After a fantastic run in the World Baseball Classic, Randy Arozarena has stayed red hot. Defensive metrics see him as a hair better in left field this year, and he’s also been slightly above average on the basepaths. That’s a big upgrade from the extremely entertaining but ultimately deleterious aggression he showed in 2022. Oh, and I should probably mention that he’s the eighth-best hitter in all of baseball right now, right behind some guy named Trout. Arozarena is running a 182 wRC+, up from his already very good career mark of 129. All three of the figures in his .348/.412/.584 slash line would be career-best marks over a full season. Put it all together, and Arozarena is currently on pace to double his career WAR total.

How is he doing all this? I’m not completely sure. Don’t get me wrong; the numbers tell a story, and there are some other convenient narratives at hand. I’m just not convinced of how everything fits together. That’s actually why I was so interested in writing about Arozarena. He’s way more fascinating than some guy named Randy has any right to be.

Let’s start with one thing we can be sure of: Randy Arozarena is absolutely hammering the baseball. He’s always been capable of posting eye-popping exit velocities, but this year he’s doing it consistently. Last year, his average exit velocity was 89.9 mph and his hard-hit rate was 40.7%, both solidly above average. This year he’s at 95.1 and 59.2%. That’s not just good; that’s Yordan Alvarez territory. In terms of contact quality, Arozarena has never had a stretch like this:

It’s not just that he’s hitting the ball harder than ever. He’s also avoiding mis-hits at a career-best rate. His 7% soft-hit rate is tied for seventh-lowest in the league, and none of the six players ahead of him has a higher hard-hit rate.

Arozarena is also lifting the ball more than ever. His line drive rate is at 20%, and his fly ball rate is at 38.6%. While both would be career highs over a full season, this isn’t completely unprecedented. Arozarena has had previous stretches with lower groundball rates, though combined with his elevated hard-hit rate, this one has led him to a career-best 16.9% barrel rate. What’s new is his launch angle tightness. Despite all this lift, his popup rate is at a career low. Arozarena’s average launch angle is up by 3.0 degrees, but the standard deviation of his launch angle is down by 3.3 degrees. He’s consistently hitting the ball where he can do the most damage, reaping all the benefits of an improved launch angle with none of the downside. Courtesy of Baseball Savant:

The last big change is that Arozarena is using right field like never before. Batters tend to elevate the ball more when they’re going the other way, but that’s not nearly enough to explain what’s going on here. His 36.6% opposite field rate is well above his 24% career average, and his pull rate is also at a career low. This is something entirely new. He’s now spraying the ball all over the field, and he’s never had a stretch where he’s gone the other way so frequently or pulled the ball so infrequently. Further, when he hits the ball to the right side, he’s hitting it with authority. His career average exit velocity on balls the other way is 88 mph. This year it’s 95.2 mph:

As you can see, Arozarena’s hard-hit rate is roughly unchanged when he pulls the ball. He’s hitting more grounders than normal to the left side, and he’s succeeding there partly by hitting the ball harder and partly through batted ball luck. However, on balls up the middle and to the opposite field, his hard-hit rates have skyrocketed and he’s hitting the ball in the air more than ever. In fact, the numbers indicate that his 229 wRC+ to the opposite field might actually be a bit lower than he deserves.

Arozarena’s profile has always been a little bit tough to parse. For example, take a look at the heat maps below. On the left is Arozarena’s career slugging percentage per ball in play. On the right is his contact rate:

Some of the pitches that Arozarena really crushes, like the ones at the top of the zone, are also the ones he swings through most often. In fact, if you take a closer look, you’ll notice that Arozarena also tends to have lower contact rates right in the middle of the plate, a trend that has continued this year. He’s capable of doing damage below the zone, or on pitches just off the plate outside.

I bring this up because this is the part of the article where I would normally dig into the underlying metrics and tell you that Arozarena is mashing the ball because he’s chasing less, getting ahead in the count, and taking advantage of meatballs in the zone. Or maybe that he’s just focusing on the pitches he can really crush. That’s how these things tend to work. And while Arozarena is in fact chasing less and seeing slightly more pitches in the zone, I don’t really think that explains the transformation in his batted ball profile.

