Matt Vierling has been a versatile player for the Philadelphia Phillies this season. Primarily a center fielder, the 25-year-old University of Notre Dame product has also seen action in the outfield corners, as well as at first, second, and third base. He’s also capable with the bat. While not yet fully established against big league pitching, Vierling has a 95 wRC+ in 229 plate appearances with the NL East club, plus the potential to produce at a higher level as he matures.
Vierling discussed his simple-meets-cerebral approach, and how he’s evolved since entering pro ball as fifth-round draft pick four years ago, during spring training.
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David Laurila: Let’s start with one of my favorite Talks Hitting openers. Do you approach hitting as more of an art, or as more of a science?
Matt Vierling: “I would lean more towards art, although I see both sides. It’s definitely science with the mechanics; if you don’t make the right swing, there’s a mechanical reason why. But when you’re up there and in the flow of things, it’s more like an art. I’d have to lean more in that direction.”
Laurila: This is maybe a hard question to answer, but how would you describe your art?
Vierling: “That is a hard one. I guess it would be being in rhythm — a lot of rhythm and a lot of timing. It’s not so much dancing with the pitcher, but kind of just being in his rhythm, being on time with him.” Read the rest of this entry »
Ty France was named to the American League All-Star team this past Sunday. Added when Mike Trout bowed out due to injury, the Seattle Mariners first baseman didn’t simply merit the honor, his addition was overdue. Statistically the best hitter on baseball’s hottest team — 14 straight wins heading into the break! — France is slashing .308/.376/.470, with club-bests in both wOBA (.369) and wRC+ (148).
He’s not a flash in the pan. A 34th-round pick by the San Diego Padres in 2015 out of San Diego State University, France has long shown an ability to square up baseballs. A .300/.388/.463 hitter over all professional levels, all he’s really needed was the opportunity.
“That’s really all it is,” France said prior to a game at Fenway Park in late May. “Honestly, it’s being able to play every day — being in the lineup and getting those consistent reps — more than anything else. This game is a lot of ups and downs, and the more comfortable you can be, the more you’re going to find yourself in a good spot.” Read the rest of this entry »
It’s a good thing that baseball writers don’t get tested on our ability to do fractions. Since time immemorial, we’ve called the All-Star break the halfway mark of the season. It’s not. Every team has played at least 90 games, even in a season with a delayed start. In fact, this is the season where calling the All-Star break the halfway mark would make most sense, and it’s still wrong.
Why do we do it? Partially, it’s because it sure would be convenient if the break really did mark the halfway point. Dividing the season into two halves makes for some fun analysis, and it works a lot better when the division occurs at a point with an event around it, rather than some random Tuesday in early July. It’s also because it creates something interesting to write about during a gap when game play would otherwise be stopped. There’s dead air every year around this time; filling it with “in the first half of the season” stories makes good sense.
I’m rambling, though. The point is, it’s the All-Star break, and I want to write an article about terrible swings. What was I going to call it, the worst swings of the first 55.5% of the season? That’s not catchy enough. “First half” just sounds better. And so here, perpetuating a bad sportswriter generalization, are the worst swings of the first half of the season.
A few ground rules: I’m focusing on swings at fastballs. Bad swings at breaking pitches are funny, but they’re understandable. Those pitches were designed to deceive, and they accomplished their goal. Sure, maybe swinging at a slider that bounces in the opposite batter’s box isn’t a good look, but I can understand how a hitter might end up there. Baseball is an unfair game. The pitches move funny. Read the rest of this entry »
All-Star Week may be a relaxing midseason respite for most players, but for front offices, it’s business as usual. For the Padres, it may be a high-stakes one, as they’re reportedly closing in on a long-term deal with their best starting pitcher, Joe Musgrove. Without a deal, he hits free agency for the first time in his career, and there’s not much that teams like less than being drawn into a bidding war over their ace.
The starting pitchers the Padres have acquired over the last few years have mixed in many lows with their highs, but Musgrove has been rock-solid in mustard-and-brown, putting up a 2.90 ERA, a 3.48 FIP, and a hair under six WAR in 47 starts since coming over from the Pirates. During last season’s late-year debacle that saw San Diego in desperate enough straits to sign Jake Arrieta as a free agent and throw him into the rotation, Musgrove was a rare example of solidity, with only one truly awful start in the last month of the season. While he’s lost some strikeouts from 2021, he’s also bid adieu to some of the walks — not an unpleasant tradeoff, given that he ranks fifth among qualifying starters in lowest average exit velocity at 86.7 mph.
