If I’ve learned anything from the new Statcast bat tracking data, it’s that bat speed alone isn’t sufficient to produce a high-quality major league hitter. Johnathan Rodriguez, Trey Cabbage, Zach Dezenzo, Jerar Encarnacion — all of these guys, at this early stage of their major league careers, swing hard but miss harder. Bat speed only matters when you make contact.
When you do hit the ball, however, it’s nice when your swing is as fast as possible. Swinging fast while making good contact most of the time — it’s hard to do, but if you can do it, you’re probably one of the best hitters in baseball.
The reason it’s rare is because these two variables — swinging hard and making solid contact — are negatively correlated. As some probably remember from when these stats originally dropped, Luis Arraez swings the slowest and squares up everything, while Giancarlo Stanton swings the fastest but seldom connects. A slow swing is a more precise swing, and so the group of hitters who can swing precisely while letting it rip are uncommon.
A ballplayer who grabs a bat and steps up to the plate aims to hit. The point of the sport is to go around the bases, and the most efficient way to do that is to put wood on the ball and hope for the best. But it’s far from the only way to go around the bases.
Sometimes you hit the ball, and sometimes the ball hits you. I’ve long been fascinated by players who use their own bodies as a means of advancement, dating back to when I, as a child, read a George Vecsey feature on the single-season hit-by-pitch leader in an old anthology of baseball writing. “Ron Hunt, Loner,” painted a broadly ambivalent portrait of a second baseman with modest physical gifts. But Hunt made two All-Star teams and retired with the same career OBP as Shohei Ohtani, despite playing in the most pitcher-friendly era of the past 100 years.
Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. September is a magical time for baseball. Half of the games are mostly for fun, with teams playing out the string and competing for bragging rights. Those games produce some delightful nonsense, because teams are often more willing to engage in tomfoolery when the stakes are low. The other half of the games (using half very broadly here, of course) are far more important than any games from earlier in the season; they determine playoff berths, home field advantage, and statistical milestones. Those games have all the intensity missing from the other half, right down to electric crowds and locked-in benches. That duality is a ton of fun. This year, we’ve even got a truly historic statistical chase going on to add to the excitement. Zach Lowe’s NBA column, which inspired this series, always hits its stride when teams are building up for the playoffs. I think that baseball trends in the same direction. Let’s get right to it.
1. When the Ball Doesn’t Lie
This is just outrageous:
The umpire is part of the field of play. That’s just how the rule works. Umpires do their best to get out of the way of batted balls, both for self-preservation and for the integrity of the game. John Bacon wasn’t trying to insert himself into the play; he was in foul territory and focused on getting the fair/foul call right, and there was simply no way to avoid this rip. Bryson Stott couldn’t believe it:
On Tuesday night, while much of the country tuned in to see Kamala Harris debate Donald Trump, I watched an even more lopsided performance from the upper deck at Yankee Stadium, where the Royals’ Seth Lugo utterly dominated the Yankees, holding them to just three hits, walking none and striking out 10 over seven innings in a 5-0 Kansas City win. Through six innings, the only Yankee to reach base was Gleyber Torres, who blooped soft singles into center field on Lugo’s fifth pitch of the game and then, roughly an hour and 20 minutes later, on his 86th pitch; in between, Lugo retired 17 straight hitters. It was the latest in a season full of great outings from the righty, who at 34 years old is having a career year while pushing the Royals toward their first postseason berth since 2015.
Lugo’s seven scoreless frames ran his total to a major league-leading 193 innings while lowering his ERA to 2.94, second in the AL behind only Tarik Skubal. Meanwhile, he’s third in WAR with 4.4, 0.2 behind teammate Cole Ragans, fifth in FIP (3.27), seventh in walk rate (5.8%), and eighth in strikeouts (169) despite punching out hitters at a modest 21.7% rate. He’s also tied with Skubal for the league lead in wins (16), and so by our Cy Young Projection model and its multiple variants, his suite of stats puts him second in the AL to Skubal and a comfortable margin ahead of Ragans, Logan Gilbert, and Framber Valdez. All of this is happening in the first year of a three-year, $45 million contract he signed with the Royals last December, and in just his third season as a starter after largely being typecast as a workhorse reliever during his seven seasons with the Mets (2016–22).
