With a 6–16 July dropping their record to 46–54, it’s increasingly clear that 2021 is not the Nationals’ year. Even with the Mets refusing to run away with the NL East, Washington is 7 1/2 games out of first place entering Wednesday and an even more daunting 11 1/2 games back in the Wild Card race, with cumulative playoff odds of 1.0%. The team appears likely to be sellers at the deadline, and short of trading Juan Soto, just about every player might be available, including ace Max Scherzer and All-Star shortstop Trea Turner — though there’s no guarantee either gets moved.

“I think if we turn into definite sellers, everything will be on the table,” said general manager Mike Rizzo on July 20 when asked about his deadline approach. At the time, the Nationals were 44–49, but Rizzo said that they were taking a dual approach, talking to teams about potential acquisitions if they escaped from their tailspin. Two wins and five losses later, it’s clear that the needle points to selling, particularly with the Nationals no longer able to look to the return of Stephen Strasburg, whom the team announced will undergo season-ending surgery to alleviate neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome. Washington is also still without Kyle Schwarber, who may not be available for another week or two as he recovers from the right hamstring strain that has sidelined him since July 3.

The most obvious prize if the Nationals are selling is Scherzer, whose seven-year, $210 million contact expires at the end of this season. Scherzer, who celebrated his 37th birthday on Tuesday, has been worth every penny and more of that deal, helping the Nationals to their first championship in 2019, winning two Cy Young awards, and making a very strong case for a spot in Cooperstown. He’s in the midst of another solid campaign, pitching to a 2.83 ERA and 3.47 FIP in 105 innings and striking out 35.1% of hitters, matching his career-high. He’s also 74 strikeouts away from becoming the 19th pitcher to reach 3,000 strikeouts, a milestone he projects to attain by the end of this season.

Trading for Scherzer isn’t as simple as just offering up a couple of quality prospects. The biggest issue is his 10-and-5 rights (at least 10 years of major league service, the last five with the same team), which allow him to reject a trade to any team. In late June, agent Scott Boras told NBC Sports that to agree to a trade, “The reality of it is it’s going to have to lead to something.” That was taken to mean a contract extension, but Boras later clarified, saying. “When players are traded, and you refer to contract amendments, it does not necessarily mean an extension. It could be any amendment that gives him a reason to exercise his rights. That’s up to the player at the time. Max and I have never discussed the subject.”

Scherzer could use his no-trade protection to direct himself toward a team, and reportedly, he’s said to prefer the West Coast. In the epic NL West race between the upstart Giants, defending champion Dodgers, and lagging but aggressive Padres, any one of those teams could view him as the difference between a division title or playing in the Wild Card game. And for as strong as each of those contenders are, the fronts of their rotations are showing some wear and tear. The Dodgers are without Clayton Kershaw, who’s working his way back from a bout of forearm inflammation that has sidelined him since early July; he threw a three-inning simulated game earlier this week. They’re also without Trevor Bauer, whose administrative leave has been extended through at least Aug. 6 as both the Pasadena Police Department and Major League Baseball conduct separate assault investigations; a longer suspension remains possible. The Padres’ rotation has a 5.60 ERA and 4.81 FIP this month, with Yu Darvish particularly struggling (7.32 ERA, 5.95 FIP). For the Giants, neither Kevin Gausman (4.87 ERA, 4.63 FIP) nor Johnny Cueto (5.57 ERA, 4.67 FIP) have fared well in July.

Those three teams are hardly alone. Via The Athletic’s Jayson Stark, at least eight others are known to be in pursuit:

These are the 8 teams known to be in on Max Scherzer, via multiple sources:

Dodgers
Giants
Padres
Red Sox
Rays
Blue Jays
Astros
Mets

Also heard Yankees checked in & were told he was unlikely to OK a trade there. Mets could be a long shot for the same reason.

— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) July 27, 2021

SNY’s Andy Martino was even more definitive regarding the Mets, reporting, “Scherzer does not want to play in New York… even if he did, the Nationals wouldn’t want to do that.”

Beyond Scherzer’s 10–5 rights is the money factor, which is both considerable and complicated. Here’s MLB Trade Rumors, with input from The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal:

The roughly $11.8MM remaining of Scherzer’s $35MM salary for 2021 is entirely deferred until 2028, so a new team wouldn’t have to pay that money out for seven years. However, Scherzer’s luxury tax number would also be around the $11.8MM mark, which is certainly a factor for teams trying to avoid a tax payment. Scherzer has another $7.5MM in signing bonus money due this September, but Rosenthal notes that this bonus payment “is solely the Nationals’ obligation.”

Right now, the Dodgers are the only team over the $210 million Competitive Balance Tax threshold, but the Red Sox, Astros, and Padres would all cross it if they acquired Scherzer without subtracting elsewhere, as would the two New York teams.

As if all of that weren’t daunting enough, Scherzer was scratched from his scheduled start on Saturday due to inflammation in his right triceps, which he believes is related to swinging a bat in the wake of his mid-June stint on the IL for groin inflammation. The good news is that he underwent an MRI last Friday, which revealed no strain or other structural damage.

As for what Scherzer could bring back in trade, two years ago Baseball America‘s Cameron Levy evaluated the previous four deadlines worth of deals (2015–18), which included the rentals of David Price (traded from the Tigers to the Blue Jays in ’15) and Darvish (traded from the Rangers to the Dodgers in ’17). Levy concluded, “As far as pitchers on expiring deals, frontline starters set to become free agents at the end of the season generally bring back one Top 100 Prospect and a top-30 player from the other team’s system.” In the Price deal, the top-ranked prospect, Daniel Norris, entered the season 18th on BA‘s list, though Matthew Boyd, 29th on the Blue Jays’ list at the outset of the season, has had more success in the majors. The Darvish return was headlined by Willie Calhoun, who was 92nd on BA‘s preseason list but vaulted to 36th the next year. The Astros’ August 31, 2017 acquisition of Justin Verlander, who wasn’t included in the study because of the different deadline and less time remaining, was headlined by Franklin Pérez, who entered the season 54th on BA’s list and climbed to 35th the next spring.

Still, it’s clear the market for Scherzer’s services is a busy one. Per MLB Network’s Jon Morosi, there’s a belief that a deal could happen as early as Wednesday night.

Sources: Max Scherzer trade talks have continued to intensify, and those close to the conversations believe a deal could be reached by late tonight. The Giants, Dodgers, and Padres are among the top suitors, but other clubs are involved. @MLBNetwork @MLB

— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) July 28, 2021

Beyond the availability of Scherzer, the biggest question regarding the Nationals is whether they’ll trade Turner. He didn’t appear to be available until MLB Network’s Peter Gammons reported on Tuesday that Nationals ownership doesn’t plan to extend the 28-year-old shortstop, who can become a free agent after the 2022 season:

Keep hearing Washington ownership isn’t going to do anything long term with Tre Turner. Talk about a market changer…

— Peter Gammons (@pgammo) July 26, 2021

The Washington Post’s Chelsea Janes reported that Turner is drawing heavy interest from teams “but would need to be presented with a total no-brainer of a deal.”

Turner is in the midst of a stellar campaign, hitting .320/.368/.519 (136 wRC+) with 18 homers and 4.2 WAR, a mark that ranks third in the league behind Fernando Tatis Jr. and Ronald Acuña Jr. Including last year’s shortened season, he’s hit .327/.378/.546 with 30 homers, 33 steals, a 145 wRC+ and 7.0 WAR in 155 games; among shortstops, only Tatis has a higher wRC+ or WAR, and only Tatis and Marcus Semien have more homers. As Javier Báez, Carlos Correa, Corey Seager, and Trevor Story look to their big free-agent paydays this winter with Francisco Lindor’s 10-year, $341 million deal as a yardstick, it’s clear that Turner is in line for a major deal. The fact that he’ll be heading into his age-30 season, though, and that injuries and bad timing have limited him to just two seasons of 100 or more games (this will be the third) during his seven-year career, probably leaves him short of a Lindor-sized haul.

