Bo Bichette is a ton of fun to watch at the plate, and that’s especially the case in two-strike counts. He takes on the old school approach of physically altering his swing to avoid striking out. There is something aesthetically pleasing about a player who refuses to strike out; it’s admirable, even. It can also be rewarding.

Bichette has used a no-stride two-strike approach his entire career, but back in 2022, he started standing a bit taller, with his weight pre-shifted into his rear hip to go along with his no-stride load. In 2021, his .212 wOBA with two strikes was well behind the league-wide mark of .236. As a hitter with an above-average hit tool and a knack for making good contact on pitches off the plate, that performance simply wasn’t good enough. Indeed, it’s the exact sort of thing that would force most hitters to try something else, which is what Bichette did. While his wOBA and xwOBA in two-strike counts showed no tangible improvement, 2022 was (and still is) his best full season by wRC+ (130). Whatever the results were, Bichette’s overall offensive game was thriving, so instead of reverting back to the more crouched setup, he built upon his new two-strike stance to improve it.

In 2023, Bichette’s .233 two-strike wOBA was in line with the league average (.232), while his .250 xwOBA was .018 points higher than league average. He decreased his whiff rate with two strikes by about four percentage points from 2022, and his strikeout rate dropped three percentage points as a result. That’s notable, of course, but remember: More contact isn’t always better for a chase-prone player like Bichette, as a batter’s quality of contact on pitches outside the zone is typically worse than on those over the plate. The key here is that Bichette’s reduction in whiffs came with better contact; last year he had the best xwOBACON with two strikes (.389) of his career. Read the rest of this entry »

Hurston Waldrep is one of my favorite pitchers in the minor leagues. Or rather, he was, because the Braves called him up this weekend and gave him his major league debut on Sunday. Waldrep was the no. 24 overall pick in the draft last year, and I was by no means alone in considering that selection a steal for Atlanta.

A year ago this weekend, Waldrep was pitching the University of Florida to the College World Series; on Sunday, his opponent, the Washington Nationals, was somewhat more challenging. Waldrep’s line in his debut ended up being extremely ugly: 3 2/3 innings, four hits, four walks, only one strikeout, and seven earned runs allowed. Atlanta lost the game 8-5, and Waldrep got charged with the decision, leaving him with a career record of 0-1 and an ERA of 17.18.

Waldrep’s first big league start ended in disaster, but up until the point where it all went wrong, the rookie showed incredible promise. So let’s look a little deeper, because amid the pile of runs, you can see why I’m still so high on Waldrep, and why he could end up being immensely important to the Braves later this year. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Sunday’s column led with Detroit Tigers infielder/outfielder Matt Vierling reflecting on his days as a two-way player in high school and at the University of Notre Dame. This week’s leads with a former two-way player whose career path took a different turn. A native of Saginaw, Michigan who played shortstop and served as a closer at the University of Nebraska, Spencer Schwellenbach is currently a member of the Atlanta Braves starting rotation.

His big-league debut came sooner than expected. The 24-year-old right-hander was drafted in 2021 — Atlanta selected him in the second round — but because of Tommy John surgery he didn’t take the mound until last year. At the time of his May 29 call-up, Schwellenbach had just 110 minor-league innings under his belt. Moreover, he hadn’t thrown a pitch above the Double-A level.

His two-step call-up is something he’ll never forget.

“They actually told me I was going to Triple-A,” said Schwellenbach. “I showed up in Gwinnett, threw a bullpen, and after I got done they asked if I was all packed up to go to Virginia. I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve got all my stuff here.’ They were like, ‘Well, unpack your stuff, you’re throwing in Atlanta on Wednesday.’ I was so taken off guard that I didn’t know what to say. It was like, ‘holy crap.’ I called my parents, my fiancee, my brothers, my sister. It was awesome.” Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not as stridently anti-tanking as some people — in my youth, I was a Sixers blogger during The Process, so I can say from experience that rooting for a historically bad team has its moments — but there is one thing that bugs me about the Orioles and Astros and so on from the 2010s. They’ve broken the curve for bad teams.

Back in my day, it took some doing to lose 100 games. Teams that bad were special. Now, we don’t blink at having multiple 100-loss teams in the same season, and 110-loss teams or worse are pretty common. It takes an increasingly rare brand of ineptitude to catch our attention nowadays.

Enter the 2024 Chicago White Sox. Read the rest of this entry »

Max Fried hadn’t yet established himself when I first talked to him for FanGraphs in April 2018. While highly regarded — the San Diego Padres had drafted the southpaw seventh overall in 2012 out of Los Angeles’ Harvard-Westlake High School — he had just a smattering of innings under his big league belt. Fast forward to today, and Fried — acquired by the Atlanta Braves in a December 2014 trade the Padres presumably wish they hadn’t made — is one of the best pitchers in baseball. Moreover, he has been since the start of the 2019 season. With the caveat that pitcher win-loss records need to be taken with a large grain of salt, the 30-year-old hurler has gone 66-23 over the last five-plus seasons; his .742 winning percentage ranks first among his contemporaries (min. 50 decisions). Fried’s ERA and FIP over that span are 3.00 and 3.20, respectively, and in the current campaign those numbers are 2.93 and 3.22.

