The other day, I was listening to an episode of Rates and Barrels, an always informative baseball podcast on The Athletic hosted by Eno Sarris and Derek Van Ripper, and learned something new. The two went over each team’s ‘Location+,’ a metric developed by Max Bay that quantifies pitcher command, with teams like the Brewers, Giants, and Rays recording the highest marks. That’s no surprise; what did surprise me is that the Padres stood out as being uniformly bland, receiving average grades for every pitch type except cutters.

San Diego’s’ pitching staff is underperforming, injured, and recently experienced a change in leadership. But I figured it’s still one of the league’s better ones. Since Location+ is proprietary, I can’t consult the exact numbers, though it did inspire me to look at where Padres pitchers had been locating their pitches. And in doing so, I came to a realization: They might have a four-seam fastball problem.

Pitchers perform differently depending on the count; they’re great when they’re ahead, about average when even, and terrible when behind. Unless a microscopic sample size is involved, this principle applies to pretty much everyone. So when looking at how Padres pitchers have performed by count, these results shouldn’t seem out of the ordinary:

Consider, though, how they compare against the league averages. The Padres are comfortably better than the average pitcher when ahead in the count, but the same can’t be said for other instances. In disadvantageous situations, they seem mediocre at best, and the whole picture is underwhelming. You might have guessed where I’m going with this, but basically, the idea is that four-seam fastballs are to blame. Here are the wOBAs against them by count, along with where the Padres rank league-wide. I’ve also included xwOBA to isolate the effects of batted ball luck:

As the kids say, this ain’t it. A .193 wOBA against four-seamers once ahead in the count is great. But a whopping .500 wOBA after falling behind is… not so great. The gap does narrow with xwOBA as the metric of choice; after all, part of the Padres’ recent struggles are due to good players underperforming, which is naturally fixable. But there’s a significant gap nonetheless, and it does seem tied to how they are locating their fastballs. For the sake of time and sample size, I focused on the team’s starters with 50 or more innings pitched. If we examine where their fastballs have ended up, perhaps we can also analyze why they have been hit hard.

Alright, enough talk. You’re here for the meat and potatoes. First up is Blake Snell, whose fastball locations I categorized by count type and batter handedness, presented from the pitcher’s point of view:

You can see that he likes to live higher up when ahead in the count, which is ideal, since batters are more likely to chase. Otherwise, however, Snell’s fastballs are heading straight down the pipe. Even his higher fastballs are still squarely in the strike zone; with the amount of ride he generates, he can afford to climb the ladder more often, a feat he accomplished in previous seasons. He’s also all over the place, which the wide contours illustrate. The command isn’t quite there, and it shows.

Next is Yu Darvish, the Padres’ other ace. Unlike Snell, his four-seamer isn’t his primary pitch, but it still accounts for around 20% of his repertoire. Another detail to note is the wOBA against his four-seamer by month:

• April: .328
• May: .178
• June: .066
• July: .398
• August: .513

After appearing invincible in June, the four-seamer has spiraled out of control in recent months. Because the downward trend coincides with the crackdown on sticky stuff, though, it’s easy to think Darvish’s heater has become worse. That’s true, but not markedly so. An average spin rate of 2,577 rpm before the June 15 ultimatum is now down to 2,473, and it only cost Darvish about an inch of ride, which isn’t all that significant.

There hasn’t been a change to how he’s locating his heater, either. But maybe there should, because Darvish seems like another pitcher who isn’t capitalizing on the vertical movement he generates:

When ahead in the count, Darvish is hitting the outside corner against lefties and righties alike, but besides that, there’s not much else in terms of location. And like Snell before, the high fastballs aren’t really all that high. The contours are also wide and scattered across the strike zone, which might suggest a lack of strategy. I could be reading too much into it, but even at a glance, those heat maps aren’t very appealing.

Joe Musgrove is similar to Darvish, in that the four-seamer acts as a secondary pitch but is nonetheless an integral part of his arsenal. Without it, his fantastic breaking pitches probably aren’t as attractive. So how does he locate the heater? Here’s a look:

That’s better! Those ahead in the count fastballs, they’re up (sort of), but at least they aren’t centered around the heart of the zone. I also appreciate how Musgrove is seemingly exploring the bottom third of the zone when behind, as a way to sneak in a called strike or two.

In his case, though, the stuff is arguably a greater issue than command. Despite an elite raw spin rate, Musgrove doesn’t actually generate much vertical movement on his heater; in fact, it’s one of the league’s worst relative to his velocity. This is presumably why he has continued to shy away from it, gradually replacing his four-seamers with cutters and more breaking balls. Maybe right now demonstrates the best usage of it; I’m not entirely sure. But among Padres starting pitchers, his fastball woes are the least severe.

