Whether or not you’ve seen it, you likely know the premise of Freaky Friday. A mother and her daughter switch bodies in a great cosmic mixup, and hijinks ensue. Hello! Welcome to FanGraphs. I’m Ben Clemens, and today we’ll be covering classic teen cinema of the early 2000s (and mid-1970s), as personified by last night’s Giants-Mets game.

Tuesday night could have been just another day at the (beautiful, well-appointed) office for the Mets and Giants. After a comfortable win by New York in Monday’s series opener, the Giants returned the favor early in last night’s game. Chris Bassitt, the steadiest starter in a rotation buffeted by injuries, had his worst start of the year, surrendering eight earned runs in only 4.1 innings thanks to three homers, two by Joc Pederson. Logan Webb, meanwhile, cruised through five innings (six strikeouts, one walk, two runs), turning what was billed as a pitching duel into an 8-2 rout.

Teams don’t come back from six-run deficits. When Pederson launched his second homer, a two-run shot that pushed the score to 8-2, the Giants’ win expectancy climbed to 98.2%. Tune into 50 games, and you might see the trailing team pull one out. The Mets behaved accordingly; they brought in Stephen Nogosek, the last reliever in their bullpen, to eat some innings.

That’s the way the game could have ended – but let’s get back to Freaky Friday. In 2021, the Giants won these games, whichever side of the 8-2 score they were on. They were both excellent and a team of destiny, and you have to win plenty of tough ones to end the regular season with 107 wins.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Brewers are atop the NL Central thanks in large part to a rotation that has ranked among the game’s best, but the team’s postseason hopes took a hit this week with the news that righty Freddy Peralta will miss “a significant amount of time” due to a posterior shoulder strain. Milwaukee, which is additionally dealing with multiple injuries in its lineup, believes that Peralta will avoid surgery and return this season, but his loss is a disappointment given the 25-year-old’s recent return to form.

Peralta left Sunday’s start against the Nationals after three-plus innings due to tightness in his left shoulder. He failed to retire any of the three batters he faced in the fourth inning, and all three came around to score, the last two on reliever Brent Suter’s watch along with three others. The five runs that Peralta was charged with were as many as he had allowed over his previous five starts.

Indeed, Peralta had been on a roll. After starting the season by allowing nine runs in seven innings in his first two turns, he went on the aforementioned five-start run. In 28.2 innings, he struck out 38 (a 34.2% rate) and walked six (5.4%) without allowing a single homer, a run capped by his seven-inning, two-hit, 10-strikeout game against the Braves on May 16. Granted, the competition he faced during that strech wasn’t fierce, as the Phillies, Pirates, Reds (twice), and Braves are all below .500, and only Philadelphia has a team wRC+ higher than 94, but such is the schedule of an NL Central contender.

Peralta underwent an MRI on Monday, which revealed the strain. The Brewers expect the injury will heal with rest, but it will take some time. “He will be back this season but it’s going to be a lengthy absence,” manager Craig Counsell told reporters on Monday. “We’re confident that there’s gonna be no aftereffects to this thing but it’s going to take a while to heal and then build it back up.”

Through the ups and downs of his season so far, Peralta’s ERA is a gaudy 4.42, but among the 66 NL pitchers with at least 30 innings through Monday (the cutoff point for all stats here unless otherwise noted), his 2.10 FIP was the league’s lowest, his 0.23 homers per nine ranked third (teammate Adrian Houser was first at 0.21), his 1.3 WAR and 30.3% strikeout rate were sixth, his 22.4% strikeout-walk differential was seventh, and his 2.88 xERA was 14th.

Those peripherals are in line with the All-Star campaign he put up last season. After three years of careful workload management — a span during which he struck out 258 in 192.2 innings but never threw over 85 innings in a season — Peralta broke out with career highs of 27 starts and 144.1 innings in 2021. Among NL pitchers with at least 140 innings, his 2.81 ERA placed sixth and his 3.12 FIP was seventh. His 33.6% strikeout rate was third behind only teammate Corbin Burnes and Max Scherzer, and his 24.0% strikeout-walk differential was good for fourth behind that pair and Aaron Nola. Only a late-season bout of shoulder inflammation, for which Peralta spent 15 days on the injured list and had a few shortened starts on either side, put a damper on his strong campaign and prevented him from down-ballot consideration in the Cy Young voting. Read the rest of this entry »

The Cardinals are only second in the NL Central right now, but they’ve been having some fun lately. On back-to-back Sundays, they sent elder statesmen (and likely future Hall of Famers) to the mound to close out lopsided games — first Albert Pujols against the Giants and then Yadier Molina against the Pirates. What’s more, the Cardinals were on top in both of those games by double-digit scores, placing the pair in a rare subset within the annals of position players pitching.

