I know what you’re thinking: it’s a layup of a title. Harrison Bader is one of the best defensive outfielders in baseball. When he needs it, he can engage a little bit of turbo boost, turning his range from excellent to downright ludicrous:

Too easy, right? What a one-note title. We get it: he catches all the balls. If you thought that was what I had in store for you, gather around, because things are about to get exciting.

Bader, you see, collected Pokémon cards as a kid. Relevant? Not really. Unless you follow fantasy baseball forums and heard this whopper of a tale early in the season:

I’m not the first person to cover this story. Sami Alsado picked it up in May over at Pitcher List and wondered whether it should inform our opinion of Bader’s start. But it was still early in the year, and besides, Bader himself hadn’t said anything about it yet. Well, that surgery was real, and Bader is in the midst of a breakout offensive season. It’s speculation no longer — Harrison Bader is seeing clearly. Let’s see what removing some nasal polyps can do for you. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2021 Los Angeles Dodgers might be having one of the greatest disappointing seasons in MLB history. Despite being on a 97-win pace, an accomplishment that nearly every team in baseball would celebrate most seasons, they find themselves in second place in the National League West, four games behind the surprising San Francisco Giants. They’re even underperforming their preseason expectations, a notable feat considering how rare it is for projection systems to forecast a team to have more than 97 wins.

One of the primary components of this terrific-but-underwhelming paradox is Cody Bellinger, 2019’s NL MVP. Just 24 at the end of the 2019 season and sporting an ultra-spicy .305/.406/.629, 7.8 WAR line, Bellinger was quite rightly considered one of the best young players in baseball. A slugging first baseman who somehow converted into being a solid center fielder, little seemed out of reach in those salad days. Yet just two years later, at the ripe old age of 26, Bellinger is currently a platoon player.

Entering the season, ZiPS projected Bellinger for a 133 wRC+, a notable bounce-back from the decidedly middling 114 wRC+ he posted in the shortened 2020 season. And ZiPS was actually the grumpy one here; the other projections housed here at FanGraphs pegged him for a wRC+ of anywhere from 141 to 148. The results haven’t been in the same galaxy as those forecasts, or even his 2020 results. Bellinger’s 65 wRC+ is a shining beacon of misery. To put this in context, Chris Davis put up a 63 wRC+ from 2017-20 and a 60 the last time he got significant playing time in 2019. You don’t want history to rhyme, let alone repeat, when the comparison is Davis.

Of course, one mitigating factor is that Bellinger has suffered a string of injuries over the last year. First, there was a dislocated shoulder while celebrating a World Series dinger. Then this season, he’s missed time with a hairline fracture in his left fibula and a hamstring strain. We’ve seen players struggle while coming back from shoulder injuries in the past, and his maladies this season haven’t allowed for much of a run. So case closed, he’ll be fine? Not really. Read the rest of this entry »

With the July 30 trade deadline come and gone and the August waiver trade deadline a relic of the past, teams are set for the stretch run. Perhaps that’s why the deadline was so frantic; all of the contenders and bubble teams had one last chance to upgrade their rosters before the final two months of the season. We’re only a week into August and the standings in the two eastern divisions have already been shaken up.

A quick refresher: my approach takes the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), and their starting rotation and bullpen (50%/50% FIP- and RA9-) — and combines them to create an overall team quality metric. I add in a factor for “luck” — adjusting based on a team’s expected win-loss record — to produce a power ranking.

Even though the Dodgers added a ton of firepower to their roster at the end of July, the Giants have maintained their grip on both first place in the NL West and the best record in baseball. Getting Kris Bryant was a critical response to Los Angeles adding Trea Turner and Max Scherzer, and Bryant has had no problems settling in. He’s already played three different positions and has collected 10 hits in his first eight games as a Giant. They’ve won four straight series against the likes of the Dodgers, Astros, and Brewers.

