After much anticipation, the US National Baseball Team is heading to the 2021 Olympic Games. Given the 13 years since baseball was last played in the Olympics, the lack of overlap between this roster and the last Games’ is no surprise. But that’s not to say the team is entirely without Olympic experience. Eddy Alvarez competed for the United States speed skating team at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, where he earned a silver medal in the 5000 meter relay. When he told reporters after those Games that he planned to hang up his skates in favor of pursuing a baseball career, it’s unlikely he did so knowing the decision would start him on a path back to the Olympics.

Far-fetched as it may have seemed back then, Alvarez was indeed one of 24 players named to represent the US in the six-team Olympic baseball tournament later this month. The US and the Dominican Republic both qualified in June, joining Japan, South Korea, Israel, and Mexico, all of which qualified over a year and a half ago, when the Games were still slated to take place in 2020 (just one of many ways in which the global pandemic has already shaped this year’s Games, a topic I’ll examine in greater depth next week). This will be the first time baseball is played at the Olympics since the 2008 Games in Beijing, after which the sport (along with softball) was removed from Olympic competition. The 2008 roster featured Double-A versions of Trevor Cahill and Dexter Fowler, a Single-A Jake Arrieta, and a soon-to-be-drafted college pitcher named Stephen Strasburg.

Last time baseball was an Olympic sport (08) these guys won bronze. Strasburg,Fowler, Cahill, Arrieta. #mlb #Wbsc pic.twitter.com/ZLzpfQDGkU

— John Blundell (@JBMLBPR) August 3, 2016

It’s been a while, to say the least. Read the rest of this entry »

We probably don’t write enough about the Giants. That’s not to say that we don’t write about the Giants here — we do, quite frequently. Back in May, Kevin Goldstein looked into their complicated future. Jake Mailhot and Dan Szymborski wrote about the starters. Jay Jaffe and Luke Hooper talked veteran hitters.

So yes, we write about the Giants quite a bit here. But to my eyes, it’s still not enough. This team is the biggest surprise in baseball this year. We’re nearly to the All-Star break, and they’re leading the NL West, the toughest division in baseball. All those articles above focused on Giants exceeding expectations, but I’m more interested in another group: the bullpen, which has been one of the better units in baseball despite a pedigree that could best be described as mixed.

This isn’t a case of spending money and trading players to assemble a monster bullpen. It isn’t a case of prioritizing relievers in the draft and getting it done that way. It’s a motley crew of arms that have turned into far more than we expected — we pegged them 18th in our preseason positional power rankings, and they’ve DFA’ed the player we pegged for the most WAR. This group feels like it came from a script, so let’s treat this like a heist movie and assemble the squad. Read the rest of this entry »

At the outset of the season, the Dodgers were forecast for a major league-high 100 wins thanks to their incredible depth, which included eight plausible candidates for their starting rotation. Thanks to a recent surge, 100 wins remains a realistic target — their .609 winning percentage puts them on pace for 99, and our updated projections forecast them for 98 — but that herd of starters has dwindled due to injuries and other matters. On Wednesday, that herd got even smaller, as the team placed Clayton Kershaw on the 10-day injured list due to a bout of inflammation in his left forearm.

According to manager Dave Roberts, Kershaw “felt something in the elbow” while playing catch earlier this week, but beyond that, there’s no indication as to the severity of his injury, or his prognosis. He’ll undergo an MRI and other tests after the team returns to Los Angeles for its weekend series with the Diamondbacks. With less than a week until the All-Star break, the timing of the move is such that he might only miss one start and would be eligible to return to action on Saturday, July 17.

That said, while this is the sixth season in a row that the three-time Cy Young winner has landed on the injured list, it’s the first time he’s been sidelined for an injury involving his forearm or elbow, and if he’s suffered a strain or a sprain — gulp — he could miss substantial time. Only last season, when he was scratched on Opening Day for a bout of lower back stiffness, has Kershaw returned from the IL as soon as he was eligible:

The 33-year-old Kershaw has pitched well this season, posting a 3.39 ERA and 3.00 FIP in 106.1 innings and lasting at least six innings in 14 of his 18 starts. His FIP, 30.1% strikeout rate, and 25.6% strikeout-walk differential are all his best marks since 2016, respectively ranking sixth, ninth, and third in the NL; he’s also third in walk rate (4.5%). Even so, he was bypassed for a spot on the NL All-Star team, along with every other Dodgers pitcher, despite the team’s NL-low 3.21 ERA and its third-ranked 3.63 FIP. That could change as replacements are announced; Jacob deGrom, for example, has said he will decline his invitation in favor of resting his body and spending time with his family.

