Ryan Noda was a 22-year-old Toronto Blue Jays prospect coming off his first full professional season when he led Sunday Notes on December 15, 2018. Drafted in the 15th round out of the University of Cincinnati a year earlier, Noda had logged 20 home runs and a .421 OBP with then-Low-A Lansing, prompting me to compare him to former Bearcat Kevin Youkilis. With the caveat “I’m not close to being in his class,” he told me that he modeled his game after Joey Votto.

Five years and two organizations later, Noda is now a big-leaguer himself. Selected by the Oakland Athletics out of the Los Angeles Dodgers system in last winter’s Rule 5 draft, the left-handed-hitting first baseman proceeded to put up solid numbers with MLB’s worst-performing club. In 495 plate appearances, Noda logged a team-best .364 OBP and slugged 16 home runs with a 123 wRC+.

“I don’t mind those two comps at all,” Noda replied when I reminded him of our bygone conversation. “I certainly wouldn’t mind having either of their careers, either.”

It’s probably safe to say that Noda won’t go on to match, or even approximate, what Votto has accomplished over his storied career. Channeling Youkilis, who was 27 years old — Noda’s current age — when he established himself as a big-league regular could be another story. The erstwhile corner infielder averaged 20 home runs with a .385 OBP and a 127 wRC+ in his seven-season prime.

Stylistically speaking — Youkilis being a righty aside — would he comp himself more to one than the other?

“Not really,” said Noda. “But I do take both of them into account with how I go about hitting. I’m trying to get a pitch to drive and from there hopefully driving it. In this game, patience is important — and not just at the plate. It’s a long season, and if you can stick to what you do best, even when you’re going bad, you can be successful.”

Noda and I were at Fenway Park when he spoke those words, which brought to mind yet another comp. I asked him how familiar he is with 23-year-old Red Sox rookie Triston Casas.

“Not too much,” Noda responded. “I know he’s a good ballplayer and that he can swing it well. It will be interesting to see him play over the years and watch how similar we maybe are. But again, I don’t know too much about him.”

Casas had a 13.9% walk rate to go with 24 home runs and 129 wRC+ in 502 plate appearances this season. Noda had a 15.6% walk rate to go with his aforementioned 16 home runs and 123 wRC+ over 495 plate appearances. With the caveat that Casas is three years younger and has a first-round pedigree — Boston drafted him 26th-overall in 2018 — there are definitely some similarities. If Casas goes on to meet expectations, Noda wouldn’t mind having his career either.

———

RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS

Bryce Harper is 20 for 49 against Julio Teheran.

Brian Harper went 18 for 44 against Dave Stewart.

Tommy Harper went 21 for 56 against Dave McNally.

Terry Harper went 11 for 18 against Bruce Ruffin.

George Harper went 32 for 71 against Grover Cleveland Alexander.

———

Left on the cutting-room floor from Thursday’s interview with former Seattle Mariners scouting director Tom McNamara were his reflections on the club’s fourth-round pick in the 2012 draft. With the 131st-overall selection, Seattle took a third baseman whose collegiate career comprised all of 51 games and 229 plate appearances.

“We needed a senior, because we’d spent money,” McNamara told me. “Patrick Kivlehan was a safety on the Rutgers football team. He played both baseball and football. The amazing story about Kivlehan is that he didn’t play college baseball for his first three years. I remember flying in and talking to the coach at Rutgers. I asked him, ‘How did he make the team?’ He said, ‘He asked if he could try out for the team. I told him we had a spot, but he was probably never going to play.’ Well, what happened is that Rutgers’ third baseman tore a hamstring and Kivlehan ended up playing third base and almost winning the Triple Crown in the Big East. We took him in the fourth round and he got to the big leagues. He played with Arizona and Cincinnati, and I think San Diego.”

The Mariners traded Kivlehan to the Texas Rangers in December 2015 as part of a five-player deal, reacquired him six months later in exchange for Justin De Fratus, then released him in early August. The Padres picked him up, and Kivlehan made his MLB debut a few weeks later. He went to log a 84 wRC+ over 250 plate appearances in what was ultimately a modest big-league career.

The player taken one pick after Kivlehan has had a notable career that took awhile to get off the ground. The Baltimore Orioles selected Christian Walker 132nd overall out of the University of South Carolina, only to place him on waivers five years later after 31 nondescript big-league plate appearances. Then came a four-week rollercoaster that eventually landed the slugging first baseman in his current home. The Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds both claimed, but then waived, Walker before the Arizona Diamondbacks inked him to a contract on the eve of the 2017 season. The rest is history. Hitting in the middle of the D-Backs lineup, Walker has 69 home runs and a 122 wRC+ over the past two seasons.

———

A quiz:

Which pitcher holds the Pittsburgh Pirates franchise record for strikeouts in a single season? (A hint: he also has the franchise’s second-highest single-season strikeout total.)

The answer can be found below.

———

NEWS NOTES

Brad Ciolek, who has been serving as Baltimore’s director of draft operations, is leaving the organization and will be joining the Washington Nationals. Ciolek has overseen the last five Orioles drafts, which include the selections of Gunnar Henderson, Jackson Holliday, Heston Kjerstad, and Adley Rutschman,

Toronto Blue Jays coach Luis Rivera has decided to retire. The 59-year-old former big-league infielder had coached and managed in the Jays system since 2010.

Casey Cox, who pitched for the Washington Senators/Texas Rangers from 1966-1972, and then briefly for the New York Yankees, died earlier this month at age 82 (per Baseball Player Passings). The right-hander’s best season came in 1969 when he went 12-7 with a 2.78 ERA.

SABR’s Larry Dierker chapter will hold a dual in-person/Zoom meeting tomorrow (Monday October 16) beginning at 7pm with former Astros announcer Bill Brown the guest speaker. More information can be found here.

——-

The answer to the quiz is Bob Veale, with 276 strikeouts in 1965. A year earlier, the hard-throwing southpaw logged an NL-best 250 strikeouts, the second-highest total in Pirates franchise history.

———

The Houston Astros advancing to their seventh consecutive LCS ranks right up there with the 1990s Atlanta Braves and multiple decades of New York Yankees American League supremacy. The grownup sons of the expansion Colt .45s are eight wins away from a third World Series title since 2017.

The Brooklyn Dodgers deserve some love here. Shortly before being relocated to Los Angeles in 1958, “Dem Bums” reached the World Series five times from 1949-1956. and their win totals in the three years they fell just short were 89, 97, and 92 (in what was then a 154-game-schedule). The winningest of those not-quite seasons was famously painful — Bobby Thomson’s Shot Heard ‘Round the World capping a four-run bottom of the ninth inning for the New York Giants. Four years after that soul-crushing 1951 defeat, Brooklyn won its only World Series by beating the Yankees in seven games. Johnny Podres was on the mound for the 2-0 clincher, while Gil Hodges drove in both runs.

———

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

NPB’s postseason got underway on Saturday with the Chiba Lotte Marines beating the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks 8-2. Twenty-one-year-old wunderkind Roki Sasaki threw three scoreless innings for the winning side, while 2018 Atlanta Braves first-round pick Carter Stewart was tagged with the loss.

NPB’s other first-stage contest saw the Hiroshima Carp edge past the Yokohama DeNA BayStars 3-2 in 11 innings with a pair of former MLB pitchers getting the decisions. Nik Turley was credited with the win, while J.B. Wendelken was tagged with the loss. Game 2 of each best-of-five, first-stage matchups are today.

Update: Hiroshima defeated DeNA 4-2 and will go on to play the Central League champion Hanshin Tigers in the next round. SoftBank beat Chiba Lotte 3-1, setting up a deciding Game 3 to determine who goes up against the Pacific League champion Orix Buffaloes.

Yuki Matsui, who will reportedly be exercising his international free agent rights this offseason, made his 500th NPB appearance in his final game of the regular season The 27-year-old Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles southpaw had 39 saves and a 1.60 ERA this year.

Seunghwan Oh recorded his 400th KBO save, and his 522nd professionally, on Saturday. The 36-year-old Samsung Lions right-hander’s resume includes 80 saves in NPB and 42 more in MLB.

Erick Fedde went 20-6 with a 2.06 ERA for the KBO’s NC Dinos. The 30-year-old former Washington National right-hander had 204 strikeouts and 134 hits allowed in 174-and-two-thirds innings.

Dong Ju Moon went 8-8 with a 3.72 ERA over 118-and-two-thirds innings for the KBO’s Hanwha Eagles. The 19-year-old right-hander went six scoreless in his last start of the season.

———

Dixie Howell holds three obscure big-league records. Per his B-Ref bio page, the Harold, Kentucky native is the last relief pitcher to hit two home runs in the same game, having done so with the Chicago White Sox on June 16, 1957. Moreover, all five hits he had that season — a double, a triple, and three home runs — went for extra bases (Rick Wrona subsequently tied Howell’s most-hits-sans-a-single record in 1994 while playing with the Milwaukee Brewers). Howell also holds the record for the longest time between when he first pitched in the majors and when he got his first victory. He made his MLB debut in 1940 and wasn’t credited with a win until 1955.

———

FARM NOTES

Alexander Albertus slashed .310/.471/.468 with five home runs and a 152 wRC+ in 170 plate appearances between the Dominican Summer League and the Arizona Complex League. A native of Oranjestad, Aruba, the 18-year-old infielder in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization drew 38 walks and fanned just 19 times.

Cesar Quintas had a .516 BABIP in 168 plate appearances with Giants Orange, one of two San Francisco entries in the Arizona Complex League. The 20-year-old outfielder fromValencia, Venezuela slashed .372/.506/.473 with one home run and a 159 wRC+.

Jakob Marsee has 19 hits, including nine for extra bases, in 38 at-bats for the Arizona Fall League’s Peoria Javelinas. The 22-year-old outfielder in the San Diego Padres system slashed .274/.413/.428 with 16 home runs this year between High-A Fort Wayne and Double-A San Antonio. Marsee is a former Central Michigan University Chippewa.

Carter Howell has seven hits, including a triple and a pair of home runs, in 21 at-bats with the Arizona Fall League’s Scottsdale Scorpions. The 24-year-old Fargo, North Dakota-born outfielder in the San Francisco Giants system swatted 10 taters and had a .295/.369/.442 slash line between Low-A San Jose and High-A Eugene.

Liam Hicks is 16-for-28, including four doubles, for the Arizona Fall League’s Surprise Saguaros. The 24-year-old, Toronto, Ontario-born catcher in the Texas Rangers organization slashed .275/.414/.373 with four home runs between High-A Hickory and Double-A Frisco.

———

The following paragraph is included in Jonathan Mayo’s Smart, Wrong, and Lucky: The Origin Stories of Baseball’s Unexpected Stars:

“It begs the question, of course. If the Padres area scout and regional crosschecker had him in as a second rounder, if a national crosschecker saw him, if the the scouting director came in to see a private workout, all of which occurred according to Campbell, how on earth did Mookie Betts become a San Diego Padre?”

Betts, as has been well chronicled, lasted until the fifth round of the 2011 draft when he was taken by the Boston Red Sox with the 172nd-overall pick. The Padres, who had the 173rd pick that year, had taken eight players earlier in the draft, including four supplemental first-round selections. None of them have come close to matching Betts’s accomplishments.

Mayo addresses that part of the backstory, as well as how Betts ultimately landed in Boston, in his must-read book.

———

LINKS YOU’LL LIKE

MLB.com’s Michael Clair wrote about how power-hitting Japanese high school phenom Rintaro Sasaki will reportedly bypass the NPB draft and, with MLB in mind, instead attend college in the United States.

Dan Connolly offered some observations from the Orioles’ postseason press conference, and opined on the Mike Elias-Brandon Hyde partnership, at Baltimore’s WHAR.

True Blue LA’s Eric Stephen wonders if Clayton Kershaw has thrown his last pitch for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Covering the Corner’s Matt Dallas looked back at the 1949 Cleveland Indians, who failed to defend a World Series championship. More than seven decades later, the fanbase awaits its first title since 1948.

Over at Bless You Boys, Patrick O’Kennedy gave us an offseason calendar covering not only the Detroit Tigers, but also MLB as a whole. From the GM Meetings to the non-tender deadline to the Rule 5 draft, it’s all here.

———

RANDOM FACTS AND STATS

Including the postseason, NLCS managers Torey Lovullo and Rob Thomson have a combined 672 managerial wins. ALCS managers Dusty Baker and Bruce Bochy have a combined 4,379 managerial wins.

Lance Lynn allowed 48 home runs in 186-and-a-third innings (including the postseason). Sonny Gray allowed 10 home runs in 193 innings (also including the postseason).

Mookie Betts is 6-for-48 with two extra-base hits over his last three postseason series. Trea Turner is 18-for-42 with 10 extra-base hits over his last three postseason series.

Ronald Acuña Jr’s combined runs scored-RBI total during the regular season was 255. Matt Olson’s combined runs scored-RBI total was 266.

The league-average team totals for stolen bases and caught-stealings this year were 117 and 29 respectively. The most-league-average team was the Seattle Mariners, with 118 stolen bases and 30 caught-stealings. The New York Mets swiped 118 bases and were caught just 15 times.

Arizona Diamondbacks batters combined for 36 sacrifice hits this season, the most of any team. Atlanta Braves batters combined for two sacrifice hits this season, the fewest of any team

Minnesota Twins pitchers combined to allow 443 walks with a franchise record 1,560 strikeouts. Pitchers for the 1991 World Series champion Twins combined to allow 488 walks with 876 strikeouts.

Bob Gibson got the win as the St. Louis Cardinals beat the New York Yankees 7-5 in World Series Game 7 on today’s date in 1964. The Boyer brothers both homered — Clete for the losing side and Ken for he victors — as did Lou Brock, Mickey Mantle, and Phil Linz.

On today’s date in 1975, Luis Tiant went the distance as the Boston Red Sox edged the Cincinnati Reds 5-4 in Game 4 of the World Series. El Tiant threw 163 pitches while scattering nine hits and four walks. The Reds stranded eight runners, including two in the bottom of the ninth.

Players born on today’s date include Tommy Toms, a right-handed pitcher who appeared in 18 games for the San Francisco Giants from 1975-1977. The Charlottesville, Virginia native went 0-1 in each of the three seasons, and was credited with one save.

Also born on today’s date was Jim Command, a third baseman who went 4-for-25 while getting cups of coffee with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1954 and 1955. The Grand Rapids, Michigan native’s lone home run was a grand slam off of Brooklyn Dodgers right-hander Carl Erskine.

Tom McNamara remembers the 2012 draft well. Now a Special Assistant to the General Manager with the Kansas City Royals, McNamara was then the Director of Amateur Scouting for a Seattle Mariners team that landed Mike Zunino with the third overall pick, this after the Houston Astros had tabbed Carlos Correa and the Minnesota Twins followed by taking Byron Buxton. Other first-round notables that year included Kevin Gausman to the Baltimore Orioles at four, Max Fried to the San Diego Padres at seven, and Corey Seager to the Los Angeles Dodgers at 18.

As is the case with every MLB draft, woulda-coulda-shoulda is in no short supply when you look back with 20/20 hindsight. Eight of the first 30 picks that year have never reached the majors, and a dozen more have yet to accumulate 10 WAR. It’s safe to say that numerous teams would go in a different direction if given an opportunity to do it all over again.

How might have things unfolded differently for the Mariners in 2012? McNamara shared some of his thoughts on that subject during a visit to Fenway Park in September.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with a player you drafted but didn’t sign. You took Mike Yastrzemski in the 30th round out of Vanderbilt.

Tom McNamara: “Our area scout in the Northeast really liked him in high school. He got to know him, so we knew Mike’s makeup. I also knew how much the head coach at Vandy, Tim Corbin, liked him both as a player and a person. Mike didn’t put up loud numbers there in his junior season, but I remember going to our GM, Jack Zduriencik, and telling him there was a player still on the board I’d love to give a nice bonus to. We ended up offering Mike $300,000. I remember flying across the country and meeting him in Boston. It was Mike, his mom. his agent, his grandfather…”

Laurila: His grandfather being pretty notable.

McNamara: “Yeah. He was a pretty good player. I was always a big fan of Mike’s grandfather, even though I was from New York. And I think Mike was actually a little surprised with the offer we made him. He’s a great kid. He told me that he needed a day to think about it.

“I could tell that his grandfather kind of liked the fact that it was Seattle, that it was away from the Northeast. That’s understandable. When you’re Carl Yastrzemski’s grandson, there is a lot of pressure there. But Mike told me he had promised his family that he would finish school on time before he signed, and it’s pretty tough to put up a fight when a kid says that. There were definitely no hard feelings with him not signing with us. Looking back, the mistake we made was not drafting him the following year. We should have, because we knew him and we liked him as a player. Baltimore took him, I believe. The rest is history.” Read the rest of this entry »

The rookies took the spotlight this past Saturday in Baltimore, as the Orioles battled the Rays and clinched their first playoff berth since 2016 via an 8-0 victory. Leading the way on the offensive side was 22-year-old Gunnar Henderson, who led off the first inning with a first-pitch single off Tyler Glasnow and came around to score the game’s first run, then added a two-run homer in the second and an RBI single in the fourth, helping to stake rookie starter Grayson Rodriguez to a 5-0 lead. The 23-year-old righty turned in the best start of his brief big league career, spinning eight shutout innings while striking out seven and allowing just five baserunners. A day later, when the Orioles beat the Rays in 11 innings to reclaim the AL East lead, a trio of rookies — Shintaro Fujinami, Yennier Cano, and DL Hall — combined to allow just one hit and one unearned run over the final three frames.

Earlier this month, colleague Chris Gilligan highlighted the contributions of this year’s rookie class. With just under four weeks to go in the regular season at that point, rookie pitchers and position players had combined to produce more WAR than all but three other classes since the turn of the millennium. Collectively they’re now second only to the Class of 2015 (more on which below), and since the publication of that piece, four teams besides the Orioles, all heavy with rookie contributions, have made headway in the playoff races. The Dodgers clinched the NL West for the 10th time in 11 years on Saturday, while the Mariners and Diamondbacks are clinging to Wild Card spots, and the Reds are in the thick of the NL race as well. Read the rest of this entry »

In the Beforetimes, mid-September brought my annual check-in on the potential for end-of-season chaos in the playoff races via the Team Entropy series. With last year’s introduction of an expanded and restructured postseason, however, Major League Baseball did away with the potential for scheduling mayhem in favor of a larger inventory of playoff games. Along with the expansion of the playoff field from 10 teams to 12 and of the Wild Card round from a pair of winner-take-all games to a quartet of three-game series, MLB also eliminated all winner-take-all regular-season tiebreaker games. In the name of efficiency, we have no more Games 163 and no more potential Bucky Dents. Instead, ties, even for spots where the winner would receive a postseason berth and the loser would go home, are decided by mathematics. It’s enough to make a fan want to shout, “Hey, Manfred, pull your head out of a spreadsheet and watch an elimination game!”

The untangling of the often-chaotic scenarios by which those one-game tiebreakers could come about was Team Entropy’s raison d’etre. But particularly with so many close races, there’s still enough untangling to do in potentially complex tie scenarios that I’ve chosen to continue a version of this exercise, pouring out a cold one for what might have been. If what we’re left with isn’t exactly chaotic, you can thumb your nose at the commissioner as you take a seat on the Team Un-Tropy bandwagon. Read the rest of this entry »

In the moment, the home run was huge. With the Mariners trailing 5-3 in the bottom of the 10th inning against the Angels on Monday night, needing a win to stay half a game ahead of the Rangers in the race for the third AL Wild Card spot, Julio Rodríguez chased a low sinker from José Marte and swatted it over the center field wall into the No Fly Zone, the personal cheering section of T-Mobile Park where the J-Rod Squad sits. The 402-foot blast was Rodríguez’s 30th of the year, meaning that it not only tied the game, it made the 22-year-old center fielder the third-youngest player to join the 30-homer, 30-steal club.

Counting to the point where the players joined the club by reaching the second milestone, only Mike Trout (21 years, 54 days in 2012) and Ronald Acuña Jr. (21 years, 248 days in 2019) reached 30 homers and 30 stolen bases in the same season at a younger age. Alex Rodriguez, like Julio Rodríguez, reached the mark in his age-22 season — and is the only other Mariner to accomplish the feat, but he was 23 years and three days old when he notched his 30th steal in 1998. Read the rest of this entry »

Intern, Baseball Analytics

Job Title: Intern, Baseball Analytics
Department: Baseball Analytics
Reports To: Director, Baseball Analytics
Status: Non-Exempt

Primary Objective: Responsible for supporting all areas of baseball operations through baseball-related data science, including statistical modeling, research, visualizations, and other projects.

Essential Functions:

• Statistical modeling and analysis of a variety of data sources including Trackman, Hawkeye, and proprietary data sets.
• Ad hoc queries and quantitative research.
• Will perform other relevant duties as assigned.

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree preferred. Education and experience may be considered in lieu of education requirements if approved by management.
• Proficiency in programming with either R or Python required.
• Proficiency with SQL required.
• A strong foundation in mathematics, statistics, computer science, and/or engineering required.
• Track record of original baseball research preferred.
• Experience building and interpreting predictive models preferred.

Competencies, Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSA’s):

• Strong technical skills in predictive modeling, data analysis, and research.
• Shares and expresses thoughts in a clear and effective manner through verbal and written communication skills. Exhibits effective listening skills and builds positive relationships with all team members, vendors, and guests. Is diplomatic, tactful, and professional in all forms of communication.
• Understands and supports the team and is quick to volunteer to assist others. Others view most interactions as being positive with a willingness to achieve common goals. Effective in working with others to cooperatively solve problems. Workplace behavior is consistently respectful of others.
• Takes personal responsibility for getting things done in a way that positively and professionally represents the organization.
• Demonstrates through their actions and interactions with others a commitment to Mariner Purpose, Mission and Values.
• Competent in required job skills and knowledge. Completes work assignments thoroughly, accurately, and promptly. Identifies and corrects errors. Is careful, alert, and accurate, paying attention to details of the job.

The Mariners are committed to providing a competitive total rewards package for our valued Team Members.

The anticipated range of base compensation for this role is $20.00 – $22.00 per hour. We also provide complimentary parking and paid public transportation.

All benefits are subject to eligibility requirements and the terms of official plan documents which may be modified or amended from time to time.

This information is being provided in accordance with the Washington State Equal Pay and Opportunity Act.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

Intern, Baseball Projects

Job Title: Intern, Baseball Projects
Department: Baseball Projects
Reports To: Director, Baseball Projects
Status: Non-Exempt

Primary Objective: Responsible for contributing to projects at the intersection of baseball analytics and broader baseball operations, with an emphasis on creating innovative tools & streamlining communications.

Essential Functions:

• Develop reports, software, and educational materials to facilitate evidence-based decision-making throughout broader baseball operations.
• Provide quantitative support to player plan, high performance, advance scouting, and other player improvement processes.
• Contribute to amateur & professional player acquisition decisions in both formal & informal contexts.
• Field ad hoc requests from coaches, scouts, and other staff about internal metrics & processes.
• Complete other projects as assigned by Director, Baseball Projects.

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree preferred. Equivalent, relevant experience may be considered in lieu of education requirements if approved by management.
• Proficiency handling large datasets in R, SQL, Python, and/or comparable languages is required.
• Shiny application or other web development experience is preferred.
• Experience building predictive models is a plus, but not required.
• Ability to communicate in Spanish is a plus, but not required.

Competencies, Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSA’s):

• Possesses working knowledge of modern baseball analytics, strategy, and trends.
• Exhibits excellent interpersonal skills and communicates effectively in both written & verbal formats.
• Is self-motivated, creative, and innovative with a high degree of integrity and attention to detail.
• Respectfully collaborates with teammates to cooperatively solve problems.
• Demonstrates a commitment to the Mariners mission.

Physical Activities and Working Conditions:

• Public health permitting, this is role is Seattle-based and works out of T-Mobile Park. Remote opportunities may be available on a case-by-case basis.

The Mariners are committed to providing a competitive total rewards package for our valued Team Members.

The anticipated range of base compensation for this role is $20.00 – $22.00 per hour. We also provide complimentary parking and paid public transportation.

All benefits are subject to eligibility requirements and the terms of official plan documents which may be modified or amended from time to time.

This information is being provided in accordance with the Washington State Equal Pay and Opportunity Act.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Seattle Mariners.

Have I got news for you. The J.P. Crawford you know and love is now 50% more powerful! After running an ISO of .099 over the last two seasons, the Mariners shortstop is at .150 in 2023. And that’s not all. With that power has come increased production: Crawford’s 133 wRC+ is not just the best of his career, it’s second among all shortstops, trailing only Corey Seager’s 179 wRC+. Let’s act now and figure out what Crawford is doing differently this season.

With Crawford, plate discipline is always a good place to start. Crawford has always run low chase rates, but this season, he’s down to 21.2%. That’s fifth-lowest among all qualified players, and it’s led to a 15.6% walk rate, fourth-highest. However, while Crawford is chasing less and walking more, he’s also striking out more. While his 19% strikeout rate is still better than the average player, it’s a jump of more than five percentage points from last season.

Crawford is running a career-best 37.3% hard-hit rate. That’s still well below average, but it’s a huge jump for someone who was in the fifth percentile in 2022. It may seem like Crawford has made the classic power-for-contact tradeoff, but that’s only true to an extent. Players who make that tradeoff usually whiff more because they’re being more aggressive at the plate. Crawford is hitting the ball harder and striking out more, but he’s actually been more passive than ever. His swing rate has dropped by almost exactly the same amount on pitches inside the zone and outside the zone.

I’m going to show you three heat maps. The one in the middle is Crawford’s slugging percentage on balls in play over the course of his career. It shows where he does damage. On the left is Crawford’s swing rate in 2022, and on the right is his swing rate in 2023:

This is as big a change as you’re going to see. Last year, Crawford would swing at pretty much anything over the heart of the plate. This year, he’s focused on a much smaller area, pitches in the absolute center of the zone, much closer to where he really does damage. Here’s what that looks like in terms of Baseball Savant’s swing/take decisions:

Crawford is chasing less, so the improvements in the shadow and chase zones shouldn’t surprise us much. The heart of the plate is where things get interesting. Let’s break those numbers into their constituent parts:

In both 2022 and thus far in 2023, when Crawford took pitches over the heart of the plate, he was worth -11 runs. That’s makes sense, as all of those pitches end up as called strikes. When he has swung at pitches over the heart of the plate, he’s been 16 runs better than he was last year! His wOBA on those swings has gone from .312 to .400. Crawford is taking more strikes, which hurts a little, but he’s more than making up for it when he does swing.

Still, none of this explains why he’s making less contact. Here’s the thing I think is really fascinating. Take a look at Crawford’s whiff percentage broken down by pitch type:

Crawford is gearing up to hit the fastball in a way he hasn’t been in previous seasons. He’s missing them a bit less often, and his wOBA against them has jumped from .315 to .394. Gearing up to hit the fastball can have a side effect: getting fooled more often on softer stuff. Crawford is whiffing a lot more against breaking balls and offspeed stuff. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s performing worse on softer stuff. Take a look at his actual results, once again using Baseball Savant’s run values:

Crawford is indeed doing worse against breaking stuff, but he has completely turned himself around against both fastballs and offspeed stuff. How is he doing so well against changeups and splitters when he’s whiffing on them over 50% more often than he did last year? Furthermore, since he’s now much worse against breaking balls, why haven’t pitchers started throwing them way more often?

The answer to the first question is that Crawford is offsetting all those extra whiffs by hitting the ball much harder, especially against offspeed stuff. His soft contact rate has dropped to a career low, and his 95th-percentile exit velocity increased from 105 mph to 106.2. As for the second question, breaking stuff often requires a hitter to chase in order to be effective, and Crawford doesn’t do that. If your plan is to get Crawford out by deluging him with soft stuff, you’re likely to end up behind in the count.

As I pulled all these numbers together, I was reminded of something Robert Orr wrote back in June for Baseball Prospectus. Orr detailed how Ronald Acuña Jr., previously a dead-pull hitter, had begun letting fastballs travel a little deeper and sending them the other way, which led to a convenient knock-on effect:

“What happens when Acuña thinks a fastball is coming and he’s wrong. If he starts on time for 96 and gets 96, then he laces a base hit into the gap. That’s good. If he starts on time for 96 and gets 87, though? That’s when he can catch the ball out in front of the plate, and that’s where homers are. That’s better.”

Crawford is coming from the opposite end of the spectrum. He ran a 34.2% pull rate last year, compared to Acuña’s 44.5%. But this year, they’ve ended up in the same place: Crawford at 41% and Acuña at 40.5%. Here’s what the change looks like when you break it down by pitch type:

Crawford is pulling the ball way more often, especially against non-fastballs. Those pulled balls haven’t turned into homers, because even this version of him is still way less powerful than Acuña, but he’s gone from the bottom end of the spectrum up toward the middle. Further, Crawford’s 39.2% groundball rate is the lowest it’s been since he became a regular starter. Meeting those balls out in front is helping him pull them in the air, making the most of his increased power.

Under normal circumstances, I might have ended this article here. We’re pushing 2,000 words, and I’ve typed the name Crawford so many times that I’ve lost the ability to comprehend its meaning. It’s just a string of letters to me, and that A-W-F-O section in the middle is really starting to freak me out. Who does that? The only word I can think of that contains an A-W-F-O stretch is ‘clawfoot,’ and I think we can all agree that that’s one of the creepiest words in the English language. However, there are two things I’d still like to address. The first is how Crawford came about this extra power. You might remember that he’s tried to improve his power output before. Before the 2021 season, he packed on 20 pounds of muscle in hopes of increasing his slugging. Unfortunately the Get Yoked, Go Smash method only raised his ISO by 20 points, while his hard-hit rate actually got worse.

This year, he’s increased his average exit velocity by 3.9 mph, the third-highest jump among qualified players. Some of this can be explained by choosing better pitches to hit and pulling the ball more often. Some of it can likely be explained by improved health, since Crawford played through back, pec, leg, and knee injuries last season. Lastly, Crawford trained at Driveline this offseason, after taking six weeks to recover from all of the injuries to all of his body parts.

While I was researching this article, I stumbled onto an episode of the Sea Level podcast that featured Maxx Garrett, the hitting trainer who worked with Crawford this winter. I’m normally reluctant to draw a straight line from a swing change to improved results. There are so many factors involved in hitting. Seemingly everybody comes into spring training in the best shape of their life and with a new swing. Some of those players are bound to improve, and while the hard work they put in during the offseason likely helped, giving all the credit to their new bat waggle is often a facile conclusion. However, Garrett gave host Ben Ranieri some pretty interesting details that dovetailed nicely with what I found in the numbers.

First, Garrett confirmed that the focus was on improving Crawford’s bat speed, as his plate discipline is already elite. Referring to his notes, he said that Crawford’s bat speed was measured at 65.6 mph at the beginning of training and 71.1 at the end. “We saw some movement things, especially with his setup, his load, kind of that load, stride, into landing, where he was in some unique positions that not many of our high-level hitters get into,” said Garrett. “And it was making it harder for him to produce as much force as he was capable of.”

Let’s go to the tape. On the left is a swing from 2022, and on the right is a swing from 2023:

I’ve pulled some stills below to illustrate the differences. Crawford starts off with his stance much more closed. He’s changed his bat angle, lowered his hands, and tucked both his hands and elbows closer to his body. Once he gets into his leg kick, he’s crouching slightly deeper, his front shoulder is angled downward, and his shoulders are rotated further away from the pitcher. If not for his hair, his entire name would be visible on the back of his jersey. The follow-through makes it easy to see how much harder Crawford is swinging, and how much higher he’s finishing. Keep in mind that Crawford crushes both of these pitches. They’re both middle-middle four-seamers that result in hard-hit balls to right-center. Crawford actually hits the ball on the left much harder, but look at how he finishes. He’s much more upright, much less athletic. The swing on the right is clearly more explosive:

Garrett also said that they focused on Crawford’s attack angle, helping him to hit the ball in the air more. This is the part that made me sit up and listen: Garrett described a drill that involved feeding Crawford fastballs from an extremely high attack angle and from off to the side, beyond the right base side of the rubber. “So basically, an extreme lefty release,” he said. “And that was forcing him to get his barrel out front, have it work up. His intent was to move fast, hit the ball higher, to the pull side. Really get his barrel out front, working up more into the ball.” To me, that sounds like a pretty good explanation for the way Crawford has been able to attack fastballs, punish offspeed stuff, and pull the ball in the air this season.

