I didn’t want to write this article. One of my favorite things to do, back when I was a full-time Cardinals fan and part-time writer, was wait for the first few weeks of the season and then start ogling velocity changes. There’s almost nothing that made me feel so unabashedly happy as seeing an extra tick or two out of some arm I’d written off the previous year. Why spoil that magic by looking into whether it actually matters?

Nothing fun can come of using data to look at incuriously held beliefs, but that’s never stopped me before, so I decided to examine pitchers who experienced velocity gains from one year to the next. Do their fastballs grade out better? Do they strike out more batters? Walk more? Do they hold the gains from one year to the next? I had no clue, but I decided to find out.

First things first: 2020 goes right out the window. The season started in late July, and no one had anything approaching their normal offseason routine. Temperatures were weird, workloads were changed on the fly, and some teams were affected by COVID-related cancelations; trying to tease something out from that noise is pointless and unnecessary. I’ll just use 2015 through 2019 instead.

Why 2015? That’s when Statcast first arrived, and with it a new tracking system. I could, I suppose, use data since 2008, but I wanted to minimize the chances of false readings stemming from the change in systems. 2020 also featured a change — to camera-based readings instead of radar — but we’re already throwing it out anyway, so no big deal there.

In each year, I looked at the population of starters who threw at least 500 four-seam fastballs. I then found the year-to-year changes for each pitcher-season combination. Justin Verlander, as an example, averaged 93.4 mph in 2015, 94.1 mph in 2016, 95.3 mph in 2017, 95 mph in 2018, and 94.6 mph in 2019. That means his ‘15-’16 change was 0.7 mph, his ‘16-’17 change was 1.2 mph, his ‘17-’18 change was -0.3 mph, and his ‘18-’19 change was -0.4 mph. This gave us a database of 236 pitcher-seasons from 2016 to 2018 — I’m leaving out changes between 2018 and 2019 because I want to know what happens the year after a pitcher gains velocity. Read the rest of this entry »

MLB managers not named Tony La Russa did Zoom calls with members of the media this past week. Today’s column features highlights from several of those sessions.

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Two of the topics Dusty Baker addressed on Monday were job-related. One was the position he currently holds with the Houston Astros, the other was a role that’s never appealed to him. The latter is anathema to baseball’s Most Interesting Man in the World because it wouldn’t allow him to kick back and ruminate on life.

“One reason I never wanted to be a general manager is because you don’t really have an offseason,” Baker told a cohort of reporters. “He works all year, and doesn’t have much time off, but for the general manager, and front office people, this is the most busy time of the year.”

Baker is 71 years old with 23 managerial seasons under his belt. How much longer he’ll sit in that chair is a question he can’t answer, but he’s been around long enough to know that life can come at you from different directions. Much for that reason, he’s simply going with the flow.

“Depends on how I feel [and it] depends on how the team feels about me,” said Baker, who was hired by Houston prior to last season. “Changes are going to come about in life. I tend to think in terms of Walter Alston and Tom Lasorda. Those guys signed a series of 20 one-year contracts. I’m not lame anymore. You know what I mean? A lame duck can’t fly. But my wings aren’t clipped no more. I can always fly.” Read the rest of this entry »

A week ago, the Rays’ 40-man roster had a single catcher on it: Ronaldo Hernández, a 23-year-old prospect who had never played above High-A. Fast forward to Friday, and Tampa has doubled its collection of backstops after re-signing Mike Zunino, who has been with the team the past two seasons. That was not the only move the club made, though, as the Rays also signed free-agent pitcher Michael Wacha. Both deals came in at $3 million, with Zunino’s total figure including a buyout on a 2022 option. The deals make sense, though it is worth noting that the two players combined for 0.1 WAR last season, so the Rays must see something beyond their recent performances to justify even a modest investment.

The Rays need a bunch of innings behind the plate, and Zunino, who turns 30 in March, should supply some of them; just don’t expect much out of them. The last two seasons, he’s been one of the worst hitters in baseball, with his 49 wRC+ ranking 337th out of 342 players with at least 300 plate appearances. Zunino does have some power, with a career ISO around .200, and he bested that number in 84 plate appearances last season, but he just doesn’t get to it enough to make himself anywhere near a decent hitter. Even his walk rates, which were double-digit levels back in his good offensive years with the Mariners in 2016 and ’17, have dropped below league average the last three years. Zunino has always swung and missed a lot, with a 35% career strikeout rate, and he whiffed 37 times last year while putting the ball in fair territory on just 38 occasions. He’s average to maybe slightly above average at throwing out runners, but last season, he was below average in framing for the first time in his career. There are reasons the Rays declined Zunino’s $4.5 million option at the end of last season, and it isn’t because they’re cheap.

Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s talk a little bit about outrage. How would you feel if you were Edwin Rios and this happened to you?

