On July 27, 2018, a piece titled A Conversation With Oakland Pitching Coach Scott Emerson was published here at FanGraphs. Notable about the piece is that a question I’d asked about a particular pitcher, Daniel Mengden, ended up segueing into a variety of related topics. As I noted at the time, Emerson loves discussing his craft.

Six years later, that hasn’t changed. A few days before the All-Star break, I once again sat down with Emerson at Fenway Park. I wanted to ask him about pitch counts — the night before, A’s starter JP Sears threw 114 pitches across 5 2/3 innings in Oakland’s 5-2 win over the Red Sox — and expected our chit-chat would last roughly five minutes. Not surprisingly, we talked a good bit longer. Moreover — again not a surprise — we ended up discussing not just what I’d intended, but other aspects of the art and science of pitching as well.

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David Laurila: JP Sears threw 114 pitches last night. “What is your philosophy on starters going deep into games in terms of pitch count?

Scott Emerson: “For us last night, he had an extra day of rest, and we’re also going into the break, so he’s going to have some rest there. We wanted him to get through the sixth so we could get to [Austin] Adams, [Lucas] Erceg, and [Mason] Miller. We thought that was our best chance through their lineup.

“As for me, I like starters to go as long as they can and as hard as they can. I don’t think 114 is necessarily that high of a pitch count. I thought he was throwing the ball fine. [Mark Kotsay] and I talked about it, and [Sears] felt good about himself, so we tried to get him through [Rafael] Devers. That was the goal.”

Laurila: Generally speaking, how does a pitcher’s arm action and pitching style factor into it? Read the rest of this entry »

The Milwaukee Brewers, in recent history, tend to be a little light both on offense and in the payroll department. Which makes Christian Yelich — the team’s leader in batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging, and the recipient of nearly a quarter of the team’s major league salary expenditure — a pivotal figure for the franchise. Perhaps to an extent unmatched by any other position player on a contending team. (That’d be an interesting blog for another day.)

On Tuesday, the Brewers faced a situation tailor-made for Yelich: Leading 1-0, runners on first and second, two outs, the right-handed Julian Merryweather on the mound. Milwaukee had struggled to scratch out even that one run, and just a single by Yelich would’ve given the Brewers bullpen room to relax. And yet, out of the dugout stepped the right-handed Rhys Hoskins, not Yelich. Hoskins struck out, and the Brewers quickly announced that their star left fielder was experiencing back tightness.

Oh, crap. Read the rest of this entry »

“An egregious error of Umpire Hurst in construing the rules helped Boston to two runs and added to the confusion of the Orioles. In the fourth inning Boston had three men on bases and one out. Ryan came to the bat and scratched out a short fly over third base. Jennings ran for the ball, got under it and muffed it. According to Rule 45, Section 9, a batter is out ‘if he hits a fly ball that can be handled by an infielder while first base is occupied with only one out.’ Ryan should have been declared out whether the ball was muffed or not…

When seen at the club-house after the game he started in defense of his position by attempting a distinction between the outfield and infield, claiming that the ball was not hit to the infield, but when his attention was called to the wording of the rule, which does not state that the ball must be hit to the infield, but simply that it shall be such a ball as an infielder can handle, he abandoned that position, and argued that it was not a fly ball, but a line drive. He soon saw the absurdity of that argument, as a line drive which does not touch the ground is as much a fly ball as if it were hit 100 feet up into the air.”

– “Errors Lost the Game,” The Morning Herald, April 26, 1894

The graph below has been haunting me for weeks now. I made it, but there’s nothing unique about it. You can find an identical graph in this Alex Chamberlain piece, this Tom Tango blog post, or any number of other articles. It shows the batting average and wOBA for every batted ball, based on launch angle.

I cut off 20 degrees from either side, but you get the point. Worthless groundballs and popups are on the sides, and valuable line drives and fly balls make up a narrow sliver in the middle. It occurred to me a few weeks ago that we’ve been splitting batted balls into those same four categories for a very long time now. Moreover, one of those categories is suspect. If you’ve been reading FanGraphs for a while, you know that line drive rate is considered fluky rather than sticky. Only a handful of elite players – Luis Arraez, Freddie Freeman, maybe Steven Kwan – are capable of consistently putting up top-10 line drive rates. According to Baseball Savant, batters have a .639 wOBA on line drives this year. Hitting line drives is what every single batter is trying to do, and yet somehow what Russell Carleton wrote seven years ago still holds true: “There is some skill in hitting line drives, but it is hard to repeat, and how many line drives you hit seems to be unrelated to where you fall on the ground-ball/fly-ball spectrum.” I set out to find some new way to look at this old puzzle, figuring that with all of the tools as our disposal, there had to be a better way to slice this particular pie. I failed, but I came across some interesting things along the way, and that (I have decided after the fact) is what’s really important. Read the rest of this entry »

We now have less than a week until the the July 30 trade deadline, and so far, not much has happened other than the Hunter Harvey trade before the All-Star break. That ought to (hopefully) change in coming days, unless we’re witnessing the heat death of the baseball universe.

As is my habit, I have suggested eight trades that teams should to consider in some form to fulfill their short-term and long-term organizational goals. I’ve tried to make broadly fair proposals in the context of historical deadline trades, but your mileage may vary. Please note that I am not reporting these as trades that are currently being discussed by respective front offices, and if you report these as such, you hereby waive all rights not to receive an ironic visit from an antagonist from a German fairy tale.

Let us know what you think about these ideas and feel free to add your own in the comments!

