Tanner Bibee is having a down season. While he’s thrown a team-high 154 2/3 innings, the Cleveland Guardians right-hander has a 4.77 ERA and a 4.69 FIP, as well as a career-low 20.6% strikeout rate. Over the previous two seasons — his first two in the majors — he’d tossed 315 2/3 innings with a 3.25 ERA, a 3.54 FIP, and a 25.3% strikeout rate. Something has clearly been amiss.
Bibee believes that he knows what the issue has been; how to right himself during the season is the question at hand. With less than a month left on the schedule and the Guardians still holding out hope for October baseball — their playoff odds are a faint, but not impossible, 4.6% — Bibee can’t wait until the winter to get right. Much for that reason, he worked diligently in a bullpen session on Wednesday afternoon at Fenway Park, after which he expounded on his efforts to return to what he’s been at his best.
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David Laurila: We talked a few days after you made your big league debut (in April 2023). How do you compare to the pitcher you were then?
Tanner Bibee: “Stuff-wise?”
Laurila: Stuff. How you approach the game. You’re two years older and presumably smarter now.
Bibee: “That doesn’t always mean better. It’s been an interesting first couple of years in the big leagues. I obviously had a lot of success in 2023. I had some success last year after a rough month or two. This year has definitely been… I’ve been through different movement patterns. In ’23, I came in with a really high slot, then kind of slowly got it back down.”
Lake Bachar was a kicker at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater before turning his full attention to baseball. He had a good leg. An all-conference performer, Bachar booted three field goals in the 2014 NCAA Division III championship game, a 43-34 Warhawks win over the Mount Union Raiders. Along with being a place kicker, he served as the team’s punter and kickoff specialist across his three collegiate seasons on the gridiron.
How good was he in his other sport?
“I was decent,” said Bachar, who now pitches out of the bullpen for the Miami Marlins. “I don’t know about NFL kicker, but at that time I was going to try do whatever I could to at least go to a [tryout] camp. The longest field goal I kicked in practice was 68 [yards] — good conditions, and all that — and the longest in a game was either high 40s or low 50s.”
Baseball has turned out to be a good career choice, although it took him awhile to reach the majors. Drafted by the San Diego Padres in 2016, the fifth-rounder was 29 years old when he debuted with the Marlins last September. His first full big-league season has been impressive. Over 43 relief appearances, the right-hander has a 5-1 record and a pair of saves to go with his 3.39 ERA and 3.77 FIP over 58-and-a-third innings. His strikeout rate is a solid 26.7%.
Selected off waivers by Miami shortly before his debut, Bachar attributes his late-bloomer breakthrough to “being in the right place at the right time,” as well as some fine-tuning of his pitches. A four-seamer that gets ride-run and a splitter that he’s thrown since 2020 comprise half of his arsenal. The other offerings are breakers new to this year. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. August is a month I like to use for rest and recovery. After the chaos of July, there’s a natural lull in the season before the drama of September. Both deadline buyers and sellers are figuring out their new rosters and allocating playing time to new arrivals and minor league call-ups. No race is down to the wire, and yet many races are already decided. That’s a great time to relax – and what I like to do to relax is watch baseball. This week’s set of five things doesn’t have a lot of pivotal plays or playoff squads on the brink. It doesn’t have walk-offs or game-ending defensive plays. It’s just guys doing cool things, and sometimes that’s the best part of baseball. So with a quick programming note – Five Things is off next week while I go to the US Open – and a nod to Zach Lowe of The Ringer, let’s get started.
1. Ultimate Reversals
In an 0-2 count in his first start off the IL, Hunter Greene lost control of a fastball:
Hey, it happens. It was an 0-2 count, so no big deal, get ‘em next pitch. Only, wait, something was going on:
Hit… by pitch? I’m not sure anyone at the plate was sure what happened. J.T. Realmuto said something to umpire Carlos Torres. Torres thought about it and then eventually awarded Realmuto first base. Tyler Stephenson went full John Travolta behind home plate, looking around in vain for someone to make this make sense to him.
How did Reds manager Terry Francona feel about this? The same way I did, and the same way you do right now, presumably:
When the first slow-motion replay came in, everything started to make a little more sense:
Realmuto wasn’t hit by the pitch; his bat was. It’s an easy overturn. Why didn’t anyone notice? Well, Stephenson had his eyes closed and his glove blocked Torres’ view of the butt of Realmuto’s bat. No one noticed the deflection right away either; after all, Stephenson stuck up his glove trying to catch it and the ball landed in the mitt.
