When Jake Arrieta made his 2017 season debut, he raised a certain amount of alarm. Although he held the Cardinals to all of one single unearned run over six innings, his velocity was sharply down, and that never escapes an analyst’s notice. Arrieta, therefore, was immediately put on the watch list. The reasons, I’d say, were justifiable.

Arrieta just made his eighth start. As with his first, this one came in St. Louis. The good news? His velocity is coming back. Compared to that first game, Arrieta’s sinker bumped up by a tick and a half. The same thing happened with his curveball. His cutter jumped up even more. Joe Maddon said before he wasn’t worried about Arrieta’s zip, and now we’re seeing some more familiar readings. So much for that early-season panic.

Yet now there’s different early-season panic. Through his first eight games a year ago, Arrieta allowed a combined nine runs. This year, he’s allowed a combined 33. Arrieta’s sitting on a worse ERA than Jhoulys Chacin, and with the Cubs a game under .500, this, too, can’t escape notice. Arrieta doesn’t look like himself.

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CLEVELAND – Byron Buxton sat before his locker in the road clubhouse at Progressive Field before a game last week, intermittently scrolling through his smart phone and chatting with several nearby teammates. As I approached Buxton to request an interview, his clubhouse neighbor, Miguel Sano, morphed from a 6-foot-4, 260-pound third baseman to clubhouse bouncer. He was prohibiting me from addressing Buxton until I paid a fee, something of a toll. He was joking, I think, and I played along, asking if he would give me a receipt for business expenses. While Sano, who’s known for his loquaciousness and sense of humor, prompted some laughter in the corner of the Twins clubhouse, he was also perhaps trying to protect his teammates a bit from another prying journalist.

Buxton wore the label of “No. 1 Prospect in the Game” for multiple years, which has placed his offensive struggles at the major-league level under great scrutiny. But no one has placed more pressure on Buxton than himself. And that pressure was creating something that prevents success from occurring in the batter’s box: anxiety.

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Ian Happ made his MLB debut with the Cubs yesterday. He did so as a right fielder, which is one of four positions he’s played since Chicago drafted him ninth overall in 2015 out of the University of Cincinnati. But while versatility is handy, Happ’s bat is his calling card. The 22-year-old switch-hitter can mash.

Happ’s rapid ascent to the big leagues took him through Iowa, where he was slashing .298/.362/.615, with nine home runs, at the time of his call-up. And while he profiles more as a doubles machine than he does a home-run champion, his bombs aren’t anomalies. He has pop, and his approach is all about loft.

“I’m trying to hit balls in the air to center field,” explained Happ, who left the yard in his fourth big-league plate appearance. “If you get the ball in the air, you give yourself a chance to find some green and get on base. Ground balls are out. The instruction guys talk about trying to elevate, in order to produce. Your slugging percentage is in the air. You don’t slug on the ground.”

Happ doesn’t feel he’s markedly changed his approach, although he acknowledged that hitting the ball in the air wasn’t prioritized at the collegiate level. All in all, he’s pleased with how the Cubs organization has approached his development. Read the rest of this entry »

As you may have heard, the Yankees are retiring Derek Jeter’s number on Sunday. ESPN’s coverage of the ceremony — and the subsequent game, of course — will begin at a surprisingly early 8:00 a.m. EST. The first pitch of the game between the Astros and Yankees, two of the powerhouse teams in the American League, is scheduled for 7:35 at night. Sunday Night Baseball usually kicks off at 8, but the Yankees got ESPN to agree to moving the game up to give the pre-game ceremonies (and theoretically the game itself) a larger audience and reach.

Of course, a player can’t have his number retired unless he himself is retired, and indeed, Jeter hasn’t suited up since 2014. His retirement was kind of a big deal, as you likely remember. It turned into a media bonanza that facilitated the sale of many tickets and even more merchandise. Jeter struggled that year to a -0.1 WAR and the Yankees just barely missed the playoffs. He started at shortstop in the All-Star Game. Even when he clearly had overstayed his welcome as a productive player, he still represented a massive source of revenue for the Yankees and for the sport.

MLB social media has spent the week doing a tournament of Jeter’s best moments under the #Jeets16 hashtag. Budweiser just put out an ad that uses the number retirement as its inspiration. The league, and a corporation as huge as Anheuser-Busch, wouldn’t be doing a Jeter-shaped media blitz if there wasn’t profit to be made here. And there is, of course, seeing as Jeter was the most recognizable figure in baseball, and one of the most recognizable people in all of sports, for nearly two decades.

There’s still something a little strange, though, about having this much hullabaloo about a retired player. The Sunday night game features two strong teams chock full of exciting young talent. Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa, Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, and George Springer will all be taking part in this game.  There’s absolutely room to celebrate both Jeter’s past and those players’ present and future. Given the pre-game focus on Jeter, it will be interesting to see how much of the game broadcast is spent discussing him and not the game itself. It could go some way to revealing ESPN’s production interests.

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Back in the spring, there was a gaggle of starting pitchers under consideration for the final spot in the Yankees rotation. Eventually, the lesser-known starter who wowed management got the chance. Jordan Montgomery has been a top-five rookie starter this year so far and, by all accounts, looks like a major leaguer. Now, the question has shifted. Now, we ask not “Will he pitch in the majors?” but “How good will he be?”

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Jake Thomas is flying under the radar with a sky-high OBP. Playing on a Lansing Lugnuts team that features some of the top prospects in the Toronto Blue Jays system, the 23-year-old outfielder has logged 17 hits, and drawn 27 walks, in 84 plate appearances. His slash line is an eye-popping .315/.536/.407.

On-base percentage was his MO in college — Thomas slashed .322/.453/.470 at SUNY Binghamton — but MLB clubs weren’t exactly clamoring to procure his services. He went undrafted in 2014, and when he joined the Blue Jays organization a year later, it was as a 27th-round senior sign. When he reported to rookie ball, he did so with a degree in finance and the odds against him.

The uphill battle continued last summer. Despite having put up a .393 OBP in the Gulf Coast League, Thomas began his first full professional season in extended spring training. He was subsequently promoted to Low-A Lansing, in June, but his first go-round with the Lugnuts was pedestrian at best. As Courtney Barnett sang on Saturday Night Live, the left-handed hitter “made a mess of what should be a small success.” He slashed just .244/.326/.315.

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Over the last few seasons, the Diamondbacks haven’t been a team worthy of positive attention. Ever since Mike Hazen took the reins back in October, however, we’ve been keeping tabs on them. It started when Dave correctly noted that there wasn’t a clear direction for the D-backs to pick heading into the 2017 season. We’ve seen why through the first six weeks of the 2017 campaign: this season has presented the D-backs an opportunity. With the Giants’ rapid fade and the Mets’ injury troubles, the National League Wild Card is suddenly wide open, and teams like Arizona (and Colorado) have an opportunity to step into the void. As such, it’s time to start paying attention to the D-backs.

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Ringer staff writer and FanGraphs podcaster Ben Lindbergh exhibited some excellent reporting earlier this week, obtaining MLB’s study on the properties of its baseballs. It was a valiant attempt to learn whether the ball itself is responsible for the game’s curious home-run surge. Last year, Lindbergh and Rob Arthur went as far as dissecting some balls to study, wondering if juiced balls were the “new steroids.”

This year, the home-run rate on fly balls is 12.8%. Last year, it was the same. Both marks are the highest on record and certainly grab our attention.

Lindbergh has been on the case of the juiced ball for a while. In light of that fact, it’s somewhat unsatisfying that the report he obtained doesn’t support the juiced-ball theory. While this conclusion naturally depends upon the assumption that MLB’s study was conducted in good faith, Dr. Alan Nathan — friend of FanGraphs and professor emeritus of physics at the University of Illinois — was asked by MLB to review the research as an independent source. Lindbergh spoked with Nathan.

“Quite frankly, I was disappointed at that result, because I was hoping I’d find something,” Nathan, who was compensated by MLB for the time he spent studying the BRC report, tells me by phone. However, he says, “I saw nothing in the data that was presented that suggests that the ball has been altered at all.”

Wrote Lindbergh in conclusion:

If the spread of dingers has less to do with COR or seam height than with a wave of Yonder Alonso–like breakouts by hitters who’ve tailored their swings to lift low pitches, then pitchers could exploit those uppercuts by raising their own sights … The historic performance we’ve seen since mid-2015 still supports at least a little skepticism about the true roots of baseball’s home run revolution; without witnessing the tests, we can’t consider these findings definitive. But the “juiced ball” hypothesis does seem much less likely than I thought it did two days ago. “It has every look of being suspicious,” Nathan says about the timing of baseball’s big-fly bailout. “But as I said, there’s nothing I could find that suggests anything amiss.”

Everyone interested in the home-run surge has a theory about its causes.

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This started as a post about Eugenio Suarez. Suarez has gotten off to a big offensive start, and that’s drawn a certain amount of attention, yet more behind the scenes, he’s also taken a step forward in the field. The other day a baseball person said he’s gotten about as good at third base as Nolan Arenado. I don’t know if that’s actually true, but even just the idea was enough to push me to Suarez’s player page. And, sure enough, by the numbers we have — DRS and UZR — Suarez is playing like a better third baseman.

I checked to see where Suarez might rank among the most-improved defenders, league-wide. I know it’s early, but I still wanted to see. Suarez ranks super high. Yet near the top of the list, there’s also Jose Peraza. And there’s also Joey Votto. You don’t have to scroll far to find Scott Schebler. Forget about Suarez. I mean, forget about Suarez, individually. What Suarez is doing is interesting, and he’ll get his own post one of these days, but I’m more intrigued by the Reds as a whole defensive unit. It’s played like the league’s best defensive unit.

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