Sinkers (or two-seamers, as they’re also called), are a mixed bag. Maybe it’s just me, but they seem to produce polarizing results. They’re used by the most mediocre of control artists and the league’s best pitchers alike. They’re responsible for some of the slowest as well as the fastest, well, fastballs – just watch teammates Adam Wainwright and Jordan Hicks. When a pitcher lobs a bad sinker, hard contact seems inevitable. But when a good sinker is dangled as bait and the hitter bites, there’s no escaping that darn infield.

Extremes can work. They’re also risky, which is why the average pitcher relies on a four-seam fastball. We know what makes that pitch tick, and it slots into any arsenal. Sinkers are trickier to tame, which helps explain why pitchers have shied away from them in recent years. But as I explored earlier this year, a decline in usage does not equal a decline in relevance. If anything, the emphasis on seam-shifted wake has piqued the sabermetric community’s interest in sinkers.

When I wrote the article I referenced above, I was left with a few unanswered questions. For example:

“That being said, I’m not sure if higher sinker velocity correlates to better results, whether that be in terms of wOBA or Run Value… [a]t a glance, there’s no significant relationship between sinker velocity and xwOBA allowed (r^2 = 0.04).”

Immediately, there’s a flaw within that finding. I’d measured the relationship using pitchers who threw sinkers, not the sinkers themselves. It’s possible a pitcher possesses the makings of a good sinker but struggles with command. This time, I got down to business. I had pitch data from the 2018-19 seasons from an earlier project, so that became my sample. One caveat, though: I only included sinkers that resulted in batted balls. For the most part, the intended purpose of a sinker is to generate soft contact, and I felt including whiffs, fouls, and other results would produce murkier conclusions. Read the rest of this entry »

Justin Yurchak is flying under the radar as a prospect. He’s flying high in present-season performance. Unranked on our 2021 Los Angeles Dodgers Top Prospects list, the 24-year-old first baseman boasts the highest batting average among minor-league hitters with at least 260 plate appearances. Currently with Double-A Tulsa after spending the first three months of the season with High-A Great Lakes, Yurchak has come to the plate 322 times and is slashing a stand-up-and-take-notice .365/.452/.498.

Those numbers aren’t as nearly surprising as you might think. Since entering pro ball in 2017 as a 12th-round draft pick out of SUNY-Binghamton, Yurchak has put up a sumptuous .318/.413/.468 slash line. With the exception of a pedestrian year in 2018 — a 100 wRC+ in Low-A — he’s always hit.

I asked Yurchak about that lone blemish on his otherwise stellar stat sheet.

“That year, I got off on a bad track and had a hard time figuring out what was wrong,” Yurchak told me on the final Friday of July. “There was a little bit too much movement in my lower half. Part of it was that I wasn’t gathering my legs under my body. When I was landing in my load, there was a little bit of a slide with my hips, and my bat was dragging. Had I been able to make [the needed] adjustment earlier, I think the season would have gone differently for me.” Read the rest of this entry »

When Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert both went down with serious injuries earlier this season, the White Sox had to scramble to cover for two of their best outfielders. Andrew Vaughn, a corner infielder by trade, was thrown into the fire as their Opening Day left fielder, and when Robert went down a month later, the options were even thinner. To make matters even more complicated, the other member of their projected preseason outfield trio, Adam Eaton, was released by the club right before the All-Star break. Despite all this turnover and turmoil, White Sox outfielders have been worth a cumulative 7.1 WAR this year, the fifth highest mark in the majors. With both Jiménez and Robert back from the injured list much earlier than expected, Chicago suddenly has outfield options to spare.

