The Pirates beat the Phillies 2-1 on Sunday, and near as I can tell everyone was pissed about it. The Phillies, a would-be World Series contender, had just gotten swept by a team they’d been hoping to do some damage against, and dropped to 1-9 in their previous 10 games. The Pirates, for their part, had just gotten one over (three over, actually) on their intrastate rival, but Paul Skenes didn’t get the win.

The biggest, scariest pitcher in the league had gone 7 2/3 innings, allowing only one unearned run, but had left the game while it was tied in the top of the eighth. That left the NL Cy Young frontrunner with an ERA of 1.88 in 91 innings, but a record of just 4-6. Is it important for Skenes to get the win? Not exactly. But the incongruity between record and performance was just another reminder of how little support this disappointing team is giving the generational talent that had fallen into its lap.

Skenes is the class of the Pirates rotation, but he’s not the only talented pitcher the Bucs have. Even with Jared Jones and Johan Oviedo in the shop getting their elbows worked on, Mitch Keller is having a solid season. Keller is top 25 in the league in innings and WAR, and despite some indifferent strikeout numbers, he’s kept the ball in the yard and scratched out a 4.13 ERA — that’s a 100 ERA- on the dot — with a 3.27 FIP. Read the rest of this entry »

The wait is over. On Monday, the Red Sox called up Roman Anthony, the consensus top prospect in baseball. He batted fifth and played right field against the Rays, going 0-for-4 with a walk, an RBI, and a costly error. After spending the last few seasons absolutely torching the minors, it turns out Anthony just needed to smash a 497-foot grand slam – the longest ball hit in either the majors or the minors this season – in order to earn his spot in Boston.

What really brought Anthony to Boston was a left oblique strain to Wilyer Abreu, whom the Red Sox placed on the IL when they announced Anthony’s promotion (though the 497-footer certainly couldn’t have hurt). The team designated Ryan Noda for assignment to open a 40-man roster spot.

After all the anticipation, the promotion happened at the very last minute; there were no tear-jerker undercover boss videos. Although Abreu showed discomfort during Friday’s game against the Yankees, the team wasn’t sure until Monday afternoon that he’d actually need to go on the IL. The Triple-A Worcester Red Sox were on the bus about to head to their next series in the Lehigh Valley when the big club called and asked them to wait. Everybody piled off the bus, but the team’s gear was already en route to Pennsylvania. So Anthony drove up the Mass Pike after getting the news and played the game in borrowed cleats. Luckily, teammate Marcelo Mayer already had one of Anthony’s bats.

The Red Sox could certainly use a savior right about now. At 32-36, they’re in fourth place in the East, nine games behind the Yankees, and 4 1/2 games out of the final Wild Card spot. We currently have them with a 15.7% chance of making the playoffs. Read the rest of this entry »

You know Shohei and Clayton and Freddie and Mookie. Teo and Will Smith and Blake Snell and Roki. But do you recall the least heralded Dodger of all? Well, that’s not exactly fair, and I didn’t even name all the famous Dodgers, but here’s the point: I’m writing about a Dodger who isn’t one of the guys who seem to steal every headline.

Meet Andy Pages, the Dodgers’ everyday center fielder. A year ago, Pages was just another hopeful, the latest in a line of plus-bat, where-can-he-play-defense-though options cycling through the corners in Chavez Ravine. Pages’ prospect reports paint a clear picture: a swing built for lift, plenty of swing-and-miss, and sneaky athleticism that exploded after Pages returned from shoulder surgery. In 116 games of big league play, he took over center field (mostly out of necessity — he looked stretched there at times) and posted a league average batting line, though without the home run power that evaluators expected from him.

If you could freeze time there and give the Dodgers the option of having exactly that Pages for the next five years, I think they would have begrudgingly accepted it. Teams as full of stars as Los Angeles’ current squad need role players to fill the cracks in the roster, and outfielders who can handle center and hit at least okay are always in high demand. That isn’t to say that there weren’t encouraging signs – Pages’ athleticism was better than advertised and he showed plus bat speed – but a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and he was already an excellent cog in the machine even without fully unlocking his power.

