No one deserves a .414 BABIP. That’s just not how things work. Hit the ball as hard as you want, spray line drives to all fields with reckless abandon, secretly slather grease on your opponents’ gloves – none of those things can keep your batting average on balls in play at such a lofty level. It’s a good marker of small samples. If someone is BABIP’ing .414, it’s too early to believe their stats.

Let’s use Heliot Ramos as an example. Ramos is on fire so far this year. He’s hitting a ridiculous .319/.394/.560, and doing it while striking out nearly 30% of the time. It doesn’t make sense. No one hits .300 while striking out that often. No one runs a .400 OBP with a strikeout rate that high unless they’re walking like Barry Bonds. Ramos is doing neither.

I can keep listing the things that don’t make sense here. Ramos isn’t exactly a launch-and-crush kind of guy – he’s hitting 1.7 grounders per fly ball, with the league average around 1.4. But it’s working out for him – he’s batting a scalding .367 on those grounders with a .411 slugging percentage. That’s the 11th-best mark (minimum 40 grounders) in baseball for average, and the 15th best for slugging percentage. Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball is a game all about decisions. Some are minuscule, micro-level decisions that everyone will forget about after they happen. Should I sit fastball on this pitch? Should I take off for second base? Meanwhile, some are much larger, macro-level decisions felt over the course of one or multiple seasons. Should I try to lift the ball more? Should I change the grip of my slider? Everyday games over the course of a long season let us keep track of these larger trends, but no one could possibly analyze every substitution or pitching change over a 2,430-game regular season. So, instead, I’ll look at just three. In a midweek series last week, the Phillies and Giants put on a clinic of cat-and-mouse strategy and mostly excellent pitching. Let’s take a look at both the small- and large-scale decisions that contributed to this excellence on the mound.

Game 1 was a relatively high-scoring affair in which neither starter shined. There was nothing interesting to report from the Phillies side, as backend starter Taijuan Walker completed six innings but allowed as many runs. Opposite him was the struggling Blake Snell, who, in his typical inefficient fashion, lasted just four innings before being removed. To begin the fifth, manager Bob Melvin turned to rookie Randy Rodríguez, a sensible choice given his consistent multi-inning appearances to provide length to the Giants bullpen. In his first inning, Rodríguez retired the heart of the lineup in order on just 10 pitches, making him the easy choice to come back out for the sixth, due to face a pair of Phillies platoon hitters inserted into the lineup to face Snell.

Pache and Merrifield really aren’t guys you want hitting against a righty, especially one as nasty as Rodríguez, whose absolute hammer of a slider creates a difficult look for same-handed batters. Despite Marsh and Stott, the regular starters, ready to pinch-hit, Phillies manager Rob Thomson elected to keep them on the bench in a one-run game. His reason was the man standing on a bullpen mound beyond the center field fence: Lefty Erik Miller was warming up for the Giants.

While the Giants could have sent in Miller in response to a pinch-hitter, I still think using Marsh and Stott would’ve been the correct decision for Thomson. First, given Pache and Merrifield’s futility against right-handed pitching, almost any other scenario would have been more favorable. Indeed, the two managed a fly out and groundout against Rodríguez, combining for an xBA of .090. Furthermore, with lefty sluggers Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper at the top of the lineup (with a 91 and 72 point gap in projected OPS, respectively, between their splits vs. right-handed and left-handed pitchers), it would’ve been wise for Thomson to force Melvin to burn one of the two lefty relievers in the Giants bullpen, which could’ve led to more favorable matchups later in the game. Because Thomson decided not to make any substitutions, Miller wasn’t needed until the next inning, a scoreless effort in which he allowed just one hit, the popup single in front of home plate that Ben Clemens wrote about in Friday’s Five Things column. Marsh and Stott did eventually hit in the ninth, as did lefty bench bat Kody Clemens, but only after Philadelphia’s deficit had ballooned to four runs.

