Seemingly in the blink of an eye, a month of baseball is behind us. With nearly 30,000 plate appearances taken and more than 18,000 batted balls put into play, a month of data is plenty to begin examining league-wide trends and to make some predictions for the rest of 2021.

One big question going into this season — and a topic already examined here by both Ben Clemens and Justin Choi — was what the impact of the new baseball would be on the overall offensive environment. As both Ben and Justin found and detailed, the new baseball is bouncier, yielding higher exit velocities than in years past, and also possesses more drag, as it is not traveling as far. I want to focus on that second point. If the ball isn’t traveling as far, we should be seeing fewer home runs hit in 2021 — and we are. But can we pinpoint just how many home runs will be hit this season? That takes a bit more guesswork, but before getting into that, let’s first see how April 2021 stacks up to prior seasons, as well as identify where exactly we lost those home runs.

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Myles Straw grew up a big Tampa Bay Rays fan and has been to hundreds of games at Tropicana Field. Much for that reason, he’s more than a little familiar with Brandon Guyer. Which isn’t to say that Straw emulates the recently-retired outfielder. Guyer reached base via HBP a bruise-worthy 85 times from 2014-2018, and he did so despite never getting as many as 400 plate appearances in a single season. The bulk of his plunkings came in a Rays uniform.

When I talked to Straw this past Wednesday, he had played in 120 big-league games, all with the Houston Astros. He had never been hit by a pitch.

“I didn’t know that,” Straw claimed when I brought up the subject. “I mean, I don’t really jump out of the way of pitches. I’ll turn, because I don’t want to get hit in the ribs. If it hits me in the back, it hits me in the back, and that’s OK; I’m willing to take my base. But I’m not going to go up there and try to get hit. You always have a chance to get hurt with how hard guys are throwing these days.”

That same night, Straw was 2 for 2 with a pair of singles — one of the RBI variety — when he stepped into the box against Seattle Mariners right-hander Keynan Middleton. The second pitch he saw was a heater, well inside. Straw turned, and… you can probably guess the rest. The pitch hit him square in the back. Read the rest of this entry »

The Giants have been on a roll lately, winning their last three series thanks in large part to a surprisingly competent rotation, which Tony Wolfe detailed nicely earlier this week. Their latest victory, a 7–3 defeat of the Rockies on Wednesday, featured Alex Wood on the mound; he allowed just two runs and struck out nine over six innings en route to his third win in three starts. But his bold base running was what I want to focus on.

In the bottom of the sixth inning, looking to add to a 4–0 lead, Wood broke toward third before reliever Jordan Sheffield had started toward the plate. Sheffield stepped off the rubber and easily threw out Wood, who awkwardly tried to evade the tag by Josh Fuentes and somersaulted into the grass on the foul side of the bag. There’s something about the way Wood tumbled over the base while wearing his oversized coat that takes this past funny and into something special.

Alex Wood: Threat on the bases? ? pic.twitter.com/ul4QAqSaHy

— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) April 29, 2021

This steal attempt was a bizarre looking play. For starters, that big coat doesn’t seem very aerodynamic. But it’s rare in general for a pitcher to attempt to steal a base; I can’t remember the last time I’ve witnessed it. Sure enough, Wood’s scamper on Wednesday night has been the only stolen base attempt by a pitcher so far this season.

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If you pull up the Statcast batting leaderboards and sort by hard hit rate, the number one player won’t surprise you; it’s Giancarlo Stanton with a full two-thirds of his batted balls hit harder than 95 mph this year. But if you set the minimum batted ball filter to 40 events, the third name on the list is quite surprising: Evan Longoria. The 35-year-old third baseman is putting up some of the most encouraging offensive numbers since his heyday in Tampa Bay. And if you look a little further down, another veteran third-baseman shows up: Kyle Seager, who is carrying much of Seattle’s offense on his shoulders. These two veterans are simply crushing the ball right now and are enjoying late-career resurgences to help their respective teams get off to hot starts in April.

Longoria more than Seager has struggled offensively in the recent past. Since being traded to San Francisco prior to the 2018 season, he’s put up a 93 wRC+ in three seasons, accumulating just 3.1 WAR. That’s a significant step back from the peak of his career when he was widely considered to be one of the best, most consistent third basemen in baseball. After three disappointing years in the Bay area, his Statcast batting profile looks completely different this year. He’s posting career highs in average exit velocity, barrel rate, and hard hit rate leading to the highest power output of his career.

