Archive for Dodgers

A Clash of Titans in the Bronx

Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

NEW YORK — For a matchup with so much history — the most common World Series pairing, and the most storied as well — meetings between the Dodgers and Yankees have been curiously rare since the introduction of interleague play in 1997. It took until 2013 for Major League Baseball to bring the Dodgers back to Yankee Stadium for the first time since the 1981 World Series clincher, and until this past weekend they had made just one other visit (2016). The more balanced schedule adopted last year has made meetings between the two teams an annual occurrence, but even so, this still feels like the best kind of novelty that interleague play can muster.

Particularly so to this scribe, for whom the 1978 and ’81 World Series were foundational experiences as a young third-generation Dodgers fan who never dreamed that he would one day cover baseball, let alone in the Bronx. This was the first of the Dodgers’ three visits where I was able to enjoy games as both a fan (Friday night, from my ticket group’s regular seats in section 422) and a member of the media. Getting paid to have this much fun? I recommend it.

With both teams leading their respective divisions, with national television on hand for all three games, and with Yankee Stadium filled with sellout crowds of 48,000-plus — including a substantial, colorful contingent of Dodgers fans, many of them decked out in Shohei Ohtani jerseys — this past weekend brought an electrified, playoff-like atmosphere to the Bronx. Not that the Yankees, who entered the series having won eight straight and who still own the AL’s best record (46-21), weren’t already doing their best to create one. Offsetting their sluggish play over the past few weeks, the Dodgers (41-26) rose to the occasion by taking two out of three tension-filled games, winning 2-1 in 11 innings on Friday and turning a tight game on Saturday into an 11-3 laugher. The Yankees avoided a sweep and rewarded their frenzied fans by winning a seesaw battle on Sunday night, 6-4, thanks to a well-timed three-run homer by Trent Grisham, who was only playing because Juan Soto spent the series on the bench due to inflammation in his left elbow; the go-ahead blast came off Tyler Glasnow as Yankees fans chanted “We want Soto! We want Soto!”

“This whole series has been fun,” slugger Aaron Judge told ESPN’s Buster Olney afterward. “I know they took the series, but these are the games you want to play in, back and forth like that and it comes down to an MVP with two guys on — those are the moments you live for right there.” Judge was referring to the game’s final out, where Clay Holmes struck out Mookie Betts chasing a low-and-away slider with runners on first and second.

Unofficially, it may as well have been Teoscar Hernández Weekend. While the Yankees held the Dodgers’ 1-2-3 of Betts, Ohtani, and Freddie Freeman to a combined 7-for-35 performance with 11 total bases in the series, Hernández himself went 6-for-12 with two doubles and three homers while driving in nine of the Dodgers’ 17 runs. The 31-year-old left fielder snapped the seal on a scoreless game with a two-run double in the 11th inning on Friday night. His grand slam — his second home run of the night — broke open Saturday night’s game, and his double and solo shot on Sunday accounted for two of the three extra-base hits collected against Yankees starter Luis Gil, with the last of those hits temporarily giving the Dodgers the lead before Grisham’s home run.

Both teams played the series at less than full strength, with the Yankees not only missing ace Gerrit Cole — whose rehab from a bout of nerve inflammation in his elbow is progressing well — but also Soto. The superstar right fielder started each of the Yankees’ first 64 games, but he left Thursday’s contest against the Twins during a 56-minute rain delay due to lingering discomfort in his left forearm. Though it had bothered him for the past couple weeks, it apparently hadn’t prevented him from destroying opposing pitching; prior to his absence, his .603 slugging percentage, 190 wRC+, and 4.1 WAR ranked second in AL only to Judge, with the two outfielders ranking first and second in the majors in the latter two categories to that point. An MRI taken Friday revealed only inflammation in Soto’s forearm, much to the Yankees’ relief. In addition to fetching Cole Gatorade during an in-game interview with the Fox Sports booth on Saturday, Soto served as a decoy off the bench all weekend, though Dodgers manager Dave Roberts saw through the ruse.

“Where they’re at in the standings, with how well they’re playing and what’s at stake this year, I really wasn’t too concerned about him being played this weekend,” he told reporters after Sunday’s game. Yankees manager Aaron Boone, who had hinted before Sunday’s game he might use Soto, said he expects the right fielder back in the lineup for the series against the Royals, which begins on Monday night.

As for the Dodgers, in addition to being without Clayton Kershaw as he recovers from shoulder surgery, they’ve been without third baseman Max Muncy since May 15 due to an oblique strain. Though hardly as central to the Dodgers offense as Soto is to the Yankees, Muncy is hitting .223/.323/.475 for a 123 wRC+, his best mark since 2021. What’s more, his fill-ins — mainly Enrique Hernández, with Miguel Rojas and Chris Taylor also chipping in — have combined to hit just .171/.241/.276 (52 wRC+) with two doubles and two home runs in 83 plate appearances. Hernández, who’s hitting just .207/.273/.314 (72 wRC+) overall, hit one of those doubles on Friday, and one of those homers on Saturday.

Muncy is of particular importance to the Dodgers because his presence lengthens a top-heavy lineup that’s gotten just a 77 wRC+ (.210/.273/.334) showing from its 6-7-8-9 hitters this year (including seven games for which Muncy himself batted sixth). Without him, the Dodgers had gone 10-9 — all against sub-.500 teams (the Reds, Diamondbacks, Mets, Rockies, and Pirates) — from the time of his injury to the start of Friday’s series, scoring three or fewer runs in nine of those games, and averaging just 4.05 runs per game in that span, with two double-digit blowouts padding that average by three-quarters of a run.