The last thing I need to mention is less fun. Crawford’s defense has been quite bad this year. A Gold Glover in 2020, Crawford’s 14 errors are tied for fifth-most in the league, and most defensive metrics rank him as one of the game’s worst fielders. That’s a real bummer, because if Crawford rated as even a league-average defender at short, he would be a top 20 player in all of baseball this season. It’s always good to take defensive metrics with a grain of salt, and any player experiencing such a big drop-off is a candidate to regress back to the mean the following season. Crawford has already turned himself into an All-Star caliber player this season. If he can hold on to some of his gains at the plate and get his defense back toward the middle of the pack, the future is even brighter.

All numbers are as of Wednesday morning.

You could be forgiven for viewing Julio Rodríguez’s follow-up to last year’s AL Rookie of the Year season as something of a disappointment — the numbers certainly bear that out. Even so, the 22-year-old center fielder had already appeared to turn a corner this month before going on a hitting binge for the ages. Over a four-game span from Wednesday through Saturday, Rodríguez collected 17 hits, a major league record. Those hits were hardly afterthoughts, as they helped the Mariners extend their latest winning streak to six games, a run that’s pushed them into a Wild Card spot.

Rodríguez began his jag by going 4-for-6 in Wednesday’s 6-5 win over the Royals. He led off the game with a double off James McArthur, sparking a three-run first inning, and added RBI singles in the second and ninth innings. Then he went 5-for-5 in Thursday’s 6-4 win against the Royals, driving in five runs via an RBI single off Angel Zerpa, an RBI double off Max Castillo, and a three-run eighth-inning homer off Carlos Hernández that turned a 4-2 deficit into a 5-4 lead. He added a solo home run on Friday off the Astros’ J.P. France in a 2-0 win, and then went 4-for-6 in a 10-3 rout of Houston on Saturday, coming around to score on two of his four singles. Read the rest of this entry »

Charlie Morton just keeps chugging along. Three months shy of his 40th birthday, and in his 17th big-league season, the right-hander is 12-10 with a 3.54 ERA over 24 starts with the Atlanta Braves. His most recent outing was especially impressive. Relying heavily on his knee-buckling bender, but also topping out at 96.9 mph with his heater, he dominated the New York Yankees to the tune of six shutout innings with 10 strikeouts.

How much longer can he continue to defy Father Time and excel against baseball’s best hitters?

“I don’t think about that,” Morton replied in response to that question. “I think about, ‘When am I going to go home?’ I always thought the game was going to dictate when I went home. If you look at my career, there was no reason why I wouldn’t think that. There was no reason to think that I was going to start having the best years of my career at age 33, or that my best years would be in my late 30s. There was no reason to think I would still be throwing the ball like I am now. It would have been illogical.”

Morton’s career has indeed followed an unforeseeable path. From 2008-2016, playing primarily with the Pittsburgh Pirates, he went 46-71 with a 4.54 ERA over 161 starts. Since his 2017 age-33 season, he has gone 82-40 with a 3.54 ERA over 185 starts. Morphing from “Ground Chuck” into more of a power pitcher played a major role in the turnaround, but whatever the reason, Morton went from mediocre to a mainstay in frontline rotations. Since his transformation, only six pitchers have started more games, and only two (Gerrit Cole and Max Scherzer) have been credited with more wins. Read the rest of this entry »

When trades occur that aren’t quite big enough to merit their own post, we sometimes compile our analysis into a compendium like this, where we touch on a number of transactions at one time. In this dispatch, I’ll cover the Rays’ trades for upper-level depth (pitchers Manuel Rodríguez and Adrian Sampson from the Cubs, and catcher Alex Jackson from the Brewers), as well as the Mariners/Orioles swap of Logan Rinehart and Eduard Bazardo.

The Rays acquired Adrian Sampson, Manuel Rodríguez, and $220,000 of international free agent bonus pool space from the Cubs for minor league pitcher Josh Roberson. Sampson, 31, was originally the Pirates’ 2012 fifth round pick. He made the big leagues with the Mariners in 2016 and then began to hop around the fringes of various rosters, which is part of what led to his 2020 jaunt to the KBO before a return to MLB with the Cubs. He made 19 starts for the Cubbies in 2022 as a long-term injury replacement, but he has missed most of 2023 due to a knee surgery from which he only recently returned. Sampson has been sitting 90-91 mph during each of his last two minor league starts. He does not occupy a 40-man roster spot and should be considered injury replacement depth for the Rays. Read the rest of this entry »