In case you were worried that Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge somehow forgot how to be excellent at baseball since the end of last season, fear not. The 2021 and ’22 American League Most Valuable Players are off to strong starts this season, highlighted by a shared distinction: both have gotten on base in every game thus far, extending lengthy streaks that have carried over from last season.
Admittedly, on-base streaks aren’t as sexy as hitting streaks. Nobody rhapsodizes about them or scrutinizes their mathematical unlikelihood the way they do Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak from 1941. Comparatively few people — professionals as well as fans — could tell you who holds the record for consecutive games getting on base. The answer is Ted Williams in 84 straight games from July 1 through September 27 in 1949, which makes perfect sense given that the Splendid Splinter is the career on-base percentage leader (.482). DiMaggio is a distant second at 74 games, with his more famous streak occupying games 2–57 of the longer one. Williams also owns the third-longest streak at 72 games bridging 1941 (the year he hit .406) and ’42, but as for the fourth-longest one — and the longest of the post-1960 expansion era — it belongs to Orlando Cabrera, he of the career .317 OBP and 83 wRC+. Cabrera reached base in 63 straight games from April 25 through July 6 in 2006. Go figure. Read the rest of this entry »
Of all the things that happened in baseball this weekend, the only one I cared about was a Double-A game between the Chattanooga Lookouts and the Rocket City Trash Pandas. Now, I know what you’re thinking. If an April Double-A game is worth caring about at all, it must be a real doozy. To have it overshadow a weekend of MLB action — the Rays went to 9-0, Jordan Walker tied Ted Williams’ record for longest career-opening hitting streak, Oneil Cruz got hurt — well surely I must be exaggerating.
Try this on for size: The Trash Pandas led 3–0 heading into the seventh and final inning of the game, having not allowed a hit. They went on to lose that game 7–5, still not having allowed a hit. “You can’t predict baseball” is a bit of a cliché; baseball has been around for more than 150 years. All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again. But allowing seven runs while preserving a no-hitter? That’s worthy of detailed examination. Read the rest of this entry »
When the Angels signed Anthony Rendon to a seven-year, $245 million deal in December 2019, the expectation was that he’d be a difference-maker, augmenting a lineup that already included Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani and helping the Halos return to the postseason after a five-year absence. Though he played up to his capabilities in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, Rendon’s last two years have been greatly limited due to injuries, and so far his ’23 season is off to a less-than-auspicious start.
On Opening Day, following a 2–1 loss to the A’s at Oakland’s Ring Central Coliseum, Rendon was involved in an altercation with a fan wearing an A’s hat as he exited the field. Apparently displeased by something the fan yelled, Rendon confronted him, reaching up and grabbing him by the shirt, then taking an open-handed swipe at him. In the video that circulated after the game, you can hear Rendon’s side of the story, not all of which is safe for work:
Whatever the fan said to Rendon isn’t part of either video, but even if it were, it’s unlikely to justify the third baseman’s actions; a player simply can’t mix it up in a physical altercation with a fan, period. Rendon is lucky he didn’t actually hit the man, because he’d almost certainly face a more severe fine and suspension than he might receive. As it is, both Major League Baseball and the Oakland Police Department are investigating the incident, with the latter saying it was investigating a battery:
When asked if Oakland Police Department was investigating the incident with Anthony Rendon, this is what the department said: pic.twitter.com/2If9BU23D6
The Angels and A’s were off on Friday. On Saturday, the team made Rendon available to the media prior to the game, but he repeatedly said that he couldn’t comment on an ongoing investigation. Manager Phil Nevin and general manager Perry Minasian made similar no-comments, with the former saying that “at some point” he would address the matter.
Beyond the altercation (and, if we’re being cheeky, including it), Rendon is so far hitless with a walk, a sacrifice fly and two strikeouts in eight plate appearances during this young season. He started in Saturday’s 13–1 win but was pulled in the sixth inning, having banged his left knee on the tarp in pursuit of a foul ball. He sat out Sunday’s contest after getting treatment; the 32-year-old third baseman said that he was well enough to play but that it was already a planned day off for him.