The Baltimore Orioles acquire P Garrett Crochet from the White Sox for 3B/1B Coby Mayo, OF Enrique Bradfield Jr., and P Chayce McDermott

I know the White Sox are dreaming of a mega-package in return from Garrett Crochet, who is a legitimate Cy Young candidate this season, but I just can’t see them doing better for Crochet than they did for Dylan Cease. I would argue that Coby Mayo, if he had been included in the Cease trade through some kind of weirdness in the space-time continuum, would have been the most valuable prospect involved, more so than Drew Thorpe was at the time. I’m sure the Sox would prefer a comparable pitching prospect to Mayo than Mayo, but I’m not sure the teams most likely to go after Crochet have that available. Mayo is likely to be an impact bat, even if he isn’t going to stick at third base. He also should to be able to contribute quickly, which appears to be (confusingly) an important goal for the White Sox, even though they are in a generally worse position than they think they’re in.

The White Sox may counter and say that they expect a return similar to the Chris Sale trade, but I can’t imagine any team doing that. Sale at the time was a much more established pitcher than Crochet is currently, and he also wasn’t a year removed from a significant elbow injury, as is the case with Crochet. The O’s are in a situation in which they can justify being even more aggressive than this, but to include more name brand talent than this starts to make the trade look quite a bit riskier. Enrique Bradfield Jr. and Chayce McDermott are ranked seventh and eighth, respectively, in the Orioles’ system — 45+ FV guys but not Top 100 Prospects. I do get the impression that at the end of the day, the White Sox don’t have to be completely bowled over to trade Crochet, while the Tigers may very well need to be for Tarik Skubal, the best lefty pitcher who might be available.

The Houston Astros acquire 3B/1B Isaac Paredes from the Tampa Bay Rays for OF Jacob Melton, SS Alberto Hernandez, OF Luis Baez, and P Alimber Santa

Corner infielder Isaac Paredes is arguably the best bat likely to be available at the deadline, so it’s hard for the Astros not to have serious interest given the utter wreck that first base has been for them this year (.205/.276/.317). While one of the prime artisans of that triple-slash, José Abreu, is gone, Jon Singleton is not much of an improvement, and at 32, he’s hardly the future of the position. Paredes, who has three years left until he hits free agency, would fill that short-term need at first and also provide the Astros with an option to replace third baseman Alex Bregman if he doesn’t re-sign with the team.

While Houston has reasons to be interested in Paredes, do they have enough to offer? I think that’s the key question here, because the farm system is pretty poorly stacked at the moment. I don’t think there’s any way the Astros can pull off this trade without giving up their top prospect Jacob Melton, who is ranked no. 78 overall, or Jake Bloss, their top pitching prospect and no. 100 on our Top 100 list. Even if one of those two are included, the Astros would have to send along a few other guys who offer enough upside to make it a worthwhile deal for the Rays. I kinda see Alimber Santa as one of those hard throwers with poor command that the Rays suddenly make into elite relievers after a midseason call-up. I could also see the Rays asking for Shay Whitcomb, who fits in with their organization’s long-term embrace of unheralded Joey Wendle-type infielders who hit in the upper minors and get no attention around the league. ZiPS has actually been rather enamored with Whitcomb for a while. The Rays have bled a lot of outfield bats over the last few years and, in addition to Melton, Luis Baez would help them restock. On top of that, Tampa Bay likes upside, and while I’m a José Caballero fan, Alberto Hernandez certainly has upside. With Jeremy Peña and Jose Altuve, Houston can spare middle infield prospects, even really good ones.

The Los Angeles Dodgers acquire RHP Jack Flaherty from the Detroit Tigers for LHP Justin Wrobleski and SS Trey Sweeney

The Tigers are no doubt asking for the moon for Skubal, but they don’t have the same need to do so for Jack Flaherty, a free agent at the end of the season. Flaherty’s been terrific this year, but he’s also a rental, and teams don’t usually give up their best for players on expiring contracts these days. I kinda wanted to center this trade around one of the Dodgers’ many young catchers, probably Thayron Liranzo, or an infielder on the rise like Alex Freeland, but that just seemed a bit too rich for them to give up for two months of Flaherty’s services. The good news is the Dodgers have an extremely deep farm system, so if a trade like this were to be discussed, there are myriad ways to get Detroit interested, even if it’s not exactly these two mid-tier prospects. Justin Wrobleski is probably too much of an innings eater for the Dodgers, who prefer to juggle high-end pitching talents based on who’s healthy, and although Trey Sweeney has been passed by other players in the organization, the Tigers could still use him in their system.

I think it would be a mistake if the Dodgers didn’t add a pitcher before the deadline. Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s goal to make it back before the playoffs is not an auspicious sign, and even with Clayton Kershaw and Tyler Glasnow returning from injuries, I think the team would be well-served to have another fairly hardy pitcher in the mix for the playoffs.

The Seattle Mariners acquire 1B Yandy Díaz and OF Randy Arozarena from the Tampa Rays for RHP Logan Evans, RHP Emerson Hancock, and RHP Michael Morales

This trade depends on the status of Yandy Díaz, who is currently on the restricted list for a personal issue, but I’m assuming that will be resolved fairly soon. If not, then I’d still be in favor of a scaled back trade in which the Mariners acquired Randy Arozarena. Rays fans might be underwhelmed by the lack of a huge name coming back in the deal, but I don’t think Díaz and Arozarena really have the same trade value they had a year ago, and we project both players to finish with just short of two WAR for the 2024 season. But I think they each hold decent value for the Mariners considering how bad their offense has been this season. The Mitch Haniger reunion hasn’t worked out, and first baseman Tyler Locklear is likely a worse hitter in the short term than Díaz. Additionally, both Díaz and Arozarena have some cost control remaining. The Rays like interesting pitching prospects the way that sculptors like marble, and the M’s are one of the few teams that can provide them without impacting to their long-term roster. Three of those interesting lesser pitching prospects are righties Logan Evans, Emerson Hancock, and Michael Morales. Paredes would probably be an even better pickup for the Mariners, who really need a bat, but I already gave Paredes to the Astros.

