When asked recently about his post-retirement plans, the fabulous Ichiro Suzuki provided a response as memorable as his career: “I think I’ll just die,” he told Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald. It’s possible that he might just play forever. So it’s premature to call this remarkable at-bat in Seattle on April 19th his last in Seattle, as many did when it occurred.

But it does remind us of another great response Ichiro provided — one that gave life to the idea that he would be a great Home Run Derby entrant. “If I’m allowed to hit .220, I could probably hit 40 [homers],” he told Bob Nightengale back in 2007. “But nobody wants that.”

Ben Lindbergh once looked at the hypothetical shift in Ichiro’s outcomes if the player had attempted to hit for power, but now that we have even better batted-ball data, we can maybe take a look and see if he could have even been that 40-homer hitter at all.

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We spend so much of our time talking about players making changes. One could argue, too much of our time. I get it! The stories can blend together. But the analysis we’re capable of now is so much better than it used to be. The public tools and information have opened doors we never could’ve dreamed of. So all the different insights have shaped the way people on the outside cover the game on the field. One thing we understand better than ever is how players might forever evolve.

Changes everywhere. Which hitters have made changes? Taylor Motter has made changes. Miguel Sano? He’s made changes. Travis Shaw, Elvis Andrus, Xander Bogaerts — they’re all making changes. I wanted to take a step away from focusing on any given individual in particular. Which hitters seem the most changed, compared to 2017? I assembled a spreadsheet. There’s a table below, with 10 names. Let me explain this real quick.

I decided to focus on four traits that I think reflect a hitter’s profile. Those four traits: swing rate and contact rate (from FanGraphs), and average exit velocity and launch angle (from Baseball Savant). A hitter is mostly, if not entirely, how often he swings, and what happens after he swings. I gathered all four data points for hitters who played in both 2016 and 2017. So I guess that makes it eight data points. For each data point for each year for each hitter, I figured out the standard deviations above or below the league average. Then I calculated the absolute value of the change in standard deviations between 2016 and 2017. I wound up with four absolute values, for every hitter. I added them up to yield what I’ll call the “Change Index.” The larger the number, the more changed the hitter.

That was an unpleasant paragraph. Here’s the fun part! Behold, the changed hitters! I set arbitrary minimums of 75 plate appearances in each season. Don’t complain about that, please, because I don’t care.

Compared to last year, the most-changed hitter in baseball is Mike Moustakas. In fact, it’s Moustakas by a healthy margin. Now, Moustakas had his own 2016 season cut short by injury, but as we see him now, he’s swinging a lot more, and he’s making a lot less contact. While his exit velocity is down, his launch angle is up, and Moustakas has focused on pulling the ball for power. Maybe he’s felt some pressure, getting so little support from the rest of the lineup around him.

Moustakas will be a name to watch. Unsurprisingly, Aaron Judge makes it in here, thanks in large part to his dramatic contact-rate improvement. He’s also cut down on his launch angle, and although we normally associate launch-angle increases with power, Judge has more of that flat Giancarlo Stanton attack path. Don’t complain while it’s working.

There are a couple A’s on here — one who’s always hit for power, and one who’s learning. What I think I love about Trevor Story here is that he already had an extreme launch angle, and now he’s practically Schimpf-ing. Not that Story should want to keep this up; 2017 has not been a success. You can turn it up to 11, but don’t turn it up to 12. Things get broken at 12.

That’s where I’ll leave it for now. Remember that most-changed doesn’t automatically mean most-changed for the better. Consider, say, Story, or Alex Gordon. Changes are changes. Just because we often focus on the successful adjustments doesn’t mean there aren’t always bad things happening, too.

I didn’t realize the Royals have lost nine games in a row. When it’s come to disappointing baseball, most of my attention was focused on teams like the Blue Jays, Giants, Mets, and Mariners. Every team mentioned here has under-performed, but sure enough, the Royals stand at 7-16, with baseball’s worst record. The upside, I suppose, is that they were once 7-7, but that’s damning with faint praise, since losing nine straight can derail even a wonderful season. The Royals have had a horrible week and a half.

As you examine things, it’s not like the Royals have experienced some kind of team-wide collapse. The defensive metrics paint a confusing picture, and the rotation has been better than the bullpen, but the Royals’ run prevention has surprisingly been a tiny bit better than average. The Royals aren’t out there just constantly getting smoked. Nearly the entirety of the problem is captured by the headline just above. Hitting. Teams need to hit. The Royals haven’t hit. It’s not unreasonable to suggest they’ve actually hit worse than ever.

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Remember last August when Gary Sanchez hit a ton of home runs and put up a .442 isolated-power figure for the New York Yankees? It was amazing. It was also special, so far as exhibitions of power are concerned. Consider: only four batters produced a higher single-month ISO last year than Sanchez. It wasn’t just improbable for a rookie; it was improbable for a major leaguer.

But the improbable is different than the impossible. Now another power-hitting Yankees prospect, Aaron Judge, has just finished his first real month as a starting outfielder in New York and has recorded a .447 ISO in the process — or slightly higher than Sanchez’s mark. The power is as large as Judge himself.

And while Judge has been the most impressive hitter for the Yankees, the club has received quite a few pleasant surprises. Starlin Castro, Chase Headley, Aaron Hicks, Matt Holliday, Austin Romine, and Ronald Torreyes have all exceeded expectations.

The result? A very successful first month of the season, leading to a 15-8 record. And while some of the club’s surprising performances won’t last — Judge included — the Yankees have banked some wins, increased their projections, and significantly improved their playoff odds, as the chart below shows.

The Yankees entered the 2017 season with playoff odds of 15.9%, the worst of any team in the AL East. Their strong April has put them over the 50% mark the rest of the way, however. At the start of the season, the Yankees were projected to have a .488 win percentage. Going forward, that number is already up to .509. Add in the wins they’ve already received, and their projected end-of-season winning percentage is up to .529.

Largely responsible for that positive trend is Judge himself. As with the club itself, his own personal projections now appear more optimistic.

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When Noah Syndergaard showed up to spring training having indulged in “Bowls of Doom” to gain 17 pounds with a view towards throwing even harder — this, after a season in which his fastball averaged 98 mph — alarm bells began clanging around the country. Among those waving red flags was the present author.

Here’s what I wrote on Feb. 13, 2017:

As exciting as all this [added strength] sounds, perhaps someone should pump the breaks. For a pitcher who threw harder than any other starter, who threw a variant of a fastball on 60% of his offerings, more velocity might not be such a great development. While we don’t have a full understanding of why so many pitchers are breaking down, perhaps the body is being pushed beyond its physical limits with the strength and velocity increases in the game. No one, among starter pitchers, is pushing limits like Syndergaard.

After pushing the limits in 2016, Syndergaard was attempting to push even harder against them this year. Perhaps he pushed too hard, flew too close to the sun, etc. Pitchers’ ligaments and soft tissue aren’t unlike wax wings; velocity, not unlike the sun. Record pitch speeds have wrought a record numbers of injuries. That Syndergaard is on the DL is, sadly, one of the least surprising developments early this season.

Sports-injury expert Will Carroll told FanGraphs on Monday that Syndergaard’s offseason work was likely unhelpful.

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CLEVELAND – Like so many others, Chris Devenski watched in fascination last October. He observed, on the flat-screen television of his offseason home in San Diego, as Cleveland continuously elected not to save their best arm, Andrew Miller, for the ninth inning, but rather to utilize him in high-leverage situations earlier in the game.

Unlike the many other major-league pitchers watching, however, Devenski recognized the part Miller was playing: he himself had already assumed a similar new-age bullpen role in the second half of the season with Houston. He had, in fact, become accustomed to entering games at unlikely spots much earlier than that, from his experience as a piggy-back tandem starter in the Astros’ farm system. As Cleveland advanced through the playoffs, Devenski watched as the movement to rethink bullpen usage and role — a movement of which he’s a part — advanced. The revolution was televised.

“I saw my role, man,” Devenski told FanGraphs last week. “I saw what they were doing with Miller here [in Cleveland] and [Aroldis] Chapman with the Cubs, it seems like that is what is coming about now in the game. It’s changing a little bit. I saw [in Miller] what I do. It was pretty cool. It’s big-time situations there. It’s important.”

But Devenski is arguably more of a revolutionary, more of disruptive figure than Miller. Since joining the Indians, Miller has pitched in high-leverage situations often, but he’s only recorded two or more innings in an outing three times in the regular season. He’s never recorded more than six outs in an appearance. Devenski had 18 such outings last season alone, including nine in August and September when the then-rookie was thrust into more high-leverage situations.

Devenski has recorded six or more outs in seven of his nine appearances this season and has an absurd 49.2-point strikeout- and walk-rate differential (K-BB%) and 22% swinging-strike rate. He has become a unique weapon in an unusual role.

Devenski said his wide range of experiences — from starting to relieving to tandem-starting — made the job a natural fit. While most pitchers would rather start or rack up saves, Devenski seems to have embraced his work in a hybrid capacity.

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The Washington Nationals are the best team in the NL East. The second best team in the NL East might be the Mets Disabled List. Already consisting of Yoenis Cespedes, Steven Matz, Lucas Duda, David Wright, Wilmer Flores, Seth Lugo, and Brandon Nimmo, the injured Mets are now going to add Noah Syndergaard to the list, as the Mets announced his MRI this morning revealed a torn lat muscle.

Update on Noah Syndergaard. #Mets pic.twitter.com/n8JVxIBBid

— New York Mets (@Mets) May 1, 2017

While there’s no official timetable, this isn’t going to be a short DL stint. Matz missed two months with a similar injury back in 2015, and that was diagnosed as the lowest grade lat tear. At this point, it’s probably unlikely that Syndergaard is back before the All-Star break.

While the Mets theoretically had a lot of pitching depth before the season started, no team can really sustain the loss of three starting pitchers that easily, and there’s no replacing Syndergaard. This probably costs the Mets a win or two even if Syndergaard gets back in July, and if this lingers beyond that, it could be closer to three or four wins. This is a huge blow, on par with the Giants loss of Madison Bumgarner, and puts the Mets 2017 season in some legitimate jeopardy.

The NL Wild Card race might really end up being first-to-87-wins-gets-it. This doesn’t end the Mets chances of making the postseason, but they’re going to need some things to turn around in short order. They can only dig so big a hole before it becomes overwhelming.

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Jessica Mendoza’s ears perked up while she was conversing with Kyle Hendricks yesterday afternoon. The ESPN analyst was doing game prep for this evening’s Sunday Night Baseball broadcast when the Chicago Cubs right-hander mentioned effective velocity.

“I interrupted him,” Mendoza told me later. “I said, ‘Can we talk about that?’

If you read this Sunday Notes column from last August, that won’t surprise you. The Stanford-educated Mendoza is a baseball nerd. So is the Dartmouth-educated Hendricks, who was more than happy to oblige her request.

“It was refreshing, because that’s (the type of subject) we love talking about,” said Hendricks. “We started talking about bat paths, two- and four-seam fastballs, how to attack hitters. That was the first time I’d met her, and it was great to talk baseball with her. You can tell she’s very knowledgeable, especially about hitting.”

How Hendricks is avoiding bats is what Mendoza wanted to address when she approached him in the clubhouse. She was especially curious about his velocity, which has been down this year. That’s where the ear-perking subject came up. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, we examined pitcher in Los Angeles who’d switched from a pretty ordinary four-seam fastball to a more dynamic two-seamer and found success in the process. JC Ramirez does throw in the high 90s, but his was the story you want to tell.

What we might be seeing with Kenta Maeda is the opposite, or close to it. Because, right now, despite a strikeout minus walk rate that looks familiar, Maeda’s ERA is more than twice his 2016 version. The difference between the two years? Home runs, seven of them already. The fastball might be the key to avoiding those going forward.

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