Then we move onto the youngsters, Chris Paddack and Ryan Weathers. To avoid beating the same drum for too long, I’ll sum up Paddack with words: He probably can and should live up in the zone more often, but there’s been a snag in his stuff. After a solid rookie campaign, his fastball lost a ton of vertical break in 2020, and as far I can tell, he’s still working toward returning to those 2019 levels. The ERA and dearth of strikeouts this season are concerning, but it’s doubtful he’s this ineffective of a starter moving forward. We’ll give him a pass.

On the other hand, Weathers sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s okay that this is his first season in the big leagues. It’s not okay that every pitch he has — fastball, slider, and changeup — ends up in a terrible spot. He’ll figure it out as he accumulates innings and experience, but for now, here’s a slice of reality for the Padres:

Those aren’t good areas to place a fastball even with superb movement, which unfortunately Weathers has lacked so far.

But let’s put everything we’ve explored into context. What’s an example of good fastball command, and how does that turn out when visualized? Originally, I’d planned a comparison between the Giants’ and Padres’ fastball locations, then scrapped it after realizing how daunting the task would be. There’s a useful remnant, though. Below is a heat map of Johnny Cueto’s four-seamers this season:

It’s the year 2021, and Cueto has a higher whiff rate and a better run value on his four-seamer than Snell. Yes, Cueto uses his less frequently, but consider where they’ve ended up. Ahead in the count, those fastballs are perched right on top of the strike zone, with a tendency to veer away from right-handed hitters. Naturally, they aren’t as high up when the count is even, but remember, that’s where Snell roamed after getting ahead, not even. And even when behind in the count, Cueto has done a solid job of avoiding the bottom third of the zone.

If you buy pitch location as a reason for the Padres’ pitching woes, their unexpected dismissal of Larry Rothschild makes a bit more sense. There’s not much a coach can do about a pitcher’s stuff; no decree will magically add three inches of movement to a slider. Location, however, is within his realm of control. To wit, Mets pitchers in 2018 went from generally avoiding the inner half to thriving there, which then-pitching coach Dave Eiland had emphasized. Over time, perhaps the Padres realized Rothschild’s own philosophy was doing more harm than good.

I’m not 100% sure if location, let alone fastball location, is the main culprit. Heat maps are hardly an exact science; they’re approximations of a pitcher’s command whose gaps are colored in by a model and charted. They also don’t factor in pitch sequencing, another element a pitching coach could influence. So maybe this is all wrong! But two facts remain true: (a) the Padres, in general, haven’t been able to avoid dangerous fastball locations; and (b) their fastballs are either getting smacked or taken for balls. If they do indeed need help, it needs to come fast.

Shohei Ohtani does something amazing virtually every time he sets foot on a baseball field, and Thursday was no exception. Leading off the afternoon’s contest against the Orioles in Camden Yards, he connected with Keegan Akin’s second pitch of the day, a hanging curveball in the middle of the zone, and hit a towering homer:

It wasn’t just the fact that this was Ohtani’s 41st homer of the year, extending his major league lead, or that it was the third time he’s led off a game with a homer, which he did on June 25 against the Rays in Tampa Bay and on August 14 against the Astros in Anaheim. No, what stood out to these eyes was the combination of the Statcast specs — a 45-degree launch angle and a 110.7-mph exit velocity — on this shot that made it such a majestic drive, and one that particularly caught the eye of this launch angle aficionado.

I have a thing for what I’ve sometimes termed “launch angle porn,” one that predates the Statcast era. Even amid the unending barrage of home runs and their resultant highlights, I find that the visceral thrill of watching the beginning of a sky-scraping home run is the best part. Particularly when viewed on a two-dimensional screen of whatever size, we have no idea of the final distance that struck sphere will travel, but after the sight and sound of contact — and particularly, the mellifluous melody of a ball hitting the sweet spot of a wooden bat — launch angle is the first feedback we get, whether or not there’s a number attached to that steep ascent. As for exit velocity and distance, those come later, whether it’s a couple of seconds after when we see where that ball lands, or once the Statcast numbers are in.

Wherever you sit along the spectrum of baseball observers, from newcomer through casual fan, diehard, junkie, nerd, and professional, you are by no means obligated to care about such numbers. But if you’re the type that gets a kick out of at least an occasional peek at them, not for their own sake but because they increase our understanding of the game (and of ourselves): welcome to the club, and to today’s tour of the season-to-date’s Statcast extremes. This ride isn’t for everyone, but if it’s your thing, buckle up.