Arozarena’s chase rate is 7.5 percentage points lower than it was last year. That’s a big drop, but it also leaves him right around his 2001 rate, and he wasn’t running a 180 wRC+ or a 60% hard-hit rate in 2021. He’s striking out a lot less and walking slightly more, but he’s also whiffing more often. In fact, he’s seen more strikes overall and spent a lower percentage of the time ahead in the count this year.

Arozarena’s overall contact rate is up slightly, though again, it’s not that simple. He’s making more contact in the zone and whiffing more when he chases. I don’t know how repeatable that is, but it’s a neat trick if you can pull it off. Combine it with a lower swing rate (particularly outside the zone), and all of sudden more of his batted balls come on pitches in the zone. But still, we’re only talking about an increase of 2.3 percentage points. That doesn’t sound like enough to explain a hard-hit rate that’s jumped nearly 20.

Here’s the bigger thing: Name a split, and within that split Arozarena is hitting the ball harder this year than he did last year. Ahead, behind, or even in the count? Randy Arozarena is hitting the ball harder. Inside or outside the zone? Randy Arozarena is hitting the ball harder. Heart, shadow, or chase zone. Fastball, breaking ball, or offspeed. Lefty, righty, home, away, fly ball, groundball, line drive; he’s even hitting his popups harder. His numbers are down just a hair on the inner third, which is certainly understandable given his new propensity to rip the ball the other way, but that’s really all I could find. The guy is just plain hitting the ball harder, and I’m not prepared to conclude that it all comes down to his swing decisions.

That brings us to our two tidy narratives. The first is something Adam Berry described somewhat bluntly on the Ballpark Dimensions Podcast. “He was openly not really looking into scouting reports,” Berry told Mike Petriello. “He would ask the hitting coach or the manager, whoever ‘What’s this guy’s fastball?’ That’s all he needed to know before he went up for a plate appearance. He even told us last year at one point he didn’t know other pitchers’ names. He knew his fellow Cubans, and he knew Gerrit Cole, and that was it.”

Joe Trezza gave a more nuanced picture at MLB.com. It’s not that Arozarena couldn’t be bothered, Trezza explained, “He eschewed data, preferring to stay in the moment and let his natural ability take over. Sometimes, he told teammates, he didn’t even want to know the opposing pitcher’s name.”

I am definitely willing to believe that more preparation has helped Arozarena. Lest we forget, this wouldn’t be the first time that Arozarena has decided to put in extra work to up his game and done exactly that. Arozarena is still chasing breaking stuff at almost exactly the same rate, but he is laying off more four-seamers above the zone and offspeed stuff below it. That could be due to having a better idea of how pitchers are attacking him. At the very least, it’s safe to say that incorporating new information into his gameplan hasn’t hurt.

The other thing that could tie our story up with a bow is that Arozarena has made some significant changes to his swing. Last year his stance was extremely upright. This year, he’s crouching a bit more, as he did in 2020. Last year, his hands were up above his ear and he kept his back elbow up, with his bat at a much flatter angle. This year, he’s lowered his hands to shoulder height, with his elbow less elevated and his bat nearly vertical. All of that is completely new. When he goes into his load, he’s rotating his body away from the pitcher less and keeping his shoulders much more level. 2023 is on the left and 2022 is on the right:

Last year, you could pretty much see all of the 56 on Arozarena’s back; this year, you can only see a small part of the six.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any information about Arozarena’s new stance. He was using it both in spring training and at the World Baseball Classic, so it’s clearly the result of offseason work. To my knowledge, no one has written an article about it. Andrea of Scout Girl Report was the only person I found who’s mentioned it on Twitter.

I don’t know whether Arozarena made these changes on his own, with outside coaches, or with Tampa Bay’s coaching staff, and I haven’t been able to track down a quote about what he hopes they’ll do for his swing. I assume that the desired effect of all these adjustments — deeper crouch, lower hands, less rotation pre-swing — is to make him quicker, starting out with the various parts of his body closer to where they need to be when he begins his swing. Shortening up in this way clearly hasn’t hurt his power. He even set a career exit velocity record last week by hitting a Levi Stoudt four-seamer 114.3 mph. It could also be that lowering his hands and staying more level were changes intended to help him elevate the ball, in which case they have been a soaring success.

