If you sort the wRC+ leaderboard, you find Mike Trout sandwiched in between Eugenio Suarez and Steven Souza Jr. That’s the bad way to spin it. The good way to spin it is that Trout is in sixth with a wRC+ of 210, and that would also easily be the best mark of his career. I don’t have any good reason to write this right now, except that it’s Mike Trout, so, hey, why not? Does Trout have anything going on underneath the surface?

As always, sure. Here’s a home run from last Friday:

As Daren Willman pointed out on Twitter, that’s the most-outside pitch Trout has ever taken deep. This is a plot of his career home runs:

This is the location of that very pitch:

There’s more in here. One thing you might notice is that that’s a first-pitch home run. Trout has gradually been getting more aggressive. He used to swing at the first pitch about 10% of the time. Last year, he jumped to 17%, and so far this year, he’s at 26%. Just in terms of overall swing rate, Trout right now is at 45%, which would be a career high, easily. He has his highest-ever swing rate at would-be strikes, and his chase rate is the highest it’s been since he first came up in 2011. Trout isn’t an aggressive hitter, but he’s looking like a more aggressive hitter, by Mike Trout standards. Something to watch over the coming weeks and months.

Continuing on, that pitch there also would’ve been a ball. Trout swung, and hit it, and hit it hard. This is presumably just a weird statistical fluke, but Trout’s in-zone contact rate is just under 83%, and his out-of-zone contact rate is just over 81%. The two rates are separated by about one percentage point. His career separation is 18 percentage points. Trout’s been hitting a lot of would-be balls. That doesn’t seem good, but, again, 210 wRC+. Nothing to complain about here. Just an observation.

And, at last, that first-pitch homer went to right-center field. Trout’s been less about pulling the ball in 2017. I calculated the difference between pull rate and opposite-field rate. Last season, among qualified hitters, Trout ranked in the 44th percentile. This season, he ranks in the 14th percentile. It’s quite exaggerated when you look at Trout’s ground balls, alone — in terms of pulling grounders, last year, Trout ranked in the 91st percentile. So far this year, he ranks in the 7th percentile. The 7th! Pulled ground balls are basically death. Trout hasn’t been pulling so many of them, and he’s still ultra-dangerous when the ball is batted back. His approach for the first few weeks has focused on using the whole field, and although everything is always cyclical, this is at the very least a helpful reminder that Mike Trout can be successful in countless different ways.

So, early Trout: more aggressive, with more contact out of the zone, and more balls hit the other way. His numbers are fantastic. That last part — that’s the part that doesn’t change.

Statcast! Who doesn’t love playing with Statcast? Baseball Savant makes it all possible, so let’s take a quick look at a 2017 vs. 2016 comparison. I looked at every hitter with at least 30 batted balls in each of the last two seasons. Here’s a plot of all of their changes in average exit velocity and average launch angle. One data point is highlighted.

The point I highlighted belongs to Taylor Motter. There’s a pretty great chance you’ve never even heard of Taylor Motter. He was a quiet acquisition, and he might not even be playing in the majors were it not for health issues with Shawn O’Malley and Jean Segura. But there’s Motter, a utility type with a 179 wRC+. Last season, in exit velocity, he ranked in the 25th percentile, by names like Eduardo Escobar and Chris Stewart. So far this season, he ranks in the 97th percentile. In fact, here’s the whole top 10!

1. Miguel Sano
2. Joey Gallo
3. Miguel Cabrera
4. Nick Castellanos
5. Khris Davis
6. Freddie Freeman
7. Taylor Motter
8. Yandy Diaz
9. Manny Machado
10. Aaron Judge

Very strong, dangerous hitters. Also Yandy Diaz and Taylor Motter. Diaz is interesting, but he’s also hit a bunch of grounders. Motter’s been elevating, and when you look at that plot, his launch angle is up four degrees, and his exit velocity is up nine ticks. Sano has the next-biggest exit-velocity gain, at +6.7. Then it’s Castellanos, at +5.3. No one else has reached +4. Obviously, the samples are small, too small to arrive at certain conclusions, but Motter might’ve seen this as his best shot at building a career. Here he is, and with the Mariners having dropped Leonys Martin yesterday, Motter could stick around, playing all over semi-regularly.

If you watch Taylor Motter go deep, he looks like a home-run hitter. Like, everything about this seems perfectly natural.

Yet here’s the real trick. What’s driving Motter’s early success? Why couldn’t he do this in a brief stint last season? Motter is trying to hit literally everything to left field. He’s trying to make the most of the bat speed he has.

Nobody has a higher pull rate than Motter’s 72%. Only Trevor Plouffe has a lower opposite-field rate than Motter’s 5%. Motter’s been hunting pitches he can elevate and pull, and he’s gotten enough of them to accomplish what he’s accomplished. If you’re curious, since 2002, the highest single-season pull rate for a qualified hitter has been 64%, by 2003 Tony Batista. If you drop the minimum to 250 plate appearances, then the highest pull rate is 66%, by 2002 Greg Vaughn. Pull hitters like Vaughn, Batista, Marcus Thames, and Gary Sheffield don’t really work for me as potential Motter comps.

