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There are not many subjects that baseball teams agree on, outside of not paying minor leaguers much money. One thing that 29 teams do share is an enormous amount of regret that they didn’t convince Shohei Ohtani to come join their franchise after the end of the 2017 season. (OK, 28 teams since the Orioles bizarrely refused to make a presentation on philosophical grounds, but I’d wager that the current front office would not have operated the same way!) In any case, major league teams and fans who pay attention regularly covet the biggest stars in NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball), and a small but steady flow of talent comes to the United States and Canada from overseas. So I wanted to take a look at two Japanese players who, while they may not be the next NPB stars to come to MLB due to the vagaries of the posting system, are the most exciting young players in the league right now: Tokyo Yakult Swallows third baseman Munetaka Murakami, and Chiba Lotte Marines righty Roki Sasaki.

It would be difficult to overstate how dominating Murakami has been at age 22, but I’m going to try my best to do so. Called up for a cup of coffee at 18 years old in 2018, he quickly became one of Japan’s best hitters, slugging 36 round-trippers at age 19 and putting up OPS figures of 1.012 and .974 in the two years since. Like MLB, NPB is at a fairly low offensive environment these days, though it’s unlikely the underlying causes are similar. The Central League — pretty much the last bastion if you like seeing pitchers hit — is only scoring 3.64 runs per game, its fewest since 2015. That hasn’t kept Murakami from not just finding another gear in 2022, but enough extra gears that it looks like he emptied out a bicycle shop.

At 52 homers, Murakami is not merely at the top of the standings; he is the standings. Only a single player in Japan, Hotaka Yamakawa, has even half the home run total (38). There are only two players within 300 points of his 1.229 OPS: Yamakawa (.988) and Masataka Yoshida (.952), and that’s while using a fairly generous plate appearance requirement (250 PA). In recent weeks, Murakami also set an NPB record by hitting home runs in five consecutive plate appearances.

This type of home run dominance is rare, and Aaron Judge may be the first hitter in nearly a century to beat the runner-up by as large a margin as Murakami’s current one. OPS dominance to this degree is just as rare, even using the same liberal 250 plate appearance threshold rather than the official 3.1 plate appearances per team game, with only Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds matching Murakami’s current edge. Read the rest of this entry »

Aaron Judge is doing something that most baseball fans, myself included, haven’t seen in their lifetime: He’s making a run at the American League home run record. Even if you don’t do some steroid-related asterisking of Barry Bonds et al., passing Babe Ruth and Roger Maris is a heck of an accomplishment; if you want to stick your fingers in your ears and ignore the late 1990s and early 2000s, it only makes Judge’s chase more consequential. Truly, this is an exciting time to follow baseball.

Normally, I’m the writer who pours cold water on everyone’s fun during chases like this. “Sure, he’s doing well now,” I’d say, “but if you look at his career numbers, he’s on pace to fall short.” Well for once, that’s not true! If you look at our Depth Charts projections, our median expectation for Judge gives him a 62-homer season.

That’s a boring and dry number, but in baseball statistics nerd land, it’s rare and exceptional. Projecting someone to break a record is obviously rare – records usually get broken by phenomenal performances, not by median outcomes. In celebration of that, I thought I’d layer on a bit more analytical rigor and give people an idea of not just if, but when Judge might hit home runs number 60, 61, or 62.

I wanted an easy-to-understand process, so I kept it simple. I took the Yankees’ remaining schedule, then noted each remaining team’s HR/9+ (from our suite of Plus Stats), the venue’s righty home run park factor (from Statcast’s new park factors), and whether I think Judge will play that day. I also used our projections to get what we consider to be Judge’s current true home-run-per-plate-appearance level (it’s 7.14%, for those of you keeping score at home). Read the rest of this entry »

With Justin Verlander landing on the injured list due to a mild right calf injury, the AL Cy Young race has taken a turn. On Saturday, Dylan Cease did his best to capitalize on the opportunity. Facing the Twins in Chicago, the 26-year-old White Sox righty came within one out of throwing the season’s fourth no-hitter, losing it only when Luis Arraez singled with two outs in the ninth.

