Despite a strong late-winter effort to beef up their roster by adding big-name free agents Jorge Soler, Matt Chapman, and Blake Snell in February and March, the Giants have stumbled out of the gate. They haven’t even been at .500 since March 31, when they were 2-2, and now they’re 19-24 and in the midst of an unrelenting wave of injuries that has thinned their roster. The most serious is that of Jung Hoo Lee, who dislocated his left shoulder trying to make a run-saving catch in Sunday’s win over the Reds and could be out for several weeks, or even months.

The play occurred in the top of the first inning at Oracle Park, after the Reds loaded the bases against starter Kyle Harrison on a hit-by-pitch, two steals, a throwing error, and a walk. With two outs, Jeimer Candelario hit a high 104-mph drive to deep center field. At the warning track, Lee leaped for the ball, but it bounced off the padding on top of the wall instead of hitting his glove. On his way down, he smacked his left forearm into the padding; his elbow and then his back both hit the chain link fence (!) below the padding, jamming his left shoulder. He went down hard as all three runners scored, and after several minutes on the ground, left the game accompanied by head athletic trainer Dave Groeschner, who held Lee’s arm in place.

Though manager Bob Melvin initially indicated that the 25-year-old center fielder had separated his shoulder, the Giants later clarified that he had dislocated it, indicating a more serious injury. Lee underwent an MRI on Monday, but a more detailed prognosis won’t be known until at least Tuesday after he and the Giants consult with Dr. Ken Akizuki, the team’s orthopedic surgeon. The Giants are hopeful that Lee won’t need surgery, unlike Red Sox shortstop Trevor Story, who on April 5 dislocated his left shoulder while diving for a ball and additionally suffered a fracture of the glenoid rim, an injury that required season-ending surgery. There’s been no report of a fracture yet for Lee, but soft-tissue damage could be another matter.

[Update: Indeed, on Tuesday evening, the Giants confirmed that Lee has suffered structural damage in his shoulder. He will get a second opinion from Dr. Neal ElAttrache in Los Angeles on Thursday, indicating that surgery is a possibility.] Read the rest of this entry »

There’s no way to say this without sounding snarky, so I’m not going to try: The Oakland A’s, who were supposed to be abysmal, have shocked the baseball world by being merely mediocre. They’re in third place in the AL West, with a full series’ worth of buffer between them and their pursuers. The Angels are suffering the mother of all post-breakup hangovers, and it appears that the Astros have finally been caught by Mephistopheles. Reports say a sinister-looking goateed man has been seen pounding on the door to Minute Maid Park, saying, “I gave you your two World Series, now I’m here for your soul!”

Nothing gold can stay.

The key — or at least one key — to Oakland’s surprising ascent to averageness has been a superb bullpen. Closer Mason Miller has grabbed most of the headlines; some people are saying he’s the best reliever in baseball now. I don’t know if that assertion will hold up over a full season, but the hyperbole will continue until the FIP doesn’t start with a minus sign.

Miller’s emergence has sucked up all the air in the room — insofar as there was ever a ton of air in the room for discussing Oakland’s bullpen — to the detriment of his teammates. So I wanted to highlight Lucas Erceg, who’s been very good this season, and is also kind of weird.

The first thing to know about Erceg is that he was, until very recently, a third baseman. As a sophomore at Cal, Erceg hit .303/.357/.502 with 11 home runs in 57 games, but was ruled academically ineligible the following season, which kicked off a circuitous path to the majors. First: A year at NAIA Menlo College, alma mater of former MLB… standout is probably too strong a word, even if he won a World Series and made an All-Star team… Gino Cimoli. Erceg went in the second round to Milwaukee, becoming Menlo’s highest draft pick ever in the process, and slowly worked his way through the minors with a series of unremarkable batting lines.

In 2021, the Brewers gave Erceg, who’d pitched occasionally at Cal, a shot as a reliever, and by that summer he was good enough to get an honorable mention on Milwaukee’s prospect list. (Even if it was only one sentence in a section labeled “Arm Strength.”)

In 2023, the A’s — who have had some success with converting college infielders into relief pitchers, or who at least brought Sean Doolittle through — purchased Erceg from Milwaukee. This furthers my long-held belief that everyone who plays for the Brewers will one day play for the A’s, and vice-versa. We’d save a lot of hassle by merging the two franchises and having them play on a barnstorming circuit called the John Jaha Highway.

But I digress.

Erceg’s surface stats look pretty pedestrian right now, but about half of his 3.38 ERA comes from one three-run blown save against the Rangers on May 6. At the end of April, he was on a run of nine consecutive scoreless appearances, the last eight of which were also hitless. It’s not as impressive as a hidden perfect game, but Erceg did throw a hidden no-hitter (with 13 strikeouts and three walks on 120 pitches) from April 11 to April 30. I regret not getting to this topic two weeks ago, because I would’ve hammered the “more like Lucas Goose-egg” joke until you all started sending me rotten vegetables in the mail.

Puns and unusual development plan withstanding, there are two things I want to highlight about Erceg: His unusual repertoire and the significant step forward he’s made in missing bats from last year to this year.

As you might expect from a conversion project, there are elements of Erceg’s game that might be considered crude. He’s a hard-throwing one-inning reliever, to start, and even after taking a substantial step forward in this department, his walk rate this year is 11.9%. That’s in the “survivable, but not ideal” bucket for a pitcher, even a reliever.

Nevertheless, Erceg has a legitimate four-pitch repertoire. And this isn’t some fastball-slider guy who has a show-me curveball and a changeup he occasionally throws to opposite-handed batters. He throws four pitches between 18.9% and 30.5% of the time, and while he has specialist offerings to both righties and lefties, he throws his four-seamer and slider against everyone, giving him a three-pitch repertoire against any opponent.