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I’ll forgive you if you thought Adam Wainwright was cooked in 2018. He landed on the IL after three middling starts (12 strikeouts in 15.2 innings, a 3.45 ERA and 5.20 FIP), made a single short start in May, then didn’t pitch again until September. His sinker had never been slower; his curveball had never had less bite. At 37, that’s a scary combination, and it hadn’t come out of nowhere; he posted an ERA of 5.11 in his previous season, along with career-worst marks in K%, BB%, and FIP.

Three years later, Wainwright is a down-ballot Cy Young candidate. He’s accrued as much WAR as the next five Cardinals starters combined. St. Louis probably won’t make the playoffs, but it won’t be because of the once and current ace, a timeless wonder having his best season since before tearing his Achilles in 2015. How has he done it? I’m glad you asked.

Major leaguers are so good these days, on both the pitching and hitting side. Batters have never hit the ball harder on contact or tried so hard to hit home runs. It’s scary out there for a pitcher; any contact could leave the park at the drop of a hat. Pitchers have compensated in the obvious way: throwing pitches that avoid contact. Swinging-strike rate and strikeout rate are both marching inexorably higher, with occasional step changes (the sticky stuff crackdown, for example) fighting the tide.

Wainwright doesn’t have that option, though. If you asked him candidly, I’m sure he’d love to throw 95 mph and snap off sliders that turn into Pitching Ninja GIFs. But that was never his game, and he wasn’t going to suddenly turn into that kind of pitcher at age 39. In fact, when Wainwright began to decline, that was the common diagnosis. An aging sinker-first pitcher in the age of four-seamers? Sounds like a recipe for failure.

That’s all true! Wainwright’s sinker virtually never induces an empty swing. That’s not even a new thing; he’s only had one year in his entire career with a swinging-strike rate above 5% on the pitch. He’s only had a whiff rate higher than 10% in two of his 14 seasons. When batters take a cut, they mostly hit the ball.
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The Orioles woke up on Thursday morning as winners for the first time in over three weeks, with their 10–6 defeat of the Angels snapping a 19-game losing streak. It’s just Baltimore’s second victory this month, though they need quite a few more — 24 in their final 37 games, to be exact — in order to avoid a third 100-loss season in the last four years. It’s a miserable run, but one not wholly unexpected when Mike Elias took the reigns and devoted all of his resources to building a farm system that could produce a consistent winner, all but ignoring the big league roster.

Still, the major league product is unwatchable, and fair questions are starting to be asked. Can this team start to pull out of what feels like a never-ending tailspin? The answer is yes, as long as the bar is set at simply not being awful anymore as opposed to hanging some new flags in the stadium. Prospects are wonderful, and having one of the best, if not the best, farm systems in baseball is fantastic, but it’s more of a guarantee of betterment as opposed to becoming a good team, especially for a team that is starting at a level that might be comparable only to the 1899 Cleveland Spiders at this point.

The Orioles’ August misery has been defined by pitching. The offense has been below average, but not dreadful, with a wRC+ of 94 during the month, which ranks 19th among the 30 teams. The pitching, on the other hand, has been unimaginably awful. Here was Baltimore’s collective line during the losing streak:

It’s hard to be that bad. You could take a random Triple-A starter and expect better than that. The average start during the streak saw more runs allowed (4.53) than innings pitched (4.1).

It shouldn’t have to be like this. Major League Baseball’s rules should incentivize teams to put their best product on the field as opposed to what Baltimore (and others, to be fair) are doing. But for the purpose of this exercise, let’s stick to the unfortunate reality that is the worst big league roster combined with one of the best minor league systems. Does that combination automatically mean things will get better?

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Hitting is a multi-faceted skill. The best batters don’t share the same cookie cutter profiles; Max Muncy and Shohei Ohtani, despite producing similar overall value at the plate, get to it in very different ways. You can wait pitchers out or attack their mistakes, feast on bad pitches or foul off their best offerings. But if you want to know who looks like the best hitter, there’s an easy metric: who does the best against fastballs?

There’s something viscerally satisfying about obliterating a good four-seam fastball. The best curveballs to hit look easy to hit; they’re lollipops that hang over the middle of the plate, and by definition they’re slow. Even a fastball that misses location has that “fast” going for it. That’s not to say that they’re harder to hit, or that it’s the best way to think of good hitters, but when it comes to the eye test, fastball hitting is second to none.

