We don’t know exactly why Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel didn’t sign with teams during the winter and early spring like the other prominent free agents did. It’s possible that early posturing around large contract demands pushed some teams away and caused them to explore other options. It’s possible there were just too many teams that weren’t sufficiently interested in adding good players at a reasonable cost, even if Keuchel and Kimbrel’s demands had come down. We do know that neither signed before the season, or in April, and that coming up on the end of May, both players are still looking for a team.

What we might have heard over the last few months is that teams are waiting until after the draft in June to sign Keuchel or Kimbrel so as to avoid losing a draft pick. Over the last decade, as the game has gotten younger and younger players have gotten cheaper relative to veterans, teams have placed greater emphasis on draft picks. Ahead of the last CBA, one of the bigger issues for players was the free agentcompensation system, in which teams made qualifying offers to free agents and then received a first round pick (or something close to it) when those free agents signed elsewhere. One of the major changes in the new CBA was a change to that system designed to make free agents more attractive by lessening the penalty for signing free agents attached to a qualifying offer. While Keuchel and Kimbrel aren’t ironclad proof the system didn’t work, they are a couple of key pieces of evidence. A breakdown of the penalties provides further reasoning.

To understand why the system hasn’t worked, it helps to look at the penalties. Here are the rules from MLB:

Any team that signs a player who has rejected a qualifying offer is subject to the loss of one or more Draft picks. However, a team’s highest first-round pick is exempt from forfeiture, which is the most notable change that went into affect with the new system. Three tiers of Draft-pick forfeiture — which are based on the financial status of the signing team — are in place to serve as a penalty for signing a player who rejected a qualifying offer:

• A team that exceeded the luxury tax in the preceding season will lose its second- and fifth-highest selections in the following year’s Draft, as well as $1 million from its international bonus pool for the upcoming signing period. If such a team signs multiple qualifying-offer free agents, it will forfeit its third- and sixth-highest remaining picks as well.

Examples: A team with one pick in each round of the 2019 Draft would lose its second- and fifth-round picks. A team with two first-round picks and one pick in each subsequent round would lose its second-highest first-round pick and its fourth-round pick.

• A team that receives revenue sharing will lose its third-highest selection in the following year’s Draft. If it signs two such players, it will also forfeit its fourth-highest remaining pick.

Examples: A team with one pick in each round of the 2019 Draft would lose its third-round pick. A team with two first-round picks and one pick in each subsequent round would lose its second-round pick.

• A team that neither exceeded the luxury tax in the preceding season nor receives revenue sharing will lose its second-highest selection in the following year’s Draft, as well as $500,000 from its international bonus pool for the upcoming signing period. If it signs two such players, it will also forfeit its third-highest remaining pick and an additional $500,000.

Examples: A team with one pick in each round of the 2019 Draft would lose its second-round pick. A team with two first-round picks would lose its second-highest first-round pick.

Determining exactly which picks can be forfeited is a little tricky, as essentially all picks count when determining a team’s second, third, or fourth pick, but compensatory picks from not signing a player the previous season, as well as the market/revenue picks at the end of the first and second rounds, are not subject to forfeiture. That said, since the market/revenue comp picks can be traded, if one of those picks is traded to another team, it is no longer protected. For example, Oakland was awarded the 40th pick in this year’s draft. That pick would have been a protected pick for the club, but since they traded it to Tampa Bay in the Jurickson Profar deal, it becomes subject to potential forfeiture for the Rays if they were to sign Dallas Keuchel or Craig Kimbrel.

To provide concrete examples, the table below shows the pick every team would give up for signing Keuchel or Kimbrel right now, along with the slot value for that pick (which can be found here), and the present value of the pick based on my research. Also included is the value of the international money penalty based Kiley McDaniel’s research, with one dollar of international spending estimated at five times that amount in value.

A note about this table: Houston and Boston are assumed to sign their own free agent, and thus not get a compensatory pick, which is the value listed below. In reality, that pick is now worth considerably less, as it is far less likely to happen. If Boston or Houston were to sign the other team’s free agents, the cost would be significantly higher.

For no team is the extra cost greater than the amount guaranteed to Matt Harvey this offseason and for half the teams, the cost is around what Daniel Descalso or Jordy Mercer received. These are not large sums. This list isn’t meant to provide a justification for a team signing or not signing any particular free agent, but it does show that there are pretty significant differences in the penalties teams face. The amounts of money we are talking about shouldn’t be the deciding factor in determining whether or not to sign a free agent, and “We are unwilling to forfeit a draft selection to sign Player X” is actually a prohibited phrase under the CBA, whether on or off the record. Teams can and do factor in the value of a draft pick when making an offer. The argument that teams horde draft picks as things to be held at all costs rings false when Cleveland, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Oakland, and St. Louis have all traded early-round draft picks in the current draft alone.

A handful of teams would incur additional penalties if they signed another free agent in the form of competitive balance taxes. An extra $18 million in salary would result in only a few million in penalties for teams like the Yankees and Cubs, though the Red Sox would pay an additional $15 million if they added the same amount to their roster. As for why the new qualifying offer system didn’t provide the improvements players expected, we can look at how the old rules applied compared to the current system. Under the old system, teams gave up their first pick so long as it wasn’t in the top 10. For teams picking in the middle of the first round, this constituted a pretty sizable amount of potential value lost, particularly under a system with a hard draft cap and the inability to pay more for greater talent later.

Using this year’s draft as an example, here is the value teams would give up under the old system versus the new system. Some of the penalties above might not match those below, as trades, qualifying offers, and free agent signings weren’t assumed below so we could get a better theoretical understanding of the differences.

The penalty was lessened, but for teams picking in the top 10, it was virtually unchanged, and for teams paying the competitive balance tax, it was the same or worse. The gap would be even smaller if the Cubs, Yankees, and Dodgers were over the competitive balance tax as they have been fairly recently. While the most substantial improvements in terms of lessening the penalty come right in the middle of the draft, those teams generally still have the biggest penalties, with teams at the end of the draft not seeing much of a change. If draft picks played a big role in free agency prior to the current CBA, there isn’t that much reason to think the new CBA constitutes a big step forward, as the number of teams significantly affected isn’t that great and most of those teams were still left with penalties approaching eight figures.

Whether or not it is a sound decision to sign Dallas Keuchel or Craig Kimbrel at their current asking prices, it is important to understand the exact cost of signing either at this point in the baseball calendar. There is certainly a credible argument to be made that for the teams that might need those players now, the cost of their missed production over two months of the season outweighs the penalties above, and perhaps by a significant margin. There is always a need for starting pitchers and relievers, and most teams had a pretty good idea if they would be contending this season. If these players were available for the same price now as they were at the beginning of the season, which we don’t know, then not signing them then was a poor choice for most teams. Now the missed production is a sunk cost, and the penalties for the draft pick, when signing a player only gets you another week of their services, weigh more heavily. Even still, the costs aren’t great and shouldn’t be too difficult for any team to justify whether it is for this season or into the future.

When the Indians signed Carlos Gonzalez on March 19, it had the feel of a student buying an off-brand version of Cliff’s Notes at the Starbucks cash register to thumb through on the way to the final exam. It’s not that the team didn’t do their homework on the 33-year-old outfielder specifically — there’s a reason he was still a free agent at that late date. It’s that they went into the season looking particularly ill-prepared with regards to their outfield picture. The poor play of Gonzalez and the team’s other options isn’t the only reason why Cleveland finds itself looking up at the Twins in the AL Central standings, but it has contributed to a team-wide offensive decline that ranks as the majors’ largest.

The 2018 Indians, who went 91-71, were a very good offensive team. The 2019 Indians, who finished Wednesday 25-23, are not:

That 26-point drop in wRC+ is the majors’ largest.

Note the 51-point swing in wRC+ among the AL Central’s top two teams. Where the Indians’ scoring has dropped by 1.13 runs per game relative to last year, the Twins’ has increased by exactly the same amount (from 4.56 to 5.69). At 32-16, they lead the Indians by 6.5 games; our playoff odds give them an 80.2% chance of winning the division to the Indians’ 19.8%

Roster turnover is a major reason for the Indians’ fall-off. Most notably, they lost Michael Brantely (124 wRC+) to free agency, as well as the oft-injured Lonnie Chisenhall (129 wRC+, albeit in just 95 PA due to time lost to strains in each calf), and in-season pickups Melky Cabrera (102 WRC+ in 278 PA) and Josh Donaldson (140 wRC+ in 60 PA). They also traded away Edwin Encarnacion (115 wRC+), Yandy Diaz (115 wRC+), Yan Gomes (101 wRC+), and Yonder Alonso (97 wRC+). In all, that’s eight of their 10 most productive bats (50 PA minimum), with Jose Ramirez (146 wRC+) and Francisco Lindor (130 wRC+) — two of the top hitters in the league — the holdovers. More on them shortly.

The trades have been a mixed bag, at least in the short term. Encarnacion and Diaz were part of a three-way deal that yielded Carlos Santana from the Mariners and Jake Bauers from the Rays. Santana, who spent 2010-17 with Cleveland before signing a free agent deal with the Phillies, has been the team’s best hitter (.291/.409/.491, 136 wRC+), more or less on par with Encarnacion (.254/.368/.514, 140 wRC+) but with more regular play at first base instead of DH. The 23-year-old Bauers, who hit just .201/.316/.384 (95 wRC+) as a rookie last year, has hit for a higher average but been less productive overall (.227/.312/.360, 79 wRC+) while Diaz has blossomed in Tampa Bay (.256/.339/.500, 124 wRC+). Alonso has fizzled with yonder White Sox (65 wRC+), as has Gomes for the Nationals (69 wRC+). That said, the Indians’ overall level of offensive production at catcher is virtually unchanged, as Roberto Perez’s gains have been offset by the struggles of backup Kevin Plawecki. In a lower profile move, the team dealt light-hitting backup infielder Erik Gonzalez for 25-year-old outfielder Jordan Luplow, who had managed just a 72 WRC+ in 103 PA in Pittsburgh; though he’s struck out in 34.2% of his 73 PA for the Indians, his 105 wRC+ (.242/.301/.500) is good for third on the team.

The Indians signed only one free agent to a major league contract this past winter, namely lefty reliever Oliver Perez — I swear, this isn’t the punchline from a decade-old Mets joke — on a one-year, $2.5 million deal. Of the position players they signed to minor league deals, Hanley Ramirez hit just .184/.298/.327 (69 wRC+) in 57 PA before getting his walking papers. Matt Joyce didn’t even make it to Opening Day; he was released on March 19, when the Indians signed Gonzalez, who hit just .210/.282/.276 (50 wRC+) in 117 PA; he managed just two home runs, and was striking out at a career-worst 28.2% clip.

By the time the Indians signed Gonzalez, it was already clear that they were considerably undermanned in the outfield. On February 1, I tried to match unsigned free agents from our Top 50 list with teams that had obvious needs, noting that according to our depth charts forecasts, the team’s left fielders ranked 29th in the majors in WAR, and their right fielders 28th; between those two positions, the bulk of the playing time was earmarked for Luplow, Tyler Naquin, Greg Allen, and Bradley Zimmer, the last of whom was (and still is) recovering from July 2018 surgery to repair a torn labrum. None of them had produced at anything close to an acceptable level last year, and aside from Luplow, none has done so this year, though in both cases, we’re not talking about huge sample sizes:

I’ve included Bauers here because while he was expected to be the team’s regular first baseman, he’s started there just six times, compared to 24 in left field and four in right. Note that aside from him, we’re not talking about spring chickens. Naquin is 28 years old, Allen and Zimmer are 26, and Luplow is 25. While one can find reasons why the Indians might remain committed to each of those players or find them potentially useful — Allen is a speedster who can play center field, Luplow a pull hitter with plus power and the only natural righty swinger in this mix, Naquin an above-average hitter in his most substantial taste of major league action in 2016, Zimmer a 2014 first-round pick who was on top 100 lists as recently as 2017 — none of them projected well, as the aforementioned rankings suggest, and as a group, they made for a high-risk portfolio. Thus, I suggested that Adam Jones, a much-needed righty bat, could provide a boost despite coming off a subpar season (98 wRC+, 0.5 WAR). The Indians ignored my sage advice (they always do, alas), and he went unsigned until March 11, when he landed with the Diamondbacks on a one-year, $3 million deal. Thus far, he’s hit .265/.323/.476 (110 wRC+) with nine home runs, a total that would lead the Indians. Oops.

Jones’ production is a reminder that not every late-signing free agent has struggled out of the gate, but Gonzalez, who as a lefty fit into the mix less well, certainly did. While the Indians tried him as a middle-of-the-order bat, the production wasn’t there; among players with at least 100 PA, his 50 wRC+ put him in the fifth percentile, while both his 86.6 mph average exit velocity and .286 xwOBA put him in the 18th. Still, it’s a jarring sight to see yesterday’s cleanup hitter become today’s just-released free agent, particularly with Naquin having recently hit the IL due to a left calf strain. Zimmer is set to begin a rehab assignment next week, which leaves room for 24-year-old rookie Oscar Mercado, a 45 Future Value fourth-outfielder type who placed 12th on the team’s list this year, to get a look.

As for the rest of the lineup, center fielder Leonys Martin, whose acquisition I praised last July 31 thanks to his newfound ability to elevate the ball, has returned from the life-threatening infection that felled him after he played just six games for the Indians. While he showed some pop in April (five homers, 93 wRC+), he has scuffled mightily in May (one homer, 60 wRC+). Second baseman Jason Kipnis, who is coming off a pair of subpar offensive seasons (81 wRC+ in 2017, 89 in ’18) but was good enough defensively to still post 2.1 WAR last year, has been dreadful (.218/.301/.336, 70 wRC+).

Which brings us to Lindor and Ramirez, the twin engines of this lineup, and two of the majors’ six most valuable players by WAR last year (7.6 for the former, 8.0 for the latter). Lindor, who set additional career highs with 38 homers and a 130 wRC+, missed the team’s first 19 games due to a right calf strain, but has largely returned to form (.296/.349/.513, 119 wRC+). Ramirez, who outdid Lindor with 39 homers and a 146 wRC+ while spending most of the 2018 season as an MVP candidate, has the majors’ seventh-lowest wRC+ out of 170 qualifiers (60) via an abysmal .196/.296/.302 line. As Devan Fink noted just two weeks into the season, his struggles actually date back to last August, and appear to coincide with his attempts to beat the shift while batting left-handed. Focusing only on 2019 stats, he’s been shifted against in 57% of his left-handed plate appearances but just 35% of his right-handed ones. Shift or no, he’s been pulling the ball less, going opposite field more often, and as he’s done it, his average fly ball distance has fallen dramatically:

From the left side, which constitutes 62% of Ramirez’s plate appearances, his average fly ball distance has decreased by 18 feet, and his rate of home runs per fly ball is just a quarter of what it was last year. He’s dropped eight feet while batting righty, where his home run rate is basically unchanged (we’re talking about a sample of just 24 fly balls). Note the 30-foot gap when he pulls the ball on the fly, which is central to the Indians’ offensive philosophy, as Travis Sawchik pointed out last year. In 2018, 26 of his 50 pulled fly balls as a left-hander went over the wall, but this year, it’s just two out of 12; from the right side, the percentage has risen, but in smaller sample sizes (from four out of 32 to two out of eight).

How much of Ramirez’s struggles are mechanical versus psychological or philosophical, I can’t say, but his fall-off has been precipitous, and the Indians’ dearth of solid bats to help the lineup withstand his slump sticks out like a sore thumb. The play of Mercado and the return of Zimmer aside, any influx of offense will have to either come from within or by trading from a farm system that’s generally considered to be in the upper half of the league but is currently lacking in near-ready help.