While players with a year of club control remaining bring back bigger hauls than rentals, Turner fell off our Trade Value Top 50 list last year, then played his way back to Honorable Mention this year. As an impact player, he might net a couple of Top 100 prospects, perhaps with a 60 FV type in the mix, though it’s unknown if that would be enough to compel the Nationals to deal him. The chances of them doing so anyway were lowered on Tuesday, when he left their game against the Phillies after the top of the first inning because of a positive COVID-19 test. If he’s not vaccinated — manager Dave Martinez declined to comment on whether he was but noted that vaccinated players, coaches and staffers don’t get tested regularly (ahem) — he’ll miss a minimum of 10 days.

Even if the Nationals choose to hold onto Scherzer and Turner, they have several other players likely to be dealt; the possibility of bundling any of them into a package with one of the aforementioned names could create a more impressive return. Most notable among the trade candidates are pending free agents Brad Hand, Daniel Hudson, Yan Gomes, and Josh Harrison. Every contender is looking for bullpen help, and the Nationals can offer both a lefty and a righty with closing experience, which isn’t to say that they don’t come with dings. After a stellar 2020 with Cleveland, during which he led the AL with 16 saves and posted a 2.05 ERA and 1.37 FIP, Hand was solid through this season’s first half, converting 19 of 21 save chances with a 2.43 ERA (but a 3.91 FIP). After going 12 days between appearances due to the All-Star break, however, he’s been scored upon in four out of five outings, taking losses in three straight games over a six-day span and blowing three saves within a nine-day span; his ERA has risen to 3.67, his FIP to 4.40. Hudson, after a disastrous 2020 as closer (6.10 ERA, 6.29 FIP, 10-for-15 in saves), has pitched to a 2.20 ERA and 2.45 FIP in a setup role, but he missed nearly four weeks in June and July due to inflammation in his right elbow.

Gomes is currently on the IL for an oblique strain, though he’s believed to be nearing the point where he can go out on a rehab assignment. The 34-year-old backstop is hitting .266/.320/.439 (101 wRC+), though his pitch framing, which from 2013 to ’18 was 19.3 runs above average, has declined to -4.7 runs this year, his third straight below-average season. Still, he might have great appeal to a contender getting replacement-level work out of its catchers, as the Astros, Padres, and soon-to-be Guardians are. Harrison is hitting .282/.358/.406 (109 wRC+) while making 59 starts at second, 12 in left, seven at third, two in center, and one in right. After spending the first half as the team’s regular second baseman, he covered left in the final week before the All-Star break once Schwarber went down, then moved over to third when Starlin Castro was placed on administrative leave in connection with a domestic violence investigation.

As for Schwarber, whom the Nationals signed to a one-year, $10 million deal after he was non-tendered by the Cubs, the 28-year-old slugger has hit .253/.340/.570 (137 wRC+). Though he hasn’t played since July 2, his 25 homers still rank second in the NL, that after an incredible 18-game binge during which he hit 16 homers from June 12 to 29. There’s no timetable for his return, but as of July 23, he had resumed jogging and taking batting practice, with Martinez noting on July 26 that while he was making good progress, he had yet to run the bases. Thus, a team trading for Schwarber would not get an immediately available player (a situation that could actually work in its favor if it has a post-deadline roster crunch) but would have to finish overseeing his rehab. Plenty of teams could use the power boost that he would provide if healthy, even if that’s not until the second or third week of August; whoever gets him will inherit the $11.5 million mutual option and $3 million buyout in his contract.

While there are other Nationals who could be dealt, they’re less immediately enticing; Patrick Corbin and Jon Lester have both been dreadful this year, for example. Still, en route to a second straight sub-.500 season following their World Series win, the Nationals appear headed for a shakeup. We’ll soon see just how major it is.