So this is where I’m going to leave you. Randy Arozarena is off to a great start. He’s got a new swing. He’s studying scouting reports. He’s chasing less. Through some combination of these factors, he’s elevating the baseball, using the whole field, and hitting it very, very hard. Maybe that’s all we need to know.

Mason Montgomery is the highest-ranked left-hander in the Tampa Bay Rays’ pitching pipeline. No. 7 overall and with a 45+ FV, the 2021 sixth-round pick out of Texas Tech University is coming off his first full professional season, in which he logged a 2.10 ERA with 171 strikeouts in 124 innings between High-A Bowling Green and Double-A Montgomery. Back with the Biscuits to start the current campaign, the 22-year-old Austin native has a 3.38 ERA to go with 16 strikeouts in 13.1 innings.

Deception and ride are among the southpaw’s attributes. As our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen wrote earlier this year, “His glove hand plays the role of the magician’s assistant, flying above Montgomery’s head and toward the hitter when, suddenly, the baseball appears… with a nearly perfect north/south arm slot, imparting the look of rise on his fastball.”

Montgomery discussed his M.O. on the mound, which includes aggressively pumping heaters down the middle, during spring training.

———

David Laurila: What is your approach on the mound? How do you get guys out?

Mason Montgomery: “Man, I think my go-to is just my fastball. It’s kind of got that carry to it, and I usually go to it as my finishing pitch. Sometimes I’ll go slider, too. But really, I just work ahead with the heater and then if I feel like they’re on that, I’ll throw some offspeed over the plate, either my slider or my changeup. That’s my full repertoire: four-seam, slider, and changeup.”

Laurila: How many inches of ride do you get on your four-seamer?

Montgomery: “It changes. At my best, I’ll get consistently 20, maybe 22. Sometimes it will be 17 to 19. So it just depends on the day. Some days I get behind it a little better than I do on others.” Read the rest of this entry »

What’s the most important thing for a pitcher to do? That’s right, don’t leave the ball up in the zone for Aaron Judge. The second-most important thing for a pitcher to do is throw strikes. Throw strikes to get ahead in the count, throw strikes to challenge hitters, throw strikes to force action early in the count and keep your pitch count down… pitchers talk about throwing strikes the way health nuts talk about kale. It’s good for you. How? Let me count the ways.

Except, nobody actually throws strikes. Last season, 347 pitchers threw at least 50 innings in the majors; nobody threw more than 58.5% of their pitches in the strike zone. Devin Williams, one of the best in the business, worked inside the zone just 42.4% of the time. “It’s good to throw strikes,” then, is something to be taken seriously but not literally.

Seattle Mariners right-hander George Kirby is a greater adherent of the zone than most. Last season, he broke a big league record by throwing 24 consecutive strikes to start a game. This year, he’s working in the zone more than any other pitcher with at least 20 innings under their belt. It was not always thus. Read the rest of this entry »

José Berríos has gotten shelled this year. Through five starts, he’s allowed 17 runs, 15 of them earned, good for a 4.71 ERA. Per our calculation of RA9-WAR, that means Berríos has been almost exactly replacement level, worth 0.1 wins above replacement so far this season. That follows last year’s debacle, when he was worth 0.2 wins below replacement by the same calculation. For a guy the Jays saw as their long-term ace a few years ago, it’s been a precipitous fall.

José Berríos has been lights out this year. He’s striking out 26.1% of his opponents and walking only 4.3%. That 21.7% gap between strikeout and walk rates is 15th among starters this year, just ahead of Gerrit Cole, who you’ve maybe heard of. It’s not just strikeouts and walks, either: Berríos has allowed only a single home run all year. He sports a 2.32 FIP. By our calculation of FIP-based WAR, he’s the eighth-best starter in baseball this season, just a hair behind Shohei Ohtani.

That gap between ERA and FIP is, to put it mildly, extreme. It’s the second-largest gap in baseball behind Nathan Eovaldi, who’s allowing a .413 BABIP so far this year – oof. What gives with Berríos? Let’s investigate and see which side feels more like the truth. Read the rest of this entry »

The good times are rolling in Pittsburgh. Though their seven-game winning streak ended on Tuesday night as they failed to hold a 7-2 lead against the Dodgers, the Pirates are off to a 16-8 start, their best since 1992, and they lead the NL Central by a game. What’s more, they’ve finally sealed a long-term deal with their star left fielder, as Bryan Reynolds has reportedly agreed to an eight-year, $106.75 million extension that covers his 2023-30 seasons.

