There probably aren’t many times in his life when Franmil Reyes has snuck up on someone. Listed at 6-foot-5 and 265 pounds, Reyes looks like he could stiff arm a Ford F-150. There’s nothing inconspicuous about him. However, despite being fourth in average exit velocity since he was called up in 2018 – rubbing elbows with the Aaron Judge-s, Nelson Cruz-s, and Joey Gallo-s of the world – Reyes’ name is rarely mentioned when discussing the game’s prodigious power hitters. Part of this may be because he’s played in Cleveland and a pre-Fernando Tatis Jr. San Diego. Part of it may be because, despite the jumbo exit velocity, he’s tied for 21st in home runs over that span. You can hit the ball as hard as you want, but if 46.6% of them are on the ground like Reyes’ have been, people will lose interest as quickly as those blistering grounders become outs.

Exit velocity will catch the eye of dedicated, hardcore fans painstakingly poring over data. But massive home runs will always be the quickest way to draw the eyes of casual fans. Ideally (as Reyes did twice on Tuesday night) you can hit a ball over 110 mph while also sending it halfway to a neighboring county. Reyes may not have to worry about sneaking up on people anymore, both because he’s finally getting the results that his exit velocities would suggest, and because he’s literally being very loud. You’ll know he’s around because you’ll know the sound of his bat.

Read the rest of this entry »

The end of April always sees some teams with their hands hovering above the panic button, some pitchers wondering what the heck is happening, and others hoping their newfound glory is more than just a phase. As the month comes to a close, we’ll see all of those tropes beautifully on display. Here are the week’s best matchups.

Tuesday, April 27, 6:10 PM ET: Kenta Maeda vs. Aaron Civale

Heading into the season, three AL Central teams had playoff odds above 24%. Nearly a month into things, two of those teams are struggling with losing records (Minnesota and Cleveland), while the Royals, who had the fourth-lowest playoff odds of any AL team, are the surprise of the spring. This week brings the first Minnesota-Cleveland series of the year as both sides try to find their mojo. On Tuesday, they’ll each turn to guys with a wide array of pitches who currently occupy different ends of the success spectrum.

One year removed from finishing second in Cy Young voting and AL starter WAR, Kenta Maeda is searching for answers. He’s only seen the sixth inning once in his four starts this year, going exactly 6.0 innings in a game against the clawless Tigers. He’s had two starts flame out at 4.1 innings; his other outing was a meltdown at the Coliseum on April 21. The A’s clobbered three home runs, whacked five balls with exit velocities above 100 mph, plated seven earned runs, and hooked him after three innings.

Those big-time exit velocities are becoming a troubling trend for Maeda, a pitcher who thrived in his first five major league seasons by limiting hard contact. According to Statcast, Maeda had the lowest average exit velocity among all starters from 2015-20 who threw at least 500 innings. Today, he’s floundering in the 28th percentile for average exit velocity and the 29th percentile for hard-hit percentage, partially due to the fact that his four-seam fastball just flat out ain’t working.

Last season, when Maeda had the lowest average exit velocity of any starter and the highest K% of his career, hitters flailed their way to a .086 batting average and .103 wOBA (.150 xwOBA) on his fastball. The average exit velocity against that pitch (83.4 mph) was even weaker than his league-leading overall average (85.3). This year, that’s all gone awry. His fastball is getting lit up for a .313 average and .372 wOBA (.430 xwOBA). He even allowed a home run on the fastball for the first time in his Twins tenure. This Matt Olson skyscraper, measured at 107.8 mph on a middle-middle meatball, is a perfect encapsulation of how things are going for Maeda when his catcher puts down one finger.

Aaron Civale, on the other hand, has taken the thump out of opponents’ bats. Cleveland’s third-year righty is in the 88th percentile of exit velocity, and his heater is the one steadying the ship. As Devan Fink laid out, Civale has overhauled everything, mainly his philosophy on fastballs. After throwing a four-seam 2.5% of the time in 2020, he’s shot that percentage all the way up near 30.