The replay review was short and conclusive. The call on the field was overturned; instead of a hit-by-pitch, it was a foul ball. Only, that’s not quite right – there were two strikes. The ball landed in Stephenson’s mitt after making contact with the bat. That’s a textbook foul tip strikeout. Instead of strolling to first base, Realmuto trudged back to the dugout.
There have only been five other HBP-to-strikeout overturns in the replay review era. I watched video of all of them. The one this week was the strangest. Here’s AJ Pollock getting “hit” by Tyler Chatwood in the first one I found:
See the umpire’s quick and decisive reaction? That’s normal. Call a dead ball, determine what happened, point to first to signal a hit-by-pitch – it’s standard operating procedure. Torres didn’t even call a dead ball, because he didn’t realize he needed to.
In fact, I think Realmuto might have inadvertently done this to himself. It’s feasible that if he didn’t say anything to Torres, that would have just been a ball. No one saw the ball deflect off the bat in real time, and it was such a glancing blow that no one seemed to hear it. You can tell because of their reactions; Torres doesn’t call the ball dead right away and Stephenson definitely has no idea what’s going on. Also? Change this rule! That has to be one of the hardest-luck strikeouts of all time.
2. Coordination Jung Hoo Lee’s second year in San Francisco has gone much better than his first. He’s healthy, for one thing: After an injury limited him to just 158 plate appearances in 2024, he’s been active for the entire season and has already crested 500 plate appearances this year. He’s improved across the board offensively, flashing gap-to-gap power and consistently working counts and avoiding strikeouts. It’s been more of a struggle defensively, where he’s been somewhere between blah (per OAA) and quite poor (per DRS and Baseball Prospectus’ DRP). It’s tough having your fielding compared to the ridiculous monsters who roam center these days. But how many of them can do this?
What’s that, you say? That was a standard play, catch probability 99%? The wind looked a little swirly, which made it slightly more difficult, but you’re not wrong. Lee took a meandering route to the ball and still had time to flatten his route and more or less come to a complete stop to judge the wind; he probably could have caught it standing up if he’d gotten a better read initially. That’s all true! But wait for the reveal:
It’s like a magic trick, pulling a coin out from behind a kindergartener’s ear only in baseball form. Oh, you’d expect the ball to be in my glove? No, of course it’s somewhere else. See, the ball actually kicked out of Lee’s glove, but he made a spectacular instinctual adjustment:
Lee’s right leg made that entire play. He lunged and missed with his hand, the normal thing you’d use to catch a baseball. For most players, that would be the end of the play. But Lee somehow flipped his hips to get in position, drove his right knee past the ball without bumping it away, and then pincered it into the hollow between his knees to protect it from falling to the ground.
Don’t try this at home. I say that out of personal experience – my dog looked at me funny for about five minutes while I tried to replicate it on my living room floor. There’s no practicing or teaching this. No one works on it in spring training. For nearly every outfielder in baseball, the play would have been over after it kicked out of their glove. Lee might be a below-average outfielder when you take the sum of his defensive contributions into consideration. His coordination and ability to make last-minute adjustments, though? It’s certifiably excellent.
3. Necessity Ryan O’Hearn doesn’t face lefties. In his entire Orioles career – 1,223 plate appearances – he faced only 137 lefties. It’s no secret why: He posted an 89 wRC+ against them, as compared to a 126 wRC+ against righties. That’s a huge platoon split, more than double the major league average for lefties. The O’s had a surfeit of righty platoon options, and even this year, when O’Hearn put up his best season yet, they generally didn’t let him face lefties, and he hit poorly against them when he did get the chance.
In theory, the Padres are similarly capable of sheltering O’Hearn. They’ve only given him six plate appearances against lefties, and they’ve pretty much all been out of necessity rather than desire. Your bench isn’t always as full as you’d like, the other team can sneak in lefty relievers at almost any time late in the game, and no hitter avoids facing lefties altogether. In fact, the Padres have given him those opportunities at about the same rate as the O’s. But let’s just say he’s not hitting southpaws quite so poorly with San Diego:
That’s 4-5 with a walk, and all four hits have gone for extra bases. It’s far too small of a sample to make substantive conclusions, of course, but O’Hearn has already socked as many homers against lefties in a Padres uniform as he did in Baltimore, where he played for 20 times as long.
The last one, a two-run blast against All-Star Robbie Ray, came after Mike Shildt pinch-hit with O’Hearn against a lefty. It wasn’t exactly a normal decision – Jake Cronenworth was hit in the hand in his previous plate appearance, and while he played the field afterwards, he didn’t appear to be capable of swinging a bat. Since the Padres had already juiced their lineup with righties against Ray, the only bench hitter with a platoon advantage was Elias Díaz, and your light-hitting backup catcher isn’t a real pinch-hitting option. O’Hearn was the logical play even if “pinch-hit with the guy we never let face lefties against a dominant lefty” isn’t normally a good decision.
So, is O’Hearn suddenly a lefty killer? I don’t think so, but I definitely hope so. The Padres are going to run into many more chances to either let O’Hearn hit against a lefty or replace him with an inferior hitter (Jose Iglesias? Bryce Johnson?) who stands on the other side of the plate. Previously, the decision has rarely been interesting – get the righty in there. In the last 20 days, though, O’Hearn is making it hard to pull him from the game. Yes, it’s six plate appearances. Sure, that’s not how sample sizes work. But since coming to the Padres, he’s slashing .800/.833/2.400 against lefties. Can you really turn that down in favor of Candelita? It’s gonna be a great subplot to watch down the stretch.
4. Thievery Alejandro Kirk doesn’t steal bases. In his entire minor league career, he swiped five bags, all in 2018 and 2019. He’s never so much as attempted one at the major league level. He’s listed at 5-foot-8 and 245 pounds, kind of the reverse of a prototypical base stealing frame. His 24.2 ft/sec sprint speed is in the second percentile league-wide. Could you, personally, beat Alejandro Kirk in a footrace? Probably not, but it’s at least closer than it would be for pretty much every other major leaguer.
Anyway, here’s Alejandro Kirk stealing a base:
This play was a perfect storm of pro-stealing factors. With only one out and a runner on third in a one-run game, the Rangers infield was all the way in. That meant Jake Burger couldn’t hold Kirk on first base because he was off the line and on the grass. It wasn’t a big deal, though. Is there a runner less important to hold on than the guy with 2,000 plate appearances and zero stolen base attempts? Meanwhile, with Daulton Varsho on third base, Kyle Higashioka had no interest in throwing down to second and letting Varsho maraud home. The Rangers knew there was no throw coming to second. Look at their positioning with the ball already in Higashioka’s glove:
In other words, they were more or less daring Kirk to go. Why wouldn’t they? Kirk batted 1,946 times before attempting his first steal. Second place in the majors for most plate appearances without attempting one? Spencer Horwitz with 723. The post-integration record for career plate appearances without a stolen base attempt is 2,224, by Johnny Estrada from 2001-2008. Very few batters reach 1,000 plate appearances without trying to steal at least once. Kirk was a true standout in his field of standing around.
Now he’s got a swipe in his back pocket. Estrada’s record is safe; the odds of Horwitz getting to that milestone are negligible. He’s not even a catcher! But more importantly, Kirk is on the board. He tried to act casual after stealing the base, but the crowd wouldn’t let it go (the Jays posted that it was his first career stolen base on the scoreboard). You know you’ve done something fun when you get Max Scherzer to react like this:
5. Pratfalls With Happy Endings
If your only understanding of outfield defense came from this column, you might think that falling over was a key part of the job:
Sorry for the camera angle; it’s all both broadcasts had. But in any case, what a disaster. You can’t fall down there. That’s Alek Freaking Thomas on the basepaths. He’s maniacally aggressive and has the speed to make it work; he’s 10 runs above average on the basepaths in his career even without taking stolen bases (he’s not a great base stealer) into account. He was on his horse right away and had eyes on home plate. Watch Thomas clock what’s going on in center, pick up third base coach Shaun Larkin waving him on, and book it home:
Wait, what? He got thrown out?!? Yeah, and by a lot, as it turns out. See, Angel Martínez fell, but it was fairly graceful as falls go. He didn’t lose the ball, didn’t panic, and was back on his feet quickly to toss in the relay. It took him about a second-and-a-half to recover, which isn’t great, but it’s a lot better than staying down or losing his grip:
