It’s been a long time since we’ve seen Chris Sale pitch like an ace — or it had been, until recently. For the first time in more than half a decade, the 35-year-old lefty is dominating hitters on a routine basis. On Monday night in Atlanta, Sale turned in his third consecutive scoreless start, shutting out the Padres for seven innings while striking out nine, and helping the Braves halt a four-game losing streak.

Sale allowed just five hits, didn’t walk a single batter, and went to a three-ball count just twice (he retired both hitters). Only in the fourth, when Donovan Solano and Ha-Seong Kim hit back-to-back two-out singles, did the Padres put two men on base against Sale. Solano took third on Kim’s single, and then Kim stole second, but Sale escaped the jam by getting José Azocar to fly out. San Diego mustered just five hard-hit balls, which together amounted to two singles — a 95.9-mph one in the first inning by Jurickson Profar, and a 108.2-mph scorcher in the second inning by Manny Machado — plus two groundouts and a fly out. The last of those, a towering 104.9-mph drive to left center by Kyle Higashioka, would have been a home run in 28 out of the 30 major league parks according to Statcast, but at Truist Park it was a routine warning track out to left fielder Adam Duvall.

Meanwhile, Sale generated 18 whiffs, seven apiece with his four-seamer and his slider, and four with his changeup. He had a 35% called strike and walk rate, and got the Padres to chase on 37% of his pitches outside the zone, consistent with his season rate, which is also his Statcast-era high. All but one of his strikeouts came on pitches out of the zone, most of them on the outer edge; six of them were swinging (three sliders, two fastballs, one changeup) and two were foul tips, while the other was a swinging strike at the top border:

Read the rest of this entry »

What’s wrong with Edwin Díaz? In a single GIF, this is what’s wrong with Edwin Díaz:

I don’t want to tell him how to pitch, because he’s Edwin Díaz and I’m an anonymous person on the internet. But putting a slider right in Josh Bell’s nitro zone is not a great way to approach a high-leverage at-bat. Bell put a good swing on it, which was hardly a given, but Díaz put himself into that situation and paid the price for it.

On a superficial level, there’s not a lot of uncertainty over what’s wrong. During the 2023 World Baseball Classic, Díaz tore his patellar tendon, and then he missed the entirety of the season recovering from surgery that repaired that tendon. He’s back on the mound, but he’s clearly not the same pitcher that he was in his dominant 2022 season.
Read the rest of this entry »

This article isn’t really about Joey Ortiz. Or, well, it is, but it’s also about how numbers will fool you. Let’s start with a few numbers, then. Ortiz is walking 12.9% of the time so far this year, far more than average and far more than he ever did in the high minors. He’s chasing pitches outside of the strike zone only 24% of the time, a huge change in approach. Last year in the minor leagues, that number stood at 34.5%. As a result, he’s swinging and missing far less often. There’s the story of how Ortiz has improved.

Just one problem: That story doesn’t hold up to closer examination. Let’s break the strike zone up into four parts the way Baseball Savant and the Statcast team do it. There’s the heart of the plate (heart), the edges of the plate and the area just off of it (shadow), the area where good breaking pitches often end up (chase), and the land of non-competitive pitches (waste). You’d expect Ortiz to swing less frequently than average at chase and waste pitches. You’d be wrong:

That’s baffling. For comparison’s sake, teammate Rhys Hoskins has similar chase and zone swing rates, and he’s swinging at 17% of chase pitches and 1% of waste pitches. He’s also swinging more frequently than Ortiz at pitches over the heart of the plate.
Read the rest of this entry »

With his combination of power and speed, Elly De La Cruz may be the eighth wonder of the world, or merely one of baseball’s most improved players, but lately he’s been just about the only one keeping the Reds relevant. After starting the season in promising fashion, Cincinnati has now dropped seven straight series, most recently losing three out of four against the Dodgers in Los Angeles while slipping into last place in the NL Central. Thanks to an offense that’s gone missing, the Reds own a major league-worst 3-14 record in May. Yuck.

They had their chances to arrest their slide against the Dodgers. After winning 7-2 on Thursday, the Reds fell behind early 3-0 on Friday as Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani both homered off Frankie Montas. They clawed their way back to tie the game, and looked to build upon that when Mike Ford singled off James Paxton to open the seventh. Paxton got the hook in favor of righty Michael Grove, while Jake Fraley pinch-hit for Stuart Fairchild and Jacob Hurtubise pinch-ran for Ford. On a 1-1 count, Grove picked off Hurtubise, and he soon escaped the inning; the Dodgers responded by putting up two runs apiece against relievers Fernando Cruz and Alexis Díaz in the next two innings to pull away for a 7-3 win.

After being shut out by Walker Buehler and friends on Saturday, the Reds squandered numerous opportunities that would have allowed them to escape with a split. They left 10 runners on base in Sunday’s 10-inning loss, and while they erased a 2-0 deficit to tie the game in the seventh, De La Cruz struck out with men on second and third in both that inning and the ninth, part of a tough 0-for-5, four-strikeout day. The Reds lost when Díaz walked Will Smith with one out, forcing him to pitch to Ohtani, who singled for his first walk-off hit since September 4, 2020. Read the rest of this entry »

Jordan Weems was in his 10th professional season when he was featured here at FanGraphs for the first, and heretofore only, time in July 2020. His story was one of resilience, but also of change. Then 27 years old, Weems was a converted catcher soon to make his big-league debut as a pitcher for the Oakland Athletics. Drafted by the Boston Red Sox in 2011 out of Columbus (GA) High School in 2011, he moved to the mound five years later after dwelling in Mendoza-line territory while wearing the tools of ignorance.

Weems is now in his third season with the Washington Nationals, and by and large he’s forged a decent career as a reliever. The 6-foot-4 right-hander has made 118 appearances at baseball’s highest level, and his numbers include 140 strikeouts in 130 innings. The first of his Ks came against Trevor Story, the first batter he faced while toeing a big-league rubber.

I recently asked the personable hurler if he ever thinks about that initial punch out.

“Absolutely,” replied Weems, who has a 3.94 ERA over 16 innings in the current campaign. “You have to kind of stay where your feet are in this game — what you did in the past is in your past — but at the same time, if you’d have told me early on in my [professional] career that I’d be a pitcher in the big leagues, I would have laughed. Looking back, what I’ve done is pretty cool.” Read the rest of this entry »

Over the course of his storied career, Andrew McCutchen has stood there and watched ball four go by 1,075 times. I watched something like 750 of those pitches on Thursday, and then I cut them down into supercuts. I hope to God I never to see another ball four. I was watching for something specific. I noticed the other day that McCutchen flips his bat a lot, which caught me off guard. If you’re a Pirates fan, I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about, but I suspect people outside Pittsburgh might be startled by it, too. After all, McCutchen is a veteran who tends toward a more traditional playing style. That’s not to say that he plays without any flair or that he doesn’t have a sense of humor (he definitely does), just that he’s on the staid side of things. In fact, in October of 2017, McCutchen tweeted his disapproval of the trend.

The issue is not that McCutchen has necessarily changed his mind. He doesn’t really flip his bat when he hits a home run. He’ll do it on rare occasions, but most of the time, he handles his homers with a quiet cool. He finishes his home run swing one-handed, with the bat held low, and he simply drops the bat head toward the ground and lets go of the handle in a smooth continuation of that move. It’s a classic look, and though it’s hard to imagine that McCutchen doesn’t know he looks cool while he’s doing it, it doesn’t come off as an affectation.