His hitting also bears mention. In 2021, the last year before the National League adopted the DH, Fried had the highest batting average (.273), on-base percentage (.322), wRC+ (77), and wOBA (.289) among pitchers with 40 or more plate appearances. While not exactly Wes Ferrell, Fried could more than hold his own in the batter’s box.

How has the Atlanta ace evolved as a pitcher since we spoke six years ago, and does he miss stepping up to the plate with a piece of lumber in hand? I broached those topics with Fried on Wednesday afternoon at Fenway Park.

———

David Laurila: You were relatively new to the big leagues when we first spoke. Outside of being older and more experienced, what has changed since that time?

Max Fried: “Honestly, I would say it’s just experience, just constantly evolving and taking from what I’ve learned over the years. A lot of it has been commanding my pitches better, throwing them for strikes and keeping guys off balance.”

Laurila: Baseball Savant has you throwing seven different pitches. Is that accurate? 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.

On Tuesday, I wrote about how the Brewers have been able to leverage largely unheralded depth into an excellent start to their season. In a conversation about the column with one of my friends the following day, I referred to the Brewers as “Rays North” for their ability to extract the most out of players and pile up wins. But really, the Brewers are paving their own trail and the Rays are at something of a crossroads.

Entering a huge four-game series against the Orioles on Friday, the Rays are 31-31, and 13 games back in the AL East. They’ve got 100 games left, so there’s no need to panic just yet, but they’re at risk of missing the playoffs for the first time since 2018, and for their first losing season since 2017.

The ever-present depth that has defined the Rays for much of Kevin Cash’s tenure just hasn’t been there, especially on the pitching side. The bullpen, which has been fodder for cheeky memes whenever the Rays pick a reliever up off waivers (I love tweeting “1.80 ERA coming” for every arm they snag off the scrap heap), has plunged to 29th in WAR, with the team simply not possessing the breadth of arms that it has in years past. The middle relievers have been especially troublesome; while Pete Fairbanks, Jason Adam, and Garrett Cleavinger have all been excellent once the ball has gotten to them in the late innings, the bridge to them is crumbling.

And their starters aren’t helping matters. Only Ryan Pepiot and Zack Littell have ERAs below 4.00, and Aaron Civale and Taj Bradley have been hit especially hard. Bradley has tantalizing potential and can carve through hitters with the best of them when he’s on — he struck out eight batters in his first three innings against the Red Sox two starts ago — but when he’s off for an inning or two he gets absolutely hammered. He’s allowed seven homers across five starts. That inconsistency has fueled a rotation that ranks 26th in WAR, and unlike in prior years, the Rays don’t have reinforcements on the way. Joe Rock is their only prospect pitching particularly well at Triple-A.

It’s a bit more encouraging — if not by much — that Tampa Bay sits 19th in the majors by position player WAR, and maybe that’s enough to conjure up some Rays magic. However, I’m just not sure this offense should even be this good. Isaac Paredes is almost singlehandedly carrying the bats, with last year’s core of Yandy Díaz (99 wRC+), Randy Arozarena (83 wRC+), and Josh Lowe (109 wRC+ in just 15 games thanks to a couple IL trips) failing to support him. I don’t think Díaz is suddenly an average bat; he won the batting title in 2023, continues to hit the ball hard, and still makes great swing decisions. Arozarena is a different story. His swing-and-miss issues and newfound inability to optimally hit the ball (his sweet-spot percentage is in the first percentile) don’t exactly give me hope that a turnaround is imminent.

So, where do the Rays go from here? Many other teams would be relieved if they still had a .500 record as plenty of their most important players underperformed; those clubs might bank on some positive regression and decide to upgrade their roster before the trade deadline. But that’s not how the Rays operate, especially in an extremely tough AL East.

Complicating matters is their payroll, which is currently at $97 million, by far the highest of the six years for which we have payroll data at RosterResource. While teams will never open the books and say exactly what a particular payroll means for financial losses and gains, owner Stuart Sternberg claimed before the season that the high payroll would lead to “real losses.” Sternberg added that he views those losses as worth it because he’d “like to keep [the successes] rolling,” and I have no real reason to doubt that he means that; the Rays have been good for years, and he’d surely like to have a talented team when the franchise’s new stadium ostensibly opens in 2028. What I’m not sure, though, is if augmenting this deeply flawed team to win this season is the best move. For the first time in a while, I could see the Rays going in the complete opposite direction.

