Every year, a huge throng of pitchers changes teams at the trade deadline. It happens for obvious reasons: teams with postseason aspirations and second-division pitching staffs try to augment their squad, juggernauts shore up their bullpen, or any of several variations on those themes. For the most part, it’s a simple re-allocation of good pitching: teams that don’t need it this year trade pitchers to teams that do, and reap prospects or otherwise interesting players in return.

Sometimes, though, teams make trades for a slightly different reason. Pitchers aren’t static; you can’t call someone up on the phone and trade for a 3.40 ERA, or 2.4 WAR per 200 innings pitched, or anything of the sort. You trade for a pitcher, and as we detail frequently in the electronic pages of FanGraphs, pitchers change the way they approach their craft all the time. They might take a new approach, or learn a new pitch, or switch roles. Learning a new pitch isn’t practical in the heat of a playoff chase, but changing the allocation of existing pitches is far easier. Let’s take a look at two starting pitchers who have changed their pitch mix significantly since being traded at the deadline, as well as two others who have made smaller changes. Read the rest of this entry »

Most people who change employers and job titles go through an interview process, and Chris Valaika was no exception. A former big league infielder who’d been serving as the assistant hitting coach for the Chicago Cubs, and before that as their minor league hitting coordinator, he was carefully vetted before being hired as the hitting coach of the Cleveland Guardians last winter. What was that process like? He explained in an interview that was conducted earlier this summer.

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David Laurila: You were hired by the Guardians last November. How did that come about?

Chris Valaika: “The interview process started a week or so after the season ended. I talked to [President of Baseball Operations] Chris Antonetti and then to [General Manager] Mike Chernoff. The one that really facilitated the process was Alex Eckelman, our director of hitting. We did phone to start and then Zoom with a couple of different groups. Tito [Terry Francona] was on one of them. There were some of our advance guys. There were Chris and Cherny. I also did an in-person interview with a couple of different groups. I talked to the player development department. I also worked with a hitter. I went through the whole gamut.”

Laurila: Can you elaborate on “worked with a hitter?”

Valiaka: “It was a mock. We went through the whole process of… basically, it was a workup of what I saw in the swing, and how I would address swing changes and approach.”

Laurila: This was from video?

Valaika: “Yes. And we did a mock of an in-person, as well — how I would interact in the cage to address certain things — which was to see my coaching voice, how I delivered information. We also went through advance reports and did a mock hitters meeting.

“With the hitter breakdown, it was basically me giving my 10,000-foot view of him approach-wise, bio-mechanically, things that I saw in the swing, and again, how I would address them.”

Laurila: Who was the hitter, and what did you see? Read the rest of this entry »

While Dylan Cease was chasing a no-hitter and Aaron Judge was homering in three straight games, Shohei Ohtani enhanced his own cases for the AL Cy Young and MVP awards. On Saturday, he threw eight innings of one-run ball against the Astros in a game that the Angels won in 12 innings, continuing his dominance of the AL West leaders. On Monday, he homered twice and drove in three runs in a 10–0 rout of Detroit, running his totals to five homers, 10 RBIs, and a .414/.469/1.000 line in a seven-game span against the Blue Jays, Yankees, Astros, and Tigers (oh my!). Much to Tungsten Arm O’Doyle’s chagrin, the Angels even went 5–2 in those games.

A year after winning the AL MVP award for his unprecedented wire-to-wire excellence both as a pitcher and a designated hitter, Ohtani has continued to thrive in both contexts. But where he didn’t get any attention when it came to the 2021 Cy Young race, this season, he’s pitched his way into the picture.

