Slade Cecconi must have been nervous. Staring down the first batter of his big league career, the 24-year-old couldn’t quite get on top of a 2-2 curveball. The looping pitch floated harmlessly past LaMonte Wade Jr., well above the strike zone for ball three. Wade called time out, and Cecconi used the respite to take a few calming breaths before returning to the rubber.

For the sixth pitch in a row, catcher Jose Herrera set up on the outside corner. For the sixth pitch in a row, Cecconi overthrew it, yanking a four-seamer toward the left-hand batter’s box. Wade had no time to react as it screamed in toward his hands at 94.8 mph. Only after the ball had made contact did he recoil, leaning away so far and so fast that he had to start jogging backward toward first base just to keep from falling over. Then things started to get stuck. Read the rest of this entry »

The Reds are on the verge of their first playoff appearance since 2020 and their first real playoff appearance since 2013, when they lost the loudest baseball game in the history of Pittsburgh. (I go back and forth on whether 2020 counts as a real postseason, depending on what’s expedient for my argument. In this case, I think you have to score at least one run for it to count as a playoff appearance.) And in pursuit of that end, the Reds’ ownership and front office have elected… not to send reinforcements. They traded for Sam Moll at the deadline, but that’s it. The Reds are more relevant than they’ve been in a decade, and this poor team is getting Siege of Jadotville’d. Water is running low, and help is not coming.

So it’s all up to you, Andrew Abbott. Read the rest of this entry »

Watching the ebbs and flows of Christian Yelich’s career has been very interesting. From 2018 to 2019, he was one of the best players in baseball, winning the NL MVP in 2018 and placing second in the voting the following year. He was sending balls to the moon like he never had before (some of that might have owed to the livelier ball, but Yelich also hit the ball very hard those years, and continues to). Then from 2020 to 2022, he was just an average dude. He had a 108 wRC+ over that span, swatting just 35 home runs and accruing 4.4 total WAR.

Typically, I’d say that a player like Yelich already has a blueprint for success. Faced with a few down seasons, his focus should be on regaining the traits that had served him so well previously. However, a lot of what we know about the Brewers outfielder needs to be thrown out the window. This is a different player from the one we saw during Yelich’s MVP run, and he’s also a different player from the one we’ve watched the last two and a half years. Instead of figuring out how he could get back to his old self, Yelich seems to have decided to blend all of his previous years together to create a new version. And with a 129 wRC+ and 3.6 WAR so far this season, Yelich has shown he can still be a star player — it just looks different. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a true statement: Luis Medina has not been very good this year. You can say that just by looking at his numbers: a 5.35 ERA and a 4.83 FIP. He’s running a so-so 22.8% strikeout rate and walking a worrisome 10.8% of batters. If you looked up replacement level in the dictionary… well, you probably wouldn’t find anything, because that’s not the kind of thing that dictionaries define. But Medina’s performance has been almost exactly replacement level this year.

Here’s another true statement: Medina is great right now. That’s kind of confusing, what with all the bad statistics I just hit you with in the last paragraph, but I was cheating. Those are Medina’s full-season numbers, but he’s been an absolute beast in the last month. I’m not talking about some small-sample ERA mirage, either, though his ERA is a tidy 2.86. He’s running a 2.23 FIP, and he’s doing it by striking out 30% of opposing batters and walking only 5.6%. In other words, he’s an ace — or at least, he was one in July. Sounds like it’s time for an investigation. Read the rest of this entry »

When anyone but an absolute superstar gets traded at the deadline, we’ve come to expect that the player’s new team sees something they can improve. Thousands of scouts, data analysts, and coaches across the sport, poring over film and charts, looking for the one player they can point to and say, with total confidence, “I can fix him.” Sometimes it’s as simple as one conversation, one adjustment to a pitch grip or a player’s swing timing or his position on the rubber, and it all clicks. Sometimes in the player’s first game in his new environs.

Predicting and identifying these adjustments can make for a fun metagame around the trade deadline, but I’ve learned the hard way not to trust the headline-making debut. In 2019, the Astros made a deadline move for Aaron Sanchez, the onetime Blue Jays standout whose career had stagnated. Sanchez brought an ERA over 6.00 into his Houston debut, and promptly threw six innings of no-hit ball. You could not ask for a clearer example of a player being remade overnight by an organization that knew what to do with him.

After the no-hit bid, Sanchez made just three more starts for Houston, in which his ERA was 7.11. He pitched for three teams in 2021 and 2022, posting an ERA of 5.29. (But just a 4.32 FIP! I can still fix him!) Two weeks ago, he was released from the Twins’ Triple-A affiliate. Now, when you look Sanchez up on the internet, Wikipedia assumes you’re looking for celebrity chef Aarón Sánchez, who is definitely the best MasterChef judge but has never, to my knowledge, no-hit anything.

