With six days left in the regular season — and six games for most teams — three teams have clinched their respective divisions (the Brewers, Guardians, and Phillies), and two others have clinched playoff berths (the Dodgers and Yankees). That leaves 10 teams fighting for seven spots, but even with the playoff field not fully set, we thought it would be a fun and worthwhile exercise to highlight various facets of the potential October teams by going around the diamond to identify the strongest and weakest at each position in each league.
This is something of an offshoot of my annual Replacement Level Killers series, and in fact even some confirmed October participants have spots that still fit the bill as true lineup sinkholes — think first base for the Yankees and Brewers, to pick one position from among the aforementioned teams — but this time with no trade deadline to help fill them. For this, I’ll be considering full-season performance but with an eye to who’s best or worst now, with injuries and adjustments in mind. Unlike the Killers series, I’ll also be considering pitching, with the shortening of rotations and bullpens part of the deliberations.
For the first installment of this series, I’ll focus on each position’s best among the remaining National League contenders. In this case that limits the field to the Phillies, Brewers, Dodgers, Padres, Mets, Diamondbacks, and Braves, with the last three of those teams fighting for two Wild Card spots. Read the rest of this entry »
With just 10 days left to go in the regular season, four teams — the Brewers, Dodgers, Guardians, and Yankees — have clinched playoff berths, and while just one division race has been decided, only two others have even a faint pulse. There’s still plenty of drama to be had with regards to the Wild Card races, which essentially boil down to a pair of four-to-make-three scenarios; Seattle might have been a stronger fifth in the AL if certain Mariners who reached third base didn’t insist upon taking very strangewalkabouts. Beyond that, it’s also worth checking in on the jockeying for position to claim the first-round byes that go to the top two teams in each league.
Once upon a time, this space would be filled with my reintroducing readers to the concept of Team Entropy, but through the 2022 Collective Bargaining Agreement, Major League Baseball and the players’ union traded the potential excitement and scheduling mayhem created by on-field tiebreakers and sudden-death games in exchange for a larger inventory of playoff games. The 12-team, two-bye format was designed to reward the top two teams by allowing them to bypass the possibility of being eliminated in best-of-three series. So far, however, things haven’t worked out that way, because outcomes in a best-of-five series are only slightly more predictable than those of a best-of-three.
In fact, the National League teams who have received byes under the newish system have lost all four Division Series since, two apiece by the Dodgers and Braves. The 111-win Dodgers were ousted by an 89-win Padres team in 2022, and then last year’s 100-win team was knocked off by the 84-win Diamondbacks. In 2022, the 101-win Braves fell to an 87-win Phillies team, and last year, after winning 104 games in the regular season, Atlanta once again was eliminated by a Philadelphia club that had finished 14 games behind the Braves in the standings. American League bye teams have had more success, going 3-1, with last year’s 90-win Rangers beating the 101-win Orioles for the lone upset. The Astros have taken care of business in both years, with their 106-win club sweeping the 90-win Mariners in 2022 and their 90-win team beating the 87-win Twins last year. Read the rest of this entry »
Jovanny Hernandez/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel-USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
The Brewers clinched a playoff spot on Wednesday afternoon, with the Cubs’ loss to Oakland early in the afternoon. The Brew Crew themselves waited until after their game against Philadelphia later in the evening to celebrate properly — turns out that a pregame champagne bacchanal is frowned upon in this day and age — but by golly, they sure did seem to enjoy themselves.
Some fuddy-duddies, angered by the realization that anhedonia is not a universal condition, will say there’s still work to be done for the Brewers, a team that’s now made the playoffs six times in seven years but has connived to win only a single postseason series in that span. That’s surely true, and should Milwaukee repeat its traditional low-scoring first-round flameout, I’ll be right there in line to level appropriate criticism.