That’s not the only interesting recent development when it comes to those accidental moundsmen. But as it’s been awhile since I last delved into the topic, it’s a good place to start.

So let’s set the wayback machine to May 15, the night that the Cardinals faced the Giants in St. Louis for ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball broadcast. With lefty Carlos Rodón on the mound for San Francisco, the 42-year-old Pujols, who returned to the nest this spring after a decade-long run with the Angels and, briefly, the Dodgers, was in the lineup. Though righties are still a problem, he’s ably served as a platoon designated hitter against southpaws; to date he’s hit .227/.329/.439 (125 wRC+). On this night, Pujols and company went to town on Rodón, scoring nine runs over the first four frames, with eight of them charged to the starter, and the veteran slugger collecting a double and an RBI single within that onslaught. The Cardinals kept scoring, adding two runs apiece in the fifth, sixth, and seventh; by the end of the eighth, they led 15–2. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I talked about a few young players who teams should be itching to sign to long-term contracts. Due to public demand, another set of projections is on the way, but I’ll admit I intentionally omitted one pitcher, Pablo López, from the first look because I wanted more space to talk about him.

Unlike a lot of pitchers the Marlins have accumulated during their various fire sales, López wasn’t a highly touted arm in the minors. Prior to 2017 — the season during which he and three other players were traded by the Mariners to the Marlins for reliever David Phelps — he was basically a non-entity among prospect-watchers. He didn’t receive an official ZiPS projection that year, but if he had, it would have been similar to the projection he received before the 2018 season, which essentially saw him as a below-average innings-eater at his peak. At no time did he rank on a ZiPS Top 100 prospect list.

His first couple of campaigns with the Marlins featured decidedly mixed results. While López was essentially a league-average pitcher thanks to exit velocities that ranked towards the top of the league (the good kind of top of the league), he lacked the ability to finish off batters. From 2018-19, he basically threw four pitches: a relatively straight fastball, a sinker, a curve, and a changeup. None them were whiff-makers, and none of them had even a 20% put-away rate, resulting in a mediocre 7.5 K/9 combined over those two seasons. Read the rest of this entry »

Sergio Romo moved past Walter Johnson on the all-time pitching appearances list a few days ago. Now in his fifteenth season, and his first with the Seattle Mariners, the 39-year-old right-hander has taken the mound 804 times, a number that only 49 others have reached. Also in front of Tyler Clippard following yesterday’s outing in Boston, Romo was at 798 games to begin the campaign.

I asked the bearded-and-tattooed reliever when he started becoming aware of his place in history.

“This season, really,” Romo told me on Friday. “Earlier in my career, it had been more of a blur. But coming into this year, it was kind of, ‘Hey, man…’ My wife, too. She was aware of it. She was, ‘You’re two away from 800,’ so I started paying attention.”

Asked for his thoughts on having just passed a legendary Hall of Famer, Romo responded with a smiling, “Take that, Walter!”

Romo knows his history. “The Big Train” pitched long before he was alive — from 1907 through 1927 — but his legacy is no mystery.

“He was an infamous flame-thrower, and a guy who commanded a lot of respect,” said Romo. “He pitched a lot of innings, and he did it throwing gas. I actually play with Walter Johnson every now and again in MLB: The Show, The’ve got a lot of greats in that game. Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey… a lot of those guys.”

Nolan Ryan pitched in 807 games on his way to immortality.R omo will soon pass “The Ryan Express” on the all-time appearances, as well. I asked the owner of 137 saves, and a career 3.09 ERA, what it feels like — obvious caveats aside — to be in such company. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets lost another starting pitcher on Thursday, as the team announced that the pain that forced Max Scherzer from his start Wednesday has been diagnosed as a moderate to high grade oblique sprain; the anticipated timetable for Scherzer’s return is six to eight weeks. After throwing a slider to Albert Pujols, Scherzer was in visible discomfort and quickly pulled the plug himself, sparing Buck Showalter the most dangerous part of a manager’s job: telling Max Scherzer to hit the showers:

The loss of Scherzer comes at a time the Mets are already down two other starting pitchers (three if you count Joey Lucchesi‘s loss to Tommy John surgery, which I’m not). Most notably, Jacob deGrom’s 2022 season has yet to begin due to a stress reaction in his right scapula. Tylor Megill is also currently on the IL due to biceps tendinitis diagnosed after the worst start of his professional career. Luckily, there’s reason to be hopeful in both cases. The most recent imaging of deGrom’s scapula indicated it is healing effectively, raising hopes that the ace’s return isn’t too far off. Meanwhile, Megill’s MRI didn’t reveal anything darker than a case of tendinitis, and he’s already scheduled to play catch today:

Jacob deGrom's MRI and CT scan revealed "considerable healing of the stress reaction on his scapula," Mets say.