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This is the June edition of my monthly column, in which I recap what’s been going on in the Korean Baseball Organization on both a league- and team-wide scale. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments or reach out to me via Twitter. Also, don’t forget to check out our expanded KBO stats offering. Without further ado, let’s talk some KBO.

Standings

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Devlin Granberg is an under-the-radar prospect enjoying a breakout season. Boston’s sixth-round pick in 2018 out of Dallas Baptist University, the 25-year-old first baseman/outfielder — unranked on our 2021 Red Sox Top Prospects list — is slashing .315/.379/.573 between High-A Greenville and Double-A Portland. Swinging from the right side, the Hudson, Colorado native has slugged eight home runs while putting up a healthy 155 wRC+.

Granberg talked hitting prior to a recent game at Portland’s Hadlock Field.

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David Laurila: How much have you changed since coming to pro ball?

Devlin Granberg: “I’ve had a very similar swing since probably my sophomore year in college. I’ve got a very immobile body — I have tight hips and tight shoulders — but that helps me stay more consistent. It’s kind of what has allowed me to stay with a very similar swing.

“I think the biggest change for me has been the routine. It’s the same thing every single day, whereas in college you’re able to split it up. [College] is similar day-to-day, sure, but you also have different midweek games and practices, plus you get days off. Here, you have to get into a good routine and put yourself in the same state of mind each day in order to hit 95 [mph], or whatever it is the minor leagues throws at you.”

Laurila: Is a strict routine ever a negative? For instance, if you’re scuffling at the plate and doing the same thing day after day…

Granberg: “That’s actually one thing I learned this offseason. In my routine, I have different routines — I have two or three different drill sets that I do in the cage, and I never do the same thing on repeated days. Does that make sense? So, back-to-back days, I never do things exactly the same. I started implementing that in quarantine and I think it’s actually helped me stay a little bit more consistent. I think you have to keep the body guessing. If you stick to the same routine over and over, at some point the body is going to compensate, and then it’s going to overcompensate.

“A routine that is very positive could be maybe neutral, or maybe slightly negative, if you continuously do it every single day. That’s why I try to keep it fresh and mix it up. I’ll go BP, machine work, different things like that.”

Laurila: What was your routine today? Read the rest of this entry »

We have speed limits for a reason. Excessive speed is a factor in more than a quarter of automobile fatalities and is particularly deadly when combined with other dangerous behaviors behind the wheel. And yet, the idea that we can drive 5-10 mph over the limit without repercussion is so entrenched in our collective psyche — and so effectively decriminalized in most American cities — that most people hardly think twice about driving 35 in a 30. Behind this normalization lies an unexamined, exceptionalist belief: “This speed limit may be a good idea, but I have the ability to exceed it safely.”

There are a number of behaviors that fit into this category of exceptionalism: I’m the one who can get away with not flossing, I can spend hours on social media without consequence, I can stay cool into my 40s. Narcissism lies at the end of this road, but most of us don’t make it nearly that far. In doses, it’s entirely normal to think that general principles don’t apply to you personally. The contradiction at play is just part of the human experience, and it’s not always unhealthy: from this wellspring comes hope and ambition, among other traits and emotions.

As far as baseball is concerned, a no-hitter is perhaps the most wholesome embodiment of this form of individual exceptionalism. In the modern game, chasing a no-no is a retrograde “screw you,” not only to the opponent, but to the conventions of our time. “Take your third time through the order penalty and shove it,” and all that. Understandably, there was a bit of no-hitter fatigue swirling through the audience earlier this season. For me though, even with the increased frequency, the no-hitter remains a rebellion, and it’s as badass as ever. Read the rest of this entry »

We passed the halfway mark of the 2021 season over the long holiday weekend, providing a convenient spot to take a break, look back over the preseason projections, and hopefully not cringe too much about how the predictions are shaking out. Since this is the big midseason update, I used the full-fat ZiPS model for individual players in addition to the normal depth chart reconfiguring, with all the high-fructose algorithms rather than the leaner one used for daily updates.

I went through the American League on Wednesday, so now it’s the Senior Circuit’s turn.

The Mets only averaging 89 wins in the update might feel a bit disappointing, but that negative inclination is misplaced. ZiPS actually likes the team’s talent slightly more than it did in March, with the difference being that the injury situation has been worse than expected. Use the preseason playing time predictions with the up-to-date player projections, and ZiPS believes that New York would have a 93-win roster, good enough to be the third-best team in the National League.

