In his recent piece about umpire accuracy, Davy Andrews noted that plate umpires correctly called 99.26% of heart zone pitches in 2023. When I first read that number, I didn’t think missed calls in the heart zone warranted any closer investigation. For most of us, ninety-nine point anything is as good as 100; you don’t spend much time worrying about the 0.01% of germs Purell can’t kill. Then again, if you were to consider the sheer amount of bacteria on your hands at any given moment, you might opt for a second squirt of sanitizer. A tiny percentage of a tremendous number is still going to be a pretty big number. The same is true for missed calls in the heart zone. There aren’t quite as many pitches in an MLB season as there are germs on your phone screen, but there are enough that a few tenths of percent of heart zone offerings still represents a pretty hefty figure. In 2023, plate umpires watched 381 pitches sail over the heart of the plate without signaling a strike. When you frame it that way (pun absolutely intended), it actually sounds pretty bad.

I wasn’t nearly as surprised to learn that plate umpires missed 428 calls in the chase zone last season. Offerings in the chase zone are designed to look hittable out of the pitcher’s hand. An especially talented catcher can make them look hittable as they reach his glove, too. Meanwhile, a batter might like to earn a few extra balls inside the zone, but he doesn’t have the same influence over calls as do his opponents. Besides, if a hitter recognizes that a pitch is coming for the heart zone, he’s not going to wriggle and contort his body in hopes of inducing a missed call – he’s going to swing. To that end, batters are much more likely to swing in the heart zone than the chase zone, which means that on a rate basis, umpires miss significantly more calls over the heart of the plate because there are fewer total pitches there that need to be called. While 381 and 428 are similar figures, batters took 2.4 times as many pitches in the chase zone as in the heart zone. Apparently, it’s harder than I thought to call strikes what they are. Read the rest of this entry »

Even with an extra day in February this year, Matt Chapman remains unsigned, his free agency having lingered past the start of exhibition season. Admittedly, the soon-to-be-31-year-old third baseman is coming off of an uneven season marked by a late slump related to a finger injury, but he’s been reliably productive throughout his seven-year career, with good-to-great defense bolstering his value at the plate. Meanwhile, his former (?) team, the Blue Jays — who reportedly offered him a nine-figure extension before he hit free agency — have cobbled together an uninspiring solution at third base.

Chapman isn’t the only remaining free agent who could provide a significant upgrade, but he’s by far the best position player remaining on the shelves, and the combination of his absence and the Blue Jays’ needs stands out as I turn to the American League edition of my roundup of the most glaring holes on contending teams (the National League edition is here). For this exercise, I’ve highlighted the spots that per our projections — which combine ZiPS and Steamer as well as playing time estimates from RosterResource — fall below a combined 2.0 WAR on teams whose Playoff Odds sit at or above 25%.

Why 2.0 WAR? That’s the rough equivalent of average play across a full season, but because of the general tendency to overproject playing time and keep even the weakest teams with positive WARs at each position (in reality over 10% of them will finish in the red), our position player Depth Chart values at the team level are inflated by about 20%. That is, instead of having a total of 1,000 WAR projected across the 30 teams, and 57% of that (570 WAR) allocated to position players, our Depth Chart values currently add up to about 682 WAR. Thus, I am discounting the team values that you see on the Depth Chart pages by 20%, and focusing on the lowest-ranked contenders among those whose adjusted values fall below that 2.0 WAR threshold. The individual WAR values cited will remain as they are on the Depth Chart pages, however, and it’s worth noting that many of the players here — particularly youngsters with shorter track records, including some from our Top 100 Prospects list — don’t project particularly well but still have considerable upside. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s almost March! It’s time for the weather to feel like it should be changing, only for it to not really change for a couple more weeks. It’s time for the very first baseball of the year. It’s time for massive overreactions to the tiniest sample sizes imaginable. With that in mind, sound the alarm: Spencer Strider threw three curveballs! “What’s that,” you say? “Spencer Strider doesn’t throw a curveball,” you say? Welcome to 2024, my friend, where anything is possible (except for opaque pants, apparently).