Fewer walks and strikeouts have allowed Musgrove to get through innings slightly more efficiently. As a result, he’s averaged almost a full inning per start more than last year while throwing just three more pitches per outing. Getting through the sixth more often has resulted in his quality start percentage shooting up from 48% to 88%; among MLB qualifiers, only Framber Valdez has racked up a higher rate. Musgrove’s five-inning loss to the Rockies last Wednesday was the first time he failed to finish six innings this season. This durability and consistency are crucial to the Padres, given their experience last season when they tried to keep the rotation’s inning count low in the early going, resulting in an exhausted bullpen breaking down by July.
With the trade deadline fast approaching, getting some certainty about Musgrove’s future with the club has quite a bit of value. The Padres seem likely to add a bat, and getting a better idea of how many pitchers they’ll need to replace over the next few years should provide some guidance on which prospects they can afford to give up. Sean Manaea and Mike Clevinger are also free agents after this season, and Blake Snell and Yu Darvish will be after 2023, so getting Musgrove inked for most of the rest of the decade takes at least one problem off their plate.
So, what kind of deal is Musgrove likely looking at? Let’s fire up ZiPS and run him through the mathematical wringer. Read the rest of this entry »
Unless you count Stephen Strasburg’s much-hyped debut, a top pitching prospect’s first start usually doesn’t have much to write home about. While talented, the player in question is understandably an unfinished product who’s facing big league hitters for the first time, in addition to fighting off nerves and perhaps pressure to perform. If you’re looking for some razzle-dazzle, it’s best to wait out a season of adjustments, maybe two. I mean, just look at how Shane McClanahan is taking off this season!
At a glance, Max Meyer’s debut is emblematic of the rookie pitcher’s all-too-common plight. Sure, he did strike out five and hold his own through five innings, but things quickly unraveled afterward. In the top of the sixth, the Phillies got to see Meyer for a third time, which resulted in a home run, walk, and a double. Richard Bleier then took over, but the lefty allowed both runners to score, ballooning Meyer’s earned run total to five. You never got the sense that Meyer was in control of the Phillies, and you couldn’t be blamed for thinking he was ill-prepared.
But c’mon, FanGraphs doesn’t just stop at the box score. From a different angle, Meyer’s debut is one of the more striking ones in recent memory. Read the rest of this entry »
When he was first featured here at FanGraphs three years ago, I wrote that Nestor Cortes “barely registers a blip on the national radar.” With his multiple windups in mind, I called the then-24-year-old southpaw “probably the most unique member of the 2019 New York Yankees.”
A lot has changed since that time. Cortes is still unique — the funkiness and deceptive deliveries remain part of his M.O. — but he’s otherwise a much different pitcher. He’s also become a household name. Traded to Seattle in November 2019, Cortes returned to New York in free agency prior to last season and has since been remade into one of the top starters in the American League. A first-time All-Star with a 2.63 ERA and 99 strikeouts in 95-and-two-thirds innings, Cortes attacks hitters with a different arsenal than the one he employed as an obscure reliever.
How has Cortes evolved, and just as importantly, can he continue to thrive if he doesn’t evolve further? Yankees pitching coach Matt Blake addressed those questions when the team visited Fenway Park earlier this month.
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David Laurila: You’ve obviously been asked about Nestor Cortes numerous times already this season. That said, why has he been so good?
Matt Blake: “When he first started going last year, the league didn’t really know who he was. I mean, they knew of Nestor, but they hadn’t necessarily seen this version of him, where there’s a little bit more velocity [and] the fastball has kind of a true riding profile, one that’s a little bit closer to cut than run. And then the cutter off of that creates a really tough visual for hitters to identify. He’d also added the sweeper slider to be able to slow guys down and steal some strikes. Read the rest of this entry »
What’s 4,700 or so feet of elevation between friends? Where last year’s Home Run Derby was held in the majors’ most homer-conducive venue, mile-high Coors Field, this year’s event will be held in Dodger Stadium, which is an estimated 522 feet above sea level. The difference is hardly trivial when it comes to the hard-hit fly balls that are the stuff of Home Run Derbies; based on league-wide data from 2021 and ’22, those hit with exit velocities of 95 mph or higher traveled an average of 31 fewer feet at Dodger Stadium (361 feet) than at Coors Field (392 feet).
The difference may not matter to two-time defending champion Pete Alonso, who won at Progressive Field with its 653-foot elevation in 2019, as well as last year at Coors. In beating out upstart Trey Mancini last summer, Alonso became the fourth two-time winner in Derby history, joining Ken Griffey Jr. (1994, ’98–99), Prince Fielder (2009, ’12) and Yoenis Céspedes (2013–14). This year, he has a chance not only to tie Griffey but also to become the first player to win three in a row. Three-Peat, Three-Pete — we’ll never hear the end of it if he wins the event, which airs at 8 pm ET on ESPN on Monday night.