On paper, Friday’s pairing of ace-in-the-making Yoshinobu Yamamoto and injury fill-in Cody Poteet (subbing for Clarke Schmidt, who’s out due to a lat strain) looked like a mismatch, but it turned into a pitchers’ duel. Each team collected just four hits through the first nine innings; five times, a half-inning ended with a runner stranded in scoring position. Yamamoto was phenomenal, holding the Yankees to two hits and two walks over seven innings while striking out seven, lowering his ERA to an even 3.00. He ended the first inning by striking out Giancarlo Stanton swinging on a slider in the dirt with a runner on second, escaped the second by whiffing Jose Trevino on a slider outside with runners on the corners, then retired the next 11 in a row before walking Judge with two outs in the sixth. Yamamoto followed by striking out Stanton again, this time by elevating a 97-mph heater.

The closest the Yankees came to scoring was in the eighth, when reliever Anthony Banda notched two strikeouts, yielded back-to-back singles to Anthony Volpe and Alex Verdugo, and gave way to Blake Treinen, who has been absolutely dominant since returning from a nearly two-year absence due to shoulder woes, throwing 11 scoreless innings with 16 strikeouts and two walks. One of those walks was wisely issued to the red-hot Judge. Stanton followed, just getting under a sinker that was hit into the left-center gap but didn’t quite reach the warning track before Teoscar Hernández hauled it in.

On the other side, Poteet, a 29-year-old righty whose previous major league experience was 58.2 innings with the 2021–22 Marlins, did an impressive job of working his way through the Dodgers’ lineup twice. Though he didn’t have a single clean inning, he held the Dodgers to just two hits, two walks and a hit batsman, using a double play and a pickoff — Enrique Hernández, who reached on an error by second baseman Gleyber Torres — to reduce traffic.

Poteet departed with two outs in the fifth following a walk of Enrique Hernández and single by Betts. Lefty reliever Victor Gonzalez — one of three ex-Dodgers who took the mound for the Yankees in the opener — induced Ohtani to line out to Anthony Rizzo to end the threat, but the early move to the bullpen created a ripple effect that carried through Saturday night, forcing Boone to turn to his less-trusted arms. He used six relievers after Poteet, calling upon both thrice-DFA’d Michael Tonkin and Ian Hamilton to get more than three outs. After working a scoreless 10th, Hamilton walked Freeman to start the 11th, then one out later gave up the big hit to Teoscar Hernández, a 109-mph two-run double into the gap. Dennis Santana (another ex-Dodger) relieved him and almost made matters worse by issuing a two-out walk to Andy Pages before retiring Gavin Lux. The Dodgers won, but only after Yohan Ramírez allowed an RBI single to Judge, then held on to notch his first save as a Dodger.

Saturday night’s game pitted a pair of pitchers who have successfully shaken off miserable 2023 campaigns, righty Gavin Stone and lefty Nestor Cortes. Stone, who was rocked for a 9.00 ERA and 6.64 FIP in 31 innings last year, moved to a bigger glove to help him combat a pitch-tipping issue; relying more on a sinker-slider combo than before, he’s turned in a 2.93 ERA and 3.46 FIP in 67.2 innings. Cortes, who made three trips to the injured list last year due to hamstring and rotator cuff strains, has been healthy this season, lowering his ERA from 4.97 to 3.68 and his FIP from 4.49 to 3.77.

The two teams traded runs in the second and third innings, with a Teoscar Hernández homer and an Ohtani RBI single (one of his two hits in a relatively quiet series) producing the runs for Los Angeles, and an Austin Wells groundout and a Judge home run driving in those for New York. The Dodgers pulled ahead 3-2 in the fifth on Enrique Hernández’s solo homer off Cortes, then padded that lead in the sixth when Teoscar Hernández followed a Freeman double and a Will Smith single with an RBI groundout.

The Yankees had a chance to claw back that lead when they loaded the bases with two outs in the sixth, chasing Stone — who scattered eight hits and two walks — in the process; lefty Alex Vesia retired Volpe on a fly ball, ending the threat. The Dodgers broke the game open in the eighth when Teoscar Hernández clubbed a grand slam off Tommy Kahnle. After Santana allowed two runs in the ninth in what turned out to be his final appearance before being designated for assignment, Boone called upon utilityman Oswaldo Cabrera to get the final out. He did, but not before walking both Teoscar Hernández and the nearly unwalkable Pages, bringing in the 11th and final Dodgers run. Judge homered for the second time in the game with two outs in the ninth.

Sunday offered the series’ most tantalizing pitching matchup, with Gil, the AL Pitcher of the Month for May, up against Glasnow. The Yankees claimed their first lead of the series in the third inning, when Cabrera pounced upon a 97-mph first-pitch fastball on the inside edge of the plate, homering off the foul pole in right field. The Yankees added another run when Verdugo doubled into the right field corner, then scored when Pages crashed into the wall trying unsuccessfully to hold onto a 104-mph, 390-foot drive to center field off the bat of Judge; that went for a double as well.