The St. Louis Cardinals acquire RHP Nathan Eovaldi from the Texas Rangers for RHP Sem Robberse and C Pedro Pagés

I’m still unsure what the Rangers plan to do next week, but should they decided that retooling isn’t a dirty word for them, Nathan Eovaldi is one of the logical players to trade. Technically, he has a vesting player option for 2025 at $20 million, but I’m not sure that’s really a factor here; Eovaldi’s on target to meet the 300 innings requirement should things go well this summer, and if they do, he’ll be in a position to do a lot better than a single year at $20 million. Like Flaherty, there are no moons to acquire for two months of Eovaldi, but I think the Rangers could do a lot worse than two mid-tier prospects who aren’t years away from the big leagues. Pedro Pagés doesn’t have an obvious place in St. Louis and would be a more effective long-term caddy for Jonah Heim than current Texas backup Andrew Knizner, and the Rangers have a farm system that is lighter on starting pitchers than position players. I like Sem Robberse, but the Cardinals are full of no. 3 and 4 starters, and a healthy mid-rotation arm may simply be more valuable to the Rangers than to the Cards.

The New York Mets acquire RHP Carlos Estévez and LHP Reid Detmers from the Los Angeles Angels for RHP Blade Tidwell, SS/OF Luisangel Acuña, and OF Ryan Clifford

Carlos Estévez is one of the best relievers available at the deadline – and a pure rental – and if the Mets are interested in pushing for a wild card, as I believe they are, shoring up a weak bullpen is a good place to improve. I’m also a big fan of Reid Detmers. He’s commonly talked about as a “reclamation project,” but I think there’s good evidence to say that this year in the majors he pitched better than his surface-level stats showed. No competent major league pitcher is “truly” a .333 BABIP pitcher. Before being demoted, Detmers was having his best season yet in terms of missing bats, and I think he fits in the middle of the Mets rotation both immediately and over the next few years. Maybe I’m underrating the Angels as an organization, but I don’t think they would need a marquee prospect to make this trade, so I’m not going to throw one in willy-nilly. Blade Tidwell has struggled a little with command at Triple-A, but he ought to stick as a starter, and ZiPS is a pretty big fan of him long term. Luisangel Acuña is a tantalizing athlete who hasn’t really hit since he was traded to the Mets organization, and Ryan Clifford boasts plus power and has performed well at Double-A this year, but he strikes out a lot and doesn’t offer much defensively.

The San Diego Padres acquire LHP Yusei Kikuchi and RHP Yimi García from the Toronto Blue Jays for IF Eguy Rosario, C Brandon Valenzuela, and OF Homer Bush Jr.

With Yu Darvish out for personal reasons and Joe Musgrove’s exact timetable for a return still up in the air, the Padres could use an extra starting pitcher. Yusei Kikuchi is no ace, but he’s been solid the last two years and has pitched better than his raw ERA this season. He’s also a free agent at the end of the season, which makes him more movable for the Blue Jays than either Vladimir Guerrero Jr. or Bo Bichette, as I think 2025 is still very important to the Jays. The back of San Diego’s bullpen is also less than enthralling, and a Yimi García acquisition would give them more heft for the very wide open NL Wild Card race.

Naturally, neither Kikuchi nor García merit a top prospect in return, but they should at least get an interesting package. ZiPS actually likes Eguy Rosario quite a bit, projecting him for a 97 wRC+ in 2025 with +5 fielding runs at third, good enough to be a league-average player and help the Jays retool for next season. A healthy Manny Machado greatly reduces Rosario’s utility to the Padres. Danny Jansen is a free agent after the season and the Jays are short in prospects both behind the plate and in the outfield, and Brandon Valenzuela and Homer Bush Jr. are the types of 40ish prospects that frequently go in trades like this.

The New York Yankees acquire RHP Chad Green from the Toronto Blue Jays for IF Jared Serna

I’d be surprised if the Yankees weren’t after a late-inning arm, and they have a good history with Chad Green. I also think Green is unlikely to require a large price despite his solid ERA; his strikeout rate has fallen considerably and it’s backed largely by hitters making a lot more contact. Even before you consider Bichette’s free agency after next season, the Jays are in need of infield depth; I don’t think they see Addison Barger as a long-term middle infielder, but Jared Serna could fill that role.

Amusingly, Isiah Kiner-Falefa is having a strong season and would be useful for the Yankees at third base, but because the Jays need infield depth and might want to retool for 2025 rather than rebuild, they might choose to keep IKF, who is signed through next season.

Bryan Woo wasn’t highly regarded when the Seattle Mariners selected him in the sixth round of the 2021 draft out of Cal Poly. That’s understandable. The low-slot righty had a 6.36 ERA in his three collegiate seasons, including a 6.11 mark in his injury-hampered junior year. After undergoing Tommy John surgery in April 2021, he made his professional debut in ’22.

Now, the 24-year-old is showing that Seattle’s director of pitching strategy, Trent Blank, wasn’t completely out of his mind when he reportedly told members of the Mariners front office prior to the draft that “this guy would be one-one for me.” While it’s unlikely that Woo is going to be as good or better than all of the 173 players drafted ahead of him, his numbers have nonetheless been impressive. Since making his big league debut in July 2023, he has a 3.60 ERA and a 3.96 FIP over 137 1/3 innings across his 28 starts with the Mariners. In 10 outings this year, he is 4-1 with a 2.54 ERA and a 3.25 FIP. It’s worth noting that this success hasn’t exactly come out of nowhere. Including four rehab outings this year, Woo logged a 2.97 ERA and 162 strikeouts over 115 innings as a minor leaguer.

Woo brought up his backstory when I asked him how he’s developed as pitcher.

