On Saturday, the Cardinals battled back from deficits of 6-1 and 8-3 to find themselves trailing by just one run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. Yadier Molina had just singled off Mets closer Edwin Diaz. Cardinals pitcher Jack Flaherty came in off the bench to pinch run. Kolten Wong hit a high blooper that found its way in between second baseman Jeff McNeil and a diving Michael Conforto. Flaherty, showing some of his inexperience on the basepaths, twice looked back at the play instead of focusing on third base coach Pop Warner as he was heading toward third base when the ball hit the ground. He then ran for home.

This is how the play moved forward from there.

We can see Flaherty stumble a bit at third, though that stumble doesn’t look like it made a huge difference as the throw beat Flaherty by about 10 feet. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that the decision to send Flaherty ended the baseball game and handed the Mets a victory. As for the decision-making at the time of Warner’s choice to send Flaherty home, that deserves a closer examination.

The first step in looking at the decision to try and tie the game is establishing how much benefit the Cardinals would receive if Flaherty was safe and compare that to the loss if Flaherty was thrown out. We know that getting thrown out ends the game, so the Cardinals win expectancy in that scenario is of course zero. There are two other scenarios, with the first being if Flaherty stays. The Cardinals would then still be down by one run, but they would have runners on second and third base with two outs and Paul Goldschmidt stepping up to the plate. The second scenario is if Flaherty scores the tying run and Paul Goldschmidt steps up to the plate with a runner on second base. Read the rest of this entry »

The combination of power and command has been striking. In 34 innings split between high-A Dunedin and Double-A New Hampshire, Nate Pearson has punched out 52 batters and issued just six walks. His ERA sits comfortably at 1.32. Blessed with a blistering fastball and a carve-‘em-up slider, he’s the top pitching prospect in the Toronto Blue Jays organization.

The 22-year-old right-hander doesn’t possess a long professional resume. Selected 28th overall in the 2017 draft out of Central Florida Community College, Pearson got his feet wet with 20 innings of rookie ball, then began last year on the injured list with an intercostal strain. Upon returning in early May, he was promptly nailed by a come-backer and missed the remainder of the regular season with a fractured ulna.

Pearson recovered in time to make six appearances in the Fall League, an assignment Jeff Ware, Toronto’s minor-league pitching coordinator, called “a big test given that he’d really only pitched in short-season ball.” In terms of reestablishing his high-ceiling credentials, he passed with flying colors.

Standing a sturdy six-foot-six, Pearson looks the part of a power pitcher, and that’s exactly what he is. Asked for a self-scouting report, he led with that exact definition. Read the rest of this entry »

Things haven’t been going the Mariners’ way lately. With Tuesday’s loss to the Yankees, they fell to 19-19, thereby setting a record for the fastest plunge to .500 for a team that started the season 13-2. In the third inning of Thursday night’s contest, second baseman Dee Gordon departed the game after being hit on the right wrist by a J.A. Happ fastball, and after manager Scott Servais pinch-hit for fill-in Dylan Moore in the top of the eighth, he resorted to calling upon first baseman Edwin Encarnacion to shift to second base, a position he’d never played before during his 20-year professional career. When the Yankees’ DJ Lemahieu led off the bottom of the eighth with a 100-mph grounder towards second, the 36-year-old Encarnacion gamely dove for the ball, not only coming up empty but rolling the wrist of his left (glove) hand.

Encarnacion was able to continue, but Gordon is still being evaluated. So much for one wag’s theory that the move would improve the Mariners’ defense, which has been downright dreadful, as I noted in passing during my look at the Nationals’ porous defense and disappointing start. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, I made my on-the-record guesses for what would happen with some of April’s underachieving hitters. Now we’ll turn to look at the disappointing pitchers and the potential for more helpings of crow for me to eat come October.

Chris Sale, Boston Red Sox

Last year, through the late-season shoulder problems, I counseled people not to panic so soon on Sale. He’s Chris Freaking Sale after all. When the White Sox put him in the rotation in 2012, there was a lot of doom-and-gloom about how his pitching motion and his frame meant he wouldn’t survive long as a starting pitcher. But from 2012-17, Sale was one of the most durable starters in baseball and now he drinks overflowing pints out of the skulls of those pundits.