There are 15 pitchers this year who qualify for Baseball Savant’s leaderboards, throw at least four pitches 15% of the time, and have no more than a 20-percentage point spread between their most-used pitch and their least-used pitch. (Erceg’s spread is 11.6 percentage points, the third-lowest of his cohort.) Of those 15 pitchers, 10 have thrown most or all of this season out of the rotation. That makes sense, because the more times a pitcher goes through the lineup, the more pitches he needs.

Here are the five relievers, with the number of pitches they throw, the spread between their highest and lowest pitch usage rate, and the average velocity of their hardest fastball. (Hardest, because all five of these pitchers throw at least two types of fastballs.)

These guys aren’t soft-tossers — Brent Suter came up in the net I originally cast before I narrowed the parameters some — but Erceg is on a different planet, velocity-wise. His changeup is averaging 91.4 mph, which is just 0.3 mph slower than Farmer’s sinker. That changeup is getting knocked around — five of the seven extra-base hits Erceg has allowed this season have come off the changeup, including his only home run — but it’s also missing bats at a rate of 37.5%.

In fact, I’m going to combine arbitrary-endpoint theater and small-sample-size theater to give you a fun fact: Through the weekend, only three pitchers in baseball were running whiff rates of at least 28% on four different pitches they’d thrown at least 49 times: Zack Wheeler, Pablo López, and Erceg.

Now to the really fun part. Erceg has experienced a massive uptick in chase rate, from 23.2% to 31.0%, while at the same time lowering his in-zone swing rate from 62.9% to 56.1% and his in-zone contact rate from 79.3% to 67.2%.

In other words, hitters are swinging less at pitches in the zone, and when they swing they’re not making as much contact. And simultaneously they’re chasing pitches a third more than they did last year. It’s not immediately clear to me why this is happening; Erceg’s in-zone rate is down a couple percentage points, and while his overall opponent swing rate is up, it’s by about two swings at this point in the season. That’s nothing.

As with any reliever performance before the All-Star break, it bears monitoring before we start to count on it going forward. But for now, Erceg is getting whiffs on four different pitches, and is one of the best relievers in baseball both at missing bats and avoiding hard contact. Not bad for a converted infielder, and at best the second-most important reliever on the Oakland A’s.

The Angels haven’t had a whole lot to cheer about this season aside from Mike Trout’s power outburst before he suffered his knee injury. They’re 15-26, last in the AL West, and given both their lackluster offense and dreadful run prevention, they appear on track for their ninth consecutive sub-.500 season. Amid that, one positive development worth noting is the progress of Jo Adell, who looks as though he’s finally carved out a spot in the majors.

The 25-year-old Adell recently homered three times in a four-game span, and none of them were cheapies. Last Wednesday against the Pirates, he hit a Martín Pérez cutter 407 feet to center field, a third-inning solo homer that kicked off the scoring in a 5-4 win. On Friday against the Royals, he crushed an Alec Marsh sinker, sending it 436 feet into the Angel Stadium rockpile; alas, that was the Halos’ only run in a 2-1 loss. On Saturday he destroyed a Cole Ragans slider for a 419-foot three-run homer that led to a 9-3 win.

Adell is now hitting .255/.314/.532 (134 wRC+) with seven homers and seven steals in 105 plate appearances. While those slash stats aren’t as eye-catching as the .316/.365/.614 (171 wRC+) that he posted in April, his recent outburst has followed an 0-for-16 skid that could have sent him into a deeper slide or worse, the bench or Triple-A. What’s more, Adell now has enough plate appearances and batted ball events for several of his key stats to have stabilized, which should hopefully make this check-in more illuminating. Read the rest of this entry »

Less than a year after being drafted first overall, Paul Skenes made his first major league start for the Pirates. On Saturday, nearly 35,000 fans packed the stands at PNC Park in Pittsburgh for the occasion, hoping to get the first glimpse of a new era for the long-struggling home team. It was impossible not to draw comparisons to Stephen Strasburg’s debut in 2010, a masterpiece in which he struck out 14 batters, coincidentally against the Pirates. Perhaps no pitching prospect in history has come with the same hype that Strasburg did as he ascended through the minors, but the buzz surrounding Skenes comes close. Let’s see how he began his big league career.

Even those who haven’t read the full scouting report on Skenes know that he throws incredibly hard, and he needed just one pitch to associate himself with triple-digit Trackman readings. While he’s averaged 99 mph during his (mostly abbreviated) minor league starts over the past month, Skenes opened up the game with 101 mph heat and sat at 100 throughout the start. He threw mostly fastballs to leadoff hitter Mike Tauchman, save for a slider that missed outside. After reaching full count, Skenes collected his first strikeout in style.

Prior to Saturday, no starting pitcher in 2024 had thrown a pitch at 101 or higher. Skenes did so six times before his debut was over. While velocity might be the best known part of his game, Skenes has developed a deep arsenal of pitches, the newest of which he put to work against the next batter, Seiya Suzuki.

This splitter-sinker hybrid, or “splinker,” is a pitch with few comparisons; only Jhoan Duran and José Soriano throw any offering remotely similar. It feels impossible to throw in the mid-90s while simultaneously killing enough spin to give the pitch a negative induced vertical break, but Skenes rips these off with ease. He tends to use this pitch as more of a sinker than an offspeed offering (after all, it averages 95 mph), deploying it mostly against right-handed hitters while saving his lesser-used, upper-80s changeup for lefties. Suzuki could only watch the splinker go by. He couldn’t do much more with the next two pitches he saw, either. Let’s play them back to back.

