Over the last decade, pitchers have striven to be more and more like Stephen Strasburg. While Strasburg has always had one of the better changeups in the game, the 30-year-old righty has long used a four-seam fastball up in the zone paired with a big curve to dominate hitters. It’s a combo the Astros have famously used to successfully transform multiple pitchers, but almost nobody has been better than Strasburg with both the four-seamer and the curve over the last decade. The graph below shows all pitchers with at least 500 innings pitched who have thrown a four-seamer and curve, and the total run value the two pitches have produced.

Sure, Clayton Kershaw is on another planet, but Strasburg is the only other pitcher at least 50 runs above average on both pitches. Since 2016, he’s been the best at combining the fastball and the curve to get great results. Read the rest of this entry »

Even after losing Bryce Harper to free agency, the Nationals were projected to win the NL East, but for the second year in a row, things are going awry. At 14-22, they’re actually five games worse than they were last year at this point; they currently own the worst record in the NL this side of the Marlins, who at least have the excuse of being bad by design (not that they haven’t been designed badly). With Wednesday’s sweep-culminating loss to Milwaukee, Washington has lost four games in a row, and 14 out of 19; they’ve dropped six straight series. They’re underperforming in virtually every phase of their game, and while injuries have been a part of the story, they’re hardly alone in that regard. Everybody hurts.

When the season began, the Nationals were projected for a .555 winning percentage, a 53.2% chance of winning the division, and a 25.9% chance at claiming a Wild Card spot, resulting in a 79.1% chance at a playoff spot overall. Through Wednesday, they’re down to 28.6% for the division, 16.8% for the Wild Card, and 45.4% for any playoff spot.

Those are still better odds than recent history suggests. While a sub-.500 start through 36 games isn’t fatal to a team’s playoff hopes, in the era of two Wild Card teams per league (since 2012), no team has dug itself out of a hole this deep at this particular point. Of the 70 playoff teams in that span, only seven were even below .500 at this point before recovering to claim a spot: the 2013 Dodgers (15-21); 2014 Pirates (16-20) and Royals (17-19); 2015 Rangers (15-21), Blue Jays (17-19), and Pirates (17-19); and 2018 Dodgers (16-20). It’s been 10 years since a playoff-bound team started 14-22, namely the 2009 Rockies.

Relative to our preseason projections as of March 21, the Nationals are the majors’ top underachievers by a wide margin: Read the rest of this entry »

2018 wasn’t supposed to be the year of Juan Soto in Washington. It was supposed to be the year of Victor Robles. Robles, the consensus No. 1 outfield prospect in the Nats system and probably the No. 2 outfield prospect in all of baseball behind Ronald Acuña, was ready for the majors. Only a hyperextended elbow kept Robles from making an impact in the majors last year, but in abbreviated playing time in August and September, he looked like he was making up for lost time (.288/.348/.525, 131 wRC+).

Robles’ 2019 hasn’t been quite as impressive, but you can see in his performance why he’s such an exciting talent. Even while running a 30.5% strikeout rate and walking only 4.8% of the time, Robles has put up a league-average batting line (.265/.308/.480, 102 wRC+). Watch Robles play, and you can immediately see what the hype is about. He’s electric both at the plate and in the field. With all that said, I’m not here today to talk to you about Robles’ tremendous potential or his jaw-dropping athleticism. I’m here for the bunts.

Victor Robles leads the major leagues in bunt singles this year (he’s actually tied for the lead with teammate Adam Eaton). It’s a good thing, too, because he’s also first in bunts (fair balls that were bunted — it’s hard to get a good count of foul bunt attempts). If that seems weird to you, you’re not alone. We’re talking about a guy with non-negligible power — the FanGraphs prospect team graded him at 50 raw power this offseason. He has four home runs so far this year, and he ran a .157 ISO in the minor leagues, which isn’t Joey Gallo level or anything, but is certainly not poor.