So then, who are the best fastball hitters in the game? There’s no one way to answer it, so I thought I’d take a crack at coming up with my own answer. One thing you could do is simply look at our pitch values. Using Pitch Info fastball classifications, here are the best hitters against four-seamers this year:

Hey, great, article over! This was a quick one; you’ll have time to grab a bite to eat or get up and stretch your legs with the time you thought you were devoting to it.
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Miguel Cabrera became the 28th member of the 500 homer club last Sunday with a solo shot off Toronto’s Steven Matz. Approaching 40 and about five years removed from being one of baseball’s most feared sluggers, his 500th homer looks to be one of the last big highlights on his résumé; his 3,000th hit is coming as well, but he’s running out of calendar on that one, and it’s likely he’ll end 2021 about 20 or so hits shy of joining that exclusive society.

For a long time, Cabrera looked as if he had a chance to hit 600 or more homers. He had the 12th-most before his age-30 season, bopping 321 through his 20s, with the last ones coming in his Triple Crown season of 2012. But while his 30s got off to a roaring start with 44 homers added to the tally in 2013, it’s taken him nearly eight more seasons to add another 136 to his line — a rather paltry 17 per year — thanks to a combination of injuries and slowing bat speed.

Hitting 600 homers now looks out of reach for Cabrera, who could theoretically remain a Tiger for at least four more seasons, though that would require a shocking reversal of fortune for Detroit to pick up the option years of 2024 and ’25 that are unlikely to vest because of 2023 MVP votes. The most likely scenario is that he plays out the last two seasons and retires with an Old English D on his cap, followed by Hall of Fame induction five years later. While 500 homers may not be as impressive a feat as it once was, it’s still a viable path to Cooperstown; every eligible hitter who’s reached that mark is in the Hall unless they were connected credibly to the use of steroids. Albert Pujols won’t be the exception to that rule, and neither will Cabrera.

Either way, I hope you enjoyed this 500th home run, because it’s actually going to be a decent wait until we see another one. Baseball has an impressive stable of young phenoms, but being young phenoms, they don’t yet have impressive quantities on their career lines. Since Babe Ruth became the first 500-homer hitter in 1929, the average wait for a new member has been a scant 3.4 years. Despite the widespread belief that the relative ease of joining this club is a recent development, it’s actually been happening quite regularly since 1960. When Ted Williams hit his 500th, it had been 15 years since Mel Ott’s 500th. From Williams to the increase in league homer rate in the early 90s, the average wait was 2.7 years. Since then, the typical interregnum has dropped to 2.4 years, and since Eddie Murray in 1996, there hasn’t been a wait of more than five seasons.

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You could have been forgiven for giving up the Braves for dead in the water last month. Heading into the July 30 trade deadline, they were 51–52, four games behind the NL East-leading Mets and eight back in the Wild Card race, with four teams between them and the second-slotted Padres. Three weeks earlier, they’d lost their best player, Ronald Acuña Jr., to a season-ending torn ACL, plus they were down last year’s NL home run and RBI leader (Marcell Ozuna), their starting catcher (Travis d’Arnaud), and three key members of their rotation (Ian Anderson, Huascar Ynoa, and Mike Soroka). Yet nearly four weeks later, the division race has been upended, and Atlanta is squarely in the drivers’ seat. What happened?

The short version is that the Braves were aggressive in giving their outfield a much-needed makeover at the deadline and entered Tuesday with an NL-best 17–5 record since then, albeit largely against a soft schedule. Even after their nine-game winning streak came to an end against the Yankees — themselves riding a nine-game winning streak at the time, making for a first-in-120-years matchup — to knock them back to 17–6, a half-game behind the Dodgers, they’ve left the Mets in the dust, as New York has run into buzzsaw after buzzsaw. Here’s the full picture of how the NL East standings and Playoff Odds have changed:

For those who prefer a picture, here you go (this one shows only the division-winning odds):

For the Braves, this run has come the old-fashioned way, as they’ve held their own against the other strong teams and steamrolled the weak ones. They’ve played series against just four teams with a .500 or better record: the Brewers (against whom they lost two of three), Cardinals (whom they swept), Reds (against whom they won two of three), and Yankees (who swept a two-game series) That’s a 6–5 mark against four teams with a weighted winning percentage of .560. Meanwhile, they’ve gone a combined 11–1 against the Nationals (5–1), Marlins (3–0), and Orioles (3–0), teams with a weighted .395 winning percentage. At the same time, the Mets went 3–14 against the Reds (1–2), Phillies (0–3), Dodgers (1–6), and Giants (1-3), four teams with a weighted winning percentage of .592, and 4–3 against the Marlins (1–3) and Nationals (3–0), a pair with a combined winning percentage of .417.