First, Skenes claimed strike two with the harder version of his slider. After seeing something that broke a foot toward him, Suzuki flinched a bit at a that pitch, which ended up solidly in the zone. Well ahead in the count now, Skenes went in for the kill. This sweeping slider was his most-used pitch against righties in his start, featuring 15 inches of gloveside break. Moreover, because Skenes releases the ball so far on the third base side of the mound, it approaches the plate at a more extreme angle and makes it even more difficult to hit. All Suzuki could do was flail at it for strike three.

Skenes finished his first three innings of work without allowing any runs, though he issued two walks and hit a batter. At times, he struggled to find his release, finishing late with the fastball and ending up with a clump of misses below the zone to the gloveside. He also threw a sizable number down the heart of the plate, and Cubs hitters squared up a trio of them. With his slider, he would sometimes release early and cause the pitch to back up over the plate, but the few that he landed on the outside corner, mainly of the sweeper variation, were among his best pitches of the day.

While Skenes certainly has room to grow with his fastball and slider command, he threw his splinker with remarkable accuracy and consistency throughout his start. With the exception of the pitch that hit Nico Hoerner, Skenes’ splinkers lived at the bottom of the zone or right below it; that’s especially impressive considering he’s been throwing that pitch for only a couple months. Spotting it on the edges of the zone makes it so challenging for hitters to decide whether to swing, let alone make contact if they do. The pitch led Skenes’ arsenal with a 55% chase rate, 53% CSW, and seven swinging strikes, including these two to Ian Happ to start the fourth inning.

After dispatching Happ with a fastball, Hoerner stepped up for his second plate appearance. He quickly exacted his revenge for the second-inning plunk, pulling a first-pitch slider left over the middle for a home run that barely cleared the left field fence. Many gyro sliders feature late downward break, but unlike those thrown by the likes of Jeff Hoffman and Dylan Cease, Skenes’ has a few inches of rise compared to a ball thrown without spin. Without the downward bite, batters have an easier time barreling it up when he doesn’t locate it well. That’s what happened with the slider to Hoerner, who easily kept his swing on its plane and hooked the pitch out of the yard because it didn’t dive low and away from him. In his report, Eric Longenhagen explained that Skenes’ low arm slot is a likely cause of this pitch shape, as Skenes tends to get around the side of the ball instead of imparting motion on the vertical axis.

Skenes recovered nicely from the blemish on his line, fanning two more Cubs to put his total at seven through four innings. He had thrown 74 pitches, one shy of his season high in Triple-A. Had his day ended here, I think most would have been satisfied with what they saw – a dominant yet imperfect performance that gave a rosy glimpse into the future. But his start wasn’t over yet.

Much of what I’ve written about here explains why things happened. Skenes overwhelmed hitters with his fastball because he threw it so hard. He had success with his splinker because he located it so well. He gave up a homer with his slider because he hung it up in the zone. But I have no rational explanation for what happened next. Skenes, on a short leash, was pulled quickly after ground balls from Tauchman and Suzuki found just the right holes to end up as hits. Kyle Nicolas entered the game in relief, quickly striking out the next two batters before hitting the third. With two outs and the bases loaded, he proceeded to throw 12 consecutive balls, allowing a trio of runs to score, two of which were charged to Skenes. But even as Nicolas was removed from the game, the inning was far from over. Josh Fleming and Colin Holderman combined to walk in three more runs before the inning’s merciful conclusion, which took nearly three hours thanks to a rain delay.

Skenes, in a rather unfortunate feat, tripled his ERA while sitting on the bench. But he certainly gave a lot to be excited about while on the mound. Despite having just 34 minor league innings under his belt, he is certainly a different pitcher than he was this time last year at LSU. Most notably, he has expanded and diversified his arsenal considerably, and while some wondered whether he would have a viable third pitch in the majors, he showed off a six-pitch arsenal in his first career game.

We still talk about Strasburg’s debut 14 years after it happened, not only because of the incredible results but because of what he meant for the future of the Nationals franchise. Soon after, Strasburg was joined by other homegrown talents like Bryce Harper and Anthony Rendon, and much later, Juan Soto. Washington won a World Series after a decade of contention, and Strasburg was the series MVP. What Skenes brings to Pittsburgh is no different, with his call-up carrying the optimism that he would be one of a new wave of young talents who’d come to reverse the fortunes of a team and city. Skenes didn’t have the legendary debut performance that Strasburg did, but he certainly pitched well enough to keep that hope alive.

Your local beat reporter has the power to shape the way you see your favorite team. Day in and day out, it’s their voice delivering the good news and the bad, telling you what’s happening on the field and in the locker room. If you’re lucky enough to love a team with a good beat writer, it can absolutely deepen your relationship with the sport. A reporter might become required reading because they write beautifully, make you laugh, really know the game, ask good questions, or build great relationships with the players. If you don’t have a good beat writer, it’s easier to drift away from the team, and even the sport. They matter quite a bit, is what I’m saying. Despite that fact, beat reporters are rarely the focus. For all they mean to us, we don’t even see their faces all that often. Most of the time, all we see of a beat reporter is a disembodied hand holding a recording device (or, as in the picture below, the very tip of their nose).

It’s a complicated job. It requires knowledge of the game, constant creativity, tight deadlines, long hours, travel, and the ability to forge good relationships with players despite the fact that you sometimes have to stick a recorder in their face and ask, “So what was going through your mind when you made the error that cost your team the game?” In order to learn more about what the job actually entails, I reached out to Andrew Golden, who took over as the Washington Post’s lead beat writer covering the Nationals this season and has been on the beat for a few years.