It’s July, which means the A’s are trading to improve their bullpen. Whether it’s Jake Diekman, Mike Minor, Jeurys Familia, or any of a seemingly unending number of other moves, they always seem to find an arm they can bring in to redo their leverage roadmap and provide a little extra playoff oomph. Last night, they acquired Andrew Chafin in exchange for Greg Deichmann, Daniel Palencia, and cash, as MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand first reported.

Chafin has been downright spectacular this year. In 39.1 innings, he’s allowed only nine runs, good for a 2.06 ERA. He’s done so by limiting home runs; he’s only given up one all year, and while that’s unlikely to persist, he does plenty of things right that should continue to limit homers. He gets grounders, with a 50% groundball rate so far this year. He’s limited hard contact, too: opponents have barreled up only 5.1% of their batted balls and have hit only 32.3% of them 95 mph or harder.

Do those two things, and homers are harder to come by. Baseball Savant’s xHR, which is a descriptive estimate of home runs based on contact quality, thinks Chapin “should” have allowed only 1.1 dingers so far this year. That doesn’t mean it will keep happening — it’s based on the actual contact allowed, which is volatile — but it’s a good sign that he hasn’t given up 20 warning track blasts or anything of that nature.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series returned last month after being on hiatus due to the pandemic. Each week, we’ll hear from three pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment focuses on changeups and features a pair of big-league relievers — Connor Brogdon and Garrett Whitlock — as well as Cade Cavalli, the top pitching prospect in the Washington Nationals system.

———

Connor Brogdon, Philadelphia Phillies

“A changeup was the first off-speed pitch I ever learned. It was… shoot, I was probably eight or 10 years old. When I was growing up, you weren’t taught to throw a curveball too early in your life. Mine was just a straight circle change, basically right off the grip of my four-seam fastball.

“I had the same grip all the way through Little League, and even into high school. When I got to college, I started messing around with grips to see if I could throw it for a strike more consistently. I ended up talking to one of my teammates at Lewis Clark State College, Henry McAree, and picked his brain on some things.

“I finally settled on a grip that felt comfortable to me, then took some of his tips. One was to lay on your back and flip the ball up in the air, focusing on turning your wrist. By that, I mean physically taking a baseball, laying on the ground, or on a bed, and just flipping it up into the air, seeing the rotation of the ball and focusing on pronating your wrist to get that action — kind of that side-spin action you want to get. Read the rest of this entry »

For the full introduction to the Replacement-Level Killers series, follow the link above. While still focusing upon teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — this year I have incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a closer look.

As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly when taken in the context of the rest of their roster. As with some of the previous entries in this series, a few of these situations include midseason turnarounds where returns to normalcy are camouflaged by early-season struggles; one problem spot, that of the Rays’ designated hitters, was shored up in impressive fashion with Thursday night’s acquisition of Nelson Cruz from the Twins. As with previous entries in this series, won-loss records and Playoff Odds are through yesterday (July 22, in this case), but statistics through the day before (July 21).

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re about a week away from the trade deadline, and so far, the stage has been a little quiet. So for a little mid-week action, we need to create our own little mise-en-scène, an activity I try to do around this time every year. These are not predictions of moves that will happen, but an exercise that seeks to make fair trades that benefit both the buying contenders and the selling also-rans. In the best-case scenario, we get some fun discussions of what things are possible.

The Oakland Athletics acquire SS Trevor Story from the Colorado Rockies for OF Brayan Buelvas, C Drew Millas, and 1B Greg Deichmann

I’m starting off with a trade that I don’t think either team would do. For Rockies fans, there may be some disappointment that Story doesn’t fetch a big-name prospect. I don’t think that kind of return is suitable at this point; that boat sailed last winter. And the other team isn’t trading for Story, but for two months of Story having a distinct down year.

The Rockies have offensive problems, but given the size of the outfield, I think that a raw talent with defensive upside like Buelvas has a lot of value in Coors, something they’ve been without quite often. While some would think of Nick Allen going in a trade like this, at this point, he’s too good to trade for a rental. Colorado likes defensive-minded catchers, so Millas makes sense here (and isn’t 32 like the team’s usual backstop of choice).