But now, I am quite worried, especially in the short-term. He’s shown he can occasionally dial it up as he did in the Yankees matchup, hitting 96-97 through most of the game. But his velocity is generally down, severely so in most games. He went three months without a start below an average of 95 mph last year. This year he’s only had individual pitches passing this mark in a single game (the Yankees one).

If this is the Sale that we have now, I do expect him to adjust in the long-term. But the Sale of 2018 had a highly edited repertoire. He’s essentially a fastball-changeup-slider pitcher who is amazing at changing the look of these pitches. He could throw his fastball anywhere between 88-98 and have it look like five different pitches depending where it was. In 2019, he’s Pavarotti with an octave taken away. His fastball is more one-note and hitters have realized it; of every 10 fastballs that batters swing at, one in 10 of those swings-and-misses from previous years are now being hit.

“But Dan, he’s just being cautious because of his shoulder!” That makes me even more worried if 10 months later, he’s still having to pitch in a way that makes him a less effective pitcher because of a shoulder issue. Elbow problems are bad, but shoulder problems are a whole new level of scary, like going from a haunted house at an elementary school carnival to a Saw movie. I’m hopeful in the long-term, but it’s a problem for Boston getting back into the race. Read the rest of this entry »

When I last checked in on Marcell Ozuna, the Cardinals’ left fielder had just etched himself into blooper reels for an eternity with his epic misplay of a Kiké Hernandez fly ball. Since then, however, Ozuna has atoned for his mistakes with some of the hottest hitting this side of Cody Bellinger. After a disappointing debut season in St. Louis, he’s become a centerpiece of a revamped Cardinals’ lineup that has powered the team to the best record (18-10) in the National League.

The Cardinals acquired Ozuna from the Marlins in exchange for a quartet of prospects on December 14, 2017, just days after their attempt to trade for Ozuna’s teammate, Giancarlo Stanton, fell through. Though he had earned All-Star honors for the first time a year before, Ozuna was coming off a breakout 2017 in which he’d set across-the-board career highs with 37 homers, a .312/.376/.548 line, a 144 wRC+, and 5.1 WAR. He had not only made his second All-Star team, he’d won his first Gold Glove. He looked to be a significant addition to the Cardinals’ lineup, but hit just .260/.308/.337 with three home runs and a 76 wRC+ through the end of May. Ozuna eventually heated up, hitting .290/.334/.482 (120 wRC+) with 20 homers over the remainder of the season, with a wRC+ of 133 or better in three of the final four months. Still, his overall 106 wRC+ and 2.7 WAR represented significant drops from 2017, ones that stuck out like sore thumbs on a team that fell three games short of a Wild Card spot.

To be fair, Ozuna spent much if not all of 2018 battling tendinitis and an impingement in his right shoulder, more or less maintaining his uptick in production in either side of a 10-day stint on the disabled list at the end of August. The injury eroded his arm strength to the point that his outfield throwing speed ranked last according to Statcast, and, by his own account, he struggled to hit pitches on the inside part of the plate. Read the rest of this entry »

So here’s a thing you might see if you looked at our FanGraphs Leaderboards this morning.

That Mike Trout isn’t yet leading baseball is a surprise, and an indication that we still need some time before we start touting potential MVP candidates. Cody Bellinger is having a big year, but he put up a 138 wRC+ and four-win season when he was 21 years old. Christian Yelich was sixth in WAR last season and won MVP. Matt Chapman was seventh in WAR a year ago, Anthony Rendon was ninth, and Javier Baez was 14th. Jorge Polanco and Hunter Dozier are certainly shockers, but they are lower on this list than Paul DeJong, so it’s the Cardinals shortstop who is getting a post as he heads toward what could be his breakout season at 25 years old.

When we do an initial look at DeJong’s numbers, his .387 BABIP jumps out as unsustainable. DeJong isn’t going to put up a .343 batting average all season long. He’s not going to put up a 169 wRC+ all season long, either. He doesn’t need to in order to be one of the better players in the league, though. Since the start of last season, DeJong is just shy of 600 plate appearances and put up five wins, one of the top-30 marks in baseball despite being several hundred plate appearances behind much of the league due to a fractured left hand that cost him two months last year. DeJong’s .283 ISO does look a bit higher than we might reasonably expect, but with a .219 career ISO entering the season, it’s not like he has been without power. Even if DeJong were to drop 50 points a piece in BABIP and ISO, we’d still be looking at a player whose bat is about 30% above league average to go along with an above-average glove at shortstop. That would be roughly a six-win player, which seems rather unexpected for Paul DeJong. Read the rest of this entry »

If you know one thing about Kolten Wong, you probably know that he’s a great defender. Honestly, great defender might be underselling it. Since 2014, his first full year in the bigs, he’s third in Defensive Runs Saved at second base. Maybe UZR is more your speed? Wong is third there, too. This isn’t some trick of innings played, either — he’s fourth in UZR/150 among qualifiers. He hasn’t won a Gold Glove yet, but it’s not because he doesn’t deserve it.

If you know Kolten Wong for a second thing, you probably know him for the endless flashes of potential, the bumpy road he’s followed throughout his major league career. In 2013, when he’d barely had a cup of coffee in the regular season, he got picked off of first base to end a World Series game. After two average-ish seasons in the majors, he found himself playing the outfield (?!) so that the team could squeeze more at-bats out of… um… Matt Adams? Brandon Moss? Greg Garcia? Mike Matheny-run teams had some interesting substitution patterns, let me tell you.

In any case, whatever you know about Kolten Wong, elite plate discipline probably isn’t on your list. After all, Wong is on the field for defense. Take a look at his yearly wRC+ numbers, starting with his first full year: 90, 96, 85, 107, 98. Those numbers are totally acceptable for a premium defender (Wong’s career wRC+ bests Andrelton Simmons’), but they also lead to batting at the bottom of the lineup more often than not.

Here’s the thing, though: Wong is certifiably great at controlling walks and strikeouts. It’s not just a 2019 thing, though it’s certainly been the case so far in 2019. Take a look at the list of qualified batters with more walks than strikeouts this year:
Read the rest of this entry »

All major league pitchers throw pretty hard, and on average, fastballs are hitting close to 93 miles per hour these days. Pitchers throwing 95 seems common-place, and we regularly see pitches in the upper-90s. Pitchers throwing the ball really hard seems routine, but that should make us appreciate pitchers throwing the hardest even more. As pitch velocities get higher and higher, there are still upper limits, and the players who tend to reach those upper limits seem to find themselves alone. Right now, Jordan Hicks is alone.

The graph below represents all the fastballs thrown, except those by J.R. Murphy, this season.

It might be difficult to see the bars at 102 mph and above, so here’s a chart showing those pitches.

And to further clarify matters, here’s the average fastball velocity for pitchers with at least 10 fastballs this season.

Read the rest of this entry »

Runs Batted In is not the most reliable measure of a player’s offensive contribution in baseball. It isn’t particularly fair to evaluate a hitter based on how many players get on base in front of him. As the great William Shakespeare once wrote, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have runners in scoring position thrust upon them.” However, RBI has given rise to one under-appreciated stat. From 2013-2016, three of the most RBI-happy hitters on the St. Louis Cardinals roster were named Matt, namely Adams, Carpenter, Holliday. This led to the creation of an unofficial fan stat known as RMI (Runs Matted In), or runs batted in by players named Matt. Having enjoyed the RMI years in St. Louis, I thought I’d check in on baseball’s various Matts, and see how they stack up in 2019.

