Who have been the best players in the South Atlantic League so far this season? I recently posed that question to some of the circuit’s broadcasters, with an important qualifier: I requested that they base their selections on what they’ve seen with their own eyes, and not on players’ reputations. I also asked for snapshot observations on each player named, which the respondents graciously took the time to provide.

As with the Midwest League survey we ran last month, the respondents will have seen some players more than others (or not at all) as the SAL plays an unbalanced schedule with two seven-team divisions. Three broadcasters participated, two from the league’s Southern division, and one from the Northern division. Their respective lists were put together within the past couple of weeks.

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Will DeBoer, Delmarva Shorebirds (Orioles)

Pitchers

1. Grayson Rodriguez (Orioles): Perhaps a little biased since he’s one of ours, but I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone else rates him this high. He’s like no 19-year-old I’ve ever seen. Blazing fastball, remarkable command of his changeup at such a young age. When he’s on, you can’t stop him. He’s a Freight Train.

2. Hans Crouse (Rangers): Dominated over the limited innings the Rangers kept him on. Wicked fastball, the sort that makes you pay attention because if anyone ever fouled it off, it turned into a crowd missile. Seemed to streamline his windup, which wasn’t as eccentric as his reputation suggested; for a guy who loves the whimsical side of baseball, that was the only disappointment.

3. Hever Bueno (Rangers): More than anybody in our league, when he came into the game you knew your goose was cooked. Straight gas, phenomenal strikeout stuff. The Rangers always seem to have somebody like this in the Hickory bullpen, but this year’s model outshines the rest.

4. Drew Rom (Orioles): A sneaky pick because Grayson Rodriguez soaks up all the limelight in the Orioles system, but Rom has at times been even better. Great splitter that most guys in this league can’t catch up to. Another 19-year-old that’s advanced beyond his years; the O’s could end up with the R&R Boys in their big league rotation in a few years. Read the rest of this entry »

With so many variables, isolating specific trends in baseball can be tricky. Relievers have been pitching more and more innings. Strikeouts keep going up. The ball has been juiced, de-juiced, and re-juiced, making home run totals hard to fathom and difficult to place in context, both for this year and for years past. One noticeable aspect of this season’s play, influenced by some or all of the factors just listed, is that relievers are actually performing worse than starters. Our starter/reliever splits go back to 1974, and that has never happened before. Here is how starter and relievers have performed since 2002:

A healthy gap between the two roles has existed for some time, but seems to have taken an abrupt turn this year. Ben Clemens looked at the talent level between starters and relievers earlier this season in a pair of posts that discussed how starters are preparing more like relievers, as well as the potential dilution of talent among relievers. The evidence seemed to point toward the latter theory, though exactly how that dilution has affected performance comes in a rather interesting package. Providing some evidence for the dilution effect is the number of innings handled by relievers in recent seasons. While the idea of starters pitching better than relievers is a new one statistically, the trend of increasing reliever innings likely made this year’s change possible. Below, see the share of reliever innings and reliever WAR since 2002:

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On Monday, Rays’ infielder Michael Brosseau took the mound. On Sunday, it was Brewers infielder Hernán Pérez, and before him, Diamondbacks catcher Alex Avila on Saturday, and Reds infielder Jose Peraza on Friday. On Thursday, which now seems so long ago — seriously, do you remember what you had for dinner that night? — it was Yankees first baseman Mike Ford. If you think that home run and strikeout rates have gotten out of hand, consider the tally of position players pitching.

While teams are producing homers at a per-game rate 12% higher than the previous record (set in 2017), and while per-game strikeout rates are on the rise for the 14th straight season (up about 3% relative to last year), the single-season record for position player outings (65, set just last year, and no, that count doesn’t include Shohei Ohtani) fell earlier this month. Already, position players have taken the hill a total of 78 times this season; prorated to a full schedule, that’s 101 outings, a 55% increase on last year. And if things were to continue at the blistering pace we’ve seen since the All-Star break — 33 appearances in 39 days — the number would soar higher than the drive the Indians’ Carlos Santana hit off Ford:

Whew. Traditionally, a position player pitching appearance has been a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency desperation move (generally in extra innings) or a lighthearted farce that draws attention away from an otherwise unpleasant blowout. Through some combination of higher-scoring games, higher per-game totals of relievers, concerns about reliever workloads, and the reduced stigma of this particular maneuver, the rate of such appearances has accelerated. Like the barrage of homers and strikeouts, whether or not the higher frequency takes the fun out of it is rather subjective. To these eyes, the novelty is in the absurdity, like imagining a dog penning this article, and the bordering-on-routine nature of this year’s appearances has dimmed some of the luster. Even so, it’s an interesting enough subject to dwell upon for a few minutes.