The A’s would likely balk because of money. Sorry Oakland, there aren’t enough (or good enough) prospects going to Colorado to include Elvis Andrus to “even up” the money involved. Story’s not really that expensive, but he’s still too costly for the A’s to make it up by either releasing minor leaguers or making them into a roguish band of lovable Dickensian pickpockets. Read the rest of this entry »

Major League Baseball’s sticky stuff crackdown is working. Since the June 3 warning that increased enforcement of the foreign substance rule was coming, spin rates have fallen league-wide. The league-average spin-to-velocity ratio on four-seam fastballs, which sat comfortably above 24.5 rpm/mph for the entirety of the 2020 season and the beginning of the ’21 season, has fallen to under 24 rpm/mph for the first time since the beginning of ’19. This is what that enormous drop looks like visually:

The crackdown has had plenty of consequences, all of which have theoretically had a significant impact on the game. I touched a little bit on one of these outcomes — whether it was fair to ask pitchers to alter their stuff dramatically in the middle of a season — in a July 2 article on Garrett Richards, who claimed that he needed to try “to figure out how to pitch again” post-enforcement. But there has been one outstanding question all along: How will this impact offense? In a year that started with some of the lowest batting averages in baseball history and with run scoring heavily concentrated in home runs, that was of the utmost importance in the minds of baseball-followers, including those who work for the league and for teams. Cubs president Jed Hoyer, for example, called the impact of the sticky substance enforcement “a huge variable” in determining which players Chicago could target at the July 30 trade deadline.

In an article leading up to the changes in enforcement, I covered the potential impact the crackdown would have on offense with a focus on the effect of spin rates on batter performance. The trend was clear: Batters hit much better on four-seam fastballs with less velocity-adjusted spin, and in a world in which fewer pitches are thrown with elite spin, they should have an easier time at the plate. One executive even told Stephanie Apstein and Alex Prewitt of Sports Illustrated that he thought better enforcement of Rule 6.02(c) could actually have an outsized impact on reviving offense around the league, potentially lessening the pressure on baseball to institute rule changes to create more balls in play, higher batting averages, and more non-homer scoring overall. “I think people would be absolutely shocked if they actually enforced this, how much you’ll start to normalize things without rule changes,” they said. Read the rest of this entry »

For the full introduction to the Replacement-Level Killers series, follow the link above. While still focusing upon teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — this year I have incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a look.

As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly when taken in the context of the rest of their roster. I don’t expect every team to go out and track down an upgrade before the July 30 deadline, and in this two-position batch in particular, I don’t get the sense that any of these teams have these positions atop their shopping lists. With catchers in particular, framing and the less-quantifiable aspects of knowing a pitching staff make it easier for teams to talk themselves out of changing things up unless an injury situation has compromised their depth.

Note that all individual stats in this article are through July 18, but the won-loss records and Playoff Odds include games of July 19. Read the rest of this entry »

In a race for a playoff spot, every edge matters. Yet all too often, for reasons that extend beyond a player’s statistics, managers and general managers fail to make the moves that could improve their teams, allowing subpar production to fester at the risk of smothering a club’s postseason hopes. In Baseball Prospectus’ 2007 book It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over, I compiled a historical All-Star squad of ignominy, identifying players at each position whose performances had dragged their teams down in tight races: the Replacement Level Killers. I’ve revisited the concept numerous times at multiple outlets and have presented it at FanGraphs in an expanded format since 2018.

When it comes to defining replacement level play, we needn’t be slaves to exactitude. Any team that’s gotten less than 0.6 WAR from a position to this point — prorating to 1.0 over a full season — might be considered fair game. Sometimes, acceptable or even above-average defense (which may depend upon which metric one uses) coupled with total ineptitude on offense is enough to flag a team. Sometimes a team may be well ahead of replacement level but has lost a key contributor due to injury; sometimes the reverse is true, but the team hasn’t yet climbed above that first-cut threshold. As with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of hardcore pornography, I know replacement level when I see it.