Knocking back a couple of beers from my partial season ticket group’s usual perch in Section 422 affords a different perspective than in the press box or at home. So when Sports Reference’s Katie Sharp noted that the game was the first time the Yankees had ever been held to zero walks and zero extra-base hits while striking out at least 14 times, I decided to take a closer look at Lugo’s night to gain a fuller appreciation of what’s made him so successful lately. Read the rest of this entry »
If you’re a major league hitter, you’ll reach a two-strike count. Not every time – baseball isn’t an every time game – but frequently, consistently, inevitably. In those two-strike counts, you’re going to see sliders. Again, not every time, but frequently. A quarter of two-strike pitches in the majors this year have been sliders of some variety. Pitchers are no dummies, and they know where their bread is buttered.
The worst thing that could happen with those two-strike sliders you’re bound to face? A strikeout, obviously. But bad news: There are going to be strikeouts. Again, not every time, but strikeouts are just a fact of life in baseball these days, and 21% of two-strike sliders have resulted in strikeouts this year. Not in the plate appearance – on that pitch specifically. No wonder pitchers throw so many of them.
With all that in mind, here’s a statement I’m sure you’ll agree with: A good way to get better at hitting is to stop striking out on two-strike sliders. I mean, this isn’t rocket science. Striking out is bad. Doing it less is good. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Oh, right, I guess I still have to tell you what this article is about. Let’s talk about a player who made a heroic change. Early in his career, he did a fair job protecting against sliders with two strikes (15.4% putaway rate on two-strike sliders). In 2023, though, things took a turn; he struck out on 20% of the two-strike sliders he saw. This year, however, he’s defending against them better than ever. No player in baseball has gone down less frequently against two-strike sliders than our mystery man’s 8.6% clip. Pitchers simply can’t get him out. He’s putting up a glorious 118 wRC+ and striking out less often than last year. Read the rest of this entry »
Before I started researching this article, I assumed that Cal Raleigh had been an All-Star before. I was wrong. Raleigh is in just his third full season as a big leaguer, but he’s spent all of that time as one of the best catchers in baseball, so I was surprised to find out that the last time he won an award of any kind was 2019, when he was named the California League’s Rookie of the Year as a member of the Modesto Nuts. Now that I know, I feel even stronger about the premise of this article, so please forgive me for stating it so baldly: Cal Raleigh is a star, and it’s about time we all acknowledged it.
Raleigh has turned on the afterburners over his last nine games entering Wednesday, slashing .314/.390/.629 with three home runs for a 187 wRC+. With that, he pushed his WAR to 4.3, tying his total from the 2023 season. According to WAR, he was the sixth-best catcher in baseball in 2022, the fourth best in ’23, and he’s now the second best in ’24. Unless my pattern recognition skills have fallen off since elementary school, next year he’ll have to find a way to be number zero.
Here’s what Kevin Goldstein wrote in June 2021, just a bit over a month before Raleigh made his big league debut:
Teams were almost universally enamored with Raleigh’s bat in the 2018 draft, but the Florida State product fell to the third round because most had big concerns about his ability to stay at catcher, projecting a quick move to first base, where the pressure on the player to hit increases exponentially. The Mariners decided to at least try to keep him behind the plate, and to the player’s credit, Raleigh has put an incredible amount of work into his defense, and suddenly looks like an average defensive catcher.
As it turned out, Raleigh struggled mightily at the plate during his 43-game rookie stint with the Mariners, but his defense graded out great. In that short sample, both FRV and DRP rated his framing highly, and DRS would hop on board the following season. This year, in an uncommon bit of perfect harmony, all three of those advanced defensive metrics agree that Raleigh is having his best season ever behind the plate. DRP says he’s saved 17.5 runs, DRS has him at 17, and FRV at 13, all of which are good enough to rate him the best defensive catcher in the American League and second best in the game, behind Patrick Bailey.
Raleigh has paired that defensive excellence with the classic profile of a power hitter. He strikes out too much, but when he does make contact, look out. That’s not to say that he’s out of control: This year, he’s been especially aggressive on pitches over the heart of the plate, so despite his elevated chase rate, he ranks in the 80th percentile in Robert Orr’s SEAGER metric, which measures selective aggression. Opposing pitchers, hopeful that they can induce a chase and terrified of what might happen if they hit the zone, are throwing Raleigh a lot of balls, and he’s running a career-high 10.8% walk rate despite striking out nearly 30% of the time.
