Matt Mervis didn’t get a ton of opportunities to hit at Duke University. He hit a ton this summer in his second full season of pro ball. Signed by the Chicago Cubs as a non-drafted free agent in 2020, the 24-year-old first baseman went deep 36 times across three levels — 15 of his dingers came in Triple-A — while slashing a robust .309/.379/.606. Currently competing in the Arizona Fall League, he has four home runs to go with an 1.103 OPS in 36 plate appearances with the Mesa Solar Sox.

Mervis’s ability to clear fences is his calling card, but that’s not how he views himself as a hitter.

“I have power, but I wouldn’t call myself a power hitter,” said Mervis, who went into yesterday as the AFL’s co-leader in home runs along with Heston Kjerstad. “I like to be a hitter. I hit for average and hate striking out. I try to move the ball, and if it turns into a double or a home run that’s great. I’m a big guy and hit the ball hard naturally, so it was really just simplifying my swing that led me to driving the ball more this year.”

Mervis does recognize that extra-base power is a big part of what will get him to the big leagues. At 6-foot-4, 230 pounds, slashing singles would be a path to nowhere.

“I’m a left-handed-hitting first baseman and it’s what we’re supposed to do in a lineup,” acknowledged Mervis. “That was the case long before the game turned to home runs and strikeouts. I grew up watching guys like David Ortiz, Prince Fielder, and Anthony Rizzo, a bunch of left handed hitters with a bunch of power. I don’t put pressure on myself to do that, but I obviously want to hit home runs and help us win.” Read the rest of this entry »

Framber Valdez threw a spectacular game last night. For seven innings, he bewitched, hoodwinked, and otherwise bamboozled the Yankee offense. As Alex Eisert noted, he notched a career high in swinging strikes en route to a whopping nine strikeouts.

How did he manage it? As best as I can tell, he made one key adjustment: he used his wipeout curveball to start at-bats and ended up with 16 first-pitch strikes out of 27 batters faced, plus a weak grounder that turned into slapstick comedy:

It’s particularly impressive when you consider the beginning of his outing: he started six of his first eight batters faced with a ball and looked like he might struggle to find the zone. But he stuck to his plan, and the Yankees, who had taken the first eight pitches they saw, started swinging aggressively the rest of the night. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, when I wrote about some of the league’s strongest throwers, I ended up exclusively featuring outfielders. The nature of the position is more suited to making full capacity throws than in the infield, and as a result, only outfielders ended up on the list. Because of that, I feel obligated to acknowledge and highlight some of the strongest throwers in the infield. On average, these throws won’t be quite as fast. The footwork and time required to throw the ball is one reason for that, and that will be the focus of this piece.

Similar to last time, we’ll have to sort through some qualifications on how I came up with this short list of names. The first is at least 100 throws in the infield. One thing I ran into when sorting through the leaderboard was that several players near the top were utility players, rather than just strictly infielders. That led me to using the 2B/SS/3B filter and sorting the list by the overall throws at those positions only. See the full leaderboard here.

After working that out, I wanted to select plays where a player needed their plus arm strength to get an out. For example, a shortstop and/or third baseman needs to fire a rocket when moving multiple steps to use their backhand. A second baseman needs to have the correct footwork to fire a ball when ranging up the middle or quickly spinning a double play. Those are the types of plays I’m looking for, but they were harder to find than you would expect, given how so many plays in the infield are routine. I started with about 15 players from the top 20 on the list and worked my way down to a representative sample of five. Now, let’s get into it. Read the rest of this entry »

With a massive first-pitch home run off Aaron Nola on Wednesday afternoon, Josh Bell broke an 0-for-14 slump. He went 3-for-4 in Game 2 of the NLCS, adding an RBI single in the fourth and another base hit in the seventh to go along with his second-inning home run. It was a major improvement over his performance in the first game of the series, when he went hitless in four at-bats and struck out swinging with two runners on to end the ballgame.