Outraged is the way I’d feel. Come on! There’s nothing about that pitch that says strike. 4,356 pitches were thrown over the plate and within an inch up or down from that one, and none of the other 4,355 were called strikes. This call is outrageous! It’s unfair.

Sadly, I’m not Jeff Sullivan, so I’m not going to do a post about the worst called balls and strikes of 2020. I wanted to start with that pitch as an appetizer, though, because I do enjoy the genre of “pitch that shouldn’t be a strike gets called a strike.” But forget quality — it’s overrated. Let’s focus on quantity instead.

On September 9, Tyler Anderson threw 100 pitches. He received a whopping 22 called strikes — not too shabby! It was his second-best mark of the year in games where he threw at least 50 pitches. Here’s the real kicker — 12 of those 22 weren’t in the strike zone.

Let’s look at one of those to set the stage. Here’s a pitch that got Dylan Moore looking for a strikeout:

Wait, is that haze in the background? Indeed it is — this game was played under a wildfire-induced haze. No, it’s not that Mariners game against a Bay Area club that was impacted by wildfires — you’re thinking of the Oakland-Seattle clash on September 14, a doubleheader played in and under smoky skies. It’s also not that Mariners game against a bay Area club that was played in San Francisco — you’re thinking of the September 15 decision to relocate the A’s/Mariners tilt to California to avoid the unhealthy Seattle air. 2020 sure was a doozy. Read the rest of this entry »

The year 2020 has not been filled with good news as far as baseball is concerned, but on Wednesday, some arrived. After lengthy study, Major League Baseball announced that it will officially recognize seven professional Negro Leagues that operated between 1920 and 1948 as major leagues. For as overdue as the decision is, it’s first and foremost an official acknowledgement — as if one was needed — that the baseball played in those leagues at a time when MLB’s shameful color line was in effect was of comparable quality.

“In the minds of baseball fans worldwide, this serves as historical validation for those who had been shunned from the Major Leagues and had the foresight and courage to create their own league that helped change the game and our country too,” said Bob Kendrick, the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, via MLB’s press release. “This acknowledgement is a meritorious nod to the courageous owners and players who helped build this exceptional enterprise and shines a welcomed spotlight on the immense talent that called the Negro Leagues home.”

Accordingly, the move will make the statistics and accomplishments of some 3,400 players part of the major league record, meaning that it has the potential to alter familiar career totals, slash stats, and distinctions, some of which will inevitably make their way into Hall of Fame deliberations.

The decision is the culmination of MLB’s centennial celebration of the founding of the Negro Leagues — specifically, the point when Rube Foster and seven other owners of independent Black baseball teams banded together to form the first Negro National League, “the first successful, organized professional Black Baseball League that provided a playing field for African-American and Hispanic baseball players to showcase their world-class baseball abilities,” to use the NLBM’s description.

The centennial, which included festivities on August 16 where players, coaches, managers, and umpires wore a special Negro Leagues 100th anniversary logo patch on their uniforms, took place against the backdrop of the widespread protests against police brutality and structural racism that followed in the wake of the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. Those protests have spurred changes that have included the retirement of corporate names and logos based on racial stereotypes, an effort that spilled over into the sports sphere via commitments to rename the NFL’s Washington franchise and MLB’s Cleveland team, which have made for some bumpy rides, to say the least. Read the rest of this entry »

The offseason remains slow, but the reliever market saw some moves this week, with a trio of free agents scoring new contracts. Greg Holland signed a one-year, $2.75 million deal to come back to the Royals, who continue to act aggressively this winter. Former Brewers lefty Alex Claudio signed a one-year, $1.25 million commitment to join the Angels, who recently traded for closer Raisel Iglesias. And speaking of the Angels, Keynan Middleton signed a one-year contract with the Mariners, who also added Rafael Montero via a trade with Texas this week.

Read the rest of this entry »

The fact that Andy Haines has been coaching for close to two decades doesn’t make him unique among his contemporaries. But his background does differ. Two years into his tenure as the hitting coach of the Milwaukee Brewers, Haines is just 43 years old. He’s either been coaching or managing for basically his entire adult life.

Haines earned a master’s degree from Middle Tennessee State University, and since that time he’s tutored players in independent ball, at every level of the minors — including as a coordinator — and more recently in the majors. An assistant hitting coach with the Chicago Cubs in 2018, where he worked alongside Chili Davis, Haines was hired into his current role by the Brewers in November of that same year.

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David Laurila: What stands out to you about today’s hitting environment?

Andy Haines: “What’s prevalent right now is how things have evolved with technology. Hitting is still at the mercy of pitching — it’s still a reactionary event — and the trends in the game somewhat dictate what hitters need to do to have success. You’re seeing guys rip four-seamers at the top. With technology, guys in the minor leagues can practice not only spinning the ball, but how efficiently they can spin it, and where it gets the outs.

