Corbin Burnes is laying waste to the National League, putting up numbers that can best be described as comical. A 34.6% strikeout rate? That’s closer territory. A 4.8% walk rate? That’s lower than Kyle Hendricks’ career mark. His 2.27 ERA might undersell how good he’s been; both his xERA (a Statcast ERA estimator) and FIP are in the ones (1.96 and 1.58, respectively).

You know about the cutter he leads with, which he described to David Laurila earlier this year. You know about the slider and sinker, the two pitches that complement his cutter. That trio took the league by storm last year, and he’s doubled down on cutters this year; he now throws the pitch roughly half the time.

Like an annoying hipster, though, I’ve moved on to the next cool Burnes thing that no one is talking about yet. The cutter? It’s fine, I guess (it’s the best cutter in baseball, but I’m doing a bit here, so bear with me). I’m here to talk to you about the curveball, a pitch that he threw less than 10% of the time before making it a staple this season.

If Burnes has one standout skill, it’s his ability to impart spin. Even when he was bad, he threw the highest-spinning four-seamer in the game, and his slider has always jumped out of his hand. It’s hardly a surprise that his curveball is cut from the same cloth. Spin data is fraught this year, what with the foreign substance crackdown and all, but since June 21, he’s thrown his curveball with a whopping 2,840 rpm, the 16th-best mark in the game (21st-best if you consider spin-to-velocity ratio instead).

What does that mean in English? It means that he has the raw stuff to generate eye-popping movement. He also throws the pitch in the low 80s, which means batters don’t have a ton of time to react. Put those two things together, and you can make MVP candidate Buster Posey look like a toddler learning how to walk:

The pitch is an absolute delight, and it’s also phenomenally effective. Batters have come up empty on half of their swings against it, the third-highest mark in the league (and 45% since June 21, so don’t go sticky-stuff-asterisking up this great pitch). As an added bonus, he’s seventh in baseball when it comes to batters not swinging at pitches in the zone. He throws it for a strike 49.3% of the time, which ranks seventh in the majors, and batters take it, doing his work for him. Can’t hit it when they swing at it, often take it when they should swing at it: what’s an opposing hitter to do but complain?
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A couple of weeks ago, White Sox manager Tony LaRussa called first baseman José Abreu “one of the great players in major league history.” That’s certainly a strong statement — probably too strong, but that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with a manager praising his players.

Abreu’s season has been defined by streaks, but he’s getting hot down the stretch for Chicago, and when he’s hot, he’s an aircraft carrier in terms of the ability to put the team on his back if needed.

As he heats up, he’s now on track to lead the American League in RBIs for the third consecutive season, and while that statistic is exceptionally lineup dependent, it still speaks to his value in the middle of the order, as well as his exceptional durability and consistency. His career wRC+ is 133, and his lowest mark in a season is 114, back in 2018. He’s had off years, but only in the context of his own career; he’s never approached anything that could be called bad. Most of his ability comes from his massive strength, as he ranks in the 90th-plus percentile among major leaguers in most any advanced power measurement stat. And while he’s a bit of a free swinger, he barrels balls up at an elite rate, and they tend to have more oomph on them than when your average player squares a ball up.

Is he one of the greatest players in history? He is not, but he’s certainly high on my Cuban-What-Could-Have-Been list. While most baseball fans have only been aware of Abreu since his 2014 rookie season, for many inside the game, last year’s MVP campaign was a long time coming.

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Bobby Dalbec is a bona fide music nerd. The son of a longtime Atlantic Records executive, the 26-year-old Boston Red Sox rookie not only plays piano and guitar, he’s an ardent fan of multiple genres. Growing up around the business influenced that. His father, Tim Dalbec, has worked with a diverse group of artists that include — to name just a few — Bruno Mars, Robert Plant, Smash Mouth, and the Zac Brown Band.