Flash-forward to this season. Pages started the year playing center and batting ninth. That’s the lineup spot for a complementary piece, a defensive specialist or fourth outfielder. He started slow, with a 70 wRC+ over his first month of play. The Dodgers didn’t have better options defensively, and in fact, Pages looked downright smooth out there, both to my eyes and to defensive model grades. When your team posts a collective 126 wRC+ for the months of March and April (for the months of May and June so far, too — this team is pretty good!), you can live with a below-average hitter playing a tough defensive position, so the Dodgers kept running Pages out there, slow start and all. And that brings us to April 22, when Pages got hot and didn’t stop. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Texas Rangers. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the fifth 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. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

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

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) 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 »

Ron Washington has formed strong opinions over his long time in the game. One of them is built on old-school common sense. The 73-year-old Los Angeles Angels manager doesn’t believe in hefty hacks from batters who don’t possess plus pop, and that’s especially the case when simply putting the ball in play can produce a positive result. Which isn’t to say he doesn’t like home runs — “Wash” is no fool — it’s just that he wants his hitters to play to the situation. Moreover, he wants them to play to their own strengths.

The subject came up when the veteran manager met with the media prior to a recent game at Fenway Park. Zach Neto had gone deep the previous day — it was his 10th dinger on the season — and Washington stated that he doesn’t want the young shortstop thinking home run. I proceeded to ask him if he likes any hitter thinking home run.

“That’s a tough question,” he replied. “You’ve got guys that are home run hitters — that’s what they do — and you’ve also got guys that are home run hitters who are ‘hitters.’ There are guys that can walk up to the plate, look for a pitch, and take you deep if you throw it. Neto is not one of them.

“The game of baseball has transitioned itself to the point where everybody is worried about exit velocity and launch angle,” added Washington. “Even little guys have got a launch angle. They’re supposed to be putting the ball in play, getting on the base paths, causing havoc on the base paths, and letting the guys that take care of driving in runs drive in the runs. But for some reason, the industry right now… everybody wants to be a long-ball hitter. And I see a lot of 290-foot fly balls. I see a lot of 290-foot fly balls where they caught it on a barrel. If you caught the ball on a barrel and it only went 290 feet, you’re not a home run hitter. I see a lot of that.”

What about hitters that do have plus power? Does Washington like them thinking home run? That follow-up elicited any even lengthier response. Read the rest of this entry »

Happy Saturday, everyone, and welcome to the first edition of the FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag! We’ve got a lot to cover today, including how to fix the Braves, how the Orioles might fare if they sell at the deadline, the most fun plays to lead off games, and so much more.

But before we get there, I’d like to remind all of you that while anyone can submit a question, this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for next week’s mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.

OK, that’s enough housekeeping. Let’s get to the first question, which comes to us from one of our international readers!

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I’m just wondering if it’s weird that the Twins have had two seasons in a row with winning streaks equal to or greater than 12 games after an absolutely garbage start. We didn’t even have a magic piece of preserved meat this year. Can we read into these tea leaves at all? Does God exist and, assuming they do exist, what has Minnesota baseball ever done to them? — Incomprehensibly Irrational in Ireland

After doing some Stathead research, it seems that you might not be “Incomprehensibly Irrational” after all, because you’re onto something here. The Twins are the second team in the Divisional Era to have winning streaks of 12 or more games in back-to-back seasons. Cleveland won 14 straight games in 2016, from June 17 through July 1; the next year, from August 24 through September 14, Cleveland ripped off 22 straight wins, the longest single-season winning streak since at least 1901, which is as far back as Stathead’s research goes. Those Cleveland teams were both really good, though. The 2016 club went to the World Series, and was 35-30 entering play on June 17; the 2017 team won 102 games, most in the American League, and was 69-56 entering play on August 24.

The closest comparison I could find to these Twins are the Chicago Cubs in 1927 and 1928. Chicago won 12 straight games in 1927, but that streak began on June 5 — later than the two Minnesota streaks. Those Cubs started slow, too, though 4-7 is not as rough a start as the Twins of the last two years, who were six games below .500 when their winning streak began last season and as many as eight games below .500 this year. Also, by the time the 1927 Cubs began their winning streak, they were three games above .500, at 22-19. The next year, the Cubs had a 13-game winning streak, beginning on May 5, when they were three games below .500. They finished the season 91-63, good for third in the National League.