It’s the largest contract in Pirates history, outdoing Ke’Bryan Hayes‘ eight-year, $70 million extension as the team ventures into nine-digit territory for the first time. The deal includes a six-team no-trade list, the first time in 17 years that the Pirates have included some form of no-trade protection in a contract. Notably, it does not include an opt-out clause, an item that had previously been a stumbling block when the two sides neared a deal with the same dollars-and-years framework just before Opening Day. Reynolds wanted an opt-out after 2026, meaning that the Pirates would gain only one more year of control if he were to exercise that option.

As with that proposal, the contract incorporates the 28-year-old Reynolds’ $6.75 million salary for this season, his second of arbitration eligibility (as a Super Two, he has two more remaining). He also receives a $2 million signing bonus, with salaries of $10 million and $12 million for 2024 and ’25, his final two arb years, and then $14 million for ’26 and $15 million annually for ’27-30. The Pirates hold a $20 million club option and $2 million buyout for his services in 2031, his age-36 season.

If those annual salaries seems a little light to you, you’re not alone, but the particulars of his situation make it worth a closer look. We’ll start with Dan Szymborksi’s ZiPS projection from February, which suggested a six-year, $95 million valuation for Reynolds’ 2024-29 years:

Under the actual contract, Reynolds will be paid just $81 million for those six years. On the other hand, he’ll make $15 million for what eyeballs to be about a one-win projection for 2030, so much of that shortfall comes out in the wash.

The problem for Reynolds — the reason the dollar figures aren’t bigger — is something of a perfect storm of service time and aging curves. He was stellar in 2021, making the NL All-Star team while hitting .302/.390/.522 (141 wRC+) with 6.2 WAR, but he slipped to .262/.345/.461 (125 wRC+) and 2.8 WAR last year. Even with ZiPS forecasting him at 4.0 WAR this year, going forward he projects to lose about one win for every two years as he ages. On top of that, his salary is being drastically suppressed by the arbitration system during what project to be his strongest seasons; as a free agent, he’d be worth over $30 million a year for 2023-25, but he’ll only make about 30% of that.

As Dan summarized via Twitter, “[I]t’s hard to value those seventh and eighth years very highly at all for a 3-4 win player that far away in his mid-30s. Obviously, Reynolds would have done better if he were a free agent this year. But he’s not and this price is the product of his age and MLB’s service-time rules; Reynolds just didn’t have a great deal of leverage because the Pirates already had nearly all the years they wanted.”

That’s a bit of a harsh reality, but it’s offset by Reynolds getting the stability and security he valued. Though he requested a trade in December after the team reportedly offered a six-year, $80 million extension — over $50 million short of the eight-year, $134 million deal he was seeking — he cared enough to return to the table and found a way to stay, even forgoing the opt-out.

It’s nice to see Pirates fans get nice things for a change, and the structure of Reynolds’ deal is such that even by the craptastic standards of the way the team has been run under owner Bob Nutting, none of the annual salaries should be backbreaking. Unless his option is picked up, Reynolds won’t even set the franchise’s single-season record for salary, and not until 2027 would he surpass Andrew McCutchen for the highest salary solely paid by the team, which turns out to be an important distinction given their dismal history:

Is Reynolds as good as prime Cutch? No, but McCutchen signed his six-year, $51.5 million extension 11 years ago, and industry inflation has obviously pushed salaries upwards since then. Someone was bound to break McCutchen’s franchise record before the next ice age arrived, and it makes sense that it was Reynolds, whose 6.2 WAR in 2021 was the highest for a Pirate since McCutchen’s 7.4 WAR in ’14.

As for his current performance, when I checked in on him just a couple of weeks ago, Reynolds was off to a sizzling start, hitting .356/.367/.778, leading the NL in slugging percentage and homers (five), and ranking fifth in both WAR (0.7) and wRC+ (184); amid that tear, he was named NL Player of the Week. Now he’s down to .294/.319/.553, and his 127 wRC+ is just two points ahead of last year and two behind his preseason ZiPS projection. Regression doesn’t mess around, kids.