When Bell is hot, he can be a terrific offensive performer, and a lineup built around him, Juan Soto and Manny Machado has the potential to be one of the most powerful in baseball. That’s exactly what A.J. Preller was counting on when he pulled off the biggest summer blockbuster in recent memory. When Bell goes cold, however, he’s dead weight in the middle of the lineup.

Just take a look at his wRC+ by month:

More of his success came with the Nationals, but Bell did have a couple of strong stretches in San Diego. From August 20 to September 10, he hit for a 152 wRC+, and did so again from October 1 through the end of the season. The Padres went 14–9 during those two stretches, and Bell led the squad with 0.84 Win Probability Added. In the rest of their games post-deadline, the team went 17–18, and Bell’s -1.55 WPA ranked dead last. When their DH was hitting, the Friars had a more complete offense, and when he wasn’t, he dragged the team down with him. That trend has continued into the postseason; in Padres wins, he is batting .294/.294/.647 with three runs and four RBI (17 PA), and in losses, he’s hitting .100/.182/.100 with no runs or runs batted in (11 PA). Read the rest of this entry »

With the ALDS finally finished, I’m continuing my annual series grading each manager’s playoff decision-making. As always, I’m focusing on the lineup and pitching decisions that each manager made in the course of their series. I’m honing in on process rather than results, and taking into account the limitations of each roster.

That might mean not docking Dusty Baker, in a future edition of these report cards, for failing to bring in a lefty specialist; he doesn’t have any. It might mean taking it easy on teams with limited platoon or pinch hitting options. It doesn’t mean that you get a pass for not doing anything, though; just because a manager’s resources are limited doesn’t mean they should automatically sit on their hands. Of course, sometimes doing nothing is good, too. Leaving your excellent starter in or skipping pinch hitting when it only confers a marginal advantage can both be smart moves.

What qualifies me to issue these grades? Well, nothing really. They’re just the opinions of someone who spends a lot of time thinking about baseball. I’m sure teams are doing their own evaluations, and they probably have a better handle on the exact individual matchups, but the point is this: these decisions matter, and while the team- and consensus-building aspects of a manager’s job are far more important over a 162-game season, little edges can be decisive in a short series. A run could send you home or catapult you to glory, as these two managers will demonstrate. A note: both ALDS losers played in the three-game Wild Card round, and I’ll cover all of their decisions, starting with the most recent series. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve come to expect the characteristic intensity of the MLB postseason. The league’s best teams meeting head to head with everything on the line is bound to generate some memorable storylines, and two weeks in, the 2022 playoffs have been no exception. The top four seeds in the NL — the Dodgers, Braves, Cardinals, and Mets — were upset by the Padres and Phillies, leading to heated debate on the merits of a playoff format that remains a crapshoot. The Mariners ended their drought and beat the Blue Jays on the road to earn a playoff game in front of their long-deserving home fans before falling in the ALDS to Yordan Alvarez and, eventually, Jeremy Peña. The Yankees and Guardians traded blows for five games in the only Division Series to go the distance.

What is not a given in the playoffs is that, independent of the stakes of the game, the games themselves will be competitive. With the level of talent on the field, we expect to see some worthy contention, but it is an inevitability of the sport — maybe an inevitability of sports in general — that some games end up as back-and-forth nailbiters and others as, well, something like 8–2 in the fourth inning. The results may be the same, but baseball is, after all, about the fan experience, and it’s a heck of a lot more fun to watch when you don’t know who’s going to win. This postseason, we’ve been lucky to get more of the former than the latter. Read the rest of this entry »

The Division Series between the Astros and Mariners only went three games, but it wasn’t short on drama. Overlooked amid the extra innings madness and the late game heroics was the performance of Jose Altuve. That might be for the best, as the Astros second baseman struggled mightily:

Going 0-for-16 with six strikeouts is, to use a technical term, real bad. What was going on? Let’s start with Altuve’s plate discipline:

