Archive for Teams

I think every article about this year’s Astros is supposed to begin in the same way, so, who am I to defy convention? Let’s just embed this and move on:

We don’t need to review the feature. We don’t need to review the things it got right and the things it got wrong. It’s unlikely to be remembered for more than the headline, because that’s the way the reading public works, and here we are, three years later, and the Astros have baseball’s best record. The best record by a decent margin, at that, and the Astros also happen to have our second-highest odds of winning the World Series. No team has improved its World Series odds more since the start of the year. I just got an email an hour ago from some gambling business that currently has the Astros as its World Series favorites. This could become a reality. Chances are, it won’t, yet the Astros’ odds have never looked better. The Astros are good. That doesn’t sound as weird as it used to, but the process is complete. Winning is all that’s left.

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PITTSBURGH – That Zack Greinke is reinventing himself, that he remains effective even as his velocity leaves him, that he has bounced back while pitching in front of a better defensive cast this season — none of it should represent one of the greater shocks of the 2017 season. After all, this is an elite-level athlete with excellent command, one who owns a five-pitch mix and a feel for the craft. He is also a diligent student of the game.

Before I caught up with Greinke this week in Pittsburgh, he was seated at a card table before a laptop, a sort of make-shift video and data center hastily constructed each series in the center of the opposing clubhouse in PNC Park, a common setup for the road traveling party. Greinke was several days away from his Thursday start in Miami, but he was one of the players seemingly most interested in studying upcoming opponents. Greinke embraces data and — shameless plug alert — is a reader of FanGraphs.

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For a guy with just 484 plate appearances, a 104 career wRC+, and 1.4 WAR, Kyle Schwarber gets talked about an awful lot. There are a lot of good reasons for that talk. He was part of a rejuvenation for the Cubs in 2015 that saw the team move from punching bag to NL force. He hit a massive home run in the National League Division Series that year. After missing almost the entire season and playoffs last season, he returned for just the World Series, during which he reached base in 10 out of 20 plate appearances. Those are some impressive feats for such a brief career.

But again, the regular-season numbers aren’t exceptional. Is it possible that Schwarber is overrated due to his performances in big moments? Maybe a tad. He is an offense-first corner outfielder who needs to hit a ton to be a really valuable player. The Cubs’ insistence on keeping him instead of trading him for a potential upgrade elsewhere might play into his perceived value versus actual value, as well. In either case, Schwarber was still a good hitter entering the 2017 season. Whatever his struggles so far, he probably still is a good hitter.

Right now, Schwarber is putting up poor batting numbers, including a .165/.286/.341 slash line and 70 wRC+ in 206 plate appearances. Those marks have rendered Schwarber something worse than replacement level so far this season. If the Cubs were running away with the division right now like they did last year, maybe Schwarber’s results get a bit less scrutiny. (Maybe. Of course, the struggles of Jason Heyward last year certainly drew a lot of attention.) It probably doesn’t help that Schwarber began the season in the leadoff spot, either. In any event, Schwarber’s results have been terrible. Before he makes major changes to his swing or his approach, however — or before the organization does something drastic — it’s probably worth exploring whether Schwarber’s just hit into a bit (or a lot) of bad luck due, simply, to hitting ’em where they are.

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Bo Bichette is making mincemeat out of lower-level pitching, and not in subtle fashion. The 19-year-old shortstop has a swing designed to smash baseballs into smithereens, and that’s pretty much what he’s done since the Toronto Blue Jays selected him in the second round of last year’s draft. In 283 professional plate appearances, former big-league slugger Dante Bichette’s rapidly rising son is slashing .396/.456/.656.

The damage he did in Rookie ball last year — which led to an 1.182 OPS over 22 games — is largely being replicated in Low-A Lansing. Slotted near the top of a loaded Lugnuts lineup, Bichette is hitting an electric .381/.458/.619, with 18 doubles and six home runs. He leads the Midwest League in all three slash-line categories, as well as in total bases.

Anecdotally speaking, he also tops the circuit in aggressive hacks. When Eric Longenhagen wrote up Bichette in his Blue Jays Top Prospect rankings, he cited “exceptional bat speed and above-average raw power,” but also an “exaggerated leg kick” and hands “noisier than a Dinosaur Jr. concert.” He added that “Toronto may actively be working to quiet things down.”

Somewhat surprisingly, that isn’t the case. With a presumed organizational mindset of “If ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” the precocious youngster is being allowed to continue to do his own thing. I learned as much when I spoke to Bichette, and to Blue Jays farm director Gil Kim, in mid-May.

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On His Aggressive Swing

Bichette: “I’m a really aggressive hitter. I take a big leg kick, and I use everything I have. I’m not the biggest guy out there — I’m 5-11, 190 — so I need all the power I can get. I use my upper body and my lower body. I have a little bit of an inward turn with my upper body, which I think people may see as weird, but everything I do is to generate as much power as I can.”

