The Arizona Diamondbacks are a playoff team. They probably aren’t a division-winning team, with the Los Angeles Dodgers surging ahead, but sitting roughly 10 games clear in the current Wild Card standings — or around six if you believe the Chicago Cubs will overtake the Milwaukee Brewers at some point — the team has about a 90% shot to make the playoffs. Given their place in the standings, it’s probably fair to consider the Diamondbacks a good team.

The Diamondbacks have also seen three different general managers over the last four seasons. They’ve certainly lacked continuity, but the muddled visions of three front offices have brought them here. Doling out credit and blame to one person or even two or three is a difficult task when we are talking about the construction of a baseball team. In any organization, myriad personnel play a huge part in acquiring players. Once those players are acquired, many more people play a role in developing them to put the best collection of talent on the field.

With that out of the way, let’s focus today on the acquisition portion of the equation and divide those acquisitions into three eras: pre-Tony La Russa and Dave Stewart, La Russa and Stewart, and Mike Hazen. But before we do that, let’s just take a moment to establish that the Diamondbacks are, in fact, good. Six weeks ago, Dave Cameron said it was time to take the Diamondbacks seriously. Since that time, the team has continued to win, improving its position with regard to securing a place in the postseason.

In his piece, Cameron noted that a number of hitters on the Diamondbacks roster were playing a bit over their heads and we could expect some regression. Several Diamondbacks pitchers have pitched well above projections from earlier this season — in particular, Zack Godley, Zack Greinke, and Taijuan Walker, with Robbie Ray’s solid pitching only a bit above expectations.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you don’t follow the Padres, this might be the first time you’ve heard of Phil Maton. For that reason, we’ll start with the pronunciation of his name — it’s “May-tawn” — and the fact that he’s a 24-year-old right-hander whom San Diego drafted 597th overall in 2015 out of Louisiana Tech. Since being called up from Triple-A last month, he’s made 12 relief appearances, 11 of which have been scoreless.

And then there’s his calling card. Over 10.1 big-league innings, Maton’s four-seam spin rate has been 2,446 rpm, which is well above the MLB average of 2,222 rpm. For him, it’s actually lower than usual. According to Padres beat writer Dennis Lin, Maton’s spin rate was 2,572 in the minors last year, which would have ranked second to Matt Bush among big-league pitchers who threw at least 500 four-seam fastballs.

I saw the pitch in action, in Cleveland, on July 5. Facing the Indians, Maton threw 22 fastballs and three sliders while retiring five of the six batters he faced. He fanned three, with all of the strikeouts coming on his four-seam. Per usual, the pitch sat around 93 mph.

I talked to Maton prior to the game. Later, I spoke both with his pitching coach, Darren Balsley, and San Diego’s primary catcher, Austin Hedges. Those conversations centered around Maton’s explosive fastball and his work-in-progress slider. I also touched base with three of the Cleveland batters he faced — Jason Kipnis, Francisco Lindor, and Bradley Zimmer — to get their first impressions of the up-and-coming right-hander.

———

Phil Maton: “I didn’t find out about [the spin rate] until I got drafted. When I was in short-season ball, the video guys told me that my spin rate was one of the highest they’d ever seen. At the time, I didn’t really think much of it. I was like, ‘Alright, cool, but I don’t really know how that helps me out.’ As I’ve progressed, I’ve realized that is what allows me to pitch up in the zone. My four-seam carries a little better, carries longer, than the average person’s four-seam.

Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball is flush with randomness. Time and time again, we trick ourselves into believing we have a good sense of what’s going to happen next, armed with an ever-growing arsenal of measurements, metrics, and projections. Yet, without fail, baseball constantly finds a way to catch us by surprise. One of those surprises has taken St. Louis by storm the last couple of weeks. First baseman Luke Voit debuted for the Cardinals on June 25th and has proceeded to hit .333/.379/.704 between then and now. He’s currently sporting a 179 wRC+, which as the title suggests, is one of the best in baseball among batters with at least 29 plate appearances.

Of course, 29 plate appearances is too few to tell us much of anything about what Voit will do going forward. Luckily, Voit has a lengthy minor-league track record that can. And now that you’ve fallen for the clickbaity title, you’re stuck reading about it.

While surprising, Voit’s performance didn’t come completely out of nowhere. He was a good hitter in the minors, amassing over 30 homers since the start of 2015. He slashed .322/.406/.561 at Triple-A this year and .297/.372/,477 in 2016 at Double-A. Voit also managed to keep his strikeout rate comfortably below 20%, which allowed him to hit for both average and power.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve noticed a recurring question in most of my chats. For the past several weeks, a similar query has shown up time and again, and that query is, to paraphrase: “where do the Brewers actually have to be in order to be a deadline buyer?” And I’ve mostly ignored the query, or brushed it aside, because while in one sense it was a worthwhile question, I didn’t think it was going to matter. I assumed the Brewers would fade away. I imagine nearly all of us assumed the Brewers would fade away. No reason for them to change the course of their rebuild.

I can tell you this: there’s still time. Still time for the Brewers to collapse, or regress, or do whatever might be your preferred word for the action. Still time for the Brewers to stop being good. But on Thursday, the Brewers went into Chicago and they throttled the Cubs so badly that Jon Jay was asked to handle the ninth. Importantly, the Brewers added to their lead in the division. No less importantly, the Brewers closed in on the second wild-card slot. The Brewers have played more than half of their games, and they’ve won more than half of the games that they’ve played. The Brewers have indeed positioned themselves to buy.

Read the rest of this entry »

The overriding theme of the 2017 season to date has been a wave of homers, many of them hit into the stratosphere courtesy of the sport’s new wave of sluggers, like Cody Bellinger, Miguel Sano, and, of course, Aaron Judge. Somewhat under the radar, the game’s three best starting pitchers, Clayton Kershaw, Chris Sale, Max Scherzer and are doing what they always do — namely, dominate.

Read the rest of this entry »

Clayton Kershaw is an outlier, and for the more number-oriented among us, outliers can be best appreciated through their statistics. One could investigate Kershaw with the same enthusiasm with which one could investigate Barry Bonds. Maybe more fittingly, he’s like a modern-day Pedro Martinez. His career could be considered an accumulation of incredible fun facts. There’s the one about how his five-year ERA is still holding under 2.00. There’s the one about how Kershaw allowed an identical .521 OPS in three consecutive seasons. (In the fourth season, Kershaw got better.) It’s overwhelming to think about gathering all the best Kershaw fun facts. There are too many. You might already have your own favorite.

Now I have another fact to add to the list. It’s a little bit different — it’s as much about the hitters as it is about Kershaw himself, and it isn’t even necessarily good. What it is is an outlier. It’s another Kershaw stat that stands out from the pack. It requires some digging to get to, but the effort, I think, is worthwhile, because seldom do you ever encounter such statistical separation.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s quite possible that — as recently as last night, with the Orioles preparing to finish their series against the Brewers — that Manny Machado had no idea who’d be on the mound for the Twins this evening. That sort of knowledge, and the preparation that goes along with it, would have to wait until Baltimore was finished with Milwaukee. The young third baseman doesn’t like to look too far ahead. I learned that when I spoke to Machado earlier this season.

At the time of our conversation, the Orioles were in Boston to play the Red Sox. His club would be facing the White Sox next, and I was interested to know when Chicago — and, specifically, their pitchers — would begin entering Machado’s consciousness. Here’s what he had to say.

———

Machado on preparing for a series: “I don’t really think ahead. I think it’s the same way for most of the guys in this clubhouse — you have to stay in the moment. Today we have to face Chris Sale, so why would we think about the White Sox coming up? We have to worry about one of the best pitchers in the game, and what we’re going to do against him. We just prepare for the guy we’re going to face tonight. We stay with our same routines in the cage, and on the field, as well.

“Every time you go into a series, you kind of want to know who the three or four starters are going to be, but that’s just right before the series starts. I don’t know who is pitching for Chicago yet. Once the series here is over, I’ll take a look to see who we’ve got coming. I’ll kind of prepare myself mentally and start creating my plan for that series.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Watch a batting practice of mine and it’s real boring,” said Freddie Freeman with a smile. The Atlanta first baseman is back, and he’s playing third base right now. You’d think the change of position might be the strangest thing about him. After studying angles with the team’s infield coach Ron Washington, though, he feels like playing third won’t actually be so difficult. What’s weirder is his approach during batting practice. As both his numbers and geometry suggest, however, his unusual BP strategy makes sense for him.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the winter, the Dodgers re-signed Rich Hill. They did so because they knew that, when he was able to pitch, Hill looked like one of the best starting pitchers in the game. And then 2017 went and got underway. Through the earlier part of 2017, Hill looked like one of the more frustrating starting pitchers in the game. The stuff, for the most part, remained there, but Hill didn’t have his same control, and his remarkable curveball was no longer working. I wrote about Hill in the middle of June, at which point his curveball had the lowest run value among all curveballs, out of everyone. It made me wonder where, exactly, Rich Hill was. Could someone who reappeared so suddenly disappear with similar speed?

Since I wrote about Hill and his struggles, he’s gone back to looking like one of the best starting pitchers in the game. In three starts, he’s allowed four runs over 19 innings, with six walks and 26 strikeouts. The easy explanation is that Hill has simply regressed to the mean. That is, his newer mean, the one he began establishing a couple years ago. That explanation would ignore the changes that Hill has folded in. Regression to the mean isn’t an automatic process. Rich Hill has simultaneously simplified and grown more complex.

Read the rest of this entry »

We might as well start this off with a Buster Olney tweet:

Teams asking about Justin Verlander; perception is DET looking for big,big,big return w/out salary offset. Owed $70m for rest of ’17,’18.’19

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) July 4, 2017

Just from reading that tweet alone, one could infer a few things. One, that the year hasn’t gone very well for the Tigers. That much is true, and the Tigers are only in the playoff race in the way that everyone in the American League is still in the playoff race. The Tigers are closer to the AL basement than they are to a playoff spot. Two, that Justin Verlander is available, and he’s been good enough to be interesting. That much is also true. And three, that a Verlander trade is going to be very challenging to execute. That much is certainly true. Verlander’s is the most fascinating name on the trade market, but as things stand, I don’t know how two sides could come together.

Read the rest of this entry »