I lied, though. I haven’t learned a damn thing, because I’m going to get carried away over Lance Lynn’s first start with the Dodgers. I am ready to believe again. Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros had quite a day on Tuesday, and not just because they reunited with Justin Verlander via a trade with the Mets, nine months after he helped them win a World Series. In another callback to last year’s success, they showcased the quality of their homegrown starting pitching as Framber Valdez no-hit the Guardians. Unlike last year, when Cristian Javier threw combined no-hitters (plural!) against the Yankees on June 25 and the Phillies in Game 4 of the World Series on November 2, Valdez did it solo — making him the first Astro to throw a complete-game no-hitter since Verlander himself, on September 1, 2019.

Prior to Tuesday night, the 29-year-old Valdez had already stepped into the breach to front the Astros’ rotation after Verlander’s offseason departure. He earned All-Star honors for the second year in a row, his 3.19 FIP and 3.2 WAR both led the staff’s starters, and his 3.29 ERA trailed only rookie J.P. France, who had thrown 34.1 fewer innings (91.2 to 126). He had even notched a complete-game shutout already, on May 21 against the A’s. It was the second of his career; he had one against the Tigers last September 12.

Still, on Tuesday night Valdez was even more dominant than in those shutouts. He “only” struck out seven batters, but six of them were from among the first 12 Guardians he faced, as if to make it abundantly clear this wasn’t Cleveland’s night. He only went to a three-ball count twice, and walked just one batter: Oscar Gonzalez, who led off the fifth by winning an eight-pitch battle, a particularly tenacious plate appearance for a hacker who entered the night with a .229 on-base percentage and a 3.6% walk rate. Five pitches and one out later, Gonzalez was erased by a 4-6-3 double play off the bat of Will Brennan, meaning Valdez faced the minimum of 27 on the night. Read the rest of this entry »

The Phillies and Tigers are at it again. After a five-player swap back in January, Dave Dombrowski is making another trade with his former club. With the top five teams in the NL wild card race currently separated by a grand total of one game in the loss column, the Phillies, currently in command of the second wild card spot by a whopping half a game, decided to grab a reinforcement for the rotation and bullpen, trading prospect Hao-Yu Lee to the Tigers in exchange for right-hander Michael Lorenzen. They also designated veteran utility man Josh Harrison for assignment to make room for Lorenzen on the 40-man roster. And at least one Phillies player is very excited about this trade:

Brandon Marsh, who played with Michael Lorenzen in 2022 with the Angels, says he is a “great pitcher, an incredible teammate, and has big biceps.”

“He’s gonna be a great fit here. I’m super excited to see him again and give him a hug. I hope he picks me up. He’s strong.”

— Alex Coffey (@byalexcoffey) August 1, 2023

The 31-year-old Lorenzen, who will be a free agent this winter, is in the midst of his best season since 2020, running a 3.58 ERA and a 3.88 FIP. That improvement has largely come via limiting walks: after averaging a 9.9% walk rate from 2017 to ’19, he’s at 6.5% this season. He’s done that not by increasing his chase rate, but simply by throwing more pitches in the zone, with his zone rate rising from 39.8% in 2022 to 45.7% this year. Lorenzen throws four pitches more than 10% of the time — four-seamer, slider, changeup, and sinker — and is throwing all of them in the zone more often this season than last. In doing so, he traded some whiffs for some called strikes, a swap that has so far paid off. He’s also improved dramatically against lefties, with a .279 wOBA against them this year, down from a career mark of .323.

There’s a troubling trend worth noting, though. Lorenzen’s 4.80 DRA is higher than his 2022 mark of 4.32. His average exit velocity and barrel rate are at career highs, and while his .323 wOBAcon is right in line with last year’s .329 mark, his .362 xwOBAcon is the highest since his rookie season in 2015. Lorenzen might be getting a little lucky on balls in play or getting a little extra help from his defense. Both of those tricks will be harder to pull off at Citizens Bank Park than they were at Comerica Park. Still, it might help your wOBAcon just a bit when the center fielder is willing to run through a brick wall for you. Read the rest of this entry »

The Atlanta Braves made another fine-tuning move on Tuesday, bringing in veteran left-hander Brad Hand from Colorado in exchange for minor league right-hander Alec Barger. Hand joins his ninth big league club – his seventh since the pandemic-shortened 2020 season – where he’ll factor into a righty-heavy bullpen stocked with veterans. (With his latest relocation, Hand is a lock for the Immaculate Grid Hall of Fame, though Rich Hill was not to be outdone and found himself yet another team Tuesday afternoon.)