No, I think there’s an obvious one, here. There’s a decent chance Motter will be exposed over a greater period of time. It might even be a good chance. Motter, after all, struggled just last season. But if he holds to this approach, and if it works for him, you could see him as someone in the Brian Dozier mold. Dozier became a quality everyday player when he started to pull the ball aggressively in the air. Pitchers haven’t been able to solve him yet, after a handful of years. Given a good-enough eye and quick-enough hands, a hitter can survive like this, essentially eliminating half of the field. It’s no way to be *great*, but one can be good. Or even just useful.

Taylor Motter isn’t Brian Dozier, officially. But he’s channeled Dozier in getting to this point, where he’s currently the most-searched player on FanGraphs.com. Sometimes baseball makes me write the weirdest damn sentences.

Slowly but surely, we’re getting into the fun part of the season. I mean, it’s all fun, even parts of spring training, but now that we’re approaching the end of April, elements are starting to shake out. Certain teams have had legitimately great starts, and certain other teams are in significant trouble. Sample sizes everywhere remain small, but they’re growing large enough that we can begin to seriously wonder about changed performances. What’s more fun than a player who’s changed his own true talent? After the first few games, we can throw any number of names against the wall. By now, there’s just a little more clarity.

In this post, I call for your help. It’s a poll post! Below, you will find the names of five hitters who have gotten off to extraordinary starts. They’re five of the more interesting hitters in the game today. Every player gets a short description, and a poll. I want to know how good you think they actually are. Just for the few of you who might like to complain: Obviously, I’ve not included every interesting hitter off to a promising start. There’s no Freddie Freeman or Ryan Zimmerman or Aaron Hicks. I’ve chosen these five because these are the five I have chosen. Participate or don’t. (Please participate.)

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On several occasions in my youth, in the early 1990s, my dad took me to the chain-link perimeter of the construction site of what was then called the Gateway Project. There, we monitored the progress of what was to become Progressive Field. Within what had been a warehouse and market district in downtown Cleveland, we saw a steel skeleton rise and concrete poured. And on April 2, 1994, it was awe-inspiring as a 14-year-old to walk into the new park for its first game, an exhibition-game christening against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Progressive Field was the second of the retro-style ballparks to open, following Oriole Park at Camden Yards. The ballpark, originally named Jacobs Field, hosted its first regular-season game on April 4, 1994. The Ballpark in Arlington became the third retro park to open, a week later, on April 11, 1994.

Upon entering the stadium that day some 23 years ago, it was clear that the overall experience would be markedly superior to that of the multi-purpose Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Jacobs Field had charm, including varying wall heights, asymmetrical dimensions, and a backdrop of downtown high rises. It also had modern amenities, wider concourses, and no obstructed views.

As soon as Camden Yards opened, most existing stadiums became immediately obsolete. Since 1992, 21 teams have opened new stadiums. One club, the Atlanta Braves, is now on their second — SunTrust Park, which opened last week. (Let the record show that Bartolo Colon’s major-league career outlasted Turner Field.)

This is not a post about the morality or utility of many of these parks having been funded, at least in part, by tax dollars. That’s a subject for another post, another day. This post is about design and location. There’s no doubt SunTrust will offer a more enjoyable experience than that of Turner Field, which had little character, was planted in a sub-optimal location, and was essentially a leftover of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. But, like nearly every new ballpark that has been constructed, SunTrust is, to me, flawed in significant ways.

One of the perks of a beat writer, in which capacity I served for four years while covering the Pirates for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, is travel. As a beat writer, you’re able to see much of the country and many of its major-league parks. I haven’t visited every major-league park, but I’ve been to the majority. And nearly every new park shares the same design issues. First, too many seats are too far removed from the playing surface. Second, too many parks aren’t situated where they should be — and that is, preferably, not just in a city but in a neighborhood. (From a total experience before, during, and after games, Wrigley Field stands alone in the National League.)

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This is a guest post from Jen Mac Ramos, assistant general manager of the Sonoma Stompers. You can find Jen on Twitter.

The MLB Urban Youth Academy in Compton, California, is tucked away in a small corner of the Compton campus of El Camino Community College. Early on a Friday, the field is being prepared for a day-and-a-half’s worth of baseball games and instruction. As the buses roll up to the field, out pour about 100 young girls under the age of 16 and their coaches, many of whom are members of Team USA’s women’s national baseball team. Their excitement mounts as they view for the first time their home for the next two days, where their love for the game will be on full display

This is the Trailblazer Series, the first-of-its-kind girls baseball tournament in the United States, showcasing young female ballplayers from the States, D.C., and Canada. Featuring guest speakers such as Kim Ng, the senior vice president of baseball operations for Major League Baseball and the highest ranking Asian-American woman baseball executive, the tournament is meant to inspire young girls to pursue their dreams of playing baseball and give them the confidence to achieve other goals.