Amazingly enough, Jiménez has already accounted for 0.8 WAR in just 13 games since being activated a few weeks ago. He’s been used as the designated hitter seven times, with three of his appearances in left field coming during an interleague series against the Cubs. With Robert taking his place as the everyday center fielder, the White Sox have four or five different options to deploy in their outfield corners. When Jiménez lines up in the field, Vaughn has been used as the designated hitter or shifted over to right field. Considering the difficult circumstances Vaughn was thrown into at the start of the season, his 2021 has to be seen as a huge success. The other day, Luke Hooper broke down the swing adjustment he made in late June that has led to a surge in production over the last month and a half. Even though he hasn’t contributed very much in the field, his bat is clearly good enough to stick in the lineup as the everyday starter in left. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday, Justin Choi took a look at the Blue Jays’ offense, observing that Toronto is succeeding by attacking in-zone pitches early in the count. It’s a strategy that has proven successful before: As Justin noted, you don’t want to give away a get-me-over strike. Falling behind 0–1 is too high of a price to pay if the first pitch is in the strike zone. No one exemplified this strategy more than George Springer, who had the majors’ highest differential between Z-Swing% and O-Swing% on the first pitch in 2020. Maybe that is why Springer was the Jays’ big free-agent splash last offseason: Not only is he a great player, but he also fits with that organizational philosophy that Justin outlined.

There’s more to be said about the impact that Springer has had on the Jays, however. It did take some time for him to settle into his new home, as he missed the beginning of the season due to an oblique strain, returned on April 28 to play four games as the team’s DH, then strained his right quad and found himself back on the IL until June 22. After the second return, though, he has been a mainstay in the lineup, and he’s quickly making a case as the most impactful-free agent acquisition of the 2020–21 offseason, even in spite of the comparatively lower volume.

Through Wednesday, Springer is hitting .285/.371/.645 with 16 home runs and a 170 wRC+ in 198 plate appearances across 46 games. The batting average and on-base percentage are roughly in line with his career marks, at 15 and 10 points above his career-average performance in each stat, respectively. It’s the .645 slugging percentage that sticks out like a sore thumb. Springer has never been a .300 ISO player, let alone a .360 ISO player. It’s been four years since Springer had an ISO this high in any 46-game stretch:

Springer has been the beneficiary of some good luck, but his barrel rate is a career-high, and it’s not even close. His average exit velocity, meanwhile, has ticked up by 2 mph year-over-year, getting above 90 mph for the first time in his career, and his sweet-spot rate — the percentage of batted balls between 8–32 degrees — is also at new heights. This has led to the best expected wOBAcon of Springer’s career, at .469. Other underlying numbers, like xwOBA, have been less favorable to his performance. (This is due at least in part to the highest strikeout rate of his career.) But the top line production is currently there, and even if regression does come, he’ll still be the George Springer the Jays were looking for when they signed him. Read the rest of this entry »

Whit Merrifield has long been one of the best base stealers in the game, but he has seemingly reached a new level of thievery this season, with 33 steals on only 35 attempts. That 94% success rate is the highest of his career and leads the majors among players with at least 20 attempts (Bo Bichette is an impressive 17 for 17). Our base running metric pegs him as the most valuable runner in the game, and he’s on pace to set a new career high in steals (he swiped 45 in 2018) with a chance to become the first player to reach 50 steals since 2017 — and all at the age of 32.

What’s particularly interesting is that, despite a 90th percentile Sprint Speed of 28.7 feet per second, which is about a half a foot per second off of his peak, Merrifield is far from elite when it comes to his short distance split times, which is a good way to gauge a player’s acceleration. His 90-foot split has gone from a peak of 3.89 seconds in 2018 to 3.97 this season, or from the 79th percentile to the 68th. Other elite thieves like Trea Turner, Byron Buxton and Tim Locastro have splits in the 99th percentile. Even Starling Marte, a fellow high success-rate stealer in his early 30s, is in the 81st percentile.

Base stealing is much more than a runner going top speed, though; it’s a mental and physical duel between the base runner and the pitcher. (That’s not to make light of the catcher’s role, but they are often left holding a baton, and the blame, for a race long lost.) What makes Merrifield the best base stealer in the game at a time when he’s far from the fastest player in the game is that he’s a master of this duel.

