Back in 2014, the average baseball team scored 4.07 runs per game. That was down only a tenth of a run from the year before, which was down only a little more than a tenth of a run from the year before that, but a definite trend was emerging. An average of 4.07 was the league’s lowest mark since 1981, and there were gathering concerns that offense was being suffocated. No one really knows how low is too low, but Rob Manfred considered various ideas that might re-inject some hitting. This is why conspiracy theories persist to this day.

Rather conveniently, see, offense bounced back in 2015. It surged again in 2016, and it’s surged only more over the past five months. The average team now is up to 4.68 runs per game, which feels more familiar. The surge has been powered by a well-publicized and well-examined home-run spike, but at the end of the day, offense is offense, right?

It is, and it’s good that hitters again have a chance. The balance of power had felt like it was shifted too far. But in a certain sense, you could argue that this offensive surge is artificial. For a variety of reasons, home runs are up, and they’ve gone up right when they needed to. But offenses now are so very home-run reliant. Everything to follow is probably obvious, but I might as well explicitly lay it out. Home runs are taking over the game.

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A few days ago, the Cubs rallied to beat the Blue Jays in 10 innings. It was the 10th inning that was the most dramatic, but the Cubs had a chance to finish things off the frame before. In a tie game in the bottom of the ninth, Kris Bryant batted with two on and one out, against Ryan Tepera. It was one of the highest-leverage plate appearances for Bryant on the year, and he quickly found himself behind 0-and-2. A borderline ball call extended the at-bat, but then Tepera threw a pitch outside. The screenshot says everything you need to know about what happened next.

Kris Bryant is one of the best players in baseball, and he might well be the best player in the National League. Of that, there’s no question, and before we get any deeper, I want to try to get one simple point across. It’s probably futile, but, anyway: There’s a difference between saying a player is unclutch, and saying a player has been unclutch. The former would be a hell of a statement. The latter is easy enough to demonstrate with evidence. Clutch performance tends to be volatile; it hasn’t been shown to be a sticky attribute. It is not my belief that Kris Bryant is actually, naturally, unclutch.

But Kris Bryant has been incredibly unclutch. Historically unclutch. It’s the one place where he’s come up short. As much as I love the things he can do, the data he’s assembled is stunning.

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Nicky Delmonico demands our attention, if only for a moment.

In the midst of an all-in rebuild of the Chicago White Sox, general manager Rick Hahn has focused on acquiring high-upside, high-risk assets who could help the club in future seasons. Delmonico is not that. He was signed to a minor-league deal after being released by the Brewers in 2015, having failed to reach even Double-A.

Now, three years later, Delmonico is living a charmed life. Over his first 87 career major-league plate appearances, he owns a .315/.425/.589 slash line and .427 wOBA — a figure that’s 70% better than league average. He even hit his first home run in Fenway Park, against the club for which he grew up rooting.

Not surprisingly, there’s a lot to suggest the fun won’t continue — at least not to this degree. According to Baseball Savant, Delmonico has been nearly the most fortunate hitter in baseball this season among those who have seen at least 200 pitches. He’s recorded the fifth-highest wOBA relative to his xwOBA of the 474 players in that sample.

The outfielder possesses a pedestrian average exit velocity of 82.9 mph through his first 59 batted balls tracked by Statcast. He’s barreled just 5.1% of those balls in play, another pedestrian figure.

Nor are the underlying skills indicative of a future star. Delmonico was never rated as a top prospect (though he did rank 92nd on the stats-only KATOH top 100 list this year). Confined to the corner outfield, Delmonico has to hit just to be average.

But Delmonico — a former bat boy at the University of Tennessee, where his father coached — doesn’t need to be a star for this to be a success story. Steamer and ZiPS project him to be a league-average bat (99 wRC+) going forward this season.

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Last week, I took a look at Statcast data from 2016 and 2017 and attempted to find contact-management skills among pitchers. The basic conclusion of that study? Pitchers might well have skills to manage contact once the ball hits the bat; if they do, however, neither xwOBA nor Statcast classifications seem to reveal it. Quality of contact didn’t hold up from year to year — i.e. last year’s results on contact aren’t likely to inform much of this year’s results on contact.

In the comments section, however, one reader wondered if in-season results might create a different result. That’s what I’d like to examine in this post. Here we go.

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Last night, with a 4-3 leading heading into the 9th inning, the Rockies called on Greg Holland to shut down his former team and provide the team with a much-needed win. With the Cardinals already winning, there were now two teams breathing down their neck in the NL Wild Card race, and a big win on the road would help stem the team’s August slide.