Rendon is coming off not one but two disappointing, injury-shortened seasons in a row, which makes it easy to forget just how he earned that big contract, which still has the fourth-highest average annual value ($35 million) of any position player besides Aaron Judge ($40 million), Trout ($35.54 million), and Carlos Correa ($35.1 million). From 2017 to ’19, Rendon hit for a 145 wRC+ (eighth in the majors) with 18.7 WAR (tied for fifth) and capped that by helping the Nationals win the World Series in 2019, driving in a series-high eight runs, including six (with two homers) in Games 6 and 7. After signing with the Angels, he hit a robust .286/.418/.497 in 52 games in 2020, placing seventh in the league with a 152 wRC+ and tying Trout for third with 2.5 WAR; unfortunately, terrible run prevention cost the Angels a playoff spot.
In 2021, Rendon was sent to the injured list by groin and hamstring strains as well as a knee contusion; he played in just 58 games, none after July 4, and while rehabbing from the hamstring injury suffered a bout of right hip impingement that necessitated season-ending surgery in August. He hit just .240/.329/.382 with six homers, setting career lows with a 94 RC+ and 0.1 WAR. Last year, he landed on the IL due to right wrist inflammation in late May and played just four games in mid-June upon returning before undergoing surgery to repair a subluxation of a tendon. The surgery was supposed to be season-ending, but Rendon healed more quickly than expected and was able to return near the end of the year. That allowed him to serve a five-game suspension for his role in a June 26 benches-clearing brawl with the Mariners and then play in two games, during which he went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts.
If Rendon’s season-ending coda wasn’t exactly impressive for its performance, it at least sent him home “just having the peace of mind of going into the winter and having a normal offseason,” as he said at the time. “It was good to show myself going into the offseason that I could play… It wasn’t the greatest playing those last few games, but just to have that in the back of your mind knowing that I had another three months knowing I could continue to get stronger.”
Following a normal offseason, Rendon hit a sizzling .500/.561/.806 in 41 PA of Cactus League play. Obviously, one can’t put a ton of stock in such numbers, but they at least back up his assertion that he was fully healthy. For what it’s worth, he averaged an exit velocity of 94.4 mph on the 11 balls he hit in parks equipped with Statcast. As Davy Andrews noted last week, there’s at least some signal within the noise when it comes to spring exit velos, albeit at the 15-batted ball level.
Rendon is rejoining what projects to be the strongest Angels squad in recent years, at least going by their preseason Playoff Odds projection of 83.5 wins, which translates to an 18.5% chance of winning the AL West and a 44.7% of reaching the postseason for the first time since 2014. With the offseason additions of free agents Brandon Drury and Gio Urshela, the Angels have upgraded their infield, notably adding some depth that seems designed to insure against another Rendon outage. With first baseman Jared Walshsidelined by headaches and insomnia, Drury is starting at first base instead of second, though hopefully that’s a short-term issue.
There aren’t a ton of small-sample positives to be taken from Rendon’s performances in the past two seasons, but a few things do stand out. Even while swinging and missing more than ever last year (7.1% swinging-strike rate), he remained an exceptionally disciplined hitter, chasing just 23.4% of pitches, walking 11.9% of the time and striking out 18.1% of the time (his highest mark since 2016). His 8.3% barrel rate was his highest since 2019 and would have placed in the 54th percentile; as it was, it exceeded his previous Statcast career mark by 0.9 points.
Considering that he missed well over 200 games over the past two seasons and will turn 33 on June 6, Rendon still projects to be a force if he’s healthy. His Depth Charts projection forecasts a .264/.359/.442 line in 131 games; his 128 wRC+ matches that of Manny Machado for the seventh-highest among third basemen, and his 3.8 WAR is tied for eighth. The systems don’t know any details about Rendon’s physical condition, but even while accounting for the significant outages of his past two seasons, they project him for something near a star-level contribution, which shouldn’t be too surprising given that he reached or exceeded 5.9 WAR four times from 2014 to ’19 and on a prorated basis would have cleared that as well in ’20.
