Season one of One Tree Hill is a perfect season of television, and I will not be entertaining arguments to the contrary. In it we meet Nathan and Lucas Scott, the sons of hometown basketball hero, Dan Scott, who runs a local car dealership. Nathan was raised in the traditional nuclear family structure by Dan and his college sweetheart and wife. Lucas was raised in a single-parent household by his mother, Dan’s high school sweetheart. Despite sourcing their foundational genetic material from the same DNA pool, Nathan and Lucas are depicted at odds with one another in several key ways. Nathan is his father’s golden child and characterized as hyper competitive, entitled, and emotionally stunted; Lucas receives no acknowledgement from Dan and skews more intellectual, reserved, and empathetic. Both are super good at basketball and both crave the approval of their father. Nathan seemingly has it all, but presents as lonely and ill at ease in his environment. Lucas drew the short straw, but is mostly content and supported by several meaningful relationships.
The whole concept is a pretty straightforward exercise in nature vs. nurture, and if you haven’t seen One Tree Hill, don’t worry, I haven’t spoiled anything; this is all part of the show’s initial setup in the pilot episode. What the viewer is intended to puzzle out as the season unfolds is how much of Nathan’s arrogance and aggression is a reaction to his surroundings and how much is an inherent part of his character. And on the other hand, can Lucas, against his father’s wishes, learn to thrive in new surroundings as he steps into the spotlight of varsity basketball? Or is he more naturally suited to exist in the shadows?
I recently read almost six years of scouting reports, statistical breakdowns, and interviews covering two prospects from the 2018 MLB draft in an attempt to to understand the how and why of each player’s career arc. More on that later, but for now, I want to emphasize how much easier it is to analyze a teen soap opera. And it’s not that the scouting reports were unclear, or that the statistical analysis was misleading, or that the players misrepresented themselves in interviews. It’s that taking 18- to 22-year-olds and turning them into big leaguers is a hard thing to do under the best of circumstances. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
It’s understandable to want to blame injuries when your favorite team underperforms expectations. But every team deals with them, and the truly great ones are able to weather that storm and succeed when their best players aren’t in the lineup. The Brewers sure look like a great team right now, with a commanding seven-game lead in the NL Central even after dropping Monday night’s game in Philadelphia. They are where they are despite having a whole rotation’s worth of starters on the injured list, getting zero innings from star closer Devin Williams, and losing important position players Christian Yelich, Rhys Hoskins, and Garrett Mitchell to injury at various points this year.
How has Milwaukee thrived under less-than-ideal circumstances? The answer is one of my favorite topics: depth. For the most part, it’s fairly easy to look at a team’s Opening Day roster or offseason RosterResource page and prognosticate how things will play out if everyone stays reasonably healthy; it’s much harder to go two or three players deep at a position and figure how good a club will be if it has to depend on those guys. The Brewers have assembled a team that may not be as top heavy as some of the other contending clubs, but when it comes to the entire roster, few teams are deeper. So let’s run through some of the unlikely contributors for the Brewers this season.
All stats are updated through the start of play Monday.
Position Players
The Brewers haven’t been terribly unlucky in this department: Yelich missed 25 days with a back strain, Hoskins 17 with a hamstring strain, and Joey Wiemer 16 with knee discomfort. Mitchell has missed the entire season thus far with a fractured finger suffered in the final days of spring training, but if there’s anywhere the Brewers could’ve afforded an injury, it was out on the grass.
Still, the names covering for Mitchell aren’t exactly as expected. Top prospect Jackson Chourio has struggled out of the gate, batting .214/.257/.345 with a 71 wRC+ over 180 plate appearances. While his fielding (2 OAA, 1 DRS) and baserunning (1.7 BsR with seven steals in eight tries) have kept him above replacement level, he obviously hasn’t lived up to the hype thus far.
Fortunately, Blake Perkins has basically been what Milwaukee hoped Chourio would be. The switch-hitter was elite on defense in his rookie year last season, with 11 DRS and 7 OAA in just 400 innings in the outfield, though his bat lagged behind (88 wRC+). This year, his fielding has remained excellent while he’s taken a big step forward at the dish (98 wRC+), especially against righties (114 wRC+).
Perhaps overshadowed by Yelich, William Contreras, and Willy Adames, infielders Joey Ortiz and Brice Turang have both broken out in meaningful ways, lengthening a lineup that looked a little light entering the season. Ortiz leads all rookies this season with 2.0 WAR and his 155 wRC+ is the highest among all big league third basemen with at least 150 plate appearances. He’s also a slick fielder who can also hold his own at second and short. Turang has more than doubled his wRC+ from his rough rookie season last year. He’s also swiped 20 bases in 21 tries and has flashed an elite glove at the keystone. (If you’re noticing a trend here, yes, the Brewers have great defense across the diamond.)
Lastly, I’d be remiss if I failed to mention Gary Sánchez: He’s only caught 11 games so far behind the iron man that is Contreras but is getting plenty of plate appearances at DH. His seven home runs and 116 wRC+ make him one of the game’s best backup catchers, and he’s played some backup first base, too.
