I invite you to look at the image below. Please, go ahead.

That’s Jordan Hicks on the mound — you know, “strike one at 104” Jordan Hicks. At the plate is Mets utilityman Luis Guillorme. Hicks, on Sunday, was making his first appearance on the mound since undergoing Tommy John surgery in mid-2019. Guillorme played an extremely solid 30 games for the Mets in 2020 and is 5-for-15 this spring.

What is happening in this picture? Look at Guillorme’s feet — his right ankle rolled, his left heel lifting off the ground, his arms flinging the bat desperately through the air. Yadier Molina extends his arm, holding his glove in place. Look at the scorebug — the 1-2 count. This could very well have been a picture of Hicks striking out Guillorme.

Except it wasn’t. Guillorme got his bat on it, somehow — not the heat Hicks is best known for, but a slider at 86 — launching the ball somewhere into the leftward distance. It was the 10th pitch of the plate appearance, the eighth he’d seen with two strikes. Molina and the umpire watched it sail away. Hicks’ next pitch, at 99, nearly took Guillorme’s head off. The count was now even, and the plate appearance was still only halfway done. Read the rest of this entry »

If you want power, pull the ball in the air. It’s a truism because it’s true. On pulled air balls (line drives and fly balls), batters hit .558 with a 1.285 slugging percentage in 2020. When they went to the opposite field, they hit .297 with a .522 slugging percentage. It isn’t rocket science; pulling means power, and power means production.

Want another way of putting it? Those opposite-field air balls were hit with an average 86.8 mph exit velocity. Only 26.6% of them were hit at 95 mph or harder. When batters pulled the ball, they did far better — they checked in at 94 mph on average and 54.7% were 95 mph or higher. You don’t need any fancy statistics to tell you how much better that is.

Even if you take for granted that a batter hit the ball hard, it’s still better to pull the ball. When batters barreled up balls to the pull side, they slugged 3.283. A barrel is high-value by nature, but a slugging percentage of 3.283 is still hard to fathom. Those balls were hit a comical 105.6 mph on average, and hitters posted a 1.679 wOBA on them — again, you don’t need me to tell you that’s good. It’s good!

Barrel a ball to the opposite field, and the results aren’t bad, per se — after all, a barrel is a high-value hit by definition. Compared to the gaudy results on pulled barrels, though, it’s a disappointment; a 2.588 slugging percentage on 102.4 mph average exit velocity, good for a 1.347 wOBA. Good, but not as good as it could be; pulling the ball creates more juice.

Got that all straight? It’s harder to barrel the ball up when you hit it to the opposite field. Even when you do, it’s hard to get as much production out of it as you do to the pull side. Great, we have that covered. Now, meet Eloy Jiménez:

That’s an opposite-field barrel, one of 10 such batted balls Jiménez hit last year. That led baseball, and it wasn’t some volume-based fluke; 21.3% of the opposite-field balls that he hit, period, were barreled. That’s almost double his rate on pulled balls (11.9%). Did Eloy figure out how to beat the sheer inevitability of pull production being better? Read the rest of this entry »

With nearly half of spring training already over, the Pirates made a last-minute addition to their starting rotation last week, signing Trevor Cahill to a one-year, $1.5 million contract with an additional $1 million in potential incentives. Cahill becomes the second veteran arm Pittsburgh has added this offseason, joining his former teammate from the Giants, Tyler Anderson. In a season where every pitching staff will be stretched thin, both ex-Giants give the Pirates much needed rotation depth.

Cahill joins an extremely young Pirates roster. Depending on what happens with Todd Frazier, who is in camp as a non-roster invitee, Cahill could enter the season as the oldest member of the 26-man roster. Pittsburgh was very aggressive in moving whatever value they could find from their starting rotation this offseason. Joe Musgrove and Jameson Taillon were both traded away within a week of each other, and Trevor Williams and Chris Archer both left in free agency. Steven Brault and Chad Kuhl have the most seniority now with nine seasons and 5.6 total WAR between them. Mitch Keller will get another chance to translate his excellent minor league track record and prospect helium into actual production at the major league level. Because of either their advanced service time or pedigree, those three should have rotation spots locked up with Anderson slotting into the fourth slot. That leaves Cahill and JT Brubaker to round out the staff — assuming the Pirates use a six-man rotation.