Exhibit A:

Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Tess Taruskin. Read previous installments of the Daily Prospect Notes here.

A month after the draft, here are some early looks at a few members of the 2021 draft class as they launch their professional careers.

Ryan Cusick, RHP, Atlanta Braves
Level & Affiliate: Low-A Augusta Age: 21 Org Rank: 7 FV: 45
Line: 3 IP, 0 H, 0 BB, 0 R, 7 K

Notes
Cusick’s started his professional career with two consecutive 98 mph strikes, setting the tone for what would be an impressive minor league debut. The 24th overall pick of the 2021 draft struck out seven of the nine of the batters he retired, and was one scorching liner off his third baseman’s glove away from perfection over his three innings of work. His success was due largely and unsurprisingly to his fastball, a high-90s offering delivered from a high arm slot (Cusick is an imposing 6-foot-6) that proved too much for the struggling Kannapolis offense.

In addition to the four-seamer, Cusick sprinkled in a few slurvy breaking balls, most of which missed the zone, though some missed bats as well. His arsenal also includes a changeup that he rarely threw during his time at Wake Forest, but which was a major developmental focus during last year’s shutdown; it did not make an appearance in his pro debut. Read the rest of this entry »

The White Sox have built a commanding lead in the American League Central. They’re now 10 1/2 games ahead of second-place Cleveland and have a 99.9% chance of going to the playoffs according to our Playoff Odds. They were heavily favored to win the division going into the season, but the club has had to overcome some significant adversity (most notably early season injuries to Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert) en route to the secure position they currently hold. And even beyond injuries, the roster was not without its questions, with one big one being how Dylan Cease would perform in his first full season in the rotation.

Cease’s 2020 campaign produced mixed results. On the surface, his 4.01 ERA, 5-4 record, and 44 strikeouts across 58.1 IP was decent. But he drastically outperformed his expected statistics, and it was hard to imagine he could maintain that ERA given his elevated walk rate (13.3%) and home run rate (1.85 HR/9), not to mention his 6.36 FIP. Cease has always had great stuff. As a prospect, his fastball graded as a plus to plus-plus pitch, with his breaking ball sniffing 60-grade territory; the question was how well he could control and command his repertoire. And while his 2020 peripherals suggested his performance this season would regress, there was a lot of optimism surrounding Cease prior to the start of the season. In spring training, Yasmani Grandal stated, “I feel like if we get him to where we see him going, this guy could be a Cy Young finalist — he could possibly be a Cy Young winner.” Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a story that you hear all too often these days. A reliever has a breakout season, perhaps aided by leaning more into throwing his best pitch to the exclusion of everything else. He parlays that into an offseason deal, or maybe a newly-prominent role on his current team. Then the next season starts, and the bloom is off the rose. Whatever ineffable magic powered last season is simply gone.

Here’s another story you hear all too often these days. A reliever has a bad stretch, looks like he might be cooked. The Rays, though, have seen something in him. They trade for him, whisper a few sweet nothings (or, fine, mechanical adjustments) into his ear, and bam! He’s part of their bullpen army.

Here’s the fun part: Matt Wisler personifies both of these stories. He was so bad the Giants designated him for assignment after a horrid start, then agreed to a trade with the Rays. Since heading East, he’s been incredible, one of the best relievers in the game. Seriously, look at these splits:

I had to know what changed. I’ll warn you: there’s a lot of failure in this article, a lot of finding not much, before we get to the good stuff — and I promise there’s good stuff. If you’re not into seeing how a pitcher can get to wildly different results with a substantially similar process, this article might bore you. But if you’re curious like I was, read on, and delve deeply with me into the minutiae of a pitcher who didn’t change very much and yet went from unplayable to great. Read the rest of this entry »

