It would be a scurrilous lie to suggest that adding Nolan Arenado to the St. Louis Cardinals has been anything but a roaring success for the franchise. Arenado’s first season with the Cards may have been a bit down compared to his previous campaigns, but he’s rebounded to have arguably his best season ever in 2022. And with a .292/.358/. 533, 151 wRC+ line good for 7.2 WAR, he’s making a solid case for votes in this year’s National League MVP race, especially with teammate Paul Goldschmidt coming back to the pack thanks to a weak September. The near-certain MVP in the American League, Aaron Judge, will be a free agent this offseason. Could the National League MVP join him? Arenado has an important decision to make.

The Rockies originally signed Arenado to an eight-year, $260 million contract in early 2019. That contract came with an opt-out after the 2021 season, an escape hatch if he wanted to take a crack at free agency. Sadly for Rockies fans, opening that hatch became a possibility almost immediately, with Arenado reportedly becoming unhappy with the path the organization was taking before the first season of the new deal was even complete. Per The Denver Post’s Patrick Saunders:

Although Arenado declined to talk publicly about the details of his deteriorating relationship with Bridich, multiple sources told The Post that Arenado feels like “promises were broken” after he signed an eight-year, $260 million contract last February. At that point, Arenado believed the Rockies were going to make roster moves to further improve a team that made the playoffs in 2017 and 2018.

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The top nine pitchers by WAR since 2012 have a combined 54 All-Star Game appearances, 13 Cy Young Awards, and two MVP Awards in their careers. Most of them, including Max Scherzer, Clayton Kershaw, Gerrit Cole, Zack Greinke, and Stephen Strasburg, have signed nine-figure contracts that earn each of them over $30 million annually. Then, at number 10, there’s the ever underrated one-time All-Star José Quintana, just ahead of Yu Darvish and David Price:

Quintana, 33, has accumulated 32.7 WAR over an 11-season career that looks wildly different from those of his peers on this list. He started with the White Sox from 2012-17, signing a $21 million extension in 2014 and posting a 3.51 ERA in over 1,000 innings. In 2017, the Cubs took an interest, parting with their top two prospects, Eloy Jiménez and Dylan Cease, and two others to get Quintana’s talents to the North Side.

From there, he wavered. His fastball velocity declined year to year from 2016 to ’20, and while he was still capable of making 30 starts each season, he wasn’t able to get outs as effectively. In his contract year in 2020, COVID-19 and two stints on the IL limited Quintana to just one start and three relief outings. His struggles would continue in 2021, when attempts to catch on with the Angels and Giants resulted in a pair of DFAs. Read the rest of this entry »

This is Alex’s first piece as a FanGraphs contributor. Alex is a recent honors graduate of Vassar College, where he served as the sports and senior editor of the award-winning Miscellany News. He has also written for PitcherList and Sports Info Solutions, the latter of which he video-scouted for as well. His main interest lies in cognitive psychology, a woefully under-studied area of baseball research. For his senior thesis, he constructed a neural network that predicted pitch speed and location based on early trajectory information; he used the model’s errors to learn more about how batters might integrate a pre-pitch “guess” with their real-time perceptions. He is fascinated by pitch sequencing and is a swinging-strike enthusiast.

Julio Rodríguez. Michael Harris II. Adley Rutschman. We all know the names atop this year’s extraordinary position player rookie class. You have to go back to 2015 for the last time three different first-year hitters each accrued four or more wins; then it was Kris Bryant, Matt Duffy, and Francisco Lindor. Those names should put into perspective just how much baseball has gone by since then. But when Steven Kwan surpassed the 4-WAR mark on Sunday with a three-hit, five-RBI effort, cementing the Guardians’ American League Central crown, this year’s class became the first since 1964 to have four rookies each with four or more wins.

All told, the big four at the top have overshadowed some other stellar performances. Bobby Witt Jr. has joined the 20-20 club already; along with Rodríguez, they make up the first rookie duo to do so since 1987. Jose Siri has authored an excellent defensive season, ranking fifth in the majors in Statcast’s Runs Above Average. While not the age of a traditional rookie, Joey Meneses has come out of nowhere to post a 158 wRC+ across the last two months of the season. And among hitters with at least 400 PAs this year, Brendan Donovan ranks seventh in the majors with a .389 OBP. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been having fun producing estimates of when Aaron Judge might hit his 60th, 61st, and 62nd home runs this season. It’s cool for multiple reasons: I love home run chases, like most baseball fans, and I also like coming up with ways to answer seemingly difficult questions via simulation. It’s one of the same reasons I like writing about baseball in the first place: I think it’s very neat that I can think about baseball both very tangibly (Randy Arozarena’s baserunning) and abstractly.

