On Wednesday night, the Cardinals trailed the Brewers 5-3 entering the eighth inning. As the home team, St. Louis went back out on defense to start the frame. Lefty Tyler Webb retired the Brewers on eight pitches. Before the Cardinals could take their turn at the plate in the bottom of the eighth, however, it started raining. Confusion and more rain ensued.

Now, the Brewers had come up to bat in the top of the eighth, so the Cardinals were supposed to get a chance to at least finish the inning, right? That’s what the press box in St. Louis was originally told, but that statement was clarified.

As for the rule, MLB’s website states:

If a regulation game is terminated early due to weather, the results are considered final if the home team is leading. If the home team is trailing, the results are considered final if the game is not in the midst of an inning when the visiting team has taken the lead.

The rule is fairly clear that since the Brewers began the eighth inning with the lead, once the game is terminated, the Brewers get the win. A suspension to pick up the game at a later date wasn’t an option for this game. As Derrick Goold indicated above, general practice is to let the home team get as many cracks at scoring as the visiting team. If the game were to continue, the teams would have had to wait until at least 11:30 or 12, when the rain got lighter and died down. The Cardinals remained at home for their next game while the Brewers made the trip back to Milwaukee with an offday before their game on Friday. While I can’t say whether or not the result was fair, or look up all the instances in which games were delayed and then continued and to which this rule might have been applied, we can go back and look at all the instances when a game was terminated. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Tyler Beede, John Gant, and David Hale — on how they learned and developed their changeups.

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Tyler Beede, San Francisco Giants

“Based on how unique of a pitch it’s been for me, I’d say we should go with my changeup. I’m not sure of the numbers, in terms of batting-average-against or anything like that, but I know how effective it’s been for me. That’s from the time I was 13 or 14, when I learned it, to now at 26 [years old].

“I learned the pitch from a guy named Lenny Solesky. He was my pitching coach coming up through… right before high school. His big thing was — he never really showed me a specific grip — ‘hold it like an egg.’ That, and ‘keep the same arm speed as your fastball.’

“For me, it’s a light grip. It’s way far out in my fingertips. Having big hands, I’m kind of given more room to keep it out on my fingertips. It’s not a circle change. I don’t choke it, I don’t palm it; I just hold it loose with sort of a two-seam grip. And I’m not touching a seam. With my changeup, I like to feel like I’m throwing the crap out of nothing. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Cardinals traded for Paul Goldschmidt this offseason, they added one of the most consistent and potent hitters in all of baseball to a team sorely in need of a jolt. As players go, Goldschmidt was about as safe a bet as there is. From 2013 to 2018, he had posted a wRC+ between 133 and 163 every season. His wasn’t a story of constant reinvention and tinkering: he was basically the same hitter every year. He walked a lot, struck out a lot, hit for power, and ran a high BABIP through a combination of his surprising speed and consistently above-average line drive rate.

If that’s what the Cardinals thought they were adding to the lineup with Goldschmidt, the early returns were disappointing. Fresh off of signing a five-year extension, Goldschmidt scuffled through the first months of the season. After starting off the season strong with a three-dinger game in his second game in a Cardinals uniform, he put up some alarmingly pedestrian numbers. He ran a 123 wRC+ for March and April, not up to his usual standards, and it went downhill from there. He declined to a 104 wRC+ in May and a shocking 57 wRC+ in June.

Alarmingly, it didn’t look like luck was to blame. Goldschmidt’s .302 BABIP was below his career average, but not concerningly so. His strikeouts were up a hair and his walks were down perhaps two hairs from his Arizona form, but nothing about that screamed regression. No, Goldschmidt’s problems boiled down primarily to one thing: he stopped hitting for power. In his last six seasons with the Diamondbacks, Goldschmidt had posted an ISO in the top 20 in baseball five times. The one year he didn’t, he propped up his value with a whopping 32 steals and career-best plate discipline.

With half of the 2019 season in the books, Goldschmidt’s ISO was below league average, leading to a 97 wRC+. Not just outside the top 20, not just below .200 — it was a puny .159, smack dab between Amed Rosario and Nick Ahmed. As for propping up his value with steals and plate discipline, he had zero steals and the worst K-BB% since his rookie year. Add it all up, and he’d been worth 0.7 WAR, less value than he’d accrued in his average *month* with the Diamondbacks. Read the rest of this entry »

Unlike the other five divisions in the majors, the National League Central has spent 2019 in a constant state of upheaval. Four of the five teams have spent multiple days in first place, with none of the quartet being able to hang on to and solidify their lead. The division’s doormat, the rapidly collapsing Pittsburgh Pirates, spent nearly 15% of the season in first or second place. The Cincinnati Reds, the only team that hasn’t led the Central (I’m not counting the tie the morning after Opening Day), have the division’s second-best Pythagorean record.

In this environment, one might have expected to see significant wheeling-and-dealing at the trade deadline. While most of the National League could rightly claim to be in the Wild Card race, the Central teams jockeying for October baseball had the benefit of also being in a tight race for the division. Being able to draw the straight or the flush, the NL Central teams with 2019 postseason aspirations were incentivized to make an aggressive play for a Zack Greinke or a Trevor Bauer.

And the teams’ closeness wasn’t just a creation of the projections, either. On the morning of July 31, the Cubs and Cardinals were tied for first-place; the Brewers were a game back. ZiPS largely agreed that the Cubs had the strongest roster, enough to make the North Siders the favorite, but hardly a prohibitive one:

What ought to have made making significant upgrades more important for the Cardinals and Brewers is that hidden in the projections were signs that the Cubs were more dangerous at the end of July than they had been earlier in the season. Dial back to May 15 and the ZiPS projections only saw the Cubs roster as that of a .531 team, with the Brewers at .525 and the Cardinals at .519. That’s just under a two-game spread from top to bottom over the course of a 162-game season. Read the rest of this entry »

Before the season started, expectations for Jack Flaherty were pretty high. After posting a 3.86 FIP, a 3.34 ERA, and 2.4 WAR in 151 innings in his first full season in 2018, projections expected Flaherty to be even better with a 3.74 FIP. After a rough start in Seattle on July 2 in which Flaherty failed to make it out of the fifth inning by walking four and giving up four runs including a homer, the season looked to be a step back rather than a step forward. With a 4.82 FIP and 4.90 ERA on the year, Flaherty’s stats represented a half season of below-average numbers.

Since then, he’s been one of the best pitchers in baseball.

As for what happened, here’s a brief comparison of his numbers over the last month versus the first three months of the season.

We can see from the BABIP and LOB% that there’s probably some luck going on here with the sub-1.00 ERA, and even if there’s a little bit of luck on the home run rate, his 2.20 FIP wouldn’t be impacted that much. A decrease in homers might be luck evening out, but a big increase in strikeouts while seeing the walks go down shows that there’s clearly more than chance that’s pushing Flaherty to great results. It’s not the opponents either, as two of his six starts have come against the two best offenses in the game in the Astros and Dodgers, with the Cubs boasting a top-six offense as well. The biggest change is more fully embracing his best pitch, the slider. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Cardinals beat the Cubs 2-1 last Tuesday, the team took control of first place in the National League Central by one game over Chicago and two games over Milwaukee. That was the last game for St. Louis ahead of the trade deadline. While the season had been an up and down one for the Cardinals, with a great April, a terrible June and July, and a big surge after the All-Star break, the team put itself in position to make a run at the division title. While the offense had struggled for a few months, the club didn’t really need a bat to fortify itself, and there wasn’t much help available at the trade deadline, anyway. The bullpen had been a somewhat unexpected strength all season, and even with Jordan Hicks out, Andrew Miller‘s resurgence, Giovanny Gallegos‘ rise, and Carlos Martinez’s move to relief (plus the arms available in the minors), meant the relievers didn’t need a lot of help, even if another lefty would have been acceptable. But Cardinals had a very clear need in the rotation, and they did nothing to address it.

St. Louis’ front office has gotten a lot of criticism for the team’s failure to make the postseason the past three years. Some of that criticism is deserved, but sometimes, it misses the mark. It’s true that the Cardinals haven’t been very active at the trade deadline in recent seasons, but then, there hasn’t been much need for a lot of activity. The table below shows the Cardinals’ playoff odds on the day before the trade deadline, since 2014:

The Cardinals haven’t had more than a 25% chance of making the division series, or even a 10% chance of winning the division at the trade deadline, since 2015. In that season, the team was virtually assured of a playoff spot, so they added a few relievers and a bench bat. Without going over all of those seasons in detail, the Cardinals haven’t found themselves in a position where an infusion of talent at the trade deadline would have meaningfully tipped their playoff odds since 2014, when they traded two young players off their active roster in Joe Kelly and Allen Craig for John Lackey, who was signed through 2015. The Cardinals’ failure to address their needs this trade deadline is a departure from past seasons, not a continuation. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2019 trade deadline has passed and, with it, dozens of prospects have begun a new journey toward the major leagues with a different organization. We have all of the prospects who have been traded since the Nick Solak/Peter Fairbanks deal ranked below, with brief scouting snippets for each of them. Most of the deals these prospects were a part of were analyzed at length on this site. Those pieces can be found here, or by clicking the hyperlink in the “From” column below. We’ve moved all of the players below to their new orgs over on THE BOARD, so you can see where they rank among their new teammates; our farm rankings, which now update live, also reflect these changes, so you can see where teams’ systems stack up post-deadline. Thanks to the scouts, analysts, and executives who helped us compile notes on players we didn’t know about.
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The Dodgers have acquired Jedd Gyorko from the Cardinals, adding a versatile player who can handle any position on the infield in a pinch to their mix of positionally-flexible infielders. He’s still on the IL at the moment with a wrist injury he sustained in early June, though he was expected to begin a rehab assignment today before the Cardinals traded him. Given his placement on the 60-day IL, he’ll be eligible to return to the majors in seven days, though his rehab assignment will likely last longer than that. In exchange for Gyorko, a smattering of cash to cover his contract, and international bonus money, the Cardinals received Tony Cingrani and Jeffry Abreu from the Dodgers.

If he’s healthy, Gyorko is the embodiment of the way the Dodgers build their roster. He’s an average-to-plus defender at second and third base, with sneaky range and steady hands. He’s also manned first for the Cardinals at times, and has performed adequately there. Need him to line up in the outfield? Okay, fine, he can’t do that — he’s only played two innings of left field in his professional career. Still, he’s a very Dodgers infielder, capable of standing wherever necessary and platooning at second base with Max Muncy.

Why platooning? Gyorko is a fearsome hitter against left-handers. He’s compiled a career .349 wOBA against lefties over 766 career PA, good for a 122 wRC+. He’s far less potent against righties — his .237/.298/.410 line works out to a .307 wOBA and 94 wRC+. The Dodgers as a team stack up poorly against lefties — Joc Pederson, Max Muncy, Cody Bellinger, Corey Seager, and Alex Verdugo are all left-handed, and all are starter-level talents.

The main right-handed bats the team uses to spell the starters are all injured. David Freese, Enrique Hernández, and Chris Taylor are all on the IL. Freese, in particular, is the kind of player Gyorko can emulate. He crushes lefties while playing a passable corner infield. His hamstring strain makes his return uncertain. Taylor isn’t exactly the kind of player Gyorko is, but with him on the shelf, the team can’t leave Seager in and slide Taylor to second against lefties, so Gyorko helps there too. Read the rest of this entry »

Tampa Bay’s pre-deadline activity — trading bat-first prospect Nick Solak for electric reliever Peter Fairbanks, then moving recently-DFA’d reliever Ian Gibaut for a Player to be Named, and sending reliever Hunter Wood and injured post-prospect infielder Christian Arroyo to Cleveland for international bonus space and outfielder Ruben Cardenas, a recent late-round pick who was overachieving at Low-A — got us thinking about how teams’ anticipation of the fall 40-man deadline might impact their activity and the way they value individual prospects, especially for contending teams.