Note that while the team has lost starting pitchers Corey Kluber and Mike Clevinger to injuries until at least next month, the rotation still ranks among the AL’s top five in both ERA (4.03) and FIP (3.97), while the bullpen (3.04 ERA, 3.69 FIP) is in the top three in both categories. The pitching has kept this team competitive. The Indians are in danger of missing the postseason for the first time since 2015 due to an offense whose gaps were entirely foreseeable.

Yesterday, I published an article about Memorial Day as it relates to the baseball standings. In sum, I wrote about the baseball adage that one should not check the standings until Memorial Day. Using data from 2010 to 2018, I looked at the correlation between Memorial Day winning percentage and end-of-season winning percentage and constructed a linear regression line to fit the data.

Within the piece, I used the regression equation to discuss full-season scenarios for the Twins and Nationals, two teams that have surprised — albeit for different reasons — this season. The response to the article was interesting, and some asked for me to take a look at full-season projections for all 30 teams based on the regression. Read the rest of this entry »

The height of fashion in baseball analysis three years ago was finding a reliever who could pitch multiple innings. Some people called it the Andrew Miller role, though Miller was never a perfect example of it — aside from the memorable 2016 playoffs, Miller was more of a setup man who occasionally threw the seventh in his tenure on the Indians. Chris Devenski and Chad Green were trendy examples in 2017, and Mets swingmen Seth Lugo and Robert Gsellman both performed admirably in long relief in 2018.

Whichever example you turn to, the value of having a reliever who can perform over multiple innings of work is clear to see. As starters throw fewer innings across baseball, having relievers who can handle larger workloads is increasingly important. A two-inning reliever might have been a luxury in 2009, when a seven-man bullpen would cover two or three innings a night, but 2019 bullpens go eight deep and pick up nearly four innings a game. Using relievers to cover more innings naturally results in weaker relievers getting into games, so getting extra frames out of good relievers has never been more valuable.

That’s the theory, anyway. In practice, the role isn’t easy to fill. If you’re looking for someone to throw a few innings of relief, they have to be a decent pitcher. There’s not really much point in filling bulk innings with replacement-level stuff — you could just use the back of the bullpen for that. There’s just one problem with that: a good pitcher who can throw multiple innings mostly describes a starter, and getting rid of a good starter to create a good reliever doesn’t make that much sense. Blake Snell, for example, would probably make a great reliever, but that would be a waste of his talent. Read the rest of this entry »

Mario Impemba is part of the broadcast team in Boston now. The former TV voice of the Detroit Tigers is scheduled to work 51 regular-season games with Joe Castiglione in the Red Sox radio booth this year. The new job is different in more ways than one.

The last time Impemba did radio on a full-time basis was in 2001 when he called games for the Anaheim Angels. He did do a handful of radio games during the 2016 season — Detroit’s broadcast teams flip-flopped a few times that year — but television has long been his comfort zone. No big deal. While the mediums are different animals, the 56-year-old Detroit-area native is making a smooth segue.

“It’s kind of like riding a bike,” Impemba told me in late April. “It was seven years in Anaheim, and prior to that I did eight years in the minor leagues, so I cut my broadcasting teeth in radio. Transitioning back isn’t a big challenge. At the same time, I’m shifting abruptly after doing one medium for [17] years. It took a few games of telling myself, OK, you can’t just say ‘groundball to short; one out.’ On radio you have to describe the mechanics of the play.”

Much like the athletes making the plays being described, broadcasters have honed their skills through years and years of repetition. Be it a grounder to third or a fly to right, there is no shortage of familiarity with what’s happening between the white lines. Read the rest of this entry »

Generally speaking, doing more of one thing means doing less of another. A positive development can come at the expense of some other attribute and unintended consequences can make that positive thing decidedly less so. It’s one thing to strike out less often. Putting more balls in play provides the potential for positive outcomes. It’s another thing to strike out less often and walk more often. Doing those things in concert can have a great effect on getting on base and not making outs, which is almost always the point of every plate appearance from a hitter’s perspective. Sometimes, doing both doesn’t lead to positive results, and Rafael Devers found that out the first month of the season. Instead of going back, though, he’s moved forward and is hitting better than ever.