Instead of home runs, McCutchen flips his bat when he earns a walk. I’m not the only person to notice this. A Ke’Bryan Hayes fan account started a Twitter thread of McCutchen’s bat flips back in May of 2023, adding a video each time he did it for the next two weeks. In July, the Pirates posted a compilation video on TikTok with the caption, “Either pitch to Cutch or risk getting bat-flipped on.” If you think about it, for someone who really loves bat flipping, the walk is the perfect time. First of all, just about everyone walks more often than they homer, which means more chances to party. Second, while a walk is good for the batter and bad for the pitcher, it’s not a big enough deal that the pitcher will feel like you’re rubbing their nose in it. Third, nothing is expected of the batter after a walk. There’s no risk of flipping your bat dramatically and then realizing that you should have been running around the bases because the ball isn’t carrying like you thought it would. Read the rest of this entry »

During spring training, I asked 10 current big leaguers how they followed the game growing up, and how that has changed since they began playing professionally. As expected, all of them noted significant differences. No longer fans following their favorite teams and players, they consume baseball in a distinctly different way, even as the mediums through which they take in the game remain much the same.

Following up on that March 8 piece, I asked a new subset of baseball professionals much the same question. Four are former players who are now managing, while two are former players who are now broadcast analysts. In each case, how they consume the game has evolved not once, but twice.

Here is what they had to say. Their answers have been edited and condensed for clarity.

———

John Schneider, Toronto Blue Jays manager:

“For me, it’s always been similar. That maybe sounds funny, but whether it was as a fan, player, coach, or manager, I’ve always been interested in the strategy of the game. Being a catcher, you kind of look at a game that way naturally. What most fans want to see is their favorite players — you want them to hit home runs, things like that — and then as a manager, you’re always wondering what strings another manager might pull, or at least try to pull. So, it’s similar for me, but at the same time obviously a little different. Read the rest of this entry »

The catcher pickoff is one of my favorite plays in baseball. It’s impressive almost every single time. Not only do backpicks call for remarkable agility and arm strength on the catcher’s part, but they also require a Holmesian ability to read the diamond. Are any runners getting cocky? Is the defense ready for a pickoff throw? Can the team risk a throwing error? The catcher needs to make those decisions rapidly, all while still performing his regular duties behind the plate. It’s not easy.

To that point, I like catcher pickoffs so much because they’re a nice reminder of the level of talent on display in professional baseball. In all my years of childhood rec league play, I never saw a catcher pull off a backpick. I don’t think I ever saw anyone try. The chances of success were too low, and the risk of a catastrophic error was too high. Catcher pickoffs are better left to the professionals. Yet this year, even the professionals are leaving them to someone else.

Here is a supercut of every catcher pickoff so far in the 2024 season. You might notice there aren’t many:

According to the records at Baseball Reference, there have been a total of seven catcher pickoffs this year. Just past the quarter mark of the season, that puts the league on pace for 26 backpicks in 2024. Last year, there were 49. In each of the previous two seasons, we saw 51. Over the last two decades, there has never been a full season with fewer than 41 catcher pickoffs. The numbers are, perhaps, even more dramatic if you remove cross-listed pickoff/caught stealing plays. There have only been five pure catcher pickoffs this year, putting the league on pace for just 19 by season’s end:

In 2023, the league leaders in catcher pickoffs were Keibert Ruiz (6), Patrick Bailey (4), and Francisco Alvarez (4). In 2022 and ’23 combined, the leaders were Ruiz (10), Jose Trevino (7), and Elias Díaz (6). While three of those five catchers have spent time on the IL this season, that group has still combined to catch 933.1 innings over 115 games. That’s nearly equivalent to a full season of work behind the dish. They have yet to pick off a single runner.

Here’s another fun way to think about how few catcher pickoffs we’ve seen in 2024. So far this year, there have been more successful steals of home plate (9) than successful catcher pickoffs (7). That’s partly because steals at home are up, but still, this simply doesn’t happen. Like, ever:

Entering the 2023 season, I thought we might see an uptick in backpicks. I was hardly alone. Willson Contreras, one of the greatest backpick artists of his generation, took note of the fact that the new disengagement rules did not limit catcher pickoff attempts. He said the Cardinals would have to be “smart” regarding “when our catchers backpick runners.” Manager Oliver Marmol sang a similar tune, praising his new catcher’s pickoff abilities. He said Contreras would “play a big part” in preventing runners from “stretching out” their primary and secondary leads. More catchers, such as Sean Murphy (“Yeah, that means we’ll throw more”), and managers, including Gabe Kapler (“We’re emphasizing backpicks”), made similar remarks.

A few months into the 2023 season, Kiri Oler looked at the data and concluded that “the numbers suggest catchers could be throwing behind runners significantly more in the name of keeping runners on edge.” She found that backpicks were a much more effective tool for discouraging stolen bases than traditional pitcher pickoff throws. Yet, if catchers were throwing behind runners any more often, they weren’t earning any more pickoffs. League-wide catcher pickoff totals were remarkably consistent from 2021 to ’23. Now, in the second season under the new disengagement rules, catcher pickoffs are disappearing.

This disappearing act is especially noteworthy considering average catcher pop times have gotten quicker in recent years (at least as of Ben Clemens’s piece on the stolen base rate from last month). What’s more, it’s not as if runners have been extra cautious on the bases this season; if anything, it’s the opposite. The stolen base attempt rate is slightly up, while the stolen base success rate is slightly down. Similarly, runners are making outs on base (OOB) and taking extra bases (XBT%) at similar rates to last season, according to Baseball Reference.

Most interestingly, the decline in catcher pickoffs has not resulted in fewer pickoffs overall. Ninety-nine runners have been picked off this season, putting the league on pace for 368 pickoffs by the time the calendar flips to October. That would be the highest total in a single season since 2012. Needless to say, this means pitcher pickoffs are on the rise. If current trends hold, pitchers alone will finish the season with more pickoffs (342) than pitchers and catchers combined in 2023 (341). Pitchers have not surpassed the 300-pickoff mark since 2012; they’re on pace to smash past that threshold in 2024.

On the one hand, it makes sense that pitchers would improve their pickoff throws with a full season of new disengagement rule experience under their belts. That said, it stands to reason that runners, too, would get better at making the most of the new rules. A recent article from The Athletic noted that “stolen-base percentages actually went down with each pickoff attempt last season, perhaps because baserunners were not yet attuned to exploiting the new rules. This season, runners are taking fuller advantage. According to STATS Perform, the stolen-base percentage after zero pickoff [attempts] is .77 percent. After one, it’s .81. After two, .87.”

Thus, while pitchers are getting better at picking off runners, the penalty of a failed pitcher pickoff attempt has increased. That being so, you might think catcher pickoffs would rise as a result. Runners’ taking more aggressive leads provides the opportunity, while the disengagement limit for pitchers provides the motive. The case is solid. Nevertheless, things certainly haven’t played out that way. What’s up with that?

Perhaps it isn’t really about the pickoffs, at least not directly. Instead, catchers might simply be placing greater emphasis on a different aspect of their game: framing. Teams knew pitch framing was important long before they had any metrics to quantify it. Now that we have the numbers, framing is more in vogue than ever. As a result, it’s likely teams are prioritizing framing over other strategies (i.e. pickoffs) in spring training, game plans, and the moment. I’ve already described how difficult a backpick can be. Now imagine trying to pull one off while simultaneously attempting to steal a strike. It’s all but impossible. If anything, I’d think backpicks have the opposite effect; pitches in the strike zone are probably more likely to be called balls on catcher pickoff attempts. Indeed, Noah Woodward found just that in a piece for his Substack, The Advance Scout. Woodward also suggests that the one-knee-down catching stance, known to help with pitch framing, makes it harder for catchers to pull off backpicks. As this catching setup rises in popularity, it makes sense that we would see fewer catcher pickoffs.

Good pitch framing isn’t nearly as exciting as a successful backpick, nor is an extra called strike nearly as beneficial as a pickoff. Ultimately, however, there’s more value to be gained from framing than backpicks over the course of the season. If a catcher can only do one or the other, it’s not hard to see why framing wins out. Even Willson Contreras seems to agree. Contreras recorded 28 pickoffs from 2016-22 with the Cubs. Throwing behind runners was his signature skill. Yet, ever since he signed with the Cardinals – who encouraged him to work on his framing and switch to a one-knee-down position – he has not picked off a single runner. The evidence may be circumstantial, but it’s still compelling.

If catchers are really letting pickoffs fall by the wayside in an effort to steal more strikes, it’s worth remembering that pitchers are picking up the slack. In other words, it might be a win-win. Since the disengagement limits were introduced, pitchers have been picking runners off with greater efficiency than before. That means pitcher pickoff attempts are less detrimental than we might have thought. Meanwhile, catcher pickoff throws still come with significant risk attached; as Kiri explained in her piece last year, the probability of an error is significantly higher on a catcher pickoff throw than a pitcher pickoff throw. Furthermore, while each pitcher disengagement marginally increases the chances of a successful steal, a throwing error all but guarantees the runner an extra base. Therefore, if pitchers can successfully pick runners off at a high enough rate, pitcher pickoff throws might be a safer option for the defense than backpick attempts. Hence the win on both fronts; catchers can be more efficient when they focus on framing over pickoffs, and pickoffs might still be more efficient coming from pitchers rather than catchers.

It will take a lot more data before we can say with any certainty that catchers are truly moving away from backpicks. After all, we’re only seven weeks into the season. Moreover, catcher pickoffs are always so low in number that the league-wide backpick pace could skyrocket quickly. But hey, if we always waited to write about trends until they were undeniable, we wouldn’t be doing a very good job telling the story of the season as it plays out. Pickoffs, both the catcher and pitcher variety, are something to keep a close eye on for the rest of the year. That shouldn’t be hard to do — pickoffs are pretty fun to watch.

All stats and rankings through May 16.

Like everyone else in and around baseball, I’ve been following the conversations about the persistent prevalence of pitcher injuries, specifically the straining and tearing of the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) that leads to Tommy John surgery. Eury Pérez, Shane Bieber, Spencer Strider, Nick Pivetta, Jonathan Loáisiga, Trevor Gott, and Josiah Gray all landed on the IL within the first couple of weeks of the 2024 season with some manner of elbow injury, renewing concerns for pitchers’ health that have become an annual April tradition over the last decade or so.

There’s no consensus as to the cause of all these elbow injuries, and there’s even less agreement on how to prevent them, but most agree a solution is needed. As I listened to prominent figures in baseball weigh in on the issue, an idea for a new rule began to formulate in my mind, something akin to a high velocity usage tax. I threw some publicly available injury and usage data at it, and it held up well enough for me to feel comfortable unleashing it from the confines of my skull to run free in the world. Essentially, my proposal would cap the number of innings that harder-throwing hurlers can pitch in a season, while also limiting the pitchers on a roster and curbing roster management protocols to avoid churning through max-velo pitchers as they reach the innings threshold. I’ll go into greater detail of my proposal a little later, but first, let’s run through some of the possible causes of the elbow-injury problem, as well as some of the suggested solutions to it. Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday at Citi Field, Max Fried was unhittable. For seven innings, the 30-year-old lefty baffled the Mets, surviving a handful of hard-hit balls, including two that would have been home runs in several other ballparks. But because he walked three batters, went to a three-ball count against five others, and needed 24 pitches to complete the seventh while running his count to a season-high 109, Fried got the hook from manager Brian Snitker. He could only watch as J.D. Martinez — who had already hit two scorchers of at least 105 mph off Fried — clubbed a solo homer off closer Raisel Iglesias with two outs in the ninth. The Mets’ rally would ultimately fall short, but the run left the Braves still searching for their first no-hitter since Kent Mercker’s gem on April 8, 1994.

If Fried’s hitless outing evoked a sense of déjà vu, that’s because he did a very similar thing just 12 days earlier. On April 29 in Seattle, he and the Mariners’ Bryce Miller each held the opposing lineup hitless through six innings, the first time two pitchers did that in the same game in just over three full years. Miller faltered first, giving up an infield single to Ronald Acuña Jr., who came around to score; meanwhile, Fried departed after 100 pitches, and while Pierce Johnson pitched a hitless seventh inning, Joe Jiménez surrendered a single in the eighth. Unlike on Saturday, the Braves lost that one on a walk-off homer. Read the rest of this entry »