Since I have the technology, I’ve gotten a fairly obvious request a few times in the past week: do it for Pujols. His improbable quest for 700 homers has turned into an unlikely quest, and now a “wait could he?” quest. At 697 dingers, he’s within hailing distance of a momentous number to retire on. I’m going to use the same tools that helped me model when Judge might hit some big homers to do the same for Pujols.

The bare bones of this system will be the same. I started with the Cardinals’ remaining schedule and the park factors for right-handed hitters in those stadiums. Almost immediately, though, I took a detour, because the Cardinals don’t use Pujols like the Yankees use Judge. At this stage in his career, Pujols is at his best against left-handed pitching. He also needs more off days than Judge, eminently reasonable given his age. That creates a playing time puzzle, so to figure out which games Pujols will play in, I used Roster Resource to work out which days I expect opposing teams to start lefty pitchers. On those days, I project Pujols to start and get three plate appearances (against lefties) 30% of the time, four (three against lefties) 55% of the time, and five (three against lefties) 15% of the time. This is definitely not perfect, but as a rough approximation, it’ll do. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year, a huge throng of pitchers changes teams at the trade deadline. It happens for obvious reasons: teams with postseason aspirations and second-division pitching staffs try to augment their squad, juggernauts shore up their bullpen, or any of several variations on those themes. For the most part, it’s a simple re-allocation of good pitching: teams that don’t need it this year trade pitchers to teams that do, and reap prospects or otherwise interesting players in return.

Sometimes, though, teams make trades for a slightly different reason. Pitchers aren’t static; you can’t call someone up on the phone and trade for a 3.40 ERA, or 2.4 WAR per 200 innings pitched, or anything of the sort. You trade for a pitcher, and as we detail frequently in the electronic pages of FanGraphs, pitchers change the way they approach their craft all the time. They might take a new approach, or learn a new pitch, or switch roles. Learning a new pitch isn’t practical in the heat of a playoff chase, but changing the allocation of existing pitches is far easier. Let’s take a look at two starting pitchers who have changed their pitch mix significantly since being traded at the deadline, as well as two others who have made smaller changes. Read the rest of this entry »

You know the basics of Lars Nootbaar’s story, because you know how the Cardinals seem to work. An eighth-round draft pick in 2018, he held his own in an increasingly tough set of minor league assignments, made the show in ’21, and is now leading off for one of the best offensive teams in baseball. He’s putting up more or less the best offensive performance of his career, and doing it in the major leagues after less than 1,000 minor league plate appearances. Nothing to it! Just a little devil magic, move on with your lives.

If you look a bit deeper than the basics, though, Nootbaar gets far more interesting. That same old story? It’s not really right. Nootbaar isn’t the same player he was when he was drafted. He’s a slugging corner outfielder who probably had a lot to do with the Cardinals’ willingness to trade Harrison Bader at the deadline. Let’s take a journey through his pro career and see if we can predict his future at the end of it.

When he was drafted, Nootbaar was an approach-over-tools prospect. He’s always had a good sense of the strike zone; the question was whether he’d be able to muster enough power on contact to keep high-level pitchers from knocking the bat out of his hands. In 2018 and ’19, that concern seemed pressing: in 265 plate appearances between Hi-A and Double-A, he hit only two homers and posted a .055 ISO. In other words, pitchers were knocking the bat out of his hands. He posted an average batting line anyway, but let’s face it: that’s an uninspiring start to a career.
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While Francisco Lindor is having an MVP-caliber season — that is, one that would not be out of place given historical precedents and that belongs in the discussion of this year’s potential honorees — he’s not the leading candidate for National League hardware. Particularly after what he’s done in August as the Cardinals have pulled away with the NL Central lead, Paul Goldschmidt must be considered the favorite, as he not only leads the NL in all three slash stats (and wRC+), but he has a shot at winning the league’s Triple Crown.

The 34-year-old Goldschmidt finished the weekend hitting .338/.421/.639 with 33 home runs, 105 RBI, a 194 wRC+, and 6.9 WAR. All of those figures lead the Senior Circuit except for his homers, and he’s tied for the RBI lead. Here’s how those numbers stack up versus other NL players:

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Jordan Montgomery wasn’t the biggest name traded at the trading deadline, not by a long shot. Juan Soto got traded this deadline! So did Luis Castillo and Frankie Montas. The latter was even traded to Montgomery’s team, setting in motion the trade that sent him to St. Louis. But since the deadline, no player has done more for their new team than New York’s former lefty.

Last night, Montgomery put together his fourth straight gem for the Cardinals, throwing a one-hit shutout on 99 pitches, both the first complete game of his career and the second Maddux in the majors this year. The Cardinals needed every bit of it, with their bullpen taxed, their offense quieted by the Cubs, and the rival Brewers winning in Los Angeles. That brought his post-trade record to 4–0 and set up this delightfully obscure statistic:

Jordan Montgomery of the @Cardinals is the second MLB pitcher in the modern era to go 4-0 with no more than 1 run allowed over his first 4 starts with a team.

The other was Fernando Valenzuela with the Dodgers in 1981.

— OptaSTATS (@OptaSTATS) August 23, 2022

I don’t think we’re in for Montgomania anytime soon, comparisons to Valenzuela notwithstanding; statistics like that are more interesting for novelty than for making player comparisons. But the Cardinals’ deadline acquisitions — Montgomery and José Quintana — have backed an August explosion by twin MVP candidates Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado and the resurgent Albert Pujols, allowing St. Louis to take the reins in the race for the NL Central. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Cardinals re-signed Albert Pujols in late March, few imagined that the transaction would amount to much more than a victory lap and a nice bit of closure for a 42-year-old all-time great. Though he hit well in limited duty in April, Pujols struggled to such a great extent for the next two months that a midseason retirement wouldn’t have been a surprise. Over the past six weeks, however, he’s been one of the hottest hitters in baseball, and on Saturday, he made a bit of history.

In a 16–7 rout of the Diamondbacks in Arizona, Pujols went 4-for-4 with a pair of homers, both off Madison Bumgarner, with exit velocities of 105.4 mph and 107.5 mph. He also ripped a 109.4-mph single off the left field wall against Bumgarner, then capped his night with a softer single off Chris Devenski.

Via his first homer, Pujols surpassed Cardinals legend Stan Musial for second place in total bases. Not second in team history or second since Babe Ruth, or the start of the integration or expansion eras — that’s second all-time, behind only Hank Aaron:

His was a pretty quiet ascent; few noted Pujols passing Bonds in 2021 or Mays earlier this year.

In celebration of Albert Pujols (@PujolsFive) passing Stan Musial (@stanthemaninc) and becoming 2nd All-Time in MLB history in total bases, I have created a progressive timeline for All-Time Career Total Bases!

Huge congratulations to the @Cardinals legend on this feat! ?? pic.twitter.com/BXOLDyQcuS

— Greg Harvey (@BetweenTheNums) August 21, 2022

Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Pujols ranks so high in total bases given that he’s 10th in hits and fifth in both doubles and homers, but it’s that combination of power and persistence (and a little bit of luck when it comes to time missed) that’s placed him so high. While Pujols lost nearly two-thirds of a late-career season to the pandemic, Musial and Mays each missed a full season of their primes to military service, with the latter losing most of a second one as well. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the day after the trade deadline, which always means one thing: baseball writers begrudgingly cleaning up their gross, sparkling-water-can-filled workspaces. Oh, wait, actually it means two things: that, and a flood of “who won the trading deadline” articles.

This year, I’m going to do something slightly different. I won’t claim that I’ve re-invented the wheel, but I’ve always thought that those winner/loser columns are too deterministic and don’t leave enough room for nuance. I thought about listing each team that made a trade as a winner, with a “maybe” appended to indicate that we don’t know what will happen in the future; if you really want to know who won and who lost, check back in October… or maybe in October of 2025. I thought about making each team a “loser (maybe)” for the same reason. In the end, I settled on some broad archetypes. I’ll throw a subjective grade on how much I like the move, and also endeavor to explain the risks around each team’s deadline. You can find all of our deadline coverage here. Let’s get started. Read the rest of this entry »