So, all this is to say the Twins are the only team ever to begin winning streaks of 12 games or more before the start of June in back-to-back seasons, and if you extend the timeframe to the first week of June to also include the 1927-28 Cubs, the Twins are still the only team to win at least 12 games in consecutive seasons after being more than three games below .500 in each year. Sure, that’s a specific subset with a lot of qualifiers, but the Twins are a weird team! Late last August, as part of the cross-country road trip that I wrote about for FanGraphs, I stopped and saw a Twins game at Target Field. Despite their place in the standings — they were 72-60 and held the third Wild Card spot — they looked completely dead. Their outfield play was sloppy; their plate appearances were uninspired. Watching them against the Braves, another disappointing team, I could feel Minnesota’s pending collapse. Hopefully, for both you and my grandma, who is a die-hard Twins fan from Brainerd, Minnesota, the 2025 Twins won’t endure the same fate down the stretch as last year’s club did. Considering their rotation has the most WAR in the majors and Byron Buxton is (knock on wood) healthy and performing well, I think there’s a fairly good chance that they will be just fine.

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What is the most fun play to lead off a game? – Ben Lederman

Such a delightful question, Ben! I immediately thought of an inside-the-park home run, and I mean a clean one, without any errors that would put the “little league home run” asterisk on it. Give me Oneil Cruz at Coors Field, rocketing a line drive into the right-center gap in a game when the Rockies are giving Brenton Doyle the day off. Cruz blasts the ball so hard that it caroms off the wall at a weird angle, and because of the unexpected direction of the ricochet, it takes backup center fielder Mickey Moniak a little more time to pick it up. Cruz is rounding third when Moniak unleashes a perfect throw to cut-off man Ezequiel Tovar, who fires a nearly flawless one-hopper home. In a single motion, catcher Hunter Goodman snags it off the bounce, drops to his knee, and swipes his mitt to his left. Simultaneously, in an attempt to avoid the tag, the 6-foot-7 Cruz leaps head first toward the area where Goodman had been squatting before the pitch and extends his left hand to the point of the plate. It’s bang-bang. The umpire signals safe!

I also asked some of my FanGraphs colleagues what they thought. Here’s what they had to say:

Davy Andrews: I might argue for a crazy wild pitch, one that hits way up high on the net or sails way behind the batter. It really makes you wonder what’s going to happen next, and whether the game is going to get weird immediately.

Ben Clemens: I’m a defense-first guy, so I want to see this: Leadoff hitter hits a ball in the gap and gets thrown out trying to stretch it to a double.

James Fegan: A brawl to lead off a game really puts you on watch for the next nine innings.

Jay Jaffe: I’ll go with a little league home run.

Esteban Rivera: I always love a long at-bat to start a game, like at least 10 pitches.

Leo Morgenstern: I’m going simple. I think it’s just a no-doubter, first-pitch home run.

Kiri Oler: I know it’s not technically a “play,” but I like a nice bee delay to start a game.

Davy Andrews: Yeah, I’d like to change mine to that one.

Kiri Oler: I just think we can all use a friendly reminder that as much as we might like to think we’re in control, Mother Nature still runs things around here.

Jake Mailhot: A home run (little league or standard fare) is probably the right answer, but I’ll argue for a three-pitch strikeout with three whiffs. Immediately puts you on notice that the pitcher is feeling it today, and something might be cooking.

Lucas Kelly: Bunt single.

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As a Braves fan, my question is about the Braves offense – namely, how do you fix it? With so many lineup regulars locked into multi-year contracts, and nothing of note in the minors, is there anything even to be done except wait it out? The Braves fired their third base coach and brought back Fredi González, which seems like the kind of move that was only made because Alex Anthopoulos has too much respect for Brian Snitker to fire him midseason. I’m afraid that what we’ve seen from the Braves in 2024 and 2025 is closer to what they truly are, as opposed to the wonderful 2023. Should I have any reason for optimism that they will rebound? — Matt W., Nashville

The Braves are in a tough position if they want to fix their offense. They don’t have a lot of ready help in the minors, as you note, and don’t appear to have a lot of surplus talent to trade, but one position where they could afford to make a move is at catcher… where they did just get help from the minors and created a surplus. With top prospect Drake Baldwin breaking camp with the team and thriving in tandem with Sean Murphy, the Braves have an enviable pair of backstops, but that may be a luxury they have to forgo to fill other needs. They could sell high on Murphy, who has rebounded from a rough 2024 to hit for a 123 wRC+ and is signed through 2028. Good catching is always in short supply, and the Braves do have James McCann, a competent if unspectacular backup, stashed at Triple-A Gwinnett. Sure, it would be a bummer to trade a productive hitter away from an offense that needs help, but with Marcell Ozuna parked at DH, either Baldwin or Murphy is sitting on most days.

