The Texas Rangers made meaningful changes this summer when they parted ways with manager Chris Woodward — Tony Beasley is currently serving in an interim capacity — and subsequently replaced Jon Daniels with Chris Young as their top front office decision-maker. But a move that has been every bit as impactful was made 10 months ago. Last November — shortly before Baseball America named him their MLB Coach of the Year — Donnie Ecker was hired away from the San Francisco Giants and given the title of Bench Coach/Offensive Coordinator.

Ecker’s reputation as a tech-and-data-savvy hitting nerd is well-earned. Prior to the two seasons he spent as Gabe Kapler’s hitting coach in San Francisco, the 36-year-old Los Altos, California native built his bona fides as an assistant hitting coach with the Cincinnati Reds, and before that as a minor-league hitting instructor in the St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Angels organizations.

Ecker, who is well-educated in biomechanics and analytics, discussed some of the philosophies and practices he brought with him to Texas when the Rangers visited Fenway Park earlier this month.

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David Laurila: You spend a lot of time at the ballpark, often arriving by 9 AM for a seven o’clock game. What does your day typically look like?

Donnie Ecker: “It starts with understanding where all of our people are at, zooming in on our hitters first and looking at the things that we find valuable. How is their performance aligning with our North Stars and peripherals? As a department, we want to be on top of that day-to-day. Most times, that’s a process of going deep and bringing up simple and actionable items to the surface. Everything is from the inside out, leading to what we want our conversations and training to look and feel like that day for that player. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in April, 23 of our writers and contributors made predictions about the 2022 season. When guessing who would be the AL Rookie of the Year, nine different players were named, with Bobby Witt Jr. and Julio Rodríguez leading the pack. Not found among those nine names was the starting shortstop for the Astros, a rookie faced with the difficult task of replacing incumbent Carlos Correa, who had gone to the Twins. Jeremy Peña wasn’t pegged as a ROY frontrunner, but for much of the early season, he looked like a sudden superstar. However, he’s struggled offensively in recent months, raising some questions about whether the real Peña is the player with the .878 OPS through mid-May, the one with a .586 OPS since the All-Star Game, or somewhere in the middle.

Back in May, Witt, the preseason favorite, wasn’t even in the top 15; Rodríguez only put up a .544 OPS over April; and Adley Rutschman was days away from even debuting in the majors. While Peña wasn’t making Astros fans actually forget about Correa, he certainly did his best to alleviate any lingering worries about their former franchise building block heading to the AL Central. But since May 17, he has seen his control over the AL leaderboard disappear:

That’s not to say that Peña hasn’t continued to be a solid overall player, but his largest contributions in recent months have been with leather rather than wood. With his range measured at five runs above average at shortstop by Statcast’s RAA and a total of nine runs over all facets of defense by our estimate, he hasn’t disappointed defensively, which has enabled him to remain a legitimate starter even with his offense dropping to disappointing levels. But he’s a far more exciting player with his spring offense, so what went wrong there? Read the rest of this entry »

Friday night, umpire Ted Barrett got up close and personal with James Karinchak:

No, Barrett wasn’t looking for hair care tips, or acting out an Herbal Essences commercial. He was checking for foreign substances at the behest of Twins manager Rocco Baldelli. Though he ruffled around to the best of his ability, Barrett didn’t find anything definitive. Karinchak made it back to the dugout with a narrow lead and his pitching eligibility intact, though his dignity may have been affected.

Baldelli’s accusation wasn’t some off-the-cuff act of pettiness. Karinchak has been at the sticky center of controversy ever since the league cracked down on pine tar, Spider Tack, sunscreen/rosin blends, and whatever other tacky options players were using to increase spin. Stricter enforcement of existing rules started at the beginning of June last year; take a look at Karinchak’s spin-velocity ratio and raw fastball spin rate and you can clearly see when things changed:

Not coincidentally, Karinchak’s results slipped at the same time. He’d been an unhittable, fire-breathing, back-of-the-bullpen monster since reaching the majors. From June 1, 2021 onwards, however, he posted a 5.40 ERA and a 5.41 FIP, and got demoted to the minors at the end of August. The fall from grace was swift, and seemed obviously related to the change in foreign substance enforcement. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a strange season for Mike Trout, one that’s featured a hot start, an epic slump that accompanied the worst losing streak in franchise history, and a diagnosis of a long-term back injury followed by an absence of 30 games. The good news is that since returning to activity on August 19, he’s gradually recovered his form, and this past week he set a career best by homering in six straight games.