Saturday’s start was Ohtani’s 23rd of the season, matching last year’s total, and he’s now at 136 innings, topping the 130.1 he threw in ’21. His three true outcome peripherals have improved markedly, to the point that he’s shaved nearly a full run off his FIP relative to last season:

At this writing, with 136 innings in the Angels’ 136 games, Ohtani is officially qualified for the ERA title, though that won’t be the case after Wednesday night, at least until his number comes up again. In any event, it’s worth pointing out that he has the AL’s highest strikeout rate and is one-tenth of a percentage point behind Shane McClanahan for the K-BB% lead. Meanwhile, he also has the league’s second-lowest FIP, behind only Kevin Gausman’s 2.13. Read the rest of this entry »

Ty Madden has established himself as one of the top pitching prospects in the Detroit Tigers system. Drafted 32nd overall last year out of the University of Texas, the 22-year-old right-hander has a 2.92 ERA to go with 119 strikeouts and just 88 hits allowed in 114 innings between High-A West Michigan and Double-A Erie. Moreover, he’s been especially impressive since earning an early-August promotion. Over his last four starts, Madden has fanned 29 Eastern League batters while surrendering just three runs in 22-and-a-third innings.

Earlier this summer, I asked Madden how much the organization’s analytics-driven pitching program has impacted his development.

“I’ve definitely learned a lot since coming to pro ball,” said Madden, who was still in High-A when we spoke. “Before, I knew a good amount of the information, but I didn’t really know what to do with it. The staff here has kind of taught me what these numbers mean — when they’re good versus when they’re bad — and there are also the analytics for hitters. Along with knowing your own stuff, there is the game plan and how to go against that particular lineup.” Read the rest of this entry »

Aaron Judge is doing something that most baseball fans, myself included, haven’t seen in their lifetime: He’s making a run at the American League home run record. Even if you don’t do some steroid-related asterisking of Barry Bonds et al., passing Babe Ruth and Roger Maris is a heck of an accomplishment; if you want to stick your fingers in your ears and ignore the late 1990s and early 2000s, it only makes Judge’s chase more consequential. Truly, this is an exciting time to follow baseball.

Normally, I’m the writer who pours cold water on everyone’s fun during chases like this. “Sure, he’s doing well now,” I’d say, “but if you look at his career numbers, he’s on pace to fall short.” Well for once, that’s not true! If you look at our Depth Charts projections, our median expectation for Judge gives him a 62-homer season.

That’s a boring and dry number, but in baseball statistics nerd land, it’s rare and exceptional. Projecting someone to break a record is obviously rare – records usually get broken by phenomenal performances, not by median outcomes. In celebration of that, I thought I’d layer on a bit more analytical rigor and give people an idea of not just if, but when Judge might hit home runs number 60, 61, or 62.

I wanted an easy-to-understand process, so I kept it simple. I took the Yankees’ remaining schedule, then noted each remaining team’s HR/9+ (from our suite of Plus Stats), the venue’s righty home run park factor (from Statcast’s new park factors), and whether I think Judge will play that day. I also used our projections to get what we consider to be Judge’s current true home-run-per-plate-appearance level (it’s 7.14%, for those of you keeping score at home). Read the rest of this entry »

The Arizona Diamondbacks don’t generate a lot of national headlines these days, but the team’s ace, Zac Gallen, is trying his best to change that. Since a Luke Maile double knocked him out of a game against the Guardians on August 2, Gallen has racked up six consecutive scoreless games, covering 41 1/3 innings. Gallen’s run has gone on long enough to have historical significance: He currently ranks 17th in baseball history, at least the history during which usable game logs exist (since around the start of the 20th century). He’s two outs from catching Brandon Webb’s 2007 streak to set a new Diamondbacks franchise record, and another 3 2/3 innings will slot him into the top 10, tying his with the streaks of Cy Young, Sal Maglie, and Doc White.