Given his experience with the format, Alonso has to be considered the favorite from among the eight participants. Of the four previous champions who are still active, Bryce Harper (2018 winner) is on the injured list, Giancarlo Stanton (2016) and Aaron Judge (2017) both declined the opportunity to participate, and Robinson Canó (2011) is far removed from his power-hitting days. Only two active runners-up, Kyle Schwarber (2018) and Albert Pujols (2003) are here; Mancini (2021), Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (2019), Miguel Sanó (2017), Joc Pederson (2015), and Nelson Cruz (2009) are not. Neither are Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout, or Fernando Tatis Jr., for various reasons. While it would be great to have any of the aforementioned players participating, the contest is a physically demanding one, and many of those stars are already banged up if not out entirely. Still, even with just one contestant returning from last year’s field — Juan Soto, who lost to Alonso in the semifinal round — it’s a compelling group of sluggers.
I’ll get to the participants shortly, but first, the format, which is along the lines of what has been used for the event since 2015, a set of changes that has done wonders for the watchability of this spectacle. The competition will be an eight-man, single elimination bracket that uses timed rounds of three minutes apiece for the first two rounds and two minutes for the final round. Each competitor gets an additional 30-second bonus, plus potentially a second 30-second bonus if he hits a home run with a projected distance of at least 440 feet (this was increased to 475 feet for Coors). Each player is allowed to call one 45-second timeout for use during regulation time; it can’t be used during bonus time. The lower-seeded player in each round goes first, and the round will end in the equivalent of a walk-off if the higher seed surpasses his total. If two contestants are tied after the bonus time, they each get a 60-second round with no bonus time or timeouts, and if they’re still tied after that, they each get rounds of three swings apiece until a winner is decided. The winner of the Derby will take home $1 million of the $2.5 million total pot.
The lower altitude isn’t the only factor that could reduce home run totals in this year’s contest. On a per-game basis, home run rates are down to their lowest levels since 2015; this year’s 1.08 homers per team per game is down 4.6% from last year and 22.9% from 2019, the year that homers peaked. A deader baseball with a higher coefficient of drag, and the league-wide use of humidors, which normalize the bounciness of the ball based upon its water content, are the apparent culprits. As a result, fly ball distances have decreased, both on a league-wide basis and at Dodger Stadium, the latter to an even greater degree. Here’s a comparison of all fly balls hit at 95 mph or higher:
Hard-hit fly balls around the majors are averaging 365 feet, down from 367 last year and a peak of 375 from 2019. At Dodger Stadium, they’re averaging 359 feet, down from 362 last year and a high of 373 feet in 2019.
As far as the dimensions go, Dodger Stadium is symmetrical, measuring 330 feet down the foul lines, 375 feet to true left-center and right-center, and 395 feet to dead center field. The outfield fences are eight feet high from bullpen to bullpen, then drop to 55 inches high in the corners, from the bullpens to the foul poles. Despite its symmetry, the park has recently favored righties when it comes to home runs, with a 107 park factor compared to 102 for lefties. Based on data since the start of the 2021 season, righties have a 14.7% rate of home runs per fly ball, lefties a rate of 13.1%.
Here’s the official bracket:
And here’s a look at the field with some relevant stats:
All statistics through July 17. EVF (exit velocity on fly balls), Avg HR (average home-run distance) and 440 (total of home runs projected for at least 440 feet) via Baseball Savant. * = Bats left-handed. # = Switch hitter.
The Nationals are going to trade Juan Soto. Oh, sure, it’s not official yet, but it’s basically official. After he turned down their most recent extension offer, a reported 15-year, $450 million deal, reports emerged that the team was open to dealing him. And with the trade deadline conveniently only weeks away, general manager Mike Rizzo will have no shortage of phone calls to field in the coming days.
In a fortuitous coincidence, I’m currently working on our annual trade value series, so I’ve spent a good deal of time considering Soto’s value. He’s an interesting case, perhaps one without precedent in the trade market. He’s undoubtedly one of the best five or so players in baseball. In a down year, he’s still hitting .250/.405/.497, good for a 152 wRC+. That’s the kind of production that most players would call a career year, and we’re writing about adjustments he can make.