Pirates GM Ben Cherington has said that’s how he’d like to approach the season:

“We like the idea of having six starters on the team. Whether we’re actually using all six starters or are using them to come in behind guys and provide length or back and forth, we’ll see how that plays out. We just wanted to add as much starting depth as we could after the offseason moves.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, MLB announced that it was implementing several rule changes throughout the minor leagues in 2021. While the hostile takeover of the minor leagues was based primarily on economic factors, the new arrangement allows the league to act unilaterally on other issues as well, including the use of affiliate teams as testing grounds for new rules experimentations. Most of these rules had been proposed at one time or another in the recent past, and the league is spreading the adjustments across the various minor league levels:

• Base sizes: In Triple-A, the sizes of each base will be increased from 15-inch squares to 18-inch squares.
• Defensive positioning: In Double-A, teams will be required to position four players in the infield: Each player must have both feet in front of the outer boundary of the infield dirt. In the second half of the season, MLB may also require that teams keep two infielders on each side of second base, though that is not a requirement at the outset.
• Step-off rule: In High-A, pitchers will be required to disengage the rubber before attempting a pickoff throw; violations will result in a balk.
• Electronic strike zone: In the Low-A Southeast League, select games (it’s unclear which ones or how many) will use the electronic strike zone first tested in the Atlantic League and Arizona Fall League.
• Pitch timer: In the Low-A West League, pitchers will be placed on a 15-second pitch clock, which is five second faster than the clock currently used in Double-A and Triple-A.
• Pickoff limits: Across Low-A, pitchers will only be allowed to step off twice per plate appearance. Any subsequent throw over must result in successfully retiring the runner, or it’s a balk.

With those rules in hand, Brendan Gawlowski and Kevin Goldstein have thoughts.

Base Sizes

BG: The best rule adjustments foster desirable behavior without rocking the boat and I think we have that here. Shaving a few inches between bases won’t dramatically increase the number of stolen bases or infield hits, but any subtle alterations should flow in the right direction. And unlike some of these other ideas, which you can’t help but notice, a slightly larger base will be all but invisible to fans in Section 326.

KG: I mean, really, do you care? Does anyone? Depending on one’s interpretation of the 90 feet being from the center of the base rule, this puts bases two to four inches closer to each other, or roughly 0.2 to 0.4 percent. There’s no big impact on the game, which is likely why it’s being implemented at Triple-A. If anything, this could mitigate some injuries on plays that create traffic around the bag, especially 3-1 groundouts. This is fine.

Defensive Positioning

KG: My head is absolutely spinning on this one. I had a theory, I felt strongly about said theory, and then the data came and punched that theory in the face. My initial reaction was that if teams can’t shift, hitters can sell out for power and focus more on driving balls than making contact, so that while no shifts might increase BABIP, less contact would make it a zero sum game. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Wednesday, I looked at some of the hitters who cause me the greatest worry as we approach the start of the 2021 season. Today, this year’s booms-and-busts pieces finish up with the pitchers I’m most grumpy about. Like the hitters, these “busts” represent a combination of players who I think will fall significantly short of their 2020 stats, fail to meet their 2021 projections, or have some troubling flaw that gets me wondering. Only one pitcher is on this list due to injury; given pitcher injury rates, every pitcher has a disturbingly high bust potential stemming from the likelihood that they might make an unfortunate appearance on the 60-day Injured List.

Corey Kluber, New York Yankees

I know, ZiPS isn’t super concernced about Kluber, forecasting a solid 3.87 ERA and 4.12 FIP for the right-hander. But after two years of injuries, I’m far more bearish on him than the projections are. It’s good that the injuries didn’t involve anything elbow-related and that his torn teres major muscle isn’t connected to the rotator cuff. Still, one thing I’ve found in pitcher projections is that the volatility after two consecutive lost seasons is massive. Kluber may be fine, but the downside scenarios are so scary that I’m not sure he’s a good fit for the Yankees, who have a lot of risky pitchers after Gerrit Cole. Given how plentiful the worst-case scenarios are, I sadly have to put Kluber as a serious bust candidate. Read the rest of this entry »

Brady Singer played in the SEC for three seasons before being drafted by the Kansas City Royals, so he faced a ton of talented hitters prior to starting his professional career. Pitching for the University of Florida from 2016-2018, Singer matched up against the likes of JJ Bleday, Nick Senzel, Bryan Reynolds, and Evan White. Easy marks were few and far between.

Which of his collegiate opponents does Singer recall respecting the most? More specifically, which hitter had him laser-focused on making quality pitches, lest an errant offering result in serious damage?

“One that really stands out wasn’t in the SEC, but rather in Omaha,” Singer told me. “I believe it was the first game I pitched there, in 2017 when we went on to win the [College] World Series. It was Brendan McKay, from Louisville. When he got in the box, I knew I had to dial in. Just the bat path he had, and how he stood in the box — how he presented himself — was tough.”

McKay’s hitting future is obviously in limbo. Ostensibly still a two-way player, he pitched 49 big-league innings for the Tampa Bay Rays in 2019, and logged just 11 plate appearances. Last season, a positive COVID test and subsequent shoulder surgery squelched his opportunities to do either. McKay’s Ohtani aspirations remain — he’s taking cuts in camp as he rehabs — but what happens going forward isn’t entirely clear.

Singer was correct when he told me that McKay could “really swing it back in college.” As the record shows, the fourth-overall pick in the 2017 draft slashed a snazzy .328/.430/.536 as a Cardinal. Singer — the 18th-overall pick a year later — is another story. Read the rest of this entry »

With Fernando Tatis Jr. landing a massive, jaw-dropping contract extension last month, all eyes are now on the game’s other 22-year-old phenom and his next step. Juan Soto has hit at an historical level during his three seasons in the majors, landing himself on leaderboards among legends like Williams, Foxx, Hornsby, Cobb, and Trout. Reportedly, the Nationals intend to offer him a long-term extension, one that could in theory make him the game’s next $400 million man — a contract befitting a player who has already taken significant strides towards Cooperstown.

That may seem like hyperbole, but it’s not. Though Soto has played only one full 162-game season from among his three, the statistical history of players who have done what he’s done at such a young age overwhelmingly suggests a Hall of Fame-level career, and the projections based on his performance… well, we’ll get to those.

The Dominican-born Soto reached the majors on May 20, 2018, still more than five months shy of his 20th birthday. The next day, in his second major league plate appearance, he homered off the Padres’ Robbie Erlin, and he hasn’t stopped hitting, though he did his best to warp the space-time continuum by homering in the June 18 leg of a suspended game that began on May 15. Soto completed his rookie season with 22 homers and a .292/.406/.517 (146 wRC+) line, then followed up with a 34-homer, .282/.401/.548 (142 wRC+) full-season showing. In the pandemic-shortened season, he became not only the youngest player to win a batting title but also the youngest to win the slash-stat triple crown, hitting .351/.490/.695 (201 wRC+) with 13 homers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Given their disdain for our society, our laws, and our little entertainments, it makes sense that geese are not as common a visitor to professional ballparks as, say, cats. Geese prefer to create their own domains in areas less enclosed and busied by human activities, like golf courses and public green spaces. References to geese on baseball fields in old newspaper records are hard to find — perhaps because of the perceived non-newsworthiness of such incidents, perhaps because of the number of baseball players and ballparks with “Goose” in their names. But, every so often, a goose does appear on a field where major league baseball is being played. It happened just this week, in fact, at Sunday’s game between the Cubs and the Diamondbacks: a lone Canada goose in the grass at Salt River Fields, emanating hostility. It lurked behind Rafael Ortega, its eerily long neck extended outward, ready to strike anyone who might interfere with its presence there, its ego puffed up by the violence with which it had preserved its claim over the territory. Slo-mo footage showed how this goose had chased off another goose that landed on the field, clamping its screaming beak on the interloping goose’s back, tearing out a painful-looking number of feathers before the other goose was able to make its escape.

Naturally, coverage of the carnage tended toward shock at the goose’s willingness to fight for its claim to a spot in the outfield, and its unwillingness to leave said spot. The video above is titled “Goose invades baseball field!”; other headlines include “A goose took over [the] outfield,” “Angry goose wanders onto field,” and “A**hole Goose Won’t Get Out of Center Field.” While the level of intention ascribed to the goose differs, what can be agreed upon is that center field was not where the goose — and, by extension, any goose — is supposed to be. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets acquired Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco for little more than a song this offseason, the team’s new ownership making a splash just two months after officially taking over. A one-year rental of Lindor’s services plus Carrasco was enough to give New York an argument for being the favored squadron in the NL East in a likely battle with Atlanta. But what’s the fun of being a large-market team if you’re not going to act like one? Just like the Dodgers, who quickly moved to ink Mookie Betts for the next dozen years after their blockbuster pickup, the Mets have deep pockets and play in a city with limitless revenue potential. Keeping Lindor, if possible, ought to be the team’s priority. Reggie Jackson didn’t go into the Hall of Fame as an Oriole!

While no concrete terms or even loose parameters have leaked, both Lindor’s camp and the Mets have been interested in talking deal. Waiting around to see what happens is one option, but it’s a good deal more fun to play fantasy billionaire ourselves. I didn’t develop a projection system just to get people mad at me — at least not entirely.

Mega-star contracts are difficult because you don’t have a lot of direct comparables. Fernando Tatis Jr. signed a monster 14-year, $340 million pact with the Padres, but there are reasons he should get more than Lindor: He’s five years younger and coming off an MVP-caliber season. On the flip side, Tatis also had less leverage, with four full seasons until free agency.

The best place to start is the basic projection for Lindor from 2022 on. I’m letting ZiPS decide where the endpoint is, given that we don’t have any specifics to work with.

Read the rest of this entry »

Despite an atypically mediocre performance from their bullpen last year, the Yankees project to have the strongest relief corps in 2021 according to our forecasting systems. However, their chances of fulfilling that expectation have taken a hit with the news that Zack Britton, the team’s top setup man, will undergo arthroscopic surgery to remove a bone chip in his left elbow. The 33-year-old lefty could be out until mid-June or later.

Britton had already been slowed this spring by a bout of COVID-19, which he contracted in January while going to the hospital when his wife was giving birth to the couple’s fourth child. He told reporters that he lost 18 pounds and had been set back in his offseason throwing regimen. After experiencing elbow soreness in the wake of a bullpen session on Sunday, he underwent an MRI on Monday that showed the chip.

The surgery will be performed on March 15 by Dr. Christopher Ahmad, the Yankees’ team physician. As WFAN’s Sweeny Murti pointed out, Dr. Ahmad’s website suggests a timeline of six weeks before a pitcher undergoing such a procedure can be cleared to throw, and that a return to full competition could take 3-4 months:

Britton’s surgery will be performed by Yankees team Dr Chris Ahmad. Here is what his website says about timeline for removing a bone chip. h/t ?@Eric_M888? pic.twitter.com/cCULq0g7Qi

— Sweeny Murti (@SweenyMurti) March 10, 2021

Roughly speaking, three months from now means a mid-June return, and four months a return just after the All-Star break (the All-Star Game is scheduled for July 13 in Atlanta). Even a best-case scenario, involving a minimally invasive operation and a buildup to a reliever’s workload instead of a starter’s, might shave a month off that. In 2019, for example, the Rays’ Blake Snell missed about eight weeks after undergoing surgery to remove loose bodies (bone chips or cartilage fragments). He wasn’t built up to a full workload upon returning to help the Rays secure a Wild Card berth and reach the postseason, totaling just 10.1 innings in six appearances and maxing out at 62 pitches, but he was reasonably effective. Because this is happening out of the gate rather than towards the end of the season, the Yankees and Britton have less incentive to hurry back. Via ESPN’s Marly Rivera, Britton isn’t in a rush, saying, “However long that takes is how long I’m going to be out. I know that I’m going to be back with the team at some point this year and pitch significant innings. So that’s all that matters.” Read the rest of this entry »