Athletes like Elly De La Cruz can skew our perception of reality. His powerful arm makes most shortstops look like they throw with a wet noodle. His 99th-percentile sprint speed makes most other baserunners look like they’re running on sand. His tall frame, which our website somehow lists at 6-foot-2, makes that guy on Hinge who claims he’s 6-foot-2 look like he’s actually 5-foot-8. Oh, and his 13 steals of third base this year might make you think steals of third are at an all-time high, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

As a fan of highly specific baseball stats – a bold statement to make on this website, I know – I like to check in on the stolen base rates at each bag. Practically speaking, that means I pay particularly close attention to steals of third, the oft-forgotten middle child of stolen bases. Steals of third are too common to receive the same amount of attention as steals of home; at the same time, they’re infrequent enough that they’ll always be overshadowed by the sheer number of second-base steals. Steals of home are almost guaranteed to make tomorrow morning’s highlight reel. Steals of second outnumber all others and thus dictate league-wide stolen base trends every year. Steals of third are stuck in the middle, and that’s especially true this season as their siblings are taking even more of the glory than usual.

The stolen base success rate at home (16-for-29, 55.2%) is the highest it’s been since at least 1969. Indeed, it’s above 50% for only the second time in that span. In addition, runners are on pace to steal home 36 times this year, which would rank second in the divisional era and well within shouting distance of first (38 SBH in 1998). Meanwhile, the overall stolen base rate (i.e. steals per game) is also on the rise, primarily driven by an increase in steals of second. The league is on pace to steal second base 166 more times in 2024 than it did last year, a 5.6% increase, as runners continue to test the limits of the New Rules™. Read the rest of this entry »

You’re surely familiar with the trope of aging sluggers who sell out for pull-side power because they can’t catch up to the fastball like they used to. They need to start gearing up to swing earlier, forcing them to guess what pitch is coming instead of reacting to what they see. They hope that extra homers will offset the extra whiffs that come when they get fooled by slower stuff. The interesting thing about this trope is that its strategy is very similar to the one that swept through the entire baseball world roughly 10 years ago. Justin Turner was a leading light of the launch angle revolution, the movement that emphasized getting on plane early, attacking the ball out front, and pulling it in the air. Essentially, that movement turned the last refuge of an aging slugger into the mainstream way of hitting. At 39, Turner is now an aging slugger himself, with a wRC+ that has fallen in each season since 2020. His swing is already optimized, and now that he’s largely relegated to designated hitter, his 106 wRC+ doesn’t quite cut it.

A cursory look at his stats might tell you that Turner’s been unlucky this season. After all, he’s running his highest xwOBA since 2021 and his highest walk rate since 2018. Meanwhile, his BABIP is the lowest it’s been since 2011, and his wOBA is nearly 30 points below his xwOBA. Unlucky, right? Here’s the problem: Turner’s 30.6% hard-hit rate and 87.1-mph average exit velocity are not just career lows, they’re miles beneath his career averages of 39.6% and 89.8 mph. Turner’s popup rate has also ticked up. If your quality of contact gets drastically worse, luck probably isn’t the thing that’s driving down your BABIP. But there’s still that pesky xwOBA to worry about. Why hasn’t it plummeted along with Turner’s barrel rate? Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve been in a ballpark a half hour or so before game time, you’ve probably noticed the starting pitchers playing catch with a teammate or a coach in the outfield. You’ve likely also observed them subsequently going into their respective bullpens to warm up, readying themselves to face hitters once the contest begins. This is integral to a starter’s pregame preparation, but it’s only part of the start-day routine. That routine, which varies from pitcher to pitcher, is typically scripted. From going over scouting reports to the number of throws mades before taking the game mound, everything is planned out.

How exactly does a big league starter prepare for a game? A pair of New York Yankees — pitching coach Matt Blake and veteran left-hander Nestor Cortes — detailed the process in separate interviews last weekend at Fenway Park.

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Matt Blake:

“Some guys are a little more scripted than others. They’re all going to be in the vicinity of 25-35 pitches. You might have some outliers who are closer to 20 or 40, but generally 25-30ish pitches is usually the target to get yourself ready. That’s in the ’pen. There is some level of catch-play before, whether it’s long toss or PlyoCare work, to get your body prepared to get on a mound for the 25-30 pitches.

“Depending on their arsenal, they might carve out a certain amount for each pitch. For instance, Gerrit [Cole] is pretty scripted. He might do 12 or 13 out of the windup, then 12 or 13 out of the stretch, and then assess if he needs any more than that. Some guys might be mostly out of the windup and a couple out of the stretch at the end. We’re always trying to identify the foundational routine. What is it they need to work on to get ready for the game plan that night? Maybe you’re facing a couple of batters at the end of your bullpen. You’re saying, ‘This is the first batter and these are the areas I want to get to. Here is the second batter.’ You’re putting together some sequences that are akin to what you’re going to throw to start the game off. Read the rest of this entry »

No one deserves a .414 BABIP. That’s just not how things work. Hit the ball as hard as you want, spray line drives to all fields with reckless abandon, secretly slather grease on your opponents’ gloves – none of those things can keep your batting average on balls in play at such a lofty level. It’s a good marker of small samples. If someone is BABIP’ing .414, it’s too early to believe their stats.

Let’s use Heliot Ramos as an example. Ramos is on fire so far this year. He’s hitting a ridiculous .319/.394/.560, and doing it while striking out nearly 30% of the time. It doesn’t make sense. No one hits .300 while striking out that often. No one runs a .400 OBP with a strikeout rate that high unless they’re walking like Barry Bonds. Ramos is doing neither.

I can keep listing the things that don’t make sense here. Ramos isn’t exactly a launch-and-crush kind of guy – he’s hitting 1.7 grounders per fly ball, with the league average around 1.4. But it’s working out for him – he’s batting a scalding .367 on those grounders with a .411 slugging percentage. That’s the 11th-best mark (minimum 40 grounders) in baseball for average, and the 15th best for slugging percentage. Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday night, I was at a wedding in Washington, DC. The bride was a Nationals fan and the groom was a Phillies fan. The band played “Dancing on My Own,” and the groom’s friends continued to sing the chorus well after the band had stopped playing. I had only met the happy couple a few times, but due to a last-second swap and a quirk of the venue’s layout, I ended up seated immediately in front of the spot from which everyone made their speeches. And I mean immediately in front of it. I was so close that I slouched down in my chair the whole time so that the back of my head wouldn’t ruin all the pictures. I was so close that I had to alternate between looking down at the table and looking past whoever was speaking and out the window, because I honestly thought that making eye contact from that distance would be too distracting for someone trying to deliver a heartfelt message of love. Otherwise, here’s what they would have seen whenever they looked down at their speech:

I’m aware that I bring some awkwardness with me every time I enter a room, but on Saturday, the room really met me halfway.

Not long after the father of the bride tearfully recounted the time, all those years ago, when he was away on a business trip and he called his pregnant wife from a payphone in the Atlanta airport and found out that they were going to have a little girl, I started vibrating. All of a sudden, my phone was blowing up.

Needless to say, I couldn’t exactly reach into my pocket and start scrolling at that moment. I had to wait until all of the wonderful people finished wishing the beautiful couple a long life filled with love, laughter, and happiness. The answer was worth the wait.

On June 5, I wrote about the Kutina Club for Insistently Unsuccessful Basestealers. This exclusive group is named after first baseman Joe Kutina, who stole zero bases on seven attempts in 1912. It welcomes all players who have been caught stealing at least four times in a season without successfully swiping a bag. At the time, McMahon was leading the big leagues with a sparkling 0-for-4 showing that featured one old-fashioned caught stealing, two pickoffs, and one stolen base that was overturned when a replay showed that his cleat came off the bag for a nanosecond. Not only was McMahon in line to join the Kutina Club, he was very nearly on pace to become its record-holder. Joe Coscarart went 0-for-11 in 1936, while McMahon was on pace to get caught 10.8 times.

Even if he didn’t want the record, all he needed to do to get his membership card and cool embroidered jacket was stay put for the rest of the season. Instead, McMahon not only stole his first base of the season, he stole home! That’s the hardest base to steal, since catchers like to squat right behind it on their big haunches, and pitchers like to throw their pitches right to the catchers, and when catchers are attempting to catch would-be basestealers at home plate, they often put up pop times in the neighborhood of 0.00 seconds. The next morning, I saw how McMahon pulled it off: With some help from Pittsburgh catcher Yasmani Grandal. Grandal, it turns out, is something of a soft-tosser.

We already have a term for when the defense concedes a stolen base: defensive indifference. We might need a new category for this play: indifferent defense, which describes when the team out on the field is indifferent not just to the advancement of the runner, but to the very concept of defense itself. Maybe defensive obliviousness would be more accurate, but either way, this is one of the easiest steals of home you’ll ever see. Grandal had been throwing the ball back to the pitcher like this all game. When McMahon reached third, Grandal started taking a quick peek at the runner before tossing it back, but his lollipops were as soft as ever. In fact, I went ahead and timed him.

From the time the ball left Grandal’s hand to the time it hit Jared Jones’s glove, 1.86 seconds elapsed. Even with 19th percentile sprint speed, that was slow enough that McMahon could time him up and waltz home. To be clear, this wasn’t entirely Grandal’s fault. McMahon was able to take an enormous lead with impunity because Ke’Bryan Hayes was shaded way over toward short and never made the slightest pretense of checking in on him. The side angle tells the story quite elegantly. Here’s the moment that the pitch hit Grandal’s mitt.

McMahon was a solid 20 to 25 feet from the bag, but he could have easily ventured much farther. Hayes was so far from the bag that he’s not even in the frame. McMahon’s lead was so enormous that both the home and away broadcasts cut to shots of it before Jones released the fateful pitch, but nobody on the Pirates showed the slightest concern. Maybe someone told them about the Kutina Club, or maybe McMahon just really wanted out of it. McMahon gave the slightest deke back toward third base when Grandal gave his cursory look down the baseline, but perhaps the most embarrassing part of the whole story is that he started running well before Grandal threw the ball. Here’s a still from the moment when it left the catcher’s hand.

McMahon is already in a full sprint. Hayes is walking even farther away from third base. Only the home plate umpire has noticed that the score is about to change.

In terms of effective velocity, ignoring the arc Grandal put on the ball and solely measuring how long it took for it to cover the 60-foot, 6-inch distance from home plate to the mound, it traveled at 22.2 mph. For reference, there have been only nine balls hit between 22 and 23 mph this season, and seven of them were bunts.

From the time Grandal released the ball, it took just McMahon just 2.43 seconds to touch home plate. Jones knew that home plate was McMahon’s long before he caught the world’s saddest successful Hail Mary pass. Here’s a GIF that shows moment of Grandal’s release, the moment the ball reaches its apex, and the moment it hits Jones’ glove. You can’t even call it a tragedy in three acts. It’s a play where the hero gets stabbed in the first act, and then acts two and three just consist of him slowly bleeding to death.

A few minutes later, the Pirates broadcast noted that third base coach Warren Schaeffer had sneaked over to McMahon right before the pitch, presumably to whisper that home plate was wide open. However, when they cut to a replay, he didn’t appear to say anything whatsoever. All the video showed was Schaeffer shuffling over toward McMahon while attempting to chew a wad of gum the size of a Jeep Cherokee.

I’m not sure Schaeffer could have said anything to McMahon if he wanted to. He looked exactly like my little brother did when he was 8 and he stuffed an entire pouch of Big League Chew in his mouth. Maybe Schaeffer’s stroll represented some sort of non-verbal signal — he was wearing a slight smirk at the end of the clip — but if Schaeffer did tip off McMahon by way of speaking, it probably came out something like, “Roo shud sfeel fome.”

The most amazing part of the whole ordeal is that the next time the Rockies got a man in scoring position — which was in the very next inning — Grandal hadn’t learned from his mistake at all. Here he is throwing the ball back to the pitcher. It’s still a lob! The ball still travels so high that it leaves the frame entirely! It’s one inning later! What are we doing here?

With that, McMahon was out of the Kutina club. What’s more, he led a mass exodus. The list below is from my original article on June 5. It shows all five players who had at least two caught stealings and zero steals at the time.

Jeimer Candelario stole two bases the very next day. Nick Senzel stole a base the day after that, and Brendan Donovan stole one a week later. That leaves Justin Turner and Nick Martini (who picked up his second caught stealing on Monday) as the last players standing to be caught twice without stealing a base. We’ll have to wait until the end of the year to find out whether they end up joining the club. However, McMahon is now in a club that’s only slightly less exclusive.

I was curious how many players ended the season in McMahon’s position, with their only stolen bases coming on a steal of home. This is a tricky thing to search for, so I reached out to Katie Sharp of Stathead, who graciously ran a query and found 183 players and 189 player seasons that met this criteria. The list includes legends like Joe DiMaggio, Roy Campanella, and Edgar Martinez, but I’ve decided to name this club after pitcher Ray Fisher. Five of the players managed to steal home twice in a season, and five players managed to make the list twice, but only Fisher made it three times, in 1915, 1916, and 1919.

So far this season, only McMahon and Andrew McCutchen are in line to join the Fisher Club of Exclusively Domiciliary Basestealers. McCutchen’s steal of home was even flukier than McMahon’s, only coming to pass because J.T. Realmuto threw the ball into center field when the runner at first took off for second. If either player finishes the season without stealing second or third, they’ll join Yordan Alvarez as the only player to enter the club this decade. If they do end up stealing second or third, I look forward to feeling my phone blow up at the most inopportune time possible.

Even before he fractured his right arm during Sunday’s 9-3 loss to the Red Sox, Anthony Rizzo had already endured a rough 12 1/2 months. His 2023 season was wrecked by the aftereffects of a May 28 collision with Fernando Tatis Jr., which manifested themselves as post-concussion symptoms that sapped his production before he was shut down in early August; he didn’t play again that season. He started slowly this year, and while his bat perked up in late April, he fell into a deep slump at the beginning of June and was benched during the Yankees’ recent series against the Dodgers. He showed a few positive signs upon returning to the lineup, but now he’s expected to miss the next eight weeks.

Rizzo’s injury occurred during the seventh inning of Sunday night’s game at Fenway Park. After Alex Verdugo and Giancarlo Stanton both singled off pitcher Brennan Bernardino to start the inning, Rizzo grounded to the right side of the infield. First baseman Dominic Smith ranged over to field the ball and started to throw to second base before realizing he had no shot at forcing Stanton out. He then threw to Bernardino — or rather, behind him. The pitcher dropped the ball as he got to the bag, where a sprinting Rizzo swerved to his right to avoid a full-on collision. He lost his balance and went down hard, rolling over on his right arm. He remained on the ground in obvious pain while being tended to by the Yankees’ athletic trainers, then left the field and was replaced by pinch-runner Oswaldo Cabrera.

Initial imaging with a fluoroscope at Fenway Park was negative, but further testing in New York on Monday revealed that Rizzo had fractured the radial neck of his right arm — that is, the part of the radius near the elbow. Such injuries are more common in children than adults, and often occur on a traumatic fall onto an outstretched hand, which, bingo. Such fractures are usually not displaced, and that would appear to be the case with Rizzo, who won’t need surgery. While initial reports placed his absence in a four-to-six week window, on Tuesday the Yankees said that Rizzo will need about eight weeks before returning to games, with the first baseman saying he was told it’ll be “probably four, five weeks” of no baseball activity. Read the rest of this entry »

While Tarik Skubal has pitched his way into the Cy Young conversation, Jack Flaherty has done his share of the heavy lifting when it comes to helping the Tigers toward respectability. After years of battling injuries, capped by a rough campaign that included a mid-year change of address, the 28-year-old righty is in the middle of his best season in half a decade thanks to another change of scenery. He also should generate plenty of interest ahead of the July 30 trade deadline. On Saturday, Flaherty turned in five shutout innings in a blowout of the Astros, his third consecutive scoreless outing.

Flaherty’s 16.2-inning scoreless streak hasn’t gone entirely smoothly, but it began in impressive fashion. On May 30, he no-hit the Red Sox for 6.1 innings before allowing a single to Rob Refsnyder, then retired one more hitter before departing. On June 4, he threw five shutout innings against the Rangers, allowing two hits and no walks, but exited after 60 pitches due to lower back tightness. At the time, he described the early exit as “more precautionary than anything,” having pitched through a bout of tightness he felt prior to taking the mound. Instead of taking his next turn, he received an injection of some kind (not cortisone) on June 10, and recovered well enough to take the mound this past Saturday. He pitched well, allowing just three hits (including a double and a triple) and a walk, and striking out six. He exited after throwing just 73 pitches, in part because the Tigers led 10-0 at that point; he had struggled to find a rhythm due to the long delays between innings as Detroit pummeled Houston starter Spencer Arrighetti and reliever Shawn Dubin in what ended as a 13-5 rout.

Though Flaherty’s four-seam fastball averaged just 92.2 mph, down 1.4 mph from his seasonal average, he generated five of his six strikeouts with the pitch, four via called strikes; his CSW% (called strike and walk rate) for the pitch was 38%. He struck out Jose Altuve twice, once chasing a knuckle curve and once looking at a 95.3-mph fastball; the latter was his fastest pitch of the game as well as his final one. Read the rest of this entry »

Triston Casas — as evidenced by his Talks Hitting interview last summer — has a thoughtful approach to his craft. The 24-year-old Boston Red Sox slugger, who is currently on the injured list with torn rib cartilage, is not afraid to be himself, as many fans experienced during his in-game interview with ESPN on Sunday Night Baseball on Father’s Day. Call him quirky or what you will, but when it comes to damaging baseballs, Casas knows his stuff. Over 687 career plate appearances, he has 35 home runs and a 128 wRC+.

Casas talked about his preparation process prior to a recent game at Fenway Park.

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David Laurila: How do you train for hitting?

Triston Casas: “When you say hitting, I’m assuming that you mean striking the ball. There is so much that goes into the striking of the baseball. There are a lot of moving parts mechanically [and] mentally that culminate into the perfect storm of creating that compression between the barrel of the bat and the ball. How do I train that? It has a lot to do with my weight room routine. I try to think of the swing as my most athletic move. I don’t want it to be mechanical, rigid, or thought about. I just want it to be fluid. Effortless.”

Laurila: And reactional, I would assume…

Casas: “For sure. If you think about how difficult it is to hit a baseball… I mean, the plate is seven balls wide and, generously, about 10 balls high. You’ve got to cover a range of about 30 miles an hour, between 70 and 100 — that’s typically the normal range of speeds — and then there is a pitch that moves to every direction at the bottom side of a clock. So, you multiply 30 times 70 times about six, generously — maybe seven or eight — and it is a lot of possibilities. Not to mention that every single pitcher is a different height. They all have different dimensions in terms of their wingspans. They all get out to a different extension point or release height.

“There can be two 80 mph curveballs that… I mean, I can go look back at my at-bats and there can be two 80-mph curveballs right down the middle, and they’re still not the same pitch. They’re coming from different release heights. The rpms are different. The metrics on them are all different. So, it’s not just as easy as ‘Oh, let me look at two swings side by side of the same exact pitch,’ because conditions might be different. Defensive positioning might be different. My setup should have been different. And my thought process, my approach… all those things factor into how I stand in the box, and the in-at-bat adjustments that I’m making throughout the season.

“Training hitting is about an innate ability to just go out there and compete. In my opinion, there aren’t a lot of mechanical drills that you can do. Yeah, there are certain cues that you can give yourself mentally to try to get yourself in a good position, or put yourself in a good powerful contact position — the balanced one. There are definitely a lot of characteristics that great hitters have in common, but ultimately it’s about being able to make a decision after the ball is released. That’s one of the things I talk about a lot with the hitters here. Trying to be anticipative and beat the ball to a spot is not a good recipe for success. Yeah, it might create a result, but it’s one that’s falsified. It’s happy-go-lucky. But to create a long sustainable amount of success, I feel like there has to be a reactionary, involuntary, timed… a war, almost. It’s a war in your body and in your mind.

“That’s how I train hitting, by not overcomplicating the mechanics. It’s about understanding that, for me, it’s a lot about having feel within the box. It’s about going out there trying to execute a game plan.”

Laurila: With no two pitches being exactly the same in mind, do you train with a Trajekt? That individualizes a pitcher’s velocity, movement, and slot. Correct?

Casas: “Yes, they are individualizing the release points, and all that, but it’s not simulating how the pitcher tips the curveball. Even though it’s a projection of a pitcher, every pitcher out there on the mound — whether they think it or not, or whether anybody else does — tips the pitch, because they have to do something differently to throw a curveball than a fastball. Within that pitch, or him coming down the mound, there is an adjustment that he has to make to take off the velocity and add spin. A Trajekt doesn’t necessarily project that.

“I do see how the Trajekt can benefit some hitters. I actually do like to use the Trajekt — I can’t speak for anybody else — but it’s mostly just for the timing of his motion. It’s a little bit better of a gauge than to just do it off of video from the back, per se. Getting his timing off just scouting-report videos would be a little tough. Getting a projected image, so that I can kind of sync in my dance with the pitcher, is where I can see the Trajekt to be most beneficial.

“In terms of trying to develop a game plan because of his plot chart, and his pitch characteristics, and the metrics of his slider — or breaking balls compared to one another — it’s not that accurate to where I can really be, ‘Yeah, that looks exactly like it does out there.’ That said, the Trajekt is a great tool. I’ve been using it a lot in my rehabilitation process, just in terms of tracking and trying to stay sharp with my reaction times.

“It’s something that I want to incorporate into my game-day routine. I haven’t done so up to now, I’ve just taken a few swings off a regular machine and then let it rip come game time.”

Laurila: Why haven’t you used it for game-day prep up to this point?

Casas: “It’s something I had never really done before this level, so I tried to not overcomplicate things and add to something that I didn’t feel needed adjusting in my routine.”

Laurila: Do the Red Sox have Trajekt in the minors?

Casas: “They have it now in Triple-A, but when I was in Triple-A in 2022 they did not. Then, last year, in 2023, they were still fine-tuning it. I haven’t found a way to buy into it yet, but I’m really starting to like it. Even if it’s just for something as simple as tracking, or even bunting, just trying to get that reaction time back in my favor.”

Laurila: What do you mean by bunting?

Csasas: “Literally standing in there and tracking the ball all the way to the barrel and trying to manipulate the contact point to whichever side of the field I want. Bunting is such a powerful tool and skill to display out there. But just to be able to do it in a controlled environment… like, the Trajekt is still tough. I feel like it can help you slow down the ball, which is everything in hitting — being able to try to make a 98-mph fastball look like an 88-mph fastball. That’s what great hitters do. They have quiet heads and balanced positions. They make the game look slower than than it actually is.”

Laurila: Training for high velocity, say an Ohtani fastball, can only help…

Casas: “I’ve asked for exaggerated characteristics on the Trajekt, because I want it to seem a little unrealistic. Some people like it a little more toned down, because they want to feel confident going into the game. I prefer my practice to be a little more challenging. I’ve asked for verticals of 27-28. I’ve asked for horizontals that are unrealistic. I like the challenge. So yeah, I could definitely see myself using it more.”

Laurila: Is there anything else, preparation-wise, that we should be touching on? I know that you’re big on meditation and visualization…

Casas: “Of course. They’re such a big part of my routine. You can make anything look like you want to in your head. Whoever I’m facing that day, or for the at-bat, I can adjust anything that I want. If I close my eyes and imagine a pitcher vividly enough, I can make his characteristics jump off the page. I can make his breaking ball so sharp. I can make his two-seam run from my mid-back to the inside corner. I can picture his pitches doing what they do.

“Even when I do my tracking in the bullpen… the eyes are such an underrated part of the body and part of training. There are muscles within eyes that are underdeveloped if you don’t really progress them. The eyes are the most important thing in hitting. Anybody will tell you that. It’s such an undertrained tool. The eyes and ability to have depth perception — it’s such an underappreciated, under-talked-about skill to be able to look at the space in front of the ball. It’s not just looking at the ball. It’s being able to anticipate the ball’s movement, the rotation, based off whatever tips the pitcher may be allowing you to have. That all goes into my process and preparation.”

At first glance, Josh Rojas and Derek Zoolander don’t have a lot in common. Rojas is a third baseman, while Zoolander is a fictional male model. Rojas is from Arizona, while Zoolander is from an unnamed coal mining town in Appalachia. They have different jobs, different lives, and again, one is a fictional character. But one thing unites the two: Their careers took off when they learned how to go left.

In 2022, Rojas settled into a role as an everyday third baseman after years of bouncing between positions. Just one problem: He was one of the worst defenders in the major leagues at the hot corner. That was the consensus of scouts when he was a prospect, and defensive metrics bore it out. He particularly struggled ranging towards second base. Statcast breaks defensive opportunities up based on which direction a player has to move to make the play. When Rojas was moving to his right, forward, or backward, he was one run above average defensively. When he went left, he was seven runs below average. Read the rest of this entry »

This has not been the year for the AL West. With the reigning World Series champion Rangers sitting below .500 amid a string of injuries, the Astros’ core succumbing to age, and the Angels and A’s sitting at rock bottom, one of baseball’s stronger divisions over the past few years has become its weakest. Just one team has a winning record: the Seattle Mariners. At 43-31, the Mariners hold an 8.5-game lead in the West, even as some of the underlying numbers indicate the team isn’t as good as its record suggests. Seattle has overperformed its Pythagorean record by four wins and its BaseRuns record by two, and its run differential is by far the worst among division leaders. But this kind of thing is nothing new for this organization.

The Mariners are currently enjoying their fourth consecutive year of contention, falling short of a Wild Card spot in 2021 and ’23 and snapping their two-decade playoff drought in ’22. In each of these seasons, they’ve pulled out wins in close games like no other club, and manager Scott Servais has pointed to the poise and experience with which his team handles tight matchups. Famously, after a 2021 road trip where the Mariners went 6-2 despite being outscored by their opponents, Servais introduced the term “fun differential” to evaluate the team rather than its relatively poor run differential. Three years later, with a new group of players, the fun differential is still elite.

Naturally, in order to win a lot of one-run games, you need to play in a lot of one-run games. One of the best ways to do that is to play plenty of low-scoring affairs, when neither team scores enough runs to pull away from its opponent. And indeed, the Mariners rank in the bottom third of the majors in both runs scored and allowed. The first factor that puts them in so many tight games is the strength of their starting rotation, which has been among the best in baseball by both volume and efficiency. As a squad, they rank eighth in ERA- and FIP-, and second in innings per start; they’re one of just two teams to convert quality starts over half the time. While none of their starters are individually dominating the leaderboards, the depth they have is nearly unmatched. The Mariners are one of three teams (along with the Phillies and Yankees) with four qualified starters with an ERA- of 95 or lower, and even Seattle’s fifth slot (with starts made by Emerson Hancock, Bryan Woo, and Jhonathan Diaz) has pitched to a 3.25 ERA. In short, they’re the only team in the league that can expect to have good starting pitching every single night.

On the flip side, Seattle’s offense has taken a significant hit from last year. Lineup mainstays like J.P. Crawford, Julio Rodríguez, and Cal Raleigh have regressed this season, though Rodríguez has turned things around over the past month. Many of the hitters Seattle added during the offseason have underperformed as well. Returning fan favorite Mitch Haniger has been below replacement level, and Jorge Polanco and Mitch Garver are each hitting below the Mendoza line.

With an excellent rotation and below-average hitting, the Mariners have the recipe for low-scoring games, but there’s another factor here as well: their home field. T-Mobile Park has been regarded as a pitcher’s paradise since its opening 25 years ago, but it’s been even more unfavorable for hitters in 2024 than in previous years. Statcast’s single-season park factors view it as, by far, this season’s most pitcher-friendly park, with a factor of 87; it has had scores between 92 and 96 for the past half-decade. The end result is that nearly a third of Mariners games have been decided by a single run, one of the highest marks in the league.

Playing in a lot of one-run games is one thing, but winning them is another. The Cubs and Athletics, the only teams with more one-run contests, each have losing records in such games. But the Mariners combine quantity with quality, having the most one-run wins while placing second to the Rays in one-run winning percentage. In contests decided by multiple runs, the Mariners are 26-24 — their .520 win percentage in such games is shockingly close to their .527 Pythagorean record — but one-run wins have vaulted them to a dozen games above .500. Some of these wins have come in dramatic fashion, as their five walk-offs are tied for the league lead. The Mariners have been far from an offensive powerhouse, but all year the bats have come alive when it matters most.

These splits are staggering. In low leverage, the Mariners are one of worst-hitting teams in the league. But when the stakes are highest, they collectively produce like a top-15 hitter in baseball. However, the eye-popping 144 wRC+ figure in high-leverage spots comes with a .377 BABIP – more than 40 points higher than any other team in that split. Come year’s end, that number will certainly be lower than it is now, but looking underneath the hood, Seattle batsmen have still been hitting better in high leverage than low leverage. Their walk rate is three points higher and strikeout rate three points lower in such situations, and their hard-hit rate is also modestly higher.

While Mariners hitters might not be able to forever continue their dominance in dramatic moments, the production they are getting from their bullpen, the other component of their success in one-run games, is far more sustainable. Despite some confusing trades, strong relief pitching has been a strength of recent Seattle squads. The organization has a knack for finding, acquiring, and developing under-the-radar relievers.

Andrés Muñoz is enjoying his first full season as Mariners closer, but he hasn’t been deployed solely in ninth-inning save situations. In fact, only half of his appearances have begun at the start of the ninth inning. He’s been called upon for a couple of extra-inning appearances, but his most notable work has come when he’s inherited a dirty eighth inning and converted a four- or five-out save. Muñoz has recorded more than three outs in seven games, second to Mason Miller among full-time closers, and in those games, he hasn’t surrendered a single run. Servais has consistently picked the right time to get his relief ace onto the mound, as Muñoz has the highest average entrance leverage index in the league.

Veteran reliever Ryne Stanek and 31-year old breakout Tayler Saucedo, who each rank above some closers on the leverage index leaderboard, have mostly handled set-up duties ahead of Muñoz. The two of them complement each other well, as both Stanek, a righty, and Saucedo, a lefty, have significant platoon splits, and Servais shrewdly deploys them based on matchups.

Among Seattle’s lower-leverage options, former starters Austin Voth and Trent Thornton have hit their stride coming out of the bullpen; the pair lead the staff in relief innings while effectively keeping runs off the board.

It would be easy to chalk all of this up to luck, even within the context of the other recent Mariners teams. Their offense has less thump than it has in previous years, and their bullpen is more reliant on high-leverage studs than an entire stable of them. Yet, they still have the ingredients that have made them so successful in tight games, even if the recipe is a bit different. Besides, maybe a slight variation is a good thing. After all, in recent years the best the Mariners could do was secure one AL Wild Card berth. Now, for the first time in their fun differential era, they are in position to ride their recipe for success all the way to a division crown.