Although he’s barely three years out of college, Golden’s credentials are imposing. In high school, he played baseball and wrote about sports for the school paper and for a blog he ran with some friends. He double-majored in journalism and African American studies at Northwestern, where he covered sports for the student newspaper, the Daily Northwestern, earning internships at the Kansas City Star, Chicago Tribune, and Washington Post. The Post internship came immediately after graduation, and he was hired full-time when it ended. Golden had spent three months covering the Washington Commanders and another three covering various sports when an editor asked him if he’d like to cover the Nationals, working with the lead beat writer at the time, Jesse Dougherty.

“I always loved baseball,” he told me. “It’s my first love, and so l hoped at some point I could cover it. I just didn’t think it would happen the way that it did.” He joined the club during the last week of Spring Training in 2022. “To go from helping out with Navy basketball coverage to then suddenly you’re in the clubhouse and you see Juan Soto and Josh Bell, it was very much a culture shock… I don’t think I talked to Juan Soto for the first month, I was so starstruck.” When I spoke to Golden last week, he took me through the nuts and bolts of the job, and humored me when I asked questions like whether it was possible for a beat reporter to be an introvert.

For Golden, 24, a normal day on the beat starts at 9 a.m., earlier if it’s a Sunday. The first thing he does is go over the previous day’s game. “I typically like to look back at the night before and see the big trends,” he said. “Obviously, when you’re writing on deadline, there are certain things that you might miss because you need to type or something happened in the late innings that maybe you missed. So I typically like to go back and look at the night prior and do some studying… I go back and look at Baseball Savant. Does anything stand out? Did this pitcher utilize one pitch more than he normally does? Those sorts of things. What trends did I miss?” He’ll also catch up on the previous day’s news at each level of Washington’s farm system and read whatever might have been written about the Nationals or their players from other news outlets. For the first of several times throughout the day, he’ll consult with his editors about what he’s working on now and what he might work on next.

Most importantly, he’ll research and write. In addition to writing game stories, beat reporters write everything from statistical deep dives to profiles of coaches and players to breaking news about the business side of the game. At 5:12 on Friday morning, the Post published an article Golden wrote about how Trevor Williams has succeeded by using his four-seamer less often. On the day we spoke, he mentioned that he was researching Luis García Jr.’s recent success at the plate. If all that sounds like a lot, well, it is. Later in the interview, I had to circle back and make sure that I understood the logistics of, specifically, at what point of the day Golden has time to do normal person things like go to the store. The answer: whenever he finishes all of the work above. “I get normal things done,” he laughed. “There is that free time, that flexibility during the morning, definitely. I promise I have groceries in my fridge.” For that reason, he dreads 4:00 p.m. games, which don’t leave time to do anything either before or afterward. “I love 1 o’clock games or 7. You know you’re going to have the front or the back end free, but 4 o’clock is right smack in the middle.”

It’s not always feasible, but for a typical 7 p.m. game, Golden prefers to get to the ballpark at 1:45. The clubhouse opens to reporters at 3, and until then he writes down questions he’d like to ask and keeps an eye on the field. “I like to be there early. Sometimes you’ll see a guy on the field doing something and it might pique your interest.” At 3, he goes down from the press box to the clubhouse. “It’s open for 45, 50 minutes, so that’s your time to talk to players, talk to front office people if they’re there, talk to whoever’s around.” Reporters are only allowed in certain parts of the clubhouse. Places like the kitchen, training room, and bathroom are off limits. Some parts Golden has never seen even once. “There’s two sections,” he said, “an office area and a coaches’ locker room area where we’re not really allowed. And there’s a back section we’re not allowed either, and I truly can’t tell you what’s back there.” Manager Davey Martinez talks to reporters at 4, and after that reporters go on the field to watch batting practice.

Lane Thomas taking swings in the final round of BP: https://t.co/asTCGf2Jih pic.twitter.com/s4WXkXN5F5

— Andrew Golden (@andrewcgolden) May 7, 2024

“You can still get players then if you want,” he explained. “If you can grab them coming off the field, that sort of thing. That’s typically when I like to talk to Darnell Coles, the hitting coach. The hitting coach is really busy, but I always know that he has to come off the field and walk past me, so I can get him when he’s coming off the field.” Golden laughed as he said the last part, but he explained that learning each player’s routines and figuring out how to be in the right place at the right time is actually a crucial part of the job. “I think that’s one of the things about the beat that people don’t realize. There’s definitely a rhythm to how things go. You know the relievers will always be around because they’re not doing a ton of prep work before the game… But starting pitchers are rarely around because they’re obviously going through their whole routine to get ready. And the hitters are kind of hit or miss. It depends on when they go to the cage and what their routine is. That’s one thing I didn’t know early on, like, ‘Oh, I want to talk to Josiah Gray.’ And Josiah was figuring out his routine and going through his stuff, and I was like, ‘Man, why is he never here?’ You have to kind of give these guys these moments and try to figure out what their routines are, and you build around that.”

Once batting practice is over, reporters return to the press box to eat dinner before the game. For a night game, Golden’s 700- to 800-word game story is due when the final out is recorded, which means that he’s taking notes and writing throughout the game, then rewriting when new developments come up. “That was an adjustment too,” said Golden. “When do you start writing? Because obviously things can change. If somebody hits a go-ahead home run in the eighth inning, it can completely flip your story… Sometimes it just takes time to kind of develop that muscle and learn how to do that. I think that was a struggle at first, but then it starts to get a little bit easier, it starts to come to you a little more naturally.” Many beat writers also tweet the play-by-play throughout the game. Here’s a sample of Golden’s Twitter feed during last Wednesday night’s 12-inning affair between the Nationals and Orioles. Luckily for him, colleague Spencer Nusbaum was in charge of the game story that night.