But let’s not overlook the fact that winning the division requires months of hard work by hundreds of people throughout the organization. It would be disrespectful to those who put in that effort not to take a moment, for one night, to celebrate the product of all that labor. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. I’m going to keep the introduction short and sweet today so I can get back to my once-annual guilty pleasure: spending all day watching the US Open. But while I’m going full Jimmy Butler, plenty of baseball is happening, so I’ve got my eyes on that as well. You couldn’t watch a game this week without seeing something spectacular. We’ve got great baserunning, awful baserunning, and phenomenal catches. We’ve got teams misunderstanding risk and reward, and GMs touching hot stoves over and over again. It’s a great week to watch baseball, because it always is. Shout out to Zach Lowe of ESPN as always for the column idea, and one programming note: Five Things will be off next Friday. Let’s get to the baseball!
1. Anthony Volpe’s Disruptive Speed
Another year, another below-average season with the bat for the Yankees shortstop. That’s turning him into a lightning rod for controversy, because he’s a type of player who often gets overlooked (defense and speed) playing for a team where players often get overrated. The combination of the two leads to some confusing opinions. “He’s a good player who will make fewer All-Star teams than you think because defensive value is consistently underappreciated” isn’t exactly a strong argument if you’re talking to an acquaintance at a sports bar.
One thing that everyone can agree on, though: After he reaches base, Anthony Volpe is a problem. I tuned into Monday’s Nationals-Yankees game to see Dylan Crews in the majors and to watch Aaron Judge and Juan Soto, but I ended up just marveling at Volpe for a lot of the afternoon. He got on base three times (that’s the hard part for him, to be clear) and tilted the entire defense each time. He wasn’t even going on this play, and his vault lead still dragged Ildemaro Vargas out of position:
I’m not quite sure how to assign value for that play. The ball found a hole there, but DJ LeMahieu could just as easily have hit the ball straight to Vargas. I’m not saying that we need an advanced statistical reckoning about the value of a runner bluffing a fielder into motion, but that doesn’t change how cool it is to watch Volpe spook good veteran infielders just by standing around and bouncing.
Some of his baserunning value is of the straightforward, look-at-this-fast-human-being variety. You don’t need to hit the ball very deep to drive him home from third:
Some of the value is effort-based. Volpe’s always thinking about an extra base. Even when he hits a clean single, he’s got eyes on the play. An innocuous outfield bobble? He’ll take the base, thank you very much:
Of course, if you show someone taking a bouncing lead in the first GIF, you have to show them stealing a base in the fourth: Call it Volpe’s Run. That double led to a pitching change, and after two looks at Joe La Sorsa’s delivery, Volpe helped himself to third base:
Not every game is like this, but most of his times on base are. He’s never content to go station to station. His instincts are finely tuned, his speed blazing. I’m rooting for Volpe to improve at the plate, and it’s for selfish reasons: I love to watch great baserunning, and I want to see him get more chances to do it.
2. Whatever the Opposite of That Is
Oh Washington. The Nats are near the top of my watch list right now. Their assortment of young offensive standouts makes for fun games, and now that Crews has debuted, the top of their lineup looks legitimately excellent. You can see the future of the team even before they’re ready to contend, and that’s just cool. They might even be good already – they won the series against the Yankees this week, with Crews hitting his first big league homer in the deciding game. But uh, they’re not quite ready for prime time yet. Take a look at this laser beam double:
Boy, it sure looks fun to pour on the runs when you’re already winning. Wait, I misspoke. Take a look at this long fielder’s choice:
Somehow, Joey Gallo didn’t score on a jog on that one. He slammed on the brakes at third base and realized he couldn’t make it home. Then he got hung out to dry because everyone else in the play kept running like it was a clear double (it was). What a goof! That meant the only question was whether he’d be able to hold the rundown long enough to let everyone advance a base. The answer was a resounding yes – to everyone other than Juan Yepez:
I think his brain just short circuited there. He was standing on third with Gallo completely caught in a rundown. All you have to do to finish the play is stand still. But for whatever reason, he started side-shuffling in retreat toward second, another base currently occupied by a runner (!). While Jazz Chisholm Jr. tagged Gallo out, Yepez was busy hanging José Tena out to dry. Famously, you can’t have two runners on the same base. The rest of the play was academic:
I feel bad hanging Yepez out to dry, because some clearer communication would have made this play a run-scoring double. First, Gallo was overly cautious tagging up on the deep drive to center. Then, he got bamboozled. Watch the base coach hold Yepez, only for Gallo to see the sign and think it was intended for him:
Just a disaster all around. I can’t get enough of the Gameday description: “José Tena singles on a sharp line drive to center fielder Aaron Judge. Juan Yepez to 3rd. José Tena lines into a double play, center fielder Aaron Judge to shortstop Anthony Volpe to catcher Austin Wells to first baseman DJ LeMahieu to catcher Austin Wells to third baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. to second baseman Gleyber Torres. Joey Gallo out at home. Juan Yepez to 3rd. José Tena out at 2nd. Two Outs.”
