While Yu Darvish carved up the Dodgers on Monday night at Petco Park, Mookie Betts accounted for the team’s only notable gasp of offense, clubbing a third-inning solo homer that accounted for Los Angeles’ only run in six innings against the Padres’ righty, and one of their two hits. The Dodgers trailed 4-0 at the time, and were down 6-1 when Betts had another chance to make an impact. Batting with two outs and the bases loaded in the seventh against Austin Adams, Betts swung at a 2-0 slider high in the zone but managed just a routine fly ball for the third out; the Dodgers went on to lose, 6-2.

It’s been that kind of season for Betts, who has certainly had his moments here and there — his leadoff homer and double play against the Pirates on June 10, for example — but has generally been unable to sustain the type of magic that he generated in his first year as a Dodger. Acquired from the Red Sox in February 2020 and subsequently signed to a 12-year, $356 million deal, Betts helped spur the team to its first championship in 32 years with his offensive, defensive and baserunning contributions; indeed, his postseason work was a tour de force. This year, the 28-year-old right fielder has battled minor injuries and has yet to go on any kind of sustained hot streak. Read the rest of this entry »

The major league season can seem interminable at times, but July marks a pivot from a stately march into a playoff chase. There are several milestones in the month — the halfway point of the season, the All-Star break, and so on — but the rubber doesn’t really hit the road until the trade deadline. By July 31 (or, this year, July 30), teams have to decide what their plans are for the rest of the year, and often future years as well. Buy? Sell? Hedge? The hot stove can determine the course of seasons, and we’re here to help you follow it.

FanGraphs has myriad tools that can help you figure out deadline targets, potential team weaknesses, and even who should be buying and selling. Let’s take a tour of those tools, because articles about which team should trade for which reliever might feed you for a day, but generating your own lists will feed you for a lifetime — so long as you derive sustenance from knowing which relievers and players on expiring contracts will most help your squad. Read the rest of this entry »

Spencer Strider is a pitching nerd. He’s also a promising prospect putting up stellar numbers in his first professional season. Drafted in the fourth round last year out of Clemson University, the 22-year-old right-hander has a sparkling 1.50 ERA in six starts split between Low-A Augusta and High-A Rome. Moreover, he’s overpowering hitters to the tune of 14 hits allowed and 44 strikeouts in 24 innings.

Strider — No. 22 on our Atlanta Braves Top Prospects list — nerded out about his repertoire, and the evolution of his approach, prior to last night’s game.

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David Laurila: Tell me about yourself as a pitcher. How do you get guys out?

Spencer Strider: “I believe in attacking the zone and putting the game in the hitters’ hands. Whether you’re throwing 50 [mph] and can’t throw a strike, or you’re throwing 101 and spotting up like Jacob deGrom, the hitters have to deal with whatever you give them. The statistics show that’s going to work in your favor the vast majority of the time.

“I’ve also come to learn a lot about my fastball. At the end of college we were able to get more more data and metrics on it, and I understood the concept of vertical break, how spin is helpful, and everything else that’s part of the vernacular now. I’ve focused on pitching to the top half of the zone, where it’s most difficult to hit a good rising fastball. Most of my attention over the last few months has been working on a breaking ball that complements that fastball use, something with more vertical depth at a high velocity.”

Laurila: For years, pitchers tended to tell me that they pitch to contact. Now it’s more common for them to say they’re trying to miss bats. Where do you stand?

Strider: “I’m definitely trying to miss bats. That’s the best outcome. I want to give myself the best chance of being successful, and if a guy swings-and-misses, I can’t be hurt by that. If I can pitch in a way that guarantees me more swings-and-misses, that helps remove the possibility of bad outcomes. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, I took a look at the worst bunts of the season. They were all horrible! Balls were hit directly at fielders, lead runners were thrown out, and altogether the worst five bunts produced eight outs and no base advancements. Not great! But that’s only one side of the coin, and today I’d like to look at the bunts that have helped the batting team most so far this year.

You’ll notice that there aren’t any textbook sacrifice bunts on either list. That’s no knock on skilled bunters, but rather a function of the way I’m defining best and worst. Bunts, by their very nature, are hedges. They reduce volatility by definition — exchanging an out for some base advances is neither the worst nor best outcome of a given plate appearance, so a successful sacrifice bunt will inherently have a modest change in win probability relative to a play where something goes very right or very wrong.