Take a look at this list of players with the most bunts per plate appearance since 2017, Robles’ first playing time in the majors. I liberally filtered out pitchers and people with less playing time than Robles:

Robles sticks out like a sore thumb on this list. Magneuris Sierra literally had a zero ISO in 64 plate appearances in 2017. He’s never hit more than four home runs in a season, minors or majors. Delino DeShields hit six home runs in 440 plate appearances in the bigs — once. Robles has four this year already. Depth Charts projects him for another 11 over the balance of the year. Heck, he had three homers in 66 PA last year when he was called up. Maybe he’s not a power hitter, but he’s certainly not a slap hitter either. What’s up with the love for bunts? Read the rest of this entry »

By now — and barring a mid-career role reversal — the arguments over the relative greatness of Mike Trout and Bryce Harper have been settled in favor of the Millville Meteor. Trout has perennially played at an MVP-caliber level since 2012, winning the award twice while finishing second four times and fourth once, the year that he missed more than a quarter of the season due to a thumb injury, and — as of this week — has climbed to sixth in the JAWS rankings among center fielders. Harper owns one MVP award and might have won a second if not for a late-season knee injury in 2017, but in terms of consistency and overall levels of accomplishment, he’s second banana. Trout has chalked up five seasons worth at least 9.3 WAR, which matches Harper’s best, but the latter’s second- and third-best seasons merely add up to 9.2 WAR. As Jeff Sullivan put it in his penultimate post, “Mike Trout Has Been as Good as Manny Machado and Bryce Harper Combined.”

Yet Trout and Harper remain inextricably linked in the minds of many (including this scribe) in part because on the day that Harper debuted in the majors (April 29, 2012), Trout returned from Triple-A for good, and both players took their respective leagues by storm en route to Rookie of the Year awards. Though separated by about 14 months in age, they’re part of a baseball cohort in a way that Trout and Paul Goldschmidt or Giancarlo Stanton (whose totals of plate appearances are all in the same vicinity), or Harper and Machado (whose free agencies coincided) are not. The relatively stoic Trout and the more demonstrative Harper pair well as contrasts, too. Trout is so routinely great without calling attention to himself that he sometimes recedes into the background, to the point of being forgotten, while Harper’s combination of hot streaks and exuberance is more eye-catching — in grabbing our attention, he also reminds us that hey, that other guy is playing even better.

The dynamic duo are currently scalding the ball, in case you haven’t noticed. Harper, who signed a record-setting 13-year, $330 million contract, is off to a flying start with the Phillies (.314/.500/.743, four home runs, and a 198 wRC+ through Wednesday).

Trout, who signed a record-setting $12-year, $430 million extension less than three weeks after Harper inked his deal, is flying even higher (.406/.592/.938, five home runs, and a 288 wRC+).

The coincidence of their current hot streaks got me wondering whether we’re seeing their collective apex, the peak pair. The answer, within the way I chose to address the matter, is “pretty damn close.” For this, I called upon our player graphs tool — putting the graphs in FanGraphs, after all — to calculate each player’s rolling 10-game wRC+ since the aforementioned point of arrival in 2012. This ignores defense, for which we can’t get any kind of reliable read across 10 games anyway, and makes the familiar squiggly pictures, like so…

…And so…

Using that page’s “Export Data” function, I calculated the pair’s combined wRC+ for every date on which they both played and had the requisite 10 games in the sample (we’re not yet to 15 games for either player in 2019, hence this choice). That means that if one player was on the disabled list, or even had an off day, there’s no data point for that day. On the other hand, each player’s 10-game range might have different dates attached due to such absences.

Here’s the top 20 of the pair’s most productive stretches, with overlapping 10-game spans included:

As it turns out, April 9 — the point at which Harper reached 10 games this year (Trout had done so two days earlier), and the last point for which we have data, because Trout hasn’t played since then due to a groin strain that we’re all praying is minor — is the end of the seventh-best such stretch. Trout’s videogame-like numbers you saw above; Harper was hitting .333/.511/.788 for a 210 wRC+ before taking an 0-for-3 and an early exit from Wednesday night’s 15-1 drubbing by the Nationals. The heavyweight championship belongs to a stretch in late April 2017 during which Harper hit .588/.674/1.206 with five homers, with Trout at .375/.432/.725 and three homers.