While he listens to everything from rap, to house, to Neo soul —“If it sounds good in my ear is all that matters” — guitar-based rock is clearly in his wheelhouse. Talking to the young power-hitter prior to a recent game at Fenway Park, I learned that he enjoys Jimi Hendrix, John Mayer — “a lot of people think he’s a pop guy, but his his guitar playing is pretty top-tier” — and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Another favorite is Goose, a jam-band out of Connecticut.

Somewhat surprisingly, Dalbec only recently began playing the guitar.

“My dad never pushed me toward music,” said Dalbec, whom the Red Sox selected in the fourth round of the 2016 draft out of the University of Arizona. “He was a drummer growing up, but I never learned drums. The first instrument I learned was actually piano, and that was three or four off-seasons ago. I was self-taught. Piano was kind of a gateway into learning guitar, which I really dove into after the first COVID outbreak.”

Why piano before guitar? Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll forgive you if you thought Adam Wainwright was cooked in 2018. He landed on the IL after three middling starts (12 strikeouts in 15.2 innings, a 3.45 ERA and 5.20 FIP), made a single short start in May, then didn’t pitch again until September. His sinker had never been slower; his curveball had never had less bite. At 37, that’s a scary combination, and it hadn’t come out of nowhere; he posted an ERA of 5.11 in his previous season, along with career-worst marks in K%, BB%, and FIP.

Three years later, Wainwright is a down-ballot Cy Young candidate. He’s accrued as much WAR as the next five Cardinals starters combined. St. Louis probably won’t make the playoffs, but it won’t be because of the once and current ace, a timeless wonder having his best season since before tearing his Achilles in 2015. How has he done it? I’m glad you asked.

Major leaguers are so good these days, on both the pitching and hitting side. Batters have never hit the ball harder on contact or tried so hard to hit home runs. It’s scary out there for a pitcher; any contact could leave the park at the drop of a hat. Pitchers have compensated in the obvious way: throwing pitches that avoid contact. Swinging-strike rate and strikeout rate are both marching inexorably higher, with occasional step changes (the sticky stuff crackdown, for example) fighting the tide.

Wainwright doesn’t have that option, though. If you asked him candidly, I’m sure he’d love to throw 95 mph and snap off sliders that turn into Pitching Ninja GIFs. But that was never his game, and he wasn’t going to suddenly turn into that kind of pitcher at age 39. In fact, when Wainwright began to decline, that was the common diagnosis. An aging sinker-first pitcher in the age of four-seamers? Sounds like a recipe for failure.

That’s all true! Wainwright’s sinker virtually never induces an empty swing. That’s not even a new thing; he’s only had one year in his entire career with a swinging-strike rate above 5% on the pitch. He’s only had a whiff rate higher than 10% in two of his 14 seasons. When batters take a cut, they mostly hit the ball.
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Monday night brought something unseen in the majors since September 7, 1901: a matchup between two teams on winning streaks of nine or more games. In this case, both the visiting Yankees and the hosting Braves were riding streaks of exactly nine wins, and it was New York who prevailed with a 5–1 victory.

Monday’s game also brought something with only slightly more precedent: the fourth appearance by the tallest outfield in AL/NL history, one made possible by the Yankees’ aggressive approach at the trade deadline and their momentary good fortune when it comes to injuries. Their lineup featured 6-foot-5 Joey Gallo in left field, 6-foot-7 Aaron Judge in center, and 6-foot-6 Giancarlo Stanton in right, each of whom figured significantly in the team’s win. That trio of elite power hitters has played a played a prominent role in helping the Yankees blow past the Red Sox, A’s and Mariners to the top of the AL Wild Card standings.