Holland began the inning by walking Alex Gordon, who has a 51 wRC+ this year. He then gave up back to back line drives to Whit Merrifield and Lorenzo Cain, both of which were fortunately hit right at his defenders. Melky Cabrera then singled through the left side, putting the winning run on base and bringing Eric Hosmer to the plate. Hosmer did this.

The loss dropped the Rockies to 68-58, the first time they’d only been 10 games over .500 since mid-May. It was their fourth loss in a row, and their ninth loss in their last 12 games. And once again, the team surrendered a ninth inning lead because Holland doesn’t currently look like a guy you want pitching in high-leverage situations.

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Mikie Mahtook is healthy and riding his old swing to a resurgent campaign with the Detroit Tigers. Acquired from the Tampa Bay Rays in January for a PTBNL (Drew Smith), the 27-year-old outfielder is slashing a robust .288/.338/.464, with nine home runs in just 267 at-bats. Following a sluggish start that included limited playing time, he’s emerged as one of the few bright spots on what has turned into a moribund Motown ball club.

Last year was tough sledding for the Louisiana State University product. Coming off an impressive 41-game cameo with the club that drafted him 31st overall in 2011, he logged a .525 OPS over 196 plate appearance. Physical issues played a role — oblique and hand injuries were the primary bugaboos — but thanks to an offseason of healing and hard work, Mahtook is once again at full strength.

The change of scenery isn’t hurting. The Tigers are in team in transition, which means Mahtook is getting an opportunity to show what he can do. His body is giving him that opportunity, as well. Mahtook talked about his 2016 maladies, and the return of his swing, in the middle of this month.

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Mikie Mahtook: “I’m healthy. Last year I wasn’t. I hurt my oblique at the beginning of the season and it really affected my swing, which in turn affected my approach at the plate. Instead of being linear and allowing the ball to travel — staying extended and getting through the ball — I was basically cheating toward it to mask the pain in my oblique. I was going forward and everything was rotating toward left field.

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Rich Hill keeps forcing us to rethink everything.

He has us rethinking how to pitch, finding success even while employing just a fastball and curve — and frequently utilizing the latter as his primary pitch.

Has has us rethinking when it’s appropriate to give up on an arm. Perhaps never, in his case. Hill’s return to the majors — and to a three-year, $48-million deal — began in independent ball two years ago.

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Sometimes it takes a while to really hear an idea. Justin Turner told me something two and a half years ago that only recently clicked. All it took for this idiot to finally understand was an illustration of a bat path, a couple of graphs, and like 10 others players articulating a similar thought. Maybe you got it the first time. The rest of you, though, might benefit (as I did) from hearing it again: go get the ball. It’s that simple, but it’s also not that simple.

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Back in 2015, there were 643 different pitchers who threw at least 100 pitches. Out of that entire player pool, Carter Capps generated the highest whiff rate, and he had the highest whiff rate by nearly five points. Capps was as close to unhittable as any pitcher has ever been, really, and so we were fascinated, the whole lot of us. You can say you’re growing tired of strikeouts, but extremes are extremes. Capps was something else entirely. It was as if he’d been sent down from some hidden higher level.

Here in 2017, there are 604 different pitchers who have thrown at least 100 pitches. Out of that entire player pool, Carter Capps has generated the lowest whiff rate. He has a lower whiff rate than Christian Bethancourt, who wouldn’t be described as a professional pitcher. In a mop-up role last night, Capps struck out Kolten Wong. It was his first strikeout since returning to the Padres more than two weeks ago.

A lot has happened.

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Allow me to revisit something I wrote about yesterday. For the first sustained period in his major-league career, Byron Buxton has shown the ability to hit for some contact. It doesn’t mean he’s totally fixed, and he’s gone through his hot streaks before, but, with Buxton, we’re always looking for a reason to get excited. This is a new one, and in part because of Buxton doing a better job at the plate, the Twins are in wild-card position. It’s a close race, and I can practically guarantee you there’s going to be further jostling, but before the year began, we projected the Twins to be one of the worst teams in the American League. They’re poised to go to the playoffs. Outside of the mood around trade-deadline week, the year has been a fun one.

Allow me to revisit something I wrote about in May. Back then, when we were a month and a half into the season, there were promising signs up and down the Twins lineup, at least as far as plate discipline was concerned. There were suggestions of a team-wide improvement, which was sufficiently remarkable to catch my eye. The samples then were fairly small. They’re not so small anymore. Twins hitters have taken some steps. Buxton isn’t alone — something seems to be clicking, which has helped allow the Twins to get to where they are today.

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