One aspect of this that’s particularly striking is that we have to dig down to the 19th spot to find a combined performance that lands in an even-numbered year. Harper hit for a career-low 111 wRC+ in that 2016 season, four points lower than in 2014 and nine points lower than in 2012. For some weird reason, he’s simply been better in odd-numbered years, like two-time Cy Young winner Bret Saberhagen.

Condensing the above table to remove the overlapping streaks (i.e., tossing out the third-ranked streak, because most of it is already represented within the second-ranked streak) yields this top 10:

From a contemporary standpoint, that’s more satisfying, as this season’s opening salvo climbs to fifth (not third, as I originally had it when this published — score that E6). Streaks from every season except 2014 and ’18 are represented, with the 2015 season, Harper’s MVP year, dominating the charts, as separate streaks from May, June, July, and September all rank among the top six. Harper pulls his weight here, owning the higher wRC+ of the pair (highlighted with the bold-faced numbers) in five of the streaks .

As for the coldest spells, I’ll skip to the mirror image of the second table, identifying only the extremes of each discrete streak:

Above we’ve got almost entirely even-year streaks, with one exception apiece from 2013 and ’15. Every season but 2017 and this one is represented, with 2016 the most common one. During the very worst stretch, in September 2016 — a rare instance of both players falling well below 100 — Harper hit .094/.310/.188, with a home run representing one of his three hits, and Trout hit .229/.317/.229 without a homer. For eight of the 10 stretches, it’s Harper dragging the pair down, with a wRC+ below 70; that conforms to the general impression that he’s the more slump-prone player of the two.

One could certainly look at the matter in other ways, using larger sample sizes — going by 15-game stretches with the same methodology, for example, or simply by our monthly splits, or even full seasons. On that last front, 2015 gets the nod on the basis of combined wRC+ (184) or WAR (18.6) if we’re bringing defense into this. By the monthly splits, the pair’s combined wRC+ of 243 for March and April (which we customarily lump together, as we do for September and October) would rank first, but with an asterisk, as it’s the only month besides April 2012 for which the pair has combined for fewer than 100 PA. Discarding what would be the second-ranked month (June 2014) on the grounds that Harper had just four PA, the best combined month for the pair is July 2015, when Trout (260) and Harper (172) combined for a 214 wRC+ in 193 PA. Incidentally, by this method the pair has combined for a 120 wRC+ or better in every month for which we have a meaningful sample from both save for July 2016, when Trout (144) and Harper (65) combined for a 104 mark.

Still, I do like the immediacy of the 10-game sample and the fact that it places what we’ve witnessed so far this season near the top of the heap. If Trout doesn’t miss too much time, there’s a chance we can see that number climb. All of which serves to remind us that while major league baseball has problems on and off the field that shouldn’t be ignored, the level of talent today is astounding, and anytime Trout and Harper are both firing on all cylinders is a great time to be watching.

Last month, in the wake of Bryce Harper’s signing with the Phillies, I took stock of the Nationals and raised an eyebrow at the limited fixes administered to a bullpen that has required annual midseason makeovers, and that last year tied for 25th in the majors in WAR (0.6). General manager Mike Rizzo’s big offseason moves regarding the unit were to sign Trevor Rosenthal, who missed all of 2018 due to Tommy John surgery, and Kyle Barraclough, who pitched to a 4.20 ERA and 4.98 FIP with the Marlins. So far, it hasn’t gone well, to say the least. The unit as a whole has an 11.02 ERA through five games.

Barraclough has only been charged with one run allowed in 3.1 innings, but he’s also allowed five out of five inherited runners to score. That’s no good, but it’s nothing compared to the travails of Rosenthal, a 28-year-old righty who, during his Cardinals tenure, pitched to a 2.99 ERA and 2.60 FIP while saving 121 games from 2012-17.