Ah, yes, just your typical 8-6-2-3-2-5-4 double play. The Nationals are a lot of fun to watch – even when it’s at their expense.
3. We Get It, Rays
The whole never-trade-with-Tampa-Bay bit is overdone. The Rays lose plenty of trades. They win their fair share too, of course, but they are high volume operators in a business full of uncertainty. Sometimes, you get Isaac Paredes for almost nothing. Sometimes, you get Jonny DeLuca. When you churn your roster to the extent that they do, you can’t win them all, and that’s fine. But the Cardinals? Yeah, they should definitely not trade with the Rays.
First, in 2018, they sent Tommy Pham to Tampa Bay in exchange for some depth prospects, and Pham racked up 8 WAR in the next year and a half with the Rays. Then, before the 2020 season, the Cardinals swapped Randy Arozarena for Matthew Liberatore; Randy became the face of the postseason, and Libby turned into a long reliever. The most recent deal might not be the most damaging, but it’s an apt capper to a transaction trilogy.
Dylan Carlson was supposed to be the next big thing in St. Louis, but that ship had sailed long before the Cardinals jettisoned him at the deadline this year. His offensive game just broke down out of nowhere over the last two years, and he played himself out of St. Louis even as the team floundered for outfield depth this year. He had a 50 wRC+ in a part-time role when the team decided it was time to move on.
That’s fine, guys need changes of scenery all the time. But trading him to the Rays, of all teams, felt a little on the nose. The reliever they got back, Shawn Armstrong, is a perfectly good bullpen option. He made 11 appearances for the Redbirds and compiled a 2.84 ERA (2.78 FIP), a solid month’s work. But I’m using the past tense because they designated him for assignment earlier this week, hoping another team would pick up the balance of his contract and save them $350,000 or so. They’ve made a similar move with Pham, whom they also acquired at the deadline, since then. In Armstrong’s case, they also did it because he’d pitched two days in a row and they needed another fresh arm on the active roster; it was a messy situation all around.
We have their postseason odds at 1.1% after a desultory August, and they likely aren’t losing much of that value by moving on from Armstrong. It’s the signaling of it all, though: They traded for the guy, got exactly what they wanted from him, and still couldn’t keep him around for two months. Meanwhile, Carlson looks like a reasonable major leaguer again. He hasn’t been a world beater by any means, but he’s hitting the ball hard more frequently in a semi-platoon role that takes advantage of his ability to hit lefties. He already has three homers as a Ray after none all year as a Cardinal.
Carlson had to go, because something wasn’t working in St. Louis. Armstrong was a perfectly reasonable return, and he did exactly what the team hoped for when the Cardinals acquired him. The optics, though! They traded yet another pretty good outfielder who didn’t fit into the puzzle in St. Louis. Tampa Bay has two years to get the most out of him. As is customary, none of the players the Rays sent back to Missouri moved the needle. For appearances’ sake, if nothing else, the Cardinals can’t keep making these trades.
