For half of Thursday’s game against Boston, it seemed like the good times had finally stopped rolling for the Tampa Bay Rays. The hitherto unhittable Jeffrey Springs left the game with ulnar neuritis—nerve irritation in his elbow, but it’s scarier when you say it like the name of the chancellor of a minor Star Trek world. Corey Kluber had held Tampa Bay’s vaunted offense to just one run through four innings.

Then the Rays burst out for seven runs as if out of nowhere. The highlight of the inning was probably Manuel Margot’s pinch-hit RBI bunt. Bunting for a hit with two outs and the bases loaded is the kind of thing you do when a mystical hooded figure grants you the power of telekinesis and you want to see if it’s real or you’re being pranked. That’s just how things are going for Tampa Bay right now.

But the biggest hit of the inning, according to WPA, was Brandon Lowe’s seeing-eye single three batters prior, which tied the game with two outs. If the Rays are actually going to continue on as the best team in baseball, Lowe is one of their most important players. Read the rest of this entry »

In case you were worried that Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge somehow forgot how to be excellent at baseball since the end of last season, fear not. The 2021 and ’22 American League Most Valuable Players are off to strong starts this season, highlighted by a shared distinction: both have gotten on base in every game thus far, extending lengthy streaks that have carried over from last season.

Admittedly, on-base streaks aren’t as sexy as hitting streaks. Nobody rhapsodizes about them or scrutinizes their mathematical unlikelihood the way they do Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak from 1941. Comparatively few people — professionals as well as fans — could tell you who holds the record for consecutive games getting on base. The answer is Ted Williams in 84 straight games from July 1 through September 27 in 1949, which makes perfect sense given that the Splendid Splinter is the career on-base percentage leader (.482). DiMaggio is a distant second at 74 games, with his more famous streak occupying games 2–57 of the longer one. Williams also owns the third-longest streak at 72 games bridging 1941 (the year he hit .406) and ’42, but as for the fourth-longest one — and the longest of the post-1960 expansion era — it belongs to Orlando Cabrera, he of the career .317 OBP and 83 wRC+. Cabrera reached base in 63 straight games from April 25 through July 6 in 2006. Go figure. Read the rest of this entry »

If there’s one thing I remember the Cubs of recent vintage for, it’s winning the curse-breaking World Series in 2016. What, you were expecting something else? But if there are *two* things I remember the Cubs of recent vintage for, the second one is failing to sign their marquee players to contract extensions. Kris Bryant, Javier Báez, Willson Contreras, Anthony Rizzo: all four felt like candidates for a contract extension that made them a lifetime Cub, with a jersey retirement ceremony and fawning coverage from national media for their sparkling career.

Each of those four plays for another team now. The Cubs never turned that dynamic core into a second championship, or even a second World Series appearance. For a team that had dynastic aspirations, it’s a strange look. To the Cubs’ credit, it’s also a look they seem intent on changing. After signing Nico Hoerner to a three-year extension, they took care of another core player, agreeing to a three-year extension with Ian Happ worth $61 million, as Bleacher Nation’s Michael Cerami first reported.

Happ represents a bridge between the 2016 squad that has now mostly departed and the modern-day Cubs team. He debuted in 2017, and while he spent most of ’19 in the minors, he’s otherwise been a fixture in the Chicago lineup ever since. He’s also been a fixture in the field, though not always in the same place. In 2022, however, he settled into an everyday left field role and put up his best season as a professional.

A quick look at Happ’s statline might leave you wanting. He doesn’t hit a ton of home runs or get on base at an unbelievable clip. He doesn’t have a shockingly low strikeout rate for modern baseball. He simply does everything well, with no real holes in his game other than a slightly elevated strikeout rate, and that adds up to solid overall performance even without anything that will blow you away. Here, take a look at it in percentile form, as compared to all qualified hitters:

The funny thing about those numbers is that Happ’s game doesn’t feel middle-of-the-road at all. He’s capable of enormous top-end power but until 2022 had paired that intermittent thump with plenty of empty swings. His career swinging-strike rate is roughly 14%; he shaved that to 11.8%, and the hits flowed like wine. That’s how you can post your lowest career ISO and beat your career batting line anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »