Steven Souza, Jr. is showing signs he might be ready to break out. Fourteen games are far too few to make any determinations, but the numbers are promising. The Tampa Bay Rays slugger is slashing .320/.424/.520, and six of his 16 safeties have gone for extra bases. Every bit as notable is the fact that he’s drawn nine free passes, and fanned just 13 times, in 59 plate appearances.

Power has never been a problem for the 27-year-old Souza. Making consistent contact has. Coming into the season, he was a .234/.309/.404 hitter with a propensity for being punched out. All of a sudden, he’s the one doing the punching.

When I asked Souza why he’s gotten off to such a good start, he offered a fairly generic answer.

“I really don’t know,” Souza told me on Saturday. “Right now I’m just running into some balls, finding some holes, finding the barrel. I don’t get too caught up in the analytics stuff. I’m a guy who can’t overthink things, so I just try to keep it simple. Right now the ball is falling for me.”

For a baseball reporter, “I just try to keep it simple” is a commonly heard phrase. It’s an honest answer, but at the same time, a more concrete reason is often lurking behind the facade. Souza is hitting the ball harder than ever before — at least in terms of big-league success — and simplicity is rarely a new concept for a professional athlete.

Read the rest of this entry »

CLEVELAND — We’re still early in the 2017 season. We should be careful not to make too much of the goings-on of April, of course. I’m aware of all the small-sample-size disclaimers that should be attached to nearly every bit of analysis and assessment at this point. Yet, I still must write and search for things that are interesting. The baseball media industry cannot wait silently at keyboards until sample sizes accumulate and become more meaningful in mid-summer.

Since so much was written about fly-ball philosophy and trends at FanGraphs this offseason and spring — like here and here and here — I thought it would be irresponsible not to check in early (and often) and examine whether we’re were seeing any hints of the revolutionaries growing in number.

Jeff Sullivan identified a slight increase in hitters adopting lift last season. Through two weeks of this season, hitters are producing fewer ground balls and more fly balls.

Through two weeks — that is, through Sunday’s games — major-league hitters combined to produce a 43.5% ground-ball rate collectively, which would mark the lowest ground-ball rate since 2009 (43.3%). The MLB ground-ball rate has stood at 44.4% or greater since 2011, rates perhaps influenced by a greater value placed upon two-seam pitchers, ground balls, and the proliferation of infield defensive shifts.

Fly balls are also up (36.2%) early this season, the highest rate since 2011. It’s an increase of nearly two percentage points from last season (34.6%) and the decade-low rate of 33.8% in 2015. It’s early, but we should also see evidence early if more hitters are trying to lift and drive.

And it’s not just fly balls that should be examined. We should also study Statcast “barrels” and hard-contact rates, as getting on plane with a pitch should result in more quality contact. And the percentage of contact catalogued as “hard” stands at 31.4% early this season, which is tied with last season’s mark and represents the highest mark since 2007 (32%), nearly a 2.5% jump from 2015 and 2014. Uppercut swing advocate J.D. Martinez, for instance, has not dramatically lifted more balls into the air by changing his swing plane, but he has significantly boosted his hard-hit percentage since making his alterations.

These are incremental gains, but string enough incremental gains together and a tipping point is reached. Consider this graph created by my colleague Sean Dolinar:

So perhaps there is a story to be told here — or, at least another chapter of a story to be written.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last night, the Chicago Cubs lost their seventh game of the season, falling to 6-7 in the process. In 2016, the Cubs didn’t lose their seventh game of the year until May 11, so this start represents a departure from last season’s 103-win, World Series champion.

That doesn’t mean there’s cause for concern, though. The team isn’t hitting all that well, but Javier Baez, Kris Bryant, Willson Contreras, and Addison Russell are all likely to improve upon their early-season lines. The offense, as a whole, ought to come around. The rotation is pitching well — Kyle Hendricks has had a rough start, but Brett Anderson has been a pleasant surprise — so nothing really to worry about there. The bullpen, though, might be worth a closer look.

