Trey Mancini did some tinkering prior to the start of the season. Hoping to “limit a bit of pre-swing movement,” he decided to lower his leg kick. The Baltimore Orioles outfielder hit that way throughout the offseason, and he continued the experiment in spring training.

Then, about a week and a half before opening day, he returned to doing what feels natural.

“I am who I am,” Mancini told me last weekend. “The leg kick is just something that works for me — there’s a comfortability factor involved — so once I realized what I was trying didn’t feel totally right, I went back to my old one.”

Mancini felt that the lower kick disrupted his timing. Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday, I unveiled the 2018 Ken Phelps All-Star team, in what I hope will be the first in an annual series. Now, thanks to the indefatigable Sean Dolinar, we know how this team would fare were it somehow actually assembled.

First, some explanation. Because this is a team of Quad-A players, the middle relievers and backup position players required to fill out an entire roster have just been projected as replacement-level contributors. As a result, this team would be getting, for example, 314 innings of replacement-level pitching by guys I didn’t mention. Secondly, I allocated playing time based loosely on platoons where appropriate and with additional days off for injury-prone guys. (Slade Heathcott, I’m looking at you.) So, with those qualifications in mind, to the numbers.

If the Ken Phelpses, as assembled, were to take the field for the 2018 season, Steamer projects them to produce a 57-105 record. That is, as they say, putrid. But if a replacement-level team – a team of entirely replacement level players – would win between 45 and 48 games, that means this team is comfortably above replacement level even composed of freely available talent. That’s pretty significant, for a couple of reasons.

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Bryan Price finally took the fall on Thursday, but as the manager of a team short on major-league talent, with a rebuilding effort that isn’t yet close to paying off, it was only a matter of time. It’s difficult to see why the Reds waited until now instead of dismissing him last October — after four full seasons, another 18 games shouldn’t have changed the thinking of the Reds’ brass — but one thing that didn’t enhance Price’s chances for survival was the early-season struggles of Joey Votto. On the heels of one of the best seasons of his career, the 34-year-old first baseman is off to an uncharacteristically bad start, one that can’t help but stand out even given the small sample sizes.

Votto is currently hitting just .258/.315/.273, with one extra-base hit and five walks — as many as he had in a single game last August 27 — in 73 plate appearances. That’s from a five-time All-Star who hit .320/.454/.578 last year, with the majors’ best on-base percentage and walk total (135) and the NL’s top wRC+ (165). His SLG and .258 ISO were his highest since 2010.

In fact, before we dig into this year’s dismal numbers, it’s worth noting that Votto may have done more to enhance his Hall of Fame case last year than just about any player. With his second seven-win season in three years (according to Baseball-Reference WAR, which I continue to use for my JAWS system), he surpassed the seven-year peak score of the average Hall of Fame first baseman and put himself in range of surpassing the JAWS standard as well.

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This author spent a fair amount of his 2017 documenting the Fly-Ball Revolution. Of the 330 posts this author published from January through the end of last season, 49 included the term “launch angle.” I looked it up. Overkill? Perhaps. But as a devout believer and documenter, I thought it would be irresponsible not to follow up early this season.

In a piece for The Hardball Times Annual this winter, I wondered aloud if the fly-ball revolution would follow the trajectory of shifts. Shifts were a relative curiosity in 2011 and then enjoyed growth rates of 94.8%, 50.4%, 92.2%, 34.8%, and 57.8% from 2012 to -17, jumping from 2,350 shifts in 2011 to 28,130 in 2016. Shifts fell in total volume for the first time last year, to 26,705. The idea and practice of shifting spread dramatically and rapidly. Just about everyone bought in.

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On Wednesday, Yoan Moncada hit a grand slam and stole a base. Those were the notable accomplishments for the White Sox’ 22-year-old second baseman in Chicago’s game at Oakland. In a less remarkable but still relevant development, Moncada recorded his 300th plate appearances for the White Sox since his debut with the club last June.

Three years ago today, Moncada had yet to play a professional game in the United States, and while he came with considerable hype and pedigree, his play thus far has mostly lived up to the lofty expectations. Here’s his line with the White Sox since his promotion last season.

A combination of good patience, decent power, and solid speed have allowed Moncada to mitigate the effects of his one real weakness (swinging and missing) and permitted him to produce solid numbers. And while we can’t simply double the numbers here to arrive at a full-season forecast for Moncada, our Depth Chart projections nevertheless call for an average offensive performance and roughly three-win season in 2018.

If there’s a number that jumps out, however, it’s the one caused by his aforementioned weakness: Moncada has struck out more than a third of the time with the White Sox overall and in just under 40% of his plate appearances this season. That number is scary high. While Moncada has incredible tools, it could be difficult for him to capitalize on his immense talent if he fails to discern strikes from balls.

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PITTSBURGH — As defensive shifts — or, at least, infields shifts — have become an everyday part of the game, it takes a lot to get our attention. The Diamondbacks’ shift against Rockies second baseman DJ LeMahieu last season got our attention.

In case you’ve forgotten, borrowing from a post from last season detailing the alignment:

That gets our attention.

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Jose Bautista hit 23 homers last season but still had trouble finding a job over the winter. This wasn’t a conspiracy against Bautista, though, or a case of the slow free-agent market at work. Those 23 homers put the former star in a tie for just 84th overall in the majors in 2017, a season during which 117 players hit 20 homers and three-fourths of qualified batters hit at least 15.

Between Bautista’s pedestrian home-run figure, his batting line of .203/.308/.366, and his 80 wRC+, few if any teams pursued him. His poor range in the outfield and similarly poor speed on the basepaths rendered him something worse than replacement-level last year, and at 37 years old, it’s reasonable to believe Bautista’s days as a productive player are behind him. Just in case he’s not done, however, the Atlanta Braves are going to give him a shot.

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We thought the Reds were going to be pretty awful. FanGraphs’ preseason projections had Cincinnati finishing last in the NL Central with 71 wins, a 2% chance of reaching the postseason, and zero chance of winning the World Series.

The Reds have been even worse than expected to begin he season, entering play Thursday with a 3-15 record, the most losses in the majors and also (along with Kansas City) the fewest wins. The Reds are also the owners of the major’s worst run differential (-46).

So Cincinnati gave us the most traditional of responses Thursday morning, firing manager Bryan Price. In four-plus seasons with the Reds, Price had a 279-387 mark. He recorded one season of 70 wins or better, a 76-win 2014 campaign. The club also removed pitching coach Mack Jenkins. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2018 Marlins have had precious little about which to cheer so far, and the forecast calls for more of the same. The performance of 25-year-old lefty Jarlin Garcia has been an exception, however. In the first two starts of his big-league career, Jarlin the Marlin* threw a hidden no-hitter — no hits allowed over a span of 27 outs, stretched across multiple games — via six hitless innings against the Mets on April 11 followed by 4.1 hitless innings against the Yankees on Tuesday night. Garcia was hardly perfect, scattering eight walks across those two starts, but joining Bartolo Colon and Shohei Ohtani in an exclusive club — the other pitchers to throw hidden no-hitters so far in 2018 — is close to perfection itself.

*His name is actually pronounced HAR-leen, which puts him behind teammate Starlin Castro in that pecking order.

Prior to his seven no-hit innings against the Astros on Sunday, Colon had gone the last 2.2 innings of his three-inning relief stint on April 10 without allowing a hit. Ohtani’s last 4.2 innings of his April 1 outing against the A’s were hitless, as were his first 6.1 in the rematch a week later. He and Garcia thus share the season high of 33 outs without a hit recorded.

Like any reputable speakeasy, you won’t find the Hidden No-Hitter Club on Google Maps, but the club itself isn’t that exclusive (a point which I’ll address momentarily). But first, consider Garcia. Unlike Colon and Ohtani, with whom you can’t help but be familiar if you’re reading this, he’s hardly a household name. The 6-foot-3, 215-pound Dominican-born southpaw isn’t a rookie, having spent all but the first couple weeks of last season in the Marlins’ bullpen, from which he made 68 appearances to the tune of a 4.73 ERA and 4.23 FIP. He jumped to the majors from Double-A Jacksonville, where over the course of 2016 and early -17 he totaled all of 80.1 innings, mostly as a starter; he missed 10 weeks in mid-2016 due to a triceps strain, and entered last season with mixed reviews as to whether he was even one of the top 10 prospects in one of the game’s worst farm systems.

As a reliever, Garcia held his own through the end of August (2.91 ERA, 3.74 FIP), then allowed nine runs while retiring just three hitters in his first two September appearances. In all, he struck out a modest 18.7% of hitters while relying upon a combination of a four-seam fastball that averaged 94.7 mph, a slider that produced a 14.5% whiff rate and a .194 AVG/.242 SLG when put in play, and a changeup that produced a 21.7% whiff rate and .129 AVG/.258 SLG when put in play (data via Brooks Baseball).

With nothing to lose but another 100 or so games, the Marlins decided to return Garcia to the rotation for 2018, and while the results have been superficially encouraging, neither his .096 BABIP nor his 2.6-point K-BB% mark (16.9% K, 14.3% BB) are sustainable. But until he’s just another guy getting knocked around in a Marlins’ uniform, his performance is at least worth celebrating. In terms of predecessors, I’ve struggled to find a parallel for his hitless first start, which ended after 77 pitches because manager Don Mattingly and pitching coach Juan Nieves saw signs he was laboring.

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As I was researching a Mookie Betts article yesterday, I kept coming across various suggestions that Betts was thriving because of a more swing-happy mindset. Maybe that’s true on some level, but Betts isn’t actually swinging more. He continues to run one of the lowest swing rates in either league. The key for Betts has been pulling the ball in the air. He’s hunted pitches to drive, and he’s driven them as he wanted. There are few better pull hitters in the game.

That being said, while Betts hasn’t turned into anything particularly aggressive, he has given a little push to his in-zone swing rate. He’s cut down on his out-of-zone swing rate. There’s no benefit from swinging at would-be balls. And as for the rest of the Red Sox around him — this has become a different-feeling lineup. The Red Sox, as a team, have changed their approach, bringing to an end a long era of patience.

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