It’s been a few years now since we first discovered that Javier Baez has an elite tagging skill. At the time, it wasn’t obvious that a player actually could have an elite tagging skill. Applying a tag seems like a pretty specific, rote act. There’s not a lot of variation. Baez, though, somehow found a way to do it better than everyone. Baez has a way of doing that.

Well, it seems possible Baez has managed to somehow find value where none seemed clearly available — in this case, by causing fielders to self-combust while he runs the bases. It’s a skill that leads to errors and extra bases for Baez and his friends, and it was on display Wednesday night as Baez stood at first base with Anthony Rizzo up to bat. The Cubs’ first baseman hit a single to center field. Then this happened:

Baez scored on the throwing error and Rizzo advanced to second, eventually making it to third thanks to another throwing error. A guy on Twitter with 1.7 million followers asked for a post on this.

Hey, @fangraphs can we get an article on Javy’s supernatural ability to induce errors in the defense? https://t.co/wZ4L6X7i0p

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 6, 2018

 

This is that post.

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Reynaldo Lopez remains a work in progress. The 24-year-old right-hander has been brilliant in his past two outings — allowing just a pair of runs over 14 innings — but his overall performance this season has been a mixed bag. In 28 starts for Chicago’s South Side club, Lopez has a 4.37 ERA, and he’s fanned just 6.8 batters per nine innings.

That doesn’t mean he isn’t making strides, nor does it mean that he can’t miss bats when he needs to. Acquired by the White Sox along with Lucas Giolito and Dane Dunning in the December 2016 deal that sent Adam Eaton to the Washington Nationals, Lopez has been removing the word “raw” from his reputation. Tutelage from a pair of baseball’s best pitching minds is a big reason why.

“I’ve matured a lot,” Lopez told me this summer via translator Billy Russo. “Four or five years ago my mindset was to throw hard and overpower the hitters. Now it’s more about location and pitch selection, and managing the game. You have to be smart in order to succeed at this level.”

The native of San Pedro de Macoris began learning that lesson upon his arrival in the nation’s capital midway through the 2016 season. His initial outings were rocky, and teammates were in his ear. Their messages were straightforward. He couldn’t just throw hard. He needed to have a plan.

His first tutorial came from one of the game’s best, and most cerebral, pitchers.

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A while back, I wrote about Angel Hernandez and his lawsuit against Major League Baseball. In said piece, I noted that “[p]layers in both the American and National League voted Hernandez one of the game’s three worst umpires. (In case you’re wondering, Joe West was worse in both leagues.)”

It’s time to talk about Country Joe West. West hasn’t sued anybody lately, but he did manage to get himself in a kerfuffle involving the Phillies, Austin Davis, and a piece of paper.

So as to prolong the suspense, it’s worth noting why West is considered a bad umpire. Unlike Angel Hernandez, his reputation isn’t necessarily for creative calls. In fact, back in 2007, The Hardball Times named him baseball’s most consistent umpire (though he called this balk on Tony Cingrani).

No, West is more known for his colorful personality. He was suspended for calling Adrian Beltre the “biggest complainer” in baseball. And he also likes staring matches. Like this staring match with Madison Bumgarner.

And this staring match with Jimmy Rollins.

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When the Yankees acquired Luke Voit from the Cardinals on July 29 in exchange for pitchers Giovanny Gallegos and Chasen Shreve, the deal seemed like little more than a footnote, an incremental upgrade of a contender’s organizational depth, sweetened by the inclusion of international bonus-pool money. Nonetheless, the deal has yielded the hottest hitter of any who changed teams in the weeks leading up to the July 31 trade deadline — albeit in a limited sample size — and, for the moment, a solution to the Yankees’ ongoing first-base woes.

At the time of the trade, the Yankees appeared committed to Greg Bird, an oft-injured 25-year-old lefty who had started 47 of the team’s 56 games at first base since returning from surgery to remove a bone spur in his right ankle. Bird extended that stretch to 66 starts in 78 games into late August, but by that point he had slipped into an 0-for-21 slump. With a banged-up offense feeling the absences of Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, and Didi Gregorius, manager Aaron Boone suddenly turned to Voit (toined to Voit to avoid Boid and fill da void, if you’re speaking Brooklynese), who has started 11 of the team’s past 14 games. The decision has paid off.

Entering Wednesday night’s game against the A’s, Voit — a beefy, amiable lug (6-foot-3, 225 pounds, seemingly with an ever-present smile) — had homered seven times in 65 plate appearances for the Yankees, batting .322/.385/.678 for a 185 wRC+ since the trade. Five of those homers either tied the game or gave the Yankees the lead, including this eighth-inning go-ahead shot against the A’s on September 4, which marked Voit’s third straight game with a dinger:

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German Marquez is on quite the run. In the second half of the season, Marquez’s 2.3 WAR ranks third in all of baseball among pitchers behind only those marks recorded by Jacob deGrom and Patrick Corbin. His 2.29 FIP and 2.79 ERA since the All-Star break are both fantastic. He’s struck out nearly one-third of the batters he’s faced with five times as many strikeouts as walks. He’s doing all of this while pitching his home games in Colorado, and he’s just 23 years old. That’s quite the dramatic turnaround for a pitcher who put up a 4.73 FIP and a 5.53 ERA in his first 16 starts of the 2018 season. Like many young pitchers with a boatload of talent, Marquez has spent his first few years in the big leagues experimenting with different pitches and usage patterns. He seems to have found one that works.

