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We first encountered Joe Musgrove’s one-seam sinker around the All-Star break, when the Houston Astros right-hander was kind enough to show us the grip before his appearance in the Futures Game. I’d never seen a one-seam grip before, unless you count the one Zach Britton showed us. While we could spot glimpses of the sinker in the Futures Game and in his minor-league games, it wasn’t until Musgrove came up and started pitching in the big leagues that we could truly put his pitch in the context of other big-league sinkers. It’s weird.

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Despite internally high hopes after some notable acquisitions over the winter, the Diamondbacks season has simply been an unmitigated disaster. As we head towards September, they have a 51-73 record, second-worst in the National League, and they’ve played every bit as poorly as their record indicates; they also have baseball’s second-worst run differential (-129) and third-worst BaseRuns expected run differential (-138). Basically every single thing that could have gone wrong did go wrong, and instead of becoming a contender, the team has fallen apart.

The lousy results might end up costing many of the high-ranking front office personnel their jobs. The team has yet to exercise their 2017 options on GM Dave Stewart or AGM De Jon Watson. Tony LaRussa’s contract also expires at the end of the year, and reports suggest that the team is considering another front office overhaul. Unsurprisingly, Stewart and LaRussa feel that they deserve more than just two years on the job and don’t think basing an evaluation of their job performance on the team’s 2016 record is fair.

“We had one good year, and if you look at what’s happened on the field this year, then one bad year,” Stewart said. “I think we deserve a tiebreaker.”

…

“I think our group has earned the benefit of the doubt,” La Russa told USA TODAY Sports, “but it’s their decision. The way I look at it, if you get an opportunity, you don’t complain about the length of the opportunity. So I don’t complain about that.

“This is a game based on results. There was good improvement in ’15, and in ’16, was the opposite of that. It’s disappointing. We’re all upset about it.

“If somebody in charge is upset enough, they’ll make a change.”

In a rare case of agreement, I’m actually with LaRussa and Stewart on the idea that they shouldn’t be fired simply because the team performed badly in 2016. The results of one season, whether positive or negative, don’t provide enough information about the quality of the decisions made, and especially not the quality of the decision makers.

But I think the Diamondbacks should clean house anyway.

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Aaron Sanchez was optioned to High-A Dunedin over the weekend, though of course that’s not indicative of his performance at work. Sanchez is a legitimate Cy Young contender this year, maybe even the frontrunner in the eyes of some, and while players typically get sent down to the minors because their organization doesn’t care much for what they’ve done on the field, Sanchez was optioned because the Blue Jays care too much. He just turned 24, and he’s a massive part of the organization’s future, and the move was simply made to skip one of his turns in the rotation in an effort to limit the workload of Toronto’s prized, young arm.

That workload requires monitoring, of course, because no one expected Sanchez to do what he’s done this year. You likely know the Aaron Sanchez story by now. You know he spent the majority of his first two seasons in the majors working out of relief, and now that he suddenly looks like an ace, that he’s already exceeded his previous season-high in innings by more than 20. And if you know about that, then you know about the sinker that leads Sanchez’s arsenal.

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There ought to be no shame in a pitcher struggling at Coors Field. Many of the greatest pitchers on the planet have been humbled in that stadium and, last week, Stephen Strasburg became merely the latest among them. Allowing nine runs before being pulled in just the second inning, Strasburg posted what was far and away the worst performance of his career. He’d never previously given up more than seven runs in a game and his game score of 1 was not only his lowest mark ever, but is tied for seventh worst in baseball this season. Ideally, this could be written off as a Coors fluke for one of the game’s best pitchers, but instead it’s served to illuminate the frustrating reality that Strasburg has struggled mightily of late.

Over his last six outings, Strasburg has given up 26 runs in 30.2 innings pitched. Crunch the numbers and you’ll find that works out to a decidedly un-ace-like 7.63 ERA. These six outings have caused his season ERA to rise more than one full run, from 2.51 to 3.59. The good news is that there’s more than a little hope to be found in his peripheral stats. Over this awful stretch, his FIP is a massively more palatable 3.25, largely on the strength of a solid 29.1% strikeout rate and a roughly league-average 7.8% walk rate. It also likely won’t surprise you to learn that he’s posted an inflated .388 BABIP during this rough patch. Unfortunately, this is not to say Strasburg’s swoon has been entirely devoid of red flags.

In mid-June, Strasburg hit the disabled list with a back injury. Considering a back injury was the primary culprit in Strasburg’s first-half struggles last season, this latest DL stint was an unavoidably alarming development. Fortunately, he made a swift return to the mound. Any hopes that he’d escape the performance struggles which plagued him a year ago, however, have been derailed by his recent stretch. Whether those struggles are directly related to the injury is unknowable, but there are observable things about Strasburg which have changed since his return.

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Prior to changing organizations, Anderson Espinoza would sometimes be compared to a young Pedro Martinez. From a projectability standpoint, it wasn’t far-fetched. Signed by the Red Sox out of Venezuela two years ago, Espinoza was lanky with long fingers, and he possessed advanced feel for his off-speed pitches. Last year in the Gulf Coast League his fastball flirted with triple digits.