Naturally, most streaks of this nature involve a player playing well above their established level of ability, and Gallen is no exception. But every pitcher with a scoreless innings streak this long was at least solid, with nary an incompetent journeyman in sight. Gallen is again no exception and was having a solid season even before the streak started. Entering play on August 2, he had an ERA of 3.24 and a FIP of 3.69 in 19 starts, above-average numbers, though not good enough to force his way into the Cy Young conversation. (Earlier today, Baseball Prospectus‘ Michael Ajeto published a deeper examination of some of the changes Gallen has made during the scoreless streak that is worth a read.) Read the rest of this entry »

With Justin Verlander landing on the injured list due to a mild right calf injury, the AL Cy Young race has taken a turn. On Saturday, Dylan Cease did his best to capitalize on the opportunity. Facing the Twins in Chicago, the 26-year-old White Sox righty came within one out of throwing the season’s fourth no-hitter, losing it only when Luis Arraez singled with two outs in the ninth.

Cease had twice taken no-hit bids into the sixth inning this year, on April 27 against the Royals and June 21 against the Blue Jays, and had made a total of three appearances in which he allowed just one hit and no runs (May 2 against the Angels, the aforementioned June 21 start, and July 17 against the Twins). He was even better than all of those on Saturday, and particularly efficient. He breezed through the first five frames in just 50 pitches, with a leadoff walk to Jake Cave in the third inning not just the only blemish, but also the only time to that point that he even went to a three-ball count. At the same time, he didn’t record his first strikeout until Gio Urshela fanned on a slider to end the fifth.

Cease labored a bit in the sixth, throwing 21 pitches and issuing a two-out walk to Gilberto Celestino, the second and last time he’d go to a three-ball count all night. But he escaped that by catching Arraez looking at a high curveball on a generous call:

Cease needed just 20 pitches to get through the seventh and eighth combined, running his total to 91. He’d done a great job of pitching efficiently and maintaining his velocity:

Before he could take the mound in the ninth, however, Cease had to wait out a six-run rally. The White Sox, already leading 7–0, pounced on position player Nick Gordon via a pair of walks, three singles, and a grand slam by Elvis Andrus to run the score to 13–0. Fortunately, all of that took only about 15 minutes due to Gordon’s limited repertoire (Statcast credits him with throwing 30 fastballs varying in speed from 49.2 mph to 86 mph). Despite the delay, Cease made quick work of the first two Twins, striking out Caleb Hamilton on four pitches and getting Celestino to hit a first-pitch fly out.

Up came Arraez, the AL leader in batting average at that point (.318). After taking a low slider for ball one and fouling off a 97-mph fastball for strike one, he hit a slider in the middle of the zone 100.7 mph into the right-center field gap — no man’s land, a clean single. Cease remained composed enough to strike out Kyle Garlick to complete the one-hit shutout, but it still constituted a tough near-miss.

If not for Arraez’s single, Cease would have joined the Angels’ Reid Detmers, who blanked the Rays on May 10, as the only pitchers to throw complete-game no-hitters this season. Additionally, a quintet of Mets led by Tylor Megill threw a combined no-hitter against the Phillies on April 29, and likewise for a trio of Astros led by Cristian Javier against the Yankees on June 25.

Instead, Cease became the fourth pitcher to have a no-hitter broken up in the ninth this season, after the Cardinals’ Miles Mikolas (with two outs on June 14 against the Pirates), the Dodgers’ Tyler Anderson (with one out on June 15 against the Angels) and the Rays’ Drew Rasmussen (with no outs against the Orioles on August 14), who actually had a perfect game in progress before his bid ended. Anderson’s effort was retroactively obscured by a reversal of a seventh-inning ruling, where the pitcher fielded a dribbler down the first base line and made a poor throw; initially ruled a two-base error, it was changed to a single and an error. Read the rest of this entry »

The top prospect in the Los Angeles Dodgers system lost one of his baseball “brothers” a month ago. Not literally — Alex De Jesus is alive and well — but rather by dint of a trade-deadline deal. A 20-year-old infielder who’d been playing with the High-A Great Lakes Loons, De Jesus went to the Toronto Blue Jays organization, along with Mitch White, in exchange for Moises Brito and Nick Frasso.

Shortly after the trade, I asked Diego Cartaya what it’s like to have a teammate who is also a close friend leave the organization.

