It’s been a big week for the Seager family. For the first time in the careers of 26-year-old Corey Seager, who debuted in the majors with the Dodgers in 2015, and his 32-year-old brother Kyle, who debuted with the Mariners in 2011, the pair crossed paths in a regular season game. What’s more, they put themselves in the history books by becoming the first pair of brothers to homer in the same game for opposing teams since 2001, and just the ninth to do so in MLB history. Both brothers are off to strong starts this year after solid but unexceptional 2019 seasons.

Bad timing accounts for the fact that the brothers had never played a regular season game against each other until this week. Their respective teams played an interleague series in Los Angeles in April 2015, but Corey, the Dodgers’ first-round pick three years earlier, had just begun his second stint at Double-A Tulsa. When the Dodgers visited Safeco Field in August 2018, he was on the injured list, having not only undergone Tommy John surgery on May 4 of that year but also arthroscopic surgery on his left hip labrum on August 7.

MLB.com’s Ken Gurnick described the brothers’ first regular-season meeting as bittersweet, because the coronavirus pandemic prevented parents Jeff and Jody from making the trip from North Carolina to join them either at Dodger Stadium, where they played on Monday and Tuesday, or Safeco Field, where they played Wednesday and Thursday. The dueling homers occurred in the series opener on Monday, with Corey clubbing a towering 425-foot shot off Justin Dunn with two on in the third inning; dig the looks on the pair’s faces as little brother rounds the bases:

As you can see, an inning later, Kyle countered with a 405-foot solo homer off Ross Stripling, the second of three that the Dodgers righty would serve up in that frame as the Mariners overcome a 6-2 lead. Even so, the Dodgers came back to win the wild slugfest, 11-9. Read the rest of this entry »

It is uncommon for a player who has only pitched in relief to land within sniffing distance of a preseason top-100 prospect list. In his 2020 rankings, Eric Longenhagen identified a total of 43 pitchers, 42 of which have spent most if not all of their minor league careers as starters. Typically, just the threat that a pitcher could need to transition to the bullpen in the majors necessitates a substantial drop in his stock. Dodgers right-hander Brusdar Graterol, for example, dropped nearly 50 spots on Longenhagen’s list in the span of a year, partially due to the increased likelihood his big league career would be spent as a reliever.

All of which is to say that Cleveland’s James Karinchak is an anomaly. He was No. 115 on Longenhagen’s prospect list before the season started, two spots behind Graterol. Where he differs from Graterol — as well as others like Rays right-hander Shane Baz, who was ranked one spot behind Karinchak — is that there hasn’t been any real effort to have him start in some time. He appeared in 82 minor league games from 2017-19 and started just six, all of which came back in his first professional season. There is little precedent for someone inspiring such promise as a full-time reliever in the minors. Fittingly, there is also little precedent for the numbers Karinchak posted in his minor league career.

Karinchak made the Cleveland prospect list only in the “Other Prospects of Note” section before the 2019 season. At the time he was coming off a season in which he’d thrown 48.2 innings across three levels of the minors and allowed just nine runs while striking out 81 and walking 36. An injured hamstring delayed his first appearance last year, but when he finally got back on the mound, his numbers were something you couldn’t expect to replicate in a video game. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a wildly misleading set of years and statistics for you, to start this article off on a high note:

Boy, what a boring career. An average player, and average in a consistent way. There are no swings between 3 and 0, no is-it-a-breakout spikes or is-he-toast dips. Let’s zoom in slightly, though, because I’ll level with you: that was a cherry-picked set of statistics:

Fewer homers, wildly varying walk and strikeout rates — those static WAR totals were a trick! If you’ll forgive me the conceit, let’s do one last reveal of more statistics:

Ah, the magic of counting stats. Ian Happ is on pace to obliterate his best previous season. Let’s take a look at how he’s doing it, shall we?