Through four innings, Gil allowed just two baserunners, walking Freeman with two outs in the first inning and surrendering a leadoff double to Teoscar Hernández in the second. The Dodgers, who have been one of the worst teams in the majors against four-seamers 97 mph and higher — their .220 wOBA is the majors’ fifth-lowest — couldn’t solve Gil’s fastball-changuep-slider combination until the fifth, when Pages ripped a 108-mph double into the left field corner off a hanging slider. Lux then laced a fastball to left; any thought Pages had of scoring was undone when he missed third base and doubled back. Yankees pitching coach Matt Blake checked on Gil, but Boone stuck with him. Lux stole second as Enrique Hernández struck out, then Betts fought off a high inside fastball for a two-run double into the left field corner. With two outs in the sixth, Teoscar Hernández finally ended Gil’s night with a solo homer off a changeup, giving the Dodgers a 3-2 lead.

The 26-year-old righty’s three runs allowed matched his total from his previous seven starts, across a combined 44.2 innings. He struck out five while giving up five hits and walking one as his ERA rose to 2.04, but he was hardly disappointed. “I really liked this outing, actually,” he said via an interpreter. “They have a really good lineup. To be able to go out there and battle these guys, it’s fun.”

The Yankees picked up their Gil, as Verdugo and Judge both collected infield singles on hard-hit balls that bounced off the gloves of corner infielders (Freeman for the former, Enrique Hernández for the latter). That brought up Grisham, who tormented the Dodgers with his defense and timely hitting during the 2022 Division Series as a Padre, but who has languished on the Yankees bench since arriving in the Soto blockbuster. Treated to a rare start on Thursday, he collected his first hit since April 29, ending an 0-for-20 slide by clubbing a three-run homer off the Twins’ Pablo López. Here he did the same. Glasnow left a 97-mph fastball in the middle of the zone, and Grisham launched a 108-mph missile into the right field stands to give New York a 5-3 lead as the Yankee Stadium crowd erupted. Though he’s now hitting just .100/.258/.280 in 63 plate appearances, three of his five hits have been three-run homers.

“Yes, I heard them,” said a good-natured Grisham of the Soto chants. “It wasn’t about [sending a message]. I was just happy that I was able to stay present in the moment, worry about myself, and put a good swing on one.”

“Grish can get to a heater, and he didn’t miss it,” said Boone.

“Grisham works his butt off every single day,” said Judge. “I wasn’t too happy with [the chant], but I think he made a good point.” To their credit, fans chanted “We want Grisham!” when he batted again in the eighth, drawing a walk.

Grisham’s big hit undid an otherwise strong effort from Glasnow, who reached double digits in strikeouts for the fifth time this season, striking out 12 in six innings to lift his NL-leading total to 116 over 86 innings. “Bad counts, bad pitches right over the zone,” he lamented. “I wish I could have located them a little differently.”

The Dodgers continued to apply pressure, putting runners in scoring position in each of the final three innings. Lefty reliever Caleb Ferguson, yet another former Dodger, walked Pages (his fourth straight game of drawing a base on balls, accounting for five of his 10 walks) to lead off the seventh, then took second on a Lux single. Boone went to Luke Weaver, his most heavily used reliever this year. Enrique Hernández tried to bunt, first popping one foul that Trevino dropped; both he and Boone lobbied for interference, but Hernández hadn’t left the batters’ box as the catcher made his way around. With the infield drawn in, Hernández got his second attempt down, but Trevino quickly fired to Cabrera, and Pages, who had gotten a good secondary lead, nonetheless missed the bag with his front leg as he slid; by the time his back foot touched, Cabrera had gotten the forceout. Betts followed by grounding into an inning-ending double play.

In the eighth, Ohtani doubled off Weaver and eventually scored on Smith’s sacrifice fly, but the Yankees answered when Judge won a six-pitch battle against Ramírez with a thunderous, towering 434-foot solo shot to left field. It was his major league-leading 23rd home run and his third hit of the night. He went 7-for-11 with three walks, two doubles, and three homers in the series, raising his seasonal line to .305/.436/.703 (214 wRC) with 4.9 WAR; all of those figures save for the batting average lead the majors.

In the ninth, Holmes got two outs before allowing back-to-back singles to Lux (his third hit of the night) and Enrique Hernández. That gave Betts one more chance to play the hero, but the closer whiffed him for his 19th save of the season.

Remarkably, it’s been 43 years since the Yankees and Dodgers met in a World Series. That was after the two teams squared off 11 times in the Fall Classic over the 41-season span from 1941 to ’81. Both managers acknowledged the possibility of meeting again down the road but downplayed it, though Roberts saw it as a good test for his team. “I think that playing with this media attention, sold out [crowds], the energy – you feel it — a team that you potentially could meet in the World Series, is sort of a barometer,” he said before Sunday’s game.

“Both teams brought our best and fortunately for us, we won the series,” he said afterward, hardly disappointed by taking two of three on the road against top competition. “It was just a good environment all weekend. Good to show well against those guys. They’re a heck of a ballclub.”


Top of the Order: Ronald Acuña Jr. Is Irreplaceable

Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

The emotional toll of losing Ronald Acuña Jr. to another ACL tear is obvious. The entirety of the baseball world came together to express shock and disappointment at Sunday evening’s news that Acuña would need season-ending surgery for the second time in four years. At his best, Acuña is arguably the most electric player in the game, as we saw last year during his otherworldly MVP-winning campaign, when he became the first player ever to hit 40 home runs and steal 70 bases in the same season. Baseball is simply not as exciting without him on the field.