The fact that Miller only threw one inning in Game 1 became significant the next day, as he was fresh enough to slot in as the opener for bulk man Spencer Howard, a former Phillies top prospect who stalled upon hitting the majors and entered play with a career ERA north of seven. Thomson rolled out the lefty-heavy lineup hoping to feast on Howard’s mediocre fastball shape, so for the second day in a row, Miller faced the Phillies’ top three without allowing any damage. In traditional opener games, Howard would come out next and make his start as normal. Instead, Melvin went a different route, delaying Howard’s entrance in favor of bringing in Taylor Rogers, the only other available lefty he had. It’s not the first time a team has used multiple openers, but it’s certainly unorthodox during the regular season, with few off-days to rest the staff. The left-handed Rogers twin breezed through two scoreless innings, turning the lineup over before handing the ball off. Howard still had to get the job done, but Miller and Rogers lessened his load by nine outs, taking out a lefty-vulnerable lineup that wouldn’t turn to pinch-hitters so early in the game. Howard turned in four scoreless frames, and his team needed every bit of it, as they won 1-0 in extras.

Melvin’s management of his staff made the most of his available, although depleted, personnel. Under ideal circumstances, teams wouldn’t use emergency bulk arms, multiple openers, or an entire staff composed of swingmen, but an open rotation spot due to injury forced the Giants to scrap together innings by any means necessary. While Melvin’s tactical decisions were the best use of his limited arms, the opposite side of this matchup showed a fully operational, elite rotation at its finest. The Phillies currently have the best starting pitching in the league by every measure, and it’s not particularly close.

Most of that value comes from four excellent arms, two of which appeared in this series. First, in the second game, it was Zack Wheeler, who has continued his run as baseball’s most consistently excellent starter over the past half-decade. Even with his velocity finally starting to show signs of age, he’s on pace for career bests in ERA (2.32) and xERA (2.60), and his 29.0% strikeout rate is just below the career-high 29.1% mark he posted in 2021. Much of his success has come from an eagerness to change his approach and arsenal over time – first emerging as a Cy Young finalist after embracing the power of the elevated fastball, then adding a new pitch to his arsenal in each of the last two seasons. In 2023, a sweeper became his breaking pitch of choice; this season, like many other pitchers, he’s added a splitter. Wheeler now throws six pitches with regularity, a re-invention of his style from just a few years ago.

In dominating the Giants, Wheeler demonstrated the complementary power of his sinker and new split, with the former earning called strikes at a 29% clip and the latter inducing four whiffs on just 10 uses. The splitter has above-average run just like his two-seamer; it even spins on the same axis after adjusting for seam-shifted wake. It’s almost as if Wheeler precision engineered his splitter to travel on the exact same tunnel as his sinker for the first 40 feet of flight before diverging, making it extremely difficult for batters to tell them apart. The brand-new splitter is already Wheeler’s best secondary offering by run value, and it’s also helped make his sinker considerably more effective, with a 40-point drop in xwOBA compared to last season.

Wheeler put together one of his best starts of the season, striking out nine San Francisco hitters across six scoreless innings, but he couldn’t outdo his opponent’s parade of openers and was saddled with a no-decision. The next afternoon, in the series finale, Cristopher Sánchez enjoyed a Phillies offensive outburst that was absent from the first two games. In last year’s breakout campaign, the lefty Sánchez put up above-average numbers over 19 appearances, but what held him back from excellence was an abysmal showing against right-handed hitters, who ran a slugging percentage that was more than double their that left-handed counterparts. He’s leveled up this year, currently holding a share of the NL lead in FIP. And while he still runs an exaggerated platoon split, he’s been able to limit the power of opposite-handed hitters, as seen on Wednesday against a daunting all-righty Giants lineup.

The calling card of Sánchez’s arsenal is a changeup with few comps in terms of movement, boasting 97th percentile drop and 95th percentile run. This exceptional pitch generated gaudy whiff numbers during his time as a prospect, and has only continued in the big leagues. The problem is that Sánchez’s sinker, which he uses to set up the changeup, gets absolutely hammered, especially by righties. Drastically cutting his sinker usage wouldn’t be the solution, because that would allow batters to sit on his change and make it more hittable. So, rather than shelving the sinker, Sánchez made a change to when he used it.