“Going through the draft-and-scouting process, I feel like a lot of it was based on my potential,” Woo told me when the Mariners played in Cleveland last month. “I didn’t have great results at the time. It was based off of, ‘He could be this. It looks like he’s developing into that.’ For me, it was about believing that I could get there, that I could continue to get better. That’s kind of the story. I wasn’t too well-known. If you look at in on paper, it was never, ‘This guy is really good.’ The numbers never really showed that I was.”

Not surprisingly, Woo also brought up the fact that he’d been injured when he was drafted, and how that made for a lot of uncertainty. As he put it, “I didn’t quite know what was going to happen. It could have been a little higher. I could have gone a lot lower. I really wasn’t sure.”

He did know that his repertoire needed both refinement and enhancement. The Oakland native had a mid-90s four-seam fastball when healthy but nothing else to write home about. His slider, which he described as having been “OK,” was a pitch he’d throw here and there. He also had a changeup, but that mostly sat in his back pocket.

Developing a second heater has been especially impactful for him. He added a two-seamer to his arsenal last year while toeing the rubber for the Arkansas Travelers.

“Last year, before I got called up, our pitching coordinator came down to Double-A, where I was at,” Woo said. “He sat in on one of my bullpens and said, ‘Just try it.’ I was having a lot of high pitch count games — I wasn’t getting many quick outs — and he said that it could be a tool to use to get some quicker outs, some weaker contact. A lot of my game was strikeouts and fly balls. There weren’t many efficient outs, I guess you could say. So, we tried the two and it has progressed from there.”

So far this season, Woo has thrown 51.4% four-seamers and 27.2% two-seamers, as well as 7.2% changeups, 7.1% sweepers, and 7.0% sliders. The last of that mix, according to the righty, acts more like a gyro when he throws it low, and more like a cutter when he throws it toward the top of the zone. His circle changeup is a pitch he described as having “a little less vertical and a little bit more horizontal, as well as little bit slower, than my sinker.” Asked which of his off-speed pitches he sees as his main secondary offering going forward, he said that he’s satisfied with the progress of all three and wouldn’t take one over the other.

As for his two fastballs, the 6-foot-2 Woo wasn’t inclined to pick between them either. Instead of choosing favorites, he described why he’s had success with his heaters despite their relatively unimpressive metrics.

“Neither one plays super high metrically; the vertical and horizontal movement aren’t anything crazy,” Woo said. “I think it’s just my slot, kind of how the ball comes out, that makes them a little bit different.”

The slot is indeed different. As Pitcher List’s Jack Foley explained last summer, “At 4’11” off the ground, Woo has a release height a full foot below the average.”

Woo told me that he was more over the top in high school, only to have his arm “kind of lower on its own throughout college, post-surgery, and pro ball.” He claimed to have never purposefully dropped it down, but rather has just continued to throw in a way that feels most comfortable. Not so comfortable are opposing batters. They have just a .220 xBA and a 2.7% barrel rate against the low-slot righty this season. When healthy — he missed the first month with elbow inflammation and later was on the shelf for three weeks with a hamstring strain — Woo is hard to square up.

The number of Atlanta Braves players on the injured list has reached double digits after two of their core players, starting pitcher Max Fried and second baseman Ozzie Albies, went down over the weekend. Fried had a 3.08 ERA/3.71 FIP across 108 innings for the Braves before landing on the IL with neuritis in his left forearm, which first flared up while he was warming up for his All-Star Game appearance. In Atlanta’s 6-2 loss to the Cardinals on Sunday, Albies broke his wrist when his glove hand collided with a sliding Michael Siani on a stolen base attempt; the second baseman is expected to be out for nearly the rest of the regular season.

To replace Fried and Albies on the roster, the Braves recalled lefty Dylan Dodd and shortstop Nacho Alvarez Jr. from Triple-A Gwinnett and signed veteran 2B/OF Whit Merrifield to a major league contract.

Ozzie Albies today underwent X-rays that revealed a left wrist fracture. He is expected to miss approximately eight weeks.

— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) July 21, 2024

After missing a good chunk of last year due to forearm pain, the 30-year-old Fried stumbled in his first two starts of this season but has been dominant since then. He’d also stayed healthy through the first half of the season, which was especially crucial for the Braves given the early-season loss of righty Spencer Strider to Tommy John surgery. The silver lining here – important since any mention of a pitcher’s having forearm pain justifiably will send fans into a panicked binge of one of their vices – is that there is no structural damage in his pitching arm and he will not require surgery. Instead, the Braves are choosing to be cautious with Fried because neuritis in the forearm can be related to an underlying problem with the UCL. Fried has already had Tommy John surgery once, about a decade ago when he was still a Padres prospect. Neither the Braves nor Fried have offered a timetable for his return, but Fried was optimistic that this would be a short-term issue. Per The Athletic’s David O’Brien:

“Everything structurally looks great, just a little irritated sensory nerve,” Fried said, “not one of the major muscle-functioning nerves. … Just going to let it calm down, and (I’m) hoping to be back soon.”

That there was no mention of ulnar nerve transposition surgery, which would have kept Fried out for months, has to be considered a good sign. Or, again, at least a less bad one.

After getting off to a hot start in April, Albies has struggled in recent months, and has hit just .235/.285/.376 since the end of April. He may be having arguably the worst year his career, but Atlanta was hopeful that he could return to form over the final two and a half months of the season. Losing even this lesser version of Albies lowers the ceiling of this underperforming offense, which ranks 11th among the 15 NL teams in runs scored.

Atlanta may be punchless, but it’s not witless – or should I say Whitless – as the team quickly signed Merrifield to a major league contract. Merrifield’s peak years with the Royals are long behind him at this point, and he was only available for the Braves because the Phillies released him over a week ago after he’d batted .199/.277/.295 (65 wRC+) across 174 plate appearances in a utility role. The projection systems are not bullish on Merrifield’s performance the rest of the season; Steamer expects Merrifield to post a .250/.303/.362 line over the final months of the year while ZiPS has him slightly worse, at .244/.293/.354. That said, the Braves simply don’t have any good in-house options to turn to instead. I ran the projections for every player at Triple-A or Double-A for Atlanta who has played at least three games at second base this year. I’m also including Alvarez, who has not played second base professionally but appears to be the frontrunner to replace Albies.

If ZiPS is correct, the Braves appear to have identified Alvarez as their best short-term option at second base, with Merrifield filling a utility role and serving as the best second-base Plan B.

The Phillies were already overwhelming favorites to win the NL East, with ZiPS giving them an 85% chance of taking the division as of this morning if Fried and Albies had been healthy. Assuming two missed months for Albies and an average of three weeks for Fried, ZiPS drops Atlanta’s chances of running down the Phillies from 14% to 6%. Fortunately, the Braves remain in a commanding position for one of the NL Wild Card spots. These two injuries only drop their playoff probability in ZiPS from 91% to 88%, so while unwelcome, they shouldn’t cause any premature towel-throwing.

In one last bit of looking on the bright side, Atlanta has a lot more options now than it would if these injuries happened in two weeks. We’re just over a week from the trade deadline, and there are a variety of second basemen and pitchers, of varying plausibility, available. A package that included a relief arm – Atlanta is deep here – could conceivably tempt the Orioles into parting with a prospect like Connor Norby. Amed Rosario of the Rays and Isiah Kiner-Falefa of the Blue Jays have both been solid this season. I’m not sure Atlanta could successfully trade its entire farm system and get Garrett Crochet or Tarik Skubal if it wanted to, but the price of Erick Fedde ought to be more reasonable. The Braves might choose to stick with what they have and muddle through, but it’s always nice to be able to make that choice.

It says a lot about the Braves that despite all of their nasty surprises this season, they remain on a pace to win 89 games and comfortably make the playoffs. But with these two latest injuries, the team’s margin for error has been cut thinner than a nice piece of charcuterie.

I was standing in the Yankees clubhouse on July 5 after their 5-3 loss to the Red Sox when I received an angry text from my friend Andy, a huge Yankees fan. “How many years is it now that they light it up in the first half and because [sic] absolutely terrible in the second?”

I sent him back a few texts, first correcting his typo — Andy writes for a living, but considering that many of his texts are incoherent, this one wasn’t all that bad — and then answering his question about the trajectories of New York’s recent seasons. His response: “They’re just playing such ugly baseball.”

After the performance I’d just watched, which might best be described as the baseball equivalent of the poop emoji, it was hard to argue with his assessment. It was the first time in at least the last 115 years that the Yankees lost to the Red Sox at home when leading by multiple runs with two outs in the ninth inning. They made several baserunning blunders owing either to mental lapses, a lack of hustle, compromised health or some combination of the three. They botched two throws to second base, one from the catcher on a bunt attempt that probably should’ve been caught and another on a pickoff throw that sailed into center field. They allowed two two-run home runs to the bottom of Boston’s order — one in the ninth to tie the game and the other to lead off the 10th — and then failed to push across a run in the 10th with runners on the corners, nobody out, and their third, fourth, and fifth batters due up.

The loss was New York’s 14th in 18 games, and by the time the homestand ended with a 3-0 loss two nights later, the Yankees were 5-15 over a 20-game span. A week later, when they took two of three against the first-place Orioles, it was their first series victory in a month. Now, after a win Friday and two losses over the weekend, the Yankees enter this afternoon’s series finale against the Rays with a 9-20 record since June 15. Those nine wins are tied with the White Sox for the fewest in that span.

And yet, for as awful as the past five and a half weeks have been, the Yankees remain one of the best teams in baseball. At 59-42, they enter this week first in the AL Wild Card standings and just two games behind the Orioles in the division, and their Playoff Odds have fallen to 97.5%, down from 99.9% on June 14, the last night before all the losing began. Their 12.2% odds to win the World Series are the best in the American League; only the Phillies (16.1%) and Dodgers (15.3%) have a higher probability to win it all.

If you’re having a tough time making sense of this contradictory reality — that the Yankees have played terribly for over a month and remain the most likely American League team to win the pennant — you’re not alone. When I started writing this piece, I was skeptical, too. Living in New York surrounded by Yankees fans, it’s easy to understand why people like Andy are so frustrated; it’s difficult not to get caught up in the emotions of the moment, especially when that moment has spanned nearly six weeks. I also groan with cynicism when I hear manager Aaron Boone say, “It’s all right there in front of us,” because all we can see right now is a team standing amid the ruins of a season that was supposed to be different. However, on closer examination, it’s clear that the foundation of this once-promising team is still in tact, and I think the crumbled pieces from the caved in ceiling can be fixed and supported with beams borrowed, bought, or bartered from the neighbors.

To understand how the Yankees can keep the building from collapsing further, we need to figure out what exactly has gone wrong, and to do that, we should also determine what was working well. From there, we’ll look at how they can start putting their season back together and perhaps make it even better.

For the first two and a half months, this season really was different. On June 14, with a resounding 8-1 win against the Red Sox at Fenway Park, the Yankees became the first team in the majors this year to reach 50 wins, improved to a season-high 28 games over .500, and increased their odds to win the division to 76.6%. They had one of the best pitching staffs in baseball — this without reigning AL Cy Young winner Gerrit Cole, who hadn’t yet returned from the elbow injury that forced him to miss the first 83 days of the season — and their lineup, while still top heavy, was 20% better than league average. Aaron Judge (205 wRC+ at the time) and Juan Soto (188) were the two best hitters in the majors.

