Adam Ottavino had three wild pitches this year before Sunday’s game.

That’s one of those opening sentences that doesn’t bode well for what happened next. You can’t reduce your wild-pitch total, and it’s generally not newsworthy when someone throws just one wild pitch, regardless of how devastating the ramifications of that errant throw are. For this sort of thing to be newsworthy, Ottavino would have had to commit a particularly nasty act of self-immolation.

Well, he did. Ottavino threw four wild pitches, and runs scored on all four of them. The Rockies scored six runs. Because of the wild pitches, though, they lost. It’s not what you want if you’re a Rockies fan.

A Tommy John survivor, Ottavino’s had a much rougher time putting the ball where he wants it to go this season. He carried a 14% walk rate into Sunday, the ninth-worst mark among qualified relievers. Then he walked three of the nine batters he faced. A walk rate that high is never all that great, but it helps that Ottavino can also strike guys out. He boasts a mid-90s fastball and a slider so notorious that it has its own Twitter account. When it’s on, it’s disgusting, and that’s the state it’s usually in. When it’s not, things can get hairy. The slider wasn’t the issue yesterday. His fastball is what got him in trouble.

Tony Wolters wants the fastball away from Yasmani Grandal’s bat with the bases loaded. The fastball didn’t go away. It went in, and bored a hole to the backstop. Ottavino’s release point is all out of whack, so he’s throwing across his body far more than usual. By the time he releases the ball, it’s got nowhere left to go. Justin Turner jogs home, and it’s a one-run game.

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Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Thomas Szapucki, LHP, New York NL (Profile)
Level: Low-A  Age: 21   Org Rank: 7   Top 100: NR
Line: 6 IP, 2 H, 2 BB, 0 R, 10 K

Notes
Szapucki missed all of April and May with a shoulder injury. Sunday was his fourth start of the year and he worked more efficiently and missed more bats than he had in his previous three appearances. Szapucki already boasts a plus fastball/curveball combination and he’s a potential No. 3 starter if he can develop a changeup and/or plus command of his breaking ball. Should he fail to, then there’s some concern that Szapucki’s low-3/4 arm slot might be an issue against upper-level right-handed hitters and limit his effectiveness and role. He’s had a back and shoulder issue during his pro career and made many starts on extended rest. Sunday’s came with a full week between starts.

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Over the weekend, the Rockies came to LA to show everyone that the NL West was really going to be a fight, that this wasn’t just the Dodgers’ division to run away with. At 47-28, the Rockies were just behind the 48-26 Dodgers, and with a successful weekend in LA, they could even retake the division lead.

It didn’t go well. They Dodgers won 6-1 on Friday, 4-0 on Saturday, and 12-6 on Sunday, outscoring the Rockies 22-7 on the weekend. The Rockies are now 4.5 games back in the NL West race. Their chances of winning the division, which we had at 9.0% on June 20th, are now 1.3% on June 26th. And it’s not like the Rockies have fallen apart; the Dodgers are just proving to be an absolute behemoth.

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We live in an era of home runs. You know that. It’s been discussed ad nauseam on your favorite team’s broadcast, on your Twitter feed, and by your favorite baseball writers. We’re going to talk about it some more now.

The cause for this spike is manifold. Players are swinging up and for the fences, as you may have heard. They’re better-conditioned and better-fed. We understand the science and kinetics of hitting better than ever. The ball is quite possibly juiced. It’s a perfect storm of dingeritis that’s led to a fascinating new world where it’s not just guys like Aaron Judge and Paul Goldschmidt who are in scoring position the very second they step into the box. Well over 100 batters have hit at least 10 home runs, and we’re not out of June yet. The list grows to more than 240 batters if you include those who have hit at least 5, which means they’ve got a fair shot of getting to double digits before the season is out.

So yeah, we’re going coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs here. Which leads to an interesting question: if this continues, if the ball really is juiced and if players are going to keep chasing fly balls when they’re in the box, if anyone can hit the ball out, doesn’t that make a home run less special? Doesn’t that make a home run less valuable? Doesn’t it alter projections for amateurs and prospects?

There’s two important lines of thought there, so we’ll tackle the inside-baseball stuff first. If you’re running a baseball team, you’re probably no longer getting worked up over a free agent with 20-homer power because of his power alone. Why dish out a two- or three-year deal for a veteran when there are kids in your minor-league system who can replicate that kind of power on the cheap? Power was one of the last remaining calling cards of free agents. Defense and speed can decrease with time, but veterans could get paid for their bats. Rookies and journeymen like Yonder Alonso are suddenly tapping into previously unrecognized reservoirs of power with wild success. Not everyone has a Cody Bellinger sitting around at Triple-A, but given the way the ball is flying around and the way hitters are structuring their swings, you may be able to scrounge up 15 bombs for a league-minimum salary.

We already saw some of this over the winter when players like Chris Carter had a hard time finding work. Power is coming even easier now. It’s becoming less of a defining tool. If everyone can hit 15-20 bombs, it then becomes a question of what else a player can do for you, and for how much. Can you field well? Can you play multiple positions? Do you walk a lot? Can you do all that for cheap?

There’s more to this than team-building and the squeezing out of veterans, too. There’s a fan’s side to this too, and it’s probably more important. We’re now witnessing home runs more often than ever. Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa aren’t running around out there anymore. The word “anabolic” isn’t in the papers all that often anymore. This is more dramatic than the steroid era. Maybe we’ll one day call this the “uppercut era,” the “juiced-ball era,” or the “three-true-outcomes era.” But this is clearly a different animal. Balls that have never really gone out before are going out. Is there a saturation point?

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Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Jacob Scavuzzo, OF, Los Angeles NL (Profile)
Level: Double-A  Age: 23   Org Rank: HM   Top 100: NR
Line: 3-for-5, 3 HR
Notes
Scavuzzo has above-average raw power, but he often expands the zone; has a stubborn, pull-only approach to contact; and has long levers. That’s a potent swing-and-miss cocktail, but hitters with Scavuzzo’s body type sometimes put it together a bit later than their peers. He’s 23.

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Clayton Kershaw got the win against the Mets last night. From one perspective, he was fantastic. He faced 25 batters, and struck 10 of them out, issuing but one single walk. He threw more than two-thirds of his pitches for strikes, and he pitched himself into the seventh inning. The problem was that, of the 14 batters who hit the ball fair, four of them went deep. Kershaw was charged with a season-high six runs allowed, giving him a game ERA of just about 9.

Let it be acknowledged right away: Kershaw’s still amazing. Kershaw’s still an ace. He still has one of the game’s highest strikeout rates, and he still seldom issues any walks. He’s near the top among starters in ERA-, and he’s even closer to the top by xFIP-. Kershaw might be literally the last pitcher on the planet you’d want to catch yourself worrying about. There’s just this one thing I can’t get past: Kershaw has coughed up 17 homers. That is, already, a new career high.

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Kenley Jansen has never been better.

On Sunday, Jansen threw 12 pitches — 12 cutters — and 11 for strikes to close out the Reds during a 1-2-3 ninth. Video evidence of the simplistic, ruthlessly efficient, Jansen Way: Read the rest of this entry »

On this date a year ago, the Dodgers traded pitcher Zach Lee for non-pitcher Chris Taylor. Since then, Lee has been claimed off waivers, and he’s thrown eight big-league innings, with eight walks. Taylor, meanwhile, didn’t impress in the majors in 2016, but he made some offseason changes and currently ranks third among Dodgers position players in 2017 WAR, behind only Justin Turner and Corey Seager. Cody Bellinger has been very good, yes? He’s at 1.8 WAR, with a 144 wRC+. Taylor’s at 1.9 WAR, with a 140 wRC+. He’s appeared at second base, shortstop, third base, left field, and center field.

I’m not here to give Taylor an exhaustive look. I’m not going to do any video breakdowns. This is pure statistics. Let’s begin with a table featuring one statistic. For every hitter who’s batted at least 150 times this season, I calculated the difference between their in-zone swing rates and their out-of-zone swing rates. There have been more than 250 such hitters. A leaderboard:

That’s Chris Taylor in first place. That’s Chris Taylor in first place in a table that also has Joey Votto in it. Taylor, to this point, has been making many of the right swing decisions, being aggressive within the zone while laying off garbage outside of it. That’s not everything about being a good hitter, but you couldn’t ask for a better foundation. Taylor has made himself difficult to pitch to.