Pitching
Here’s where things could have gotten ugly for Milwaukee. Corbin Burnes is an Oriole. Brandon Woodruff and Wade Miley are both out for the entire year. Jakob Junis, Joe Ross, and DL Hall are all on the injured list as well. (Junis and Hall appear to be nearing returns, but they’ll likely pitch out of the bullpen when they’re back.)
How the heck have the Brewers stayed afloat with what’s basically been Freddy Peralta and a second-string cast of other starters? It’s twofold: The replacement arms have filled in more than admirably, and the bullpen has been excellent despite the loss of Williams.
Peralta and Colin Rea are the only arms who remain from the season-opening starting five, and they actually have the highest ERAs in the current four-man rotation (the team has been bullpenning every fifth game). Formerly a failed starter, Bryse Wilson has made a triumphant return to the rotation after working entirely in relief last year. Across seven starts he has a 2.76 ERA and a 3.35 ERA over his 15 total outings this season. (Wilson served as the bulk man in Monday night’s loss to the Phillies, tossing 5.2 innings and allowing three runs.) Robert Gasser, who despite failing to achieve nominative determinism (his fastball averages just 93 mph), has been excellent in his first five starts, walking just one (!) of the 114 batters he’s faced. Unfortunately, the beat will have to go on without Gasser, just as it has without Burnes and Woodruff: The rookie lefty has elbow tightness and soreness and is scheduled to get a second opinion sometime soon; it’d be hard to see him dodging the IL at this point. In the interim, the Brewers could turn to Aaron Ashby or Tobias Myers — both of whom have made starts this year — or perhaps righty Chad Patrick, who’s not exactly a prospect but has pitched well at Triple-A Nashville this year.
Papering over the ragtag rotation has been a well-performing bullpen, belying its 16th-ranked FIP with a sixth-ranked ERA. Going through a handful of closers by June isn’t usually a recipe for success, but the Brewers have kept on chugging despite pulling the plug on Abner Uribe (now in Triple-A) and Joel Payamps as primary closers. The guy right now is Trevor Megill; a concussion and bruised elbow have limited him to just 15 innings, but they’ve been 15 excellent ones, with 21 strikeouts compared to just three walks and a one homer allowed. It’s a continuation of Megill’s breakout 2023 in which he struck out 35% of the batters he faced over 34.2 innings. Before last year, he had a woeful 6.03 ERA in 68.2 combined innings for the Cubs and Twins.
Even more anonymous is Bryan Hudson, who was acquired in a minor trade with the Dodgers over the offseason and is now pitching to a 1.13 ERA (four runs in 32 innings). The 6’8” lefty is tough on both sides of the plate, but he’s been especially lethal against lefties, with a sub-.200 wOBA. Joining him off the scrap heap and pitching well are Enoli Paredes, Jared Koenig, and Kevin Herget, none of whom made the Opening Day roster but have stepped in and pitched like they belong. Like many good bullpens, the Brewers’ is defined by the performances, not the names.
All in all, Pat Murphy’s Brewers are much like the clubs of previous Milwaukee manager Craig Counsell: a whole team that is greater than the sum of its parts, creating a Voltron of a limited number of stars and mostly unheralded names who just get the job done.
The Mariners Add Victor Robles
As first reported by Locked on Mariners’ Ty Dane Gonzalez, former Nationals outfielder Victor Robles will be headed to the other Washington, joining Seattle as backup outfielder who will start primarily against lefty pitching.
Sources: The #Mariners will be filling their open 26-man roster spot with former Nationals OF Victor Robles.
Robles obviously hasn’t lived up to his prospect billing that plateaued with a fourth-overall ranking in 2018, but with the Mariners, he doesn’t really have to be the guy the Nationals were expecting. He’ll earn the prorated league minimum (under $500,000) while being paid the balance of the $2.65 million the Nationals owe him, and he’s not going to be relied upon to put up big numbers. Instead, he’ll spell Luke Raley or Dominic Canzone against lefties in the corner outfield. His main job will be to catch fly balls, a skill of his that cratered in center field last year but remains strong in left and right.
Over the weekend, I was distraught to learn that Mike Baumann — my lovely, mild-mannered, Suits-loving, pineapple-curious distant cousin — had been designated for assignment by the Baltimore Orioles. Those no-good, rotten, perfidious, cold-hearted Baltimore Orioles. Did you know that Big Mike and Austin Hays had been teammates dating back to college? All those years, lost like tears in the rain.
To say I’m furious would be an understatement of biblical proportions, and the Mike Baumanns of the world are coming together to visit disproportionate vengeance upon the Orioles. I’ve already jinxedJohn Means, and I’ll take another pitcher every week until our thirst for retribution is sated. Which will probably be never. Francis Scott Key was a hack. The Wire is overrated. Neither I nor my descendants will ever eat crab again. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
When I think about openers, I think about Ryne Stanek. His statistics as a Ray in 2018 and 2019 were comical: Before he was traded to the Marlins in 2019, he made 100 appearances over those two seasons; 59 of them were “starts.” In those opening appearances, he never threw more than 37 pitches, recorded more than six outs, or faced more than nine hitters. But since leaving the Rays, despite appearing in 234 games, he’s pitched for more teams (three) than he’s made starts (zero). In fact, he’s averaging less than one inning per appearance.