Read the rest of this entry »

Well folks, that’s what we call a pitcher’s duel. I don’t think there’s a universal definition for the term, but Wikipedia tells me it’s when both starting pitchers allow very few runners to reach base. That seems about right! Zack Wheeler and Yu Darvish both came up big Tuesday night in San Diego, with each starter limiting the success of the opposing team’s hitters after each offense had put up an incredible performance in their respective Division Series. As the game progressed, both attacked their foes with a variety of pitches spread across the zone. Neither was predictable, and neither gave their manager much reason to remove them, but one made a few more mistakes in a few more at-bats than the other. Those mistakes ended up being the difference in the game.

To understand exactly what happened in those at-bats — specifically, why the batter was successful — it helps to know what happened with each pitch and what the pitcher-catcher tandem’s potential thought process was for each of them. John Smoltz always sprinkles in tidbits about pitch sequencing that are worth listening to when he broadcasts a game. It’s easier said than done, but a pitcher holding back some pieces of their repertoire until later in the game — or say, a hitter’s third at-bat — is a good way to maximize deception. If there’s anyone who knows a thing or two about that, it’s Darvish. Darvish’s never-ending pitch mix allows him to change how he attacks hitters as the game progresses. In his first battle against Bryce Harper, he opted for a three-pitch mix and attacked Harper in the zone. No nibbling the first time around:

Read the rest of this entry »

The Boston Red Sox acquired a unique pitcher when they claimed Jake Reed off waivers from the Baltimore Orioles last week. They also acquired a pitcher who is heading into the offseason looking to rework a delivery that is among the funkiest in the game. As Ben Clemens showed us when writing about him last summer, the side-slinging 28-year-old right-hander has been attacking hitters from an arm slot that is anything but ordinary.

Reed’s effectiveness in the big leagues has been a mixed bag. Since debuting with the Dodgers last July, he’s held same-sided batters to a .639 OPS, but he’s also logged a 5.74 ERA over his 28 relief appearances. With designs on jumpstarting a professional career that began in 2014 when he was drafted 140th overall by the Minnesota Twins out of the University of Oregon, Reed plans to not only bring a new throwing motion with him to Boston, but a higher octane heater as well.

Reed discussed the evolution of his atypical delivery, and why it again needs to change, on the final weekend of the regular season.

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On dropping his arm angle:
“I’d pretty much always been low three-quarters. I was pitching pretty well in the minors, but in 2017 the Twins changed over their front office. Baseball was getting a lot more progressive, which sort of changed how guys are valued. I threw pretty hard — I was a mid-to-upper-90s kind of guy — but my stuff didn’t necessarily perform super well analytically. So about halfway through the 2019 season we had a long conversation and came to the idea of me dropping down sidearm and trying to create more movement on my sinker, and improve my slider. That was the first time I really made that transition from how I’d thrown my whole life. Read the rest of this entry »

Ah yes, the postseason. As Jay Jaffe noted yesterday, it’s nothing like the regular season. Here, managers have to grind out every edge possible. Continuing a series that I started last year, I’ll be assigning managerial grades for each vanquished team. They’ll cover on-field managerial decisions: chiefly, lineup construction, pinch hitting, and pitcher usage.

My goal is to rank each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things – getting team buy-in for new strategies and unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is one I find particularly valuable – but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for that.

Another thing I’m trying to avoid? Relying too much on “leaning on your trusted veterans.” That’s never really been a strategy I love without knowing the underlying data, but mentioning it lets me drop this delightful statistic: “proven veterans” Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, and Charlie Morton each have a 13.50 ERA this postseason. That’s not in aggregate; each of them has that exact mark. The playoffs are about overpowering your opponent in big spots. Which pitchers and hitters teams use to do so is entirely up to them, but if the justification for a move is “but he’s a veteran,” I’m going to judge that decision harshly. Let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »