Lost somewhat amid the holiday weekend, the Twins set a new major league record on Saturday. Granted, the mark they surpassed was no long-standing, hallowed standard — in fact, it stood for less than a full year. Nonetheless, with Mitch Garver’s ninth-inning solo shot off the Tigers’ Joe Jiménez, the Twins overtook the 2018 Yankees with their 268th home run, the most by any team in one season. That they left themselves with four full weeks to pad the mark is just one more sign of how over-the-top this this year’s home run totals — fueled primarily by more aerodynamic baseballs, with smoother leather and seams so low that the balls are nearly round — are. The feat deserves a closer look, as well as some perspective.

Here’s Garver’s home run, his second of the day and 26th of the season — in just his 76th game:

Garver’s homers were two of six the Twins hit in their 10-7 loss (a subject to which I’ll return momentarily). His total ranks fifth on the team behind Max Kepler (36), Nelson Cruz (35, in just 101 games), Eddie Rosario (28), and Miguel Sanó (27, in just 87 games). Counting C.J. Cron (24), Jonathan Schoop (21) and Jorge Polanco (20), the Twins are the first team with eight players to reach 20 homers in a season, and they’re the 14th team to have five players reach 25 homers, with multiple candidates to make them the second team to have six:

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In the second half of the season, Justin Verlander has been the best pitcher in baseball. On the heels of a no-hitter over the weekend, Verlander lowered his second-half FIP to a major league-leading 1.91 and his ERA to an AL-leading 1.76, and raised his WAR to 3.2, more than half a win better than second-place Jack Flaherty. On the season, it’s less clear whether Verlander has been the game’s best pitcher. His 2.56 ERA does lead the AL, but his 3.41 FIP is seventh in the league, and even with his 193 innings tops in the game, he’s still nearly a full win behind Lance Lynn in WAR, with Gerrit Cole and Charlie Morton ahead of Verlander’s 5.2 figure as well.

The reason Verlander has performed relatively poorly — even if he’s only the fourth-best pitcher in the AL, he’s having a great season — is due to all of the home runs he has given up. Only Mike Leake and Matthew Boyd have allowed more than the 33 homers offered up by the 36-year-old righty. In some ways, Verlander’s home run troubles are just an extension of the 2018 season. Home runs have gone up from 1.16 per nine innings last year to 1.45 this year; Verlander gave up 1.18 homers per nine innings last year and has given up 1.54 this season. Even if Verlander’s increase was exactly in line with the rest of baseball’s, we’d only be talking about a difference of two home runs, and a 3.28 FIP instead of the 3.41 he currently holds. But that’s still a pretty big difference from his 2.69 ERA, and requires some explanation.

The simple answer behind all of Justin Verlander’s homers is that he’s a fly ball pitcher who throws pitches more prone to homers than most pitchers. A year ago, it might have been that Verlander was a bit unlucky with the long ball. Based on Statcast’s numbers, Verlander’s xwOBA on homers last year was 1.042, which was about 300 points below league average, so he might have had his share of bad luck in that regard. This season, the xwOBA on Verlander homers is 1.317, right in line with the rest of the majors. The same is true when we drop the standards to batted balls with an expected ISO of at least .200. Verlander’s xwOBA on those 97 batted balls was .876 compared to a major league-wide .857, and the resulting wOBA for Verlander was .921 compared to .902 for the rest of the sport. Twenty-five percent of those balls ended up out of the ballpark for the league compared to 31% for Verlander, which isn’t a huge difference. Based on the quality of the contact, Verlander has absolutely earned his home run totals this season. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Larry Andersen, Durbin Feltman, and Trevor May— on how they learned and developed their sliders.

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Larry Andersen, Philadelphia Phillies (broadcaster)

“I was a sophomore in high school, and we had a senior pitcher named Don Beckwith who had a slider. At the time, I just had a fastball and a curveball. He showed me his grip and I was like, ‘Let me try this.’ From there I implemented it into my repertoire. It was a pitch I picked up right away. It felt comfortable. It’s almost like holding a fastball off-center a little bit.

“Of course, then there was the pressure on my fingertips and how far back I held it in my hand. That type of thing. I played with those over the years to the point where I felt I had three different pitches with essentially the same grip Don Beckwith showed me in high school.

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Last Thursday, Max Fried turned in six of the best innings of his young career. Sure, it was against the Chicago White Sox, who are decisively not good at hitting baseballs right now, but still, Fried was dominant. He sat down each of the first 13 hitters he faced, striking out eight of them. Then Eloy Jiménez reached on a softly hit infield single down the third-base line and scored two batters later on a double by Adam Engel. But Fried bounced right back with a scoreless sixth, striking out two more to bring his total for the day to 11. He waved four batters with a curveball, four with a slider, and three with a fastball. After one of them, he made this face.

Folks, I have never looked at anyone like that in my life. Mostly because I have never fired a 97 mph fastball past Tim Anderson, or accomplished anything else that would fill me with a similar rush of adrenaline and personal gratification. Maybe if I really think I did a great job writing this post, I’ll feel so good about it that I’ll slam my laptop shut, strut away from the couch, and make this face at my girlfriend. Probably not, but we’ll see how these next few hundred words go. Might be worth a try. Point is, Fried was feeling himself, and I don’t blame him.

Then it all went away. Jiménez singled again on the first pitch of the seventh inning, this time hitting a 105-mph line drive to right. Then Fried let a 1-2 breaker run in and hit James McCann, and then Yolmer Sanchez reached on an error at first base. After that, Fried was out of the game, and two batters later, he watched Braves reliever Luke Jackson surrender a three-run homer to Welington Castillo, scoring all of the runners he inherited. After allowing just one run on three hits and a walk in his first six innings, Fried allowed all three hitters he faced in the seventh reach, and each one subsequently scored, messing up what had been a very strong performance. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not breaking any news in saying that Alex Bregman is having a great year. He’s batting an otherworldly .295/.416/.570, good for a 162 wRC+, while walking more than he strikes out and playing his usual excellent defense at third base. He’s fifth in baseball in WAR, and only Mike Trout’s constant unrelenting excellence prevents Bregman from being the presumptive AL MVP.

I could talk about all of that, but that would be boring. Do you really want to hear that Alex Bregman is good? If that’s what you’re here for — he’s good! He’s great! Boring. If that’s what you’re after, go browse his player page — it won’t disappoint. I want to tackle something slightly different today.

This year, it wouldn’t be a stretch to call Bregman a power hitter. His .278 ISO is 14th-best in baseball, sandwiched between Kyle Schwarber and Freddie Freeman, and his 33 home runs are both a career-best and a top-20 mark in baseball. Heck, he was in the Home Run Derby, and nothing says power hitter like baseball’s annual celebration of dingers. He hit 31 home runs last year, too — this isn’t a purely 2019 concern. Here’s my hot take: Bregman still isn’t a power hitter — and if he unlocks that, there’s a new level of stardom available to him. Read the rest of this entry »

When Hyun-Jin Ryu takes the hill tonight against the Rockies in Los Angeles, he’ll be looking to reverse the fortunes he’s faced over his last three outings.

Ryu started the year hot. In his first 22 outings this season, Ryu’s 1.45 ERA led baseball by a healthy margin. No one could beat him; Ryu allowed two or fewer earned runs in 21 of his first 22 starts, and his ERA would have been even lower (read: 1.04) if it weren’t for one disastrous outing at Coors Field on June 28.

Despite this sparkling start to his 2019 campaign, Ryu found himself in the midst of a two-man race for the National League Cy Young Award. At the time, Ryu’s ERA — while certainly outstanding in a vacuum — appeared quite dependent on defense and luck. On the morning of August 12, after he completed seven innings of shutout ball against the Diamondbacks, Ryu’s ERA sat at the aforementioned 1.45 figure (34 ERA-). His FIP of 2.86 (65 FIP-) was still excellent, but it remained a far cry from the dominance we had witnessed on the scoreboard. In fact, at the time, Ryu’s ERA-FIP differential of -1.40 runs was the second-lowest in baseball. An ERA that low just wasn’t possible to sustain. Read the rest of this entry »

When the All-Star break arrived, Max Scherzer appeared to be making a pretty strong case to win a fourth Cy Young award. Nearly two months and two stints on the injured list later, however, he’s trying to recover his dominant form and to restart his campaign for the hardware, one that will be difficult in light of recent voting history. In a performance that was largely lost amid Tuesday night’s late-inning drama in Washington — the Nationals allowed five ninth-inning runs to fall behind 10-4, then scored seven in the bottom of the frame, capped by Kurt Suzuki’s walk-off homer — Scherzer did show some semblance of his usual self. Unfortunately for the 35-year-old righty, the other inning he threw, a four-run fourth during which the Mets teed off on his first pitches, was his undoing.

Making just his fourth start since the All-Star break, Scherzer wasn’t at his sharpest against the Mets, but he did retire nine of the first 10 batters he faced, with a seven-pitch second inning walk by Brandon Nimmo the only blemish. While he did strike out four in that span, the Mets made him work for those shutout innings, as he needed 46 pitches. The Mets changed their approach in the fourth, attacking Scherzer’s first pitch even if it was outside the zone during a three-pitch sequence to start the frame, Pete Alonso and Michael Conforto both singled, and then Wilson Ramos doubled, plating one run. Nimmo went four pitches deep before hitting a sacrifice fly to put the Mets up 2-1, and then Joe Panik pounced on the next pitch, a 91.9-mph cutter high in the zone, for a two-run homer to left field, expanding the lead to 4-1. Scherzer didn’t allow another run amid that 21-pitch slog of an inning, but he did give up one more hit, a double down the line by light-hitting Luis Guillorme.

Scherzer recovered to retire the final six Mets he faced. Outside of the fourth inning, he didn’t surrender a hit, and allowed just one walk. With opposite pitcher Jacob deGrom also wobbly — after allowing two runs through his first seven innings, he served up a two-run homer to Juan Soto in the eighth — the Nationals remained in the game and ultimately produced a comeback of a type that hadn’t been seen in 58 years. It was the first time Scherzer had gone six innings or thrown at least 90 pitches in a start since July 6. Read the rest of this entry »

Royals fans aren’t exactly getting swept up in a wave of euphoria with the team’s newest acquisition. Ryan McBroom — obtained from the Yankees over the weekend in exchange for cash considerations — is a 27-year-old outfielder/first baseman without a big-league resume. Nowhere to be found on top prospect lists, he wasn’t even on New York’s 40-man roster (which is why this deal was possible a month after the MLB trade deadline).

That doesn’t mean that Kansas City didn’t get a player capable of producing at the highest level. Named last week to the International League’s Postseason All-Star Team, McBroom slashed an impressive .315/.402/.574 with 26 home runs in 482 plate appearances with the Triple-A Scranton Wilkes-Barre RailRiders. His .976 OPS was tops in the circuit.

While he didn’t exactly come out of nowhere, the University of West Virginia product clearly turned a corner in this, his sixth professional season. Coming into the current campaign, he profiled more as an organizational guy — a Quad-A type — than a true prospect. Poor walk and strikeout rates stood out among the negatives.

Recently, I asked the suddenly productive right-handed hitter about his breakthrough. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking at this year’s stat line for Nicholas Castellanos yields almost no surprises. He’s putting up a .291/.340/.521 slash line good for a 121 wRC+. At the beginning of the season, our Depth Charts projected Castellanos to put up a 121 wRC+, and over the last three seasons before this one, he put up a .285/.336/.495 slash line with a 121 wRC+. His performance has gone almost exactly like we would expect it to this year, and if Castellanos were still on the Tigers, we wouldn’t have even noticed what the 27-year-old outfielder has done over the last month. Since Castellanos moved from Detroit to the Cubs at the trade deadline, we have a fairly obvious demarcation for his season, and his great performance with the Cubs might lead us to believe that something with him has changed. That’s a bit more difficult to show, however.

Over his first 30 games with the Cubs, Castellanos has hit 11 homers and put up a 167 wRC+ (before last night’s homer brought his total up to 12 and his wRC+ to 173) thanks to those huge power numbers and a .365 BABIP. He’s been one of the 20 most productive hitters in the game. A look at his results says something has changed with his ISO and BABIP way up, but his walks a little down with pretty consistent strikeout numbers compared to what he was doing in Detroit earlier this season. His plate discipline numbers in terms of swings have changed, though his contact percentage has gone down as he’s whiffing on more pitches outside the strike zone. It’s possible he’s been more willing to make mistakes outside the zone and is instead hitting pitches in the zone harder. That could be considered a change, but it is basically what he did last season when he put up a .361 BABIP and a career-high 130 wRC+. He had a similar plate discipline profile in 2016, when he also ran a high .345 BABIP.

It’s probably more important to keep in mind that the difference in walk rate with the Cubs compared to when he was with the Tigers only amounts to about two walks over the last month. While Castellanos has been very good, almost none of this is new when we isolate Castellanos’ first 30 games with the Cubs compared to any other 30-game stretch. That 4.6% walk rate? He’s done that a bunch of times. Read the rest of this entry »

Heading into the All-Star break, the Cardinals were sitting in third place in the NL Central with an even record of 44-44. Even though they were just two games behind the division-leading Cubs, their playoff odds were sitting at just 21.2%, the seventh-best mark in the National League. Since then, they’ve posted the best record in the NL, winning 33 of their 49 games since the midseason break. One of the biggest reasons for their surprising turnaround has been the excellent play of Kolten Wong.

Wong has accumulated 2.2 WAR in the second half of the season alone, by far the most wins by a position player on the Cardinals in that time. His 165 wRC+ ranks 14th in the majors since the break and he’s continued to flash the leather at second base. He’s setting career highs across all three slash components, and is on pace to hit more home runs and steal more bases than ever before. Wong’s excellence and Jack Flaherty’s masterful pitching since the All-Star break have carried the Cardinals into the division lead and boosted their playoff odds to 91.0%.

I should quickly point out that Wong is running a BABIP of .434 during his hot streak. He’s not really hitting for any additional power and his walk-to-strikeout ratio hasn’t budged. He’s simply benefitted from a ton of his batted balls falling in for hits over the last couple of months. But it’s not just blind luck driving his hot streak. He’s made some real changes to his plate approach that have helped him earn some of those extra hits. Read the rest of this entry »