Even so, today isn’t solely a showcase of bad defense. There’s some bad defense, but there’s also plenty of bunting for a hit. When you change the math by giving yourself a chance to reach base, bunts become far more valuable. It’s hard to greatly increase your team’s chances of winning while also making an out, so separating the sacrifice from the bunt is a prerequisite for having one of the most valuable bunts of the year.

For the most part, the plays on this list are all baseball being played at a high level. There are some defensive howlers, sure, but there’s plenty of skill here on both sides of the ball. Let’s take a look at the bunts that have helped out the most this year (through June 9), starting with an honorable mention.
Read the rest of this entry »

Vladimir Guerrero spent 16 years in the majors, hitting .318 with 449 home runs and nabbing scores of overambitious baserunners with his cannon of an arm. Just a couple years ago, he gave his induction speech in Cooperstown after breezing into the Hall of Fame on his second appearance on the ballot. For a son getting into the same profession, matching those accolades is a tall order, one of Jon Rauchian proportions. But after a so-so start to his major league career, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is having a breakout season and now threatens to do something Dad never did: win a Triple Crown.

That the younger Guerrero is quite adept at hitting a baseball shouldn’t shock anyone, though his first two stints in the majors were admittedly more middling than magical. But hype is difficult, and I suspect that if he played under a nom de guerre rather than a nom de Guerrero, people would likely have been far more patient before starting to worry about him. As I wrote about Guerrero in my preseason breakout picks:

Perhaps not the gutsiest call, but it feels to me like people have soured way too much on Vladito. A 112 wRC+ won’t win any Silver Sluggers, but we have to remember he was just 21 last season. Let’s imagine that Guerrero Jr. wasn’t part of the imperial-Vlad bloodline and was just a guy in Triple-A in 2020 (in an alternate universe where the minor league season existed). If we translate Guerrero’s actual major league performance into a Triple-A Buffalo line, ZiPS estimates that he would’ve been hitting .288/.370/.526 as a 21-year-old in the International League. Would anyone be disappointed with this line? There would be cries of Free Vlad! echoing through the streets by June. I think players like Juan Soto and Fernando Tatis Jr. have spoiled us for normal awesome prospects.

While he was one of my favorite breakout picks, I certainly can’t claim to have seen a breakout on this particular level. If we look back at the preseason projections, neither could ZiPS:

Now, he hasn’t yet completed 2021 with a wRC+ of 206, but if he did, that’s in 99th percentile territory. I’ve been working on calibrating this model since the start of the season, and projected right now, his 90th percentile wRC+ gets a bump to 163, but 206 still would have been seen as a one-in-50 shot to happen.

As of Tuesday morning, Guerrero leads the American League in batting average, home runs, and RBI, baseball’s Triple Crown components. His sterling performance has been enough for a wRC+ bump of an impressive 27 points since March in ZiPS’ estimate of his current level of ability. At this point, it’s hard to argue his ceiling has been raised; the main question is how high. In the updated projections, which combine year-to-date with the rest-of-season projections, ZiPS has Guerrero leading the league in home runs and RBI and finishing second in batting average behind Michael Brantley. Steamer has Guerrero leading in all three categories.

Even if the stats were reset to zero, Vladito’s projections have improved to the point that he’d have a fighting chance to lead in the three stats, and be in the top 10 in each.

What this doesn’t tell us is the probability that Vlad does, in fact, win the Triple Crown. For that, I used the ZiPS season simulation and projected the rest of 2021 a million times for the American League, then added to the stats already in the books, counting — by computer, not by hand, of course– how many times each player led the league in the Triple Crown categories.

Injuries have been a red flag for Brantley, but he’s been healthy enough to qualify for the batting title in three consecutive seasons after missing more than 200 games in 2016 and ’17 combined. Assuming perfect health, ZiPS would give him about a 43% chance of taking the batting title, but with him already having missed time with a hamstring injury, he has a smaller margin of error in getting the required plate appearances. ZiPS sees Vlad at the back of the top 10 in rest-of-season batting average, but he’s got a 23-point cushion over the non-Brantley candidates. Also providing an assist is that two of the bigger threats, Mike Trout and Luis Arraez, are almost certainly going to fall short of 3.1 plate appearances per game (or lose too much BA if they fall just short in PA).

ZiPS still sees Matt Olson and Giancarlo Stanton as better home run hitters, but the four-homer edge to date is enough to leave Vlad the favorite over either. The computer projects him with a 44% shot to beat his dad’s career-high of 44; it surprises me too, but Vlad Sr. never led the league (or finished second) in any Triple Crown stat. The projections give him a 28% chance to pass the 50-homer threshold.

José Abreu isn’t repeating his 2020 season, but he’s still a player who should hit for power, even in a relative down season. As importantly, Abreu hits third or fourth in a White Sox lineup that’s been surprisingly potent for a team that’s lost Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert. Nobody has more plate appearances with runners on base this season than Abreu. But the Jays are no slouches, and as with the other categories, Guerrero has the lead right now.

If you wanted to be lazy, you’d multiply Vlad’s probability of leading each category together and get 2.6%, decent odds of getting into the record books. That, of course, is something you cannot actually do since these aren’t independent variables. The hundred games of baseball that leave Guerrero with the home run title also leave him with the RBI title most of the time. Batting average isn’t as highly correlated with the others, but if Guerrero hits .340, well, many of those hits will be homers and/or drive in runners. All told, ZiPS gives him a 19.1% chance of winning the Triple Crown. Not a bad shot at something that’s been done once in the last half-century.

Leading all of baseball in the Triple Crown categories — the Triple Crown Magnifique, as I like to call it — is a trickier challenge. That one hasn’t been done since Mickey Mantle in 1956, and Vlad has tough competition in this one. Fighting against Fernando Tatis Jr. and Ronald Acuña Jr. in a battle for junior supremacy drops his chances from 19.1% to well under 1% (0.2%).

Whether he wins the Triple Crown or not, it appears the Vladimir Guerrero Jr. era is in full swing. I don’t have kids, but I’m at least of the belief that most parents hope to see their children exceed their accomplishments. Vladito has a long way to go, but 2021 looks like the start of a run that may end with him achieving just that.

After last week’s games, we’re around 40% of the way through the season. The halfway mark is quickly approaching, with the All-Star game soon after that. The form of the playoff races is slowly taking shape. And with few exceptions, too many of the teams on the bubble of contention just aren’t making any headway in the standings. There’s still plenty of season left to play, but the trade deadline decision-making point for many of these teams is coming sooner rather than later.

A quick refresher: my approach takes the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), and their starting rotation and bullpen (50%/50% FIP- and RA9-) — and combines them to create an overall team quality metric. I add in a factor for “luck” — adjusting based on a team’s expected win-loss record — to produce a power ranking.

Despite neither team moving at all in the rankings, this tier saw the biggest changes this week. Both the White Sox and the Rays continued to pull away from the rest of the field in the American League, with each team losing just once last week. These two powerhouses are set to play three games in Chicago, which should be a fantastic preview of a potential AL Championship Series.

Chicago and Tampa Bay have scored the exact same number of runs this season but the White Sox have a decided advantage when it comes to their starting rotation. If the season ended today, their starters would have the third lowest park- and league-adjusted ERA of any team since the mound was lowered in 1969. And all this despite some significant struggles on the part of their staff ace, Lucas Giolito. They’ve thrived despite some extremely unfortunate injuries — Nick Madrigal is the latest victim — because they’ve built the best run prevention unit in the American League. Read the rest of this entry »

With the continual increases in league-wide fastball velocity each year, we’re beginning to understand that pitcher aging curves are going to change dramatically. As Jeff Zimmerman’s work makes clear, older pitchers are holding onto more of their fastball velocity and shedding usage at the same time. There’s a survivor’s bias in studying the pitchers who have accrued the most innings, but there’s something to be learned about the limits of maintaining velocity from pitchers who exemplify the modern game.

Max Scherzer is an archetype of the modern pitcher: someone who has been all gas and punchouts. But as he ages, he appears to be entering into a slow decline. He’s boosted his K-BB% rate from 23.4% last season to 30.9%, but his fastball has lost 0.6 mph (94.9 to 94.3 mph) off its average and 0.8 mph (97.9 to 97.1 mph) off its max. And while we can argue about averages, what might be most important for measuring arm health is max velocity.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is Part Two of the May edition of my monthly column in which I recap what’s been going on in the Korean Baseball Organization on both a league- and team-wide scale. In case you missed it, Part One discussed league-wide trends, then covered the SSG Landers, LG Twins, Samsung Lions, and NC Dinos. Today’s post will cover the remaining six teams. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them as comments or reach out to me via Twitter. Without further ado, let’s talk some KBO!

