Major-league batters struck out in 21.7% of their plate appearances last season, an MLB record. That rate broke the previous record set in 2016 (21.1%), which broke the previous top rate of (20.4%) set in 2014 and matched in 2015. Major-league batters struck out last season at a rate five percentage points greater than in 2003. You’re probably well aware of this trend — a trend of more swing and miss, of fewer batted balls in play.

Reversing this trend seems difficult. It would require a change in incentives or, perhaps, the ball’s seam height. Batters would have to trade in power for more contact; pitchers would have to throw fewer breaking balls and with less velocity. The game keeps moving toward more power, more velo, more breaking stuff. It seems, at least to this author, that this strikeout level is pretty sticky and might continue increasing for the foreseeable future.

This phenomenon means a number of things. Most relevant to this post, it means that defenders have fewer opportunities, thousands fewer over the collective course of a season, which erodes the value of defense.

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Last Wednesday, a commenter named Boofer (thanks, Boofer!) asked me to look into a book by former Mets and Phillies Outfielder Lenny Dykstra called House of Nails. In said book, Dykstra claims to have hired a team of private investigators for $500,000 to look into the backgrounds of umpires and discover their dirty secrets. This is a family site, so I won’t go into any great detail about what most of those secrets are. Suffice to say, however, that they concern certain details about the umpires’ private lives, such as sex and gambling, that the umpires ostensibly wouldn’t have wanted to be made public. Dykstra says that he collected those secrets as leverage to get a better strike zone from umpires.

According to Dykstra, it worked. Consider this, from a 2015 appearance on The Herd:

For those who’d prefer not to watch the video, it’s more or less Dykstra pantomiming an at-bat during which he asks an umpire if the latter “covered the spread” on a bet the previous night and then suggesting to Colin Cowherd that he received favorable calls after having successfully conveyed his meaning to said umpire.

Regarding Dykstra’s claims, I think two questions fall within the purview of this site. First: is there any objective evidence that Dykstra benefited from a smaller strike zone than his peers? And second: if Dykstra’s claims are true, are they also illegal?

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the World Series champion Houston Astros. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from our own (both Eric Longenhagen’s and Kiley McDaniel’s) observations. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this.

60 FV Prospects

When Whitley remade his physique during his senior year of high school, his stuff and command both ticked up, and they’ve continued to do so. He now sits 93-97. Whitley’s size and delivery create good angle up and down in the zone, and he can sink or cut his fastball if he wants to. He has a knee-buckling curveball, a hard slider, and a burgeoning changeup that has quickly developed into a plus pitch. Whitley’s delivery is a bit violent, but he throws strikes and already has impressive control for a pitcher this size, age, and with this kind of stuff. This unique combination of stuff, pitchability, and command allowed Whitley to traverse three levels last year, ending with four impressive appearances at Double-A. Whitley struck out 143 hitters in 92.1 innings. He doesn’t turn 21 until mid-September and has ace ceiling.

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I’ve been waiting for this. I’ve been waiting for this ever since I saw a tweet a little over a month ago.

With Cole, Astros now project at 103.5 2018 wins. Easily the highest pre-season W projection NEIFI has ever forecast.

— NEIFI Analytics (@NEIFIco) January 13, 2018

I don’t know much about the NEIFI projection system, and I don’t have access to its archives. I don’t know how far back it goes. The tweet, though, stuck in my memory, and for weeks I looked forward to what numbers would show up right here. We’ve always had the Steamer projection system numbers on display, but only the other day did we get to include ZiPS. So, things are pretty much final, pending injuries and a few further significant free-agent signings. The Astros’ roster looks set. Maybe there’s a bullpen battle or two. Whatever. Here are the current projected standings.

The Astros are projected to win 101 games. That’s an extraordinary total, and no one is close. I’ll acknowledge right here that this isn’t very surprising. Also, the Astros just actually won the World Series, so, who cares? A great team is a great team. I get it, and you can close this window if you want to. I’m just wired to delight in fun facts. I come carrying further fun facts.

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The Corey Dickerson saga concluded Thursday afternoon.

The Rays’ decision to designate Dickerson for assignment last week shocked many in the baseball community given that Dickerson, an All-Star in 2017, had just authored a 115-wRC+, 27-homer, three-win season. But the Rays wanted to rid themselves of his $5.9 million salary. By designating him, they would, at the very worst, be responsible for just 30 days of termination pay.

Jeff opined earlier this week that the Rays managed to trim payroll without getting any worse — a development that included, essentially, swapping out Dickerson for C.J. Cron. The 28-year-old Dickerson struggled in the second half, is projected to produce a 103 wRC+, and is not much of a defender or baserunner. There are quite a few players like Dickerson still available on the free-agent market for a variety of reasons.

While Dickerson is unlikely to provide All-Star value in 2018, this still seems to very much be a sensible addition and a clear win of a trade for the Pirates since it comes at little cost.

Daniel Hudson is coming off an uninspiring season for the Pirates that included a 4.38 ERA, 4.34 FIP, and 0.1 WAR in just over 60 innings. While the Rays are getting cash back in the deal, Hudson is owed $5.5 million in 2018. The Rays also pick up Tristan Gray, who was not ranked among Pittsburgh’s top-25 organizational prospects by Eric Longenhagen.

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Roger Cormier is a new contributor to FanGraphs. This is his delightful and strange first piece.

One could be excused for assuming that Eric Hosmer was made, not born. Made to confound the so-called “advanced” defensive metrics. Built to suppress that uprising known as the “fly-ball revolution.” Manufactured to lead a club written off by the projections — to lead them to a world championship. Engineered, in short, to thwart those who have attempted to harness the wild, loose ends of the game.

This long, chilly Hot Stove season appeared to be designed just for him, a comeuppance for his agitation. He, the One Demanding the Eight-Year Contract, would wait. And wait. And wait.

And then, like all mortals do, he would settle. And it would be glorious. The universe would finally bend towards justice. We would forever look at a picture of Hosmer in a puka shell necklace and laugh until we died, happy.

But we were naive. Instead, he did sign an eight-year deal. And not only that, but the pact would allow him to leave after five years if he wanted. That’s right: he even has Free Will.

How did we get here? How did we let such a polarizing creature into our lives?

As it turns out, Eric Hosmer is neither myth nor machine, but an actual human being — the progeny of two carbon-based lifeforms, even. He wasn’t constructed to singlehandedly defy sabermetric orthodoxy. Rather, he was born in South Miami. He is a person with feelings. He was once a boy.

I wanted to learn more about him, so I turned to primary sources, digging through newspaper and internet archives to build a portrait of the man. It’s a story I found interesting — and which also just so happens to be the truth.

*****

The story begins not with Hosmer himself, but with a seven-year-old named Ileana. Ileana’s family won a lottery for a temporary work visa. They got to fly out of Cuba and into the United States. Cuban officials threatened to cancel the visa the night of their flight because two of her dolls were missing. The neighbor to whom Ileana lent the dolls presented them to the officials just in time, and that was the last time she was ever in Cuba. (Another version of events, the one told by Eric himself, is similar, except Ileana was nine, and the two dolls was one teddy bear. It doesn’t matter.)

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The 1997 Seattle Mariners hit 264 home runs. No team has ever hit more than that. That season, the next-closest team hit 239 home runs, and that particular team played half its baseball on the moon. The next-closest team hit 220. The Mariners hit more than their share of dingers. Didn’t win them a World Series, and, didn’t even win them an ALDS, but those Mariners still hold the single-season team record. It’s something to cling to, which is all anyone wants.

Last year’s Yankees led baseball with 241 home runs. Their lead was narrow, but they still had sole possession of first, and then those Yankees went and traded for Giancarlo Stanton. Stanton was last year’s player who hit the most homers. And that’s not the only factor here, because the Yankees might also get to enjoy a full season from a healthy Greg Bird. It doesn’t take much wonky analysis to figure the Yankees could give that single-season homer record a push. Might even knock it down! The Yankees are as set up as anyone, and, as you’ve probably heard, we’ve entered into an era of high home-run totals, anyway. Seems like it’s all lined up.

Indeed, I can verify this: The 2018 Yankees are positioned to break the home-run record. What’s a little more surprising is they’re not alone. In 1998, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa both eclipsed the home-run record set by Roger Maris. We could very well see something similar on the team scale.

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Last May, Jeff Sullivan — along with others like this author and J.D. Martinez — hypothesized that pitchers might already be thinking about a way to adjust in the fly-ball era. The possible antidote? To work higher. After all, the swing changes that helped produce a surge in home runs were designed largely to address pitches at the bottom part of the zone, notably the growing number of two-seam fastballs directed there.

Said Martinez to this author last spring of how pitchers appeared to be adapting:

“Pitchers are countering it right now. The pitchers are always ahead,” Martinez said.

What exactly are the adjustments being made to his swing path? Martinez and I had not, apparently, reached that level of trust.

“That’s one of the things you don’t want to tell anyone,” Martinez said.

While Martinez would not reveal what he believes to be countermeasures to his swing path, it appears pitchers are trying to elevate their fastballs against Martinez.

The home-run surge — whether a function of the changing ball, evolving swing planes across the league, or a combination of factors — began in the second half of 2015 and has since, of course, continued. Jeff found that, in the second half of 2015 and 2016, the increase in home-run damage done by batters had largely occurred in the bottom half of the zone. So it made sense that pitchers, especially those with high-spin fastballs with a rising effect, would turn their attention upwards.

Pitchers like Jake Odorizzi, for example. It was Odorizzi who told this author last spring that he had become more committed to a high-fastball approach. The numbers bear that out: the right-hander utilized the high fastball more than ever last season. Of course, Odorizzi also allowed 30 home runs in 143 innings.

Odorizzi’s 2017 campaign led me to a pair of questions. First of all, were pitchers working up in the zone more frequently last season? And if so, was it working?

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A conversation I had with Rob Whalen on Wednesday took an unexpected, and coincidental, turn. The 24-year-old right-hander brought up the first of the two starts he made for the Seattle Mariners, a game in which he was out-pitched by Boston’s Brian Johnson. A few years earlier, the Red Sox left-hander had taken a leave of absence from baseball to get treated for anxiety and depression.

It turns out that Whalen did the same thing last July — and he should have done it sooner. His mental health had been slowly crumbling, and it finally reached the point where he could no longer function normally — either on or off the field. When Whalen finally walked away from Seattle’s Triple-A affiliate, he did so knowing that he was in serious need of help.

———

Rob Whalen on his battle with depression: “Mentally, I was in a tough place. A lot of it was personal stuff, and it wasn’t one thing. It was how I’d felt for a few years, even when I was having success. The way I’d describe it would be a perfect storm of not feeling very confident in who I was as a man. I was kind of losing my identity as a person. Baseball is our job — it’s what we do — and I kind of lost that, as well.

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The St. Louis Cardinals selected Paul DeJong in the fourth round of the 2015 draft. DeJong was taken more for his bat than his defense. According to his alma mater Illinois State, for example, DeJong spent time at “second base, third base, catcher, right field, and as the team’s designated hitter” during his third and final season with the Redbirds. While suggestive of positional flexibility, that’s not the usual path of a defensive wizard. During that same campaign, however, DeJong also slashed .333/.427/.605 in 246 plate appearances. That kind of offensive performance can play at multiple positions.

The Cardinals used DeJong mostly third base after drafting him. He played 62 games at the hot corner in his first pro season and followed that up with 112 more starts at third in 2016 — but also 11 starts at shortstop. After some more work at short in the Arizona Fall League and a couple months in Triple-A, DeJong became the starting shortstop for the actual Cardinals, a contending major-league club. He finished second in balloting for the National League Rookie of the Year.

Minor-league third basemen don’t generally develop into major-league shortstops. If playing first base is incredibly hard, playing an adequate shortstop is nearly impossible. Even so, MLB is a copycat league. If an experiment works once, others will try it. Which brings us to the Cincinnati Reds and top prospect Nick Senzel.

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