For this series, I’ll go around the diamond, pointing out the most egregious examples of potential Killers at each position among contenders, which I’ll define as teams who are above .500 or have playoff odds of at least 10.0%. That definition covers 17 teams (sorry Braves, Cubs, Cardinals, and Nationals, but you’ll have to do this without my help). If one of the aforementioned fringe teams gets their record or odds above the threshold this week, I’ll do an additional Very Special installment at the end. And while I may mention potential trade targets, I’m less focused on these teams’ solutions than I am the problems, because hey, human nature.

This first installment will cover first basemen. All statistics within this piece are through Saturday, July 17. Read the rest of this entry »

On the strength of his monster home run and an additional RBI groundout, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. took home MVP honors from the All-Star Game at Coors Field on Tuesday night. In doing so, the 22-year-old slugger — who also nearly decapitated National League starter Max Scherzer with his hardest-hit ball of the evening — became the youngest player ever to win that award. The performance was just the latest chapter of Guerrero’s breakout, as he lives up to the high expectations set by his pedigree and his precocious development.

If for some reason you haven’t seen his highlights from Tuesday night, here’s Guerrero’s first-inning plate appearance, where his 111.1 mph rocket back through the box produced such a close call that Guerrero felt obliged to apologize to Scherzer, who remarked after the game, “I’m alive… that’s the success story… I’m just grateful I still have a blue eye and a brown eye”:

Vlad Guerrero Jr. almost takes Max Scherzer’s head off and then apologizes ? pic.twitter.com/oTv06MiY5o

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) July 14, 2021

And here’s Guerrero’s third-inning homer off Corbin Burnes:

The 468-footer was the longest All-Star Game homer of the Statcast era, surpassing Kris Bryant’s 2016 shot by a good 58 feet. With it, Guerrero became the second-youngest player to go yard in an All-Star Game, after Johnny Bench did so in 1969 at the age of 21 years and 228 days. In winning MVP honors, Guerrero, at 22 years and 119 days, surpassed Ken Griffey Jr., who was 117 days older when he won in 1992. Meanwhile, Guerrero and dad Vlad joined the Griffeys and Bobby and Barry Bonds as the only father/son combinations to homer in the All-Star Game.

With the single-game spotlight and honors behind him, Guerrero is now angling to become the youngest position player to win a regular season MVP award; he won’t surpass pitcher Vida Blue, who was 22 years and 64 days old on the final day of the 1971 season, but would surpass Bench, who was 22 years and 298 days on the final day of the ’70 season. He and his father, the AL MVP in 2004, would be the first pair to win the award. Of course, the competition for Guerrero to win is daunting given the ongoing tour de force of Shohei Ohtani. A month ago, Guerrero led the AL in all three Triple Crown categories and WAR, kindling a debate over the merits of that combination relative to Ohtani’s pitching. At that point, Dan Szymborski estimated Vladito’s chances of winning the Triple Crown at 19.1%, but the five-homer lead he held over Ohtani has become a five-homer lead for Ohtani (33-28) thanks to the Angels’ superstar’s recent flurry. Guerrero’s .332 batting average and 73 RBI both still leads the AL, as does his .439 on-base percentage, 189 wRC+, and 4.6 position player WAR, though Ohtani has taken over the combined WAR lead at 5.5, and has a slugging percentage 40 points higher than Guerrero’s .658.

Regardless of whether he’s first or second in any category, Guerrero has taken a massive leap forward from his performances in 2019 and ’20, which were solid enough for a 20- or 21-year-old, but hardly All-Star caliber. After batting .272/.339/.433 (105 wRC+) in 2019, he showed more power last year, hitting .262/.329/.462 (112 wRC+); his ISO jumped by 37 points, and his home run rate rose from 2.9% to 3.7%, a gain of about 28%.