Sánchez took advantage of the Giants’ passivity on first pitches by throwing juicy sinkers to 12 of the 24 batters he faced; none of them were put into play. In fact, over a third of his sinkers in the game were taken for called strikes, his highest mark of the season. After getting ahead in the count, Sánchez then let the changeups rain down, racking up strikeouts and groundouts. By the end of the start, Sánchez’s sinker — a pitch that had allowed loud contact like no other in the past — surrendered zero barrels and zero extra-base hits. Like Wheeler the day prior, Sánchez turned in six scoreless innings, while the Philadelphia bats knocked around the surprisingly hittable Kyle Harrison. The vulnerability of Sánchez’s sinker likely caps his upside as a mid-rotation guy, but certainly one more than capable of starting playoff games for his contending team.

The Giants won the series, taking two games out of three. They showed they could win even with a starting rotation depleted by injury and underperformance, tilting the odds in their favor with crafty personnel decisions that kept the Phillies’ offense guessing as to who would come out next. (Of course, over the weekend, the Giants were swept by the Yankees in San Francisco, perhaps displaying the limitations of a team with a shaky staff.) On the other side, Philadelphia’s buzzsaw of a rotation was created by decisions as well, albeit ones made on the more macro level. From arsenal tweaks to command improvements, these changes demonstrate why this team is top dog right now in the National League.

I think everyone has moments where they wonder just what the hell they’ve done with their lives. I’ve been blessed with the divine spark of human consciousness, and a body to tote those thoughts around in, and what have I accomplished? I had one of those moments recently while I was holding a friend’s baby, trying to make her laugh. What a delightful and important but most of all profound thing, to create a whole other person and cultivate her — from scratch — into a happy adult.

Or the next best thing, creating art. I’ll speak to what I know: music. I’m left in awe of songs that, through dynamic contrast and precision of rhythm and density of countermelody, seem to be carrying that divine spark themselves — the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th symphony, or Typhoon’s “Prosthetic Love.” So much care and emotion went into such composition that it’s hard not to be bowled over by the emotional transference of the artistic process even as you’re astounded by how precisely the pieces have been crafted and how seamlessly they fit together.

Again: What am I doing with my life to show that I value this gift? How am I using this spark to shape the world into a better place? How am I passing this light on to others? This thought burst out and grabbed me recently when I was poking around our site’s pitcher defense leaderboards and noticed something interesting about Josh Fleming. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

Amid all the (mostly Gunnar Henderson-related, as I understand it) Orioles hoopla, John Means has a chance to do something unusual in his start later today against the Cardinals. Means is the only starting pitcher this season to make it through his first three outings without walking a batter.

That might not sound like much to all you folks who walked barefoot in the snow — uphill, both ways — to see Christy Mathewson shut out the Louisville Trench Foots every three days, way back when. But it’s pretty impressive by modern standards. Only four other starters — Mitchell Parker, Sonny Gray, Corbin Burnes, and Shota Imanaga — even made it through their first two starts without giving up a free pass in 2024. And if Means continues according to form this afternoon, he’ll join a surprisingly small group of pitchers. Read the rest of this entry »

During spring training, I asked 10 current big leaguers how they followed the game growing up, and how that has changed since they began playing professionally. As expected, all of them noted significant differences. No longer fans following their favorite teams and players, they consume baseball in a distinctly different way, even as the mediums through which they take in the game remain much the same.

Following up on that March 8 piece, I asked a new subset of baseball professionals much the same question. Four are former players who are now managing, while two are former players who are now broadcast analysts. In each case, how they consume the game has evolved not once, but twice.

Here is what they had to say. Their answers have been edited and condensed for clarity.

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John Schneider, Toronto Blue Jays manager:

“For me, it’s always been similar. That maybe sounds funny, but whether it was as a fan, player, coach, or manager, I’ve always been interested in the strategy of the game. Being a catcher, you kind of look at a game that way naturally. What most fans want to see is their favorite players — you want them to hit home runs, things like that — and then as a manager, you’re always wondering what strings another manager might pull, or at least try to pull. So, it’s similar for me, but at the same time obviously a little different. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. After taking a week off to recharge and travel, I was itching to watch some baseball this week, and the sport delivered. After spending last week in New York, I had the city on my mind, and the Mets delivered with some exciting series against the Braves and Phillies. There was good rivalry action out west, too, with the Dodgers and Giants squaring off. And of course, there’s that classic rivalry, Tommy Pham against the concept of ever taking a single play off. As always, thanks to Zach Lowe for the inspiration for this series. Let’s get right into it.

1. Max Effort Every Time

Tommy Pham is my favorite baseball player. To be clear, I don’t think he’s the best baseball player. I’m not sure that I, personally, would want him as a teammate, even. He’s too intense for my laid back view of the world. But his maniacal drive is absolutely delightful to watch, and it’s particularly delightful now that he’s on a team that is absolutely not competing for a playoff spot this year.
Read the rest of this entry »

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.

When I think about openers, I think about Ryne Stanek. His statistics as a Ray in 2018 and 2019 were comical: Before he was traded to the Marlins in 2019, he made 100 appearances over those two seasons; 59 of them were “starts.” In those opening appearances, he never threw more than 37 pitches, recorded more than six outs, or faced more than nine hitters. But since leaving the Rays, despite appearing in 234 games, he’s pitched for more teams (three) than he’s made starts (zero). In fact, he’s averaging less than one inning per appearance.

I searched my brain to figure out who is today’s version of Stanek circa 2018-19, only to realize that there isn’t one. I turned to Stathead and confirmed my inkling: The opener has gone by the wayside in 2024.

In my query, I set a couple of filters as guardrails. First, I limited my search to pitchers who were on, at most, three days of rest. That way, I could eliminate the true starters who got hurt or blitzed out of games from this sample. I also capped the number of batters faced at nine. Facing the leadoff man twice goes against the spirit of the opener, where the aim is to prevent batters from seeing any one pitcher too many times.

It doesn’t take a math degree to know that nine is far fewer than 154. But it’s not quite that simple. Remember, we’re only a quarter of the way through the season, and there will almost certainly be more openers used the rest of the way. That said, baseball is on pace to use 33 openers in 2024, which would be the fewest since the opener was first utilized in 2018 — yes, that includes the shortened 2020 campaign. It’s worth noting that only 12 openers were used at this point in 2023, so we could see opener usage ramp up as this season progresses, too. Even so, it’s clear that something has changed.

I don’t really have a take on whether or not the opener is a good strategy in today’s game. I also don’t think there’s an obvious explanation for why the fall of the opener is happening. Some of it may just be circumstance. Gabe Kapler’s Giants frequently used openers, and he’s no longer managing. The 2018-19 Rays had Blake Snell and Charlie Morton, but they also had plenty of pitchers who were best deployed in short outings. This season, the Rays feature a deeper group of pitchers who are capable of carrying a starter’s workload. Five years ago, Tampa Bay turned to openers out of necessity; now, that’s no longer necessary.

What To Look Forward to This Weekend

• The Mariners have played great baseball of late, winning eight of their last nine series, bringing their record to 24-20, and entering play Friday in first place in the AL West. But they’ve got a big test coming up, with three games in Baltimore followed by three games in the Bronx, two exciting series that will give the Mariners ample opportunity to show the league they’re for real. George Kirby and Corbin Burnes face off in a marquee pitching matchup on Sunday.

• The Rockies are looking to extend their winning streak that currently sits at seven games, beginning tonight in San Francisco. Colorado started out its streak last week with a win against the Giants, scoring seven runs off Keaton Winn, who is set to start for the Giants on Sunday. Whether or not the Rockies will be riding a nine-game streak at that point will depend on San Francisco starters Kyle Harrison and Jordan Hicks, as well as a piecemeal Giants lineup that’s without Patrick Bailey, Michael Conforto, Jung Hoo Lee, and Jorge Soler.

• Although they’re still the league’s worst team, the White Sox have played less embarrassingly of late, going 8-4 over their last 12 games. This weekend, though, they head to the Bronx to face the first-place Yankees. Led by a ridiculously hot Aaron Judge, New York has won four straight games and 10 of its last 12. During the Yankees’ three-game sweep of the Twins in Minnesota, Judge went 7-for-11 (.636) with five doubles and two home runs. On the season, he’s slashing .262/.393/.555 with 11 homers and a 169 wRC+, which is remarkable considering how much he struggled in April.

Lastly, a quick programming note. Beginning next week, we’ll be shifting Top of the Order to a twice-weekly schedule, running on Tuesday and Friday mornings. See you then!