As soon as their stories have been filed, reporters head back down to the clubhouse to hear from players and coaches again. “While we’re down there, our editors are editing the story,” said Golden. “And then we’ll come back up, and then we’ll add quotes in, and that’ll be the final story. So it’s probably an hour between when I file the first one and the second one.” At that point, the reporters finally get to go home or to their hotel, unless it’s getaway day. Golden generally prefers to go straight from the ballpark to the airport so that the next day, he can wake up in the city where he’ll be covering the game. I stammered a bit after Golden finished walking me through a normal day on the beat. It was a lot to take in. “So, so that’s — I mean, that’s a long day,” I said. “Yeah,” he said, laughing. “It is a grind. I’m sure people kind of know that, but I don’t think they know the extent. I mean, I have friends who are like, ‘Well, the game starts at 7. Don’t you get there at like 5:30?’”

It’s a grueling job: a month away from home during spring training, then a six-month-long season of days like the one described above, half of them on the road, with few days off. Knowing that, I asked Golden whether my impression of the beat writer demographic was correct. I’d noticed that beat writers tend to be either very young reporters or veterans who have been doing it forever because they’ve found a way to balance the lifestyle. “Yeah, that’s absolutely correct, at least from what I’ve seen,” he said. “I remember somebody telling me when I started, ‘Yeah, this is a job that you have when you’re single and have no kids’… You do it when you’re young, because it’s easier to manage a 162-game season when you don’t have all those other responsibilities, families, all that stuff.”

Golden recently got engaged, and the quirks of his job have been a part of the relationship from the very beginning. His first date with his now-fiancée was supposed to take place on the first Sunday of October 2022, but the Nationals and the Phillies needed to play four games in three days, all of them rain-soaked because a hurricane was bearing down on the east coast. Golden was texting her throughout the weekend, trying to explain the scheduling and scoring arcana that would determine whether he could make it or whether they’d need to reschedule. “It’s hard to explain how ridiculous it is. I’m trying to explain to her… we just have to get to the fifth inning and then we’re good. She’s like, ‘Why do you only need to get through half a game?’ There are so many things about baseball that we think are so normal that actually are not normal to normal people.” To make the grind more manageable, he now sends his parents and his fiancée an email every month with his entire travel itinerary, down to the flight numbers and hotels.

Golden mentioned another challenge to working the beat for an extended period of time: finding new ways to tell the same story. “I think when you first get started on the beat, everything feels new,” he said. “Coming up with ideas can be challenging when you’ve written stuff before. Trying to think, ‘How can I make this new?’ or ‘How can I make this different from before?’” As with any job, some days are harder than others. “There are some days where you just don’t have it. There’s just some days where you’re tired, you just got off a plane this morning and you drove to the stadium. And it’s day eight of a road trip and you’re like, ‘Man, I just don’t have it today.’ Those days definitely happen.”

All of this makes Golden more impressed by the veterans who have been doing it for years and years. “There are people who do balance both and who do this for a very long time. Mad props to them for that,” he said. “I can imagine trying to balance all those things, but it definitely is either younger people or people who have been doing this like 40 years and really know the business, know everybody in the business, and know the organization. The people who have institutional knowledge, it’s really interesting. One of our beat reporters is Mark Zuckerman [of MASN]. He’s been covering the team since 2005. He has an institutional knowledge that I just don’t have.”

He’s freezing https://t.co/ay0BgrIPUB pic.twitter.com/mXA6lMTx7B

— Spencer Nusbaum (@spencernusbaum_) March 26, 2024

That brought us to another important part of the job: Beat writers need to develop relationships with the people they’re covering. I asked Golden whether he has an easier time talking to players now than he did when he first started. “Definitely, yeah,” he said. “When you first join the beat there is a bit of — it’s not discomfort, but — I guess discomfort is the right word. They don’t really know you, you don’t really know them, and now you’re developing trust with them.” The most important thing is putting in the time, especially on road trips. “When you travel, and they realize that you’re traveling with them a lot and they see you on the road a lot, you’re going through the ride with them. I think they start to respect you more and they start to open up more, because they also understand you are going to be around.” Traveling and befriending writers in other cities has also made that easier. For example, when the Nationals signed Eddie Rosario, Golden asked Justin Toscano, who covered Rosario for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, for advice on how to connect with him. He also traded notes about Jeimer Candelario and Nick Senzel with Charlie Goldsmith of the Cincinnati Enquirer, which was easy because Goldsmith also happened to be Golden’s college roommate.

Golden mentioned several other ways to build trust with players. When they see you keep your word about not printing off-the-record comments, they start to trust that you’re not there to make them look bad. Similarly, they appreciate when a writer strikes the right balance when someone’s struggling. Some of the Nationals follow Golden on social media, where it is sometimes his job to talk about what’s going wrong with the team. “It can be a little bit awkward having to go to guys and be like, ‘Hey man, what happened there? Why’d you make that mistake?’ Or, ‘What was going through your mind?’ It can be awkward, uncomfortable. Nobody wants to ask about failures.” Managing to tell the truth respectfully makes a difference. “As long as you’re fair, and you’re not attacking them personally, I think people can respect that… I think a lot of times, people think the players will get upset if you say something negative. But I also think if you pretend like everything is positive and going well, I think they get upset with that too. Where the guy is 2-for-40 in his last 10 games, and you’re like, ‘What do you think you’re doing well at the plate right now?’ And they don’t want to hear that… You don’t want to personally attack somebody or say something negative about them as a person. But I also do think there’s a balance. You want to be honest with where they’re at. And if they get upset with your honesty, you have to live with that.”