Additionally, the Braves do have a few below-market contracts, which gives them some room to maneuver; they can shake things up if they want to. Ozzie Albies is making $7 million this year with options at the same price for each of the next two. A team that’s more committed to winning than bean-counting could just eat his remaining commitment or sell low and trade for a better second baseman — not that it can be easily done without weakening some other part of the roster or system. Michael Harris II, who’s signed through 2030, has been terrible at the plate, but speed and defense give his value a floor, making him a buy-low possibility for a team willing to supply more immediate help in return.

Beyond that, there’s reason to wait — and even be optimistic. Jurickson Profar will be eligible to return from his 80-game PED suspension on June 29. That should help in left field, where Alex Verdugo and friends have combined for -1.0 WAR. It’s also not unreasonable to hope for some positive regression from Matt Olson and Austin Riley, both of whom have scalded the ball but are well short of their expected numbers. Ronald Acuña Jr. has hit well since coming back, and while it hasn’t coincided with a team-wide offensive outburst yet, the odds of one are certainly better with him in the lineup. — Jay Jaffe

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A lot of readers are probably well-versed on the 20-80 scouting scale, but can you give us more context on what that translates to at the major league level? It’d be interesting to hear some examples of 50/60/70 shortstops, who has a 30 hit tool, who has 70 power, etc. — Satya

I think there are useful modern applications for the traditional scouting scale. It’s a concise way to paint a fairly detailed picture of a player’s skill set. This sort of scale (where 50 is average and each integer of 10 represents a standard deviation from the average) was built to help describe distributions across any sort of population, like the size and color variation in carrots, or the rates of traffic accidents at different times of day, or, in our case, the distribution of talent across high-level amateur and pro baseball.

We have so much more data to consider now then we did when this scale was initially conceived as a potential means of communicating scouting information across a department of people without computers. Here are some of the statistical baselines and distributions that I use as a reference when interacting with in-kind minor league data for position players — we can do pitchers another time. I’m generally able to pull this information from FanGraphs; there’s often a big league equivalent to whatever minor league data I’ve gotten my hands on that’s accessible using our leaderboards and custom reports.

Here are the league-wide averages across the last 10 years for many of the statistical categories I think are meaningful when assessing players. The upward trend in some of the power metrics is a reminder that these scales shift and change. You can also play with the individual positions to get an idea of just how high the bar is at first base compared to catcher or center field.

Let’s start with some metrics that help measure a player’s hit tool:

Here are some examples by position, using full-season 2024 numbers:

This is a crude assessment. Note that there are plenty of hitters toward the bottom of the contact rate leaderboard who have high batting averages. Those guys are crushing the baseball when they make contact and netting more hits per ball in play; a hitter’s strength and power also impact the way their hit tool actually plays. These metrics are more indications of pure barrel feel, and I think that’s supported by the above list of names.

Next let’s look at raw power:

The league-wide average has been steadily creeping up over the last 10 years or so at every position but first base. Here are position-by-position deltas for hard-hit rate over the last 10 years:

Remember these deltas are in percentage points, not percentages. For shortstops, this is a 33% increase on balls put in play at 95 mph or more since 2015. Here are the players with top marks in these statistical categories:

There are no real surprises here. You can play with the leaderboards across positions, handedness, age, or various windows of time and learn more. Once you know the big league average and the standard deviation, you can basically ballpark everyone’s raw power as you surf around. Again, it’s crude, but it’s a piece of the puzzle for any prospect.

