess around 1989 or 1990, I forget the exact year, we had a benches-clearing brawl in Cleveland. Albert Belle put a hurt on one of our pitchers. Well, in spring training the next year, our pitching coach indicated that it was a good time to take care of business with Belle. I threw a pitch that was probably going to hit him in the neck if he didn’t swing. He swung and hit a line drive home run out of our spring training facility in Haines City, Florida. It almost tore out three rows of bleachers. It was an embarrassing moment for me, because here’s a guy that turns on my best fastball, one that’s supposed to knock him down, and he hits it for a home run.”
Laurila: Knocking Belle down and having him charge the mound wouldn’t be an enviable scenario for a pitcher.
Montgomery: “Neal Heaton did that once. We’d had a benches-clearing brawl the day before, and Neal was trying to retaliate. I don’t think he actually hit him, I think he threw three balls behind him. After the third one, Belle took off after Neal. I remember Mike Macfarlane grabbed him, and he pretty much just drug Mac out to the pitcher’s mound. It was one of those crazy, crazy brawls. There was some blood shed in that one.”
Laurila: It sound like McFarlane saved Heaton from some serious damage.
Montgomery: “Well, Neal still got a pretty good beating out there. And I actually did hit him once. It wasn’t Albert Belle’s fault, but I had to hit him. I hit him right in the cheeks. They had a guy named Mark Whiten. Do you remember him?”
Laurila: I do. Hard hittin’ Mark Whiten.
Montgomery: “Yes. Well, Whiten hits a ball to the first baseman, and I’m covering the bag. Whiten veers off to fair territory to give me the bag, I’m a half step ahead of him, and he pushes me, flips me into right field. My rule of thumb was that if you were trying to hurt or embarrass me or one of my teammates, I was going to take care of business. The next batter was Albert Belle. I think everybody in the ballpark knew what was going to happen. I drilled him. But I did it the right way; I hit him right in the wallet. He dropped that bat and stared out at me, I thought he was coming after me, but luckily he didn’t. Thankfully he just jogged to first base.”
You can picture it in your mind. A runner on first, a single into the gap — it’s first and third with one out, and it’s time to fret. Having a runner on third base with less than two outs is secretly one of the most stressful moments in an average baseball game. Success feels like it should be automatic, but of course it isn’t. Failing to get that runner home always feels like a moral failing, some elemental lack on the part of the batting team. It’s so easy! No hits necessary. Just put your mind to it and do it.
Depending on who you watch baseball with, you might hear this cast as old school versus new school, but I don’t think that’s fair. It’s been a part of baseball since time immemorial. You don’t have to remember baseball from the 1970s to get annoyed by a strikeout or pop up that leads to your team trudging dejectedly back to the dugout. And even if you’re young enough that you got your first cell phone before your 10th birthday, the sweet relief of a clean single with two outs to rescue that poor, potentially stranded soul on third base feels great.
For such a central part of the baseball viewing experience, I’m woefully underinformed about the statistics of that particular pivot point. Do teams score that runner a lot of the time? Rarely? How much has it changed over time? Which team is the worst at it in baseball this year? The best? I couldn’t tell you the answer to any of those questions, so I set out to find them. Read the rest of this entry »
If I have one criticism of Shohei Ohtani, it’s that he has singlehandedly ruined baseball’s great parlor discussions. Admittedly, this is the only valid criticism of Ohtani that I can think of. But questions like “Which player would you want to start a franchise with?” or “Who’s the most talented ballplayer you’ve ever seen?” are so much less fun now than they were a decade ago. First person to answer just says, “Ohtani,” and there’s a brief but grave silence until someone pipes up and asks if anyone is watching the new season of Billions.
Setting Ohtani aside, Fernando Tatis Jr. would be on my short list of most talented or dynamic baseball players I’ve had the good fortune to witness. In the past, I’d compared his physicality to that of a 3–4 outside linebacker, but watching him scramble around the diamond is like watching an alien who’s holding something in reserve so he doesn’t get outed by the humans. If that is his goal, Tatis is not doing a great job of blending in.
June 23, 2023, was a rough day for the Braves. They scored 10 runs but gave up 11 in a hard-fought battle with the Reds. It was the first time they’d given up more than ten runs all season, and the first time they’d scored double-digit runs and still lost in over a year. They blew two leads and couldn’t quite pull off the comeback at the end of the night.
Yet in the grand scheme of things, June 23, 2023, was an insignificant day for the Braves. By that point in the season, their playoff odds were 99.5%. Sure, they lost the game, but it was one of only four losses they would suffer all month. They went on to win the series and sweep their next two, increasing their playoff odds to 100% within the week. The Braves have about as much reason to worry about losses as I have to worry about werewolf attacks. It’s not worth agonizing over something that only happens once in a blue moon.