Despite a strong late-winter effort to beef up their roster by adding big-name free agents Jorge Soler, Matt Chapman, and Blake Snell in February and March, the Giants have stumbled out of the gate. They haven’t even been at .500 since March 31, when they were 2-2, and now they’re 19-24 and in the midst of an unrelenting wave of injuries that has thinned their roster. The most serious is that of Jung Hoo Lee, who dislocated his left shoulder trying to make a run-saving catch in Sunday’s win over the Reds and could be out for several weeks, or even months.

The play occurred in the top of the first inning at Oracle Park, after the Reds loaded the bases against starter Kyle Harrison on a hit-by-pitch, two steals, a throwing error, and a walk. With two outs, Jeimer Candelario hit a high 104-mph drive to deep center field. At the warning track, Lee leaped for the ball, but it bounced off the padding on top of the wall instead of hitting his glove. On his way down, he smacked his left forearm into the padding; his elbow and then his back both hit the chain link fence (!) below the padding, jamming his left shoulder. He went down hard as all three runners scored, and after several minutes on the ground, left the game accompanied by head athletic trainer Dave Groeschner, who held Lee’s arm in place.

Though manager Bob Melvin initially indicated that the 25-year-old center fielder had separated his shoulder, the Giants later clarified that he had dislocated it, indicating a more serious injury. Lee underwent an MRI on Monday, but a more detailed prognosis won’t be known until at least Tuesday after he and the Giants consult with Dr. Ken Akizuki, the team’s orthopedic surgeon. The Giants are hopeful that Lee won’t need surgery, unlike Red Sox shortstop Trevor Story, who on April 5 dislocated his left shoulder while diving for a ball and additionally suffered a fracture of the glenoid rim, an injury that required season-ending surgery. There’s been no report of a fracture yet for Lee, but soft-tissue damage could be another matter.

[Update: Indeed, on Tuesday evening, the Giants confirmed that Lee has suffered structural damage in his shoulder. He will get a second opinion from Dr. Neal ElAttrache in Los Angeles on Thursday, indicating that surgery is a possibility.] Read the rest of this entry »

Keaton Winn is a rare big league pitcher, and not just because he’s the only one who grew up in Ollie, Iowa, with a population of 201 in the 2020 census. The 26-year-old San Francisco Giants right-hander’s primary pitch is a splitter, and by a significant margin. Through seven starts this season, Winn’s usage breakdown is 42.2% splitters, 23.3% four-seamers, 20.4% sinkers, and 14.1% sliders. No starter in baseball has thrown a higher percentage of splits this season.

With one notable exception, his atypical approach has yielded good results. Winn failed to get out of the first inning when he faced the Phillies in his most recent start, on May 4, but even with that turbulent outing — five runs in 2/3 frames — he has a respectable 4.41 ERA and a 3.97 FIP. In each of the three starts that preceded the debacle, he went six innings and allowed just one run. His next start is scheduled for this afternoon against the Rockies in Colorado, at 3:10 p.m. ET.

Winn’s mix was even more splitter heavy a year ago. He made his MLB debut last June and proceeded to throw his signature offering an eye-opening 55.1% of the time in 42 1/3 innings. It’s understandable that he would prioritize the pitch — last month, our prospect writers Eric Longenhagen and Travis Ice called Winn’s splitter “devastating… one of the nastier ones in pro ball” — even if such an approach is unprecedented among starters. San Francisco’s fifth-round pick in the 2017 draft out of Iowa Western Community College is anything but ordinary in the way he attacks hitters.

Winn discussed his splitter when the Giants played the Red Sox at Fenway Park earlier this month.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with your full repertoire. What was it at the time you signed your first professional contract, and what is it now?

Keaton Winn: “When I signed it was four-seam, curveball, slider, and I maybe threw like five sinkers. No changeup. Now it is four-seamer, sinker, splitter, slider.”

Laurila: You obviously throw a ton of splitters. Given how much you rely on it, would it be fair to say that you’re probably not in the big leagues right now had you never developed a splitter?

Winn: “Yeah. That’s definitely crossed my mind before. I mean, I think I ultimately could have competed to get a role, but having the splitter made it so much easier.”

Laurila: What’s the story behind it? Read the rest of this entry »