Of course, since then, their season has taken a turn for the worse in ways that feel all too familiar. Their potent lineup has become stagnant. Several key contributors have landed on the injured list, most notably Giancarlo Stanton, who was enjoying a resurgent season before suffering a hamstring strain the third week of June, and more recently Jose Trevino, who despite his reputation as a glove-first catcher was one of the handful of Yankees regulars who’d been above league average at the plate this season (103 wRC+). They are no longer hitting for average and they’re not slugging like they were over the first two and a half months. The only thing to improve since they started losing is their walk rate, but walks will only get you so far if you’re not getting the hits to bring those baserunners home. Oh, about running the bases — the Yankees have been the worst baserunning team in the majors all season, but now that they aren’t hitting for average or power, their ineptitude on the basepaths has turned into a much more glaring problem.

Some of these offensive woes can be attributed to injuries and players going cold at the same time, while some portion of it is probably due to players pressing as the losing persisted. Of course, some of it is just, to borrow one of Boone’s favorite clichés, “the ebbs and flows of the season.” We should expect some rebound here. This isn’t the case of Judge alone propping up an otherwise meek lineup as he did in 2022; remember, the Yankees held their own while their captain looked lost through April. That said, this offense still lacks depth.

Meanwhile, the Yankees pitching staff, which had been the bedrock of their success, has crumbled over the past four weeks. After posting the best ERA in baseball (2.90) over their 72 games through June 14, the Yankees have the second-worst ERA (5.37) during their 29-game slide, and they are the only team whose pitching staff has been below replacement level over that span.

Boone has cited a spike in home runs allowed as one of the main sources of trouble for Yankees pitchers — that the few mistakes his pitchers are making are ending up in the seats, whereas earlier in the year, they were staying in the ballpark, providing the pitchers a chance to escape the inning unscathed. And, for the most part, he is correct. Their opponents’ home run rate has increased 87.5%, from 2.4% through June 14 to 4.5% since then. But Yankees pitchers are also allowing a higher rate of non-HR hits than they did before. Their opponents recorded non-HR hits on 16.2% of their plate appearances through June 14; that rate is 19.0% since then. Meanwhile, using the same cutoff, the percentage of hits the Yankees allowed that were home runs has gone from 13.1% to 19.3%. So, yes, home runs are a big issue here, probably even the main issue, but the Yankees are also giving up more hits in general than they did before.

As the losing has continued, Boone and the players have resorted to the same keeping-the-faith approach that hasn’t worked for them before.

“Regardless of when we’re on winning streaks or when it’s like this, I think we have a really good clubhouse, staying even-keel and showing up every day,” said shortstop Anthony Volpe after that sloppy Friday night game against the Red Sox. “We trust each other, we trust ourselves. We know we’ve got everything in front of us. We play to win, we expect to win — we’re the Yankees.”

“We’re still believing,” Soto said after the Yankees’ loss to the Red Sox on July 7. “We’re still grinding every day. We still come in with the same energy. I think that’s really positive on our side.”

“Nobody likes losing,” Judge said after the Yankees lost their July 11 rubber match with the Rays. “Nobody is happy about it. We’ve just got to keep showing up, doing our thing.”

That implies that “showing up, doing our thing” is working, and well, at least right now, it isn’t. To the fans who have been through this with the Yankees before, many of these comments sound like a lack of urgency. Simply being the Yankees won’t save them from more losing, nor will the power of positive thinking.

However, Boone is right in a sense when he says, “It’s all right there in front of us.” Unlike in 2022, when the Yankees had an even better start to the season, this year they went cold before the All-Star break, so there are more games ahead of them to turn things around. More importantly, the trade deadline is still a week away, meaning GM Brian Cashman has had time to assess the flaws of the roster and determine which moves he needs to make to improve it, and he still has more time to work the phones and make something happen. Two years ago, the Yankees were 70-34 and 12 games up in the AL East entering the day of the deadline. Their fall to earth began a few hours after the deadline passed, when they suffered the first of five straight losses that kicked off a 3-14 stretch. They couldn’t swing a trade to pull them out of their rut; they had to make due with the players they had and hope they would snap out of it. By the end of the month, their division lead was cut in half, and it was down to 3.5 games after a loss on September 9. They rebounded from there and won the division, but they were gassed and overmatched by the time they faced and were swept by the Astros in the ALCS.

This time, the Yankees can look externally to address their weaknesses, and considering their willingness to splurge for one season of Soto, we should expect the front office to double down on its intent to win it all this year with a major acquisition or two. We know the Yankees need to add a productive hitter in the infield, especially at third base. All-Star Ryan McMahon, who has another three years and $44 million left on his contract after this year, would make a lot of sense, though it’s unclear if the Rockies would be willing to trade him because of that club control.

Otherwise, the trade market for third basemen has yet to solidify because there are so many teams caught in the mediocre middle. There has been some chatter about Rays All-Star and Ben Clemens’ favorite player Isaac Paredes, but considering he’s only in his first year of arbitration eligibility and therefore is affordable and controllable through the 2027 season, it seems unlikely that Tampa Bay would trade him without getting a haul of prospects in return — especially not to a divisional foe like the Yankees.

But that doesn’t mean the Yankees shouldn’t look to the AL East to improve at third base. The Blue Jays have old friend Isiah Kiner-Falefa at the hot corner. He’s signed through next season at a relatively affordable $7.5 million, and while Yankees fans might balk at trading for someone who was best suited for a utility role during his two seasons in the Bronx, they should remember that depth is crucial down the stretch and into the postseason. Beyond that, though, they should look at IKF’s stats for this season, because if he were in the Yankees lineup today, he’d be their third-most productive hitter by wRC+ (117), behind only Judge (208) and Soto (185). Kiner-Falefa also plays excellent defense and runs the bases well. The one concern here is that Kiner-Falefa is currently on the injured list with a sprained left knee. He has started doing baseball activities and is expected back late this month or in early August.