On March 30 against the Mets, Rosenthal entered a tied game in the eighth inning and proceeded to allow back-to-back singles to Wilson Ramos and Jeff McNeil, then walked Amed Rosario (a tough thing to do given the kid’s 4.9% walk rate last year) and served up a two-run single to J.D. Davis. Manager Davey Martinez gave him the hook in favor of Barraclough, who immediately balked in a run, and two outs later, allowed a two-run double by Pete Alonso. Thus, four runs were charged to Rosenthal, who didn’t retire a batter.

Undeterred, Martinez called on Rosenthal again the next day with the Nationals trailing the Mets 5-2 and runners on the corners courtesy of mid-March signing Tony Sipp. Facing Rosario again, Rosenthal threw just one pitch, which the 23-year-old shortstop lined for an RBI single. Sean Doolittle relieved Rosenthal and allowed back-to-back singles, the second of which scored Rosario. Another day, another outing with a run allowed but no out for Rosenthal. Read the rest of this entry »

If you watch enough baseball, players start to blend together in your brain. You know what I’m talking about — Corey Seager is injury-prone Carlos Correa. Ozzie Albies is caffeinated Jose Altuve (no small feat, since Altuve is a Five Hour Energy spokesperson). Newly minted $100 million man Alex Bregman is Anthony Rendon with good hair. The Bregman/Rendon comparison occurred to me even before I saw Bregman play. A highly-drafted college third baseman with an excellent all-around game? More power than you’d think despite a swing that seems designed to put the ball in play? Probably a little better at baserunning than you’d expect, even if he isn’t a burner? Yeah, that pretty much covers both guys.

Nothing Bregman has done since reaching the majors has changed this early comparison in my mind. Between 2017 (Bregman’s first full year in the bigs) and 2018, he’s recorded a 141 wRC+ to Rendon’s 140. Bregman has walked 11.3% of the time, Rendon 11.6%. Bregman has struck out 13.7% of the time to Rendon’s 13.6%. Bregman has a .219 ISO; Rendon’s is .230. Bregman has 50 home runs; Rendon has 49.

You get the general idea — both players have been incredible, and both have done it in really similar ways. Rendon has been worth 13 WAR over the past two years, second-best among third basemen. Bregman has been worth 11.1 WAR, good for fourth. Here’s another thing they have in common — they were both among the most extreme swing-rate changers from 2017 to 2018. Plot twist, though! It was in opposite directions. Bregman decreased his swing rate by the third-most among qualified hitters, while Rendon increased his by the second-most. Yes, we’ve finally found a place where Anthony Rendon and Alex Bregman are different — extremely different.

For Alex Bregman, 2017 must have been a mix of satisfaction and frustration. His 217 PA in 2016 exhausted his rookie eligibility, and while he held his own in his first big league action (114 wRC+), he looked very much like someone struggling to adjust to big league pitching. He struck out in 24% of his plate appearances, light years higher than his 10% career minor league rate (and 7.5% college rate). His swinging strike rate was 11.8%, meaningfully above league average. In short, he didn’t look like the hitter scouts expected him to be. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not a news flash that Juan Soto was great in 2018. The simplest of statistics could tell that story. His OBP started with a 4. His slugging percentage started with a 5. He had 22 homers in a mere 116 games. However, the real hype starts when you dig into the numbers a little more. Juan Soto was 19, and he walked 16% of the time in the big leagues while putting up a 146 wRC+. People are making historical comparisons because that’s the only way to appreciate such a tremendous feat. No one in history has put up a better batting line before their 20th birthday, and the only people to come close are Mel Ott, Tony Conigliaro, and Ty Cobb. When you put it that way, maybe we’re underselling how great Soto’s 2018 was.

I’m not writing today to remind you of how good Soto’s 2018 was (like, really good though! Really good!). Instead, let’s talk about the approach he used to generate those numbers. Here’s a leaderboard of the 10 best hitters in baseball by wOBA last year, minimum of 450 PA. I’m using wOBA instead of wRC+ for compatibility with data further along in the article:

Well, that’s about what you’d expect. Ten great hitters, or potentially nine great hitters and Max Muncy, depending on how you feel about him. Paul Goldschmidt was eleventh if you want to leave Muncy out of this. That alone is already amazing. What makes it really impressive, however, is that Soto did it all against fastballs. I’m going to throw another leaderboard at you. Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday, the Washington Nationals dipped into the leftovers pile of free agency and came away with lefty reliever Tony Sipp, formerly of the Houston Astros, who signed a one-year, $1.25 million deal, with a $2.5 million mutual option for 2020.