For starters, here’s the progression for the past decade:

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We treat the statistics around torn UCL’s and Tommy John surgery with abstract sadness. It’s awful that so many elbows blow out, but for the most part, it’s just a number. Sure, when a star is injured, we notice — Jordan Hicks, say, or Shohei Ohtani. Those are marquee names, and the disappointment over not getting to see them pitch is merited. But that doesn’t mean that other players who need surgery aren’t just as sad of a story.

Consider Dinelson Lamet. When he made it to the majors in 2017, he was a rare bright spot for the Padres. Three years after signing with them as an international free agent, he’d torn through the minors, striking out 27% of the batters he faced at a mix of levels he was too old (rookie ball at 22) and too young (Triple-A at 24) for. Without much reason to keep him in the minors, the Padres called him up.

Lamet wasn’t a star. He didn’t feature on Twitter highlights, wasn’t gunning for any records. His wasn’t a story to set the major leagues ablaze, the heralded Padre savior arriving to lead the team to the playoffs. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t effective, though; it doesn’t mean that he wasn’t a great story.

Even as he tore through the minors, Lamet looked like a reliever before he got to the majors, with only two pitches he had confidence in. After throwing just two starts in Triple-A before 2017, he was an average pitcher over 114 innings with the big league club. The two-pitch arsenal played — his slider was good enough to offset the lack of a third pitch. A ZiPS darling from day one, he was living his major league fantasy — the Padres slotted him in as their number two starter for 2018.

And just like that, he was gone. He felt pain in his elbow while making his final start of the spring, and a few MRIs later, he went under the knife. If you weren’t a Padres fan or a fantasy baseball owner, though, you might never have known. Lamet was a long shot to make it from the start, and even though he’d defied the odds for a season, the abyss is never far away for a major league pitcher.

Lamet has always lived on the margins as a starter. Two-pitch pitchers have a tough time starting, and Lamet was no exception in his 2017 debut. The problem is two-fold — opposite-handed batters are tough to beat without a pitch that breaks away from them, and facing the same batter multiple times without a new look to show is dangerous. Lamet had particular trouble the third time through the order, but he suffered nearly as much against lefties:

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Five years ago, as the Chicago Cubs were playing out the final stretch of their last losing season before their rebuilt roster took flight, they called up two of their top prospects — Javier Báez and Jorge Soler — to get their first look at big league pitching. While Báez struggled, finishing with just a 58 wRC+ and -0.8 WAR, Soler flourished. He burst on the scene with three homers and seven hits in his first three games, and finished his 24-game test run with a .292/.330/.573 line, a 148 wRC+, and 0.7 WAR. Both players figured to be key to Chicago turning the corner, but in the years that followed, the two trended in very different directions.

Báez turned into a defensive wizard and overcame his plate discipline issues with a lethal power stroke, eventually earning a second-place MVP finish in 2018. Soler, however, has failed to live up to the promise he showed in his first season. Thanks to a series of injuries, he was limited to 187 games in the majors between 2015 and 2016, after which the Cubs traded him to the Kansas City Royals. He spent most of 2017 at Triple-A, and posted just a 32 wRC+ in the 35 games he spent in the big leagues. Last year, he began to break out again, but had his season derailed by a broken foot in June. He entered this season having never played more than 109 games in a year, compiling just 1.7 WAR since that debut.

The past few years have been frustrating enough to snuff out the flame of excitement that surrounded Soler’s arrival in the majors, but this season, he’s finally establishing himself as the slugger he was expected to be. After Sunday’s games, he is slashing .259/.351/.549, with a 131 wRC+ and 2.4 WAR. His 35 homers are tied with Ronald Acuña Jr. for fifth-most in baseball, and have him on pace to demolish Mike Moustakas’s franchise record of 38 dingers in a season. They are also nearly triple his previous career-high of 12 homers, set with the Cubs in 2016. 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 — Trevor Cahill, Marco Gonzales, and David Phelps— on how they learned and developed their curveballs.