At this point, it seems unlikely the Yankees would trade Gleyber Torres, because for as much as he’s disappointed this season, there aren’t many available second basemen who’d represent an offensive improvement, especially not ones who’d be worth the cost. If they’re going to add a bat in their infield, it will almost certainly come at third.

New York could also seek to improve its offense with an upgrade in the outfield. The New York Post’s Jon Heyman has reported that the Yankees have discussed Jazz Chisholm Jr. with the Marlins. A lefty batter with power and speed, Chisholm would slide into center field, with Judge moving to left. That would likely move Verdugo to the bench upon Stanton’s return from injury (which MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch reported recently is “really close”). Verdugo started the season strong but has been awful (17 wRC+) since June 15. The Yankees’ outfield defense would get worse with Chisholm, a converted middle infielder now in his second season as an everyday center fielder, but he would be an upgrade at the plate and especially on the bases. New York could also mix and match its lineup and work Chisholm in at second base to give Torres a spell against tough righties. Chisholm has two years of arbitration left after this season, and trading for him would also fill the hole at second base that the Yankees are expected to have next season; Torres is a pending free agent, and given his lackluster performance this year, it seems unlikely that the Yankees will re-sign him. Another outfielder the Yankees could (read: should) target is Jesse Winker of the Nationals, who has a 132 wRC+ this season and, as a rental, would likely come cheap.

As is the case with every contender, the Yankees need to add at least one or two relievers. Their bullpen is especially light on high-leverage lefties, so Tanner Scott of the Marlins is the obvious best fit, but the Yankees should also see what it would take to get Andrew Chafin from the Tigers. Or, if the Yankees do decide to trade with the Blue Jays for IKF, maybe they could get Toronto to throw in righty Chad Green and make it a bigger reunion.

The Yankees will be in better shape if any of these players are on their roster come July 31, but those additions on their own are not going to solve all the problems that we’ve seen over the last month. The good news is the Yankees as currently constructed are still a good team, maybe even a great one. As we can see by their place in the standings and Playoff Odds even after such a disastrous stretch, one month of “ugly baseball” doesn’t erase all that came before it.

A more-consistent arm slot related to a move back to the third base side of the rubber has contributed to Cole Ragans’s success this season. The raw stuff was obviously already there. As Ben Clemens wrote back in March, the Kansas City Royals left-hander “looks like an absolute terror on the mound.” My colleague went on to say that if he “were designing a pitcher in a laboratory, he’d look a lot like Ragans.”

When I talked to the 2024 American League All-Star on the eve of the break, he told me that going into full attack mode following last year’s oft-reported velocity jump played a huge role in his emergence as a front-line starter. As he put it, “I kind of had to teach myself that I could get away with a little more of a miss compared to when I was throwing 90-91 [mph]. I have a good arsenal in my opinion, so I can just go after hitters.”

And then there’s the work he does in the laboratory.

“I use TrackMan in my bullpens, especially with the slider and the cutter, to kind of see where I’m at,” said Ragans, whose heater is now mid-to-high 90s. “The biggest thing for me is my release points, making sure that my pitches are in a tight cluster. I want everything coming out of the same tunnel. I don’t want to be throwing a fastball from this release height, and my slider from a lower release height.” Read the rest of this entry »

All-Star Week is the traditional midpoint of the baseball season — though not the mathematical one – and with the MLB Draft adding a bunch of new prospects to the minors, it’s a good time to look back at the ZiPS prospect list from this past winter. Some prospects have excelled in the majors and some, well, not so much, but that’s why we call them prospects and not certainties. Interpreting minor league statistics properly has always been a challenge, but it’s more so these days with an unusual divergence in offensive levels between the majors and high minors, especially the Triple-A leagues. An .850 OPS that may have been impressive in the International League a few years ago isn’t that mouth-watering these days, while an ERA around four is unusually promising. ZiPS, naturally, has to translate minor league performance as part of predicting how players will fare in the majors, and now that we have public Statcast data for the minors, there’s even more to dig into in 2024.

For each player in last winter’s ZiPS Top 100, I’m listing quick lines for their translated minor league performance (lower-case m), any major league performance, and lastly, a combination of the two to get one 2024 line (noted with a c).

As I’ve said before, Jackson Holliday might actually be underrated at this point. I got a lot of complaints about the “bearish” .255/.341/.381 projection for him coming into the season, but ZiPS (and I) shared the belief that people were coming too quickly on him. He’s still extremely likely to be a fantastic player, but considering he’s a 20-year-old who blasted through four levels of the minors, it’s not the weirdest thing ever that he’d see a consolidation season. That .336/.332 OBP/SLG isn’t really that far behind his projection, especially considering ZiPS expected the major league offensive environment to be better than it has been this season.

Coby Mayo has had the better season but still wouldn’t come close to passing Holliday if I rerolled the full top prospects right now. James Wood actually has surpassed Holliday, though that will only last until he exceeds the rookie maximum and sheds his prospect status; he was legitimately excellent in the minors this year. The sheen has come off both Wyatt Langford and Evan Carter a little bit, while Jackson Chourio and Masyn Winn have performed about as advertised. As movers go, Adael Amador and Pete Crow-Armstrong look like the two who will take the biggest hit of this group before next year’s rankings (if PCA hasn’t graduated). There hasn’t been as much ink about Emmanuel Rodriguez as I would have expected this year, even before he injured his thumb last month. The Texas League, unlike the Triple-A leagues, is a pretty low offensive environment, with a league OPS of just .705, so his actual 1.100 OPS is pretty impressive.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shota Imanaga have both performed as well as ZiPS expected. While that’s hardly going out on a limb for Yamamoto, whom everyone liked, ZiPS was in on Imanaga very early. Paul Skenes, of course, has been fabulous, even more so than his top-notch translations from April and May. I’d only describe two of the pitchers on this list as unmitigated disappointments so far in 2024, at least from a projections standpoint: Both Ricky Tiedemann and Dylan Lesko will take pretty big hits in the next rankings. Andrew Painter will slide quite a bit as well, but it would be pretty churlish to call a pitcher a disappointment for being injured.

