No one asked me, but given the trends in attendance, the average age of MLB fans, and the fluctuations in ratings over the past few years, along with the dwindling page space and airtime given to baseball by mainstream media outlets relative to their coverage of other sports, it seems undeniable that baseball no longer holds the “America’s Pastime” title, but rather the considerably less catchy moniker: “America’s Third or Maybe Fourth Favorite Sport.” The battle for consumers’ time and attention wages on, and while baseball started in the pole position, it scraped the wall a few times and now sits a lap down.

The entertainment market is oversaturated. Viewers easily scroll through endless options and click away from any selection that doesn’t immediately spark joy. “The only game in town” marketing strategy simply no longer suffices. So again, while no one asked me, I’m here to offer some unsolicited advice to MLB on how to better sell their game and the characters, settings, and themes that make up its stories. In other words, I’d like to improve their drive to survive within a competitive market.

This article is the first of a three-part series. This edition will provide an overview of alternative forms of supplemental content the league might use to entice new viewers and the potential benefits such content yields. Part II will explore the specifics of how to make supplementary content effective, while Part III will shift the perspective to focus on marketing strategies for individual players at all levels of baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Evan Reifert has one of the best sliders in the minors. In the words of our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen, “the pitch is incredible, a low-80s knee-buckler that he throws about as much as his fastball.” Moreover, the numbers are as good as the observations. As Eric noted when profiling the 23-year-old right-hander for our 2023 Tampa Bay Rays Top Prospects list, Reifert’s slider “generated the top whiff rate of any pitch in the 2022 minors at a whopping 70%.”

Overall, the numbers were that of a work-in-progress. Pitching between three levels — the majority of his 31 relief outings came with High-A Bowling Green — Reifert logged a 4.58 ERA and issued 20 free passes over 37.1 innings. He was also overpowering; thanks largely to his signature pitch, the Wilton, Iowa native fanned 62 batters.

Assigned to the Arizona Fall League’s Mesa Solar Sox to build on what had been an injury-interrupted campaign, the erstwhile Milwaukee Brewers prospect — Tampa Bay acquired him in exchange for Mike Brosseau in November 2021 — proceeded to put up eye-popping numbers. In eight AFL appearances comprising 11.1 innings, Reifert registered 25 punchouts and allowed just one hit.

Reifert, who is currently on the injured list at Double-A Montgomery, discussed his wipeout slider during spring training.

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David Laurila: You have a plus-plus slider. What is the story behind it?

Evan Reifort: “I was pretty young. I was growing up playing travel ball, and I have a great uncle who was a really good pitcher back home in Iowa. His name is Ron Reifert.”

Laurila: Did your great uncle play pro ball?

Reifert: “He did not. Unfortunately, polio kind of got to him — I believe it was polio — so he was unable to go on to play pro ball, but he pitched at the University of Iowa and was really good. That’s kind of where I started learning how to throw a slider, from him. I was probably 10 or 12, and from there it’s morphed into the pitch it is today. I found a grip that I liked and have even modified it since then. It’s definitely gotten harder and sharper over the years. But yeah, all I really do is rip it and let it do its thing.” Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t like using absolutes when talking about sports on the internet. No matter how uncontroversial the take, there’s always someone out there whose whole personality is wrapped up in “No, actually Mike Trout isn’t the best center fielder in baseball” and you get yelled at.

So I’m not going to say that Nick Lodolo has been the best pitcher in baseball thus far this year. And even if I did, it wouldn’t be that momentous a statement, since he’s only made two starts so far and nobody else has made more than three. Still, through those two starts and 12 innings, he’s faced 51 batters, striking out 21 and reducing another nine to popups and softly-hit groundballs. He’s allowed just 10 hits and two runs, and has a strikeout rate over 40%.

Regardless of superlatives, certainly he’s pitched well enough to warrant both praise and examination. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re not supposed to find this charming anymore. I know that. The Era of Position Players Pitching was established all the way back in 2017, when Jordan Walker was a scant 15 years old. The shine has officially worn off watching non-pitchers huck batting practice fastballs toward the general vicinity of home plate during garbage time. But could we maybe enjoy this one, just once more, for a treat? I promise I’ll be extra grouchy once we’re done.

There are a few things that make this instance of position player pitching particularly fun. The first is that the player who took the hill is absolutely the most exciting choice possible. When the Baseball Savant arm strength leaderboard debuted in October, Nate Eaton ranked at the very top, with a 98.1 mph average throw that made Esteban Rivera weak in the knees. At the beginning of the 2022 season, Eric Longenhagen hung an 80 on Eaton’s arm, writing “Eaton has below-average offensive ability, but he can play a variety of positions and he has one of the best throwing arms in professional baseball, a rocket launcher that might merit a look on the mound if/when Eaton and the industry declare him to have plateaued as a position player.”