Sipp spent five seasons with Houston, originally joining the Astros as a free agent in 2014 after being released from a minor-league contract with the Padres. The book on Sipp at the time was that his control wasn’t quite passable enough to use him in high-leverage innings, and it looked a lot like he was destined to spend his career shuttling between Triple-A and the majors depending on team needs at the time.

In 2014-2015, Sipp significantly improved that long-term outlook with increased confidence in his splitter, making a concerted effort to throw the pitch for strikes enough to make it not-so-predictable. Actually getting batters to chase it resulted in the splitter being promoted to a regular part of his repertoire, which had previously consisted primarily of a mediocre fastball and a good slider.

During those first two years, the splitter became his go-to tool against righties, throwing it 315 times against them compared to just 21 time to left-handed batters. The slider remained his bread-and-butter pitch against lefties as expected and over 2014-2015, Sipp allowed a 2.66 ERA and 2.93 FIP, and struck out 125 batters in 105 innings. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Max Scherzer’s supremacy and the changes coming to the Atlantic League in 2019 as part of its partnership with MLB, include an altered base size, mound distance, strike zone, and more, then preview the 2019 Nationals (29:00) with Washington Post columnist Barry Svrluga, and the 2019 Seattle Mariners (1:04:16) with Seattle Times Mariners beat writer Ryan Divish.

Audio intro: Pixies, "Debaser"
Audio interstitial 1: Grateful Dead, "He’s Gone"
Audio interstitial 2: The Baseball Project, "Ichiro Goes to the Moon"
Audio outro: Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez, "Play it Again Sam"

Link to Kershaw/Scherzer article
Link to Atlantic League-MLB press release
Link to Sam on Hamilton and Bolt
Ben’s article on moving the mound
Link to Cooper article about moving the mound
Link to Jeff on banning the shift
Link to Barry’s book, The Grind
Link to preorder The MVP Machine

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The Nationals are now officially in the post-Bryce Harper era. With the news of his completion of a 13-year, $330 million contract with the Philadelphia Phillies, Washington will no longer employ the brash prodigy whose presence has more or less defined the franchise since his arrival as a 19-year-old on April 28, 2012. It’s clear that the Nationals have been bracing for this moment since the six-time All-Star slugger spurned a 10-year, $300 million offer that — as we’ve only learned recently — reportedly included roughly $100 million in deferred money. Save for a little less star power, and perhaps a little less swagger, the team does not appear to be that worse for wear.

In fact, the Nationals are currently projected to win the NL East, though Harper’s signing has shrunk the gap between them and the Phillies, who we now project for 86 wins to the Nationals’ 90. That a similar forecast last spring went awry was of a piece with Harper’s D.C. tenure, a period defined as much by what they did not accomplish as what they did. They were also the preseason favorites going into the two other seasons in which they missed the playoffs with Harper in tow, and while they did win four division titles in Harper’s seven seasons — including the first for the franchise since relocating from Montreal prior to the 2005 season — the Nationals failed to win a single playoff series. They went an excruciating 0-for-4 in the NL Division Series, losing to lower-seeded teams each time. Three of the four series went the distance; the Nationals squandered early leads and lost those decisive games on their home field by a total of four runs.

Lest you think that I’m attempting to hang the Nationals’ failures upon Harper himself, I’m not. While his overall playoff numbers are pretty unremarkable (.211/.315/.487), he went 7-for-15 with 17 total bases in those four elimination games. He won his MVP award in 2015, when the team missed the playoffs, and by WAR, he was more valuable in the other two seasons in which they fizzled (2013 and ’18), than in ’14 or ’16, when they won the NL East. Regardless, that era is history, and perhaps not the happiest one if you’re a Nationals fan, though it had its moments. Read the rest of this entry »