Earlier this month, there was some confusion about the pitch, as Strider indicated that he was simply playing with the shape of his slider. However, since then, both he and Brian Snitker have confirmed that the pitch is a curveball. He’s thrown it in live batting practice and in Saturday’s spring training game against the Rays. It’s the second pitch in the video below:

Olson and Strider.

Nice battle. pic.twitter.com/X5F0NXb0ue

— Grant McAuley (@grantmcauley) February 19, 2024

Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday, the Baltimore Orioles signed two veterans — pitcher Julio Teheran and second baseman Kolten Wong — to minor league contracts with non-roster spring training invites. The Teheran signing has a pretty obvious logic: The veteran right-hander hasn’t been anything like a frontline starter in the majors since about 2016, or even a reliable rotation option since 2019.

But despite having come up with the Braves around the same time as Lew Burdette, Teheran is still only 33. He threw 71 2/3 competent innings for the Brewers last year, with only a 17.4% strikeout rate but a 4.40 ERA, which will play for a guy on a tryout. After the Corbin Burnes trade, the Orioles — who wanted badly for starting pitching in 2023 — had assembled a formidable front four of Burnes, Kyle Bradish, Grayson Rodriguez, and John Means. But Bradish and Means both suffered health setbacks that’ll at the very least delay their ramp-up for the season.

In short: The Orioles just had two rotation spots open up suddenly and Teheran was available, presumably cheap, and capable of sucking up major league innings. It’s a bit harder to see the need for Wong, who last year had a wRC+ of just 48 and was nearly a win below replacement in just 250 plate appearances.

More to the point, the Orioles need another infielder like they need a poke in the eye. Read the rest of this entry »

We will not be breaking new ground today. What you read in this article won’t change the way you understand baseball. However, it might help you to appreciate a few baseball players for who they are, and that strikes me as a noble goal. A couple weeks ago, Ben Clemens introduced Whomps Per Whiff, a stat that divides barrels by whiffs in order to show “how often you absolutely whomp the ball, as compared to how often your swing results in nothing but a tiny gust of air.” It was a remarkably simple way of looking at hitting, and the leaderboard featured some of the best hitters in baseball. It was also a fun article, and I agreed with several of its underlying premises:

• If there’s one thing baseball doesn’t have enough of, it’s statistics.
• Anybody can make up a statistic, as long as they have a dream in their heart and a copy of Microsoft Excel.
• It’s important that those statistics have silly names. That’s why I’ve been lobbying to have people pronounce wRC+ as “Work-Plus,” preferably in a Rihanna voice.
• The word whomp is decidedly fun.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, the Giants had a bit of a run scoring problem. Still, for much of the season, their middle-of-the-pack offense proved to be sufficient thanks to an excellent pitching staff; in early August, our playoff odds had them with an 80% chance of reaching the postseason. But from there, the bats went silent, as San Francisco rounded out the season with a team wRC+ of 83, losing out on not just a playoff spot but also a winning record. These struggles gave the Giants a clear area to upgrade during the offseason, and they did just that, kicking off their winter by signing contact machine Jung Hoo Lee, then later adding thunderous slugger Jorge Soler to the mix.

With these new faces on the roster, let’s think about what the Giants’ everyday lineup will look like. They have clear starters at each up-the-middle position, with Lee in center field, Thairo Estrada and Marco Luciano as the double play combo on the infield, and Patrick Bailey catching. Thanks to comments from general manager Farhan Zaidi, we know the outfield corners will primarily be manned by Mike Yastrzemski and Michael Conforto, with Soler serving as an everyday DH. This leaves the corner infield spots to be staffed by LaMonte Wade Jr., Wilmer Flores, and J.D. Davis. Read the rest of this entry »

The Colorado Rockies are a bit of a laughingstock at the moment. I say this intending no undue disrespect; from a player evaluation and roster-building standpoint, they’re one of the handful of organizations in baseball that doesn’t meet the bare standard of competence. They’ve missed the playoffs five years running and lost 197 games over the past two seasons.