Among this tranche of prospects, Brooks Lee is having arguably the most impressive 2024, and he’s continued to hit since his call-up a couple of weeks ago. Between Lee and the Twins’ taking Kaelen Culpepper with their first-round pick on Sunday, Edouard Julien might get lost in the shuffle quickly in Minnesota; if I were a GM of a team in need of a second baseman, I’d give the Twins call to see if he can rule again on my club. Anyway, I actually expected ZiPS to come around quicker on Dylan Crews, but he’s not really torching minor league pitching as I thought he would. Davis Schneider has long been a ZiPS favorite, but he’s cooled off since a hot run right after he earned more playing time through the process of elimination in Toronto’s struggling lineup.

Jett Williams inevitably will drop considerably after a wrist injury ruined his 2024 season, and Kevin Alcantára was one of the big ZiPS droppers in terms of future WAR. While Samuel Basallo is not matching his breakout 2023 season, he’s still a 19-year-old catcher, so he won’t sag in the rankings too far.

Looking at this group’s long-term projections, it’s almost shocking how little movement there’s been in the long-term projections. Of these 21 pitchers, only three have had their five-year projected WAR move by more than two WAR. The first is Drew Thorpe, who was solid for Birmingham, and his poor K/BB ratios in the majors so far probably aren’t representative of his abilities. The other is a much less heralded prospect, Thomas Harrington of the Pirates, a rather Doug Fister-y prospect (is that a legal adjective), who relies on control and changeups. The high minors can be cruel for this type of pitcher, but he’s survived at least one of the jumps, to Double-A, which improves his long-term outlook. On the flip side, Mick Abel’s command has continued to deteriorate, with both a seven-walk and a six-walk outing in the last month. It would be a shock if he didn’t fall completely off the ZiPS Top 100 for 2025.

It hasn’t shown yet in the majors, but Kyle Manzardo’s minor league performance this year before his call-up wiped out the real “meh” feeling that ZiPS had about his 2023. Post-suspension Noelvi Marte has been pretty lousy, though we have enough data from players after drug suspensions to dismiss any histrionics that he’s struggled because of the lack of performance enhancement. Last year was largely the season that ZiPS came around on Colson Montgomery after being later than practically everyone/everything else, and the result has been a little how I feel after eating a hot dog from a gas station. Joey Ortiz is the big winner in this group, contending for the NL Rookie of the Year award, and Kyle Teel ought to see a bump in next year’s prospect rankings as well. Like Basallo, Ethan Salas’ bat has backslid a bit, but it’s not worth obsessing over how a teenage catching prospect is hitting. Andy Pages hasn’t matched his minor league start this year, but he’s been at least respectable.

Heston Kjerstad just missed the overall ZiPS gainers list, yet given Baltimore’s crowded offense, he’s still had trouble getting a full serving of plate appearances in the majors. If the O’s land Tarik Skubal or Garrett Crochet, Kjerstad has to be one of the names likely to be included, especially for the Tigers considering they are much more motivated to add major league-ready talent than the hopeless Sox. ZiPS was as big fan of Michael Busch, one of those low-ceiling, high-floor hitters without any real positional value, and he’s performed about as well for the Cubs as could have reasonably been expected.

ZiPS was hoping for more power from Matt Shaw, and he’ll probably drop from the top 100 unless his trajectory changes again. But he won’t drop as far as Luisangel Acuña, who has only a 73 wRC+ in Triple-A, though the Mets don’t actually seem disappointed with his performance. Even as offense is up across Triple-A, Angel Martínez was having a dynamite season before he was called up; you shouldn’t dismiss a 147 wRC+ at Triple-A without a pretty compelling reason. He’s also continued to hit in the majors, and I now feel kinda guilty that I didn’t give ZiPS some new RAM to reward it for being so high on him coming into the season.

Have you ever had a friend enthusiastically recommend that you watch a TV show and then say, “It takes a few episodes to get going, and the timeline gets weird at the end, and one or two of the main characters can be kind of annoying, but other than that it’s SO GOOD.” And initially you might be put off, thinking that a truly good show wouldn’t require that many qualifiers. Sometimes you’re right about that, but sometimes it turns out the show is Parks and Recreation and even though the first season is about as appealing as living in a pit, the rest of the show is an absolute treat.

Sometimes small components of a larger body of work do a poor job of representing the work as a whole. The oddities that occur in small samples are likely not a new concept to FanGraphs readers, nor will it shock anyone when I note that what constitutes a small sample depends on what exactly we want to measure. Recently, the fine folks at MLB Advanced Media gifted us with a handful of new metrics that make use of Statcast’s bat tracking technology. Every time we dig into a new metric, we must consider the appropriate serving size to satiate our hunger for knowledge, lest we find ourselves hangrily generating takes that we later regret.

For this article, we’ll attempt to determine appropriate sample thresholds for measuring a hitter’s average bat speed; so that players without bats don’t feel left out, we’ll do the same for sword rate from the pitcher’s perspective. For many metrics, the sample size is measured in pitches or plate appearences, but since both bat speed and sword rate are tied specifically to bat movement, their samples will be composed of swings. To determine reasonable sample sizes, I used the split-half correlation method. The idea is to randomly select two samples of size X from a player’s collection of swings, calculate the player’s average bat speed or sword rate for both samples, lather/rinse/repeat for a bunch of players, then take the full set of two-sample pairs for all players and see how well they correlate. We complete the experiment by repeating the process for progressively larger sample sizes. And just to be super thorough, we’ll re-run the experiment several times and average the correlation values. Read the rest of this entry »