With Ohtani and Trout coming off exceptional showings on the big stage of the World Baseball Classic, the Angels do have a certain aura of optimism surrounding them for a change. A healthy Rendon should be part of that, but we’ll have to wait and see whether his lapse of good judgment in Oakland costs him some playing time.
The cradle of major league baseball in the spring is in the Phoenix metro area, where every February the league rises from the ashes of the previous season like, well, you know. Unlike their Grapefruit League counterparts, the Cactus League teams are fairly closely concentrated in the suburbs of Phoenix; a motivated fan could go to two spring training games a day without breaking a sweat.
The Athletics and Angels are spring training neighbors, with their training camps about 10 miles apart in Mesa and Tempe, respectively. And while these division rivals are on different trajectories — the Angels are desperately trying to get back to the playoffs before Mike Trout gets old and Shohei Ohtani peaces out; the A’s are in year two of an indefinite rebuild — “break in the young catcher” is near the top of both teams’ to-do list.
Logan O’Hoppe and Shea Langeliers were both traded to California from NL East teams in the past 13 months. Both got their first taste of big league action in 2022 and showed the potential to be that preciously rare species of ballplayer: a genuine two-way threat at catcher. O’Hoppe was the no. 51 prospect on the FanGraphs Top 100; Langeliers was no. 70 last offseason before he graduated out of prospect status. Read the rest of this entry »
Over the weekend, I participated in a panel at the SABR Analytics Conference in Phoenix. It was a ton of fun, and I enjoyed getting a chance to nerd out about baseball with a bunch of like-minded people. The awards show wasn’t bad, either. I look forward to Michael Baumann and I making subtle references to it the rest of the year (or maybe just me; Baumann is less arrogant than I am).
The topic of my panel, where I was joined by Yahoo Sports’ Hannah Keyser and moderator Vince Gennaro, was players we love for the 2023 season. I love Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout most for the 2023 season, but more specifically, it was about players we love who aren’t widely regarded as superstars. I came prepared; I picked two hitters and two pitchers who fit the bill.
A panel isn’t the same as a presentation, and our discussion ranged widely around these and other players (Hannah loves Wander Franco and Hunter Greene, Vince loves Dylan Cease), but I thought I’d lay out my research here as well. If you’re a frequent reader, you probably already know how much I like these guys, but it never hurts to reiterate a point. Read the rest of this entry »
This is a Shohei Ohtani Update. The World Baseball Classic is officially underway, and after a weekend packed with games, it’s time to check in on one of the biggest stars in the world. With Samurai Japan fresh off a 4-0 rampage through Pool B, FanGraphs can now officially report that Shohei Ohtani is still good at baseball.
The issue was not necessarily in question, but it’s worth taking a look at Ohtani’s performance considering his sudden disappearance at the end of the 2022 season. The two-way star didn’t play in a single game for more than four months — essentially the entire winter. Although he posted 9.5 WAR in 2022, several straw men constructed for the purpose of this sentence wondered whether, after such a long layoff, Ohtani would even remember how to play baseball at all.
Fortunately, Ohtani arrived at spring training in mid-February. After spending a couple weeks re-familiarizing himself with the sport, Ohtani got into three spring training games. Ohtani the batter hit a triple on the first pitch he saw, and has gone 2-for-5 so far. Ohtani the pitcher made one appearance, throwing 2.1 scoreless innings with no hits, two walks, and two strikeouts. Cactus League sources indicate that both a 1.200 OPS as a hitter and a 0.00 ERA as a pitcher are considered good. Read the rest of this entry »
Alejandro Kirk slashed a solid .285/.372/.415 with 14 home runs and a 129 wRC+ last year in his first full big-league season. Moreover, the 24-year-old Toronto Blue Jays catcher drew 63 free passes while going down by way of the K just 58 times. His 10.7% strikeout rate was third best in the junior circuit, behind only Steven Kwan’s 9.4% and Luis Arraez’s 7.1%.