Of course, if you’ve been paying attention to the conversations around the changes in the ball introduced this year, you’d know that nearly every batter is seeing higher exit velocities on their hardest hit balls in play. Here’s what Justin Choi wrote in early April:

“The pressing issue, though, is that inflated exit velocities on batted balls force us to view the improvements of hitters with a rather healthy dose of skepticism. So far into the season, many players have surpassed their previous max EV highs; to my knowledge, 19 of them did so by a margin of 2 or more mph. But how can we tell which of those power surges are genuine? Did they make mechanical adjustments, or are they beneficiaries of the new baseball?”

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The moment was certainly worth a chuckle. In the seventh inning of a 10-0 drubbing by the Braves on Wednesday night, Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo took the mound. After retiring Johan Camargo on a grounder to first and then walking Ronald Acuña Jr., the NL leader in wRC+, the lefty-tossing Rizzo faced off against lefty-swinging Freddie Freeman, the reigning MVP — and struck him out.

Neither combatant could keep a straight face as Rizzo fell behind 2-0 via a slow curveball that was about two feet outside, and then a 70-mph fastball that missed the outside corner. Freeman laid off another 70-mph fastball that was in the zone, fouled one off that was a few clicks faster, and then went down swinging at a sweeping 61-mph curve that was low in the zone.

“I couldn’t stop laughing as I was going up to the plate,” Freeman told reporters afterwards. “It’s a recipe for disaster.”

“He’ll have that over me forever. But that’s one strikeout I’m OK with. That was fun. It was fun to be a part of.”

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Tejay Antone had a strong rookie season in 2020. Working as both a starter and out of the Cincinnati Reds bullpen, the 27-year-old right-hander logged a 2.80 ERA and fanned 45 batters in 35-and-a-third innings. He came into the current campaign with designs on being even better.

He’s done just that. As a matter of fact, he’s been downright scintillating. Armed with a new-and-improved attack plan, Antone has made seven relief appearances and allowed just four hits and one run in 13-and-two-thirds innings, with 20 punch outs. Power and adept sequencing have driven that success. Antone’s heater averages 97 mph, but it’s not the pitch he relies on the most. As a matter of fact, he considers it his third-best weapon.

Antone talked about his repertoire, and his Driveline-influenced approach, over the phone yesterday afternoon.

———

David Laurila: What do you know about pitching now that you didn’t just a few years ago?

Tejay Antone: “A lot. One thing I’ve noticed is that as the fastball gets harder, I’m starting to spin the ball more. That seems counterintuitive, because you would think that if you’re throwing harder, and your fastball is getting better, you’d want to throw it more. But for me… and I’ve seen some other guys with really good fastballs actually kind of pitching backwards. One is Aroldis Chapman. He’s obviously one of the hardest throwers in the league, and he’s spinning the ball a lot. That protects his fastball; it makes it that much better, because they still have to respect the velocity. We’ve lived in a fastball-driven society lately, but I think it’s starting to kind of flip. We’re seeing the percentage of off-speed pitches go up.”

Laurila: You’re throwing more off-speed this year [35.9% curveballs, 32.1% sliders, and 32.1% fastballs]. Has that been data-driven, or is it more intuitive? Read the rest of this entry »

Wednesday night, the Marlins defeated the Brewers by a comfortable 6-2 margin. Though the game wasn’t close, it could have been slightly closer: the Marlins saved a run with a clutch sacrifice fly double play in the bottom of the sixth. That’s a standard play; every level from youth tee ball on up has catch-and-throw double plays. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t impressive. In fact, the moment-to-moment action of the play shows how impressive baseball players are even on plays we think of as de rigueur.

Here, watch it in real time:

Let’s start with the pitch: Sandy Alcantara couldn’t have done much better. He dotted the bottom of the zone with a 99 mph sinker, the perfect location to induce an inning-ending ground ball. Seriously, it’s hard to draw it up any better than this:

That’s a perfect location for a grounder-inducing pitch. When he’s located that pitch on the bottom edge of the zone, good things have happened: he’s saved roughly four runs relative to average per 100 sinkers he’s located there. That’s roughly in line with the best overall pitches in baseball. When he spots it, in other words, the Marlins are right where they want to be.