Unfortunately, this fallow period is the historical norm in Colorado. The Rockies strung together a pair of surprising playoff appearances in 2017 and 2018; apart from those two campaigns, which netted a total of one playoff win, the Rockies haven’t finished over .500 since 2010. In 31 seasons, they’ve never won the NL West.

And there isn’t really an end in sight. No Orioles-style bumper crop of prospects that can turn 100 losses to 100 wins in 18 months. Our playoff odds didn’t give the Rockies the dreaded goose egg, but it came down to the wire. The Rockies are projected to go 63-99, with a 0.1% chance of making the postseason. Both numbers are the worst in baseball. The projected 31-game gap to first place isn’t the largest in the league, if only because the Nationals are just as bad and the computers see the Braves as better than the Dodgers. (So do I, Ohtani and all, for what it’s worth.) Read the rest of this entry »

Zack Wheeler has arguably been the best pitcher in baseball over the past four seasons. Since joining the Philadelphia Phillies prior to the truncated 2020 campaign, the 33-year-old right-hander has made 101 starts and boasts a 3.06 ERA, a 2.90 FIP, and a 26.7% strikeout rate. Moreover, his 19.3 WAR over that span is tops among his contemporaries.

A thirst to continually get better has helped bring Wheeler to the pinnacle of his profession. Never entirely satisfied with the depth and quality of his arsenal, he’s always looking for a new edge, whether it’s an additional weapon or an upgrade to one already in his toolbox. Just last year he added a sweeper, and opposing hitters can expect to see yet another option when he takes the mound in 2024.

Wheeler discussed his growth as a pitcher, as well as his goals going forward, last week at the Phillies’ spring training complex in Clearwater.

———

David Laurila: How have you evolved as a pitcher over the years?

Zack Wheeler: “I’ve developed more pitches since I got drafted. Everything has gotten crisper. After my TJ [in 2015], I was able to gain some command, which I didn’t have before. So pairing the repertoire with command took me to that next level. Really, a lot of it has just been repetition and learning, and from there putting it all together.” Read the rest of this entry »

Spring training is in full swing, and while there’s still a trickle of higher-profile free agents such as Cody Bellinger and Tim Anderson finding homes — not to mention a handful of unsigned ones, from NL Cy Young winner Blake Snell and postseason stud Jordan Montgomery on down — most teams are taking shape, albeit with plenty to sort out while in camp. Still, all but the powerhouses have some lineup holes remaining, and while they may not be likely to open their checkbooks to land the likes of Matt Chapman, it’s worth keeping their vulnerabilities in mind.

To that end, I wanted to revisit an exercise I performed last year, one that bears more than a passing resemblance to the annual Replacement Level Killers series I roll out prior to the trade deadline. This one is a little different, as it comes prior to the season and relies entirely on our projections, which combine ZiPS and Steamer as well as playing time estimates from RosterResource. Those projections also drive our Playoff Odds.

There are a couple of wrinkles to note here. Where last year and for the in-season series I have generally used a 10% chance of reaching the playoffs as a cutoff for what we might loosely define as a contender, this year’s odds are distributed such that only four teams (the A’s, Nationals, Rockies, and White Sox) fall below that threshold. Thus I’ve raised the cutoff to 25%, leaving the Angels, Pirates, and Royals below the bar but including the Red Sox (25.6% at this writing) and Reds (25.7%), both of which forecast for 80 wins. Gotta love this expanded playoff system, right? Ugh. Read the rest of this entry »

Travis Bazzana, the no. 2 draft prospect on The Board at the moment, had a big day Sunday against Oklahoma State. In four at-bats, the Oregon State second baseman hit four balls 108 mph or harder, coming away with a double and two home runs for his trouble. The first of those home runs was crushed so hard that the outfielders didn’t bother chasing it — one of baseball’s great subtle aesthetic signifiers. More than that, the DJ at Globe Life Field was able to spin up the theme from The Natural before the ball even landed:

And now Travis Bazzana gets in on the action!https://t.co/a1pkN1nG65#GoBeavs pic.twitter.com/SOlYsavVyZ

— Oregon State Baseball (@BeaverBaseball) February 25, 2024

That’s how you know it’s gone. Read the rest of this entry »