I drove down from Northern California’s Wine Country as the Sonoma Stompers’ representative at the tournament. The Stompers have made waves before, having added the first professional openly gay baseball player, Sean Conroy, to its roster in 2015 and three women — Anna Kimbrell, Stacy Piagno, and Kelsie Whitmore — to the team in 2016. (Kimbrell and Piagno, the latter of whom will be returning to the Stompers in 2017, also served as coaches at the Trailblazer Series.)

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Chase Whitley grew up playing good old country hardball in Alabama. More specifically, he played it in rural Alabama. The Tampa Bay Rays right-hander hails from Ranburne, which he affectionately described as “a small town with zero stoplights.” Fewer than 500 people call it home, so it’s no wonder he knows “literally every person there.”

In Hoosiers-like fashion, the close-knit community has captured sports glory.

“Growing up, my teams consisted of a bunch of close friends,” related Whitley. “There were 13 of us, and we played together from Little League and Dixie Youth all the way through high school. My junior year, we won the state championship.”

Whitley also played on some “really good” basketball teams, and he spent time on the gridiron as well. Kids in Ranburne are expected to participate in multiple sports because, well, it’s what you do in that neck of the woods. As for their athletic accomplishments, Whitley views them mostly as a byproduct of “buddies who hang out and play some pretty good ball.”

That’s when they’re not working. Growing up where they did, you earn your keep. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not a shock that Madison Bumgarner has never been on the disabled list before now. He’s a big horse of a man, made purely of muscle and tree sap. The only thing that’s prevented him from being sidelined is Bruce Bochy not letting him throw 400 innings in a year and, apparently, that he’s been steady on a dirt bike until now.

Bumgarner is on the DL after a dirt bike accident. He has bruised ribs and a Grade One or Two Strain of his shoulder AC joint. #SFGiants

— Henry Schulman BLUE CHECK MARK (@hankschulman) April 21, 2017

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I’m an idiot, and looked up where the All-Star Game was last year. The All-Star Game this year is in Miami. So, yes, corrections below.

The story of the first few weeks of this season has almost certainly been the arrival of Eric Thames, who has returned from Korea to look like one of the game’s best power hitters. While Thames won’t keep hitting like Babe Ruth in his prime, unless there’s some hidden exploitable flaw that no one has found yet, he’s probably going to be a pretty decent hitter for the Brewers for the next few months.

And if he does keep hitting even near what the projections think he’ll be going forward, it’s going to be nearly impossible to fill out the first base portion of the National League All-Star ballot. Thames has simply made the most crowded position in baseball even more so.

Just for fun, let’s look at the top 15 hitters by our rest-of-season wOBA projections from the combined ZIPS/Steamer forecasts. I’ll highlight the NL first baseman in this table.

By our forecasts, five of the 13 best hitters in baseball over the remainder of the season play first base in the National League. That doesn’t even account for what has already happened, with Thames and Freeman putting themselves in very strong positions to have All-Star numbers by the break. And even with the DH now being used in every All-Star Game, the reality is that there’s really only room to carry four first baseman on the roster.

And we haven’t even mentioned that, of these five players, there are probably only going to be three spots available, because Wil Myers is very likely to be the Padres best representative, and as their best player, is nearly guaranteed a spot in the game given that the contest is in his home park. If we assume Myers is going to get one spot, that leaves three chances for some combination of Freeman, Thames, Votto, Rizzo, and Goldschmidt. Sorry Brandon Belt, but we’re going to pretend you don’t exist, and I hope you don’t have any All-Star incentives in your contract.

Rizzo is probably the most likely bet to win the fan’s vote as the starter, given the Cubs current popularity and the fact that their fans elected their entire starting infield last year. Freeman seems like something close to a lock, given his start and the likelihood that the Braves won’t have a lot of other compelling options to pick from. So that leaves Thames, Votto, and Goldschmidt probably fighting over one spot.

Yeah. All-Star rosters aren’t a thing that really matter, but I can’t remember a time where some obviously great players were effectively guaranteed of being shut out of the midsummer classic.

A tough thing about analyzing pitching is that it’s a moving target. You can get a decent sense of what a pitcher is like right now, and then he can completely change his approach over the next month and become a different pitcher. There’s evidence of this in the data: a pitcher’s exit velocity becomes stable relatively quickly, but then that stat’s predictability doesn’t actually improve as the sample increases. In other words, you can see what the pitcher’s got now, but what about tomorrow? Ask us then.

This is all relevant to Tyler Chatwood. You might have thought you had an idea of who he was as a pitcher — great sinker, uses his four-seamer for whiffs, and doesn’t have great secondary stuff, so it’s all about the ground balls. That’s who he was! It isn’t who he is right now, though. I had to ask him about who he is right now when I had the chance.

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