A year ago, Marquez was primarily a fastball-curveball pitcher. He would mix in a change every now and again, and he did experiment with a slider, but it wasn’t used often and it stayed up in the zone. With a mid-90s fastball and good curve, Marquez produced a 21% strikeout rate, 7% walk rate, and an ERA and FIP in the mid-fours. In Coors Field, those still represented above-average numbers. For Marquez to progress, however, he was going to need to develop a third pitch. When Eric Longenhagen discussed Marquez ahead of the 2017 season, he anticipated the introduction of that third pitch.

Marquez also has a plus curveball in the 76-81 mph range that has a slurvy shape to it but bites hard and has solid depth. A back-foot curveball is the best weapon Marquez has against left-handed pitching right now, as his changeup is still below average. But Marquez is just 21 and his delivery is loose and fluid so there’s likely more coming from the changeup. Marquez’s command elicits similarly bullish projection because of the delivery and athleticism and he’s already throwing plenty of strikes. He’s a relatively low-risk mid-rotation arm, an above-average major-league starter.

Longenhagen mentioned the change as a potential addition, and Marquez did work to make that change more of a weapon heading into this season. That plan hasn’t exactly worked out. Marquez is throwing the changeup under 10% of the time this season. Even against lefties, he’s turned to it on just 11% of all occasions. What’s improved most for Marquez is the slider, and it is fooling hitters. Here’s Nick Hundley swinging at a slider despite holding a 2-1 advantage in the count:

 

 

The pitch works well in and out of the zone. When he throws the slider outside the zone, Marquez induces swings around 40% of the time, and batters swing and miss on two-thirds of those attempts. When the pitch is in the zone and batters swing, they make contact roughly 80% of the time, but on 44% of sliders in the zone, the hitter doesn’t bother to swing, like Evan Longoria in this 0-2 count.

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When Shohei Ohtani made his return to the mound over the weekend, millions upon millions of fingers were crossed. And then, abruptly, his velocity dropped. The Angels suggested it didn’t have anything to do with the elbow injury that had kept Ohtani off of the mound for so long, and it was even somewhat believable, but now we know the truth of this dark timeline — the official recommendation is that Ohtani needs Tommy John surgery. It was reported before the season that Ohtani’s UCL had some damage. It was hurt again in June, and now it’s been hurt again in September. The rest-and-rehab approach didn’t take. It usually doesn’t, but it was worth a shot.

For whatever it’s worth, Ohtani still hasn’t decided whether he’ll have the operation. This is all new to him, and it’s a hell of a thing to accept. Presumably, he’ll acquiesce at some point, and then we’ll know we won’t see Ohtani pitch in the majors in 2019. This was one of the reasons why the Angels allowed Ohtani to pitch the other day at all — if he made it, it would provide some peace of mind, and if he didn’t make it, then an operation would allow Ohtani to be ready to pitch in a year and a half. Had the Angels waited, and had Ohtani gotten re-injured next spring, then he’d be out for much of 2020 as well. Now all parties have more information. Actionable information. Horrible, unfortunate, terribly upsetting actionable information.

But if there’s a silver lining to any of this, let me suggest that we take a step back and consider what Ohtani has already accomplished. Yes, it sucks what happens to pitchers sometimes. Yes, Tommy John surgery is a risk, and, yes, Ohtani’s two-way career might never be the same. Yet Ohtani has already proven himself. He’s already proven that someone like Shohei Ohtani can work. As far as Major League Baseball was concerned, Ohtani was something of an experiment, and he has been wildly successful. It’s impossible to deny the conclusion.

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A brief examination of basically any human encounter ever reveals that people frequently do not agree with each other. This one human over here has an opinion; this other one, meanwhile, has a different opinion. It would be fine, perhaps, if those individuals never interacted, but that is also part of being human: there’s a lot of interaction. At stores, for example. Or on streets. And the one human says to the other, “Hey, your opinion is different than mine!” And the second one says to the first, “I am mad about that!”

Sometimes the interaction in question occurs at home plate during baseball’s postseason and Sam Dyson, for reasons known primarily to Sam Dyson, has decided that the proper course of action for someone like him is just to slap Troy Tulowitzki directly on the buttocks. Tulowitzki, whom one will identify immediately as a different person than Sam Dyson, regards this as not the proper course of action and proceeds to lodge some complaints verbally. Other humans get involved and all manner of other complaints are lodged, some verbally and some even physically. Complaints abound, is what one finds. Then everyone retreats back to their respective holes in the ground (known, in the sport of baseball, as a “dugout”) and awaits the next event worthy of their indignation.

One small thing over which humans frequently disagree is how much joy is acceptable to display publicly. One camp, whom we might characterize broadly as The Sons and Daughters of John Calvin, believe the amount is very close to zero. Another camp, whom we might call Basically Everyone Else, contends that — so long as no one is getting hurt — it’s probably okay to just do whatever.

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Edwin Diaz was recently named the American League Reliever of the Month. This is, evidently, an award that exists, and Diaz this year has already won it four times. The baseball season has had just five months. Diaz has been absolutely overwhelming, and no player is more responsible for having kept the Mariners competitive. Diaz’s Oakland equivalent would be Blake Treinen, who’s had a similarly impossible year. In the National League, there has, of course, been Josh Hader. You know who many of the best relievers are right now. You might’ve read a few articles about them over the course of the regular season. It’s along season, and almost everything gets written about eventually.

But there’s a reliever breakout that’s been happening under the radar. Over time, the 2018 Texas Rangers have faded from relevance. Yet, over time, those same Rangers have watched Jose Leclerc develop into something sensational. Leclerc maybe hasn’t been the best reliever in baseball. He’s definitely been one of them, however, and what makes it all the more remarkable is where Leclerc was just a season ago. Wild hard-throwers come, and wild hard-throwers go. Usually, they never manage to harness their stuff. Leclerc’s an exception who flipped a switch, and now the batters just don’t know what to do.

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For every trial lawyer, the Holy Grail is that “Perry Mason moment.” That’s the dramatic point in the episode where the real killer, under skillful cross-examination by Mason, reveals everything to the shocked judge and jury, the chagrined prosecutor* agrees to drop the charges, and everyone rides happily into the sunset.

*On a completely irrelevant aside, the prosecutor in Perry Mason is just really awful. He doesn’t seem to know how to check his own cases, or interview witnesses, or use the Rules of Evidence, or object properly. I could never watch this show without wondering how he keeps his job.

It also almost never happens this way. Shocking, I know. (In my career, I’ve had three instances of what could be termed “Perry Mason moments.” Cultivating one requires a combination of preparation for the witness and a lot of luck.)

Earlier this year, I wrote about a lawsuit that Francisco Mejia had filed against Big League Advance, a company founded by former MLB pitcher Michael Schwimer which gives minor-league players capital advances against anticipated future major-league earnings. As I wrote then, Mejia made some pretty serious accusations against Schwimer’s company.

According to Mejia, BLA approached him when his mother was very ill and struggling with medical bills. The contracts were signed, says Mejia, without a translator, and BLA even paid for Mejia’s lawyer just so the contract could state Mejia had the advice of counsel. Mejia says that BLA employees showed up at his house unannounced to collect a payment of about $10,000 after Mejia made the big leagues and threatened to bar him from playing if he didn’t pay. And, according to the Complaint, given Mejia is projected to earn over $100 million in the major leagues, BLA stands to recover over $10,000,000 against a $360,000 investment, which Mejia says is unconscionable.

Then, last week, Mejia suddenly dropped his lawsuit.

Padres catching prospect Francisco Mejia is dropping his lawsuit against Big League Advance (https://t.co/IhgxwK3tDe). Statement here: pic.twitter.com/ZtgvewomGp

— Jack Dickey (@jackdickey) August 30, 2018

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The New York Mets are a treasure trove of interesting case studies. They’re a large-market team run frequently like a small-market one, a club that doesn’t always seem to consider the present quality of the team when making decisions about the future, an organization whose various departments — medical, public relations, etc. — don’t always appear to interact. Whatever they are, the Mess are never boring.

Fresh off rumors that the team is interested in pursuing, for their next general manager, someone who is less reliant on data, the team has recently caused the internet buzz again by choosing not to promote the team’s top first-base prospect, Peter Alonso. My colleagues Jay Jaffe and Sheryl Ring have already addressed the service-time games that involve Alonso, but I think it’s interesting to also tackle the situation by looking directly at Alonso vs. Jay Bruce as a pure baseball decision.

It’s a completely non-controversial opinion that 2018 has been a monster season for Alonso, one that has given him real hype as a prospect, something that was not a foregone conclusion entering the year. Even the ZiPS projections for Alonso didn’t quite see this comping, ranking him as the No. 2 Mets prospect coming into the season, the No. 3 first-base prospect in baseball, and the No. 99 prospect overall — all of which I believe were the most optimistic forecasts. Alonso started off the season blazing hot, hitting .408/.505/.776 with seven home runs in April for the Binghamton Rumble Ponies. That performance led to a mid-June promotion to Triple-A Las Vegas. Alonso struggled early there, hitting .171/.330/.368 with 29 strikeouts in 76 at-bats for the 51s. That was extremely concerning in light of the fact that, at 23, Alonso was not a young player at Double-A, but he hit .297/.367/.676 with 17 homers in 182 at-bats after the All-Star break.

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