The Braves, who are just 7-8 since the All-Star break, already had significant pitching help coming by way of the injured list. They activated lefty A.J. Minter on Monday and stand to get Max Fried back soon, with Dylan Lee and Kyle Wright hopefully returning in the coming weeks as well. But Hand gives them another veteran option with just about every type of experience a relief pitcher can offer. After acquiring backup infielder Nicky Lopez – the third Lopez to get dealt at this year’s deadline – for the recently-acquired Taylor Hearn on Sunday, the Hand deal is another low-cost upgrade to a team that is fully intent on making a run at a championship this October. At season’s end, Hand and the Braves have what is now a $7 million mutual option for 2024, with a $500,000 buyout.

Hand’s 2023 isn’t particularly shiny, but some of that is the result of one particularly bad outing. He’s given up 18 earned runs in 35.2 innings over 40 outings, but four of those came on July 2, when he walked three and gave up a grand slam to Jake Marisnick in Denver. Take that line off his game log and he’d have a 3.63 ERA instead of his actual 4.54 mark (next to a 4.03 FIP and 4.07 xFIP), while his walk rate would drop from 10.2% to 8.7%. He’s pretty clearly not the same pitcher he was during an elite 2017-19 run that sent him to three straight All-Star Games, but he hasn’t lost much velocity since those days. His sweeper has been less effective than in previous years and is breaking less, though some of that difference may be a result of an uptick in velocity. Read the rest of this entry »

The Cardinals are officially engaging in a moderate short-term rebuild, trading Jordan Hicks to Toronto for pitching prospects Sem Robberse and Adam Kloffenstein, and Jordan Montgomery to Texas for righty Tekoah Roby, infielder Thomas Saggese, and reliever John King. Each of these players could suit up for the Cardinals in the big leagues within the next 12 months, especially King (already a big leaguer) and the two pitchers coming back from Toronto, who will likely be added to the 40-man roster after the season. Roby and Saggese have spent their 2023 seasons at Double-A Frisco and are within range of the majors even though they don’t have to be put on the 40-man until after the 2024 slate. You can see where each of the newly-acquired prospects falls on the Cardinals list over on The Board.

Let’s start by going over the Montgomery return, since the most significant prospect acquired by the Cardinals comes over in that deal. Roby, 21, moved onto the Top 100 prospects list when I updated the Rangers system a couple of weeks ago, and he would have been even higher if not for his current shoulder injury, which shelved him in early June. Before he was shut down, Roby was consistently working with four plus pitches. He was sitting 94–95 mph with riding life, bending in one of the nastier curveballs in the minors, tilting in a similarly shaped slider in the mid-80s, and turning over a tailing low-80s changeup, all of which were capable of missing bats. He looked like a contender’s four-pitch, mid-rotation starter, like a less physical Hunter Brown.

Roby’s delivery does have some violence, but he’s always thrown strikes in spite of this. He is slightly undersized (but well-built) at 6-foot-1 and has now had arm injuries in two of his three pro seasons, so there’s definitely relief risk here despite his strike-throwing track record. From a stuff and pitch execution standpoint, he is where Jack Leiter was expected to be when he was drafted. On upside, Roby is a huge get for the Cardinals and could be the big league club’s best starting pitcher within a year or two. Once healthy, he has a chance to kick down the door, though shoulder issues can be particularly scary and destabilizing to a young pitcher’s career. Read the rest of this entry »

Figuratively speaking, Bryce Elder is pitching well under par. In 21 starts for the Atlanta Braves, the 24-year-old right-hander is 8-2 with a 3.18 ERA. Killing worms is his M.O. Relying heavily on a modified two-seamer, Elder has a 53.6% ground-ball rate that ranks fifth-best among qualified hurlers. Earlier this month, he was named an N.L. All-Star in his first full big-league season.

When he’s not sinking fastballs, he’s sinking putts. Atlanta’s fifth-round pick in the 2020 draft, the University of Texas product is an accomplished golfer who shoots in the mid-to-low 70s. More on that in a moment.

Elder learned his sinker late in his freshman year of college. He’d thrown a four-seamer in high school, but lacking plus velocity — his heater was, and remains, in the 90-mph range — an adjustment was in order. His pitching coach showed him a one-seam grip, he threw a few off the mound, and the dividends soon became apparent.

The improvement was evident in the numbers. The Decatur, Texas native had a 5.55 ERA as a four-seam freshman. As a one-seam sophomore, he had a 2.93 ERA. As a junior — this in the truncated COVID season — that number was 2.08. Success in pro ball followed, but stagnation was never part of the plan. In a continued effort to get better, the righty subsequently tweaked his sinker grip. Read the rest of this entry »