In addition, Soto is no rental. He’s under team control through the 2024 season, and while he’ll command record-breaking arbitration salaries for the next two years, he’ll still be an unbelievable bargain while doing so. Consider: He’s making $17.1 million this year in arbitration and on pace for roughly 5 WAR in a down year. What would teams pay for that production on the open market? Well, the Mets are paying Max Scherzer $43.3 million per year over the next three years, and Soto has out-WAR’ed Scherzer in each of the past three seasons. He’s also only 23, so it’s not as though he’s approaching age-related decline. Read the rest of this entry »
Robert Hassell III hasn’t experienced much adversity in his young career. Since being drafted eighth overall by the San Diego Padres in 2020 out of a Tennessee high school, the 20-year-old outfielder has climbed to No. 42 on our Top 100 Prospects list while logging 134 wRC+. Last night he was in the starting lineup for the National League in the All-Star Futures Game.
He’s shown that he’s well-equipped to handle adversity when it does occur. The sweet-swinging Nashville-area native went through a cold stretch in May, and just as he was emerging from it, he contracted COVID. That learning experience is what Hassell chose to share when I sat down with him in late June to ask about his season to date.
“I had a 3-for-30 stretch — something like that — which I hadn’t had in pro ball, or really anywhere,” said Hassell, who has spent the season with the High-A Fort Wayne TinCaps. “Playing every day you’ve got to be able to make immediate adjustments, and it took me awhile to get going again. Basically, I had to begin simplifying things, which is something I continue to do.”
Mature beyond his years, the third-ranked prospect in the Padres system agreed when I suggested that a slump doesn’t necessarily mean that changes are in order.
“That can be an adjustment itself, realizing that you don’t need to change anything,” said Hassell, who was featured in our Talks Hitting series in April. “At least not mechanically. It’s about knowing who you are, and like I said, keeping things simple. Looking back at video, it might be, ‘There is is no real difference between that guy and what I’m doing now.’ That’s why I’m big on the mental part of the game. Read the rest of this entry »
Note: This article was published shortly before a San Diego radio station reported that general manager A.J. Preller said that Fernando Tatis Jr. has finally been cleared to begin his hitting progression.
A 23-year-old star shortstop walks into a doctor’s office and… well, we don’t exactly know what happens next, at least in the case of Fernando Tatis Jr. On Monday, Tatis had his left wrist examined by the surgeon who repaired the fracture he sustained during the offseason, but the Padres did not announce a timetable for his return, because while he had been cleared to resume nearly all baseball-related activity, doctors had yet to allow him to swing a bat at full intensity. That holding pattern lasted until Friday morning, shortly after this article was originally published, when general manager A.J. Preller revealed that Tatis was finally cleared to take hacks. The green light comes with team in the midst of a four-week skid after briefly supplanting the Dodgers atop the NL West.
All the uncertainty has been par for the course, as the entire saga of Tatis’s wrist injury is rather murky. In early December, shortly after the lockout began, he was reportedly involved in a motorcycle accident in the Dominican Republic, via which he sustained “minor scrapes.” He apparently did not begin feeling the effects of the injury until he began taking swings in mid-February in preparation for spring training. On March 14, with the lockout finally over, the team announced that x-rays revealed he had suffered a fracture; when asked about the motorcycle accident at the time, the shortstop responded, “Which one?” and acknowledged “a couple incidents” without further specificity. Tatis underwent surgery to repair his scaphoid bone on March 16, at which time general manager A.J. Preller estimated a three-month recovery and a mid-June return.
That timetable proved to be too optimistic. As of early May, Tatis was running and taking grounders, but on June 14, Preller told reporters, “Another MRI scan continues to show healing, but it was not quite at the level for … a full green light.” In other words, he had not been cleared to hit, though he was able to play catch at full intensity. Eight days later, he was able to swing “at 40% intensity” for what acting manager Ryan Christenson called “a systems check” (manager Bob Melvin was in COVID-19 protocol at the time). After a visit to doctors on June 28, Tatis said he expected to be taking swings in two weeks, but he did not get the expected green light in Monday’s follow-up.
Via the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Kevin Acee, the delay reflected the team exercising caution because there had not been a full consensus from among the doctors the Padres were consulting on whether Tatis has healed enough to begin swings:
Multiple people insist Tatis has had no setbacks. As stated in previous tweet, team is being extremely cautious. As is often the case in these situations, doctors differ on opinions re: what is "enough" healing. Tatis could begin swing progression by the weekend.
The hope that Tatis would finally be cleared at some point this weekend has now been realized. The expectation is that his “progression from dry swings to swinging against live pitching is expected to take about 10 days,” after which Tatis will go on a rehab assignment whose length of time will be dictated by how comfortable he feels and how quickly he gets up to speed. Thus, even with Friday’s announcement, it sounds like he won’t be back until the end of this month or early in August. Read the rest of this entry »