Toward the end of the conversation, I asked Golden what people might not understand about his job. He mentioned the hours and the various unseen aspects, but he also talked about the perspective that comes from doing it day in and day out, and the way that all of his research allows him to ask the right questions. “Having to know the ins and outs of the team, and thinking critically about every roster move. What does this mean? Even just now, Robert Garcia just returned from a rehab assignment, and then Matt Barnes got DFA’d. And what does it mean? What does it mean for Tanner Rainey? I think my first year, I was not thinking like that. Now, your brain naturally goes like that. It’s an odd thought, like, ‘Man, my brain moves like this now?’ But there’s a lot of thought that goes into this.”

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.

Matt Olson’s streak of consecutive games played is expected to hit 500 on Saturday against the Padres, but he’s far from the only iron man in Atlanta this season. Third baseman Austin Riley, center fielder Michael Harris II, right fielder Ronald Acuña Jr., and designated hitter Marcell Ozuna have started every Braves game at their respective positions, and Orlando Arcia has started 36 of 37 games at shortstop. Second baseman Ozzie Albies would’ve been in the Never Takes A Day Off club, too, if he hadn’t missed eight games with a broken toe — yes, only eight games.

All told, except for catcher and left field (where Jarred Kelenic and Adam Duvall platoon), the remaining seven positions have had 259 starting opportunities (seven positions times 37 games), with only nine of them going to backups: six for Luis Guillorme (five at second and one at shortstop) and three for David Fletcher at second base. But that lack of playing time hasn’t stopped the Braves from shuffling players into and out of the two bench spots not occupied by one of the two left fielders and backup catcher Chadwick Tromp. (Starting catcher Sean Murphy has not played since Opening Day, when he strained his oblique; while Travis d’Arnaud, an All-Star catcher in his own right, has started 24 games behind the dish.)

Atlanta signed Guillorme to a $1.1 million contract in the offseason, a move that seemed to assure him a spot for the entirety of the season, even though he didn’t fit the roster perfectly. (Guillorme doesn’t have the speed to be a pinch-running threat, for example.) With all those bulletproof starters, the Braves didn’t really need him to do much of anything; he’d be there in case of an emergency because he could play any of the four infield positions. However, it turns out the Braves really didn’t need him, as Guillorme is now a member of the Angels. Outfielder Forrest Wall, who occupied the last bench spot on Opening Day (along with Guillorme, Duvall, and d’Arnaud), is now back in Triple-A.

In all, the two bench spots that don’t belong to a catcher or a left fielder have been occupied by five players this season: Wall, Guillorme, Fletcher, Luke Williams, and Zack Short, who was acquired from the Red Sox ahead of the Guillorme trade. Currently, the two rotating members of the ghost bench are Short and Williams. Those five have combined for just 34 plate appearances across 21 games, with Atlanta sticking to its brand of having its everyday players be exactly that.

Of course, after I filed this column, the Braves lifted Riley from last night’s 4-3 loss to the Mets with what Atlanta announced was “left side tightness.” As of now, it’s unclear whether Riley will be in the lineup tonight against the Cubs, but the Braves said his exit was precautionary, so the discomfort — for now it feels too early to call it an injury — doesn’t seem to be serious.

3B Austin Riley was removed from tonight’s game as a precaution with left side tightness.

— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) May 13, 2024

During this era of load management, teams stress the importance of having a deep bench, but that just doesn’t seem to be necessary for the Braves. Indeed, one of the main reasons the Braves have been so good these last few years is their most talented position players have also been their most durable.

Christian Scott Looks Legit

Christian Scott has acclimated himself quite nicely to the big leagues in his first two starts with the Mets. In his debut on May 4, he pitched six innings of one-run ball against the Rays. He followed that up with eight strikeouts in Saturday’s quality start against the aforementioned tough and durable Braves lineup. The Mets lost both starts, though, providing Scott with one run of support in each game.

Scott, who entered the season ranked no. 98 on our Top 100 Prospects list, was heralded coming up through the minors for having a fastball that — as Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin wrote — “jumps on hitters,” though that’s been his least impressive pitch thus far. He has demonstrated the promise of the pitch getting opponents to whiff on 37% of their swings against it, but it has been inconsistent, as batters have also piled up nine hits off the heater, including a home run. That actually portends well for Scott since it shows that he can get by on more than just his signature pitch. He also has two devastating breaking balls that, along with his fastball, could make him a capable member of the next great Mets rotation.

Weekend Wrap Up

Let’s run through some things that stood out to me this weekend:

• Tyler Glasnow and Michael King had a pitcher’s duel for the ages on Friday. Each starter threw seven innings: Glasnow allowed just one run on one hit (a solo homer to Luis Campusano) and struck out 10; King didn’t give up a run and struck out 11, surrendering just two hits. The homer kept the game at 1-0 until the top of the eighth, when Yuki Matsui coughed up the lead on a Freddie Freeman sac fly. Ultimately, Luis Arraez delivered the victory with a walk-off hit in his first home game with the Padres; he’s helped to lengthen the lineup in a big way, mostly as San Diego’s DH.

• Jo Adell kept his hot streak going over the weekend. His Saturday homer was his third in four games, and his wRC+ is now 134. With Mike Trout on the shelf and Taylor Ward scuffling, Adell is the only Angel I’d be particularly afraid to pitch to right now, and yet he remains in the seventh spot in the lineup. That rigidity for the sake of comfort feels unwise.