When Nicky Lopez steps to the plate, there is no in-between to his game. Of the 315 players who have seen at least 1,000 pitches over the past two seasons, Lopez places 27th in swinging strike rate (7.5%), in the top third in chase rate (24.7%), and in the top quarter in terms of the percentage of pitches put into play (18.8%) (all stats are through games on August 10). He combines elite plate discipline with an uncanny knack for making contact, an unusual mix of skills in the majors today. Players tend to make a trade-off when choosing to be more selective by accepting that they will put fewer balls in play. Balls in play have about a 178-point wOBA advantage over plate appearances that end in a walk or strikeout. But balls in play on pitches outside of the strike zone only enjoy a 97-point advantage over the combination of walks and strikeouts, a much less enticing proposition. Thus, by avoiding swinging at pitches outside the zone, hitters maximize their chances of putting a high-value batted ball into play, but also lengthen the plate appearance and increase the chance they strikeout. Lopez does not make this tradeoff, as you can see below:

I referenced Lopez’s minuscule 7.5% swinging strike rate; as a percentage of the total number of pitches he has seen, he rarely swings and comes up empty. He either makes contact or doesn’t swing at all. And the rate at which he swings at pitches overall is another indication of his selectivity. Over the last two seasons (2020-21), he’s swung at just 44.2% of the pitches he has seen, 2.9 percentage points less than the rest of the league over that sample.

Selectivity is great if you make it count when you do swing and put the ball in play on those pitches more towards the heart of the zone. Lopez’s problem, especially in his 2019 debut and last season, is that he often hasn’t reaped the benefits of his patience. This is the other side of his game. He has posted barrel rates in the second, fourth, and first percentiles and hard-hit rates in the second and sixth percentiles in his three seasons in the big leagues. He has also yielded zone run values per 100 pitches of -4.44, -5.17, and -3.02 in those seasons, compared to 1.86, 2.30, and 2.97 on pitches out of the zone, a product of his excellent approach but lack of punch when pitchers challenge him (average is 2.10 for out of zone and -2.21 for in zone). His career wOBAcon on the balls he puts in play inside the strike zone is just .302, 101 points lower than the league over that span. Through 937 major league plate appearances, he has hit three home runs, none of which have come in 2021. His extreme lack of pop has manifested itself in a 56 and 55 wRC+ in 2019 and ’20, respectively, the latter of which was also a product of his in-zone contact rate cratering to 82.4%. That placed him in the 51st percentile in 2020, not nearly high enough to offset the types of balls he puts into play. Read the rest of this entry »

This series of articles looks at players whose careers are cut short due to misfortune, but few of them are cases as sudden or as dramatic as that of former Astros pitcher J.R. Richard, who died one week ago at age 70. The Houston fireballer had emerged as one of the game’s hardest throwing starters and a potential ace when he suffered a stroke 41 years ago and collapsed during the team’s pregame warmups. He never pitched in the majors again.

Richard’s debut was about as brilliant as one can get: a complete-game shutout of the Giants in September 1971 in which he struck out 15 batters. This was toward the end of Willie Mays‘ illustrious career, but how many pitchers can claim to have pulled off a hat trick of whiffs against an inner-circle Hall of Famer in their debut? Those 15 strikeouts tied pitcher Karl Spooner’s debut record; incidentally, Spooner is another player with a short career that was ended by a shoulder injury a year later, but that’s a tale for another time.

As a pitcher, Richard looks more at home in 2021 than in 1970. At 6’8″ with a fastball hitting the century mark and a slider in the low 90s, there was a lot of intimidation and little in the way of pitching to contact here. The only problem was that he was raw mechanically, just two years out of high school, and coaching staffs weren’t as experienced as today at helping pitchers harness such an explosive repertoire; over his 12 remaining innings that season, including a first inning he didn’t finish, Richard walked 13 batters.

The wildness never quite went away, and Richard spent the new few years riding the Triple-A shuttle. But the Astros traded Claude Osteen in 1974 for two recent Cardinals draft picks, and Don Wilson and his son died in January 1975 from carbon monoxide poisoning, and these were the days you couldn’t just go shopping in free agency. So up to the majors came Richard for good.

Read the rest of this entry »