4. Outrageous Robberies
It feels weird that Jackson Chourio, a five-tool superstar with blazing footspeed, doesn’t play center. It seems like a knock on him, almost. Sure, this guy’s a prodigy, but he can’t handle the tough defensive position that you might expect him to play given his talent. Except, that’s not quite right. Why would you play him in center field when you currently have Spider-Man patrolling the grass? I mean…
Oh my goodness. I don’t even want to hear about catch probability on this one, because the difficulty of this play is the part where he gets over the wall in deep center. This isn’t one of those “robberies” where the fielder grazes the wall with his back and everyone celebrates. Blake Perkins can do those just fine – he has four robberies this year, and they weren’t all this hard – but he can also go the extra mile. He went all the way up and over to get this one:
That’s an 8-foot wall, so he probably got to the ball 9 or so feet in the air. He had to cover a ton of ground before getting there; 101 feet from his initial position, to be precise. He took a great route, which gave him time to decelerate and time the jump, but the ball kept carrying. In the end, he had to parkour up the wall a little bit to get enough height:
What more can I say? You can’t do it any better than that. Perkins reacted like he was shocked by his own play:
So no sweat, Jackson. You’re a pretty good outfielder too; you just can’t climb walls quite so nimbly. There’s no shame in second place when first place looks like that.
5. Getting by With a Little Help
Austin Riley is on the IL right now, and 2024 has been a down year for him. That’s largely an offensive issue, though his defense isn’t quite up to previous years’ standards, either. That said, he can still turn an absolute gem out there. Take a look at this beauty from two weeks ago:
That’s the area where he’s improved the most. His arm is below average for third base, so he compensates by getting his feet planted and putting his entire body into the throw. That ball had to travel forever, and to be fair, it two-hopped Matt Olson, but that’s an accurate ball given where he caught it and how quickly he had to let it go. That’s very nice, but watch Jo Adell at the bag. What is he doing?!? That isn’t how you’re supposed to run out a bang-bang play. If he went straight in, he’d beat the throw comfortably. Instead, he curled his way into an out.
In his mind, I’m sure that ball was a double right out of the box. That’s reasonable! Look at where Riley made the play:
Riley’s plant foot ended up all the way into the grass in foul territory. Not many baseballs get fielded there, and Adell hit that one on a line, so when he started out of the box, he was surely considering his options in regards to second base. He came out of the box looking down the line and taking a direct, rather than rounded, route. But as you can see from the high angle replay, he started to bend his path to cut the bag and head for second, right around the same time that Riley rose and fired:
The closeup of Adell is definitely a bad look:
But take another look at those last two shots and you’ll get a better idea of what happened. Adell probably couldn’t see the ball in the corner cleanly. There was a lot of traffic: baserunners, umpires, Riley himself, the pitcher, and so on. About halfway down the baseline, he looked away from the play to pick up first base coach Bo Porter, exactly what you should do when you can’t find the ball on your own. But Porter just plain missed it. He was pinwheeling Adell toward second, imploring him to arc out for extra speed. He clearly thought the ball was in the outfield and that Adell going wide could give him a shot at an extra base.
I’d put more blame on Porter than on Adell in this situation, but there’s blame to go around for both. I’d give credit to Riley, too, of course. Base coaches and baserunners make mistakes sometimes, and they aren’t always punished by outstanding defensive plays like that. But this is an unforgivable mistake given the game situation.