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It’s June 1st. The Cubs are supposed to be running away with the NL Central right now, like the Astros and Nationals are doing in their divisions. Instead, the defending champs are 25-27, in third place in the NL Central, and only a game up on the rebuilding Reds. For a team that was being hailed as a dynasty in the making, this isn’t how 2017 was supposed to go. So what’s the deal? Why did last year’s juggernaut turn into this year’s mediocrity?

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After talking recently with Daniel Murphy about launch angles and the like, I walked over to one of my brethren in hair Anthony Rendon and asked for some of his time. “I’m probably the worst person to talk to about this,” said the Nationals third baseman, already laughing. “Worst person ever!” added his next door neighbor Trea Turner. “I change strictly off of feel. Trying to talk to me about this launch-angle stuff…” Rendon said, gesturing with a wave towards Murphy. “I’m going off feel.”

That’s fine. For hitters, sometimes the best means to changing mechanically is simply to change the intention and focus on a different part of the field, like Yonder Alonso did. Very specific cues and jargon-laden research? Those are for the heady few.

But Rendon is a little different for another reason. While other batters are swinging for the fences and changing their approach radically, Rendon has achieved more power this year by adjusting in a very subtle way that allows him to make more of his level swing.

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This past Tuesday night against Oakland — just as there have been at other times this season — Trevor Bauer showed glimpses of the bat-missing strikeout artist he can be, the top-of-the rotation potential he’s possessed since departing UCLA with Tim Lincecum-like Pac-12 numbers and starter-kit stuff.

Bauer set a career high with 14 strikeouts against the A’s on Tuesday, and he has a career-high strikeout percentage (29.2%) and strikeout-walk rate differential (22.1 points) this season — nearly doubling his career rate (12.4-point K-BB%) by that measure.

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There was a time, early last season, when an increasing number of people was jumping on the Phillies bandwagon. The team was rebuilding and overachieving, but there were early signs that the front office had assembled a dynamite pitching staff. While the Phillies were the rebuilding team getting the most positive attention, the Reds might’ve been the rebuilding team getting the most negative attention. Rebuilds are rebuilds, and losing teams lose, but the Reds didn’t seem to have anything exciting. The Phillies were a team with possible studs. The Reds were a team with just about nothing to speak of.

As 2016 rolled on, the Phillies dropped off, while the Reds improved. The Phillies had the National League’s worst second-half record. The Reds closed out by playing .500 baseball. And now it’s 2017, and the Phillies continue to struggle. They presently have the worst record out of anyone, while the Reds have been somewhere in the vicinity of average. Suddenly, it’s the Reds who have players to talk about. It’s the Reds who look a little bit promising. They just — well, the season’s been weird. At the same time, the Reds have been very good and very bad.

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Even though the Rays lost on Tuesday, they’re still hanging around, with a higher number of wins than losses. The pitching staff, overall, has been neither good nor bad, which I suppose is what you’d expect from a roughly .500 ballclub. Something a little more surprising might be that the Rays have been baseball’s second-best baserunning team. And even bigger than that, the Rays presently rank fifth in team wRC+, between the Dodgers and the Reds. The Rays have struck out, but they’ve still scored runs, with the team very much a legitimate wild-card contender.

If you want to talk about the Rays offense, you should give some attention to Logan Morrison. Once you’re done doing that, you should give further attention to Steven Souza Jr. And once you’re done doing that, you should give the rest of your attention to Corey Dickerson. Dickerson’s been the best hitter on the team, and he’s also been one of the very best hitters in the league, placing just behind Bryce Harper in wRC+. The Rays have known for a while that Dickerson is a pure and talented hitter, but so far he’s made the most of his skills. We should discuss those skills. Dickerson’s is a highly unusual offensive skillset.

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When Giancarlo Stanton got to the big leagues in 2010, he became the modern-day symbol of the hulking slugger. At 6-foot-6 and 245 pounds, he’s a gigantic human being, and he’s used that strength to hit the baseball like no one else. When he did hit the baseball, anyway. As part of the natural trade-off for his legendary power, Stanton also ran top-of-the-scale strikeout rates. From his debut through 2016, he struck out in 29% of his plate appearances, ranking behind only Chris Davis, Pedro Alvarez, and Mark Reynolds among regulars during that stretch.

The fact that he ranked behind only Jose Bautista in ISO allowed him to remain productive even with the strikeouts, and combined with a lot of walks and regularly high BABIPs, Stanton’s 141 wRC+ from 2010-2016 ranks 7th best in baseball. Stanton was a living example of the ability for elite power to offset contact problems.

But then, last year, that delicate balance seemed to break down. For about a month beginning in mid-May, Stanton struck out in 37 of 80 plate appearances, managing just one home run in the process. He hit .114/.215/.200 during that stretch, and people started openly wondering what happened to the game’s preeminent slugger. Had Stanton’s contact issues finally become too severe? Had the league finally figured him out?

Well, if pitchers had made an adjustment to neutralize the game’s most devastating ball-striker, Stanton apparently decided to adjust himself. And since that miserable month of flailing at everything, he’s become a pretty different hitter than he’d been previously.

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