• We’ll have more on Paul Skenes’ debut later on today, but my general take on his outing is that he looked good! Surprising for the top pitching prospect in the sport, I know. The command definitely came and went, but the stuff looked like it can get anybody out, and I think his splinker will prove to be his best pitch, especially at neutralizing lefties. Skenes allowed three runs over four-plus innings, though two of those runs came in after he was removed with runners on first and third and nobody out in the fifth. He finished with six hits, including a home run to Nico Hoerner, two walks, and seven strikeouts.

As hyped and box-score-filling as Skenes’ outing was, it was far from the most interesting thing about that game. Once Skenes departed, the Pirates issued six (!!!) bases-loaded walks in the fifth inning, with a long rain delay in the middle of all the chaos. Despite that ignominious relief-pitching performance, the Pirates still won, 10-9, thanks to five homers.

Blade Tidwell has a five-pitch arsenal and a future on a big-league mound. Two years removed from being drafted 52nd-overall out of the University of Tennessee, the 22-year-old right-hander ranks among the top prospects in the New York Mets organization. “An old school power pitcher” in the words of our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen, Tidwell has made six appearances for the Double-A Binghamton Rumble Ponies this year and has a 2.59 ERA, a 1.85 FIP, and 38 strikeouts in 31-and-a-third innings.

He’s developed a good understanding of his pitch metrics, a process that began when he was playing with Team USA following his 2021 freshman season at UT. Tidwell “started studying analytics” on his own, and would often discuss the subject with fellow Mets prospect Drew Gilbert, his roommate that summer. He subsequently “didn’t dabble too much into it” during his sophomore year — the Columbia, Tennessee native played just two collegiate seasons due to the pandemic — but that changed after he signed a professional contract. There was a lot more to learn… and to improve upon.

His four-seamer, which sits 94-96 mph and tops out at 98, has grown meaningfully since his amateur days. The 6-foot-4 righty got “around 14-15 inches” of ride in college, and now he gets “around 19 inches on a good day.”

Janzen Blade Tidwell — his father picked his middle name, his mother his first name — also gets good movement on his sweeper. Moreover, he can massage the movement by upping or lowing velocity. Read the rest of this entry »

The best pitching prospect in baseball, 21-year-old Pittsburgh Pirates righty Paul Skenes, is slated to be called up tomorrow to make his major league debut against the Cubs. The 6-foot-6 leviathan has a 0.99 ERA in seven Triple-A starts this year and has struck out 42.9% of the hitters he’s faced across 27 1/3 innings. He’s a ready-made front-of-the-rotation starter, a Herculean physical presence with even bigger stuff, and perhaps the most important part of an increasingly promising situation in Pittsburgh, a city with three baseball playoff appearances over the last 30 years. Read the rest of this entry »

Willson Contreras’ tenure with the Cardinals has not lacked for drama, controversy, or interruptions in his work behind the plate. Unfortunately, the latest chapter in that saga began on Tuesday, when a J.D. Martinez swing fractured the 31-year-old catcher’s left forearm. After undergoing surgery on Wednesday, he’s likely to be out until around the All-Star break, leaving the struggling Cardinals to right their season without their most productive hitter.

The injury took place during the top of the second inning of Tuesday’s Mets-Cardinals game. With one out and nobody on base, Martinez swung at a 2-1 slider from Miles Mikolas and connected squarely with Contreras’ forearm “like a lumberjack taking a hack at a sequoia tree,” as Cardinals broadcaster Brad Thompson said. Conteras went down immediately and then began flailing around in obvious pain before being tended to by the Cardinals’ staff. Adding insult to injury, Martinez was awarded first base due to catcher’s interference. Here’s the video, which is not for the faint of heart:

X-rays taken at the ballpark confirmed the fracture, and while the Cardinals have not revealed whether it was Contreras’ radius or ulna that broke, Under the Knife’s Will Carroll reported that he did have a plate inserted because the bone was slightly out of alignment. It is worth noting that in the immediate aftermath of the injury, Contreras said he was told he’d be out six to eight weeks, but that estimate has since been revised upward to 10 weeks, which would put his return right after the All-Star break. Read the rest of this entry »

Among the crowd of high-end starting pitchers to sign with new teams over the offseason, perhaps none had wider error bars surrounding his projection than Shota Imanaga. An NPB star for the past half-decade, Imanaga had a track record of success but also many questions about how his skills would translate to MLB. This certainly is reflected in his contract with the Cubs, which came with just two guaranteed years worth $23 million, a far cry from our $88 million estimate. But for the past month and change, the 30-year old rookie has been up there with the league’s best.

Through his first seven starts, Imanaga has allowed just five earned runs, fewest among qualified pitchers. He’s been downright dominant through much of this stretch, proving his stuff is up to major league standards while controlling the strike zone better than almost anyone else. But he’s done so differently than other top pitching talents. Let’s take a look at his pitch arsenal.

From a quick glance at the stat sheet, the first thing that catches my eye is the sheer frequency with which Imanaga uses his fastball. In an era where nearly two-thirds of starters throw non-fastballs a majority of the time, Imanaga’s 58.4% usage (91st percentile) stands out. As pointed out by MLB.com’s David Adler, Imanaga’s heater has been the best individual pitch in baseball by run value, beating out Corbin Burnes’ notorious cutter Tyler Glasnow’s frightening fastball. But while the other heaters at the top of this list sit in the mid- to upper-90s, Imanaga’s four-seamer averages just 92 mph.