That said, even given the ups and downs, Reynolds is hitting the ball harder this season than he has in the past, and the sample sizes are either approaching or past the point where they start to stabilize, so his performance is worth an update:

Via Baseball Prospectus’ Russell Carleton, exit velocity begins to stabilize around 40 batted ball events and barrel rate at 50 BBE, so you can start to take what he’s done thus far seriously; he’s in the 84th percentile for the former and 92nd percentile for the latter. Ground ball, fly ball, and hard-hit rates begin to stabilize at 80 BBE, a total he should reach soon after he returns from the bereavement list. (Reynolds left the team for a personal matter on Sunday, which allowed the Pirates to recall 33-year-old career minor leaguer Drew Maggi, who has yet to get into a game — what’s Derek Shelton waiting for?)

With more balls in the air, a higher average exit velocity, and more frequent barrels, Reynolds has an expected batting average of .314 (95th percentile) and an expected slugging percentage of .604 (93rd percentile); he’s fallen off from the major league-leading .896 he put up during the season’s first two weeks, but that was always going to happen.

The good news for the Pirates is that even as Reynolds has cooled off, other players have stepped up, to the point that Connor Joe (.328/.423/.590, 174 wRC+), Jack Suwinski (.269/.385/.635, 166 wRC+) and McCutchen (.270/.371/.527, 141 wRC+) are outhitting him within a lineup that ranks sixth in the NL in wRC+ (108) and fourth in scoring (4.92 runs per game). Meanwhile, on the other side of the ball the Pirates are allowing only 3.92 runs per game, the NL’s fourth-lowest rate, and they’re tied with the Brewers for third in the league in run differential (+24) behind only the Cubs (+45) and Braves (+38). It’s still early enough not to get too wound up about their start, but for the first time in awhile, the Pirates are offering significant measures of hope, and wrapping up Reynolds for the future is something worth celebrating.

The Rays continue to play phenomenal baseball. While their 14-game home winning streak came to an end on Tuesday night, they have won six of their last seven and boast what is easily the best run differential in the sport. Their average margin of victory is 3.7 runs, which is more than the Tigers, Marlins, and Royals are scoring per game. As if all that weren’t enough, Tampa Bay is only getting stronger. Zach Eflin returned from a back injury on Sunday and twirled five innings of one-run ball. Tyler Glasnow threw his first simulated game on Monday, a critical step in his rehab process as he works to rejoin the rotation. Meanwhile, top prospect Taj Bradley is waiting in the wings after making a fantastic big league debut.

For all that good stuff, however, the Rays have also been dealt a significant blow. On April 13 against the Red Sox, Jeffrey Springs looked down at his elbow after throwing a pitch; it would turn out to be his last of the 2023 campaign. Coincidentally, the Rays would lose their first game of the year the following day. Springs landed on the injured list with a diagnosis of ulnar neuritis but was later revealed to have torn his UCL; he underwent Tommy John surgery earlier this week to repair the ligament, leaving the Rays to go the rest of the way without the player who could have been their biggest success story. That’s a bold claim to make about a man on the same team as Yandy Díaz and Randy Arozarena, but that’s just how well Springs was pitching. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the great truisms of modern baseball is that good teams can churn out good relievers at will. The Rays, Dodgers, and Astros do it every year. The Yankees develop so many pitching prospects that they’ve created a side hustle trading them for help elsewhere. The Guardians, Brewers, and Mariners are no slouches. The next dominant reliever on those squads might not be in the majors yet or even on people’s prospect radar.

You can add the Orioles to that list. Last year, Jorge López broke out and netted them four players in trade, while Félix Bautista also broke out and is now the closer. It gets better than that, though – one of the players the Orioles got back in the López trade is Yennier Cano, who hardly seemed like a marquee addition. Already 28 and with only 13.2 (bad) major league innings to his name, he looked like an up-and-down reliever if you’re an optimist. He was 38th on our list of the top 38 Orioles prospects before the year started. Hey, at least he was listed!

Yeah, uh, about that. In an admittedly tiny seven innings of major league work this year, Cano has posted otherworldly numbers. He’s struck out nine of the 20 batters he’s faced, hasn’t walked anyone, and hasn’t even allowed a hit. For what it’s worth, he also pitched three scoreless innings in Triple-A before being called up. It looks like the Orioles have done it again. Read the rest of this entry »

Sonny Gray has been one of baseball’s best pitchers so far this season. Over five starts, the Minnesota Twins right-hander has fanned 34 batters and allowed just 20 hits and two runs in 29 innings. His ERA is a Lilliputian 0.62.