Scherzer and Turner made their Dodger debuts this last week, giving the injury-wracked club a huge boost. The Dodgers lineup has gotten a lot healthier with the recent return of Corey Seager but the team still has 14 pitchers currently on the Injured List. The latest bad news was a setback in Clayton Kershaw’s rehab, pushing his timeline into September. They won’t have to worry about missing out on a playoff berth, but if they want to push the Giants for the NL West lead, they’ll need some help on the pitching front. They signed Cole Hamels last week but their most impactful reinforcements will be coming off the IL sometime in the next two months. Read the rest of this entry »

In late June, Chicago White Sox rookie and 2019 third overall pick Andrew Vaughn had a 13-game stretch where he struck out 31% of the time with a 15.1% swinging strike rate. This slump brought his season-long wRC+ down to 91 and his K-rate up to 27.2%. It was a disappointing start to the career of a prospect who was seen as having a great hit tool and had always had below-average strikeout rates in the minors. That stretch culminated in a three-game series against the Mariners that saw Vaughn strike out four times in eight plate appearances and wave through 20% of the pitches he saw:

The White Sox had a day off the next day and by the time their next series against the Twins started on June 29, Vaughn had snapped out of his funk. In fact, he didn’t whiff a single time in the series against Minnesota. When watching his swing in that series, you could notice an adjustment beginning to take shape. Focus on his hands, compared to the swings you saw above:

Vaughn’s ability to make contact has continued and since June 29, his swinging strike rate is an elite of 6.3% — that’s Juan Soto territory. Now that we are into August, Vaughn’s new hand load has solidified further, making it easier to see the difference compared to his early season swings. Here’s a better look at the adjustment:

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Over the last decade or so, I’ve noticed a trend I find intriguing, a pattern of fans building up a cult of personality around players on their favorite team who are, to put it politely, average at best. Now, before we dwell too much on the idea of a “bad” major leaguer, it’s worth noting that even the so-called “bad” players are still elite in terms of their ability to play the sport of baseball. To even make it to the big leagues means having proven yourself in the minors, often for years. They may not stack up compared to All-Star teammates and future Hall of Famers, but I want to emphasize that these players are still among the best in the world at what they do.

Still, even with that in context, there are players who fall into a utility or bench-player role, guys who likely don’t have sell-out jerseys in the team store or even earn the dreaded “Quad-A” moniker. Yet it’s these players who interest me most because for some reason, some of them become magnets for fan interest. Don Kelly, a utility player for the Detroit Tigers, hasn’t appeared on the field for the team since 2014; he has a career line of .230/.294/.334 over nine seasons, a career wRC+ of 72, and 0.2 career WAR. Yet to this day, Tigers fans will argue that it is Kelly, and not Don Mattingly, who is the true “Donnie Baseball.”

I posit there are two parts to what makes these players fan-favorites. The first thing that makes a “bad” player beloved is the positive feeling they create for an audience, be it as a generally likable individual or as a spark-plug who is watchable because you don’t know if they’ll crack a joke or beat the tar out of a Gatorade cooler on any given day. The feeling these players inspire in us, the GIFs and videos that hit Twitter as a result, is part of establishing a mythos that has nothing to do with their stat line. Who among us hasn’t seen a GIF of Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Brett Phillips in “airplane mode” after his unexpectedly clutch walk-off in Game Four of the 2020 World Series and smiled? Read the rest of this entry »

Francisco Urbaez wasn’t sure what to expect when he reported to spring training. Signed by the Cincinnati Reds as a non-drafted free agent in June of last year, the 23-year-old infielder knew only that he was being given an opportunity. To say he’s made the most of it would be an understatement. In 275 plate appearances with the High-A Dayton Dragons, Urbaez is slashing an eyebrow-raising .332/420/.454.

A native of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Urbaez didn’t come to the United States solely to play baseball. The son of a mechanical engineer and a psychologist, he came to earn a degree.

“That was my family’s plan,” explained Urbaez, who spent two years at Chipola Junior College, and two more at Florida Atlantic University. “They were like, “Go to the States and play ball, and whatever happens happens, but you need an education first.”

Already fluent in English when he arrived in the U.S. at age 18, Urbaez was initially an Accounting major, but then changed to International Business, and ultimately to Business. And while baseball wasn’t the priority, it did serve as a catalyst. Former Toronto Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista is involved with a foundation that helps Latin American student-athletes come to the U.S. via scholarships, and Urbaez was one of the beneficiaries.

