Last Wednesday, Trevor Bauer had a rough start. In six innings, he struck out 10 Padres, but that’s where the highlights ended. He walked four and gave up three home runs, pushing his season total to 17 homers allowed. They were all solo shots, which limited the damage, but still: three home runs isn’t a good day’s work. After the game, Bauer was understandably defensive:

"I have the worst home run luck in the league. Every time I make a little mistake it leaves the yard." — Trevor Bauer on his 3 solo shots allowed tonight. #Dodgers

— Michael J. Duarte (@michaeljduarte) June 24, 2021

Now, “little mistakes” are hard to measure. Consider this titanic Manny Machado blast, for example:

Mistake? Maybe. But how do you define a mistake pitch? That was an 82.6 mph slider, roughly two ticks faster than Bauer’s average for the pitch. Per Statcast, it had 16 inches of total break (against spin-less movement), roughly 1.5 inches less than his average slider breaks. He left it over the plate, but not excessively so; five inches above the bottom of the zone. He doesn’t locate sliders there often, but the previous three had resulted in two swinging strikes and a pop out.

So was this a sublime effort by Machado or a bad pitch by Bauer? I’d lean towards the former — though Bauer would have a better argument on his pitch to Victor Caratini later in the game. But that’s hardly a scientific way of looking at it, and I wanted to do at least slightly better. Otherwise, how will we evaluate Bauer’s claim that he’s the unluckiest man on the planet, at least when it comes to home runs? Read the rest of this entry »

Some of my fondest memories of baseball have nothing to do with the game being played on the field. Every summer like clockwork, my best friend and I set out on a new baseball adventure. We wait eagerly for the arrival of the next season’s schedule and make our travel plans accordingly. One year it was driving north through Florida to visit the stadiums in Miami, St. Petersburg, and Atlanta. Another year, we melted our way through the heat of July in the Midwest, seeing Kansas City, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Chicago.

The first time I ever took a solo road trip I did it to see baseball, visiting six stadiums and numerous baseball-themed attractions along the way. I survived traffic in Pittsburgh and scientifically determined the best cupcake shops in Washington D.C. (Red Velvet Cupcakery, though if you are a fan of sweeter, richer cupcakes, Baked and Wired is for you).

In Baltimore, a stranger gave me tips on the best place to try crab. In St. Petersburg, a friendly season ticket holder named Sherry overheard me telling the guest services attendant it was my first Rays game. She insisted on bringing me and my friend into the season ticket holders area and showing us around, as if being a Rays ambassador was her job (it should be). In Kansas City, I befriended a local so lovely that she invited me to come back and stay with her the following year to enjoy more games and more BBQ, and we went on a tour of Kauffman stadium. Read the rest of this entry »

Mitchell Kilkenny is quietly having a stupendous season. A second-round pick by the Colorado Rockies in 2018 out of Texas A&M, the 24-year-old right-hander boasts a 1.47 ERA over eight starts with the Low-A Fresno Grizzlies and the Spokane Indians. Moreover, he’s fanned 54 batters and issued just five free passes in 43 innings.

His plus command is a much-needed asset. Kilkenny is more finesse than power, his fastball ranging from the upper 80s to the low 90s. At least for now. Kilkenny threw harder as a collegian, but then came Tommy John surgery shortly after he was drafted, and last year’s cancelled minor-league season only muddied the waters. No matter. He fully expects his velocity to tick back up in time, and even if that doesn’t happen, his ability to mix, match and tunnel two- and four-seam fastballs, a slider, a curveball, and a changeup has proven to be plenty effective. As Kilkenny put it, “I might not be bright and flashy, but I’m having success.”

Prior to matriculating at Texas A&M where he double-majored in Renewable Natural Resources and Forestry, he excelled in English class at Houston Christian High School.

“My one fun fact is that I won two awards in creative writing contests,” Kilkenny told me. “One was for a class project where we were to write to a favorite author of ours. I picked Bill Watterson, for Calvin and Hobbes, because that was my favorite comic growing up, I love Calvin and Hobbes. Anyway, it was just a little piece about what the author had given me, which was some of the insights you can get out of a simple comic.” Read the rest of this entry »

Heading into 2021, the question that loomed over Nolan Arenado concerned his bat. Could he remain productive outside of Coors Field? Roughly 40% into the season, the answer seems to be yes. Although his on-base and slugging percentage are down, handy wRC+ tells us that Arenado’s offensive output relative to the environment he’s in has remained consistent. On this front, he has been the star the Cardinals had hoped for.