Cease had twice taken no-hit bids into the sixth inning this year, on April 27 against the Royals and June 21 against the Blue Jays, and had made a total of three appearances in which he allowed just one hit and no runs (May 2 against the Angels, the aforementioned June 21 start, and July 17 against the Twins). He was even better than all of those on Saturday, and particularly efficient. He breezed through the first five frames in just 50 pitches, with a leadoff walk to Jake Cave in the third inning not just the only blemish, but also the only time to that point that he even went to a three-ball count. At the same time, he didn’t record his first strikeout until Gio Urshela fanned on a slider to end the fifth.

Cease labored a bit in the sixth, throwing 21 pitches and issuing a two-out walk to Gilberto Celestino, the second and last time he’d go to a three-ball count all night. But he escaped that by catching Arraez looking at a high curveball on a generous call:

Cease needed just 20 pitches to get through the seventh and eighth combined, running his total to 91. He’d done a great job of pitching efficiently and maintaining his velocity:

Before he could take the mound in the ninth, however, Cease had to wait out a six-run rally. The White Sox, already leading 7–0, pounced on position player Nick Gordon via a pair of walks, three singles, and a grand slam by Elvis Andrus to run the score to 13–0. Fortunately, all of that took only about 15 minutes due to Gordon’s limited repertoire (Statcast credits him with throwing 30 fastballs varying in speed from 49.2 mph to 86 mph). Despite the delay, Cease made quick work of the first two Twins, striking out Caleb Hamilton on four pitches and getting Celestino to hit a first-pitch fly out.

Up came Arraez, the AL leader in batting average at that point (.318). After taking a low slider for ball one and fouling off a 97-mph fastball for strike one, he hit a slider in the middle of the zone 100.7 mph into the right-center field gap — no man’s land, a clean single. Cease remained composed enough to strike out Kyle Garlick to complete the one-hit shutout, but it still constituted a tough near-miss.

If not for Arraez’s single, Cease would have joined the Angels’ Reid Detmers, who blanked the Rays on May 10, as the only pitchers to throw complete-game no-hitters this season. Additionally, a quintet of Mets led by Tylor Megill threw a combined no-hitter against the Phillies on April 29, and likewise for a trio of Astros led by Cristian Javier against the Yankees on June 25.

Instead, Cease became the fourth pitcher to have a no-hitter broken up in the ninth this season, after the Cardinals’ Miles Mikolas (with two outs on June 14 against the Pirates), the Dodgers’ Tyler Anderson (with one out on June 15 against the Angels) and the Rays’ Drew Rasmussen (with no outs against the Orioles on August 14), who actually had a perfect game in progress before his bid ended. Anderson’s effort was retroactively obscured by a reversal of a seventh-inning ruling, where the pitcher fielded a dribbler down the first base line and made a poor throw; initially ruled a two-base error, it was changed to a single and an error. Read the rest of this entry »

The top prospect in the Los Angeles Dodgers system lost one of his baseball “brothers” a month ago. Not literally — Alex De Jesus is alive and well — but rather by dint of a trade-deadline deal. A 20-year-old infielder who’d been playing with the High-A Great Lakes Loons, De Jesus went to the Toronto Blue Jays organization, along with Mitch White, in exchange for Moises Brito and Nick Frasso.

Shortly after the trade, I asked Diego Cartaya what it’s like to have a teammate who is also a close friend leave the organization.

“It’s not easy, but I’m kind of happy for him,” replied Cartaya, who along with being L.A.’s top prospect is No. 31 in our MLB prospect rankings. “He’s going to get a better opportunity with Toronto, so we’re pretty excited for him. But it’s hard. As teammates, we spend more time together than we do with our families. He’s just like my brother.”

Cartaya’s real family is in Venezuela, and it was his father who initially taught him how to hit. The tutoring he’s received since entering pro ball at age 16 has resulted in occasional tweaks, both to his stance and his swing. Cartaya told me that he used to be “more of a big launch-angle guy,” but now has a flatter swing. Upon hearing that, I noted that the home run I’d seen him hit the previous night was more of a line drive than a moonshot. Read the rest of this entry »

At this point, it’s becoming a meme. The Orioles chug along, at or around .500, and our playoff odds continue to say that they’ll almost certainly miss postseason play. Across the internet, sites like Baseball Reference and FiveThirtyEight give them a higher chance. The headlines write themselves: “Why doesn’t FanGraphs believe in the Orioles?”