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On Monday night, the Rockies lost to the woeful Cubs, 6–4. It brought their road record to 14–46, good for a .233 winning percentage. That’s the worst mark in baseball, but the Rockies aren’t the worst team in baseball — merely the worst road team. At Coors Field, they’ve gone a spectacular 43–22, the third-best home record in the game.

It’s hard to imagine that this huge discrepancy comes down to a roll of the dice. Are the Rockies this bad on the road? Probably not. Are they this good at home? Also probably not. But this gap calls out for an investigation, so I set out to answer: what in the heck is up with their home field advantage — if that’s even what’s going on here?

Obviously, I’m not the first person to try to answer this; earlier this year, Neil Paine tackled the subject when Colorado was a woeful 6–32 on the road. The Coors hangover effect is real, and it gives us a good reason to think that the source of the Rockies’ problems might be the road side of things rather than the home side of things. I won’t try to solve the issue of what ails the Rockies today, but still, we can gawk at their incompetence and speculate about what it means for their true talent, which sounds fun enough to me.
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Taylor Hearn has added a pitch to his arsenal. More specifically, the 26-year-old Texas Rangers southpaw has reintroduced a pitch that he’s throwing in a notably different way. Unveiled mere months ago, it’s a potential career-changer.

Recently moved from the bullpen to the Rangers’ starting rotation, Hearn discussed the pitch when Texas visited Boston this past weekend.

———

David Laurila: You’ve added a sinker to your repertoire. Was that a simple matter of wanting to induce more ground balls?

Taylor Hearn: “Honestly, I was getting ground balls, It was a pitch I’d thrown before, and I kind of wanted to learn it again but in a different way. I’m always trying to figure out what I can add to my repertoire, whether it’s a curveball or whatever else.”

Laurila: When had you thrown a sinker?

Hearn: “I had it when I came over here, to [Double-A] Frisco [from the Pirates via trade in July 2018]. I wasn’t really throwing it too much, and it wasn’t really even a sinker — it was just a regular two-seamer — and it just didn’t have the movement, because I’d never really had anybody teach me that. This year, I asked about throwing a sinker. They showed me one, I threw it, and we got numbers I’d never had before. I decided to run with it.”

Laurila: Was this in spring training?

Hearn: “No, this was actually during the season. I started throwing it in Minnesota [in early May]. The first game I threw it in was away, against Seattle [in late May].”

Laurila: How does it differ from your old two-seamer? Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros bludgeoned the Mariners on Saturday in a game that was over by the time the fifth inning was complete, when Houston owned a 12–0 lead and win probability odds of 99.9% (the final score was 15–1). That game marked the 19th time in August that a team had won a game by at least 10 runs, the most in any month so far this season — and we still have a week left to go before September. Naturally, the non-contenders that sold at the trade deadline or sat still have different priorities at this stage of the season compared to the postseason hopefuls. But how much of an impact does the deadline have on the game’s competitive nature?

You could try to measure this with run differential. Prior to the trade deadline, the average margin of victory in a game was 3.54 runs; since then, it’s gone up to 3.75 runs. But the average increasing by a mere 0.2 runs per game is not a monumental change. Similarly, you could look at two teams that held deadline fire sales — the Cubs and Nationals — and look at their post-July 31 performance. Chicago is down three runs and the Nationals 1.2 in terms of run differential per game, almost entirely due to pitching and defense. But those are extreme examples, and aside from Max Scherzer and Craig Kimbrel, the impact talent that both dealt away was mostly on the position player side.

Rather than just rely on anecdotal evidence, let’s take a probabilistic look at these outcomes. To test whether or not there is statistical evidence for the trade deadline creating measurable disparity, we’ll form two sets of discrete probabilities: one based on games through July 30 (prior to the trade deadline) and one based on games afterwards. Any games with a resulting run differential of greater than or equal to 10 runs will be grouped together.

Given the small increase in average run differential between the two periods, it’s no surprise that any change in probabilities is pretty small. But focusing on the left and right boundaries, you can see the differences that we’re looking for. While one-run games are still the most common, they’re happening a bit less frequently than they were before the deadline. The incidence of games decided by at least 10 runs, meanwhile, has gone from 3.9% of games pre-deadline to 6.0% after it. (Interestingly, run differentials in between the extreme values are pretty mixed.)

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