When he reached the major leagues, Happ had an old man’s game trapped in a young man’s body; enough patience to draw a raft-load of walks, but also enough patience to get down in counts and strike out at an astronomical rate. The problem was that he didn’t draw enough of those walks to make up for the strikeouts: his batting eye simply wasn’t good enough to let him get away with the takes. After reaching a two-strike count, Happ struck out 54.4% of the time — that’s bad! The major league average over that timeframe stands at 42%. Read the rest of this entry »

At this point in his career, Eric Hosmer is a known quantity. A few good offensive seasons during his 10 years in the majors have been marred by just as many poor campaigns at the plate. Collectively, he’s been 7% better than league average as a hitter during his career. And because he’s been in the league so long, it’s pretty clear why he’s been unable to produce consistently. Among the more than 500 players who have qualified for the batting title since Hosmer debuted in 2011, his groundball rate is 20th at 54.3%.

With more than half of his batted balls getting pounded into the ground, Hosmer’s success has been dangerously tied to his BABIP. This table of batted ball stats from 2015 onwards tells most of the story:

Hosmer has never had trouble making solid contact. It’s just that more often than not, that hard contact is made on groundballs. That tendency to put the ball on the ground has only gotten worse since joining the Padres in 2018, and it’s come with an elevated strikeout rate as well. Since signing his eight-year deal, he’s been 7% below league average at the plate and has accumulated -0.5 WAR over two seasons. His contract and lack of performance has become a big problem for the Padres.

Things might be looking up for Hosmer in 2020, however. He started off the year with five hits in three games including two doubles and a home run. A stomach issue sent him to the Injured List for 10 days and he struggled in his first few games back, his body likely still recovering from losing some weight while he was sidelined. But from August 13-17, he put together a five-game hitting streak that included three home runs. Because of his missed time earlier in the season, he’s only accumulated 56 plate appearances, but there have already been some significant changes to his approach that deserve investigation.

Here’s the same table as above, this time with 2020 included.

Hosmer’s batted ball profile looks nearly unrecognizable from his previous career norms. His groundball rate has dropped to a career low, and his fly ball rate is among the league leaders at 46.5%. This spring, Hosmer made some comments recognizing the deficiencies of his approach and acknowledged the changes he needed to make:

“I’ve got to get the ball in the air a little more. I’ve got to drive the ball a little more. I hit the ball really hard. It just goes on the ground.”

This isn’t the first time Hosmer has expressed a desire to hit the ball in the air more often. He made similar comments back in 2018. But this is the first time that sentiment has led to an actual change in approach.

When a batter makes significant changes to his batted ball profile, the simple assumption is that he’s made a swing change, as so many other batters have recently. That doesn’t seem to be the case with Hosmer. Here’s an example swing from 2019:

And here’s a swing from 2020:

Hosmer still has the long, loopy swing that he’s always had. The leg kick is still present as a timing mechanism. If he made any mechanical changes to his swing, they’re likely small tweaks rather than the big, sweeping changes we’ve seen from batters like Justin Turner. In The Athletic interview linked above, Hosmer mentions maintaining balance on his back leg as a way to prevent him from swinging down on the ball. That minor mechanical adjustment is certainly present in his 2020 swing shown above but it probably isn’t the main source of his new batted ball profile; instead, a change to his swing profile is likely what’s driving the change in batted ball outcomes. Here’s Hosmer’s swing rate grouped by pitch type during his career.

He’s simply stopped swinging at breaking balls and offspeed pitches and has focused his approach on attacking fastballs. Over his career, his groundball rate against breaking balls is 57.7% and it’s even higher against offspeed pitches (60.6%). By reducing the number of swings on pitches that produce his highest rates of groundball contact, he’s bound to reduce his overall groundball rate. His historic groundball rate against fastballs has been high as well (53.2%), but this year he’s elevating the hard stuff he sees. His average launch angle against fastballs has increased by 10 degrees this year and his average launch angle against breaking balls has increased by 20 degrees!

There have been periods earlier in his career where his rolling average launch angle has been this high, but not since joining the Padres. (It should be noted that his average launch angle was higher (17.2 degress) through August 16 but he’s hit a bunch of groundballs in the days since — such is the nature of these early season stats.)