In November, teams will need to decide which minor league players to expose to other teams through the Rule 5 Draft, or protect from the Draft by adding them to their 40-man roster. Deciding who to expose means evaluating players, sure, but it also means considering factors like player redundancy (like Tampa seemed to when they moved Solak) and whether a prospect is too raw to be a realistic Rule 5 target, as well as other little variables such as the number of option years a player has left, whether he’s making the league minimum or in arbitration, and if there are other, freely available alternatives to a team’s current talent (which happens a lot to slugging first base types).

Teams with an especially high number of rostered players under contract for 2020 and with many prospects who would need to be added to the 40-man in the offseason have what is often called a “40-man crunch,” “spillover,” or “churn,” meaning that that team has incentive to clear the overflow of players away via trade for something they can keep — pool space, comp picks, or typically younger players whose 40-man clocks are further from midnight — rather than do nothing, and later lose players on waivers or in the Rule 5 draft.

As we sat twiddling our thumbs, waiting for it to rain trades or not, we compiled quick breakdowns of contending teams’ 40-man situations, using the Roster Resource pages to see who has the biggest crunch coming and might behave differently in the trade market because of it. The Rays, in adding Fairbanks and rental second baseman Eric Sogard while trading Solak, Arroyo, etc., filled a short-term need at second with a really good player and upgraded a relief spot while thinning out their 40-man in preparation for injured pitchers Anthony Banda and Tyler Glasnow to come off the 60-day IL and rejoin the roster. These sorts of considerations probably impacted how the Cubs valued Thomas Hatch in today’s acquisition of David Phelps from Toronto, as Hatch will need to be Rule 5 protected this fall.

For this exercise, we used contenders with 40% or higher playoff odds, which gives us the Astros, Yankees, Twins, Indians, Red Sox, and Rays in the AL and the Dodgers, Braves, Nationals, Cubs, and Cardinals in the NL, with the Brewers, Phillies, and A’s as the teams just missing the cut. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a sentence that I didn’t think I’d be writing in 2019: Andrew Miller has accumulated -0.2 WAR this season. By FanGraphs’ version of WAR, he’s been less valuable than a replacement-level reliever. Here’s another sentence that makes a little more sense, but is at odds with the one I just wrote: Andrew Miller might be the Cardinals’ best reliever. Now, reliever performance is volatile and all, but we’re going to need an explanation. How can those two things be true at once?

Let’s start with Miller being below replacement level, because that would have been a surprising assertion before the year. Andrew Miller has faced 139 batters this season. He’s allowed eight home runs. 6% of his plate appearances have ended with the opposing batter trotting around the bases. That surely already sounds like a ton — indeed, Miller is second in the majors in home runs allowed per nine innings, behind only Josh Osich. You don’t need a sabermetric writer to tell you that’s bad.

As bad as 2.2 home runs per nine innings sounds, though, it might be underselling how wild Miller’s season has been on the home run front. Josh Osich is a great example of the kind of pitcher who normally leads the league in home runs allowed per nine. He’s a pitch-to-contact depth reliever who works by letting opponents put the ball in play and counting on his defense to make plays behind him. Now, that strategy mostly hasn’t worked — Osich has a career ERA of 5.11, and his FIP is 5.31, so it’s not as though he’s just been getting unlucky. Still, while Osich is homer-prone, he’s mostly just contact-prone, with the home runs a cost of doing business. Strike out only 19% of the batters you face, and there will be plenty of opportunities to give up home runs.

Andrew Miller’s case of the dingers isn’t like that at all. Miller is actually one of the least contact-prone pitchers in all of baseball this year. Only 51% of the batters he has faced have put the ball in play. That severely limits the opportunities they have to hit home runs. Osich, for comparison’s sake, has let 75% of batters put the ball in play. Miller is giving up home runs at a truly alarming rate considering how few opportunities he gives batters to put a ball in play. Read the rest of this entry »