He has been cleared to begin loading and strengthening his shoulder and will be "re-imaged in approximately three weeks."

— Deesha (@DeeshaThosar) April 26, 2022

Read the rest of this entry »

This Wednesday, Corbin Burnes had a forgettable start. In six innings, he allowed four runs and struck out five while walking none. The scoring came courtesy of two home runs, a three-run shot by Austin Riley and a solo homer by Marcell Ozuna. Burnes lasted six innings, and while the Brewers ended up winning the game 7-6 in extras, it wasn’t exactly the kind of start you expect from the defending NL Cy Young winner.

Last year, Burnes was downright electric en route to winning the award. He led the NL in ERA at 2.43, and his ERA was significantly higher than his 1.63 FIP. He struck out 35.6% of the batters he faced while walking only 5.2%. He did it in only 28 starts and 167 innings, which raised questions about the trade-off between transcendent pitching and bulk innings.

If you only looked at his first and most recent starts of 2022, you might think the same thing was happening again. You’ve already heard about the most recent one; in his first start, he went five innings against the Cubs, allowed three earned runs, and struck out only four while walking three. Sure, the runs were uncharacteristic, but five and six inning starts? We’ve seen that before. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the San Diego Padres. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the second year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the numbered prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, a reader in my chat asked me a question I had no idea how to answer: Are teams increasingly pulling pitchers from games after 4 2/3 innings, even with the lead, in an attempt to cut down on wins and arbitration payouts? Here’s the question in its entirety:

My snap judgment was “probably not.” After thinking about it for a while longer, my answer is still no – but now I have some neat graphs and charts that will hopefully make the point clear. Without further ado, let’s dive into the shape of league-wide starting pitching trends since 1974, the first year in our database of game logs.

In 1974, the concept of a five-inning start existed, but it was almost an insult. More than a quarter of starts went nine or more innings. That’s hard to do, particularly when that’s an impossible feat for a visiting team that trails after the top of the ninth inning. If that’s roughly a quarter of games (it’s not every game the visiting team loses, but road teams lose more than half of the games they play), that means that roughly a third of eligible starts went at least a full nine. That’s downright wild. Here’s a graph of that wildness:

There were a few short starts, even back in the 1970s – 21% of starts went fewer than five innings. More importantly, a pattern we’ll see repeated again and again is immediately evident. Managers like leaving their pitchers in for a whole number of innings. It’s a natural endpoint to the day, mid-inning pitching changes can be tricky, it’s a way of boosting your starter’s confidence – there are plenty of reasons for this to be the case, and I’m not sure which is most true, but that’s just a fact of baseball. Managers like to pull their starters between innings rather than partway through. Read the rest of this entry »

It was weird, it was wild, it was perhaps a bit irresponsible, and it was certainly bittersweet. On Sunday in Pittsburgh, Reds rookie Hunter Greene was dominant, setting a career high for strikeouts and combining with reliever Art Warren to hold the Pirates hitless for the entire afternoon. Yet when it was all said and done, Cincinnati — which had won six out of its last nine after starting the season 3–22 — found a new way to lose, 1–0. Greene and Warren didn’t even get credit for an official no-hitter, combined or otherwise.

The game’s only run scored in the bottom of the eighth inning. After Greene issued a pair of one-out walks to Rodolfo Castro and Michael Perez to push his pitch count to 118 — oh, we’ll get to that — manager David Bell pulled him in favor of Warren, who walked Ben Gamel, then induced a chopper by Ke’Bryan Hayes. Second baseman Alejo Lopez briefly bobbled the ball, and while he still threw to shortstop Matt Reynolds in time to force Gamel, Reynolds’ throw to first base was too late to complete the double play.

The Reds themselves managed just four hits against starter José Quintana and relievers Chris Stratton and David Bednar, the last of whom set down the side 1-2-3 in the ninth. Thus they joined a short and dubious list, becoming just the fifth team to hold their opponents hitless for eight innings but lose because they were nonetheless outscored. Such efforts used to be considered no-hitters, but in 1991, MLB’s Committee for Statistical Accuracy tightened the official definition of the feat, ruling that those falling short of nine innings would not receive such a designation. That put the Reds in this company:

The most infamous of such games is that of Hawkins, who allowed four eighth-inning runs via a combination of three errors and two walks, all with two outs; he did walk five overall, so his outing was kind of a mess to begin with. Greene and Warren combined to walk six, but they were the only one of the five teams above to lose after eight hitless innings without being charged with an error as well. Congrats on discovering that new way to lose, I guess. Read the rest of this entry »