Team Notes

KT Wiz

If there was any doubt regarding Baek-ho Kang 강백호’s superstar status, this season has blown it away. Through 52 games, the young first baseman is batting over .400. He’s second in the league in wRC+ and first in Batting WAR. What’s his secret? Kang doesn’t have overwhelming raw power – our Eric Longenhagen assigned it a 55 grade – but he’s consistent enough with what he has to sustain a high BABIP. He’s also extremely picky during at-bats, fouling and taking unfavorable pitches before pouncing on one he likes. Here’s a graphical representation of his swing decisions last season (courtesy of Statiz):

That’s some excellent selective aggression. Kang’s swing rates are in the 80s on in-zone pitches, but they drop dramatically on anything outside. He’s seeing and hitting the ball so well that in one game, the Lotte Giants introduced an extreme infield shift covering Kang’s pull-side. And what does he do? Why, he executes two perfect bunts the other way for hits, of course. Later that game, he deposited an 88 mph fastball into right field to go 3-for-5 overall. At this point, Kang’s defense is his only weakness. I think he ends up as a DH if he decides to tackle major league baseball, but he’ll mash enough to be at least a solid regular. Read the rest of this entry »

Tyler O’Neill’s batting line doesn’t make any sense. I don’t mean that in a good or bad way, though I’m sure a line like his will elicit bad feelings in plenty of people. That line, just for the record, is .278/.309/.611, with a 2.6% walk rate and 34.2% strikeout rate. As you might surmise from the silly slugging percentage, he’s clubbed 13 home runs already this season, which would put him on pace for 52 in 600 plate appearances. True outcomes? Tyler O’Neill is a champion of truth.

Strikeouts and home runs have always gone together. Babe Ruth is the all-time true-outcome leader when compared to his era. But O’Neill kicks it into overdrive. Most sluggers use their prodigious power to get on base; they draw walks because pitchers are afraid to face them in the strike zone. O’Neill, again, is walking 2.6% of the time. That would be the worst rate in baseball if he qualified for the batting title, tied with Salvador Perez.

Nothing I’m saying here is particularly new. O’Neill’s 34.2% strikeout rate is virtually identical to his career mark. His 37.1% home run per fly ball rate will surely come down, but his career mark is 23.3%. His maximum exit velocity on the year is exactly identical to his previous career mark. Why write about him now? Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday night in San Diego, the Padres got an all-too rare glimpse of the version of Blake Snell that they hoped they had traded for in December. Facing the Mets — admittedly, an injury-weakened version of the team, but one that has nonetheless led the NL East for the past four weeks — Snell made his longest start in over two years and threw seven innings of one-hit shutout ball while striking out 10, that after being battered for 12 runs in 6.2 innings over his previous two starts.

Facing a lineup that was without Michael Conforto, J.D. Davis, Jeff McNeil, and Brandon Nimmo due to injuries, and that contained just two regulars with a wRC+ of 100 or better (this qualifier should sound familiar), Snell retired the first 14 Mets he faced before walking Billy McKinney, one of the lineup’s two lefties. He didn’t yield a hit until Francisco Lindor led off the seventh with a single to left field that bounced past Tommy Pham and went to the wall as Lindor took third, a two-base error that put the tying run 90 feet from home. Undaunted, Snell struck out James McCann, retired Alonso on a pop foul, and then struck out Brandon Drury on three pitches to complete a stellar night’s work. The Padres held on to win, 2-0.

Snell’s 101 pitches were the most he’d thrown in a single start this season; he’d gone 95 twice and 97 once, but hadn’t reached 100 since he threw 108 last September 22 against the Mets, one of three times he reached 100 pitches. In terms of innings, Friday’s outing was Snell’s longest since April 2, 2019, when he threw seven shutout innings against the Rockies while allowing just two hits. He didn’t complete six innings in any of his 11 starts last year, and had done so just once this year, on May 18 against an even more moribund version of the Rockies. Read the rest of this entry »