Gray is no flash in the pan. Now 33 years old and in his 11th big league season, the Vanderbilt University product is a two-time All-Star with a 3.50 ERA and a 3.54 FIP over 252 career appearances, all but nine as a starter. Originally with the Oakland Athletics, he subsequently pitched for the New York Yankees and the Cincinnati Reds before coming to the Twins Cities prior to last season.

How as the veteran hurler evolved over the years? Gray addressed that question when the Twins visited Fenway Park last week.

———

David Laurila: How have you evolved as a pitcher? Outside of being older, are you basically the same guy that broke into the big leagues in 2013?

Sonny Gray: “I would say no. As far as pitch types, I still throw the same curveball, that hasn’t changed, but everything else has kind of evolved and adapted.

“For the first four to five years, it was kind of, ‘Go out there and do it.’ At the time, 95–96 [mph] was a lot of velo, and you could just beat guys with that. If you had any type of breaking pitch, all the better. So for those first four to five years, it was kind of just that. I threw a two-seam and a four-seam and then a curveball.

“Everyone would say that one of the reasons my fastball was so hard to hit is that they didn’t know which way it was going to go. My four-seam tended to cut a little bit, and the two-seam would go the other way. Then I got traded to New York [in July 2017]. That was the first time I tried to change a little bit. I’d always lived down and away, bottom of the zone, and now I was hearing, ‘Hey, throw your four-seam at the top of the zone.’ That was a little foreign to me. I tried it, I did some things, and didn’t have immediate success with it.

“That’s the first time I was adapting. It was the first era of the spin stuff. It was new to everyone back then, and we were figuring out that spinning four-seams were good [pitches]. I don’t think everyone had it together that everyone’s four-seam is different. At the time, it was just ‘Spinning four-seams at the top are great.” My four-seam tends to cut a little bit, it doesn’t have that [ride], so while I had some success, overall it didn’t go well.” Read the rest of this entry »

Logan O’Hoppe has been one of the bright spots of the Angels’ up-and-down season, but unfortunately, the 23-year-old rookie catcher may have played his last game in 2023. On Sunday, the team revealed that O’Hoppe will need surgery to repair the torn labrum in his left shoulder, an injury that is expected to sideline him for four to six months.

The 23-year-old backstop first injured the shoulder while swinging the bat last Monday in Boston, but he remained in the game and played the next three as well. “It felt fine after it popped back in, in Boston,” he told reporters on Sunday, describing what sounds like a subluxation, not unlike what Fernando Tatis Jr. frequently experienced before undergoing surgery last September. “I mean, you hit three or four balls over 100 [mph], you think you’re fine,” he added.

Alas, O’Hoppe reaggravated the injury while hitting a single in the ninth inning of Thursday night’s 9–3 loss at Yankee Stadium. He fell down in obvious pain after hitting a hot smash down the third base line, recovered to run to first base on what otherwise would have been a double, then exited for a pinch-runner.

The Angels put O’Hoppe on the injured list on Friday, and by Sunday his season was in jeopardy. Only after he undergoes surgery on Tuesday will the prognosis be more clear, though for the moment he and the Angels have some optimism that a return in late August or September will be possible. Read the rest of this entry »

I
Drew Smyly is seven innings into a perfect game.
He’s thrown nothing but sinkers and curveballs.
It’s a day game at Wrigley and the ball melts into a swirl of white t-shirts,
Materializes in the catcher’s mitt,
Then says hello-goodbye to each of the infielders in turn
As another Dodger slides his bat back into the bat rack.
Drew Smyly is seven innings into a perfect game.
Drew Smyly is about to be tackled by his catcher.

II
Yan Gomes lands and keeps rolling, longer than he needs to,
Eventually settling on his hands and knees, head hanging,
Not remotely like girls who throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
Smyly comes to rest with his weight on his pitching elbow, legs crossed,
Like Reclining Venus in pinstripes. He shakes his head and smiles, “My bad.” Read the rest of this entry »