On the other hand, I’m willing to bet good money that nobody was worried about Arenado’s glove. Altitude doesn’t affect one’s footwork or agility. We expected him to continue his life as one of the league’s best third basemen. And all things considered, he still is one of the league’s best third basemen. What follows isn’t the sound of panic, but rather a fact to keep in mind. Consider Arenado’s defensive numbers this season:

They’re… okay. Huh. That being average elicits this sort of reaction is a paean to Areando’s talent. When the three big defensive metrics all agree that his defense has taken a step back, though, you have to wonder – what’s going on? He’s no pumpkin at the hot corner, but he’s also not the superstar we’ve become accustomed to. Prorate his 2021 DRS to his 2019 workload in terms of innings fielded, and you’d wind up with 7 DRS after rounding up. That would represent the lowest mark of his career. Defensive metrics are imperfect and noisy, sure, but confronted with these changes, there’s probably some signal worth analyzing.

For this article, I’ll be focusing on Baseball Savant’s Outs Above Average. Our in-house metric is UZR, but it unfortunately doesn’t account for infield shifts, which will become relevant later on. Read the rest of this entry »

Triston Casas and Grant Williams are teammates with distinctly different profiles. Boston’s first-round pick in the 2018 draft, the 21-year-old Casas is a 6-foot-4, 250-pound first baseman who is No. 2 on our Red Sox Top Prospects list, and No. 42 on our updated Top 100 Prospects list. Williams is unranked. A 25-year-old middle infielder who lasted until the 310th pick of the 2018 draft, he hit in the nine-hole when the Double-A Portland Sea Dogs hosted the Somerset Patriots on Wednesday night. Befitting his stature, Casas batted third.

Prior to the game, I spoke to both players about their respective hitting approaches.

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Casas possesses plus power, but he doesn’t present as a pure slugger. Patience is a big part of his M.O., as is a willingness to choke up on the bat when contact is at a premium. The lefty swinger cited Joey Votto as his role model when he was featured in a January 2020 Sunday Notes column, and as he acknowledged on Wednesday, that remains the case.

I asked Casas if he’s changed as a hitter since entering pro ball three years ago.

“I’d like to think I haven’t, but I have a lot,” responded the Plantation, Florida product. “I kind of battle that. I fight every single day to make adjustments and become the best hitter that I can, but to also apply what I’ve been doing my whole life. So I like to say that I haven’t changed too much, but at the same time, I have.”

I asked the up-and-coming youngster if he could elaborate. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2020 draft was instructive to many teams, as it taught them how to scout off data and video since multiple in-person looks were made impossible by the pandemic. And while scouts are back on the road, data and video remain important tools, with some teams giving them the same weight as in-person reports. With access to many of the tools that teams lean on come draft season, I am able to view data and video from nearly every pitch thrown by Division I college arms. So in that spirit, I decided to write up some potential first rounders.

While a great deal of draft coverage when it comes to pitching has focused on Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker, the two much-lauded Vanderbilt arms, there are somewhere between five and seven college pitchers who could also end up first-round picks and demand some attention. I start today with three of them — two who began the year highly regarded by the industry, and a third who has jumped up on boards considerably this spring.

Ty Madden, RHP, Texas

Statistics: 107.2 IP, 71 H, 7 HR, 41 BB, 129 K

2021 Year in Review: Madden came out strong but had some hiccups in late April and early May as he struggled with his command. He finished the year on a high note, including a 7-4-2-2-2-10 line against Mississippi State in Omaha.

Physical Description: 6-foot-3, 215 pounds. To use the scouting cliché, this is what they look like.

Delivery: Utilizes power frame well. Big kick, good hip tilt and leg drive with on-line landing. Finishes a bit wild with very high back leg coming around and creating big spin to the first base side. Leans into a high (12:30) arm angle that produces very good fastball shape. Read the rest of this entry »

What if I told you that there is a pitcher who throws 92 mph but is actually throwing 95? That’s just Bailey Falter’s niche. Despite only throwing nine major league innings in his career to date, Falter has already shot to the top of some important leaderboards: release extension and average velocity added.