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Trevor Cahill, Los Angeles Angels

“I didn’t throw my [current] curveball until my second year in the big leagues. I used to throw the double-knuckle — I didn’t spin it; I would literally flick it — and that worked in the minor leagues. It was actually my strikeout pitch. But once I got up here, I couldn’t really throw it with the big-league ball. Not consistently.

“The seams in the minor leagues were bigger, and that made a difference. Plus, big league hitters are more patient. I used to throw that pitch in the dirt a lot, and get swings, but I had trouble throwing it for strikes. Big league hitters, if you can’t throw it for a strike, they see that spin and just spit on it.

“One day I was playing catch with Brett Anderson, working on his slider grip, which he spikes. I did that, and it was really good on flat ground, so that offseason I started working on it. Then my finger started coming up higher, so I was throwing a normal spiked curveball. In 2010, in spring training, I started using it against hitters. I’ve thrown it ever since. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2019 season has seen a Cubs team be good, but not great, in most aspects of the game. The offense is solid, the rotation has been above average, and the defense is performing well. The bullpen has been really bad, but the other aspects of the club have carried the team to a 66-58 record tied atop the National League Central. In the rotation, the team has received solid-but-not-spectacular performances all season long from Kyle Hendricks, Jon Lester, Cole Hamels, and José Quintana, with Yu Darvish’s performance coming along over the last month. While Darvish has certainly been encouraging, it’s come at the same time as Lester and Hendricks have not done well, with Hamels being injured and struggling as well. Meanwhile, Quintana has stepped up his game and helped stabilize the rotation with plentiful innings and great performance, emerging as the best pitcher on the Cubs this season and the best pitcher in baseball so far this month.

In four August starts, Quintana has pitched 26 innings, struck out 33 batters, and walked just one. He’s allowed just five runs (four earned) and given up two homers for a 1.38 ERA and 1.91 FIP. When Quintana arrived two years ago, the Cubs were in a tough spot, sitting with a below-.500 record and difficult questions in a rotation where only Lester and Jake Arrieta were healthy and performing well. Quintana was great down the stretch, providing the Cubs exactly what they needed, leading the team with a 2.1 WAR in the second half as the club ended up cruising to a division title. Some postseason disappointment followed and Quintana put together an up-and-down 2018 campaign that wasn’t helped by Eloy Jiménez, the principal prospect heading from the Cubs to the White Sox for Quintana, establishing himself as one of the best prospects in the game.

This season has produced considerable consternation among Cubs faithful due to performances below expectations and a subpar bullpen, though a competitive NL Central without a powerhouse has meant the Cubs are still very much in contention and do still have the highest playoff odds in the division. Many of the Cubs’ performances have disappointed this season, though Quintana’s has not been one of them. His 3.1 WAR has already exceeded his 2.6 WAR projection and he’s likely to end up around four wins, essentially the pitcher the Cubs thought they were getting when they traded for him two years ago. Read the rest of this entry »

At this point, it seems like common knowledge that the sinker has fallen out of favor. We’ve covered that development pretty often here at FanGraphs over the past couple of years. In fact, here’s Jeff Sullivan doing just that in a 2017 piece called, “Baseball is Moving Away From the Sinker:”

“The league got a whole hell of a lot better at hitting the low pitch out of the ballpark. Not exclusively the low pitch, but disproportionately the low pitch. Swings started to gear up for elevating the low sinker. This is something that’s continuing today. Where many of those swings have a vulnerability is up, around the belt. The uppercut swing can have trouble connecting with pitches in the upper half, and those pitches have long gotten swings and misses, anyhow. Sinkers? Sinkers are supposed to be low. They’re not so good at the thigh.”

Since then, homer totals have soared and sinker usage rates have fallen. For those still working with a sinker, it’s often their worst pitch. This is true for Noah Syndergaard, Chris Archer, and even a guy like Aaron Sanchez, who has notably reduced his sinker usage since he was traded to Houston.