Unlike many Dominicans currently playing professional baseball, Urbaez hadn’t attracted a lot of attention while on the island. He received only one offer from an MLB organization, and that was after he’d committed to come Stateside to begin his studies. Teams didn’t exactly knock down his door during his JC tenure, either. It wasn’t until his junior year at FAU that scouts began to take notice. Prominent among them was Andrew Fabian, whose familiarity with Urbaez dated back to his time as a coach at Hillsborough Community College. Now an area scout with the Reds, Fabian saw potential in the under-the-radar second baseman. Read the rest of this entry »

The A’s are in the midst of another playoff hunt as they look to make their fourth postseason in a row, but this looks to be the first year in the run where a reliever doesn’t lead the pitching staff in WAR. Up there with Sean Manaea (2.9 WAR, 127 IP), Chris Bassitt (2.4 WAR, 137 IP) has taken a big step forward in his development, working a career best 19% K-BB%. Manaea’s success can be attributed to an across-the-board velocity spike (roughly 2 mph) that’s made an already great arsenal exceptional. Bassitt’s breakout is less clear and warrants some investigation.

Before I get into usage, I should note that his four-seam fastball velocity is a pedestrian 93.4 mph (league average is 93.7), and the shape on the four-seamer, sinker, and cutter are also average relative to the league.

For clarification on the sinker and cutter, vertical movement values greater than zero mean more drop than average. The four-seamer is rather poor when it comes to having the ride we associate with success in today’s game. The sinker, while it does well by horizontal movement, is still below average by vertical movement. And while the cutter shows great drop, there is a lack of cut or horizontal movement.

Despite being the only pitch with good vertical movement, though, it’s the cutter that has been lagging.

I bring all this up because these are the pitches that Bassitt overwhelmingly relies upon, and it’s a unique combo.

It’s an extreme approach, mashing together a combination of three average pitches by movement to the tune of a 3.51 FIP. There is no extension magic, but there is maybe some vertical approach angle ability at play.

There are far more robust calculations for vertical approach angle that are unavailable to me, but we can leverage some quick back of the envelope geometry to work with a loose version of our own. Just using release height, pitch height, and release extension, Bassitt is above average in keeping a flat approach angle that can paper over the lack of vertical movement. (“Above average” means that he does well to locate up in the zone but also releases from a lower height.)

Better than trying to justify my choice of simple geometry, how about I just show you where Bassitt stands by release and average location?

There’s great height on the four-seamer, but what’s arguably as important is how low Bassitt’s release is for a player of his height. One way to hack a non-rising four-seamer is to release it as low as possible but throw it high in the strike zone to recreate the same plane where a hitter feels like he has to adjust his hands to get his barrel where it needs to be. Bassitt does just this; he’s 6’5”, but his release is nearly a foot lower at 5.5 feet. There’s a flatness to the four-seamer that helps it play up in the zone, and the sinker still has enough raw movement to be effective as well.

Tunneling pitches and locating is great, but every pitcher wants to be more unpredictable to a hitter. Bassitt is in a high tier when it comes to combined fastball usage, but there’s a difference that should be noted on a per-plate appearance basis. What does that look like for the hitter? How often should someone step in against Bassitt and expect only fastballs?

For a plate appearance against Bassitt, more often than not, a batter will have to expect an offspeed pitch at some point. The changeup, slider, and curve are featured less than 10% of the time, but the changeup is the only of those pitches that can be thrown with more regularity because it doesn’t have a huge velocity gap (15-plus mph) with the fastball like the curve and slider do. The curve is so loopy and slow it’s almost a kind of shock pitch to steal a strike, and while the slider is fine by movement, it may be too slow to throw with regularity to lefties.

What Bassitt does is overcome his inherent fastball movement, particularly the lack of rise that is so desired for four-seamers in today’s game. Not only that, but he’s also found a mix that allows him to throw what he can command well while still having enough in his arsenal to keep batters thinking about the offspeed coming their way. Performing as well as he is right now with this much fastball usage opens up the door for a more refined slider and/or cutter to take a larger role down the road.

Bassitt can follow Lynn as a roadmap, but with the cutter as poorly performing as it is and the slider platoon dependent, there’s room for him to grow. He has found great success not having to throw a slider more often or a better performing cutter, but there’s a possible next level if he felt the need to become more unpredictable. Despite somewhat below average raw stuff, he has excelled — and there are still steps he can take to get even better.

When the Blue Jays picked up José Berríos at the trade deadline, it wasn’t hard to see the reasoning behind it. Though not without significant cost in the form of two top 100 prospects, the move was clearly an effort to bolster Toronto’s starting pitching in preparation for a potential postseason berth. Berríos is a welcome complement to Hyun Jin Ryu and Robbie Ray at the top of the rotation, but he isn’t the only noteworthy addition to the Blue Jays’ starting pitching in 2021.