Luckily, we didn’t have to wait that long. On Monday, the Kansas City utilityman played the fifth different defensive position of his young career, pitching a scoreless bottom of the eighth in an 11-2 loss to the Rangers. He threw 22 pitches, striking out one and allowing two singles. Eaton threw five pitches upwards of 94 mph, while Kansas City’s starter, one Zack Greinke, topped out at 91.3 mph. It’s two days later, and Greinke’s final curveball is just now about to cross home plate. Read the rest of this entry »

Oneil Cruz’s fractured fibula is the biggest story surrounding the Pirates. On the positive side, the return of Andrew McCutchen to the fold is neat, and Tuesday night’s walk-off home run by Ji Hwan Bae was pretty cool. To these eyes, however, the most noteworthy thing about Pittsburgh thus far — even beyond the fact that the team’s 7–4 start is its best since 2018 — has been the torrid play of Bryan Reynolds. The 28-year-old outfielder has been the one of the game’s hottest hitters, and he’s done it as progress toward a contract extension has ground to a halt just when it seemed that a deal to keep him in black and gold was within reach.

Reynolds ended last weekend as one of seven players who had collected hits in every game this season (José Abreu, José Ramírez, Nolan Arenado, Randy Arozarena, Bryson Stott, and Jordan Walker were the others). He and Abreu both went hitless in Monday night’s Pirates-Astros contest, and by the close of play Tuesday, only the streaks of Stott and Walker remained intact. Still, season-opening hitting streaks come and go pretty quickly; of more interest is that Reynolds has been putting up eye-opening numbers. Through Tuesday, he’s hitting .356/.367/.778, leading the NL in slugging percentage and homers (five) and ranking fifth in WAR (0.7) and wRC+ (184). Mind you, those numbers looked even more impressive before his 1-for-8 on Monday and Tuesday nights, but the sudden itch to write about Adam Duvall, an even hotter hitter in this young season, going down with a wrist injury got in my way.

For Duvall, Reynolds, and everyone else, we’re still in Small Sample Theater territory, but as with the Red Sox slugger, some underlying numbers have me wondering if we’re seeing real improvements to his game. For starters, like Duvall, he’s cut his strikeout rate dramatically: Last year he struck out 23% of the time, and for his career he’s at 21.5%, but this year, that’s down to 10.2%. Given that strikeout rates stabilize around 60 PA and that Reynolds is at 49, this could wind up being noteworthy, though unlike Duvall, his swinging-strike rate hasn’t fallen quite so dramatically, going from 12.9% last year to 11.9% this year. His 31.1% chase rate is down 4.5 points from last year, when he tried to hack his way out of a slow start, and is just half a point lower than his career mark, but even so, he’s walking in just 4.1% of his plate appearances, less than half of his 9.7% career mark.

All of this translates to more contact than usual for Reynolds, and he’s making the most of it. Seriously: He’s hitting the ball in the air much more than ever, and his average exit velocity, barrel rate, and hard-hit rate are beyond anything in the Bryan Reynolds catalogue. Read the rest of this entry »

Jordan Walker, the Cardinals’ phenomenal young outfielder, is off to a scintillating start to the season. In his first 10 games, he’s hitting an impressive .326/.370/.512, comfortably better than league average. The Cardinals promoted Walker to the majors despite a positional logjam, and he’s done nothing to make their job easier; he looks like a foundational part of their future. And oh yeah, maybe you’ve heard, he’s on quite the hitting streak.

You probably didn’t come here for a lecture from me, but here’s a quick one about hitting streaks. I think they’re really cool. I think it’s amazing that Walker is now in second place for the longest hitting streak to start a career for players under 21 years old, and that he passed Ted Williams for that honor. That’s awesome, and I’m sure that he’ll treasure that memory for years to come. Eleven games! It’s truly amazing. I just don’t think it’s useful for my purposes, which is to wonder how good Jordan Walker is. Here’s one example of a hit that kept Walker’s streak alive, the sole hit he recorded on April 3:

That’s clearly a hit, and I’d even say that it’s a good piece of hitting. What does it have to do with how well Walker is adjusting to the majors? Not much, I’d venture to say. The streak is a tremendous achievement, it’s super cool, and I don’t think it’s worth mentioning beyond that. Read the rest of this entry »

After just two weeks of play, there are several hitters off to scorching hot starts. Some are expected; for example, Giancarlo Stanton, Freddie Freeman, and Mike Trout all have xwOBAs over .460 so far. Given their vast history of offensive prowess, it’s not surprising to see them put together a stretch like this. But if you look near the top of the xwOBA leaderboard, you might do a double take when you see some of the names aside those aforementioned stars. Without larger batted ball samples, we may not be able to draw any concrete conclusions about the unexpected players, but there are some sticky traits that are worth paying attention to as the season develops.