Adell’s run was far less important than the two in front of him. If there was any question at all about his being safe or not, any question about whether Riley had fielded it, the correct play was to book it to first and completely forget about the double. Reaching first safely is worth more than a run: the runner scoring from third plus the first and third situation that would’ve result from it. Teams have scored 0.52 runs after first and third with two outs this year, and 0.59 runs after second and third with two outs. Meaning, if Adell had taken a straight line path, the Angels would’ve scored a run and had that 0.52 on top of it, so making an out at first base cost them an expected 1.52 runs. Advancing to second would have gained them another 0.07 expected runs, but only if that runner on third scored, which didn’t happen because Adell was out at first. They would’ve needed to successfully advance to second 96 times out of 100 to make the math work there. It’s worse than that, though: Going from a one-run lead to a two-run lead is worth astronomically more than stepping up from two to three. Take that into account, and we’re looking at a play where you’d need to be right 98 times out of 100.
The Angels mistook playing hard for playing smart. The winning baseball play there is to ensure the run. It didn’t end up costing them, but it could have. They never scored again, and the Braves put plenty of traffic on the bases the rest of the way. The funny thing is, I’m sure that Adell will get knocked for not hustling on this play, and I don’t think that’s what went wrong. He and Porter just got greedy aiming for a hustle double when the right choice was to nit it up (play extremely conservatively, for the non-poker-players out there). It’s a strange way to make a mistake – but it’s definitely still a mistake.
The other day, I wrote about Jake McCarthy’s BABIP, and touched on an assumption about which kinds of hitters are going to put up outlier numbers in that stat. McCarthy hits a lot of grounders, which generally produce a higher BABIP than fly balls (though they’re less productive by other metrics). He’s also left-handed and very fast, which means he ought to be able to beat out grounders for infield singles.
So let’s take a little gander at the infield hit rate leaderboard for qualified hitters. This is the percentage of groundballs a batter produces that turn into infield hits. Simple enough:
So yeah, Bellinger is primarily known for grinding hanging curveballs to make his bread, but in spite of his size, he is a left-handed fast guy. That tracks. Peña is a righty, but he’s very fast. His average home-to-first time is actually in the top 20 among all hitters — lefties and righties alike — this season. And because Peña hits so many grounders, he leads all batters in total infield hits with 24.
I have a secret to tell, one that might surprise you. I think that baseball analysis is too complex. I can’t keep track of it all. There are too many numbers, too many ways to approach things, too many parts of the game that might be good in one context, bad in another, and neutral in a third. My whole job is to analyze baseball, and yet I find myself drowning in data more often than controlling it. My solution is to simplify. I look for players’ superpowers – carrying tools, in baseball parlance. Aaron Judge is power personified, with the rest of his game building off of that. José Ramírez is a bat control genius. Mookie Betts is the most coordinated man alive. Luis Arraez could hit soft line drives the other way in his sleep. These shortcuts help me think about how the rest of a player’s game fits in. But I have a problem: I’m trying to analyze Jackson Chourio, and I can’t figure out what his superpower is.
You might think it’s his speed. You wouldn’t be wrong, exactly. He’s one of the fastest players in baseball, and he uses that to his advantage all over the place. He’s an excellent baserunner and defender. He eats up ground in the outfield in huge loping strides, the kind of quick you only notice after the fact. I watch him and think he’s an above-average center fielder. The Brewers have only played him in the corners this year, since they’re overrun with excellent defensive outfielders and Chourio has the least experience, but he’s so good that if he ends up in a corner, he might be peak Jason Heyward there.
I guess we could stop the article there, but speed isn’t really a superpower for many great players. Sure, Bobby Witt Jr. and Elly De La Cruz are the current kings of sprint speed, but you don’t look at their games and say, “Oh, the main thing about them is that they’re fast.” That’s the territory of Billy Hamilton or Victor Scott II, and those guys just aren’t stars in the way that I think Chourio will be. I’m looking for an offensive weapon that makes everything work for him, one that explains how he’s hitting major league pitching at age 20. Read the rest of this entry »
Despite trading ace Corbin Burnes, losing two members of their planned starting five to Tommy John surgery and then two others to injuries that have cost them more than half a season, the Brewers are riding high atop the NL Central, holding a seven-game lead over the Cardinals and Pirates entering the morning of the trade deadline. They’ve already used a club-record 16 starters this year, including righty Aaron Civale, whom they acquired from the Rays earlier this month. On Monday they added the man who’ll likely be no. 17, righty Frankie Montas, whom they acquired from the Reds in a rare intradivisional swap in exchange for outfielder Joey Wiemer and righty reliever Jakob Junis.
Beyond the fact that Montas was healthy enough for the Brewers to move forward with the deal — his 15-day stint on the injured list earlier this year was for a forearm contusion caused by a line drive — and can take the ball every five or six days, it’s not clear yet what the Brewers see in the 31-year-old righty. His performance has fallen off considerably since he finished sixth in the AL Cy Young voting in 2021 on the strength of a 3.37 ERA, 207 strikeouts, and 4.0 WAR for the A’s. Dealt to the Yankees as part of a six-player trade on August 1, 2022, he pitched poorly down the stretch before being sidelined by shoulder inflammation, and after undergoing arthroscopic shoulder surgery in February 2023, was limited to a 1.1-inning cameo in last season’s penultimate game.
When Montas hit free agency, the Reds took a flier, signing him for a $16 million guarantee in December, with a $14 million salary this year, a $2 million buyout on a $20 million mutual option for 2025, and some small performance and award bonuses tacked on as well. There are no bad one-year deals, it is often said, but this one for Montas — with his 5.01 ERA and 4.91 FIP in 93.1 innings — rates as a disappointment. Play the arbitrary endpoint game, and you can find a pretty decent stretch: From May 29 through July 4, in seven starts totaling 36.1 innings, he posted a 3.72 ERA and 4.20 FIP. But since then, he’s been lit for 16 runs in 16 innings over three starts. Only twice all season has he put together back-to-back quality starts (six or more innings, three or fewer earned runs). Read the rest of this entry »
We’re barreling toward the trade deadline, which means it’s time for teams to decide if they’re in, out, or Tampa Bay. After picking which of those categories they fit into, the next move is obvious. In? Trade for a reliever. Out? Trade away your relievers. Tampa Bay? Make 10 moves, with more moving parts than you can possibly imagine. All of those types were on display this weekend, so let’s round up some reliever trades.
The Brewers and Rockies got the party started with a simple swap: Nick Mears to the Brewers, Bradley Blalock and Yujanyer Herrera to the Rockies. This one is basically what you’d expect from a deadline deal. The Brewers need relief help; they have nine pitchers on the IL, and while they just got Devin Williams back, they lost Bryan Hudson to injury earlier this week. It’s been an uphill battle to fill innings in Milwaukee this year. Mears slots right into the middle of the bullpen, helping to lengthen the number of innings the Brewers can cover with high octane arms. The Brewers have the fewest innings pitched by starters this year, so that depth really matters. Read the rest of this entry »
I updated the Top 100 Prospects list today. This post goes through the pitchers and why they stack the way they do. Here’s a link directly to the list, and here’s a link to the post with a little more detail regarding farm system and prospect stuff and the trade deadline. It might be best for you to open a second tab and follow along, so here are the Top 100 pitchers isolated away from the bats. Let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »
The Milwaukee Brewers, in recent history, tend to be a little light both on offense and in the payroll department. Which makes Christian Yelich — the team’s leader in batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging, and the recipient of nearly a quarter of the team’s major league salary expenditure — a pivotal figure for the franchise. Perhaps to an extent unmatched by any other position player on a contending team. (That’d be an interesting blog for another day.)
On Tuesday, the Brewers faced a situation tailor-made for Yelich: Leading 1-0, runners on first and second, two outs, the right-handed Julian Merryweather on the mound. Milwaukee had struggled to scratch out even that one run, and just a single by Yelich would’ve given the Brewers bullpen room to relax. And yet, out of the dugout stepped the right-handed Rhys Hoskins, not Yelich. Hoskins struck out, and the Brewers quickly announced that their star left fielder was experiencing back tightness.