Travis Shaw begged to differ. Well-spotted pitch, plus velocity: he hit the smithereens out of it. The ball came off his bat at 101.7 mph, a veritable laser beam. Combined with its flat 12 degree launch angle, that ball is a hit the vast majority of the time; it carried a .910 expected batting average per Statcast, though that ignores the horizontal angle (or spray angle), and Shaw happened to hit it right at a defender. Read the rest of this entry »

Jacob deGrom was his usual sterling self on Wednesday night, striking out nine Red Sox batters against no homers, one walk, and just three hits over his six innings of work. For his troubles, the Mets dropped the game 1-0, leaving deGrom with his second loss of 2021. A month into the season, deGrom now has the same number of losses as total earned runs allowed. He’s upped his Cy Young-worthy game to such a degree that allowing a single run nearly doubled his ERA, from 0.31 to 0.51. And with the Mets’ bats not cooperating, he’s even tried to help his own case, with hits in four of his five starts for a .462/.462/.538 line, though that performance might not continue. It certainly feels like of all the pitchers who have their health, deGrom is the unluckiest in baseball.

The Mets right-hander has never had a poor season, but he’s kicked his career into a new gear in recent years. Since the start of 2018, he sports a very healthy 1.99 ERA, a 2.21 FIP, and nearly 12 strikeouts per game. His total of 20.8 WAR is four more than the next-best pitcher, Gerrit Cole. And though he’s on the wrong side of 30, deGrom has even seen his velocity increase. While that’s not unheard of — Charlie Morton is the most obvious recent example that my brain trudges up — it’s not typical. If the season ended right now, he’d be the only starting pitcher to finish the season with an average fastball velocity of 99 mph of those with 20 innings thrown in a season since 2002. Not bad for a guy who broke into the league averaging 93!

Despite all that good performance, one of baseball’s cruelest stats, pitcher win-loss, has shown little mercy, leaving deGrom with a 27-21 record that looks more like what you’d expect from a good No. 3 starter than an ace. Is deGrom really the unluckiest pitcher in the game, at least when it comes to team support? Read the rest of this entry »

A’s third baseman Matt Chapman has had a pretty brutal start to his season. In 96 plate appearances through games played on April 27, he’s slashing just .152/.281/.329 and has struck out more than 34% of the time. His wRC+, meanwhile, is 45 points below his career-average into this year.

Chapman also finds himself atop a leaderboard that would, upon first glance, seemingly lead to success at the plate. Year-over-year, no hitter has increased his Center% — or percentage of batted balls hit up the middle — more than he has, with a rate that has gone up by more than 1.75 times.

Strikeouts aside, you would think that Chapman should at least be getting some decent batted ball results. More than 52% of his batted balls so far this year have gone up the middle, leading all hitters. Amazingly, though, he has hit the most groundballs up the middle this season without a hit, at 12. That’s right: On twelve different occasions this season when Chapman has hit a ball back towards the middle, it’s gone for an out.

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It would be inaccurate to say that the Yankees suddenly have a catching controversy, but only because the situation has been building for years, and already came to something of a head last fall. While Gary Sánchez burst onto the scene a few years ago as one of the game’s top backstops, he has struggled mightily in three years out of the past four, to the point that he started just two of the team’s seven postseason games last October and was nearly non-tendered last December. Amid his latest slump and the team’s ongoing funk, Yankees manager Aaron Boone said on Tuesday that going forward, Sánchez and longtime understudy Kyle Higashioka will share the starting job.

“Kind of we’ll just go day by day,” Boone told reporters. “They’re obviously both going to play a lot. But it will be a day by day thing that I’ll try to communicate as best I can.”

“[Higashioka has] just earned more playing time. Simple as that… His improvements the last couple of years on both sides of the ball have been strong. I think the way he’s played here on the onset of the season has earned him some more opportunities.”

The move has as much to do with ascendance of the 31-year-old Higashioka — a seventh-round 2008 pick who’s spent parts of five seasons at Triple-A Scranton-Wilkes/Barre plus the past season-and-change as the top backup — as it does the ongoing descent of the 28-year-old Sánchez, a two-time All-Star. After a miserable 2020 campaign in which he hit an unfathomable .147/.253/.365 (68 wRC+) with 10 homers and -0.1 WAR, Sánchez showed signs of a bounce back during spring training, and homered in each of the Yankees’ first two games of the regular season against the Blue Jays. He hasn’t homered since, however, and has gone just 6-for-48 with a lone double and seven walks since en route to a .182/.308/.309 (85 wRC+) line, that while his defense has again regressed. He’s hardly the only reason that the Yankees have stumbled to an 11-13 start — they were 9-13 before rolling into Camden Yards for their usual pillaging and plundering — but with Higashioka outplaying him on both sides of the ball as so many of their other hitters have slumped, the time is right for the Yankees to try this. Read the rest of this entry »