Here are the top-10 fastballs in June, sorted not by average velocity, but instead by average added velocity, which is the result of simple subtraction: effective velocity minus release speed. Effective velocity estimates the “actual” pitch speed the hitter faces based on where the pitcher releases the baseball and how much time the hitter has to react. If a pitcher releases the ball closer to home plate, the batter has less time to react, effectively (there’s that word again) making the pitch come in faster. This is music to Falter’s ears:

Read the rest of this entry »

Because there are so few minor league baseball games on Mondays this year, you’ll see me play with the format of the Tuesday Daily Prospect Notes. I’m lucky that the top prospect in the sport, 20-year-old Tampa Bay Rays infielder Wander Franco, is likely to debut against the Red Sox this evening. The Franco report from the Rays/Top 100 lists still applies, and folks looking for a general overview of his talent should go jam on the clipboard here and read that if you haven’t already done so. Today I’m going to be breaking down his 2021 season using Synergy Baseball, a pitch-by-pitch video software program that is often used by MLB teams.

We made a decision to allocate scouting travel budget toward Synergy Baseball during the offseason, when the timeline for vaccines was still hazy but the presence of COVID was not. Unsure if/how much I’d be travelling again this year, we funneled money into Synergy in case I could not. It was initially useful for watching action in foreign pro leagues and during Spring Training as I worked on prospect lists, but Kevin Goldstein and I also have access to pitch-by-pitch video from Triple-A games (not the whole minors, just Triple-A), as well as metadata from each pitch. I can’t share video with you here (or anywhere) or I’d be in violation of MiLB.tv terms of service, but I can share with you some of the Franco metadata to illustrate the specific nature of his skills and put them in a big league context.

Read the rest of this entry »

The biggest storyline in baseball this week was the announced crackdown on pitchers using foreign substances on the mound. It’s still too soon to tell how this might change the results on the field, but the early research suggests it could have wide reaching effects. Scoring is up in June league-wide, but that may be the normal result of warmer weather.

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.

The Dodgers have finally reclaimed the top spot in these rankings by winning 10 of their last 12. They’re about to get a lot healthier, too; Max Muncy and Cody Bellinger should be activated from the IL this coming week, and Corey Seager could start a rehab assignment as early as next weekend. That’s good, because their upcoming schedule is tough, with series against the Padres, Cubs, and Giants on the docket.

The Giants’ offense was absolutely dominant last week, beneficiaries of playing the Diamondbacks and Phillies at home; they scored 59 runs in seven games with Brandon Belt and Mike Yastrzemski leading the way. Those two combined to collect 18 hits last week, including eleven extra-base hits and five home runs. But one of the biggest reasons for San Francisco’s continued success has been the vast improvement of its bullpen. At the end of April, Giants relievers had the second worst park- and league-adjusted FIP in baseball. Since that point, they’ve lowered their FIP- to 98 and their ERA- to 81.

Read the rest of this entry »

Braxton Roxby was an unpolished gem when the Cincinnati Reds signed him as a non-drafted free agent last summer. A 6-foot-3, 235-pound right-hander, Roxby possessed projectable stuff, but his resume was anything but shiny. In three collegiate seasons with the Division-II Pittsburgh-Johnstown Mountain Cats, he logged a 7.31 ERA. Moreover, that number was 9.68 in his junior year.

Then came Kyle Boddy and the Reds pitching-development machine.

In what is shaping up as one of the best underdog stories in recent memory, Roxby has been shoving in his first professional season. Pitching in a relief role for the High-A Dayton Dragons, the 22-year-old hurler has surrendered just four hits and one run in 16 innings. He’s punched out 28 batters.

How he ended up signing with Cincinnati is a story in itself. Roxby talked to 20-plus teams after being bypassed in last year’s truncated draft, and the tenors of the conversations were largely the same… with one notable exception.

“The Reds were the only team to take it a step above,” said Roxby, who majored in Civil Engineering at Pittsburgh Johnstown. “They had me on a Zoom meeting — [Director of Pitching] Kyle Boddy and [Assistant Pitching Coach] Eric Jagers were both on there — and they had video breaking down my mechanics, as well as the analytics of my pitches and how I can use them better. That made it hard not to choose them.” Read the rest of this entry »