Hosmer hasn’t just increased his launch angle, he’s also changed his batted ball distribution. He’s had a fairly even distribution of batted balls throughout his career, with a 34.2% pull rate balanced by hitting to the opposite field 28.7% of the time. This year, his pull rate is up to 44.2%, easily a career high. And because he’s elevating the ball more often while still maintaining his hard hit rate, his barrel rate is also at a career high 12.2%.

Changing his swing profile has also helped him reduce his strikeout rate to where it was in Kansas City. His chase rate has dropped by four points and his contact rate has increased by more than 12 points, up to a career high 85.7%. Hosmer has a new plan at the plate. When he’s ahead in the count, he’s swinging at non-fastballs just 28.6% of the time, nearly 25 points lower than last year. He’s focused on attacking fastballs and pitches he can handle. And when he makes contact, he’s pulling the ball more often and elevating.

This new approach at the plate has resulted in a reinvention for Eric Hosmer. Nearly every single change he’s made has helped him produce better results at the plate. We’re getting close to the point where these underlying statistics become statistically reliable. It certainly seems like Hosmer has finally figured out the adjustments he needed to make to regain his productivity at the plate.

Thanks are due to Eric Longenhagen for sharing his notes on Hosmer’s adjustments.

Cleveland has received a lot of plaudits for this year’s draft class, with multiple publications giving it plus-plus grades. Top-to-bottom quality is the primary reason for the praise. On the first day of a truncated five-round draft, the club selected high school shortstop Carson Tucker 23rd overall, then tabbed Auburn University right-hander Tanner Burns with a Competitive Balance pick. The following day’s selections were Florida International left-hander Logan Allen (second round), prep outfielder Petey Halpin (third), prep shortstop Milan Tolentino (fourth), and Vanderbilt right-hander Mason Hickman (fifth).

Orchestrating those selections was Scott Barnsby, who serves as Cleveland’s director of amateur scouting. Barnsby shared his perspective on this year’s unique draft, including the players he brought on board (and one he didn’t), as well as the challenges of scouting in a pandemic.

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David Laurila: How unique was this year’s draft?

Scott Barnsby: “First, we do everything we can to extend the timeline, to get to know these players as well as we possibly can. That starts as soon as the previous year’s draft is over. But the springs are really important, because we continue to develop relationships with the players and see how they’ve progressed from the fall and winter. We didn’t have that opportunity this year. It was unique in that sense.

“We obviously didn’t have a choice, because we were dealing with the pandemic and had to make adjustments, but it was pretty incredible to see how the staff came together. The one thing they kept saying was, ‘Hey, how can I help? What can I do to to get us to where we need to be in June?’ That’s the collaborative effort we always talk about. But it was still challenging. The majority of our work was done remotely, and we felt like there were gaps in the information we had, [both] on and off the field. We tried to do our best to to close those gaps.

“We held weekly meetings. There was daily work being done to prepare, but there were weekly check-ins starting a couple months prior to the draft to make sure that we were squared away on draft day. So while there were some challenges, it felt like it came together. And obviously, with five rounds we were really able to prioritize our time. Would we have liked more? We did the most with what we had.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Houston Astros took another hit Wednesday afternoon with the news that young slugger Yordan Alvarez, last year’s unanimous American League Rookie of the Year, would miss the rest of the 2020 season due to knee surgery. For the Astros, winners of 107 games in 2019, it represents the latest downgrade to the roster that was just one win away from winning the World Series last October. For Alvarez, it means a lot of pain, physical therapy, and a lost opportunity to consolidate some of his phenomenal gains as an offensive force over the previous 18 months.

Yordan Alvarez is going to undergo surgery next week to repair a partial tear of patella tendon in right knee and is out for the year, Baker said.