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Through 18 starts and 111.1 innings pitched, Zack Greinke has compiled a 3.64 ERA. To say those figures play at the top of a major league starting rotation would be an understatement. The mere fact that Greinke remains a good pitcher at the age of 37 in his 18th season is an accomplishment in itself. Arriving in Kansas City as a 20-year-old, just two years after being drafted sixth overall out of high school, Greinke has put together quite the career, accumulating 64.2 WAR (which ranks 42nd all-time and third among active players), winning a Cy Young Award in 2009, and finishing in the top-10 of Cy Young voting on four other occasions (’13, ’14, ’15, and ’17). His Cy Young campaign was 12 years ago and he is still an important cog on a club with World Series aspirations, a testament to Greinke’s greatness and longevity. And that’s to say nothing of what he has battled to become and remain one of the best pitchers in the sport for over a decade.

I prefaced this piece with a brief rundown of Greinke’s amazing career because I am going to be throwing up some red flags in regards to his performance thus far. Despite the excellent ERA I referenced to start, his strikeout rate is down to 18.5% (league average is 23.8%) after posting a rate of 24.5% in 2020 and 23.7% from when he signed in Arizona in 2016 through last season. His walk rate is up to 5%, still almost half the league average of about 9% but an increase compared to his 3.7% and 3.3% walk rates in 2019 and ’20, respectively. Greinke is inducing fewer groundballs than in any season since his Cy Young Award-winning 2009. From 2010-19, he allowed a groundball rate of 46.8%. In 2020, that plummeted to 41.2% and this year he is down to 40.9%. That means 59.1% of the contact he has allowed has been in the air. He has maintained his ERA with the help of a below-average HR/FB ratio and a HR/9 rate about 9% less than the rest of the league. His FIP remains at a solid 4.07, buoyed by his aforementioned home run fortune. Regress that HR/FB ratio towards league average and you get an xFIP of 4.14. Put a little more emphasis on his strikeout struggles and the types of batted balls allowed and you get a SIERA of 4.39, which is a tad less than 8% worse than league average.

So what gives? In his last four seasons, aging curve be damned, he has thrown 3.68 SIERA ball over a not insignificant sample of 685.2 innings, which placed him third in the majors behind only Jacob deGrom (690.1) and Gerrit Cole (688.2). Obviously Greinke is at the point in his career where we expect degradation in his performance, but this dip in his peripherals seems noteworthy given all his success, both in terms of surface-level numbers and those under-the-hood, in recent vintage. Read the rest of this entry »

In late June and in just his fourth major league start, Marlins right-hander Zach Thompson accomplished something that has only been done nine times in the last decade. Facing the Nationals, he went six innings, allowed just two runs (one earned), and struck out 11. In the process, he became the 10th pitcher in the last 10 seasons to strike out 11 or more batters in his first four career appearances — certainly a qualifier-heavy fact, but it still yields quite an impressive list of names:

As the table shows, it’s rare to break into the major leagues with the level of dominance that Thompson displayed, but his path here has been even more fascinating.

In perhaps the most innocuous of moves, the Marlins signed Thompson last November as a minor league free agent to serve as additional bullpen depth. Even still, he was one of the team’s top targets on the minor league free-agent market, Marlins director of pro scouting Hadi Raad told Christina De Nicola of MLB.com, in what he said was based on a blend of scouting and analytics. As Marlins manager Don Mattingly told De Nicola after Thompson’s start against the Nationals, “It’s like, ‘How does this guy get away from teams?’ I liked his stuff, but you never know where that goes, too, after spring training. Sometimes those guys go to Triple-A and you never see them again. Zach, I think, started a little slow, and then kind of got it going. He’s been impressive, so hopefully this just keeps going.” Read the rest of this entry »

A pivotal series between the two teams atop the AL West kicked off on Tuesday with the Astros beating the A’s to extend their division lead to 4.5 games. It was an unusually shaky start from Chris Bassitt, who allowed six runs and couldn’t escape the fifth inning, but he turned the game over to Oakland’s bullpen with the game knotted at six runs apiece. The combo of J.B. Wendelken and Yusmeiro Petit, though, quickly changed that, allowing two runs in the sixth to put the A’s behind for good.

The A’s have routinely found ways to create value despite a small piggy bank, but the bullpen is probably the biggest concern with the team so far. That’s nothing unusual; most teams in the majors stress over their bullpen. But the A’s are not an ordinary team. During their current three-year streak of going to the playoffs, their bullpen has ranked in the top 10 in WAR each of those seasons and top five overall:

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