I searched my brain to figure out who is today’s version of Stanek circa 2018-19, only to realize that there isn’t one. I turned to Stathead and confirmed my inkling: The opener has gone by the wayside in 2024.
In my query, I set a couple of filters as guardrails. First, I limited my search to pitchers who were on, at most, three days of rest. That way, I could eliminate the true starters who got hurt or blitzed out of games from this sample. I also capped the number of batters faced at nine. Facing the leadoff man twice goes against the spirit of the opener, where the aim is to prevent batters from seeing any one pitcher too many times.
Openers Used by Season
Season
Openers Used
2024
9
2023
154
2022
80
2021
84
2020
34
2019
165
2018
91
2017
2
SOURCE: Baseball Reference
It doesn’t take a math degree to know that nine is far fewer than 154. But it’s not quite that simple. Remember, we’re only a quarter of the way through the season, and there will almost certainly be more openers used the rest of the way. That said, baseball is on pace to use 33 openers in 2024, which would be the fewest since the opener was first utilized in 2018 — yes, that includes the shortened 2020 campaign. It’s worth noting that only 12 openers were used at this point in 2023, so we could see opener usage ramp up as this season progresses, too. Even so, it’s clear that something has changed.
I don’t really have a take on whether or not the opener is a good strategy in today’s game. I also don’t think there’s an obvious explanation for why the fall of the opener is happening. Some of it may just be circumstance. Gabe Kapler’s Giants frequently used openers, and he’s no longer managing. The 2018-19 Rays had Blake Snell and Charlie Morton, but they also had plenty of pitchers who were best deployed in short outings. This season, the Rays feature a deeper group of pitchers who are capable of carrying a starter’s workload. Five years ago, Tampa Bay turned to openers out of necessity; now, that’s no longer necessary.
What To Look Forward to This Weekend
• The Mariners have played great baseball of late, winning eight of their last nine series, bringing their record to 24-20, and entering play Friday in first place in the AL West. But they’ve got a big test coming up, with three games in Baltimore followed by three games in the Bronx, two exciting series that will give the Mariners ample opportunity to show the league they’re for real. George Kirby and Corbin Burnes face off in a marquee pitching matchup on Sunday.
• The Rockies are looking to extend their winning streak that currently sits at seven games, beginning tonight in San Francisco. Colorado started out its streak last week with a win against the Giants, scoring seven runs off Keaton Winn, who is set to start for the Giants on Sunday. Whether or not the Rockies will be riding a nine-game streak at that point will depend on San Francisco starters Kyle Harrison and Jordan Hicks, as well as a piecemeal Giants lineup that’s without Patrick Bailey, Michael Conforto, Jung Hoo Lee, and Jorge Soler.
• Although they’re still the league’s worst team, the White Sox have played less embarrassingly of late, going 8-4 over their last 12 games. This weekend, though, they head to the Bronx to face the first-place Yankees. Led by a ridiculously hot Aaron Judge, New York has won four straight games and 10 of its last 12. During the Yankees’ three-game sweep of the Twins in Minnesota, Judge went 7-for-11 (.636) with five doubles and two home runs. On the season, he’s slashing .262/.393/.555 with 11 homers and a 169 wRC+, which is remarkable considering how much he struggled in April.
Lastly, a quick programming note. Beginning next week, we’ll be shifting Top of the Order to a twice-weekly schedule, running on Tuesday and Friday mornings. See you then!
In the seventh inning of Sunday afternoon’s game in Houston, Bryce Miller left a sweeper over the inner third of the plate, and Jon Singleton didn’t miss it, hammering a towering two-run shot to right field that yielded a bat flip and gave the Astros a 4-3 lead. With that, the Mariners were stopped short of tying a major league record — a semi-obscure one, but an impressive one nonetheless: the most consecutive games with a starting pitcher allowing no more than two earned runs. The Mariners did rally to win 5-4, sending them to their sixth straight series victory and lifting their record to 19-15, enough to help them preserve their half-game lead over the Rangers (19-16) in the AL West.
The starters’ streak began back on April 10, when Logan Gilbert held the Blue Jays to one run in 7.2 innings, and extended to 21 games through Saturday. Most of the starts were exceptional, and for the stretch, the unit pitched to a 1.38 ERA and a 2.91 FIP, but two of those starts depended upon the earned/unearned run distinction to extend the streak, and two were short outings of four or fewer innings; one of those starts, Emerson Hancock’s clunker last Wednesday against the Braves, was both. Still, even including unearned runs, their 1.86 runs allowed per nine allowed during the streak is impressive. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. As always, thanks to Zach Lowe for coming up with the idea for the column, because it’s a great excuse to watch a ton of baseball and write about plays that make me smile. This week had a little bit of everything: close and fun games, lopsided and fun games, idiosyncratic batter behavior, and even an all-time major league record (nope, not a good one). Let’s get started. One quick note: Five Things is taking a week off next week for workload management. No word on whether I’ll be assigned to FanGraphs Triple-A to keep my typing arm fresh, but the column will return a week from Friday.