Facing the Braves’ Huascar Ynoa at Truist Park, Stanton swatted an opposite-field solo home run in the second inning to give the Yankees a 1–0 lead, then added a two-run double that scored both DJ LeMahieu (who was hit by a pitch) and Gallo (who walked) to break a 1-1 tie in the sixth. His first drive left the bat at 103.4 mph, his second at a scorching 119.2 mph:

The Yankees extended the lead against Edgar Santana in the eighth via a two-out Judge single, walks by Gallo and Luke Voit, and then a two-run single by Gary Sánchez, effectively sealing the game. Gallo, meanwhile, had the defensive play of the night via his diving catch of a Guillermo Heredia drive in the second inning:

Judge traveled a long ways — 87 feet, according to Statcast — to haul in Jorge Soler’s fly ball in the third:

Quipped Yankees manager Aaron Boone afterwards, “It’s nice to see the jumbo package out there playing really well.”

The Jumbo Package, or the Big Boy Outfield, or the Large Adult Sons of Brian Cashman — by whatever name, this is the tallest outfield in major league history, at least going by the listed heights at Baseball Reference. Those measurements may contain their share of fudge, but unless you’ve got a tape measure, that’s the best we’re going to do.

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Shane McClanahan is one of the best young pitchers in the game, and a weapon that wasn’t in his arsenal prior to this season is one of the reasons why. The 24-year-old Tampa Bay Rays southpaw has added a slider, and he’s been featuring it prominently while putting up a 3.63 ERA, a 3.31 FIP, and 113 strikeouts in 94-and-a-third innings. Delivered at an average velocity of 89.5 MPH — fourth highest among hurlers with 60-plus frames — McClanahan is throwing his new pitch a healthy 35.4% of the time.

The seeds of the offering date back to early-January.

“I was throwing a pre-spring-training bullpen at the Trop,” explained McClanahan, whom the Rays drafted 31st overall out of the University of South Florida in 2018. “I told [pitching coach Kyle] Snyder, ‘Hey, I want to try this pitch and see if it does anything.’ He said, ‘OK,’ so I did. Then he was like, ‘Throw it again.’ From there, I just kept throwing it and working on it.”

Snyder echoed that recollection when asked about McClanahan’s new asset, adding that the organization was all-in with the idea of adding a firmer breaking pitch. That was the sole intent. According to McClanahan, the idea was never as specific as “learn a cutter” or “learn a slider,” but rather to introduce a pitch that differentiated both from his curveball and the slurve he threw last October when debuting in the postseason.

I asked Snyder about the addition from a pitching coach’s perspective. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll warn you up front: this article is going to be a loose description of some research I’m working on, plus a copious amount of rambling. I’ve been looking for non-handedness platoon effects a lot recently. Partially, it’s because they’re fun to look at. It’s also because the Giants seem to be using some non-handedness platoons to good effect this year — they’re certainly doing more than just picking left or right based on the opposing pitcher.

I haven’t finished exploring this one yet. So why write an article about it? People like to read articles — but also, I get a lot of good ideas from reading the comments (this being perhaps the only site on the internet where that’s a reasonable sentence) and I could use some inspiration in terms of more things to do here. Without further ado, let’s talk inside/outside splits.

Listen to a game, and you can’t miss it. Announcers will tell you that some players are adept at taking an outside pitch and hitting it the other way, or turning on anything inside and giving fans some souvenirs. I split the plate into thirds, then used those thirds to define three zones: anything on the inside third or off the plate inside is “inside,” anything on the outside third or off the plate outside is “outside,” and the rest is the middle.

Here’s something right off the top: Bryce Harper has destroyed inside pitches this year. He’s seen 441 of them and produced 22 runs above average. That counts good takes as well as solid contact, but his batting line is spectacular, too — .367/.480/.735, good for a .497 wOBA. Give him something he can pull, and it’s all over but the crying.