Alek Manoah was called up to make his major league debut earlier this season, continuing a fast-tracked professional career that has required him to adapt quickly at every step. The righty was something of a late bloomer, attracting little attention until developing into an elite prospect at West Virginia, eventually going in the first round of the 2019 draft. He made six starts at Low-A in 2019, and impressed the organization enough at the alternate sight in 2020 to begin this season at Triple-A. Even more improbable than skipping both High- and Double-A entirely is that it only took a polished showing at spring training and three starts at Triple-A to convince management that he was major league ready.

Unlikely as it may seem, Manoah’s expedited trip to the majors was backed up by his numbers. In 18 innings at Triple-A this year, Manoah struck out 27 and walked only three, while allowing one run on seven hits. He issued four hit-by-pitches during that time (three came in his first game of the season), which is high, but is also likely an ironic byproduct of the same mechanics that make him so effective. Manoah works exclusively from the stretch, and when he lunges toward the plate during his delivery, he lands toward the third base side of the rubber – an awkward look for a big-bodied righty. While this cross-body motion does an exceptional job of hiding the ball, especially from right-handed hitters, when he doesn’t manage to fully whip his arm across his large frame, he has a tendency to miss arm-side, and given that top-notch deception, hitters tend not to have time to react quickly enough to get out of the way. Aside from that explainable HBP spike in those three starts, he showed virtually no signs of the growing pains you might expect from a guy who skipped two levels of the minors. Read the rest of this entry »

Just as the Joey Gallo trade ended an era of Rangers baseball, the Cubs’ flurry of moves at this year’s trade deadline closed the door on Chicago’s championship core. While Kyle Hendricks, Willson Contreras, and Jason Heyward still remain from the 2016 team, the trades of Javier Báez, Kris Bryant, and Anthony Rizzo send things out with an exclamation point rather than the Texas comma. Five games below .500 and with a much weakened roster, we now project Chicago to finish 74-88; the last time the franchise finished with a worse record was 2014.

In a very real way, the 2010s Cubs did accomplish one very important feat: they won a championship. While I don’t subscribe to the notion that a great run for a team must involve a title, I also have not yet been placed in the role of some brutal autarch who determines how the history books are written. The Cubs won the World Series, and the Rangers did not, and both teams will be remembered differently as a result.

Still, the way it ended leaves a curious dissatisfaction about the Cubs. The dizzying heights of 2016 faded quickly, and the subsequent single NLCS appearance and pair of wild card losses were not the stuff of legend. The sudden turning-off of the cash spigot didn’t help, either; after spending $217 million in free agency after the 2017 season, Chicago has spent a total of $21 million in the offseasons since, or roughly half what the Rays have paid out in that span. (The mid-June 2019 signing of Craig Kimbrel to a three-year, $43 million contract is one of the lone splurges.) In the end, the farm system and those low-key signings couldn’t make up for the attrition elsewhere, and the Cubs’ domination of the NL Central was a brief affair.

Before last winter, team president Jed Hoyer talked about the Cubs going into a retooling phase rather than a full teardown, which left me skeptical. But Chicago still has some advantages that suggest a return to playoff relevance might not be that far away.

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The playoff race is heating up and for teams still competing for the postseason, the stakes are the highest they’ve been all season. The spotlight shines especially bright on high-leverage relief appearances in this environment. Unfortunately for the Padres, their All-Star closer Mark Melancon took a small step backward in yesterday’s matchup against the Athletics. Melancon entered the ninth with a two-run lead but allowed two runs on three hits and a walk. The A’s went on to win 5-4 in extras. Despite the setback, Melancon has been one of the best closers in the league in 2021, converting 32 of his 37 save opportunities and leading all of baseball in saves. This season, however, has seen a ton of blown leads in late innings. In the past two seasons, save conversion rates have plummeted, diving from a stable range of 66-70% from 2002-18, down to as low as 61.7% so far this season.

At first glance, it’s easy to point to the expansion of the active roster to 26 players and an influx of injuries as the reason for baseball’s poor performance in closing out games. Save opportunities are being distributed much more widely than in the past. The chart above shows that the drop in save conversion rate actually begins in 2019. The days of multiple workhorse closers meeting the 40-save benchmark are gone. Even getting 40 save opportunities has been elusive for all but a handful of pitchers:

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