The Cubs’ bullpen has put up a 4.10 ERA, which isn’t very good, and a 4.46 FIP, which is even worse. Through 41.2 innings, the team’s relievers have been slightly worse than replacement level as a group. They’ve blown four saves already, tied with the Marlins for the most in the National League — and for whatever shortcomings the save possesses as a metric, having a bullpen blow a lead four times in 13 games isn’t good.

On the whole, the bullpen has been bad. Has it been team-wide issue, though, or the product of a few poor performers? Let’s see.

New closer Wade Davis has been good. Koji Uehara has been fine. Carl Edwards, Jr. looks like he’s ready to step into a more prominent role. Mike Montgomery hasn’t been great, really, but he’s covered a lot of innings adequately. Hector Rondon seems like he’s probably back after a rough 2016 season, and Brian Duensing has only pitched two innings. If there’s blame to had it is coming from two guys: Justin Grimm and Pedro Strop. While Grimm’s start hasn’t been great, he’s also not expected to be more than the sixth- or seventh-best reliever on the team. Looking even closer, Grimm’s poor pitching hasn’t really even cost the Cubs. Here are the same pitchers by win-probability statistics.

Of Grimm’s six appearances, three have come in very low-leverage situations, one has been roughly neutral, and two have occurred in high-leverage situations. On April 10, Grimm came on in the seventh with the bases loaded and no outs with the Cubs holding a one-run lead. A pop fly and a double play later, the Cubs’ chances of winning moved from 39% to 79%, making up for Grimm’s few poor performances in low-leverage outings, as well as another appearance (April 14) during which he allowed two inherited runners plus a run of his own en route to turning a 2-1 lead into a 4-2 deficit.

Read the rest of this entry »

As Nick noted yesterday, Eric Thames is destroying the baseball right now. Through his first 48 plate appearances, he’s hitting .405/.479/1.000, good for a ridiculous .604 wOBA and 287 wRC+, both the best in baseball. He’s homered in five consecutive games, and 11 of his 17 hits this year have gone for extra bases. Power was the one part of Thames’ game in which we were fairly confident, but he’s putting to rest any doubts about whether his thump would translate back to the big leagues.

Read the rest of this entry »

In yesterday’s ninth inning, Sam Dyson came in with a lead, and left with a loss. It’s the second time that’s happened. Another time, he came in with a tie, and left with a loss. Another time, he came in with a lead, and left with a tie. Dyson has so far pitched in six games, and he’s been charged with four of what we call Meltdowns. He has zero saves, three blown saves, three losses, and a 27.00 ERA. The Rangers are probably going to give Dyson a break from closing, not because they necessarily think he’s toast, but because at some point you just need to make a change so that Dyson doesn’t completely lose confidence.

Dyson has two scoreless appearances, both of which came in low-leverage spots. He’s been a nightmare in the four higher-leverage spots. Of Dyson’s seven worst career appearances, as ranked by Win Probability Added, four have come in the last two weeks, with Dyson owning a total -2.6 WPA. The next-worst mark in baseball right now is Steve Pearce‘s -1.2. The next-worst mark for a pitcher right now is Xavier Cedeno’s -1.1. Dyson, already, has been a win and a half worse than the next-most harmful player.

It’s natural to wonder about historical context. And I couldn’t find a real clean way to look this up, but I’ve done the best I could, using the Baseball-Reference Play Index. Looking at pitchers only, I searched for the worst starts to seasons, by WPA, through a team’s first 12 games. And assuming I did everything correctly, Dyson is the big winner, or the big loser. I couldn’t find a pitcher with a worse 12-team-game WPA than Dyson’s -2.6. The closest I found was -2.0, belonging to 2011 Matt Thornton. If this is correct, then Dyson has had the worst such start by more than half a win. It’s a weird and oddly specific stat query, but it might be helpful to know that Dyson’s troubles have indeed been historic in magnitude. Nobody else on record has struggled like this in circumstances like his.