Guerrero is showing even greater in-game power this year — his display in the 2019 Home Run Derby provided more evidence of raw power than anyone this side of Iggy and the Stooges — as you can see from the basic numbers, but before discussing that, it’s worth acknowledging his improved plate discipline. He’s cut his rate of swinging at pitches outside the strike zone from 31.6% as a rookie to 27.4% last year and then 25.3% this year; among qualifiers, he’s climbed from the 46th percentile to the 70th and now the 83rd. As a result, he’s posted the majors’ fifth-largest gain in walk rate from 2020 to ’21, jumping 5.7 percentage points to 13.9%; only Starling Marte (+7.9%,), Joey Gallo (+7.7%), Carlos Correa (5.9%), and Andrew McCutchen (+5.8%) have gained more. While Guerrero is striking out more as well (up two points to 17.6%), he’s still in the 70th percentile in that category.

The biggest difference in his performance relative to 2020, though, is how much harder he’s hitting the ball:

Guerrero’s exit velocity already ranked in the 93rd percentile last year, but he was hitting grounders about twice as often as fly balls. He still hits more grounders than flies, but his 9.8 percentage point drop in groundball rate is the majors’ fourth-largest behind Jonathan Villar (-14.0%), Kyle Schwarber (-10.6%), and Kevin Pillar (-9.9%). He’s nearly doubled his average launch angle (from 4.6 degrees to 8.4), and with it, has nearly doubled his barrel rate while increasing his already-high hard-hit rate. A picture is worth a thousand words:

Guerrero has improved in every Statcast-tracked category here — even the ones that pertain to his speed and defense, the evidence of the better conditioning and work he’s put into learning a new(ish) position — except for maximum exit velocity, where he already ranked in the 99th percentile. In case you were worried that he was stagnating, he has actually shown improvement there nonetheless, from last year’s 116.1 mph to 117.4 (for what it’s worth, he topped both with a 118.9 mph single in 2019). Fittingly, where last year’s hardest-hit ball was a lineout to second base, this year’s was a home run off the Rays’ Ryan Yarbrough, the first of the two he hit on May 24 at the team’s temporary Dunedin home:

That first one had a projected distance of 461 feet, four short of his regular season career long, set just eight days earlier off the Phillies’ Brandon Kintzler, also in Dunedin:

Guerrero’s All-Star Game homer topped that, albeit with an assist from Coors Field’s altitude (which added 32 feet, according to Weather Applied Metrics’ Ken Arneson) if not the wind (which took away 10).

On the subject of harnessing his incredible bat speed towards improving his ability to get the ball in the air, in April our own Carmen Ciardiello wrote about the possibility of Guerrero improving what he called his attack angle to better launch the ball. Using an approximation based upon the top 5% of each player’s hardest-hit batted balls, Ciardiello compared Guerrero to the other mighty sluggers with similar maximum exit velocities and estimated his attack angle at 8.71 degrees. Only Giancarlo Stanton (8.74 degrees) had one nearly as flat, while Ronald Acuña Jr. had the highest angle at 17.86 degrees, followed by Trout at 16.94. In my attempt to track this as a potential explanation for Guerrerro’s year-to-year improvement, I calculated that based upon his top 5% of hard-hit balls, his attack angle has actually dipped to an average of 6.69 degrees; five of his 13 hardest-hit balls thus far have negative launch angles, meaning that they were hit on the ground, while only four are double-digit positives, all of them homers. I’ll leave it to Ciardello for further interpretation of those results.

Looking at Guerrero’s year-to-year improvement by pitch type what quickly becomes apparent is that he’s now a serial murderer of four-seam fastballs; he’s gone from a .254 AVG, .465 SLG, and .356 wOBA against them last year to a .386 AVG, .830 SLG, and .538 wOBA. Among players with at least 100 PA ending in four-seamers, only Juan Soto has a higher average, while those other two figures are tops. Guerrero’s 18 runs above average against four-seamers is the highest of any player against any pitch, and represents a full 18-run gain relative to last year as well. His other big improvements are against sliders, where he’s gained eight runs (from +1 to +9) primarily by improving from .576 SLG to .633, and sinkers, where he’s gained six runs (from +3 to +9) primarily by improving from .485 SLG to .614.