The 2018 season wasn’t a great one for Devers statistically. He wasn’t terrible, posting a slightly lower than average 8% walk rate and 24% strikeout rate, as well as better than average power with a .193 ISO, but a .281 BABIP meant a .240 batting average a sub-.300 on-base percentage and a below-average 90 wRC+. In his 2017 debut, Devers’ numbers were mostly the same, but a .342 BABIP meant a 110 wRC+. The Statcast data indicates that the difference between 2017 and 2018 was mostly luck, and Devers’ batted ball profile in terms of ground balls, line drives, and pulled balls were all pretty similar in 2017 and 2018, giving credence to Devers being a bit lucky in 2017, with 2018 his natural level if all else remained the same.

Devers wasn’t content with remaining the same, so he spent the offseason working on his weight and now focuses more on not striking out and incorporating video of pitchers in his preparation. While all those changes are admirable, they failed to make a difference the first month of the season. On April 25, Devers had completed 101 of his 201 plate appearances this season. True to his word, Devers struck out a lot less, lowering his strikeout rate down to 16% on the season and saw his walk rate rise to 12%. Devers also saw his BABIP rise to .338 so the lowered strikeouts and increased walks caused his batting average to stand at a healthy .276 with a very good .370 OBP. Unfortunately, Devers had yet to hit a home run and only had six doubles, leaving his ISO at a meager .069 and his wRC+ right at 90, the same as where it was the previous season. Read the rest of this entry »

At some point during the baseball season, it’s no longer “early.” I think you know exactly what I’m talking about. When an unexpected team starts out hot — a la the Mariners, who started 2019 on a 13-2 tear — the response of most rational baseball fans is that “it’s early.” For Seattle, the idea that it was far too early to evaluate the true talent level of the team was absolutely correct. From April 12 on, the Mariners are 10-26 and have sunk to last place in the AL West. Natural regression happened.

Because of the randomness and variation that often does occur during small samples within the marathon baseball season, it’s an old adage to avoid checking the league standings until Memorial Day. Clearly the idea behind this theory is that around Memorial Day, every team has played at least a quarter of their season. With that in mind, the results we have witnessed thus far become significantly more meaningful, and it’s no longer “early.”

I decided to set out and check this theory. Just how accurate are the standings on Memorial Day? Is there hope for a team like the Nationals, who have struggled thus far but still remain a talented squad on paper, to come back? Let’s break down the general trend while also talking about some of the biggest outliers (in both directions) in recent memory.

My process for this study was fairly simple. I collected every team’s record on Memorial Day from 2010 to 2018 and compared it to their record at the end of the season. This gave me a sample size of 270 baseball seasons, all of which occurred in relatively recent memory. I plotted the results in a scatterplot, and here it is:

There’s a pretty strong linear correlation here, evidenced by our r-value of 0.756. The r-squared value tells us that the regression equation for Memorial Day winning percentage accounts for 57.1% of the variability in the end-of-season winning percentage. This means that 42.9% of the variability is still unaccounted for, so while Memorial Day certainly tells us something about a team’s end-of-season record, there’s still so much that can change between now and October. This conclusion is what I’d expect. Read the rest of this entry »

The list of players who have struck out 15 batters without allowing a walk in a shutout is a small one. So small that I can list them here in chronological order: Van Mungo, Luis Tiant, Dwight Gooden, Roger Clemens (twice), Kerry Wood, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez (twice), Erik Bedard, Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, Vince Velasquez, Jon Gray, and Shane Bieber. The Cleveland right-hander became the first pitcher since 2016 to accomplish the feat when he struck out 15 Orioles over the weekend. Perhaps the effort comes with a caveat because it was Baltimore, although the club’s 24% strikeout rate is middle of the pack and there are five teams with a wRC+ lower than the 83 currently sported by the Orioles. Bieber surprised with a strong performance last season and he looks even better this year thanks to some changes he’s made to miss more bats.