For this exercise, I’m going to highlight four players that have caught my eye this season and who I’ll be watching over the next few months to see if they can keep up their early performance. The criteria for picking these players were relatively loose: It could be an under-the-radar bat that has impressed me, or a veteran who has reached a new height due to an interesting adjustment. With that said, let’s jump into it. Read the rest of this entry »

If you look atop the groundball rate leaderboard, you’ll see some of the usual suspects. Josh Bell and Masataka Yoshida have hit more than two-thirds of their batted balls on the ground this year, while Eric Hosmer and Jean Segura aren’t far behind. Bell, Hosmer, and Segura have been some of the most notable groundball hitters in the majors for years, while Yoshida was a groundball menace in Japan. Even at such an early point in the season, the groundball cream is rising to the top.

At the bottom of the leaderboard, the names are a little more surprising. Noted fly ball hitters Adam Duvall and Brandon Lowe are among the bottom 10, but there are also a handful of players you wouldn’t expect to see. One such player is Daulton Varsho.

Varsho has hit five groundballs this year, good for a 20% groundball rate. Only one qualified batter, Carlos Correa, has hit fewer balls on the ground. However, it was Varsho, and not Correa, who caught my eye, because of his extreme groundball numbers at the very beginning of the season. Over his first eight games, Varsho came to the plate 32 times and put 19 balls in play. Only one was a groundball. Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday, Taylor Clarke was in quite the pickle. The Royals had tasked him with pitching the eighth inning of a tied ballgame against the Giants and it wasn’t going very well. Clarke allowed three consecutive singles to J.D. Davis, Joc Pederson, and Mike Yastrzemski, with each hit 104 mph or harder. The bases were loaded with no outs. The Giants were reading Clarke’s pitches incredibly well and he needed a solution, fast. Clearly, he found one. Clarke struck out the next three hitters in order, earning seven called or swinging strikes. Kansas City’s offense took the lead in the ninth and went on to complete the comeback victory. So what was special about the way Clarke got out of his jam? Of the 13 pitches he threw, not a single one was a fastball.

While there are many relievers who barely throw any fastballs, like Alex Colomé and Matt Wisler, Clarke isn’t one of them. He came up as a starter with Arizona throwing heaters about half the time. After being converted to the bullpen and experiencing a two-tick velocity spike, he kept up that fastball usage. Had Clarke randomly chosen pitches in line with his career averages (48.8% fastballs) during this three-batter stretch, the odds of him choosing secondaries 13 times in a row would be just .017%, or 1-in-6,000. But on Saturday, he turned to his best stuff and ended up with the best possible results.

The first hitter up with the bases loaded was infielder Thairo Estrada. Estrada likes to put balls in play, and with three ducks on the pond, balls in play often mean runs. In 2022, he combined to strike out and walk just 22.6% of the time, considerably below the league average of 30.6%. Clarke started off the at-bat with one of his two slider variants. This variant, which sits 87-90 mph with a few inches of horizontal break, has a hybrid cutter/slider shape, though he often throws it glove side just like his other, sweepier slider in the low-to-mid-80s. Clarke missed his spot and the pitch drifted over the plate, but Estrada watched it for a called strike. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, Brady Singer enjoyed a breakout season on the mound, making him a rare success story for a Royals development team that has squandered a ton of young pitching talent in recent years. They haven’t had trouble graduating pitchers into the majors; the problem has been helping them grow once they get there. So far, only Singer has made a true impact on the big league club, with fellow 2018 first-round picks Jackson Kowar, Daniel Lynch, and Kris Bubic struggling in their limited time at the highest level. But if his first two starts this year are to be believed, Bubic might be joining Singer in that breakout tier.

Bubic’s start to spring training was delayed due to some lingering shoulder soreness, which meant his spot in the rotation was up in the air until just before Opening Day, when Lynch was shut down from throwing with his own shoulder issues. In 10.1 Cactus League innings, Bubic struck out 15 to go along with seven walks, but in his first start of the season on April 4 against the Blue Jays, he allowed just two runs in five innings of work, giving up seven hits and one walk with four strikeouts. That’s a good outing against a tough offense, particularly one loaded with right-handed mashers against the lefty.

Bubic’s second start on Sunday was the real eye-opener, though: six scoreless innings against the Giants with just two hits, no walks, and nine strikeouts on his ledger, matching a career high. He had never earned more than 17 swinging strikes in a single start; he racked up 19 on Sunday and accomplished that feat in just 76 pitches. That 25% swinging-strike rate was easily the highest of any appearance in his career to go with a 43.4% CSW rate, also his best in any start.

Bubic looks like an entirely new pitcher, too. His velocity has increased across the board, his release point is completely different, his changeup has a new shape, and he introduced a new slider to his pitch mix. That’s a lot of things to track. Read the rest of this entry »