It’s now Civale’s turn for a tour of the exit velocity leaderboard. His revamped changeup – which, as Devan also mentioned, is now a split-change – is working so well that he may even want to consider upping its dosage. The split-change is sending everyone back to the dugout having made weak contact (or no contact at all), but particularly left-handers, who have yet to record an extra base hit, and are slap boxing a 78.0 average exit velocity against this diverting action.

Like a scrap-hungry seagull or a fan with the day off tomorrow, Civale is also sticking around late into the game. As opposed to Maeda, Civale has pitched into the sixth inning in each of his starts, twice going seven frames or longer. With both teams looking to course-correct after chumpish starts, and the Royals’ making things even more crowded in the Central, Tuesday’s Maeda-Civale ticket is one to pinpoint.

Friday, April 30, 9:40 PM ET: John Means vs. Jesús Luzardo

Fresh off a resounding 8-1 win that ended Oakland’s 13-game winning streak, the Orioles meet the A’s for a second straight weekend series. John Means will attempt to keep Oakland earth-bound on Friday, matched up with the same youngster he defeated last time out. Means and Luzardo had a timeshare of the strike zone when they last linked up, pouring in strikes on over 60% of their identical 101 pitch counts.

Means has stuck to the same script for virtually his entire career, though this season he’s relegating his slider from supporting actor to bit part. With roughly 10 mph separating his fastball and changeup – Means’ most common offerings – the rock of the Orioles’ rotation is letting those two do the lion’s share of the work. Eighty-three of his 101 pitches in the clubs’ first meeting were either a fastball or changeup, and the A’s could only scrape together two hits in 6.1 innings. Will Means follow the same path when they collide this weekend, or will he try to confound Oakland by peppering in more sliders and curves?

Both pitchers will throw their fastballs more often than not, though they use different lanes of the highway. Per Baseball Savant, Luzardo was responsible for each of the 23 highest-velocity pitches in Sunday’s game against Means, topping out just a hair under 98 mph.

The Athletics’ Peruvian prodigy took the L thanks to Austin Hays’ two home runs, giving Luzardo five gopher balls in 25 innings, all provided by right-handed hitters. Since his big-league career began in 2019, Luzardo has allowed 15 home runs, 14 of which have come from the right side of the batter’s box. (To satiate your daily need for useless trivia, the only lefty to take Luzardo deep is Mariners’ 28-year-old rookie José Marmolejos.) Don’t let the Orioles band of nameless, faceless offensive players fool you. Though they’ve managed just one souvenir shot against lefties this season, Baltimore’s left-handed hitters are fifth in wRC+ against same-handed pitchers.

Friday, April 30, 9:40 PM ET: Jon Gray vs. Madison Bumgarner

Friday evening will be extremely conducive to the two-screen lifestyle, as Gray vs. Bumgarner gets underway at the same time as Means vs. Luzardo. Both of these towering NL West staples are intimately familiar with their opponent. Gray has tussled with the Diamondbacks 13 times in his seven-year career while Bumgarner’s career stats against the Rockies read like a full season for a 1960’s workhorse: 37 starts, 230.1 innings, 218 strikeouts, 62 walks. Despite inhabiting the same division as Bumgarner for his whole career, Gray has only matched up with the inimitable lefty twice. Entering round three, both guys are hot.

Gray shut out the non-Bryce Harper parts of Philadelphia’s lineup on Sunday, allowing just two runs on a pair of solo shots to the Phillies’ right fielder. Though he’s running the first double-digit walk rate of his career, Gray is doing well at keeping those base on balls from becoming runs. His 85.8 LOB% will surely come down, and his .208 BABIP will likely come up, but there are some encouraging trends that suggest Gray’s early-season fortune could be here to stay.

Keeping balls on the ground means they can’t be added to the collection of Coors Field moon shots, and Gray has gotten his groundball percentage back above 50%, much more in line with his 46.6% career average than the 36.7% outlier from last season. The Rockies also have to love their ace’s hard-hit rate, as it mirrors the numbers he maintained in 2016-17, the only seasons he’s eclipsed 3.0 WAR. So far Gray has been riding the slider – a pitch that’s been his best since 2019 – until the wheels fall off. Hitters began whiffing on it 40% of the time during that 2019 breakthrough, and this year they’re hardly faring any better, swinging and missing at a 42.5% clip and striking out in 19 of the 51 plate appearances that have ended with this unrighteous pitch.

The desert faithful will get their first look at Bumgarner since his seven-inning no-hitter. The zero hits part jumps out of the box score, but Sunday’s shortened no-no was also MadBum’s best all-around game as a Diamondback. It was his first start for Arizona without a walk, and he matched his Diamondback-high with seven strikeouts. Bumgarner generated 10 swings and misses on his cutter and curveball, the latter of which is quickly becoming an essential out pitch. With a Whiff% of 40.0 (and a staggering 75.0 against lefties), Uncle Charlie is bringing gifts every time he visits Bumgarner.

This could spell doom for Ryan McMahon, the Rockies’ left-handed hitting outfielder who’s carrying around an 0-for-10 with three strikeouts against the legendary lefty. Trevor Story, the only current Rockie with more than 18 plate appearances against Bumgarner, has also had a bad time. His 8-for-41 (.195/.233/.561) numbers are hilariously heightened by the fact that five of those hits have landed in the seats.

Under the Radar Matchup – Friday, April 30, 8:05 PM ET: Nathan Eovaldi vs. Kohei Arihara

Here’s the situation: Eovaldi has one of the lowest barrel percentages of any starter; Arihara has one of the highest. Unsurprisingly, Eovaldi has been one of the more valuable pitchers around, becoming one of the first American League hurlers to hit 1.0 WAR. He’s done it by converting to the church of groundballs, getting disgusting ride on his fastball, and harnessing a curveball that’s experienced a 180-degree turnaround in just two years.

As recently as 2019, Nathan Eovaldi was downright bad, trying to smile through the pain of home runs and walks. That is no longer the case, as Eovaldi is working on a streak of 42.2 consecutive innings without allowing a dinger, and his walk rate is a microscopic 4.2%, down from the 11.6% that severely hampered him two years ago.

While Eovaldi’s aversion to hard contact has very plainly made him Boston’s best pitcher, his Friday counterpart’s success has been much more confusing. Arihara was managing a 2.21 ERA (3.05 FIP) heading into his last start despite constantly getting hit on the thick part of the bat. After coming over from Japan on a two-year pact with the Rangers, Arihara experienced unbelievable luck through his first four starts until stopping by Guaranteed Rate Field on Sunday. His 93.9 EV (highest of any starting pitcher), 12.9% Barrel% (fifth-highest), and 50.0% HardHit% (tied for highest in the league), tell us that hitters are having a very easy time squaring him up. Yet, he went longer than five innings with zero earned runs in his two previous starts before getting beat up by the White Sox in his worst showing to date, pushing his ERA to 4.03 (4.17 FIP). Even after getting his “Welcome to MLB” moment in Chicago, Arihara still has a HR/9 under 1.00 and is feeding groundballs to 40.6% of his adversaries.

His teammate Mike Foltynewicz, who has the dubious distinction of being neck-and-neck with Arihara on HardHit Mountain, has a 5.32 ERA, 6.78 FIP, and leads the world in home runs allowed. Baseball is hard and unfair.

If you take a quick glance at Aaron Civale’s 2021 numbers, nothing looks out of the ordinary. Yes, the 2.18 ERA signals a stellar start, but with strikeout and walk rates relatively in line with his career numbers, you wouldn’t suspect that Civale has undergone a host of changes to both his repertoire and his delivery. But look beyond the numbers to the guy on the field, and it’s clear that he’s undergone a rather obvious change in his process and approach, one that merits further analysis.

Coming into the season, Civale was mainly a sinkerballer, though that requires a rather liberal definition of the word “mainly.” Civale threw his sinker, cutter, and curveball to batters of both handedness, and supplemented those main offerings with a side of slider to righties and a side of changeups to lefties. That mix of speeds and movements put him in an interesting class of pitcher:

As you can see, Civale was one of 13 pitchers to throw five different pitches at least 100 times last season. This isn’t a group of particularly good or bad pitchers. In fact, combined, these 13 had a FIP- of exactly 100. And though Civale had a solid 2020 season, it’s not as if his 4.74 ERA, 4.03 FIP, and 22% strikeout rate scream ace.

What is interesting about Civale is that he has changed so dramatically year-over-year. Though he threw five different pitches fairly frequently, it is Civale’s sixth pitch — his four-seam fastball — that is in the spotlight so far this season. After throwing just 58 total four-seamers out of a total of 2,064 pitches over his first two seasons in the majors, Civale has already thrown 83 in his three starts this April. Still, that’s not the only change he has made (pun fully intended). Civale has ditched his traditional changeup in favor of a split-change and has all but stopped throwing his sinker. His yearly pitch type chart is extraordinary:

That’s not all. Civale also completely revamped his delivery, adopting a shorter arm action. It’s the same mechanical change Lucas Giolito made going into the 2019 season, greatly contributing to his development into a frontline starter. In a similar move, Civale went from being a long-windup, over-the-top pitcher last season to one who is now a side-stepping short-armer.

“That will be my windup for the year,” Civale told reporters, including Mandy Bell of MLB.com, this spring. “I did a lot of my work out of the stretch in the offseason. Changing my arm path, I didn’t want to add any rotation into my delivery that could alter that. Just decided to keep it simple. I didn’t do too much work on that windup, it’s just a little stutter-step. Not really shifting too much weight. A lot of the work I did to transition to the new arm path was out of the stretch. Less movement is less chance for error.”

Here’s 2020:

And now 2021:

Given how much Civale changed, the title of this article may actually be an understatement. One could argue that he is a completely different pitcher now. It’s hard to know exactly what results those changes will bring, and considering how different he has become, it’s interesting that his numbers are almost identical to last year’s thus far.

Still, it’s worth examining the early returns on an individual pitch level — even if the samples are minuscule — and comparing those to previous seasons. First, let’s look at the exchange of the sinker for the four-seam fastball, a rather common move by pitchers over the last few seasons as sinkers across the league continue to get crushed.

Admittedly, the number of both pitches he’s thrown is small. But, at least so far, what is interesting is that the pitches have generated rather similar quality of contact results. While Civale’s four-seamer has performed better from a wOBA standpoint, the two pitches have almost identical xwOBAs. Also striking is that Civale’s CSW% from his 2021 four-seam is lower than on his 2020 sinker, despite generating a whiff almost three times as often. Indeed, Civale already has 14 whiffs on his fastball this season, out of 44 total swings; last year, his sinker generated just 15 whiffs on 133 swings. That is a marketed improvement.

Additionally, while neither Civale’s fastball nor sinker will blow by hitters in the low-90s, the four-seamer’s movement profile is noteworthy. Kevin Goldstein recently wrote about the importance of fastball shape, and indeed, Civale’s pitch looks not-too-dissimilar from the 2016 Marco Estrada example he was highlighted. 2021 Civale is on the left, and 2016 Estrada is on the right:

Of course, Civale doesn’t quite match Estada in the vertical movement department. But there’s clearly a similarity between the two in terms of raw, non-velocity-adjusted rise. Even after adjusting for velocity, however, Civale still generates about 5% more rise on his fastball than average, which definitely represents better pure stuff than his sinker, which generated 8% less sink than average. Indeed, as we would expect, there are signs that hitters will be popping him up. Civale is currently in the 75th percentile in average launch angle off of the four-seam fastball and has also been a big proponent of the lazy fly ball, ranking 16th in average exit velocity allowed on all air contact.

Then there’s the changeup, which — as Civale noted himself — is now a split-change. With the adjustment, it might have become his best pitch, or at least gives him a second strong offering in addition to the cutter. By our pitch values, Civale’s 2020 changeup was worth 1.6 runs above-average per 100 pitches. So far in 2021, his “split” has been worth 4.3 runs per 100. While we are again dealing with small sample caveats, here is what the quality of contact numbers look like year-over-year:

Again, we can’t yet draw firm conclusions from the wOBA and xwOBA data, though in the early going, it seems as if Civale has made what was a good pitch even better. Similar to the fastball/sinker chart, though, Civale is struggling in the CSW% department, with his former pitch performing much better than his new one so far. It very well could be noise, or it could still be him getting used to the new delivery; it’s worth noting that his overall CSW% is down six points from 2020 to ’21 as well. Nonetheless, to the naked eye, it definitely looks like he is getting more bite on the change; it’s dropping by about four more inches this year on average.

Here’s Civale’s 2020 change:

And here’s his 2021 split-change:

What do we make of all of this? It’s hard to know. There are so many moving parts, and it’s still early in the season, after all. But if you like pitcher reboots, you should definitely be paying attention to what Civale has done. I am not sure I have ever seen a pitcher change so much in just one offseason. I’m curious to see how it works out for him, and, really, I’m fascinated by his willingness to overhaul everything in an attempt to become a more effective player.

Most of the time, I don’t like to make predictions. For one thing, they’re hard! The amount of public information out there is borderline overwhelming. Beating the wisdom of the crowd isn’t easy, particularly when the crowd is using fancy models and copious batted ball data to be wise.

The other big problem with making predictions is that they’re usually wrong if they’re bold. That’s the nature of the game — a bold prediction can’t be the majority of the probability mass, or it wouldn’t be bold. How fun can it possibly be to read a list of things that probably won’t happen?

Well, hopefully very fun, because I’m going to make some this week. These aren’t going to be completely wild guesses, of course, because I do have some idea what I’m doing, but I’m not expecting to go 100% on these. If I go two for four, I’ll definitely call that a win. These are merely the synthesis of some observations that I’ve made over the past year or so, sprinkled with a little bit of boldness dust where necessary to make them exciting instead of milquetoast. Read the rest of this entry »

While Jake Odorizzi is clearly the top free-agent pitcher still available as March opens, Jackie Bradley Jr. is the market’s top position player still on the shelves, No. 18 overall on our Top 50 Free Agents list. Beyond the fact that they and their agents may have aimed too high with their contractual desires in an industry still feeling the economic pinch of the COVID-19 pandemic and treating the $210 million Competitive Balance Tax threshold as a salary cap, the pair don’t have a ton of similarities beyond their availability. But like Odorizzi, Bradley could provide a clear boost to a contending team.

Bradley, who turns 31 on April 19, spent the past 10 years in the Red Sox organization after being chosen as a supplemental first-round pick out of the University of South Carolina in 2011. It took him awhile to find his footing in the majors: Since he couldn’t keep his batting average above the Mendoza Line over the course of 530 plate appearances in 2013–14, he bounced up and down between Triple-A Pawtucket and Boston and spent nearly half of 2015 on the farm as well before finally sticking around for good.

Since the start of the 2015 season, Bradley has produced at about a league-average level offensively (.247/.331/.438, 102 wRC+) and provided exceptional and often spectacular defense. His +33 DRS in center field is tied for fifth in the majors in that span, and his 19.9 UZR is sixth, though he’s somewhere around 10th or 11th on a prorated basis, depending upon the innings cutoff one chooses. Likewise, his 42 runs via Statcast’s Runs Prevented metric ranks sixth since the start of 2016. In a league where Kevin Kiermaier has dominated the defensive metrics, Bradley has just one Gold Glove to show for his efforts, but he’s nonetheless put together some enviable highlight reels. Here’s one that covers just the last eight weeks of his work:

Read the rest of this entry »

As the calendar flips to March, exhibition season has begun (!) in both Arizona and Florida, and yet a few top free agents remain unsigned. Atop the list in terms of projected impact is Jake Odorizzi, who’s had the misfortune of mistiming the market, in part due to an injury-wracked 2020 season. Still, there’s no shortage of teams that the veteran righty, who placed 24th on our Top 50 Free Agents list, could help.

Odorizzi, who turns 31 on March 27, spent the past three seasons with the Twins, putting together a solid campaign in 2018 (4.49 ERA,4.20 FIP, and 2.5 WAR in 164.1 innings), and an All-Star one in ’19 (3.51 ERA, 3.36 FIP, and 4.3 WAR in 159 innings). Last year was a near-total loss, though, as he was limited to 13.2 innings by an intercostal strain and a blister. Prior to that, Odorizzi pitched four years and change with the Rays, that after being traded in blockbusters involving Zack Greinke and Lorenzo Cain (2010) — he was originally a supplemental first-round pick by the Brewers in ’08 — and then James Shields and Wil Myers (2012). In Tampa Bay, he totaled 6.5 WAR from 2014 to ’16 before a bout of gopher trouble (1.88 homers per nine) led to a replacement level season in ’17. That hiccup aside, he’s been very solid and (prior to 2020) rather durable, averaging 30.3 starts per year from 2013 to ’19; an oblique strain in ’15 and hamstring and back woes in ’17 kept him to 27 starts in those seasons. As best I can tell, he’s never missed significant time due to an arm injury.

Odorizzi has gone his entire career without signing a multiyear deal. He won back-to-back arbitration cases against the Rays in 2017 ($4.1 million) and ’18 ($6.3 million), the reward for which was being traded to the Twins just two days after the latter decision was announced. After making $9.3 million in 2019, his best season, he received a $17.8 million qualifying offer from the Twins, which apparently put a drag on his market before he could fully test the waters. Via MLB.com’s Do-Hyoung Park, Odorizzi received “a lot of interest” from other teams at the time, to the point of exchanging dollar figures, “but the uncertainty generated by the timeframe and the draft considerations ultimately led to his return to Minnesota.” The fact that Odorizzi wouldn’t be be subjected to another qualifying offer the next time he reached free agency, and thus wouldn’t have the millstone of draft compensation attached to his signing, was a factor in his decision.

Alas, his 2020 season didn’t pan out as planned. The intercostal strain landed him on the injured list to start the season, and so he didn’t make his season debut until August 8. In his third outing, on August 21, he was hit in the chest by a batted ball, suffering a contusion and landing on the IL again. Upon returning, a blister problem led to another early hook. Though he was on the roster for the AL Wild Card series against the Astros, he did not pitch.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re left-handed and can throw strikes, you have a chance to pitch forever. That appears to be Oliver Pérez’s plan. The 39-year-old southpaw agreed to a minor league deal with Cleveland last week, returning to the fold of the team for whom he’s pitched in the last three seasons. His contract includes an invitation to spring training, a clear path to being the bullpen’s top (and perhaps only) lefty, as well as appearance-based incentives.

Speaking from experience, if you want to catch casual baseball fans off guard, tell them that Pérez is still kicking around the majors. Particularly in New York, where he occasionally excited and often exasperated fans during his four-and-a-half year run with the Mets from 2006-10, the notion that he’s still plying his craft a decade and a half after his near-heroic effort in Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS went for naught can get quite a reaction. “Get the —- out of here,” is the usual response.

It’s been quite a journey for Pérez, who debuted in the majors with the Padres in 2002, was traded to the Pirates in the Jason Bay–Brian Giles blockbuster about 14 months later, and spent a few seasons in Pittsburgh, most notably striking out 239 batters in 196 innings at age 22, a point at which the sky appeared to be the limit. Dealt to the Mets in the Xavier Nady deal in 2006 — seriously, his transaction log is a chance to Remember Some Guys — he generally pitched well before patellar tendinitis turned his three-year, $36 million return via free agency into a sub-replacement level disaster that culminated with his being released in March 2011 while being owed $12 million. Down but not out, he remade himself as a reliever, evolved into a respected elder statesman, and is now heading into his 10th major league season as a lefty specialist, and his 19th overall, the most by any Mexican-born player. In that second life, he spent time with the Mariners, Diamondbacks, Astros and Nationals — and additionally toiled for the Reds in spring training and the Yankees in exotic Scranton/Wilkes-Barre — before resurfacing in Cleveland in mid-2018.