Trout began his streak on September 4 with an eighth-inning homer off the Astros’ Brandon Bielak — the only run the Angel scored in a 9-1 loss — but his next three came against the Tigers (Tyler Alexander, Eduardo Rodriguez, and Will Vest), all in wins. He continued the streak with a homer off the Astros’ Lance McCullers Jr. in a loss on Friday night, but his three-run second-inning shot off José Urquidy on Saturday helped power the Halos to a victory.

In the annals of Halos history, that last home run lifted Trout past Bobby Bonds, who homered in five straight games for the Angels from August 2–7, 1977. The streak additionally pushed Trout past the Rangers’ Corey Seager (July 8-12) for the longest of this year. Trout had already surpassed his personal best of homers in four straight games, set in 2017 (May 12–15) and matched in ’19 (April 4–7). Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, we at FanGraphs came up with a fun idea: we simulated Aaron Judge’s remaining games a million times to figure out if and when he’s likely to hit some milestone home runs: numbers 60, 61, and 62. At the time, the takeaway was clear: Judge was most likely to hit each of those milestone home runs during the Yankees’ series in Toronto on September 26–28.

Since that article was published, Judge has played six games and hit only one home run. That changed the odds significantly. More specifically, per my simulation, here are his odds of reaching at least 60, 61, or 62 homers, both now and six games ago:

Read the rest of this entry »

The English Premier League postponed this weekend’s slate of games following the death of Queen Elizabeth on Friday. Some of you may not have known that — soccer isn’t everyone’s cup of tea — but at the same time, a lot of you did. For many FanGraphs readers, pouring a cup of coffee and watching a Saturday or Sunday-morning match is part of your routine. More often than not, it’s as a supporter of a particular Premier League team.

Brad Miller does exactly that. An ardent Manchester City fan, the Texas Rangers infielder “dove into European soccer” head-first while on the injured list a handful of years ago. What started as a diversion has turned into a passion. Miller not only keeps a keen eye on Premier League and Champions League matches, he assesses strategies and follows transfer rumors.

Style of play is a big reason he adopted Man City.

“They’re obviously really good, and I feel kind of bad admitting that,” Miller said of his initial attraction. “But they’re also a well-oiled machine. There was a documentary on Amazon, ‘All or Nothing,’ where they followed the team. That definitely had me intrigued, just watching the way they play.

“I kind of compare them a little bit to the Dodgers,” continued Miller. “They have a great market, great financial backing, and also a great infrastructure — their player-development system, scouting, medical staffs, and all that. The haven’t poured money into just purchasing players, they’ve poured it into a sustainable model.” Read the rest of this entry »

You could be forgiven for having given up on the Rays. Four weeks ago, they lost to the Orioles at Tropicana Field, knocking their record to 58–53 and sending them down to fourth place in the AL East, half a game behind the O’s, two games behind the Blue Jays, and 12 games behind the Yankees. Injuries had gutted their lineup. Yet since that point, they’ve been as hot as any team in baseball, even the Braves. What’s more, Wander Franco is slated to return from a two-month absence on Friday, just in time for the surging squad to face the Yankees — now leading the division by just 4.5 games — in the Bronx.

The 21-year-old Franco topped our Top 100 Prospects lists in both 2020 and ‘21 before putting together a stellar rookie season last year but has played just 58 games this season, hitting a modest .260/.308/.396 for a 104 wRC+. He landed on the injured list on May 31 due to a right quad strain and missed most of June, then played just 13 games before returning to the IL on July 10 due to a fractured hamate in his right hand, which required surgery.

Franco began a rehab stint with Triple-A Durham on August 16 but made just two plate appearances before discomfort in his right wrist forced him from the game; later that week, the Rays pulled him from the assignment due to lingering soreness. He finally returned to action on September 4 and went 6-for-11 with a double over a three-game span. Tampa planned for him to stay with Durham through Saturday, but his 3-for-5 performance while playing nine innings at shortstop on Wednesday led the team to accelerate his timetable.

While Franco’s slash stats don’t measure up to last year’s numbers, his Statcast data in several key categories is practically the same:

Franco’s average exit velo and hard-hit and barrel rates are almost identical from year to year, but this year he’s hitting more grounders and fewer fly balls (note the lower average launch angle and the increase in his groundball/fly ball ratio from 1.32 to 1.66). What’s more, he’s hit just .188 and slugged .229 on grounders this year, compared to .252 and .306 last year. Where hitting the ball in the air helped him to outperform his expected stats last time, that hasn’t been the case this year, though he’s still produced a wRC+ nine points above that of the major league mark for shortstops (95). It’s also 39 points above that of fill-in Taylor Walls, who has “hit” an anemic .176/.267/.282 (65 wRC+) in 408 PA accompanied by a wide divergence in his defensive metrics at shortstop (-0.3 UZR, -4 RAA, and 12 DRS). By our measure, he’s been 0.4 wins below replacement, but via Baseball Reference, he’s been worth 2.3 WAR. Go figure.