That was a decent relay throw, perfectly on line but without a ton of vigor. Martínez has a cannon arm, but he didn’t show it off there; he was just thinking of getting the ball to the infield. When Gabriel Arias received the throw, though, he had maximum effort on his mind. Arias has an incredibly strong throwing arm, too. He knew there was going to be a play at the plate. He received the relay throw while already stepping into a throw home:
Don’t overlook Bo Naylor’s role in that play. The throw beat Thomas by plenty, but it reached Naylor on a short hop. Without perfect concentration, that ball would probably skip away. It hit so close to Naylor that he had to make a first-base-style scoop:
Meanwhile, though, even with an outfielder falling down and then feathering in a relay throw instead of ripping one, Thomas was out by quite a bit. I think I can show you what went wrong. Here’s Thomas with Martínez sprawled out in the outfield:
He’s nowhere near third base. Forget how hard Arias threw the ball on his relay; there aren’t many players who are making it home safely from this position:
The play wasn’t in front of Thomas; he noticed that Martínez fell, but he had to turn his head to run at maximum speed after that. But the timing just wasn’t right for even a fast runner to score. Martínez was throwing the ball in before Thomas reached third base. Arias was releasing it from shortstop before he was halfway home. Major league fielders are great. This just wasn’t a safe time to score, even after Martínez’s stumble.
It’s perhaps not a coincidence that Shaun Larkin isn’t coaching third base for the Diamondbacks anymore. Manager Torey Lovullo removed him after this very game, in fact. It was a straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back situation, but I think it’s emblematic of how hard it is to wrap your head around just how athletic major leaguers are. Angel Martínez was on his back in the outfield, and then he made a natural-looking, low-effort move and just wasn’t. He didn’t have to make a hero throw. He didn’t have to try to whip it home on the fly to make up for his stumble. He just kept his head about him and let his natural coordination plus his team’s competence make up for the trip. Martínez has been quite bad in the outfield this year. He’s a shortstop by trade and hasn’t adapted to the broad expanses of grass all that cleanly. But making an athletic, tumbling play, and having the rest of the Guardians turn it into an out? He looks pretty good doing that.
Beginning last Thursday and continuing through the weekend, several key rehabbers made appearances in the upper levels of the minor leagues. A few might have a meaningful impact on playoff races, while others are scuffling. I dish on eight pitchers below. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. Between a vacation, the All-Star break, the Trade Value Series, and the trade deadline, Five Things has been on a bit of a summer hiatus. Baseball itself doesn’t stop, of course; weird and delightful things happen whether I’m documenting them or not. But I still couldn’t shake the feeling that this week had an extra helping of whimsy. Balls took funny hops. Good pitchers got shelled in unexpected ways. Balks took center stage. Leads changed hands late, defenders kicked things into high gear – there was so much delightful baseball this week that I struggled to narrow it down to five things. Seven things just doesn’t have the same ring to it, though, so let’s quickly nod to Zach Lowe of The Ringer for the column inspiration and get going.
1. The True King of Contact
Writing about Luis Arraez can be a bummer sometimes. Not because he’s bad – he’s emphatically not – but because merely mentioning his name reinvigorates the age-old argument between those who say there are too many strikeouts and those who insist that slug is in the air. Should everyone be doing what Arraez is doing? Is he an anachronism? Is he underrated? Overrated? He’s so good at what he does – and what he does is so different from what most good baseball players do – that these questions are frustratingly omnipresent in any discussion about Arraez.
That said, I think I found an Arraez play that won’t divide the audience. The key is for it not to involve a ball in play, a walk, or a strikeout. Take a look at this beauty:
It’s a big deadline for relief pitchers, even for teams that aren’t operating in the Mason Miller or Jhoan Duran tier. The Orioles bullpen continues to get picked over like a charcuterie board: Andrew Kittredge is Chicago-bound, with the Cubs sending Wilfri De La Cruz the other way.
The Tigers beefed up their bullpen by picking up Paul Sewald from the Guardians in exchange for a player to be named later or cash. A few hours later, Detroit sent minor league pitchers Josh Randall and R.J. Sales to Washington for Kyle Finnegan and added Codi Heuer from Texas for minor league depth. Finally, the Dodgers are bringing Brock Stewart back from Minnesota, with James Outman going in the other direction.
I know I was worried about a slow trade deadline; “top 100 prospects never get traded at the deadline anymore” had become a fashionable cliché. Even before the Padres dropped a depth charge on that notion on Thursday morning, the Blue Jays traded Khal Stephen, the no. 80 prospect in baseball, for a guy who hasn’t thrown a pitch in the majors all season, and has only made four starts in the past two calendar years.
COOPERSTOWN, NY — During his 19-year major league career, Ichiro Suzuki rarely spoke English in public unless it was to express his thoughts about the temperature in Kansas City in August as it pertained to certain rodents. On Sunday in Cooperstown, however, he flawlessly delivered his 19-minute Hall of Fame induction speech in his second language, showing off his sly sense of humor while speaking about the professionalism, respect, and love for the fans that drove his career. “Today, I am feeling something I thought I would never feel again. I am a rookie,” he began, referring to his first seasons with the Orix Blue Wave in 1992 and the Seattle Mariners in 2001. “But please, I am 51 years old now. Easy on the hazing. I don’t need to wear a Hooters uniform again,” he quipped to the 52 returning Hall of Famers, four fellow entrants in the Class of 2025, and the estimated 30,000 people who attended the ceremony at the Clark Sports Center.
“The first two times, it was easier to manage my emotions because my goal was always clear: to play professionally at the highest level,” continued Suzuki. “This time is so different, because I could never imagine as a kid in Japan that my play would lead me to a sacred baseball land that I didn’t even know was here. People often measure me by my records: 3,000 hits, 10 gold gloves, 10 seasons of 200 hits. Not bad, eh?
“But the truth is, without baseball, you would say this guy is such a dumbass. I have bad teammates, right, Bob Costas?”
Elsewhere, Suzuki poked fun at having fallen one vote short of becoming just the second Hall candidate elected unanimously: “Three thousand hits or 262 hits in one season are achievements recognized by the writers. Well… all but one. And by the way, the offer for that writer to have dinner at my home has now expired.” On a more serious note, he advised distinguishing between dreams and goals: “Dreams are not always realistic, but goals can be possible if you think deeply about how to reach them. Dreaming is fun, but goals are difficult and challenging… If you are serious about it, you must think critically about what is necessary to achieve it.” Read the rest of this entry »
It’s pretty unusual, three days before the trade deadline, to have a different news story rocking the baseball world. But these are unusual times.
On Monday, Major League Baseball placed Cleveland Guardians closer Emmanuel Claseon non-disciplinary paid leave through August 31, pending the results of a sports betting investigation. As the name suggests, Clase will still draw a check, and can still have contact with the organization, but for the next five weeks, he is persona non grata at major league facilities. Clase’s teammate, Luis Ortiz, has been on leave under the same designation since July 3, and is slated to come off leave the same day as Clase.
Payton Tolle is the top pitching prospect in what is arguably baseball’s best farm system. Drafted 50th-overall last summer by the Boston Red Sox out of Texas Christian University, the 22-year-old left-hander features a fastball that Eric Longenhagen has assigned a 70 grade, and not just because of its high octane. Per our lead prospect analyst, the 6-foot-6, 250-pound hurler possessed “the 2024 draft’s most deceptive secondary traits,” which included seven-and-a-half feet of extension.
I asked Tolle about his four-seamer, which sat 95 mph when I saw toe the rubber for the Double-A Portland Sea Dogs versus the Hartford Yard Goats 10 days ago.
“The velo is something we’ve kind of driven hard ever since I got to the Red Sox org,” said Tolle, who was 90-92 in college and is now topping out at 98-99. “I’m buying into the system, buying into how the velo is going to change how everything looks. I also understand that more swing-and-miss is going to come at the top of the zone. At Wichita State, my first year, I felt like I was almost more sinkers, but then I switched up my grip. I brought my fingers closer together and started to have more ride on it.”
Tolle transferred from Wichita State to TCU for his junior year, where he — along with the Horned Frogs coaching staff — “really dove into how the fastball plays and what we can play off of it.” Since turning pro, that evolution has continued with a heavy emphasis on secondary offerings. Whereas his fastball usage as an amateur was often 70-75%, it has been closer to 50% in his recent outings. A work-in-progress changeup has become more prevalent — Tolle got bad swings on a few of them when I saw him in Portland — but a hard breaking ball is currently his top option behind his heater. Read the rest of this entry »