— Brian McTaggart (@brianmctaggart) August 19, 2020

Knee problems are sadly not new for Alvarez; even in March, there was a very real chance that he’d miss what was then Opening Day due to his knees. His bread-and-butter will always be making baseballs travel a very long distance, but he’s also surprisingly quick for a man his size. Despite what the massive slugger trope suggests, Alvarez’s sprint speed during his rookie season was measured by Statcast as 26.8 feet per second, just below the league average of 27. That burst of agility is rightly not used to steal bases, but it was enough to give the Astros the flexibility to occasionally use him in the outfield.

The hope had been that the season’s start date being pushed back from late March to late July would allow sufficient time for Alvarez to heal from his knee problems. But further complicating matters was a case of COVID-19, officially revealed last Friday after a couple weeks of the usual-for-2020 speculation surrounding a player missing time due to “undisclosed” reasons. Read the rest of this entry »

The future of the Tigers arrived ahead of schedule this week — in Chicago, not Detroit, because necessity didn’t consult a travel itinerary. Faced with injuries, the majors’ most ineffective rotation, and a losing streak that erased a surprisingly strong start to the abbreviated season, the Tigers promoted three of their top prospects — third baseman Isaac Paredes, lefty Tarik Skubal, and righty Casey Mize, the last of those the number one overall pick of the 2018 draft — to provide immediate reinforcements. The moves aren’t likely to send the team to the playoffs, even given the field’s expansion, but they should make the Tigers an improved and more interesting club even as they endure growing pains.

After losing 114 games last year and an average of 103 over the past three seasons, the Tigers appeared likely to remain doormats this season. Back in March, before the coronavirus interrupted spring training, our Playoff Odds projected them for 95 losses, with a 0.1% chance of making the playoffs — higher than the Mariners and Orioles, both of whom came in at percentages too small to be viewed with the naked eye, but otherwise pretty hopeless. The pandemic-shortened schedule improved their odds significantly; though still projected for a .417 winning percentage (25-35 instead of 67-95) as of Opening Day, they were estimated to have a 1.4% chance at winning the AL Central and a 12.0% chance at claiming one of the AL’s eight playoff berths.

Those odds climbed to as high as 39.2% as the Tigers won nine of their first 14 games, the team’s best start since 2015, when they went 11-3. In that year, however, 14 games represented 8.6% of their schedule, where this year it’s 23.3%. Those Tigers finished 74-87, a reminder that even lousy teams sometimes bolt from the gate in impressive fashion; last year’s Mariners, to use an example in recent memory, opened by going 13-2 but still finished 68-94.

As if on cue, the 2020 Tigers hit the skids for what has become an eight-game losing streak, starting with five straight at home — two to the White Sox, then three to the Indians — and then all three games against the White Sox in Chicago. The skid has sent them to a 9-13 record, dropping their run differential into the red (-25 runs); even entering Wednesday, their actual winning percentage had been well ahead of their projected winning percentages, but they’ve regressed to the point that their .409 mark is looking up at both their Pythagenpat (.420) and Baseruns (.416) winning percentages, which is to say that they’ve apparently found their level. Read the rest of this entry »

If you follow baseball, you might be aware of the minor scandal “caused” by Fernando Tatis Jr. on Monday night. Without the usual tens of thousands of fans in attendance to serve as direct witnesses, Tatis brazenly and maliciously hit a grand slam of Texas Rangers pitcher Juan Nicasio on a 3-0 count, while fully aware that his team had a seven-run lead. Ian Gibaut then came in and threw behind Manny Machado, sending an important message that acts of baseball will not be tolerated! Despite Chris Woodward’s efforts to explain Tatis’ violations of baseball’s sanctified unwritten rules, MLB had the temerity to give suspensions to Woodward and Gibaut. Rob Manfred may as well have thrown mom’s apple pie off the window sill.

More of this, please.

Baseball’s unwritten rules are a dreary mess, a veteran-imposed caste system of arbitrary rules and penalties that attempt to impose conformity, often on players of color, without the slightest benefit to how the game is played on the field or how the product comes across to viewers. And in addition to being tone-deaf and nonsensical, they’re rarely consistently enforced! I certainly don’t remember Woodward issuing a heartfelt apology to the Royals last year when his team hit two home runs in the ninth against Chris Owings, dragooned into mop-up duty in a long-lost game. At least Nicasio is an actual major league pitcher.