Just to give you an example, after the games of July 29, the Orioles were 51–49. Baseball Reference gave them a 34% chance of reaching the playoffs; we gave them a 4.6% chance. Ten days later, on August 8, Baseball Prospectus pegged them at 22.2% while we had them at 5.4%. On August 11, FiveThirtyEight estimated their playoff odds at 16%; we had those odds at 5.7%. Another week later, on August 19, Baseball Reference pegged them at 35.5% to reach the playoffs; we gave them a 4% chance. You can snapshot whatever day you’d like and you’d reach the same conclusion: we don’t think the Orioles are very likely to make the playoffs, while other outlets do.

Now, we’re getting down to brass tacks. The Orioles are 68–61 after Wednesday’s games. Baseball Reference thinks they are 43.6% to reach the postseason. FiveThirtyEight isn’t quite so optimistic, but still gives them 23% odds, while Baseball Prospectus has them at 29.9%. Here at FanGraphs, we’re down at 6.6%, even after they called up top prospect Gunnar Henderson. Why don’t we believe? Read the rest of this entry »

You know the basics of Lars Nootbaar’s story, because you know how the Cardinals seem to work. An eighth-round draft pick in 2018, he held his own in an increasingly tough set of minor league assignments, made the show in ’21, and is now leading off for one of the best offensive teams in baseball. He’s putting up more or less the best offensive performance of his career, and doing it in the major leagues after less than 1,000 minor league plate appearances. Nothing to it! Just a little devil magic, move on with your lives.

If you look a bit deeper than the basics, though, Nootbaar gets far more interesting. That same old story? It’s not really right. Nootbaar isn’t the same player he was when he was drafted. He’s a slugging corner outfielder who probably had a lot to do with the Cardinals’ willingness to trade Harrison Bader at the deadline. Let’s take a journey through his pro career and see if we can predict his future at the end of it.

When he was drafted, Nootbaar was an approach-over-tools prospect. He’s always had a good sense of the strike zone; the question was whether he’d be able to muster enough power on contact to keep high-level pitchers from knocking the bat out of his hands. In 2018 and ’19, that concern seemed pressing: in 265 plate appearances between Hi-A and Double-A, he hit only two homers and posted a .055 ISO. In other words, pitchers were knocking the bat out of his hands. He posted an average batting line anyway, but let’s face it: that’s an uninspiring start to a career.
Read the rest of this entry »

In the top of the fourth inning of Saturday’s Braves-Cardinals tilt, Atlanta struck for four runs, breaking a scoreless tie and setting the team up in an enviable position. Leading off the bottom of the inning, St. Louis’ Tyler O’Neill walked on four straight pitches against Charlie Morton. That walk cost the Braves; two batters later, Andrew Knizner popped a two-run homer that brought the Cardinals within two runs.

On the broadcast, John Smoltz was livid even before the home run. “The last thing you want to do is walk the leadoff hitter after the team gave you four runs…. You don’t care if he hits a 3–1 pitch for a homer. Just don’t walk him.” He said that even before O’Neill walked, and emphasized the point throughout the inning.

Aaron Goldsmith, handling play-by-play, asked Smoltz to elaborate. “You’re not being facetious, you actually mean that? You’d rather have a run on the board than a runner at first base?” Smoltz stuck to his guns, said he preferred the homer to the walk, and that was that.

Here’s a bit of an upset: I understood what Smoltz was talking about. In fact, I think that if you give him a little leeway, he might have a point. Sure, it’s fun to point at a statement like that and laugh. It’s absurd on its face. The worst-case outcome of a walk is a run scoring. The only outcome of a solo home run is a run scoring. There’s just no way a rational observer could come to any other conclusion.

That said: I don’t think that’s what Smoltz meant. Consider this: no major league pitcher has ever thrown a pitch that they knew with certainty would turn into a home run when it left their hand. That’s just not how baseball works. Position players lob plenty of objectively terrible pitchers that don’t leave the yard every time they handle mop-up duty. The meatiest meatball Morton could throw is far from a certain home run. If we think a little more about process, and a little less about outcomes, this silly debate takes on new light. Read the rest of this entry »

Friday’s interview with Michael Harris II focused on his career path, the 21-year-old Atlanta Braves rookie having excelled as a multiple-sport athlete while growing up in Stockbridge, Georgia. Moreover, he’d been a two-way player whom many scouts preferred as a pitcher. While baseball and outfielder-only are proving to be prudent choices, he had options along the way.

Jordan Romano’s path shares some similarities with Harris’s. Not only was the Toronto Blue Jays closer a multi-sport athlete in his formative years, he originally excelled as a position player. That he became a pitcher was circumstantial. Choosing baseball was a matter of passion.

“Being Canadian, I played a lot of hockey in high school,”said Romano, who grew up a Toronto Maple Leafs fan in Markham, Ontario. “I also played a little basketball and was pretty decent at volleyball. But with baseball, you kind of had to drag me off the field, even in practice. My parents wanted me to play a bunch of different sports, and while I really enjoyed hockey — I still do — I didn’t have the passion for it that I did for baseball.”

Romano never considered himself NHL material, but he does feel he had the potential to play collegiately, or in juniors, had he stuck with it. The decision to forgo that possibility came at age 17, and while it shaped his future, it didn’t end his time on the ice. Romano kept lacing up the skates for another year. Read the rest of this entry »

It’ll still be a few months before we see whether Julio Rodríguez wins the American League Rookie of the Year award, but today we got a glimpse of baseball 15 years into the future. As reported by MLB.com’s Jesse Sanchez and ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the Seattle Mariners and Rodríguez have come to terms on a huge long-term contract extension, one that would run to the late 2030s.

Passan ran down the details of the deal, and it’s a complicated one.

THREAD: There’s a lot to digest on Julio Rodríguez’s extension with Seattle, per ESPN sources. The deal could be for 8, 13, 16 or 18 years. It guarantees Rodriguez $210 million. If it maxes out, it will be the largest ever: $470 million. The details are important. Here they are.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) August 26, 2022

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On Thursday, MLB announced the 2023 schedule, implementing the alterations originally announced when the current collective bargaining agreement was signed back in March. The existing format, under which the 2022 season is being played, has been largely stable since 2013, the season the Houston Astros moved to the American League. That change evened out all six divisions to five teams each, making for a tidy format in which every team played their divisional opponents 19 times and the rest of the teams in their league six or seven times, with 20 interleague games against a rotating division and officially designated MLB rivals.

Before 2001, MLB’s schedule tended to be a good deal more balanced. During the divisional era before interleague play, six-team divisions typically played 18 games against their divisional opponents and 12 against non-divisional opponents; seven-team divisions had a nearly even 13/12 split (the American League did 15 vs. 10 or 11 for a couple years after the 1977 expansion). In 2001, MLB went all-in on an unbalanced schedule, with the idea being that by having teams play their divisional rivals more often, you’d create greater tension in the divisional races and more intense regional rivalries. Whether this approach actually accomplished its goals is difficult to tell. I can’t think of any new rivalries that were created simply by playing more games and tend to believe that rivalries are born from teams playing more meaningful games against each other, not simply from seeing each other more often. Red Sox and Yankees fans don’t appear to have hated each other any more in 2010 than they did in 2000, and the endless Orioles-Rays series in the days before Tampa Bay was competitive made this O’s fan click over to other games, not foster a hatred for the Rays.

Be that as it may, from a philosophical standpoint, heavily unbalanced schedules make the most sense when winning divisional races is the sole or at least primary way of making the playoffs and much less so when more Wild Card spots exist. When you have a lot of Wild Card spots, you create a fundamental bit of unfairness when the divisions are of meaningfully differing strengths; teams in weak divisions are competing directly against teams in stronger divisions for those Wild Card spots, with the former generally having easier schedules. Read the rest of this entry »