Now to expand. This is going to be another somewhat experimental table, a form of analysis I’ve done a few times before. I just finished writing an article for ESPN, in which I performed this same analysis for Cody Bellinger. I identified, for hitters, four core traits — discipline, contact, exit velocity, and launch angle. I gathered data for every hitter going back to 2015, when Statcast was introduced, and I looked for the closest comps to 2017 Chris Taylor. There were no extremely close comps. But among the comps that were there, one comp was far stronger, far closer than the others. The name and the stats:

For the new Chris Taylor, at the plate, easily the closest comp has been recent George Springer. They’re close up there in all four categories, and while Springer has shown the slightly better peak strength, Taylor has made more consistent contact. So, when you wonder how Taylor’s wRC+ might regress, you might decide to be strongly anchored to Springer’s 130. Perhaps that’s still too high, I don’t know, but Taylor has been showing legitimate offensive skills, and his defensive versatility is an obvious plus. Pitchers will have time to try to figure this out, but Taylor hasn’t given an inch.

Without question, Bellinger has come in handy for the Dodgers at just the right time. But Taylor, too, has been crucial to the Dodgers’ early success, and this is just another testament to the organization’s depth. Taylor always seemed like someone who could play a little bit. Now he’s resembling a critical component of the Astros’ organizational core.

Update: And, to pile on, earlier today, the Padres designated Zach Lee for assignment.

So, I already had a post published today that talks about the struggling Rich Hill. Here it is! That includes just about everything I have to say. There’s one fact, though, that I wish I’d slid in, but it eluded my notice. I only stumbled upon it while talking about Hill this morning on Effectively Wild. Let’s stop beating around the bush.

Rich Hill is all about the curveball, right? Throws it all the time. Or, at least, throws it close enough to half of the time. Between 2015 and 2016, when Hill re-emerged, he had baseball’s third-highest curveball rate. No one didn’t know about that, and, of course, the curveball rated well, in terms of being an effective pitch. You are probably aware of our pitch-type run values. Between those two seasons, Hill had baseball’s fifth-most valuable curveball, by raw value. Focusing on all the pitchers who threw at least 100 innings, and then converting that curveball value to a rate stat, Hill ranked in third place. Nothing here is surprising. Hill threw the curveball a lot because the curveball was good. It’s a big part of what allowed him to occasionally resemble an ace.

Turn now to 2017. Hill has thrown 37% curveballs. That’s down, but it’s still very high. Hill has still been throwing plenty of curves. And yet, let’s look at the pitch-type run values again. Here are baseball’s least-valuable curves to this point:

Rich Hill: last place. Last place, even, by a couple of runs. The run values are by no means perfect measurements, but they do generally point you in the right directions — good pitches tend to get good values, and bad pitches tend to get bad ones. Rich Hill’s curveball has been horribly unsuccessful, the very most unsuccessful, after starring as a nearly unparalleled weapon. Hill won’t be right until his curveball is right. Said curveball has too often been wrong.

This doesn’t so much change the analysis. It’s still a problem of location, which is still a problem of either injury or mechanics. That’s what the Dodgers have to figure out, and these numbers don’t really help to shed light on what’s going on. The Dodgers already knew that something was awry. But still, this manages to tell a heck of a story. Rich Hill’s world-beating breaking ball has completely abandoned him. You could say that life has really thrown Rich Hill a curveball. Do not say that, though. It’s stupid.

From the case of Rich Hill, I’m not sure one could learn any lessons. For one thing, he still has more time to pitch, so his final chapters are unwritten. But even if Hill is already underwater, so what? No one needs to be told that there are risks inherent in committing to a free agent 37-year-old. And it’s not like anyone else is following the Rich Hill career path. His case is unique. What matters for him might not apply to anyone else. Everything about what he is is atypical, and so we stand to learn about Hill and Hill only.

It is fair to say, though, there are things to be learned. The Dodgers are probably anxious to learn them, because they’re counting on Hill, and he’s not pulling his weight. Now, no one thought Hill would throw 200 innings. I don’t think anyone expected 140. But here’s Hill now, at 35 innings after eight starts, eight starts in which he’s run up a 5+ ERA. Hill’s strikeouts have fallen and his walks have exploded, and Thursday in Cleveland saw him cough up seven runs. Rich Hill isn’t right, and although the Dodgers aren’t so worried about his June, they’d like to know if he’ll be fine by October. Something right now is borked up.

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