That doesn’t mean the sinker is entirely dead. The most obvious example of a guy with an effective one is Zack Britton, who’s riding his sinker to a near-80% ground-ball rate this year. Britton’s a unicorn, but there are still several “normal” pitchers succeeding with sinkers too. Look at the top of the pitch value leaderboard, and you’ll see a decidedly normal pitcher with a good sinker in Julio Teheran. Read the rest of this entry »

Despite last week’s home run heroics by Bryce Harper, the Phillies’ playoff hopes have faded in recent weeks, and it doesn’t appear as though things will get easier going forward. On Saturday, the team revealed that Jake Arrieta, who had landed on the injured list with a bone spur in his right elbow earlier in the week, will undergo season-ending surgery later this month, and that reliever David Robertson had undergone Tommy John surgery earlier in the week. While neither situation was entirely unexpected, together the injuries highlight the mix of misfortune and underperformance that have placed the Phillies — who at 64-60 are nine games out in the NL East, and 1 1/2 back in the Wild Card race — in this position.

The 33-year-old Arrieta hadn’t missed a single start before landing on the IL, but had been increasingly ineffective as the season worn on. Following a pretty good April (3.46 ERA, 4.32 FIP, 6.5 innings per start), he had pitched to a 5.12 ERA and 5.12 FIP the rest of the way while averaging just 5.37 innings per start; he hadn’t completed the sixth inning since June 30. On July 7, after an outing in which he’d been touched for 11 hits and hit three batters in 4.1 innings against the Mets, a team source told The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Matt Gelb that he was pitching through a bone spur. The spur, which is the size of a marble, has apparently bothered Arrieta for the past two seasons, and is the recurrence of a spur he had removed eight years ago, while a member of the Orioles.

The Phillies were aware of the bone spur — which raises the question of why they settled for Jason Vargas as their lone rotation addition at the July 31 deadline — and had monitored Arrieta, who had worked to find different grips to help alleviate the pain that particularly hampered him when throwing his curve and changeup. He had become much more reliant upon the latter pitch in recent years, and was using the former much more often as this season went on:

Per Pitch Info, Arrieta had thrown the changeup 18.3% of the time this year, up from 10.4% last year and 7.4% in 2017. The change has been fairly effective for him this year, with a 46.2% O-Swing rate, a 15.2% swinging strike rate, and a 64 wRC+ on plate appearances ending with the pitch. His swinging strike rate on the curve had dropped by half relative to last year, from 13.0% to 6.5%, even as his wRC+ on PAs ending with the pitch dropped from 141 to 51.

Arrieta’s final numbers — 4.64 ERA, 4.89 FIP, 9.9 K-BB%, and 1.0 WAR in 135.2 innings — mark the fourth straight season in which he’s declined in all of those categories, while his 18.5% strikeout rate marked his fifth straight season of decline. That’s an ominous trend for any pitcher, and it’s one likely to carry significant financial ramifications for Arrieta, who has one more year and $20 million remaining on a three-year, $75 million deal signed in March 2018. Arrieta could opt out of his contract this winter, but would hit the market on the heels of his worst season since breaking through with the Cubs in 2014. If he does opt out, the Phillies can override that by restoring his $20 million 2020 salary and exercising a two-year, $40 million option for 2021-22, one whose annual salaries would have escalated to $25 million or higher based on starts (beginning at 25 starts; he had 24 this year) and top-three Cy Young award finishes.

While the Phillies entered the season with a rotation that placed 12th in our Positional Power Rankings, the unit as a whole entered Sunday ranked 16th in the majors in ERA- (103, via a 4.57 ERA), 26th in FIP- (110, via a 4.98 FIP), and 24th in home run rate (1.64 per nine). Aaron Nola is the only starter who has been better than average in both ERA and FIP:

Arrieta’s loss for the remainder of the season returns Eflin to the starting five; he was ousted when Vargas was acquired. Velazquez and Smyly, the latter of whom was picked up after being released by the Rangers earlier this year, round out the unit right now, with Pivetta having been relegated to the bullpen.

Speaking of which… the 34-year-old Robertson, whom the Phillies signed to a two-year, $23-million deal in January, arrived from the Bronx with a reputation as one of the most durable and reliable relievers in the game — “about as steady as it gets,” as Jeff Sullivan illustrated at the time of the signing. He was one of only two pitchers to throw at least 60 major league innings every year from 2010 (his first full season in the majors) through 2018; Tyler Clippard was the other. During that span, only the well-traveled Clippard and the Dodgers’ Kenley Jansen threw more innings out of the bullpen than his 589.2, and only Aroldis Chapman, Jansen, and Craig Kimbrel delivered more value than his 13.4 WAR. He had evolved somewhat as a pitcher in that span, as Sullivan pointed out, using his breaking stuff with increasing frequency relative to his cut fastball with no loss of effectiveness. He had also shown a welcome flexibility, working as a closer, a setup man, and a fireman who might show up in the fifth or six inning  — or even the third — if the occasion merited it, all without complaint, making him an ideal addition for any aspiring contender.