For speed, Statcast’s sprint speed is a great way of measuring a runner’s top speed. It’s giving you feet/second in the runner’s fastest one-second window. Base-to-base times (most commonly home-to-first times) give you a little better idea of a runner’s speed over a longer distance. You get some combination of top-end speed and acceleration in the home-to-first times, though beware of the jailbreak-style hitters whose times are better than their pure speed. Home-to-first times are most often what’s generating the speed grades you see in scouting reports. The players with 30 feet-per-second sprint speeds and home-to-first times hovering around 4.10 seconds are who you can safely call 80-grade runners. Most of those guys will run four flat or below on their best bolts.

As for defense and throwing, that’s something I gauge visually. I often look at Clay Davenport’s site and scope out the really big numbers in either direction as a flag that I need to assess a player’s defense, either through tape study or by communicating with scouts. Here is one totally subjective example of defenders at each grade and position (please excuse my name abbreviations):

— Eric Longenhagen
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Assuming they are healthy at the trade deadline (not a given at the moment), what would be a fair return for each of Cedric Mullins and Ryan O’Hearn? Can the Orioles expect/hope to get Top 100 pitchers for them? – Ben from Boston, FG Member since 2021

If O’Hearn and Mullins are both healthy come July and their performance hasn’t disappeared, I can imagine the O’s doing well in short-term returns. A Top 100 pitching prospect is a fairly big ask, because you’re only trading two months without an extra year as the kicker, and around 100, you’re at names like Carson Whisenhunt or Tink Hence. It’s not completely outside the realm of possibility, of course, because right now there don’t appear to be a lot of sellers with talent to target, as teams like the White Sox and Rockies have a fairly empty cupboard. Rather than focusing on one particular pitching prospect, the Orioles might use such a trade to instead pick up a few lower-ranked pitchers who have some kind of plausible upside, and see how things shake out. If the O’s are still struggling to crack .500 in late July, and Mullins and O’Hearn remain on the roster and unsigned to extensions, it would probably be malpractice if they start August in orange and black. — Dan Syzmborski

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This question is for any of the blog writers, but I had Michael Rosen in mind: How often do you find yourself 5-10 hours into researching an article and then reach a null hypothesis? Do you try to publish these anyway in some other format? This also doubles as a question about your process for picking research topics and then pursuing them: Do you do them one at a time? Multiple irons in the fire? How (if at all) do you collaborate with the other writers on staff? — Kevin Li

I try to avoid excessive dead-end research as much as possible by doing a bunch of work on the front end. If I find something that looks promising, I’ll pitch the story and start writing in earnest, but for every thread that’s worth pulling on, there are a bunch more where I write, like, 10 lines of code and realize I’m working toward a dead end. And the other writers have been super helpful when I’ve got a gap in my knowledge of some specific area of analysis, like hitting mechanics. I think I’ve sent over half the staff a Slack message at some point asking for help on one question or another. — Michael Rosen

Lawrence Butler does a lot of things well, but he cannot hit a high fastball. Entering play on June 2, Butler had just one career barrel against an elevated fastball: A deep fly out off an 87.5 mph Trevor Williams “heater” in the dog days of 2023. In 2025, he’s whiffing on over half his swings at high heaters, per the Baseball Savant-defined shadow zones at the top edge of the strike zone. (That’s attack zones 11, 12, and 13 for the Savant search heads.)

Most of the hitters with high whiff rates on top-rail four-seamers have steep swing planes. (Aaron Judge and Luis Robert Jr. are two notable examples.) Not Butler: His 31 degree swing tilt is actually a bit flatter than the major league average. Butler’s primary issue is timing — his average attack direction on these pitches is oriented 18 degrees toward the opposite field; his zero degree attack angle is perfectly flat. Whatever the reason, it’s a clear hole, and certain pitchers are primed to exploit it. Read the rest of this entry »

I owe Red Sox catcher Carlos Narváez an apology. In my preseason write-up of Boston’s backstops, I called him “organizational depth.” I lumped him in with Blake Sabol and Seby Zavala as the uninspiring backup catcher options for the team with the worst projected WAR at the position in the American League. That was in March. Now it’s June, and the rookie is slashing .288/.356/.456 with five home runs and a 126 wRC+ through 47 games. Thanks to strong framing, blocking, and throwing skills, he has earned himself 6 DRS and a +6 FRV. The only catcher who has him beat in both metrics is defensive wizard Patrick Bailey. By WAR, Narváez is one of the top-30 position players in the game. Among catchers, he ranks fifth, and if you only consider WAR accumulated as a catcher, he ranks second. If he keeps this up for a few more weeks, he’ll have a compelling case to be Cal Raleigh’s backup at the All-Star Game this summer.