Even with the higher walk total, Raleigh’s profile still depends much more on power than his on-base ability. First, as befits a catcher nicknamed Big Dumper, he doesn’t beat out too many hits, which drives down his batting average. More important is the way Raleigh swings. He doesn’t just have the profile of a classic power hitter; he’s got the elevate-and-celebrate profile of today’s power hitters. He specializes in barrels, hitting the ball hard and lifting it like few others. His 53% fly ball rate is second among qualified players, and for the third season in a row, he’s in the 94th percentile or better in pulled fly ball rate. If you take a quick glance at his spray chart, you’ll see home runs to all fields, and you’ll think, “What a balanced batted ball profile.” And then you’ll remember that he’s a switch-hitter. Raleigh is looking to lift the ball and yank it from both sides of the plate. His 30 homers are tied for 12th in baseball, but his 25 pulled homers are good for third. On the left is a spray chart that shows all of Raleigh’s career homers to the pull side and straightaway. On the right is a chart that shows his opposite field home runs.
This year, Raleigh’s 30 homers lead all catchers. He led all catchers with 30 last season too, and despite appearing in just 119 games and playing through a broken thumb and a torn ligament in his catching hand for more than a month, he also led all catchers with 27 in 2022. Only eight players have ever put up three 27-homer seasons while catching at least half the time. Here’s the list of players who have done it three times in a row: Lance Parrish, Mike Piazza, Johnny Bench, and Cal Raleigh. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s one eight-time All-Star, two inner-circle Hall of Famers, and Cal Raleigh, who again has never had a full season when he didn’t hit at least 27 homers. Among catchers with at least a thousand career plate appearances, Raleigh’s .227 ISO ranks fifth all-time, and his 144 ISO+ ranks 13th.
Put all that together, and Raleigh combines first-rate defense with a homer-heavy 109 career wRC+ (115 over the last three seasons). That’s a pretty compelling package, and it’s made Raleigh the second-best catcher in baseball no matter what timeframe you look at.
Our entire database shows 278 four-win seasons from 106 different catchers. Along with Raleigh, I counted just 20 who had put up three in a row, and the list once again reads like a who’s who of Hall of Famers, along with more recent framing standouts.
I’m not trying to say that Raleigh is destined for the Hall of Fame. I’m just trying to demonstrate that what he’s been doing doesn’t happen all that often, especially right out of the gate. From the moment he became a full-time starter, Raleigh has been one of the best catchers in baseball, and despite playing through injury at times, he’s been hands-down the most consistent. There’s no guarantee that this will continue. It’s hard to stay on top defensively, especially because catching techniques have changed radically in the last few years. Look at J.T. Realmuto, who was one of the league’s premier defenders for years, and then suddenly saw his framing fall off out of nowhere last season. It also looks more and more likely that the ABS system will be coming soon in some form to erase at least part of a catcher’s framing value. If nothing else, that just means that we should appreciate Raleigh’s current greatness all the more. He belongs in any conversation about the greatest catchers in the game right now, and it’s time he had the hardware to prove it.
The last time Luis Arraez struck out was August 10, a full month ago. He struck out the day before that as well. As of Tuesday morning, Arraez has played in 42 of the Padres’ 46 games during the second half of the season, and he has struck out exactly twice. No other qualified player has struck out fewer than 15 times since the All-Star break. Please take a moment to think about that. It means that the player with the second-fewest strikeouts has struck out 7 1/2 times more than Arraez. Nearly 75% of qualified players have struck out at least 30 times. Arraez, once again, has done so twice. Here’s what that looks like in a graph. Each bar represents a qualified player and Arraez is the tiny green one all the way to the right. I’ve added a dashed line to give you a sense of how far below everyone else he is.
Arraez currently has 26 strikeouts over the entire season. If he can stay below 30, he would be just the ninth qualified player in this century to accomplish the feat, and the first since Jeff Keppinger did so in 2008. Even if you do count 2020, despite the fact that Arraez has made 340 more plate appearances (and counting) than any player in that season, he currently has fewer strikeouts than all but five of the 142 qualified players. Here’s a chart of the whole 2024 season, just for good measure. Read the rest of this entry »
One of my favorite pieces I wrote last year was about players whose baserunning value was at odds with their footspeed: specifically, those who were squandering the God-given advantage of their legs. A year later, I have a new crop of baserunners to write about. We also have an updated version of our metric for calculating baserunning value (BsR) in 2024. So, I decided the topic was worth a fresh look.