“It’s not easy, but I’m kind of happy for him,” replied Cartaya, who along with being L.A.’s top prospect is No. 31 in our MLB prospect rankings. “He’s going to get a better opportunity with Toronto, so we’re pretty excited for him. But it’s hard. As teammates, we spend more time together than we do with our families. He’s just like my brother.”

Cartaya’s real family is in Venezuela, and it was his father who initially taught him how to hit. The tutoring he’s received since entering pro ball at age 16 has resulted in occasional tweaks, both to his stance and his swing. Cartaya told me that he used to be “more of a big launch-angle guy,” but now has a flatter swing. Upon hearing that, I noted that the home run I’d seen him hit the previous night was more of a line drive than a moonshot. Read the rest of this entry »

With Tuesday night’s 4–3 win over the Mets at Citi Field, the Dodgers notched their 90th victory of the season, the second time in the last seven years that the team reached 90 wins before the end of August. Even with a subsequent pair of losses on Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon, the Dodgers once again have a shot not just at 100 wins (a plateau they’ve reached four times in six full seasons under manager Dave Roberts) or even 106 (a franchise record set in 2019 and matched last year), but also at the 2001 Mariners’ expansion-era record of 116 wins, though admittedly their odds for that one grew longer this week.

The Dodgers enter Friday with an 18-game lead over the Padres in the NL West and a magic number of 14 (and can quickly shrink the latter with their series in San Diego this weekend). Despite their series loss in New York, they’re still seven games ahead of the Mets (84–48) in the race for the NL’s best record and thus the top seed in the expanded postseason. Our Playoff Odds project them to finish with 109 wins, which would be the majors’ highest total since the aforementioned Mariners. Via our Odds distribution, they have a 62.1% chance of winning at least 109, though after their back-to-back losses, their chances of winning 116 or more games are down to 1.1%.

Earlier this year, it was the Yankees who were on pace to top 116 wins, but their 13–13 July snuffed that dream out, and a 10–18 August has put even a 100-win season in doubt. The Dodgers, who briefly slipped into second place in the NL West on June 17, when they were 39–24, had a lead of just 1.5 games over the Padres as recently as June 29. They’ve gone 45–12 (.789) since that date, with separate winning streaks of seven, eight, and 12 games. Read the rest of this entry »

The Orioles showed mercy to minor league pitchers this week, officially calling up infielder Gunnar Henderson, relieving those hurlers of the terrible burden of having to pitch to him. The team’s top prospect wasted little time making his impact felt, hitting his first major league home run in his second time up at the plate, a long drive off Cleveland starter Triston McKenzie. And if the ZiPS projections are to be believed, adding Henderson down the stretch is about as valuable an offensive boost as anyone made this summer, with the obvious exception of a certain southern California team sporting mustard-and-brown colors.

So just how good is Henderson? That’s a question that has shifted notably over the course of the minor league season. If you go back to the winter, he was considered an excellent prospect, ranking 66th in the FanGraphs Top 100 list and 53rd in the ZiPS Top 100. We weren’t outliers, either; among others, Keith Law at The Athletic and Baseball Prospectus also put him in their top 100s.

Henderson’s stock wasn’t poorly valued, but it shot up so quickly this year that you might think that it was a Reddit meme stonk like GameStop and AMC. Minor league translation printer goes brrr! Before the season, ZiPS only projected Henderson to amass 1.5 WAR in 2023 with a wRC+ of 87. We’ll get to that updated 2023 projection in a minute; let’s just say for now that it’s better.

The improvements made by Henderson in the minors this year were across the board, from power to plate discipline to defense. Combining his performances for Double-A Bowie and Triple-A Norfolk, you get an overall line of .297/.416/.531 with 19 homers and 22 stolen bases in 112 games. That would be enough to make him the best first base prospect in baseball, considering he didn’t turn 21 until late June, but as a player who can legitimately play shortstop, that’s the kind of performance that puts you in the ultra-elite category. Read the rest of this entry »