Regardless what happens from here on out, Narváez has already been far more than just depth for the Red Sox. I was wrong, and I will readily eat crow or humble pie, though I’d really prefer the pie. At the same time, I can’t blame myself too much for overlooking him. After all, it took more than eight years from the day he signed with the Yankees as an international free agent for him to appear as anything more than an honorable mention on one of our organizational top prospect lists. Even then, Eric Longenhagen ranked him 32nd in the Yankees system (35+ FV) entering 2024, with the words “third catcher” closing out his write-up. Meanwhile, Narváez didn’t appear on a Baseball America list until this past offseason, when the publication ranked him 29th in the Red Sox organization. Neither Baseball Prospectus, nor The Athletic mentioned him on their top-20 Red Sox prospects lists this winter.

While I might have been wrong about who Narváez would be, I wasn’t wrong about who he had been when I called him “unknown” and “hardly… a top prospect.” Still, I used his reputation, or really his lack of a reputation, to let myself off the hook from learning more about him. Relying on reputation is often a necessary heuristic technique – if we all had to verify everything for ourselves, we’d never accomplish anything – but that doesn’t mean it can’t lead to mistakes. With more than 100 catchers to consider for the Position Power Rankings, I needed to find ways to reduce my workload. So, I glossed over Narváez because he didn’t have enough of a reputation to attract more of my attention. Read the rest of this entry »

In early April, Davy Andrews penned an article that ran here at FanGraphs and began with the following: “You may have noticed that this is the Year of the Kick-Change.” My colleague went on to explain the pitch, which by now most people reading this are well familiar with. Our own coverage of the popular offering also includes an interview with Davis Martin and Matt Bowman from last September, and a feature from this spring on Hayden Birdsong, who throws a kick-change, and his teammate Landen Roupp, who does not. The pitch is thrown exclusively (at least to my knowledge) by supinators such as Martin, who explained that spiking his middle finger on a seam allows him to “kick the axis of the ball into that three o’clock axis [and] get that saucer-type spin to get the depth that a guy who could pronate a changeup would get to.”

Thinking about the pitch recently, a question came to mind: What would happen if a natural pronator tried to throw a kick-change?

In search of an answer, I queried three major league pitching coaches, as well as Tread Athletics’ Leif Strom, who in addition to having hands-on knowledge of the kick-change is credited with coining the term. Their responses varied. Moreover, they meandered a bit — but in a good way — as they offered insight into the science of throwing a baseball from a mound.

Here is what they had to say.

The following answers have been lightly edited for clarity.

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Desi Druschel, New York Mets

“There are a couple of ways to look at the kick-change. Most people interpret it as, ‘the spike kicks the axis,’ but I’m not necessarily convinced. Another thought is that [the middle finger] is just out of the way, and the ring finger kind of swipes below it. You’re kicking the axis, for sure, but I don’t know if it’s always kicking it how people might think. That would be on the one where there is more supination. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a war going on across major league baseball. It’s been waged over decades, in fact, between two opposing factions of the game. Pitchers, at times aided by their catchers, want to own the top of the strike zone, the place where their fastballs have the easiest time missing bats. Hitters want to hit home runs, and the top of the zone is an ideal launching pad. But while both sides would dearly love to own the territory, they can’t both win at once. What follows are some dispatches from the front, the latest moves and counter-moves by some of the game’s best in this contested space.

Chad Patrick lives at the top of the zone. No pitcher in baseball throws upstairs fastballs more frequently. He might not seem like the type. He’s a soft tosser in the context of the modern major leagues, sitting in the low 90s with his four-seamer and sinker, and the high 80s with his cutter. But for Patrick, shape is more important than velocity.

As Alex Chamberlain has extensively explained, the plane of a pitch when it reaches home plate is a key determinant of its success. That’s most true at the top of the zone for four-seamers. Pitches that come in high and flat act like optical illusions – the average fastball thrown to that area falls more, because it’s falling at a steeper angle. Read the rest of this entry »