I took a pretty subjective approach when I wrote about this last season. I went through the sprint speed leaderboard on Baseball Savant, compared it to our BsR leaderboard, and scanned for players who stood out. This time around, I decided I could be a little more scientific. I made a spreadsheet featuring every player who has taken at least 300 plate appearances and recorded at least 100 competitive runs this season – nice, round, arbitrary cut-off points to limit small sample size randomness. Then, I determined the percentile value for each player’s BsR, as well as the percentile value for two different measurements of speed: sprint speed and the time it takes to run from home plate to first base (HP to 1B).
As I compared the results, three names immediately caught my eye: Jo Adell, Jeff McNeil, and Mickey Moniak. Adell has, by far, the widest gap between his sprint speed percentile (86th) and BsR percentile (9th). That’s approximately a 77% difference; no other runner has a gap bigger than 60%. Meanwhile, McNeil boasts the widest gap between his HP to 1B percentile (86th) and BsR percentile (19th). Finally, Moniak ranks among the top 20% in both sprint speed and HP to 1B, yet he ranks among the bottom third in BsR. He has the third-largest gap between his sprint speed (84th) and BsR (32nd) and the fifth-largest gap between his HP to 1B (83rd) and BsR. He is the only player with one of the five largest gaps in both areas: Read the rest of this entry »
I first learned of the kick change while in Chicago for Saberseminar in late August. Chatting with Garrett Crochet and Jonathan Cannon in the White Sox clubhouse prior to a Saturday game, I heard the term from Cannon, who was describing a new pitch that one of their rotation mates, Davis Martin, had recently begun throwing. Needless to say, I was intrigued.
The following day, I learned even more about the atypical offering. Brian Bannister presented at Saberseminar that Sunday, and the kick change was one of the subjects he brought up. Moreover, the White Sox Senior Advisor to Pitching subsequently spoke about it in more detail while taking questions from the audience, this particular one coming, not surprisingly, from my colleague Michael Rosen.
As luck would have it, two opportunities to hear even more about the kick change were right around the corner. The White Sox visited Fenway Park this past weekend, and with Boston being my home base, I was able to sit down with Martin to get his perspective on the pitch, as well as the story of why and how he learned it. Then the Orioles arrived in town, so I talked to reliever Matt Bowman, who not only has something similar in his arsenal, but he also is Bannister-esque when it comes to the art and science of pitching. I spoke to the veteran right-hander about the kick change and its close-cousin relationship with the better-known split change.
Here are my conversations, lightly edited for clarity, with Martin and Bowman.
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David Laurila: What is the kick change?
Davis Martin: “It’s basically for supinators. I’ve never been a pronator. It’s for guys that have really good spin talent and have always had the ability to get to that supination plane. But pronating is very unnatural for us from a physiological standpoint. Read the rest of this entry »
Relief pitching is hard work. More than that, it’s work whose difficulty builds on itself. If you’re covering a single inning in a single game, you can use your best reliever. Second inning? You’ll need your second-best guy, and so on. Second day in a row? Now your best relievers are tired. Third day in a row? Now maybe everyone is tired. And relief work never stops; through Monday’s action, there have been 4,322 starts in baseball this year and 26 complete games.
There’s an inherent tradeoff between how much teams rely on their bullpen and the average quality of the relievers who come in. No one does this anymore, but a team that was only asking its bullpen for a few innings a game could use its best arms for a high proportion of its overall innings. A team full of five-and-dive starters has to go much further down the depth chart; covering four innings per game with relievers requires more contributors.
There’s no obvious correlation between relief innings pitched and quality, for various reasons. Teams aren’t passive observers here; the teams that expect to need more relief innings tend to acquire more relievers, because they know they’ll be needed. Front offices are always on the lookout for innings eaters to lighten the bullpen load. But increasingly, this is just a cost of doing business. Teams and starters are both of the opinion that their best work is done in short bursts. If that’s the case, there will be more relief innings. Read the rest of this entry »