Beyond that, though, the injury is a devastating loss for the Braves, whose probability to win the NL East — which was already diminished, as Dan Szymborski noted in his column on Friday — sunk by 10 percentage points within a day after Acuña went down. Sure, he was struggling over the first third of the season — he hit just four home runs in 49 games, and his OPS was nearly 300 points lower than last year’s mark — but his importance to the Atlanta lineup is undeniable.

Monday’s game, an 8-4 loss to the Nationals, provided a look at what the Braves’ offense will look like without the reigning MVP. The good news was that third baseman Austin Riley returned after missing 13 games with an intercostal strain, but it was clear that this was not the same unit that last year drew comparisons to the 1927 Yankees. Second baseman Ozzie Albies replaced Acuña in the leadoff spot, with Riley sliding to the two-hole and DH Marcell Ozuna, who’s been the team’s most productive hitter this year, moving from fifth to third in the order, ahead of slugging first baseman Matt Olson. After that, things drop off considerably, though it helps that catcher Sean Murphy is back from the oblique strain that kept him out since Opening Day. Read the rest of this entry »


Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week, 5/24/24

Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. By now, you surely know the drill. I credit basketball genius Zach Lowe for creating the format I’m using, make a few jokes about how much baseball I get to watch to write this column, and then give you a preview of what you can read about below. This week’s no exception! I get to watch a ton of baseball, and this week I watched a lot of birds and a lot of bunts. I also watched a lot of the Pirates, just like I do every week. Let’s get right into it.

1. Reversals of Reversals of Fortune

For most of the 21st century, no one would bat an eye if you told them the Cardinals swept the Orioles. The Cards have been good pretty much forever, and the O’s went through a long dry period. But starting last year, things have changed. The Orioles last got swept in early 2022, and they’ve been one of the best teams in baseball since then. The Cardinals fell on tough times after 2022’s Molina/Pujols swan song season. Coming into their series this week, the O’s had the second-best record in the AL, while the Cardinals languished near the bottom of the NL at 20-26.
Read the rest of this entry »


Shohei Ohtani’s Threshold Moment With the Angels

Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

Writers frequently use threshold moments as a way to delineate a shift in the narrative from some prior homeostasis to an entirely new one. As author Jeannine Ouellette describes them, “These thresholds — the pause at the top of each breath, the space between the before and the after — can hold the entirety of our lives in a single second. Can hold everything we have been and everything we might become.”

Threshold moments exist in real life too. Sometimes we don’t notice them until years later, through the lens of hindsight. Other times, it’s as if an arrow-shaped neon sign is casting the scene with a vintage glow, reminding us that we’ll look back on this moment for years to come.

When Shohei Ohtani signed with the Los Angeles Angels in December of 2017, he experienced a threshold moment. Maybe not the day he officially signed, and maybe not for a singular instant, but as he met with teams and envisioned the different iterations of his future, everything he was in Japan and everything he might become in the U.S. likely began to clarify in his mind’s eye. Ohtani’s decision to sign with the Dodgers six years later represents another threshold moment, but again, one that didn’t happen on signing day. More likely, Ohtani underwent two transformational shifts: one where he stopped viewing himself as a Los Angeles Angel, and one where he started viewing himself as a Los Angeles Dodger. Read the rest of this entry »


Shohei Ohtani Can Win a Triple Crown

Kiyoshi Mio-USA TODAY Sports

Shohei Ohtani has a tendency to make absurd things happen. When he came over to the United States, some were skeptical that his offense would hold up as well as his pitching. Then, he came over and did just fine. Whether it’s being a two-time MVP as a two-way player or making it seem plausible that he could have a 10-WAR season as only a designated hitter, Ohtani has a knack for turning fiction into fact. Now, leading the league in batting average and not trailing by much in home runs and RBI, he has a real chance at another rare feat: winning a Triple Crown.

Going into last season, Ohtani appeared to be an excellent hitter, but we always couched that excellence as partially being due to his ability to also pitch. It’s true that he chased 50 homers in 2021, but his triple-slash line from 2018-2022 of .267/.354/.532 (137 wRC+) had the look of a very good hitter, not one that could claim transcendence on that basis alone. But in 2023, he hit .300 for the first time en route to setting career highs for each of the three triple-slash stats (.304/.412/.654), wRC+ (180), and position player WAR (6.5). He was also on a 51-homer pace when an oblique injury in early September ended his season prematurely; he finished with 44 dingers in 135 games. Projection systems were naturally skeptical about last season establishing a new baseline of offensive performance, generally seeing that as a peak-type season, with a more “normal” 140-150 wRC+ likely in 2024. In fact, ZiPS’ zStats – its equivalent of Statcast xStats with a few more ingredients in the stew and more explicitly designed for predictive purposes – saw Ohtani’s expected 2023 line at .289/.377/.590 with 38 homers. A great season to be sure, but still a 99-point dropoff in OPS from his actual numbers.

And 2024? Well, that’s a horse of a different color. Ohtani’s taken another step forward, entering play Friday slashing .355/.425/.678. But this time around, zStats sees Ohtani’s performance as completely warranted by his Statcast, plate discipline, speed, and spray data. In fact, as of Thursday morning, ZiPS thinks that his 2024 line very slightly underrates him! ZiPS thinks that he ought to be hitting .354/.442/.708 considering how he’s played. I cannot possibly overstate how unusual it is for a player to be having this strong a season and still be underperforming. Usually, for even the most talented players, at least a small part of their career-best OPS can be attributed to luck. Ohtani’s 1.103 OPS, a career high, appears to be the result of some slight misfortune. His zOPS is 1.150. That’s ridiculous!