The Rays are never ones to make huge additions at the deadline — it’s more complementary players like Nelson Cruz and Civale, and longer-term plays for untapped potential like Arozarena and Fairbanks — but that doesn’t mean they might not make huge subtractions. Tampa Bay is famous for never having untouchables, and despite his anemic performance, teams are apparently quite interested in Arozarena. He has the third-highest salary on the team, and I have no reason to believe the Rays also wouldn’t entertain offers for their two highest earners, Zach Eflin and Díaz, if the return is commensurate and the front office thinks that such a move would be the best path toward improving in 2025 and beyond. On a smaller scale, if the Rays are roughly .500 by the time the deadline rolls around, I’d be surprised to see Amed Rosario, Shawn Armstrong, Phil Maton, Chris Devenski, and Harold Ramírez still on the team.

As usual, what the Rays end up doing at the deadline might lead to some head-scratching; plenty of their moves during their stretch of success seemingly came out of nowhere, and some of those surprises hardly made sense at the time. But this is an organization that is always thinking about what’s next rather than pushing all its chips in for a single season. And there’s no reason to think that this won’t be a quick reset rather than a long rebuild. Next year, ace Shane McClanahan, Jeffrey Springs, and Drew Rasmussen are expected to return to the rotation after recovering from elbow injuries that will cost them most or all of this season. Also, the Rays should have über-prospect Junior Caminero, who is currently battling quad issues in Triple-A, healthy and ready to contribute in 2025. And don’t forget about Xavier Isaac, who’s tearing through the minors himself and could be an option for the big league club as soon as next year. Playing for next season is probably the smart move for the Rays at this point, and if that means trading away some talent from this year’s club, then so be it.

Anyone who saw the lineup that the Blue Jays fielded on Sunday against the Pirates was treated to a relatively unfamiliar sight: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. starting at third base for the first time since his 2019 rookie season, and playing the position in a regular season game for the first time since ’22. Designed to squeeze an extra bat into the lineup, the move helped the Blue Jays to a victory. But while they may continue the experiment here and there, they have bigger problems to solve if they’re going to climb back into contention.

Starting Guerrero at third base had been an option for which the Blue Jays had been preparing for a few weeks. For the occasion, manager John Schneider gave Justin Turner the start at first base, with Daniel Vogelbach serving as the designated hitter. The latter went 2-for-4 on Sunday, and capped a three-run fifth-inning rally with a double off Pirates righty Quinn Priester, with Guerrero, who had singled in a run, scoring from first base to give Toronto a 4-3 lead. With Blue Jays starter Chris Bassitt and four relievers generating just nine ground balls while striking out 13, Guerrero didn’t have to make a play in the field until the seventh inning; he handled his two chances perfectly, the second of which featured an impressive spin move while he was shifted to where the shortstop would usually play:

Schneider did not get a similarly positive return when he used the same configuration on Tuesday night. Vogelbach went 0-for-3 and the Blue Jays fell behind 4-0 in the third; they were down 10-1 by the time Guerrero made his two assists, in the eighth and ninth innings. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve got good news for you, Padres fans. Manny Machado is hitting the ball as hard as nearly anyone in baseball*. Seriously! Take a look at this leaderboard:

Yeah! There’s our guy, fourth in the majors, absolutely pummeling the ball. No Aaron Judge on this list. No Juan Soto or Shohei Ohtani or Gunnar Henderson. Machado’s outdoing them all. Never mind that pesky asterisk up above. He’s totally fixed. Though speaking of, what is that asterisk about?

*: Exit velocity on groundballs only

Oh. Huh. I guess that’s why the list is missing all those great hitters, and instead has dudes barely hanging on or getting demoted to Triple-A. Thunderous power doesn’t mean much if you’re hitting the ball straight into the infield grass. That explains this confusing trend:

If you just looked at his average exit velocity, you’d think Machado was surging this year. Even if you looked at the average of the top half of his contact, it’s better than the last two years. But he’s not hitting the ball any harder when he elevates, and he’s elevating less than ever. The result? Fewer homers and doubles, and a lower ISO. Read the rest of this entry »

For a few years now, I’ve been waiting for Salvador Perez to break down.

There are three reasons for this. First, he’s at the intersection of two kinds of hitter who are at risk of precipitous decline: Big dudes who hit for a lot of power but don’t walk much and free swingers who need to make a lot of contact. Perez is one of seven players who have batted at least 4,500 times since the year 2000, with a career walk rate of 7% or less and a career ISO of .175 or more. The other six are Eduardo Escobar, José Abreu, Javier Báez, Nick Castellanos, Adam Jones, and J.T. Realmuto. That’s five guys who watched it go in a hurry and, well, stay strong, J.T., we’re all rooting for you.

The other point is that Perez plays the hardest position in the sport. Not only that, but he’s one of the biggest guys to ever play that position regularly (a man who weighs 255 pounds and crouches 200 times a day, six days a week has to have thighs the size of bike wheels) and he’s put in an unbelievable amount of time there. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »