Last week, I dug into the data a little to see if there was any empirical basis to the suspicion that the Brewers lineup might not be cut out for October. The result was a new metric, if you want to call it that, called MeatWaste%. This number — the percentage of pitches that end up either in the dead center of the strike zone or out in Baseball Savant’s Waste region — I used as a proxy for pitcher quality. MeatWaste pitches are gifts to the batter, the kind of offering that produces an instant swing decision and either an easy take or a full-force swing.
I found two things: First, that the Brewers are better, relative to the league, on these two pitch locations than they are on the whole. And second, that these easy opportunities come around often in the regular season, but disappear in close playoff games. Simple enough, though there are limits to what this finding allows us to infer about the Brewers’ future. It’s why they play the games, after all. Read the rest of this entry »
Cal Raleigh is hot. Thumping three homers in a span of two days has put Big Dumper at 56 on the season with 11 games left to play. That binge gives him a realistic shot at hitting a nice round 60 on the season, a threshold that only an elite few sluggers have ever reached. He’s doing it as a catcher, which is absurd. He left the old single-season home run record for catchers in the dust a long time ago.
As I learned all the way back in first grade, 62 is only two more than 60. Given Raleigh’s predilection for blasting bombs in bunches – he hit six in six games earlier this year, and nine in a separate 11-game stretch – Aaron Judge’s single-season AL home run record (and for some people, though not me, the “true” home run record) is definitely in play.
As is tradition at FanGraphs, when someone goes for a home run milestone, we forecast when it might happen. Whether it’s Judge’s quest for 62, Albert Pujols’ push for 700, or Shohei Ohtani’s bid for 50/50, it’s fun and useful to predict when the actual milestone game will occur. I’ll start with the methodology, but if you’re not into that, there are some tables down below that will give you an idea of when and where Raleigh might hit either his 60th, 62nd, or 63rd homer.
I started with our Depth Charts projection for Raleigh’s home run rate the rest of the way. That’s based on neutral opposition, so I also accounted for park factors and opposition. Since Raleigh is a switch-hitter, I used the specific pitchers the Mariners are expected to face to determine whether he starts each game batting lefty or righty, and also used those pitchers’ home run rate projections to determine opponent strength. I used a blend of projected starter, home run rate, and observed bullpen home run rate to come up with a strength of opposition estimate. That let me create a unique home run environment for each game. I also told the computer to randomly select how many plate appearances Raleigh receives each game, with an average of five most likely but some chance of four or six. Read the rest of this entry »
PHILADELPHIA — Let’s get one thing clear off the top: A splitter is not a fastball. Any confusion about this topic is understandable, seeing as the full government name of the pitch is “split-finger fastball.” Don’t be a captive to the inflexibility of language. The splitter is lying to you about its very nature.
The origin story of the splitter begins in 1973, when a Cubs minor leaguer named Bruce Sutter was recovering from offseason elbow surgery and struggling to regain his fastball velocity. A pitching instructor named Fred Martin approached the sore-armed 20-year-old with a new pitch. This would be a variation on the familiar forkball, held with index and middle finger spread as far apart as possible in order to impart downward movement.
But while the forkball came out of the hand with an identifiable knuckleball action, Martin had Sutter grip the baseball ever so slightly forward, getting similar action with fastball-like spin. Read the rest of this entry »
Freddy Peralta is having arguably the greatest season of his excellent eight-year career. The right-hander has ridden a career-best 2.69 ERA to a career-high 16 wins. However, I used the word arguably for a reason. Peralta’s 3.64 FIP is just the fourth best of his career, and his 3.93 xFIP is tied with 2024 for his fifth best. There’s a gap of 0.95 runs per nine innings between his FIP and his ERA. When you multiply that times his actual innings total of 163 2/3, FIP thinks he should’ve given up just over 17 more earned runs than he actually has allowed. None of this is surprising. Pitchers underperform or overperform their peripherals all the time. The interesting thing is that Statcast says that no pitcher has benefitted as much from the defense behind him as Peralta. When he’s has been on the mound, the Brewers defense has been worth just under 14 fielding runs. It’s neither this simple or this clean-cut, but it’s easy to combine these two numbers and make an inference: Defense can explain more than 80% of the difference between Peralta’s FIP and ERA.