The first thing to look at it when it comes to Ohtani’s Triple Crown chances is his BABIP, to see if his current average is sustainable. Because of the volatility of BABIP, especially across smaller samples, you should bet on a hitter’s BABIP to regress toward his mean over time as luck balances out.

A career BABIP of at least .350 is incredibly rare; only 13 players in MLB history have done that over a minimum of 5,000 plate appearances, and most of those are from the early days of baseball, when BABIP was much higher than it is today. Looking just since the start of the divisional era, only 16 players have a lifetime BABIP of .340 or higher, topped by Rod Carew at .362 and Derek Jeter at .350. All of this is to say that there’s some justified skepticism when someone’s BABIP is pushing .400, and Ohtani currently has a .391 BABIP. There must be a lot of luck involved, right? Perhaps not! At .401, Ohtani’s zBABIP laps the field, and zBABIP is more predictive of future BABIP than actual BABIP. Here are the zBABIP leaders this season, along with their BABIP marks (minimum 100 PA).

zBABIP Leaders, Through 5/8
Name zBABIP BABIP
Shohei Ohtani .401 .391
Amed Rosario .373 .347
Willi Castro .370 .370
Luis García Jr. .369 .378
Masyn Winn .368 .338
Ronald Acuña Jr. .359 .363
Ryan McMahon .358 .400
Anthony Volpe .356 .308
Ty France .355 .310
Starling Marte .355 .323
Jackson Merrill .354 .317
Isiah Kiner-Falefa .353 .305
Julio Rodríguez .351 .376
Jesse Winker .349 .307
Bryson Stott .346 .282

We’re less than a quarter of the way through the season, and ZiPS already thinks that only 13 of the 210 players with 100 plate appearances have earned a .350 BABIP. Yet there’s Ohtani over .400, with only a single player within 30 points. As such, factoring in zBABIP, the full model of ZiPS projects Ohtani to be a .318 hitter the rest of the way, rather than the .276 hitter that the current rest-of-season model — which does not use zBABIP — expects him to be. That .042 range is easily one of the largest differences between the full and in-season models that I can remember.

In the end, ZiPS projects a 22% chance that Ohtani will win the batting title, which is almost half the battle for the Triple Crown because home runs and RBI are highly correlated with each other.

I probably don’t need to tell you about Ohtani’s power credentials at this point, but I’m going to do it anyway. Remember that word “transcendent” from above? Well, that’s Ohtani as a power hitter in 2024. His Statcast hard-hit rate is over 60% and he’s crushed more barrels than Carrie Nation, with 30 already this season. Since the debut of Statcast in 2015, only a single player, Aaron Judge in 2022, has hit 90 barrels in a season (106). Ohtani is currently on pace for about 120, hitting one at nearly a 25% clip, which is an absurd rate. ZiPS projects Ohtani to finish this season with 45 homers and a 52% chance of leading the National League.

The trickiest part of the trio is RBI, as Ohtani currently sits 11 behind NL leader Marcell Ozuna. But the full model of ZiPS gives Ohtani a solid 22% chance of leading the NL in RBI; the model is skeptical that Ozuna is this good. He’s probably not going to slug .864 with runners in scoring position for the rest of the year, as he has so far, nor will Ohtani continue to slug .275 in such situations.

In the 52% of simulations in which Ohtani leads the NL in homers, he also leads in RBI 70% of the time – remember, they’re highly correlated – giving him a 36% chance to lead the league in both homers and RBI. Add in batting average and ZiPS puts Ohtani’s odds at winning the NL Triple Crown at 14.6%. (And, for what it’s worth, ZiPS projects Ohtani to have a 5.2% probability to lead the majors in all three three categories.)

Throughout his career, Ohtani has expanded our understanding of what is possible, so much so that accomplishing something with 15% odds seems easy for him. And that’s a pretty good description of greatness: making the nearly impossible seem ordinary.


Stay Away From Mookie Betts!

Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports

In-zone rate is one of the most fascinating stats in baseball. It definitely means something, but you sometimes need to sort through a couple different factors in order to determine just what that something is. If pitchers think they can knock the bat out of your hands, they’ll come right after you inside, but if they’re scared you’ll do damage, then they’ll nibble around the edges. If you chase too much, they’ll look to tempt you outside the zone, but if you make good swing decisions, you can force them to throw it over the plate. Fastballs end up in the zone more often than breaking balls and offspeed pitches, so if you struggle to catch up to velocity, you’ll see more pitches in the zone. There’s always some randomness thrown in for good measure too, but generally speaking, that’s the matrix.

If you combine all those factors, you’ll see that most of the time, players who take big hacks see fewer pitches in the zone than those who just try to put the ball in play. Since 2021, Salvador Perez and Bryce Harper have seen the fewest pitches in the zone, while Myles Straw and Ha-Seong Kim have seen the most. But there are some elite players who combine the best of all worlds: They make good swing decisions and they combine power with contact ability. If you hang it, they’ll bang it, and if you bury it, they’ll spit on it. These players usually end up with a zone rate that’s somewhere in the middle, simply because there is no one good way to pitch to them. Think Joey Votto, Alex Bregman, and our subject for today: Mookie Betts.