But for one particular Brave, June 23, 2023, was an excellent day. Ronald Acuña Jr. went 3-for-5 with a home run and a stolen base. He made a great catch, too, covering 78 feet in 4.6 seconds to rob Tyler Stephenson of a hit. The following morning, he rose to first place in the National League in WAR, a position he has held ever since.
First place on the WAR leaderboard isn’t necessarily meaningfully different from second, third, or even fourth. At times, Acuña’s lead was so slight that you had to add another decimal place just to see it. Still, leading the league for 53 days (and counting) is an impressive accomplishment. Plenty of guys can get hot and amass a high WAR in a short stretch, but maintaining such a high degree of excellence over eight weeks is something else. Four others occupied second place in that time, and nine shuffled through spots three to five. But Acuña has yet to give up his lead. Read the rest of this entry »
Triston Casas is a studious hitter. He’s also an impactful one, as evidenced by his 19 home runs and 124 wRC+ — this after an abysmal April and a less than stellar May — in his first full big-league season. At age 23, the 6-foot-4, 250-pound first baseman profiles as a cornerstone in the Red Sox lineup. As our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen wrote back in June, the left-handed-hitting slugger “should become a middle-of-the-order force capable of hitting 35-plus annual homers.”
Casas, whom Boston drafted with the No. 28 pick in 2018 out of Plantation, Florida’s American Heritage High School, discussed his scientific approach to hitting prior to a recent game at Fenway Park.
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David Laurila: Let’s start with one of my favorite ice-breaker questions: Do you view hitting as more of an art, or as more of a science?
Triston Casas: “It’s more of a science. There are numbers involved that can help you, and if you know how to use them accurately, they can pretty much give you a formula for how to have the most success at the plate. Every pitch has a certain characteristic based off the vertical and horizontal movement and the vertical entry angle. Your swing has a certain attack angle into the zone that has to match that pitch characteristic. If it does perfectly, you’re going to have a really good result. More importantly, if you match it, you don’t have to be perfect in terms of the timing, because you’re matching that plane.”
Laurila: A lot of hitters I’ve talked to, including Justin Turner just recently, have stressed the importance of timing.
Casas: “I think hitting is more about being on plane. To me, on plane means matching the plane of the pitch coming into the zone. Being on plane gives you a lot of margin for error. If your swing is too direct or too steep, your timing is going to have to be perfect to match the vertical entry angle of the ball into the zone, as opposed to matching it and being able to hit the ball within that 90-degree angle that allows you to hit it fair.” Read the rest of this entry »
There haven’t been a lot of bright spots in St. Louis this year. The Cardinals are 14 games below .500, owners of the second-worst record in the NL. The bottom has fallen out for the franchise in a way that hasn’t happened in 30 years. I’d hardly blame fans for being a bit checked out; it’s hard to look for silver linings when the rain cloud is this dark.
If you’re so inclined, though, there are always things to be optimistic about. The obvious one: the Cardinals’ offense has performed at a high level despite the poor results. They have an aggregate 111 wRC+ on the year, the fifth-best in baseball, and underlying statistics that match that. As always in St. Louis, it’s an ensemble affair, but three stars stand out atop the WAR leaderboard: Nolan Arenado, Paul Goldschmidt, and Lars Nootbaar.
Wait, Lars Nootbaar? I know what you’re thinking: I’m the chairman of the Nootbaar Nutbar fanclub, and my preposterously biased take should be ignored. But the leaderboards don’t lie: He’s tied with Arenado for the most WAR on the team, and that’s despite a 100-PA deficit caused by early-season injury issues. He has the best wRC+ on the squad. It’s not just smoke and mirrors; Statcast thinks he deserves the vast majority of his production.
In fact, let’s take it just one step further. Nootbaar has flown under the radar on a lot of broad sweeps of the best players in baseball because of two things: he’s not playing at a best-in-game level, and he’s missed a lot of time with injury. That puts him in the vicinity, WAR-leaderboard-wise, with guys who play more but aren’t as good on a rate basis. He’s tied with Luis Arraez, Christian Walker, and Bryson Stott, just to name a few, for 2023 WAR, but he’s played less than any of those guys. So let’s ignore health, just for a minute. Read the rest of this entry »
The Astros currently rank third in the American League in runs scored — not an uncommon sight for a franchise that has only been outscored by the Dodgers and Red Sox over the last decade. But they’ve done it with a lineup with some pretty big holes, with half of their eight players with at least 300 plate appearances this season posting an OBP under .300. The team’s offense has been driven this year mainly by four players: Kyle Tucker, Yordan Alvarez, Alex Bregman, and Chas McCormick, with an assist from Yainer Diaz. A year ago, Houston signed Alvarez to a six-year, $115 million contract extension that ensured he would remain in town until the end of the 2028 season. Tucker, though, does not have a long-term deal and is scheduled to hit free agency after the 2025 season. What would a possible deal look like?