On the other end of the spectrum is Peralta’s teammate Brandon Woodruff, who returned from shoulder surgery in July and has gone 6-2 over 11 starts and 59 2/3 innings. He’s posted a 3.32 ERA, 3.26 FIP, and 3.40 xFIP. In other words, FIP thinks Woodruff has gotten exactly what he’s deserved. However, Woodruff’s xERA is a scant 2.27. When you combine all those numbers, it means Statcast thinks several batted balls that should have resulted in outs instead fell in for non-homer base hits. The difference is a bit over six runs. Coincidentally or not, Statcast says the Milwaukee defense has been at its worst behind Woodruff, costing him just under five runs, once again just about 80% of the gap between an ERA estimator and his actual ERA.
That’s why we’re talking about Peralta and Woodruff. No two teammates have a bigger gap between the fielding run value of the defense behind them. It’s nearly an 18-run gap! It’s jarring. With 26 FRV, Statcast thinks the Brewers have the fourth-best team defense in the game, but somehow none of that brilliance has been shining on Woodruff. We’re going to use Statcast data to break down, as best we can, the reasons behind it. Hopefully, the comparison will show the various ways a team can provide defensive value. Let’s start with the catching numbers. Read the rest of this entry »
Keegan Matheson has a beard. Let’s start there. Matheson is MLB.com’s Blue Jays beat writer and he has a beard. It’s a big, glorious, pointy beard, and it’s attached to his face and everything.
Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman has a beard too. It’s not glorious like Matheson’s. The right-hander usually opts for a few days’ growth, but in recent weeks, he’s been going a step further. It’s still patchy in the cheeks. Closeups show you individual hairs splayed in whichever direction their whimsy takes them. All the same, more often than not, Gausman has been moving beyond stubble status and into the beginnings of beard territory. Gausman has also been pitching quite well lately, running a 2.25 ERA and 3.00 FIP over his past 10 starts.
Last Thursday, Matheson watched Gausman mow down the Astros, pitching a shutout with nine strikeouts, two walks, and one hit, and made the connection. “The nerds won’t tell you this because their charts won’t show it,” he posted on Bluesky, “but Kevin Gausman’s recent hot streak has a direct correlation to him embracing a beard. Something to monitor.” Read the rest of this entry »
Cam Schlittler was on the doorstep of the big leagues when he led Sunday Notes on the penultimate day of June. Just 10 days later, the 24-year-old right-hander took the mound at Yankee Stadium against the Seattle Mariners and earned a win in his MLB debut. He’s been a presence in New York’s rotation ever since. In 11 starts for the pinstripers, Schlittler has a 3-3 record to go with a 3.05 ERA and a 3.73 FIP over 56 solid innings.
The 98-mph cut-ride fastball that Schlittler addressed in the article has been his most prominent pitch. Thrown at a 56.2% clip, it has elicited a .202 BAA and just a .298 slug. Augmenting the high-octane heater are a quartet of secondaries — none of which is the offering he planned to add to his arsenal this season.
“When I talked to you in the spring, I was working on a splitter,” Schlittler told me at Fenway Park on Friday. “But I just couldn’t figure it out. I didn’t want to go into the season competing with something I wasn’t really comfortable throwing, so I stopped throwing it.”
The 2022 seventh-round pick Northeastern University product began this season in Double-A, where he attacked hitters with the aforementioned fastball, a sweeper, and a curveball. He introduced a cutter — “metrically, it’s kind of in-between a slider and a cutter” — in his final start before being promoted to Triple-A in early June. He’s since added a two-seamer, giving him a pitch he can use to bore in on righties.
Which brings us back to the shelved splitter. Why does the young hurler feel that he wasn’t able to master the pitch? Read the rest of this entry »
When Gerardo Parra took the mound for the Nationals on August 3, 2019, with his team trailing 11-4 in the eighth inning in Arizona, he had no way of knowing the dubious history he was about to make in the only pitching appearance of his 12-year career. He walked the first three batters he faced, allowed an RBI single to Alex Avila, and then walked Diamondbacks reliever Zack Godley to bring home another run. That was enough for manager Davey Martinez, who opted to replace Parra on the bump with second baseman Brian Dozer to face the lefty-hitting Jarrod Dyson. To set up his desired defensive alignment without making a substitution, Martinez moved third baseman Anthony Rendon to the keystone and sent the left-handed Parra to the hot corner — a position he’d never played before. Dyson doubled home two runs, both charged to Parra. As switch-hitter Ketel Marte stepped into the right-handed batter’s box to face Dozer’s floaters, Martinez flipped Rendon and Parra, who then made his first and only career appearance at second. Marte flied out to right before Eduardo Escobar, a switch-hitter also batting right-handed, launched a three-run homer, with the first of those runs also landing on Parra’s ledger.
Of course, three months later, the Nationals would win their first and only World Series championship, with Parra conducting rousing renditions of “Baby Shark” every time he batted in Washington, but on that particular early-August night, things got ugly. With his final line of zero innings, five runs (all earned), four walks, and one hit, Parra became one of only three players to allow five or more runs without recording an out in their only career pitching appearance.
I bring this up because the first question in this week’s mailbag is about the worst major league pitcher ever. Parra is not the answer because he was not really a pitcher, but his outing was a fun bit of trivia I came across in my research, so I had no choice but to share it with you. Before we get to the actual worst-pitcher-ever candidates, I’d like to remind all of you that while anyone can submit a question, this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »
PHILADELPHIA — Nostalgia for the 1990s is so back! The Mets are running back Generation K, and at an interesting time. As it stands, their playoff rotation could include three pitchers who were in the minors in mid-August: Nolan McLean, Brandon Sproat, and Jonah Tong. At least, all three should figure somewhere on the postseason roster, should the Mets stop playing with their food and sew up the playoff berth they’ve had a hand on all season.
Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. That title is quite a mouthful. Every time I submit it, our helpful back end interface informs me that it is “far too long.” You’re not wrong, WordPress. But I lifted the title and the inspiration for this column from Zach Lowe’s basketball feature of the same name, and every time I consider removing the parenthetical part of it, I remember that the frustrations and failures of the game are part of what makes baseball so compelling. If you never disliked anything about sports, they wouldn’t be so fun to follow. So while every item this week involves something I liked, they also all contain an element of something I didn’t care for. Missed plays, bobbled balls, artificially abbreviated outings, below-average defensive units, lengthy injury recoveries – there are things to dislike in each of these. They all brought me extreme joy anyway, though. Let’s get going.
1. Relatable Frustration Mike Yastrzemski has been everything the Royals could have hoped for since he joined the team at the trade deadline. He leads off against righties, gets platooned against lefties, and plays his habitual right field. He’s been the team’s second-best hitter behind Bobby Witt Jr., a huge boon as they chase slim playoff odds. Also, when he goofs something up, his reactions are very relatable:
You can see what happened there right away. Yaz’s first step was in, but the ball was actually over his head, and tailing towards the foul line so strongly that he couldn’t reach it. Sure, it was only his second start of the year in left field. Sure, he hasn’t played left for more than a handful of games since 2019. And sure, the ball had plenty of slice on it. But he’d probably tell you the same thing you’re thinking: Major league outfielders, particularly solid ones like Yastrzemski, should make that play. Read the rest of this entry »
NEW YORK — It’s hard to stay under the radar when you play at Yankee Stadium, but Cody Bellinger is giving it his best shot.
Splitting time between all three outfield positions, the 30-year-old Bellinger is quietly putting up the second-best season of his entire career. With 4.6 WAR entering play Wednesday, he ranks 18th among all position players. Drafted out of high school in 2013, Bellinger debuted with the Dodgers at age 21 in 2017 and immediately looked like a star. He took home Rookie of the Year honors with a four-win campaign, won the MVP in 2019, and then saw his career derailed by a fractured fibula and multiple shoulder dislocations. The Dodgers non-tendered him after he ran a combined 69 wRC+ in 2021 and 2022, and he signed a pillow contract with the Cubs for 2023. He got back on track with a 136 wRC+ and 4.4 WAR, signed a three-year deal to stay in Chicago, and then got traded to New York after he took a step back in 2024. That step back is starting to look like a blip.
This season, Bellinger been the most valuable Yankee not named Aaron Judge. His 129 wRC+ ranks fifth among the team’s regulars, and he’s tied with Austin Wells for the lead with nine fielding runs. Bellinger’s 28 home runs are his most since his 2019 MVP season.
He is having an interesting year at the plate. In some ways, he looks the same as he has for the past three seasons. Deserved Runs Created Plus, a Baseball Prospectus metric that measures deserved performance rather than actual results, had him at 106 in 2023 and 111 in his down 2024 campaign. This season, he’s at 108. In other words, DRC+ thinks Bellinger has performed at pretty much the same level for the past three seasons, despite the dip in his actual performance and his xwOBA last season. That’s the first big piece of news here. DRC+ thought Bellinger’s step back last year was undeserved, and the fact that he’s returned to his 2023 performance level makes that easier to believe. As Dan Szymborski wrote earlier this week, Bellinger has put himself in position to decline his 2026 option and look for a new deal. The idea that, under the hood, he’s been this good for three years in a row makes him that much more attractive a target if he ends up hitting the open market come November. Read the rest of this entry »