If you’re a baker, you might be fond of the kitchen sink cookie: the cookie where you mix anything and everything that might be delicious into the dough. Pecans and peanut butter chips? Sure. Toffee bits and white chocolate? The more the merrier. Betts is baseball’s version of the kitchen sink cookie, studded with athleticism, coordination, savvy, skill, versatility, maybe even some shredded coconut. There’s no such thing as a right way to pitch him. He has weak spots, but he’s excellent at hitting the kinds of pitches that are usually located in those spots because he’s good against every kind of pitch. He’s never excelled against pitches at the top of the zone, but he destroys four-seam fastballs. If you want to beat him up there, you really have to hit the very edge, because if you miss high, he won’t swing, and if you miss low, he’ll clobber it. He’s also had trouble low and away, but again, he’s always been solid against the breaking pitches that most righties try and throw there.

This year, Betts is batting leadoff in front of reigning AL MVP and current Triple Crown candidate Shohei Ohtani and perennial MVP candidate Freddie Freeman. There’s nobody in baseball with better lineup protection, so you could be forgiven for assuming that he has been seeing a lot more strikes this season. He has not. In fact, his zone rate has fallen from 49.1% in 2023 to 45.4% this season. That drop of 3.7 percentage points is tied with MJ Melendez for the second largest among all qualified players, behind only Anthony Volpe, who went from 50% to 46.1%. That leaves Betts with a zone rate in the 13th percentile of all qualified players.

So far, 10.1% of the pitches Betts has seen have been in the waste zone, and 24.4% have been in the chase zone. Both of those numbers are the highest he’s ever recorded. Just 23% of the pitches Betts has seen this year have been in the heart zone. That’s the lowest rate he’s ever recorded, and it’s also eighth lowest among the 196 players who have seen at least 400 pitches this season. Pitchers are avoiding him like never before, and it’s not just that he’s seeing fewer strikes. They’re trying to execute a specific plan.

They’re trying to hit that outside corner. Betts is seeing fewer four-seamers, and more sinkers and offspeed pitches. Those offspeed pitches, as well as the breaking balls he’s seeing, are more concentrated on the outside edge of the plate.

Strictly speaking, this plan is not working. Betts is already sitting on a major league-best 3.0 WAR, and his 193 wRC+ is second only to the 217 mark of the player who is, in theory, protecting him in the lineup. It’s hard to argue that the league has finally figured out a player who’s currently on pace for 12.8 WAR.

However, this plan is absolutely changing the shape of the production Betts is putting up. First, the good news: He’s running a career-high 16.3% walk and a career-low 9.6% strikeout rate. His 1.71 walks per strikeout are miles ahead of Vinnie Pasquantino’s 1.36 in second place. Now the bad news: Betts’ hard-hit rate and 90th percentile exit velocity are down significantly. His pull rate is down to 32.6%, the lowest of his entire career and a drop-off of more than 13 percentage points from 2023. He hasn’t hit a homer since April 12 or an extra-base hit since April 28. Here’s what that looks like in heat map form. The map below shows Betts’ value according to Runs Above Average per 100 pitches.

If you’re a pitcher, that makes it pretty clear: outside good, inside bad. Even with Ohtani and Freeman looming, it might make sense to try to hit your spot on the outside corner and risk giving up a walk. Furthermore, this plan is not without precedent. If you go back and look at the heat maps of the pitches Betts has seen in recent years, one of them jumps out as similar to this season.

In 2021, pitchers tried a similar tack, aggressively going after the outside corner. Betts ended up with a 131 wRC+ — the worst mark he’s had since 2017. If you’re an opposing pitcher with no good options — which is to say any pitcher who finds themselves 60 feet, 6 inches away from Mookie Betts — why not try an approach that has, at least grading by the ridiculous curve of Betts’ stellar production, worked before? Look at how many of his hits (especially his extra-base hits) went to left field last year.

Right field is just a sea of gray outs with a few green singles sprinkled in. In 2023, Betts had a .602 wOBA when he pulled the ball, .396 when he hit it straightaway, and .189 when he hit it to the opposite field. Why not do everything you can to keep him from pulling the ball and encourage him to hit it the other way? Unfortunately for opposing pitchers, this tactic requires a high level of precision. Betts doesn’t seem to mind taking his walks, and on the rare occasions when he does get a pitch to hit on the inner half, he’s making the most of it.

However, there are a few signs that he’s had to adjust to combat this approach. He appears to be setting up closer to the plate this season. In the pictures below, I’ve copied and pasted a second home plate right next to the actual home plate to give a better sense of scale.

In theory, moving a few inches closer means that the inside pitches Betts usually mashes are now a little bit further inside, which should give him less time to turn on them. Furthermore, his chase rate is up a bit from last season, and it has been rising in recent weeks.

This could just be regression. Betts has an 83 wRC+ over his last nine games, but it’s not like he was going to run a 250 wRC+ and a 12% chase rate all season. However, he really is chasing more — not a lot, but more than he did in April and more than he did in 2023. We’ve seen him move closer to the plate, and it’s certainly possible that seeing so few pitches in the strike zone has made him a little bit sick of waiting for his pitch and more likely to swing at something he shouldn’t. We’re only a fifth of the way through the season, and all the numbers you’ve seen so far are likely to continue to regress to the mean. Betts will likely face more pitchers who are bold enough to challenge him inside (or at all). But for now, it looks like he’s still adjusting to this new approach.