As a certain amount of consolation: Matt Thornton that one year allowed 10 runs in his first 4.2 innings. Opponents managed a 1.061 OPS. From Thornton’s next outing onward, his ERA was 2.95, and opponents managed a paltry .594 OPS. Thornton got himself back on track, as if nothing had ever happened. The Rangers probably figure Dyson should be able to do the same. In the short-term, though, expect them to protect themselves, just in case. So much damage — so much damage — has already been done.

Logan Morrison is older and wiser, and he’s off to a strong start this season with the Tampa Bay Rays. Over 46 plate appearances (including this morning’s game), the 29-year-old first baseman is slashing a healthy .302/.348/.535, with three round trippers. Thanks in part to a grand salami and a .350 batting average with runners on base, he’s tied for the team lead in RBI, with 10.

He’s still colorful. Morrison has long been good with a quip, and while his hitting approach has matured, his personality remains engagingly offbeat. That’s good new for scribes and fans alike — everyone loves a snappy quote — and LoMo supplied several when I spoke to him over the weekend.

———

Morrison on his career thus far: “I’d say I’ve had some ups and downs. There have been some speed bumps along the road, but I’m still here. They’re trying to get me out, but I’m still here.

“I was 22 years old when I got called up. I didn’t know [crap] about anything I was doing. I thought I did. I thought I had it all figured out, and I actually did pretty well that first half-season. I carried it over into the next year, too, but then I got hurt and got off the tracks a little bit. Then I got hurt again. I had to have another surgery on the same leg.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Ender Inciarte hit a home run. Two games before that, he hit a home run. The game before that, he hit two home runs. Four. That’s four home runs. Last season, Ender Inciarte hit three home runs.

Inciarte owns plenty of firsts now for SunTrust Park. I don’t care about that as much as I care about another first. Last season, there were 146 so-called “qualified” position players. The cutoff there is 502 plate appearances. I know that seems like a silly number, but, what do I care, I didn’t make it up. Looking at that group of position players for 2016, and for 2017, Inciarte has become the first of them to achieve a higher home-run total this year. I know it’s a lot easier for Ender Inciarte to top three than it is for Mark Trumbo to top 47, but maybe Trumbo shouldn’t have set so high a bar for himself.

When something like this happens, the automatic follow-up question is, “why?” Why the power surge? I don’t want to make too much of it yet. Four homers. But look at the Sunday homer. Or look at this earlier homer:

Check out the confident bat-drops! Since when does Inciarte know enough about hitting home runs to develop such a confident bat-drop?

Two times, Ender Inciarte has looked like a power hitter, so at the very least, this is something to keep your eye on moving forward. Inciarte doesn’t have a history of hitting for power. He’s got 17 career dingers to his name, to go with a .099 ISO. In this year’s tiny sample, Inciarte hasn’t cut down on his grounders. He has pulled the ball more, and he has swung more often, with less contact. The samples are so small I’m almost embarrassed to even be analyzing them, but let’s face it — if I didn’t look at the numbers, you were just going to click through and look at the same numbers. I’m saving you time. Maybe Ender Inciarte is up to something? Maybe he’s not, and he’s just made an unusual amount of great contact lately. But it’s easy to let your imagination get the best of you, given that Inciarte already runs and fields so damned well. Baseball’s so weird Inciarte might as well go deep 40 times.

Time will tell how much Inciarte will accomplish at the plate. Already, he’s accomplished one thing, thanks to having accomplished four things: He’s become the first qualified hitter from 2016 to reach a higher home-run total in 2017. Your turn, Jose Iglesias.

For the Mariners, pitching-wise, 2017 has already been a mixed bag. Drew Smyly showed some extra arm strength in the WBC, but then almost immediately afterward, he experienced arm discomfort that sent him to the disabled list. Yovani Gallardo has shown better stuff, but not better results. Hisashi Iwakuma has shown far worse stuff, and far worse results. Felix Hernandez, though, has gotten himself back to throwing consistent strikes. And then there’s James Paxton. Many have focused on whether Felix would be able to bounce back, but it’s Paxton who’s been the best and most exciting starter for a while.