If you can manage to stay on the outer third, you have a better shot. He’s seen 864 pitches out there (pitchers aren’t dummies) and produced 9.2 runs above average, a far lesser line. That’s still solid — he’s an MVP candidate — but it’s nowhere near the scorched-earth stuff he manages on inside pitches. Read the rest of this entry »

With the elimination of the waiver deadline, the last two months of the season (or more accurately now, the last six weeks) can leave front office personnel feeling like little more than helpless observers. Problems at the big league level, whether of the health or performance variety, are going to pop up, but for the most part, the answers to those problems have to come from within. Yes, there’s the occasional player who gets designated for assignment who deserves consideration, but otherwise teams will either lean on the depth they’ve spent much of the year trying to establish or curse the risks they took in terms of depth in order to improve their big league roster. Here are the depth situations for the American League playoff contenders, with the National League to follow tomorrow.

American League East

Tampa Bay Rays
Strengths: The Rays bolt together pitching staffs as well as any team in baseball, and there are plenty more pieces available to them at Triple-A Durham should the need arise. They load up on pitch-data darlings while also developing plenty from within, and the result has been the best record in the International League, with their staff generating a team-wide strikeout rate of over 28%. With five current Durham pitchers already on the 40-man roster, managing innings down the stretch shouldn’t be an issue, be it for need or just for the purposes of keeping players fresh. In terms of position players, Vidal Bruján continues to slot in all over the diamond; his ability to play six positions makes him the most likely hitter to be called up. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series returned in June after being on hiatus last season due to the pandemic. Each week, we’ll hear from three pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features Andrew Kittredge, Matt Manning, and Tyler Wells each discussing their slider.

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Andrew Kittredge, Tampa Bay Rays

“It was after my freshman year of college, playing summer ball in Newport, Rhode Island. I actually started off calling it a cutter. It was pretty small, and it was firm. I was throwing my fastball anywhere from 90 to 94 [mph] and the cutter was around 89-91. Slowly, over time, I started getting around it a little bit more, and it got bigger and slower. By the time I got into pro ball, it was probably 83-85.

“It was a pretty good pitch for me — I had a good feel for it — and that’s kind of what I had up until 2019. Then I started throwing it harder again. I didn’t really change the grip, or my mindset, as much as I … well, the mindset was to try to stay behind it a little longer and accelerate through it at the end with hand speed. So while the velocity kind of jumped, I didn’t really plan on it doing that. The idea just was to try to tighten up the spin, and with the increased spin I added velocity. I also made it a little shorter; it’s not as big as it used to be. Read the rest of this entry »

Sinkers (or two-seamers, as they’re also called), are a mixed bag. Maybe it’s just me, but they seem to produce polarizing results. They’re used by the most mediocre of control artists and the league’s best pitchers alike. They’re responsible for some of the slowest as well as the fastest, well, fastballs – just watch teammates Adam Wainwright and Jordan Hicks. When a pitcher lobs a bad sinker, hard contact seems inevitable. But when a good sinker is dangled as bait and the hitter bites, there’s no escaping that darn infield.

Extremes can work. They’re also risky, which is why the average pitcher relies on a four-seam fastball. We know what makes that pitch tick, and it slots into any arsenal. Sinkers are trickier to tame, which helps explain why pitchers have shied away from them in recent years. But as I explored earlier this year, a decline in usage does not equal a decline in relevance. If anything, the emphasis on seam-shifted wake has piqued the sabermetric community’s interest in sinkers.

When I wrote the article I referenced above, I was left with a few unanswered questions. For example:

“That being said, I’m not sure if higher sinker velocity correlates to better results, whether that be in terms of wOBA or Run Value… [a]t a glance, there’s no significant relationship between sinker velocity and xwOBA allowed (r^2 = 0.04).”

Immediately, there’s a flaw within that finding. I’d measured the relationship using pitchers who threw sinkers, not the sinkers themselves. It’s possible a pitcher possesses the makings of a good sinker but struggles with command. This time, I got down to business. I had pitch data from the 2018-19 seasons from an earlier project, so that became my sample. One caveat, though: I only included sinkers that resulted in batted balls. For the most part, the intended purpose of a sinker is to generate soft contact, and I felt including whiffs, fouls, and other results would produce murkier conclusions. Read the rest of this entry »