How many Matts do you know off the top of your head? Two, or perhaps three? There are actually 11 Matts with at least one plate appearance this season, making it the most common name among hitters. (Due to lack of plate appearances, American League pitchers are largely excluded from this statistic.) Let’s take a look at where we stand by team in 2019:

Not every team has a Matt, and not every Matt is a great hitter. Andriese and Koch are both pitchers for the Diamondbacks, neither of whom has so much as a hit. Barnes is one of only two Matts counted in the AL and is a pitcher for the Red Sox. He, unsurprisingly, also has not tallied a hit. Up next is Matt Joyce of Atlanta, who has Matted In three runs on the season. Then comes Matt Strahm of the Padres, another pitcher, who has two hits and a .500 average but no RMIs. Finally, there is Matt Olson, who has Matted in zero runs over six plate appearances for Oakland.

There is a three-way tie for third place in the current RMI standings, with each hitter tallying five. Matt Carpenter has played in 21 games and had 93 plate appearances, while his Cardinals compatriot, Matt Wieters, has just as many RMI while appearing in fewer than a third as many games. Rounding out the bronze medalists is Matt Kemp, who has 62 plate appearances and a wRC+ of 22 in Cincinnati. Contrast that with Carpenter’s 93 wRC+. How can three totally different players have the same number of RMI? We might speculate that RMI carries with it the same limitations as the more official, though still silly, RBI.

Carpenter has the unenviable position of hitting leadoff, a spot that notoriously lacks runners to bat in. The two hitters before him in an inning are generally first, the worst-hitting position player and second, the pitcher. He does, however, take second place among all Matts with three home runs. Four of his five RMI come from those homers, so he generates a lot of his RMIs by scoring himself, a Matt Matting In a Matt, as it were.

Playing backup to Yadier Molina is not going to yield many plate appearances, so we shouldn’t expect much out of Wieters in this category as the season progresses. However, he’s batting .333 in 11 plate appearances and has a wRC+ of 87, so while he’s still below average, he’s still making positive contributions when he can, especially by catching standards. Kemp, however, is on the opposite end of the spectrum. He bats further down in the lineup than Carpenter, and has hit .182 with runners in scoring position, yet he is at the same RMI level as the other two. Wieters has a quarter of Kemp’s plate appearances, but has Matted In the same number of runs.

Our silver medalist is the one and only Matt Adams. With ten Runs Matted In on the season and only 31 plate appearances, Big City is once again proving himself to be a force off the Nationals bench. His 84 wRC+ isn’t great, but five of his seven hits have gone for extra bases. Adams’ hits seem to come at more opportune times than Kemp’s, but does that make him better? Or could it be that as a pinch hitter, Matt Adams usually comes up with runners already on base? When it comes to RMI it does not Matt-er.

[Ba-dum tssh.]

The gold medal for Runs Matted In goes to the Athletics’ Matt Chapman. He has a 159 wRC+ in 94 plate appearances and has driven in 15 runs. He leads the “Matt Pack” with six homers in 22 games. Does that make him the Matt-riarch?

[Hold for applause.]

None of these players have similar profiles. Some hit in the middle of the order while others hit leadoff. Some hit for power while others get on base so they can be Matted In by the next hitter. Some are more Matt-ure at the plate than others. At the end of the day, you cannot judge a hitter, not even the Matts, by how many runs they drive in. It just doesn’t tell all that much.

There are other contenders for the most common name. Around baseball there are 10 hitters named Tyler and 10 named Jose, making it a tie for second place. Counting gets a little tricky once nicknames are included. For example, there are two Jacobs and seven Jakes; three Joes and five Joeys; three Johns, three Jonathans, and two Jons. The most common name with a diminutive is Michael, eight of them spanning the alphabet from A. Taylor to Wacha. They are supplemented by six Mikes, making them the quasi-leader with a total of 14.

Will you see RMI appearing on the FanGraphs leaderboards any time soon? No. But RMI is just as useful a statistic as RBI and twice as punny. As for the Matts in Arizona, Boston, and San Diego? To quote Dr. Seuss, “Your time will come, we love every Matt! A hitter’s a hitter, no matter how well they bat.”

Heading into this season, Matt Carpenter was in the final guaranteed year of a $52 million contract with a $18.5 million 2020 option that he signed back in 2014. Yesterday, Carpenter and the Cardinals agreed to an extension that will guarantee that option year, which was already very likely to be picked up, and add an additional year at the same price along with a vesting option for 2022 with a $2 million buyout. Derrick Goold first reported the parties had apparently reached an agreement ahead of a mystery press conference, and later confirmed with contract details.

For the Cardinals this isn’t exactly an extension the team needed to do, but the club has operated similarly in the past when it comes to players they really like, handing out a three-year extension to Yadier Molina in 2017 a year before he would’ve been free-agent eligible and giving Paul Goldschmidt a $130 million deal this spring. Given that Carpenter was still two years away from free agency, and will be 35 years old in 2021, it’s fair to say the Cardinals really want to keep the third baseman around. As for why the club might reward him for past performance, Carpenter’s track record speaks for itself. Since becoming a full-time player in 2013, here’s where Carpenter ranks among all position players by WAR.

Carpenter has been one of the best players in the game over the last six-plus seasons, likely bettering some players who are more highly regarded. Removing some of those early seasons pushes Carpenter further down the list, but never out of the top-40. Last season, Carpenter caught fire midway through the season and ended with a five-win campaign that ranked 19th among position players. This season, his 4.1 projected WAR according to ZiPS is the 25th-best among position players. At his $14.5 million salary this season, that production is a bargain. Carpenter has moved all over the infield in his career, amassing more than 200 games at second, first, and third base. The majority of his starts have come at third, where he plays now, but prior defensive concerns pushed him to first base in previous seasons.

With the addition of Goldschmidt, Carpenter moved back to third. His reputation there is probably worse than his performance. His clunky throwing motion doesn’t inspire confidence, but over the course of his career, he’s been just slightly below average at the hot corner. At 33 years old, Carpenter isn’t likely to get better in the field, and with Goldschmidt with the club through 2024, Carpenter is going to have to make third work absent the designated hitter coming to the National League.

As opposed to solely being a reward for past play, expectations are still decent for Carpenter going forward. We now have three-year ZiPS on FanGraphs player and projections pages, and Carpenter’s forecast a productive player over the next three seasons.

The Cardinals certainly could have waited to see if Carpenter reaches the four-win mark before picking up his option, and then for a good three-win season in 2020 before trying to sign him in free agency. If Carpenter did put up those projected seasons, he might have gotten two more years at a salary similar to what Michael Brantley received in free agency this season. The Cardinals remove that option by guaranteeing an extra $20.5 million. If Carpenter still performs well in 2021, the team can bring him back for one more year at the same salary; Carpenter can make 2022 vest by reaching 1100 plate appearances in 2020 and 2021 as well as 550 plate appearances in 2021. Those aren’t easy milestones for Carpenter to reach, but if he does, he will likely still be playing at a high level.

In terms of justifying this new contract for the Cardinals, we don’t need to do too much of a deep dive. The team is only guaranteeing one extra year beyond his previous 2020 option, and even if Carpenter falls off a cliff in the next two seasons, a salary under $20 million isn’t going to break the bank. One thing this contract does do for St. Louis is help them avoid free agency, both with Carpenter and with other potential options at third base, and builds a bridge to last year’s first round draft pick, Nolan Gorman. Still 18 years old, but already performing well in Low-A, an extra year of Carpenter could build a bridge to Gorman as he advances through the minors. A lot has to happen on Gorman’s end to make that plan work, but it certainly has to be in the back of the Cardinals’ minds as they made this deal with Carpenter.

As for free agency generally, it would be fair to say that the Cardinals haven’t been particularly good at it in the last half-decade. Deals for Mike Leake, Dexter Fowler, and a parade of relievers haven’t worked out as planned while the team has missed on their larger targets. Since watching Albert Pujols leave, the Cardinals have avoided free agency with Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina (twice), and recently with Miles Mikolas and Paul Goldschmidt while signing Matt Carpenter, Carlos Martinez, Paul DeJong, and Kolten Wong to extensions long before they reached free agency. The Cardinals can attribute a lot of their success and sustained contention to the work they’ve done to avoid free agency, while their failures to reach 90 wins the last three seasons can be traced to their deficiencies in free agency. This deal fits in with the Cardinals preferred mode of operation, though it changes little for their long term future.