“Everybody talks about the trends — the Three True Outcomes — and how the game is being played. For me, those are the challenges on the hitting side. And defense is a part of run prevention, too. The defense in the big leagues is incredible. Front offices have more research tools and sophistication as far as defensive metrics. They play you where you hit the baseball. So there are a lot of things trending that make it challenging to score runs.”

Laurila: How similar are big-league hitting coaches right now? Do they all speak the same language — not just the terminology, but also the concepts being prioritized? Read the rest of this entry »

Before we get going, a heads up: this article is about a mathematical model that explains tanking. I’ll give you a preview. The way baseball is currently set up, it’s no surprise teams tank. If you want to fix that, the game’s competitive structure must change. I suggest a few ways to accomplish that change at the end of the article, but be warned: the bulk of this is a no-nonsense dissection of why teams keep tanking even as the returns go down. Personally, I think the game should make the changes I suggest, because the boom and bust cycle of team contention makes for a fraught fan experience. The way the game is set up now, however, it’s no surprise that teams do it.

The logic behind tanking is straightforward and solid. Being in the middle is the worst; there are no prizes for winning 85 games, flags fly forever, and so on and so forth. You’ve surely heard it enough times that you don’t need a repeat, but just for completeness’s sake, we’ll do it one more time.

By trading present concerns for future value, you make your team better in the future. As a byproduct of trading present concerns away, your major league roster gets bad — bad enough, hopefully, that you’ll move to the top of the draft. Additionally, with no pesky need to be competitive, you can use your major league roster to give borderline players extended tryouts. Hit on a few of them, and that’s even more tailwind for the future.

In essence, tanking is making a bet that taking a step back now will let you take two steps forward sometime in the future. Even if that isn’t the case, being quite bad for a while and then quite good for a while sure sounds better than being mediocre the whole time. Tanking works on both axes, which explains its continued appeal. Do you think your team will win something like 77 wins? Blow it up! 75 wins? Blow it up! 70 wins? You guessed it. Read the rest of this entry »

After going all in on their rebuild in 2019, the Mariners have cycled through what seems like a million different pitchers in just two years. (The real figure is 61, the highest number of pitchers used by any team over the last two seasons.) That shouldn’t be surprising considering general manager Jerry Dipoto’s reputation for roster churn and the team’s goal of building a contender in just a few years time; scouring the waiver wire and the Mariners’ minor league system for pitchers who might show enough promise to stick around for a while requires a constant flow of transactions.

Finding plenty of lumps of coal in their quest to uncover those hidden gems, Seattle’s bullpen has been particularly bad as the team prepares to contend again. Over the last three decades, no relief corps has posted a league- and park-adjusted FIP worse than the 2020 Mariners, 33% below league average. They would have had the worst league- and park-adjusted ERA too if it weren’t for the 2020 Phillies’ atrocious bullpen and their 7.06 ERA. When we adjust their collective strikeout-to-walk ratio for their historical context, the 2020 Mariners had the fourth worst K/BB+ in that period, 37% worse than league average.

With their eyes set on coming out of their rebuild as early as next year — but more realistically in 2022 — Dipoto has made addressing that historically bad bullpen a primary goal of this offseason. The Mariners already re-signed Kendall Graveman, one of the few bright spots in the bullpen this year, and selected Will Vest in the Rule-5 draft last week. Yesterday, they took another next step in bolstering their bullpen by acquiring Rafael Montero from the Rangers. In return, 17-year-old prospect Jose Corniell and a Player To Be Named Later are headed to Texas. Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball is great, but it can be better. While earlier versions of this piece had an overwrought and overly long intro on the delicate balance between the intimacy of the pitcher-batter matchup and the frenzied multi-actor action across beautiful acres of wondrous expanse resulting from a ball put in play, let’s just get to my suggestions to improve the play on the field.

Shrink the Strike Zone

One of the unfortunate side effects of the balls-in-play discussion is that strikeouts and walks tend to get lumped together. In reality, walks are a pretty static feature through baseball history, while strikeouts have fluctuated. Here’s a graph showing walk and strikeout rates over the last 50 years.

Over the last 50 years, the average walk rate has been 8.6%, which is the same as it has been the last five years, and over the last 10 seasons, it is 8.2. Whatever hitters and pitchers are doing in recent history, it hasn’t caused more walks. Strikeouts, though, have soared, and on average, there are about 26 fewer free passes per year over the last decade as opposed to the previous 40 years, compared to an additional 352 whiffs per team per year over the same time frame. While you can argue that the increase is due to changes in hitting philosophy, the average fastball has gone from 89 mph in 2002 to 93 mph last season, while pitchers throw more and more offspeed pitches and fewer pitches in the strike zone. It’s not batter philosophy causing the rise in strikeouts; it’s the pitching just getting better and also being better aided by an increase in the size of the strike zone of about 10%. Read the rest of this entry »