Last Saturday, against the Rangers, Paxton spun eight frames of shutout baseball, getting all the way up to 114 pitches. Some shutout efforts come as the result of exceptional defense or exceptional fortune, but Paxton threw strike after strike, whiffing nine of 26 opponents. He looked every bit like a rotation ace, and although it can take some time before that label is truly earned, Paxton is making a charge for it. In the early going, he’s made three starts. He’s allowed a run in none of them.

Read the rest of this entry »

We never really know what to expect when a player comes to Major League Baseball from a foreign league. The rules of the game are mostly identical over there, of course, but the competition level is different. It’s a completely different set of hitters and pitchers in a completely different set of parks. Even for truly exceptional talents, there’s no real telling how a player’s skills will translate precisely from league to league. The calculus gets even more interesting when it involves a player who started here, faltered, went elsewhere, and thrived.

April is a time of guessing and extrapolating and of the occasional hot take. We like to draw conclusions when we perhaps shouldn’t. That’s half of the fun of April baseball. And Eric Thames is one of the cool new things happening in baseball right now. Because, as we’ve been reminded, this man can hit some dingers. He just finished hitting five in one series against the Reds.

Now, the Reds play in a tiny little stadium, and they don’t have the best pitching in the world. If Ryan Braun had been the one to do this, it would be a cool little footnote, because we expect guys like Braun to stomp on subpar pitching in tiny ballparks. If Jett Bandy had done this, I’d assure you that Jett Bandy is, in fact, a real person, and that this is an aberration.

Thames is a different matter. This is Eric Thames, who left American organized ball and rather quickly became a league-wide sensation in Korea. This is Eric Thames, who got big, grew a mighty beard, donned what looks like cybernetic robot armor on his right arm, and promptly started hitting massive bombs. Thames took on a nearly mythic quality for a few years, watched from afar by those who still remembered his name and who pay attention to foreign leagues. We got our wish, and he’s back. We get to see if a man who couldn’t cut it in his first try can succeed after dominating a foreign circuit. So far, he’s doing quite well.

It’s probably too early to declare the Thames experiment a success. It’s April 17th, after all. The Brewers have played 13 games, and Thames now has just 44 plate appearances under his belt. He’s already created 1 WAR of value, and that translates to about $8 million of value, but he could just as easily create negative value in the coming weeks as a scouting report starts to form. Baseball is, of course, also not played in terms of cost-effectiveness and surplus value. Thames wants to succeed for Thames, not to make David Stearns look smart. He’s still got a long road to go.

In short, we can’t tell anything for certain from this collection of data. There’s simply not enough here. But consider this, because it is the height of April fun: the two highest single-season ISO marks of all time belong, rather predictably, to Barry Bonds and Babe Ruth. Bonds put up a staggering .536 in 2001; Ruth, a much-lower-but-still-quite-impressive .473 in 1920.

Eric Thames currently has a .553 ISO.

Read the rest of this entry »

CLEVELAND — The Indians did many things well en route to their division title and pennant in 2016. And one of those was to quiet the bat, in relative terms, of Miguel Cabrera.

Until last year, Cabrera had been Babe Ruth-like against Cleveland pitching. Really. Ruth and Cabrera — who, in 167 career games against the Indians, has hit .352 with 43 home runs — are the only two opponents to have hit .350 or better with 30 or more home runs against Cleveland pitching over the course of their respective careers.

According to Elias, Cabrera ranks fourth all-time in OPS against the Indians (1.040), following only Ruth (1.091), Ted Williams (1.078), and Edgar Martinez (1.050). That’s solid company.

Last season, the Indians “limited” Cabrera to an .879 OPS — which, in context, is a great achievement. Cleveland also won 14 of 18 games against Detroit in the season series. The improvement as a staff against Cabrera didn’t just seem to be the result of variance, of luck. It seemed to be in part due to a change in strategy, improved tactics, when facing Cabrera.

Consider the Indians’ two- and four-seam fastball location versus Cabrera in 2015, via BaseballSavant…

Read the rest of this entry »