The Dodgers Are Struggling Out of the Gate — Again

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Thanks to an eight-run fifth inning that included Andy Pages‘ first major league home run, the Dodgers beat the Mets 10-0 on Sunday to avoid being swept at home. Even so, they’re off to a sluggish start this season after committing nearly $1 billion in free agent contracts this past winter and pushing their payroll to a club record $314 million. Maybe they’re not the juggernaut that figure suggests, though even given their star-laden roster, they came into this season as a work in progress.

The Dodgers entered Sunday having lost seven of their past nine games. They dropped the finale of a six-game midwest road trip to the Twins, then two of three to the Padres at Chavez Ravine, followed by two of three to the Nationals and two in a row to the Mets. The skid undid a 10-4 start, and they were in danger of — gasp — sinking to .500 had they lost on Sunday. They weren’t exactly getting steamrolled by powerhouses, either. The aforementioned teams had a weighted projected winning percentage of .472 at the outset of the season, and finished Sunday having produced a .453 winning percentage outside of this nine-game stretch against Los Angeles.

For the Dodgers, run prevention has been the biggest issue. Even with Sunday’s shutout — their first of the season, with eight dominant innings from Tyler Glasnow and one from Nick Ramirez — they’re allowing 4.54 runs per game, 11th in the National League. While they haven’t allowed runs at that clip over a full season since 2005, they allowed exactly the same number of runs over their first 24 games last year while going 13-11, then picking up the pace and winning 100 games. Déjà vu all over again? Read the rest of this entry »


The Dodgers Outfield Has Been Very, Very Bad to Start the Season

Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports

For more than a decade now, the Dodgers have reigned over Major League Baseball through a combination of top-end talent and robust depth. Versatile role players like Enrique Hernández and Chris Taylor have complemented stars like Clayton Kershaw, Corey Seager, and Mookie Betts, while excellent scouting and player development departments have meant that the team has never had to scrounge for spare parts. That mix has usually kept Los Angeles clear of our Replacement-Level Killers series. This season, however, the Dodgers have a giant hole: the entire outfield. Dodgers outfielders have accrued -0.5 WAR, tied with the Phillies for dead last in baseball. Next time someone tells you to imagine trading Mookie Betts, take a moment to feel sorry for the Los Angeles outfielders, which didn’t even get to trade Betts to the infield; they just gave him away without getting so much as a Jeter Downs in return. Let’s take a look at what’s going on out there, courtesy of our the shiny new splits on our leaderboard.

Dodgers Outfield Ranks
Stat Actual MLB Rank
wRC+ 64 T-29
wOBA .263 28
xwOBA .284 27
BSR -0.9 28
Def -1.9 21
Mookie Betts 0 T-30

Well, that’s simple enough. The offense has been terrible, the defense has been not great, and Mookie Betts is a shortstop now. Before we go any further, it is time for me to shout the word April a few times. The stats above are based on just 239 plate appearances. Lots of things are going to change. In fact, one thing has already changed: On Tuesday, the Dodgers called up prospect Andy Pages and started him in center (presumably because they hacked the FanGraphs Slack and knew I was writing about their outfield needs). He knocked an RBI single on his first pitch.

That said, it’s not too early to look at what’s going on and ask some questions. First of all, Jason Heyward is on the IL with lower back tightness. He hasn’t played since March 30, which means the Dodgers have only gotten to run out their preferred outfield lineup five times. According to Dave Roberts, Heyward’s injury is not improving enough for there to be a firm timetable on his return. Following the injury, the Dodgers claimed Taylor Trammell off waivers from the Mariners, but have only given him six plate appearances. With Heyward gone, Teoscar Hernández has been the everyday right fielder. James Outman and Enrique Hernández have platooned in center. Chris Taylor has started in left, with Enrique Hernández also getting a few starts there against righties. With none of that working, Roberts said on Tuesday that Pages will likely see significant playing time against both righties and lefties.

This seems like the right place to acknowledge how confusing the landscape is in terms of names. There are two Hernándezes, a first-name Taylor and a last-name Taylor, and an Outman who is suddenly living up to his name after all.

Dodgers Outfielders
Name PA BB% K% wRC+ BsR Def WAR
Teoscar Hernández 83 7.2 32.5 138 0.2 -1.9 0.5
James Outman 63 11.1 31.7 73 -0.4 0.5 0
Enrique Hernández 43 4.7 23.3 42 -0.1 0.1 -0.2
Chris Taylor 42 14.3 42.9 -25 -0.1 -0.8 -0.6
Jason Heyward 15 0 6.7 11 0 0.3 -0.1
Taylor Trammell 6 0 50 -100 0 0 -0.1
Andy Pages 4 0 50 40 0 0 0

Let’s start with the good. Teoscar Hernández is crushing it right now. After a down year in Seattle — possibly the result of having trouble seeing the ball at T-Mobile Park — Hernández signed a one-year deal in January, and is off to a running start. However, it’s early and he has a .314 xwOBA, which would be his worst mark since 2019. So far, Hernández is chasing much less, making a lot more contact, and not sacrificing any contact quality. He may not stay lucky forever, but those underlying numbers are encouraging.