While the truth of Walls’ value probably lies somewhere in between, the larger truth is that the Rays are a better team with Franco, and they’re getting him back at a critical time. The team entered Friday having gone 19–5 (.792) since August 12, tied with the Braves for the majors’ best record, and with the best Pythagorean record (.793) in that span as well. In that time, they’ve overtaken the Orioles (which took just a day) and the Blue Jays, cut the slumping Yankees’ AL East advantage to 4.5 games, and taken over the top spot in the AL Wild Card race. Here’s a snapshot of their odds change:

The Rays began that 19–5 run by taking the next two games form the Orioles and then two of three from the Yankees, though they have benefited by playing a fairly soft schedule thereafter: four games apiece against the Royals and Angels, six against the Red Sox, two against the Marlins, and three more against the second-half edition of the Yankees, who have gone just 19–27 as everybody not named Aaron Judge has either stopped hitting, gotten hurt, or both. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I took a look at a few starters who have changed their pitch mix after being traded halfway through this season. Today, I’m finishing the set. Here are the relievers who have changed their pitch selection the most in the month after joining new teams. One note: since relievers throw fewer pitches, the variability in their mix is greater; a few extra sliders to get the feel for them in a random game can tip the percentages meaningfully. I’m focusing on five relievers who made interesting changes, but you could add others to the list.

Lou Trivino, New York Yankees

The Change: -12% Four-Seamer, -6% Changeup, +8% Cutter, +14% Slider
Trivino is a rarity, a legitimate five-pitch reliever. He’s thrown his changeup, slider, sinker, cutter, and four-seamer each at least 10% of the time this year, and mixed in an occasional curveball for good measure. The Yankees are working to change that.

Since donning pinstripes, Trivino is down to three pitches he uses at least 10% of the time: sinker, slider, cutter. His slider is new this year, one of the sweeping types that are all the rage these days, and he’d already taken to the pitch in Oakland, using it nearly 20% of the time. He’s using it even more in New York; a third of the pitches he’s thrown as a Yankee have been sliders. Read the rest of this entry »

Glenn Otto is a different pitcher than the one the New York Yankees took in the fifth round of the 2017 draft out of Rice University. Acquired from his original organization by the Texas Rangers as part of last summer’s Joey Gallo deal, the 26-year-old right-hander not only has a better understanding of his craft, he’s attacking hitters with an expanded arsenal. Moreover, his five-pitch mix is directionally diverse. Augmented by an occasional bridge pitch, Otto’s offerings are designed to go north, south, east, and west.

Otto discussed his repertoire, and the education he’s received while building it, when the Rangers visited Fenway Park last weekend.

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David Laurila: In what ways have you grown since coming to pro ball? Having played at a high-profile program, I assume you already had a good idea of how to pitch.

Glenn Otto: “I honestly really didn’t. I was a reliever in college and pretty much relied purely on stuff. I had a mid-90s fastball and a really good curveball, which was all I used back then. Once I got into pro ball and became a starter, it was about going as deep as I can, commanding the fastball to all four quadrants, developing a changeup — a pitch which has kind of come and gone for me — and I’ve also made some adjustments mechanically. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, the Mets flexed their muscles by taking two out of three from the Dodgers — the majors’ top team by won-loss record, run differential, and most other measures — at Citi Field. On Wednesday morning they awoke to a new reality. Not only were they tied for first place in the National League East with the Braves, but they had to place Max Scherzer on the injured list due to an oblique injury on his left side for the second time this season; later that day, they announced that Starling Marte had suffered a non-displaced fracture of his right middle finger as well. The confluence may not rate as a crisis in Queens, but playoff races have certainly turned on less.

The Braves’ claim on a share of first place marked the first time since April 11 — and just the second time all season — that the Mets did not have sole possession of the division lead. By the day’s end, however, the Mets again had the top spot to themselves thanks to 5-1 and 10-0 poundings of the Pirates in Pittsburgh, running their record to 87-51, while the Braves beat the A’s to improve to 86-51.

As for Scherzer, with a chance to notch his 200th career win, the 38-year-old righty left Saturday’s start against the Nationals after just five innings, 67 pitches, and one run allowed. Following the final out of the inning — during which he got an assist on a routine groundout by Ildemaro Vargas — Scherzer motioned to pitching coach Jeremy Hefner to follow him into the dugout tunnel, then gave way to reliever Tommy Hunter to start the sixth. Read the rest of this entry »