1. High-Stakes Games in April
Two division leaders faced off in Seattle on Monday night. The juggernaut Braves need no introduction; they have the best record in baseball and won 104 games last year. The Mariners have ridden a dominant rotation to the top of the AL West despite a sputtering offense. The first game of the series pitted Bryce Miller against Max Fried, and while neither was projected as their team’s ace coming into the season, they both looked the part in this game.
Miller started things off with his customary dominant fastball. He got Ronald Acuña Jr. looking and Ozzie Albies swinging in the first inning, and kept going from there. When Miller’s fastball is cooking, it’s hard to imagine making contact against him, never mind getting a hit:
Fried got off to a slow start this year after missing half of last season with injury, but he’d just thrown a three-hitter against the Marlins, and he picked up right where he left off. He baffled the Mariners with an array of fastballs, sliders, and delightful slow curves:
These two battled long into the night, exchanging scoreless innings and confident struts. One thing they didn’t exchange was baserunners; through six innings, they combined for three walks and no hits allowed. They traded strikeouts – 10 for Miller, seven for Fried – and made every 2-1 count feel like a rally.
The Braves lineup is too good to hold down forever. Acuña recorded the first hit of the game with a smashed groundball single in the seventh. Then he stole second. Then he stole third. Then Albies cracked a ground-rule double to bring him home. Miller recovered to escape the inning with no further damage, but Fried and the relievers that followed him could work with that. They made it through eight innings without any damage, setting up a dramatic clash between Atlanta closer A.J. Minter, trying to protect that one-run lead, and the two goats of the Seattle offense so far, Jorge Polanco and Mitch Garver. Polanco led off the bottom of the ninth with a single through the six hole before Garver clobbered a walk-off blast:
More games like this in April, please. More games like it in May and June. I like whimsical baseball just as much as the next person – probably more, in fact. But when games are this well played and this tight, it’s like a little piece of the playoffs escaped October and landed in my living room. My heart couldn’t handle every game being like this, but getting one every once in a while is a delight.
2. Wyatt Langford in Space Wyatt Langford’s debut has been uneven, to be kind. He’s hitting .239/.311/.312, not exactly the offensive juggernaut Rangers fans expected after he tore up the minors last year. He has top-of-the-scale power; he hit six homers in spring training this year, and 10 in fewer than 200 minor league plate appearances last season. So far, that power hasn’t shown up. He only has a single home run in the majors this year. But oh boy, was that home run fun:
It feels weird for a power hitting DH to have an inside-the-park home run and no regular ones, but Langford is a strange DH. The fact that he isn’t a plus corner outfielder is surprising, because he can absolutely fly. Statcast clocks his average sprint speed so far this year at 29.6 ft/sec, one of the fastest marks in the sport. That somehow hasn’t translated to defense yet, but on offense? The man can move.
For a lot of players, this would be a triple. I clocked him at just under 15 seconds around the bases, and that could have been even faster if he didn’t think he hit a homer at first:
Now, did the Reds defense help out? Sure. Jake Fraley didn’t play the carom well at all; if he’d simply been less aggressive chasing the ball into that corner, this would have been a double or triple at most. But that one mistake is all it took (and for the Sam Miller enthusiasts out there, note Elly De La Cruz taking the cutoff throw from right field). But even accounting for the defensive miscue, Langford’s speed is what made this play happen.
Langford doesn’t seem like a track star to me, though I’m not sure how much of that is because I keep seeing “DH” next to his name. (He was playing left field in this game, for what it’s worth.) But watching him round the bases, you can’t miss it:
I particularly liked this close-up angle the Rangers posted:
Maybe it’s the red gloves. Maybe it’s the stride length. There’s just something simultaneously soothing and surprising about seeing him round the bases. He’s a large man with flailing arms, but there’s a grace to it too; his torso and head barely bounce around even as he accelerates to full speed. It’s a joy to watch, is my point. And Adolis García loved it just as much as I did:
3. Walk Offs
It all started with a mistake. In the bottom of the first inning last Thursday, Yoshinobu Yamamoto missed just low to Joey Meneses in a full count. Umpire Brian Walsh didn’t see it that way:
You can see Meneses at the edge of the frame looking back in shock. That was a ball! But the game moved on. The next three-ball pitch Yamamoto threw was a walk to Joey Gallo. The next one after that? Another one to Gallo with a different result:
I do think that one was a strike, but Gallo clearly didn’t. And now the battle lines were set: The Nationals were walking to first on every three-ball pitch they saw. Jacob Young got the memo:
And then on 3-2, he got the memo again:
Jesse Winker looked to me like he was ready to trot off – but Yamamoto’s 3-2 curveball caught so much of the plate that he instead pivoted around and marched back to the dugout:
Yamamoto was commanding the edges of the plate masterfully, and getting some help there to boot. But I loved Washington’s strategy. Just trot down to first base if it’s close. Maybe you’ll influence the umpire. Yamamoto threw eight pitches in three-ball counts in the game. The Nats swung at one and ran down toward first on five. That’s aspirational living right there. Maybe Mike Rizzo should put up a sign that says “no one cares how fast you run down to first base on strike three.” Or maybe he shouldn’t – I had a lot of fun watching them do it.
4. Revenge
You can only pull off this play when a catcher is hitting:
Don’t get me wrong, José Ramírez is a great defender. That was a heck of a play, a difficult barehanded scoop and an impressive off-platform throw. Not many third basemen can combine those two so smoothly. But if pretty much anyone else on the Braves were running, that would have been a single. Travis d’Arnaud is a 35-year-old catcher, and he moves like one, with 18th percentile sprint speed and 10th percentile home-to-first splits.
A series of unlikely events needs to happen for that to be such an unlucky out. Replace Ramírez with a slightly worse defender and it’s a hit. Replace d’Arnaud with a slightly faster runner and it’s a hit. Take a mile per hour off of the contact, or move it just a bit more away from Ramírez’s path, and it’s a hit. Part of being a good defender is making a lot of these edge-case plays, but I’m sure d’Arnaud was unhappy about losing a hit that way.
It’s OK, though, because he got his revenge two nights later. With two out and no one on in the top of the 10th, Ramírez singled off of A.J. Minter. He got a huge jump on the second pitch of the next at-bat and stole second standing up. Or at least, he thought he did:
Blink and you’ll miss it. Orlando Arcia’s swipe tag was way late, and it didn’t even make contact. A reverse angle is even more confusing. I have no idea why Ramírez didn’t slide, but he looks pretty clearly safe on this one:
Surely replay would fix this, right? Wrong:
What a remarkably perfect throw. Without meaning to, d’Arnaud hit Ramírez’s back pocket batting gloves from 130 feet away. Ramírez was out the moment Arcia caught the ball. The after-the-fact swipe was just instinctual, because Arcia has caught thousands of throws like that in his life but probably never received one that precise. I’ve heard of letting the ball do the work on a tag, but this takes that to a new level.
If Ramírez had been faster, there would be no play. If he’d been slower, he probably would have slid – honestly, he should have anyway. If the throw had been three inches off in either direction, the tag wouldn’t have been there. Ramírez stole one from d’Arnaud thanks to a series of just-so events. It’s only fair that d’Arnaud did the same to him.
5. Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory
With their loss to the Astros on Sunday, the Rockies fell to 7-21 in their first 28 games, which is bad enough. Even worse, they trailed at some point in each of those games. That tied a “record” set by the 1910 St. Louis Browns for most consecutive games trailing to start a season. Any time you’re tying a record set by the Browns, something has gone wrong.
Luckily for them, the next game, on Tuesday, offered a quick reprieve. They ambushed the Marlins with five runs in the top of the first, and Ryan Feltner was absolutely dealing. He faced the minimum number of batters through six innings, with the two singles he allowed quickly erased by a double play and a caught stealing, respectively. He needed only 79 pitches to get through eight scoreless innings. Bud Black sent him back out for the ninth to try for his first career complete game, a shutout to boot.
Things started to go wrong right away. Vidal Bruján snuck a single through the infield, Feltner hit Christian Bethancourt to add another baserunner, and then Luis Arraez doubled Bruján home to open the scoring ledger for Miami. Feltner’s first complete game would have to wait, because the Rockies needed this win. Closer Justin Lawrence came in to slam the door. But uh… he walked Bryan De La Cruz, and then Dane Myers (in the game because Jazz Chisholm Jr. got ejected for arguing balls and strikes) singled home two runs, and then Josh Bell singled to load the bases, and then Lawrence hit Jesús Sánchez to make it 5-4, and then… well, you get the idea. By the time Jalen Beeks came in to replace Lawrence, the game was tied and there was still only one out. But Beeks wriggled out of the jam without conceding anything further. The Rockies still had a chance to bury this accursed streak – they hadn’t trailed at any point in this game.
They scored a run in the top of the 10th when Ryan McMahon stroked a two-out double. But it wasn’t to be. De La Cruz doubled in the bottom of the inning to even the score. Then Myers – c’mon, the guy who wasn’t even supposed to be in the game! – won it for Miami with a seeing-eye single. Or maybe De La Cruz won it by remembering to touch home. Or maybe catcher Elias Díaz lost it with a bobble:
Oh boy, that one’s gonna sting. The Rockies can’t get out of their own way. They’ve trailed in the two games they’ve played since this collapse, too, extending the record to an outrageous 31 straight games trailing to start the season. Include the end of last year, and it’s 37 straight games trailing. I’m sorry for the Rockies fans enduring this, and for Patrick Dubuque for choosing to live the Rockies fan life for a year in this year of all years. At this point, there’s not much you can do other than stare, like rubbernecking but for sports.
Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
Things couldn’t be going worse for the Angels. The Halos have stumbled to an 11-19 record in Ron Washington’s first year managing them, and he’ll now try to tread water without his best player. Future Hall of Famer Mike Trout is set to undergo knee surgery for a torn meniscus in his left knee, and while it isn’t expected to end his season, it will keep him out for awhile.
Trout started the year in fine form, with a wRC+ of 142 and 10 home runs tying him for the league lead. His production was elite despite a hilariously low .194 BABIP, which portended things likely would’ve gotten even better for him as the sample-size shenanigans worked themselves out. On top of that, he was much more aggressive on the bases, with his six steals equaling his total from the prior four years combined. That put him on pace for his first 30/30 season since his otherworldly 2012 rookie campaign. Indeed, this was shaping up to be another MVP-caliber campaign for Trout.
Of course, all of our optimism came with the cautious caveat: as long as he stays healthy. Which, as we know all too well, hasn’t been the case in recent years. Trout hasn’t played more than 120 games in a season since 2019, the year he won his third MVP award.
Beyond the silver lining that we might see Trout play baseball again in 2024, it’s too soon to know when he’ll be back in the lineup. Even so, we have some data to help us guess. A 2023 study by the Mayo Clinic’s Department of Orthopedic Surgery compiled data from 314 meniscus injuries from MLB and MiLB players over a seven-year period, with the median return to play time coming out to 70 days. But that includes all meniscus injuries, including those that didn’t require surgery. Knowing that Trout needs surgery paints a bleaker picture, with the median return to play for those players jumping up to 104 days. Put another way: A typical return from surgery wouldn’t have Trout returning to the Angels until the middle of August.
As difficult as it may be, the Angels still have to play baseball games without Trout. Taylor Ward (127 wRC+) and Jo Adell (174 wRC+) have done their part and will need to anchor the lineup and outfield without Trout. Mickey Moniak is expected to replace Trout in center field, at least against righties, and will likely platoon with new addition Kevin Pillar, whom the Angels signed to a major league deal shortly after Trout went down. Cole Tucker and Luis Rengifo are also capable of playing the outfield.
Bryce Miller’s Evolution
By now you’ve probably heard of Mariners righty Bryce Miller, though it’s certainly possible you hadn’t until he shined against the Braves on Monday. He took a perfect game into the sixth and a no-hitter into the seventh, striking out 10 and allowing just one run. The excellent showing lowered his ERA to 2.04 over his first six starts, with just 19 hits allowed in 35.1 innings. His strikeout rate has jumped from 22% last year to 29% so far this season, though he’s also walking a higher percentage of batters (9%, up from 5%). Of course, his .179 BABIP allowed is unsustainably low; then again, his 3.81 FIP is still respectable. Even if he’s due for some negative regression, it’s still worth discussing what has made him so effective thus far this year.
Miller relied heavily on his fastball as a rookie, and you would too if yours had 99th-percentile spin rate and nearly 10 inches of vertical ride — that’s more than all but seven pitchers who threw at least 100 innings in 2023. But when you throw your fastball nearly 60% of the time, major league hitters are going to know it’s coming and make the necessary adjustments to crush it. And boy, oh boy, they did, feasting for a .450 slugging percentage against Miller’s heater last year.
And so Miller’s response has been, unsurprisingly, to throw fewer four-seamers. He still relies on the pitch heavily, but it now represents 45% of his offerings, making him less predictable. He’s increased his sinker usage from 8% to 18%, and ditched his curveball and changeup for a splitter, which has quickly become his most-used secondary pitch (19%). With that splitter, he’s now actually running reverse splits in the early going, with lefties batting just .121/.205/.288 against it, and righties at .196/.262/.339. That said, he is striking out more and walking fewer righties than he is lefties, so I’d expect that trend to shift at least a bit. He’s kept lefties in check with his fastball this season, as his xwOBA allowed to them on that pitch has decreased from .406 to .333, but the splitter appears to be most effective tool to neutralize the platoon advantage. Lefties are 3-for-21 against that pitch with eight strikeouts and a 31.3% whiff rate. His continued emergence could give the Mariners a fourth great starter to go with Luis Castillo, George Kirby, and Logan Gilbert.
Jack Flaherty Shoves Against His Former Team
It wasn’t hard to imagine that Jack Flaherty would have a strong season. He’s still just 28, his velocity hasn’t dipped, and he has the pedigree of a fourth-place Cy Young finish in 2019. But back in December, when he signed a one-year, $14 million pillow contract with the Tigers, I certainly didn’t expect him to look as good as he did on Tuesday afternoon.
Facing the Cardinals — the team that drafted and developed him — for the first time since they traded him to the Orioles last summer, Flaherty allowed just two hits and one walk with a career-high 14 strikeouts on 93 pitches over 6.2 scoreless innings. All five of his pitches, even the few sinkers and changeups he threw, had whiff rates of at least 44%. Maybe he was amped facing his former club, or maybe he started to find his groove in his sixth start of the season; either way, all of his pitches had at least an extra tick of velocity from his rest-of-season averages. Despite his efforts, though, the Tigers allowed two runs in the top of the ninth inning and the Cardinals took the first game of Tuesday’s doubleheader, 2-1. (The Tigers won the night cap, 11-6.)
Flaherty’s excellent start could be quite the jumping-off point for a big contract when he reaches free agency again entering his age-29 season. Aside from this one outing, there are plenty of indications that Jack is, indeed, so back. His 2.85 FIP belies his 4.00 ERA, and he’s striking out 10 batters per every walk, a league-leading ratio. Most encouragingly, he’s made every start and thrown at least five innings and 87 pitches in each of them, no small feat for a guy who hasn’t qualified for the ERA title since that breakout 2019 campaign. If the Tigers are to stick around in the race, they’ll need more than just ace Tarik Skubal pitching big innings. Flaherty looks like a more than capable no. 2.
Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
At 13-16, the Arizona Diamondbacks have started their season with something of a whimper. The biggest reason for that, in my opinion, has been the performance of Corbin Carroll, who’s gone from winning Rookie of the Year and finishing fifth in MVP voting last season to hitting just .189/.295/.236 (60 wRC+) with just one home run over 122 plate appearances. There are a couple of silver linings — he’s swiped eight bases despite his struggles and has struck out just 21 times to go along with his 15 walks — but frankly, it’s mostly been a disaster for a guy who should be playing like what he is: the most talented all-around player on the National League’s reigning pennant-winning team.
Firstly, I’ll acknowledge that Carroll perhaps overperformed last year. His batting average, slugging percentage, and wOBA were all notably higher than his expected marks, and his barrel, hard-hit, and sweet-spot rates were all in the 51st percentile or lower. Then again, his .268 xBA, .441 xSLG, and .370 xwOBA were all at or above the 65th percentile — meaning he still would’ve been solid hitter if those were his actual statistics. Moreover, with his first full season behind him, we could have reasonably expected him to improve his skills, and thus his production, as he gained experience.
So far, that hasn’t been the case. He’s been downright dreadful at the plate.
Carroll’s top-level approach is good: He’s not swinging and missing (80th percentile whiff rate) or striking out (81st percentile strikeout rate), and he’s taking his walks (84th percentile walk rate). But there’s only so much value a hitter can provide by walking and making contact if his quality of contact is abysmal, and, well, that’s pretty much the only way to describe it. His 30th-percentile barrel rate is actually his best quality of contact marker, with his percentiles for average exit velocity, hard-hit rate and sweet-spot rate all amazingly in the fourth percentile or lower. He’s basically hitting the ball with the authority of Steven Kwan and Luis Arraez; that can be totally fine for a hitter if he has the bat control that those two have (which leads to elite sweet-spot percentages), but Carroll doesn’t have that, making him punchless at the plate.
On average, Carroll is hitting the ball nearly five mph softer than he did last year. Along with that, his groundball rate has increased by nearly five percentage points. For Carroll, who has as much speed as anyone in baseball, putting the ball on the ground is far from the worst thing, but that spike in worm-killers has come at the expense of his power. Last season, he hit 25 home runs, 30 doubles and 10 triples; one homer and two doubles are his only extra-base hits this year.
When a hitter loses this much punch despite being in his early-20s, the focus, understandably, will turn to injury. Carroll has a history of scary shoulder problems, forcing him to have surgery when he was in the minors and causing him to leave a couple of games last season after painful swings. But I haven’t noticed any wincing or grimacing in the Carroll plate appearances I’ve seen this year, and he hasn’t been lifted from the lineup because of his shoulder. If there are residual issues, Carroll is keeping them private. Instead, he’s theorized that his working to cut down on strikeouts has created a deeper point of contact, which has made it harder for him to get out in front of pitches and drive them. That’s borne out in the data; his overall pull rate is down from 38.4% to 33.7%, and he’s pulling just 6.5% of fly balls compared to 27.2% last year.
This very well could be the root of his struggles: Carroll doesn’t have otherworldly raw power, so if he’s going to tap into the pop he does have — as he did last year — he’s going to need to start pulling the ball in the air again. If that means taking bigger cuts and whiffing a bit more as a result, then that’s a worthy tradeoff for him to get back to being the offensive force we know he can be.
On George Kirby and Command vs. Control
George Kirby is a fantastic pitcher, and one of my favorites to watch. The degree to which he limits walks is so unprecedented in this era that it’s almost comical. (For what it’s worth, I’m not ashamed to admit I had only so much as heard of 12 of the 24 pitchers ahead of Kirby on the list.)
It’s indisputable that Kirby has incredible control, the likes of which we haven’t seen since most pitchers were topping out at 88 mph instead of 98. If anyone breaks the 20-80 scouting scale for control, it’s Kirby. The question, though, is this: Is his command better than any pitcher since Pud Galvin retired in 1892? I would argue no.
For those unfamiliar, control is accuracy (throwing the ball in the strike zone), while command is precision (throwing the ball where you want). We’ll never know for sure where Kirby wants every pitch; there are command-based statistics that attempt to use catcher glove position to approximate, but with PitchCom allowing for more seamless communication, catchers have an easier time deking hitters who may glance back for location. But it’s hard to imagine he wants all of his sinkers where he’s putting them, even as, in fairness to him, opponents are batting just .172 against that pitch.