Alas, Robertson struggled out of the gate for the Phillies, and after making seven appearances totaling 6.2 innings, hit the injured list in mid-April with a Grade 1 flexor strain. He began ramping up towards a return in late June, but his progress was slow, and he suffered setbacks. By the end of July, it appeared that he would need season-ending surgery for the flexor, with Tommy John surgery a possibility. After a consultation with Dr. James Andrews, he underwent the surgery last Thursday, which could cost him all of next season as well as the remainder of this one. The Phillies do hold a $12 million club option with a $2 million buyout for his services in 2021.

If Robertson’s injury were an isolated problem within the Phillies’ bullpen, they probably could have overcome it, but the unit that placed fourth in our preseason Positional Power Rankings has lost five of its six top forecast relievers to injuries, and all of them are still sidelined:

Thus, the Phillies’ relief corps — which entered Sunday ranked ninth in the NL in bullpen ERA (4.65) and 12th in FIP (4.93) and WAR (0.0) — has lost more player-days and dollars to the injured list than that of any other team. Excluding position players, they’ve used 26 relievers. Via Spotrac:

Note that on the rankings page, the Mariners show up with a higher dollar figure than the Phillies; for some reason, the site has classified Félix Hernández as a reliever, though all eight of his appearances before hitting the IL with a shoulder strain were as a starter. I’ve removed his data from the above table, and likewise other misclassified pitches including Velazquez and the Nationals’ Jeremy Hellickson.

Dominguez, who received a platelet-rich plasma injection on June 14, began a throwing program in early August, and there’s still hope he can return this year. Neshek received a PRP injection for his Grade 2 hamstring strain in July and is hopeful for a September return. Morgan is set to be re-examined on Wednesday, at which point his timeline will be clarified.

While those returns would be helpful — particularly that of Dominguez — they’re not likely to change the trajectory of the team’s season. The Phillies held at least a share of first place in the NL East for nearly the entire season up through June 11, but they’ve gone just 27-30 since then as the injuries have caught up, and the Mets’ recent surge has left Philadelphia scrambling to hold on to third place in the division. This graph of their division playoff odds tells the sad story:

The Phillies aren’t out of contention yet, but if they do come up short, it won’t all be on Harper and the lineup’s other newcomers for their comparatively lukewarm performances. That hasn’t helped, but in the end, it will be the slew of pitching injuries that does them in.

Aaron Bates has a dual role with the Dodgers. The 35-year-old former first baseman serves as the team’s assistant hitting coach, and he’s also the director of hitting for the minor leagues. Now in his fifth year with Los Angeles, he works in conjunction with big-league hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc, and hitting strategist Brant Brown.

A third-round pick out of North Carolina State by Boston in 2006, Bates played eight professional seasons — he logged 12 plate appearances with the Red Sox in 2009 — before joining the coaching ranks. His final swings came with the Dodgers in 2014, the same year he was asked to help tutor up-and-coming prospects such as Scott Schebler and Corey Seager. From there he served as a hitting coach in the Arizona, Midwest, and California leagues. In 2018, he became the assistant hitting coordinator for LA’s minor league system.

Bates sat down to talk hitting when the Dodgers visited Fenway Park in mid-July.

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David Laurila: How are hitters in the Dodgers’ system taught, and evaluated?

Aaron Bates: “Brownie and Robert are both unbelievable. They have a way of communicating with players that is simplistic, makes sense, and provides answers. They can say, ‘This is why you’re making outs,” or ‘This is why you’re doing that.’ When you can provides answers to a player, it’s a breath of fresh air for him.

“It’s extremely important to be upfront with the players. We let them know there are numbers we value, as far as them being promoted, and they’re not necessary your baseball-card numbers. It could be OPS, wRC+, and their walk and strikeout rates. We let them know it’s not solely based on their batting averages.

“We let them know what we consider a good at-bat. We’re process-oriented, so if you line out, don’t get mad, and if you get a bloop single, don’t get extra happy. Over the course of the season, what we want is for them to hit the ball hard. That, and to be process-oriented. Read the rest of this entry »