Espinoza is 18 years old now, and in the Padres system. Acquired by San Diego from Boston at the trade deadline in exchange for Drew Pomeranz, the high-ceiling right-hander is currently pitching for the Fort Wayne TinCaps in the low-A Midwest League. The raw stuff remains, but his physical resemblance to Pedro is fading.

Espinoza has gained 22 pounds since last season — “a lot of working out and a lot of eating” — and he now weighs a solid 202 pounds. “A strong guy who can get even stronger,” he aspires to better maintain his velocity deep into games.

Espinoza recognizes the value of velocity, but it’s no longer a main focus. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Kris Bryant did what he’s best known for; hit the crap out of the baseball. In the Cubs 9-6 victory over the Brewers, Bryant went 5 for 5 with a double and a pair of home runs, giving him 30 homers for the season. The big day raised his season line to .296/.392/.564 and pushed him up to a 152 wRC+, second in the NL, behind only Daniel Murphy. This isn’t exactly breaking news, but Kris Bryant can really hit.

But Kris Bryant is also really good at a bunch of other things that don’t get as much attention, and given his monstrous production yesterday, I thought it would be a good time to talk about all the other reasons why Kris Bryant might be the best all-around player in the National League.

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I don’t remember hearing much about controlling the running game until the whole Jon Lester episode. I mean, it’s always been important, but it was one of those baseball subtleties until it became public knowledge that Lester went a whole season without attempting a single pickoff. That opened up the gates, and, last year, Lester allowed more stolen bases than anybody else. He yielded 44 out of 55 attempts, and the next-worst steal total was seven behind. Lester knew it was something he had to work on. The Cubs knew it, too. To Lester’s credit, this year he’s allowed just 19 steals. That’s still a lot, relatively speaking, but it’s not astronomical.

Lester is no longer the obvious guy to run against. It does help that he’s left-handed. Steven Matz has allowed 20 stolen bases. That’s third-most. Jimmy Nelson has allowed 22 stolen bases. That’s second-most. Noah Syndergaard has allowed 40 stolen bases. That’s first-most. That’s more than the Indians. That’s more than the Royals. Runners have been unsuccessful just four times in 44 attempts. Noah Syndergaard does a lot of things right, but when it comes to controlling his baserunners, he’s got a real problem.

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It’s been pretty much impossible to ignore what Mookie Betts has been up to. I know that FanGraphs has been rather pro-Betts from the beginning, but even we didn’t think he was likely to hit for this much power. So, he’s exceeding everyone’s expectations, on the way to becoming a legitimate candidate for the league MVP. Dave has written about Betts plenty. He just wrote about him the other day, in fact. And there’s one thing Dave has pointed to a few times: Pitchers should probably change the way they’re pitching. They look at Betts and see a little guy, so they’ve peppered the zone. Results would suggest they should attack with greater caution.

Even now, Betts still sees a lot of strikes. That much, there’s no denying, and any downward trend has been gradual. Maybe that’s going to prove to be a lagging indicator — maybe we shouldn’t expect the zone rate to plummet until 2017. But an adjustment has taken place. It’s been quiet, and it hasn’t even worked out to this point, but pitchers have caught on to the fact that Betts represents a hell of a threat in the box.

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Let’s go back in time nine months. Fresh off the Royals World Series victory, MLB teams were making plans for how to reshape their teams for 2016. And for many of those teams, those plans included making a run at one of the many quality players available in free agency. After some years of slim pickings on the open market, there was suddenly a pretty terrific crop of players available to sign, with the market being especially deep in starting pitching and outfielders. And with teams flush with cash, a lot of players changed teams this winter, getting big paychecks in the process.

Seven players signed deals worth at least $100 million in guaranteed salaries. Eight players signed contracts that gave them the right to opt-out of their deal at some point and re-enter the free agent market if their value goes up. Middle relievers and bench players made multi-year deals a standard for players who used to have to go year to year. This past winter was, by any definition, a league-wide spending spree.

But as we approach the end of the first year of these contracts, there seems to be one developing theme; the teams that spent the most money in free agency probably wish they hadn’t.

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The Cubs have had baseball’s best defense this season. They rank first in Defensive Runs Saved, with 58 runs above average, giving them a 10-run lead over the second-place Houston Astros. They rank first in Ultimate Zone Rating, with 50 runs saved, giving them a 15-run lead over the second-place Toronto Blue Jays. They’re turning a historically high number of balls in play into outs, and while a number of factors influence a team’s BABIP, Chicago’s elite defense is among the most important.

We’ve seen what a truly elite defense can do for a mediocre pitching staff over the past couple years, with the Kansas City Royals. We’re seeing what a truly elite defense can do with a great pitching staff right now, with the Chicago Cubs. But, while the 2013 Royals had the best defense on record during the current 14-year era of advanced defensive metrics, it’s not like that team reached the ceiling of what a defense can be. That team wasn’t built by a mad-scientist general manager whose only goal for the season was to experiment with the upper bounds of defensive performance. It was just a really, really good defense. I’d like to play the role of that mad-scientist general manager for a second, based off this chat question I received on Tuesday:

Apologies to Joe for making you wait. Hopefully you understand that your question was a bit complex for an instantaneous chat-room response. I’d like to think that your excellent question being rewarded with a full article makes up for the delay.

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