But they’re hitting .357 off his slider, and while Kirby’s generally able to locate it down and on the glove side, when he misses with it, he tends to leave it up and over the middle third of the plate to righties.
Pitchers aren’t robots, and even the best won’t be able to put the ball where they want all the time. Many pitchers throw the ball outside the strike zone when they miss their spots; Kirby’s misses happen within the zone. That leads to more balls in play, which makes for a more entertaining viewing experience and oftentimes a lower pitch count, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he has the best command of all time. If his command were that impeccable, considering how good his stuff is, he’d be the best pitcher in baseball by far; instead, he’s allowed nearly a hit per inning this year. Don’t get me wrong: He’s very good, one of the best starters in the league, but let’s not overrate him just because he has a lower walk rate than anyone who’s pitched since Benjamin Harrison was president.
Judge’s Hand Gives Big Inning A Head Start
In their 15-5 win on Sunday, the Yankees had a massive sixth inning that was jumpstarted in the oddest of ways. With the score knotted at four, nobody out, and Aaron Judge on first base, Alex Verdugo bounced a routine double play ball to second baseman Brice Turang, who flipped to shortstop Willy Adames, who came across the bag and fired to first. Except the ball never made it there. Instead, it deflected off the raised hand of a sliding Judge and rolled to first baseman Jake Bauers well after Verdugo reached.
After discussion on the field, the umpires elected not to call interference on Judge, which would have resulted in a double play. Verdugo was allowed to remain at first base. The next batter, Giancarlo Stanton, popped up to Turang for the second out before the Yankees rallied for seven runs. Interference is a judgment call and thus is not reviewable, but interestingly, crew chief Andy Fletcher said after the game that he believed his crew missed the call, describing the hand raising as “an unnatural part of his slide.”
Crew chief Andy Fletcher said they missed the call on Judge’s slide.
“On the field we got together and did the best we could to come up with a correct answer. After looking at it on replay, it appears that the call was missed. It was an unnatural part of his slide.”
Here is the rule that Fletcher said Judge violated, per the MLB rulebook: “If, in the judgment of the umpire, a base runner willfully and deliberately interferes with a batted ball or a fielder in the act of fielding a batted ball with the obvious intent to break up a double play, the ball is dead. The umpire shall call the runner out for interference and also call out the batter-runner because of the action of his teammate.”
So, according to Fletcher, interference should have been called and Verdugo should’ve been out because Judge added an unnatural act to his slide to “willfully and deliberately” break up the double play. Except, the raised hand is a natural part of Judge’s slide. “I’ve been sliding like that for years,” he said after the game. “You can look back at any picture you want of me sliding into second base.”
Indeed, I did go back and look, and I found this 2021 video of Judge sliding into second base with his hand high above his head on a stolen base.
So while this perhaps is unnatural for most, it is completely natural for Judge. Maybe this is something that opponents — and umpires — should add to their scouting report on him.
Blaze Alexander is on the bubble to break camp with the Arizona Diamondbacks. His spring showing suggests he deserves the opportunity to do so. In 52 Cactus League plate appearances, the 24-year-old infield prospect has slashed .420/.442/.640 with seven extra-base hits and five stolen bases in as many attempts. Moreover, he’s continued to show promise since being taken in the 11th round of the 2018 draft out of IMG Academy. That he’s mostly flown under the radar while doing so is starting to change.
“I hope that’s the case,” Alexander told me in mid-March. “I mean, I’ve been putting on a pretty good performance this spring, so I definitely think I’m opening some eyes. That said, I obviously need to transfer it over to the regular season.”
The likelihood of his doing so in the big leagues was improved on Friday when the D-Backs released Elvis Andrus, a notable roster move given that the 15-year veteran had been inked to a free agent contract as a potential backup for Geraldo Perdomo. As it now stands, there is a good chance that Alexander — “a viable defensive shortstop with a huge arm… [who] hits for enough power” in the words of Eric Longenhagen — will be filling that role.
Hitting for power isn’t one of Alexander’s aims, nor is it part of his process. While he does possess pop — his ledger includes 30 home runs in 734 plate appearances over the past two minor-league seasons — his M.O. is bullets, not blasts. Read the rest of this entry »
I went to high school in a state with an extremely late calendar, and I took a lot of AP classes. Which meant that from about the second week of May until the end of the school year in late June, most of my class schedule was pretty pointless. It’s hard to get a bunch of overworked, checked-out teens to focus in class with nothing on the line, especially when said teens have just seen the sun for the first time in six months. Full credit to the teachers who were able to thread that needle, but in general we watched a lot of movies and played a lot of rummy while the clock ran out.
And that’s sort of where we are in spring training. With most rosters all but set and the Dodgers and Padres already playing meaningful games in Korea, the only thing left to do is find a live rooster — was it a live rooster? — to take the curse off Jake Cronenworth’s glove. And that’s not gonna take all week.