But enough about that fussiness — let’s get back to the baseball-related awesomeness of Tatis.

Tatis isn’t going to be the highest-paid Padre for a very long time thanks to the presence of Machado, but if the next decade of San Diego baseball is successful, it will be defined by players like the young shortstop, not to mention Chris Paddack and MacKenzie Gore. The resurgent, seemingly fly ballism-converted Eric Hosmer is in his decline phase and Machado, while a special player, didn’t grow up in the organization. Read the rest of this entry »

Empty stadiums are hardly the weirdest thing about baseball in 2020. There’s the shortened season, the universal DH, the runner on second base in extra innings; if you’re looking for ways the game has changed, there’s no shortage. Today, however, I’d like to talk about those empty stadiums, and their effect on home field advantage. A quick warning: this is going to be an article full of dry tables and plenty of math. I think it’ll be worth it, though.

One question looms over everything else when it comes to home field advantage: what percentage of games does the home team win? Over a very long horizon, everything else is just noise. In 2019, for example, home teams won 52.9% of the games they played. In 2018, that number stood at 52.5%. Long-term home field advantage bounces around between 52% and 54%. It’s good to play at home.

How about this year? To look at 2020 data, we need to do a little manual work. So far this year, four teams have played “home” games in opposing stadiums: the Marlins, Blue Jays, Yankees, and Cardinals. The Orioles also played part of a suspended home game in Washington against the Nationals. In all forthcoming analysis, I’ve removed those games from both the home and away datasets used in this article. It’s never exactly clear what home field advantage is measuring — rest, comfort, the crowd, umpiring, or some mixture — so games with nominal home teams playing in away stadiums are best ignored for these purposes.

With that caveat out of the way and those games excluded, home teams have won 50.6% of their games through Monday, August 17. At the broadest possible resolution, home teams are winning a lower percentage of their games this year. Maybe the crowd really is king.

That’s wildly insufficient for our purposes, however. One of the key tenets of baseball analysis is that merely looking at wins and losses is usually insufficient unless your sample size is enormous. Normally, I’d suggest using Pythagorean expectation here to guess a record. That doesn’t work when looking at only home games, however, because home teams skip the ninth inning when ahead. In 2019, for example, home teams were outscored on the year. This year, they’re scoring slightly more runs than their opponents. We’ll need something more granular than Pythagorean record to find a result. Read the rest of this entry »

Dayton Moore’s roots remain true. The Kansas City Royals GM broke into professional baseball as a scout — this with the Atlanta Braves in 1994 — and to this day, talent evaluation is as much a part of his M.O. as anything. That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been an evolution. Much as Moore’s job title and employer have changed (each in 2006), the scouting world has changed as well. Moore recognizes that, and to his credit has refused stay stuck in the past. A combination of old school and new school, Moore prefers to think of himself as neither. In his own mind, the 53-year-old front office executive considers himself to be in school.

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David Laurila: You have a background in scouting. That’s a part of the game you’ve always championed.

Dayton Moore: “Scouts have always been the backbone of an organization. It’s a legacy in our game. I’ve always felt that area scouts and minor league managers are the most important part of every organization, because of their connectivity with the players. Every player in this game is here because of the vision of a scout. The scout then turned that vision over to player development, and it was up to the minor league manager to improve upon that vision.

“Of course, the front office and the instructors — the coaches and roving instructors — are involved in that process. But again, every player’s story begins with the vision of the scout.”

Laurila: What you tell me about some of your early scouting experiences?

Moore: “When I started as an area scout, we did tryout camps all over the country. Part of our responsibility was to run those camps in rural America, and in urban America. We spent most of our time in those areas, because there weren’t as many structured leagues there. Legion baseball, Babe Ruth baseball, and Little League baseball, were all well-formed in suburbia. Read the rest of this entry »