In 2023, James Outman put up a four-win rookie season by doing what we nerds so often ask of hitters: making the most of his hard contact by pulling the ball in the air. As a result, he launched 23 homers and ran a great barrel rate despite below-average contact quality and lots of strikeouts. That also made him a likely regression candidate. Despite a 118 wRC+, he ran a DRC+ of 84. The D stands for Deserved, and this season, his DRC+ is 81. However, it’s way too early to assume that Outman can’t replicate his 2024 performance or find ways to get better in his sophomore campaign. So far this season, he’s hitting the ball a bit harder and his contact rate has improved from infinitesimally small to merely microscopic. Outman isn’t going to run a .242 BABIP all year, and it’s too early to panic about him. However, he needs a platoon partner, and right now, he really doesn’t have one.

Chris Taylor isn’t going to keep running a hilariously low .069 BABIP or a not at all funny -25 wRC+. Even over a short sample size, those are astoundingly unlucky numbers. He’s been extremely aggressive on pitches in the strike zone. That should be a good thing, but he’s made contact with them just 67.7% of the time, leading to a 42.9% strikeout rate. Because he’s walking and striking out like Joey Gallo, Taylor has put only 18 balls in play. That’s a tiny sample size, so it’s too early to do anything more than note that his contact quality has been dreadful. Taylor is coming off a 104 wRC+ in 2023, and he’s only been below 100 once in the last eight seasons.

Enrique Hernández hit his first homer of the season Tuesday night. Maybe the Dodgers can help him find his swing; after all, he hit much better following the trade that sent him from Boston to Los Angeles in 2023. But please understand how big a reclamation project that would be. From 2022 to 2024, Hernández has run a 72 wRC+, making him the sixth-worst hitter in all of baseball (minimum 700 PAs). The players below him could all be more or less described as defensive specialists; they’ve all put up positive WAR totals thanks to good defensive marks (with the exception of Martín Maldonado, whose defensive value is invisible to defensive metrics and quite possibly visible only to MLB managers). But Hernández has been worth -8.9 runs in the field, and -0.9 WAR overall, making the seventh-worst position player overall. That’s not just a replacement-level killer. His ugly defensive numbers at shortstop in 2023 were eye-opening, and if he doesn’t have the glove for center or the bat for left, that’s a big problem.

Lastly, there’s Pages (pronounced PA-hez), who was called up Tuesday. The 23-year-old Cuban missed most of the 2023 season due to surgery to repair a torn labrum in his right shoulder, but he’s already hit five homers at Triple-A this season. We have him ranked seventh in the Dodgers system. MLB Pipeline has him ranked higher: third in the system and 96th overall. After discussing Outman and Teoscar Hernández, Pages’ profile might sound familiar. His swing is designed to generate lift, allowing him to do plenty of damage even though he doesn’t boast tons of raw power. Like Outman and Hernández, that also means he’s going to strike out quite a bit. He started in center on Wednesday and has played there some in the minors, but he’s destined for a corner spot long-term, with a big arm that makes right field most likely.

Pages brings one more thing that the Los Angeles outfield sorely needs: youth. Until the arrival of Pages, Outman was the baby, but he’ll turn 27 in a week. Prorated by plate appearances, Dodgers outfielders are 30.5 years old, making them the third-oldest outfield in baseball. The oldest players are also the ones with the biggest question marks. Can Heyward stay healthy, and if he does, can he repeat his 2023 breakout? Are Taylor and Enrique Hernández still useful pieces at this stage of their careers? The overall strength of their roster means that the Dodgers can likely coast to the playoffs even if they keep getting absolutely nothing from their outfield, but that’s not usually how they operate.


Top of the Order: Mason Miller Makes The A’s (Sometimes) Worth Watching

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Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

You don’t need me to tell you that the A’s aren’t a good team, nor a particularly entertaining one. Esteury Ruiz, arguably the club’s most fun position player, is down in Triple-A looking to build on his spring training success and become a more consistent everyday player than he was last year, when he led the majors with 67 steals but also had a wRC+ of just 86 and was, as far as DRS is concerned, horrible in the outfield (-20). That leaves the A’s without many players worth tuning in for, with the roster littered with post-prime veterans, waiver claims, and former prospects who’ve lost their shine. But Mason Miller’s career is just getting going, and it’s delightful to watch.

The flame-throwing righty burst onto the major league scene last year with a 3.38 ERA in four starts, including seven no-hit innings against the Mariners in a May outing that was just the third of his career. But a minor UCL sprain kept him out until September, when he was used in two or three inning spurts, topping out at 54 pitches. That perhaps foreshadowed how he’d be used this season, with David Forst saying at the Winter Meetings that he’d likely work out of the bullpen in an effort to limit his innings (and injuries). In the very early going, the move has not only kept Miller healthy, but allowed him to turn on another gear. He’s now pitching with absolute dominance as a reliever instead of teasing it as a starter. Read the rest of this entry »


Top of the Order: Mizuhara Set To Be Charged

Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

In one of the quicker conclusions to a headline-grabbing baseball story I can think of, Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, is set to be charged with bank fraud; he’ll reportedly surrender to authorities on Friday, with an arraignment date still to be scheduled.

Mizuhara’s alleged transgressions, which were detailed in a federal affidavit filed Thursday, were even more extensive than had previously been reported. According to the complaint, federal investigators claim that Mizuhara stole more than $16 million from Ohtani (or “Victim A,” as he’s referred to in the document), rather than the initially reported $4.5 million. Read the rest of this entry »