Since then, Pérez has had his year-to-year ups and downs, but he’s been generally quite effective, pitching to a 2.67 ERA and 2.83 FIP in 91 innings while striking out 28.8% of hitters and holding batters to a .256 xwOBA, the majors’ fourth-lowest mark among lefties who’ve thrown at least 500 pitches in that span, behind only José Castillo, Josh Hader, and Aroldis Chapman. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about discordant college baseball uniform fonts, a piece by Blake Snell in The Players’ Tribune, and whether there’s a competitive advantage in making the bullpen less visible to the pitcher on the mound, then preview the 2021 Cardinals (15:13) with Will Leitch of MLB.com (and elsewhere) and the 2021 Cleveland baseball team (58:59) with Zack Meisel of The Athletic, plus a postscript about the underrated (and re-signed) Brett Gardner.

Audio intro: The Essex Green, "Uniform"
Audio interstitial 1: William Prince, "Reliever"
Audio interstitial 2: The Essex Green, "Cardinal Points"
Audio outro: Devin Davis, "Giant Spiders"

Link to Meg’s tweets about uniforms
Link to Snell’s column
Link to Will on the Arenado deal
Link to NL Central roundtable with Will
Link to preorder Will’s novel
Link to Will’s newsletter
Link to Zack on Francona
Link to The Athletic bracket of new team names
Link to Zack on Rosario
Link to Zack on McKenzie
Link to Zack on Cleveland’s new middle infield
Link to Zack on Cleveland’s pitcher development
Link to EW episode about Cleveland’s pitching powerhouse
Link to The Selby is Godcast
Link to Yankees position-player WAR leaderboard
Link to Yankees WAR Runs DP+Baserunning leaderboard
Link to 2010-20 MLB position-player WAR leaderboard

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This week may be Prospects Week here at FanGraphs, but for MLB, this has been Minor Signings Week. The long offseason dance is just about over, and everyone’s now at risk of going to homecoming alone. So rather than a long spiel that sees me reference a historical battle or obscure 18th-century literature, let’s get straight to the moves.

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Jonathan Schoop slashed .169/.217/.273 last year in counts that included two strikes, and over his career that line is an equally-squeamish .162/.208/.276. The Detroit Tigers infielder — recently re-signed to a one-year deal worth a reported $4.5M — isn’t alone in scuffling when a possible punch-out looms. Across the two leagues, batters slashed .167/.248/.275 in those situations in 2020

Schoop typically doesn’t get into two-strike counts by taking pitcher’s pitches and patiently waiting for mistakes. Restraint has never been his forte. Since debuting with the Baltimore Orioles in September 2013, Schoop’s walk rate is a lowly 3.8%, while his Swing% and O-Swing% both rank toward the top of our Plate Discipline leaderboard. And while toning down that level of aggression is a goal, it’s not as though a Tiger can simply change his stripes. Schoop isn’t about to morph into Joey Votto — not at age 29 — which means a different two-strike approach might be in order.

I asked Schoop about that during a Zoom call earlier this week.

“I’ve got to do better with two strikes,” admitted Schoop, whose 22% K-rate last year was a shade under his career mark of 22.9%. “I need to put the ball more in play and see what happens. I’m going to change that. I’m going to be better at everything. The things I need to be better in, I’m going to be better in. The things I’m good in, I’m trying to be a tick better on them, too.”

Following up, I asked Schoop if he’s considered shortening his swing with two strikes, maybe even choking up on the bat. While that might mean giving up some power, it would likely help him boost his contact rate. Read the rest of this entry »