Bieber came into the league as a command artist. He doesn’t have a great fastball, but he locates it well and has a very good slider. This is what Eric Longenhagen had to say about Bieber heading into last year:

Bieber works away from righties, using his fastball and slider in sequence very effectively. He locates his slider in a spot that is equal parts enticing and unhittable, and this trait runs through a lot of the pitchers who exceed scouting expectations and make a big-league impact with just solid stuff. It’s an above-average pitch on its own but garnered an elite swinging-strike rate last year. The stuff, alone, projects to the back of a rotation, but Bieber’s ability to locate gives him a chance to be a mid-rotation arm. It’s possible he has elite command and becomes something more.

Last season, after walking seven batters in 13 minor league starts, Bieber came to the majors and continued his stingy ways by walking only 23 batters in 114.2 innings. His 3.23 FIP was great, but a .356 BABIP meant his ERA was considerably higher at 4.55 and probably raised concerns that his fastball was a bit too hittable despite good command. Nine of his 13 homers came against the fastball, and batters had a 146 wRC+ against the pitch a season ago while he threw it nearly 60% of the time. Bieber paired that fastball with a nasty slider and solid curve. He threw an occasional changeup, but it wasn’t a very good pitch. Read the rest of this entry »

The book on Luke Weaver was written before he had played a game of professional baseball. Great changeup, good fastball, no third pitch. I mean “the book” metaphorically here, but I also mean it literally. Here’s Eric Longenhagen on Weaver before the 2017 season:

“Those who have questioned Weaver’s upside (myself included) did so because, in college, he lacked a good breaking ball. Weaver’s fringey curveball remains so today, but he’s a good athlete who has developed plus command and added an average cutter to his repertoire in pro ball.”

Cardinals fans got two years of data to back up that assessment — a scintillating 2017 (3.17 FIP, 28.6% K-rate) and a frustrating 2018 (4.45 FIP, fewer strikeouts and more walks) were worth a combined 2.7 WAR, but between underperforming his FIP and losing his rotation spot in the second half of 2018, Weaver felt like a surplus arm. The changeup and sneaky good fastball were as good as advertised, but batters consistently teed off on his curve. When Weaver and top catching prospect Carson Kelly were sent to the Diamondbacks in exchange for Paul Goldschmidt, it felt like a needed change of scenery for both of them.

If the book on Weaver was written while he was still in college, it’s a safe bet that he’s had time to read that book. He has worked towards developing a better breaking ball more or less every offseason of his pro career, and 2019 was no exception. This time, though, he had technological help. He bought a Rapsodo, a portable pitch-tracking camera, and used it to work on his curve. He took his cutter (or is it a slider?) out of mothballs, telling David Laurila he was picking up the hybrid pitch after years of being mainly fastball/change/curve.
Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Pineda has always had a bit of a weak spot in his pitching profile. From his debut in 2011 until his 2017 ended with Tommy John surgery, he threw 680 innings while allowing 91 total home runs. That translated to a 1.20 HR/9, putting Pineda in the bottom 20th percentile in the league among pitchers with at least 650 innings pitched.

Despite the eye-catching rate, the home runs were a manageable issue; Pineda’s FIP in those years was a fine 3.60. More than avoiding home runs, Pineda needed the health he enjoyed between 2015-16 to be an average starter. Even setting aside the Tommy John, his time in the majors is riddled with stints on the disabled list for a variety of maladies. Now in 2019, with the health of his arm finally restored, the home run issues looms larger.

After his first nine starts of the year, Pineda is leading the majors in home run rate among qualified pitchers with a 2.49 HR/9. Following his last start, he became the first Minnesota Twins pitcher to allow at least three home runs in consecutive outings since Bartolo Colon in 2017.

This is still a small sample, and Pineda’s home run rate will probably go down as he keeps pitching. However, given his previous home run issues, the recent spike merits a closer look.

First, let’s examine his fastball. Of the 13 home runs he has allowed this year, six have been against fastballs in the middle or upper part of the zone. Pineda has always liked to throw his fastball in the zone, challenging hitters with good gas, and he has been doing exactly that this year. Read the rest of this entry »