The list of starters who sit at 92 or below is rather short, and mostly consists of names that we certainly don’t think of as strikeout artists. In his piece, Adler noted that Imanaga’s fastball has elite induced vertical break (IVB). But carry alone doesn’t always make a fastball effective; Triston McKenzie’s four-seamer, which currently leads the league in fastball IVB, has the highest xwOBA allowed of any such pitch (min. 50 plate appearances). Rather, what makes Imanaga’s offering so special is its plus movement in combination with its ultra-low release point.

Pitchers like McKenzie and Ross Stripling throw from high, over-the-top arm slots, making their backspin (and thus vertical movement) predictable for hitters. In contrast, Imanaga’s delivery from a low three-quarters slot creates a movement profile much different than what you’d expect from his arm angle. Earlier this week, Michael Rosen broke down the biomechanics of Imanaga’s ability to spin the ball so well from an outlier release point, showing how his hip and lower-body flexibility enable him to “get behind” the ball and create backspin. Throughout the league, no starter gets a higher IVB than Imanaga does from such a low release point – those throwing from lower slots are primarily sidearmers whose deliveries generate run at the expense of carry, while the only two hurlers with more IVB (min. 250 four-seamers), McKenzie and Tyler Anderson, have release points about a foot higher.

Because of its low release point and high carry, Imanaga’s four-seamer has the third-shallowest vertical approach angle in baseball, creating the deception that causes batters to swing under it with surprising frequency. Its 12.5% swinging strike rate and 22.1% putaway rate easily exceed the league averages of 10.3% and 17.9%, respectively, as he’s able to throw it for a whiff in any count.

Imanaga gets more fastball whiffs than most, but his swinging strike rate with the pitch is a far cry from Jared Jones’ league-leading 20.1%. To be the most valuable pitch in baseball, Imanaga’s fastball has to work even when he’s not blowing it past hitters. And at first glance, you might think that a low-90s heater that lives in the zone would get sent a long way when batters connect with it. Indeed, homers were the one knock on Imanaga’s game in NPB, as his 2.9% homer rate (1.04 HR/9) last year was highest in the league in a deadened offensive environment. But he’s allowed just three homers across his seven MLB starts, and the Statcast data indicate this low total is more a product of skill than luck.

I’m not saying that a 0.65 HR/9 represents Imanaga’s true talent (ZiPS forecasts a 0.94 mark for the rest of the year), and it’s certainly likely that the results will regress toward his xwOBA as the season goes on, but he’s clearly been keeping pitches away from barrels at an above-average clip, a skill that many evaluators were skeptical of as he made the leap to MLB. Part of this is due to his fastball’s shape – a flat VAA can lead to uncomfortable swings and produce weak outs. While this type of fastball does contribute to a high fly ball rate, opponents haven’t been able to put a charge into their aerial hits thus far. Imanaga’s average exit velocity and hard-hit rates allowed sit around the league average, but his exit velocity allowed on batted balls in the air is a much more favorable 70th percentile. He also has the ninth-lowest line drive rate among qualified starters, almost never allowing squared-up contact.

Imanaga also locates his fastball in places unlikely to produce barrels. Sure, he throws more heaters in the zone than almost anyone else, but he’s not just sending them down Broadway and hoping for the best; instead, he’s consistently hitting his spots at the top edge of the zone. He ranks 10th in fastballs thrown in the upper third of the zone, an area where the flatness of the pitch can play up and create the illusion that it’s rising. Unsurprisingly, his Kirby Index, a stat that measures release angle consistency, ranks in the 90th percentile.

Imanaga’s fastball alone has made him one of the most effective pitchers in the league, and I haven’t even talked about his plus splitter yet. Like the fastball, this is a pitch he throws with remarkable accuracy. Splitters are hard to command – many pitchers’ splitter heatmaps look like giant blobs, and nearly 14% of splitters are wasted, the second highest of any pitch type. But Imanaga repeatedly hits the area at the bottom of and just below the strike zone, an optimal spot for success. His splitter has a 108 Location+ and 57 PitchingBot command grade, both among the league’s highest.

From a pure shape perspective, Imanaga’s splitter doesn’t particularly stand out. It doesn’t have absurd lateral movement like Kevin Gausman’s or fall off the table like Jordan Hicks’; Imanaga’s actually drops a few inches less than average. But when paired with his high fastball, that splitter becomes downright nasty. Thrown from the same release point and angle as his heater, Imanaga’s splitter gets hitters to swing at what they think is a meaty fastball before they have time to realize that the pitch is 9 mph slower and 19 inches lower. He throws it only about half as often as his heater, saving the split for two-strike counts where hitters are in swing mode. And swing they do, coming up empty nearly half the time they offer at it. The end result is that Imanaga’s splitter is one of the best whiff pitches in the league.

The splitter has also been integral in maintaining Imanaga’s minuscule walk rate, as hitters swing and miss at them before they can work themselves into deep counts. Opponents have swung at 47.2% of the out-of-zone splitters he’s thrown, a huge reason his overall chase rate nearly tops the charts. His low walk rate and refusal to waste pitches has worked wonders in terms of efficiency, averaging the sixth-fewest pitches per inning among qualified starters. Imanaga’s quick work of opposing lineups has allowed him to pitch deep into games (averaging six innings per start) while acclimating to more frequent outings as part of a five-man rotation.

Just a month into his MLB career, Imanaga has exceeded all expectations and emerged as an ace. His brilliant pitch execution hasn’t just proven what he can be at his best, they’ve also calmed concerns about what his downside risk can look like. When he signed, it was easy for skeptics to compare him to other hurlers without big velocity and forecast doubt. But Imanaga has shown that nobody else pitches the way he does.