Using 200-PA cutoffs for both last year and this one, Guerrero owns the majors’ biggest gains in both slugging percentage and wRC+. Here’s the top 15 for the former:

And here’s the latter:

I should point out that my somewhat arbitrary choice of 200 PA as a cutoff for both seasons — made in part because I wanted batting title qualifiers for 2020, but then 186 PA just looked weird — meant leaving Ohtani off the tables given that he had just 175 PA last year. His 332-point gain in slugging percentage (from .366 to .698) and 98-point gain in wRC+ (from 82 to 180) dwarf the gains of Guerrero and the rest, so if you want to imagine a version of the tables with him on top, you’re free to do so.

So long as we’re talking improvements, it’s worth noting Guerrero’s progress on the defensive side. After a rough introduction to the majors at third base in 2019 (-9.4 UZR, -3 DRS, and -19 OAA in just 824 innings), he split last season between first base (-1.8 UZR, -4 DRS, -2 OAA in 324 innings) and DH. Particularly given his weight and conditioning issues — he showed up to summer camp somewhere in the vicinity of 285 pounds — his future appeared to tilt towards the latter slot, limiting his ceiling. After apologizing to his teammates for showing up out of shape last summer, he lost 42 pounds this past winter and appears to have kept the weight off. His mobility and flexibility have improved and so have his defensive numbers, which are now within hailing distance of average (-0.5 UZR, -2 DRS, and 0 OAA in 576.2 innings).

Vladdy's split stats: Good
Vladdy's splits: Also good ? pic.twitter.com/KzX2N8YFNC

— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) April 14, 2021

Even for a player who was so heavily touted as a prospect — recall that he was the consensus number one heading into 2019 — Guerrero has come a long way in a short time, and what he’s doing at such a young age puts him alongside the likes of Soto and Fernando Tatis Jr., not to mention some of the game’s other recent prodigies:

Right now, Guerrero has the highest slugging percentage and wRC+ of any of the bunch, though preserving that distinction is no small challenge given the amount of season remaining. Our rest-of-season projections forecast him to add another 2.3 WAR, which would tie him with Seager for fifth on the list. At the rate he’s going, it would hardly be a surprise if he climbs higher.

Joey Gallo didn’t win in his long-anticipated Home Run Derby debut — he didn’t even make it out of the first round or hit a single 500-foot drive at Coors Field on Monday night — but he earned his trip to Denver’s All-Star festivities nonetheless. After an injury-marred 2019 and a dismal follow-up in the pandemic-shortened season, the 27-year-old slugger is putting together his best and most complete campaign.

Gallo’s second All-Star appearance was less eventful than his first. He replaced starter Aaron Judge in the bottom of the fifth inning of Tuesday night’s game, but didn’t get to bat until the eighth, when he drew a walk against Mark Melancon in his only plate appearance. In his All-Star debut two years ago, he had entered in the sixth inning, and swatted a solo homer off Will Smith in his lone plate appearance in the seventh. That run, which at the time extended the American League’s lead to 4-1, proved to be the difference-maker in the Junior Circuit’s 4-3 win.

In between those two appearances, Gallo’s had more downs than ups, but he’s worked hard to earn his way back. Having slugged 81 homers while batting a lopsided but respectable .208/.322/.516 (113 wRC+) in 2017-18, he was in the midst of a breakout campaign when the ’19 All-Star game rolled around, hitting an eye-opening .275/.417/.643 (162 wRC+) with 20 home runs in 61 first-half games. An oblique strain that sidelined him for over three weeks in June left him 19 plate appearances shy of qualifying for the batting title, but at that point, his slugging percentage and wRC+ trailed only Mike Trout (by three points and 20 points, respectively). Alas, Gallo played just 10 games in the second half before being diagnosed with a fractured hamate in his right hand. He underwent surgery, and while he expected to be out only about four weeks, continued pain while swinging prevented him from returning at all. Read the rest of this entry »