How similar of a hitter is Kirk to Arraez? I asked that question to Blue Jays manager John Schneider prior to Thursday’s game in Dunedin.
“When you talk about contact, not a lot of swing-and-miss, yeah, they’re similar,” replied Schneider. “There’s a little more damage potential with Kirky. But more walks than strikeouts is tough to do at any level, [especially] the big leagues. So, I think when it’s just strike zone command, on-base, and contact-ability, they are pretty similar.”
Arraez, now a member of the Miami Marlins, won the American League batting title with the Minnesota Twins while slashing .316/.375/.420 with eight home runs and a 131 wRC+. Following up on my initial question, I asked Schneider if Kirk has the potential to capture a title of his own. Read the rest of this entry »
Baseball season is almost upon us. Spring training competition has begun and the hot stove of free agency has cooled off a bit, though not entirely. Many players, especially on the relief market, have yet to be signed. But over the past week, two former starters with a recent track record of excellent relief performance have taken their talents to Southern California – one finding a new home in Anaheim while the other returns to the big city.
Angels sign Matt Moore to a one-year, $7.55 million deal
Moore’s path through professional baseball has been as interesting as any. A highly touted high school draftee, Moore was once ranked as the top prospect in the game by MLB.com and Baseball Prospectus, ahead of Bryce Harper and Mike Trout. He established himself in the majors at the age of 23, making the AL All-Star team in his second full season. He then missed almost all of 2014 and ’15 with a torn UCL. After returning, his performance quickly dipped from solid to disastrous. He bounced from team to team and posted a 5.99 ERA in 2017-18 while splitting time between the rotation and bullpen. He appeared in just two games in 2019 before a knee injury prematurely ended his season. With his track record of injuries and poor performance now six years long, Moore took a new path to rejuvenate his career, signing with the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks of NPB for the 2020 season. There he ultimately excelled, with a 2.65 ERA and 3.21 FIP in 13 starts. Moore’s performance impressed the Phillies, who brought him on in a hybrid starter/reliever role where his struggles continued, allowing almost two homers per nine innings and a walk every other frame. However, one team still saw something in him – the Texas Rangers. They signed him to pitch out of the bullpen, and he was excellent: His 1.95 ERA and 2.98 FIP in 74 innings were career bests, as was his 10.1 K/9. Read the rest of this entry »
Gary Sanchez finally has a team… sort of. Last week, he was one of two catchers named to Team Dominican Republic’s roster for the 2023 World Baseball Classic, which gets underway next month. Meanwhile, although pitchers and catchers have reported to major league camps this week, Sanchez still doesn’t have a destination, as he remains a free agent.
By our count, Sanchez is one of just four position players who put up at least 1.0 WAR last year but remain on the market, along with shortstop Elvis Andrus (3.5), outfielder Jurickson Profar (2.5) and infielder José Iglesias (1.0). Admittedly, he’s not coming off a great season with the Twins, but Sanchez’s 1.3 WAR was respectable, his 89 wRC+ matched the major league average for catchers, and he had his best defensive season since 2018, reversing a multiyear decline.
Aside from rumors of interest from the Giants in January and the Angels earlier this month, the Sanchez burner of the hot stove has barely flickered this winter, but things heated up a bit in the wee hours of Wednesday after Sanchez and strength and conditioning coach Theo Aasen shared a short Instagram video of the 30-year-old backstop doing some exercises and baseball activities while wearing a shirt with the Yankees’ insignia. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Yu Darvish’s extension, then continue their 2023 season preview series by discussing the Los Angeles Angels (10:11) with The Athletic’s Sam Blum and the Boston Red Sox (59:32) with The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier, plus a Past Blast (1:47:29) from 1967, an impromptu chat between Ben and former MLB umpire Joe West about whether/why West edited his own Wikipedia page (1:50:12), and a few follow-ups (2:11:42).
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