An old friend returned to the big leagues yesterday in a relatively unexpected place. After 11 seasons in the majors, all with the Cardinals, Matt Carpenter found himself searching for a new team this winter; in the end, he only managed to snag a minor league deal with the Rangers. Now, though, he’s found himself in New York with the Yankees, signing a major league deal with them that was announced on Thursday and hitting eighth in the starting lineup for their game against the Rays that same day. Does Carpenter have a second wind, or has too much time passed since he was an effective contributor?

That Carpenter found little interest in his services this winter was hardly surprising. Some players age gracefully, but he fell off a cliff after the 2018 season, dropping from a wRC+ of 140 to 96. If that had been the extent of his collapse, he’d still have a role in the majors; he still managed to collect 1.7 WAR in 492 plate appearances in 2019, thanks to not being awful at second or third base. But after hitting .176/.313/.291 combined over 2020 and ’21, even that saving grace didn’t provide quite enough grace. What rope remained after the COVID-shortened 2020 rapidly ran out of slack the following year, and his role was reduced to the extent that only 11 of his 53 games after the All-Star break were as a starter.

It strikes me as likely that Carpenter only survived on the roster because of his long history with the franchise; infielders who can’t hit are a dime a dozen, and he didn’t have an exploitable platoon split advantage the way a steeply declining Albert Pujols did. And while much has been made of Carpenter’s struggles against the shift, and while he’s been worse throughout his career relative to a traditional infield configuration, it’s not sufficient to explain the collapse. He hit just fine overall as the approach against him shifted (no pun intended) yearly toward all-shift after 2015; by the time 2018 rolled around, when he was still a dangerous offensive player, he was almost exclusively hitting against a stacked right side of the infield. Read the rest of this entry »

Shane Bieber has been one of the best pitchers in baseball in recent years. From 2019-21, he used pristine command and nasty breaking balls to rack up elite levels of strikeouts while posting an ERA- of 64 (tied for second-best in baseball over that span); he even won the AL Cy Young Award in 2020. That elite level of performance lasted until a 2021 shoulder strain cost him over three months of the season; he returned just in time to make a couple of late September starts before officially shutting it down. Coming into the 2022 campaign, Bieber said he was “100%.” Yet through his first eight starts of the season, there are warning signs all over his underlying metrics:

Bieber has still been an effective pitcher. He has an above-average ERA and an even better FIP and SwStr%, but these numbers still represent a drop in performance. For a pitcher who is just shy of 27 years old, it’s certainly notable, but we might chalk it up to a wonky eight-start rough patch were it not for the dip in velocity and the injury last season. But Bieber has lost three ticks on his heater from his Cy Young peak, when he averaged 94.3 mph. I wonder if we might be seeing the lingering effects of his shoulder injury. Just prior to the injury, Bieber’s velocity dipped to 92 mph and during his late September cameo, it was down to 91.4 mph. Throughout the season’s early going, Bieber has been asked repeatedly about his velocity dip and insisted that he feels fine and expects his velo to trend up as the season goes on. As we reach the end of May, however, no such increase has occurred:

Regardless of the cause, it isn’t a good development. And beyond just the lost velocity, there are some interesting mechanical changes that are worth taking a closer look at. We’ll start with an establishing shot of Bieber’s mechanics in 2020 and then this season. You may be able to pick up on some changes, like how this year’s windup is quite a bit faster:

Next we’ll look at his arm path. The following clip is synced to when his front foot lands, giving us a better look at his hand position at that pivotal point in a delivery. To me, it looks like his entire upper body is more closed off, giving Bieber a more circuitous hand path from his glove separation all the way through to the release of the ball. The result is an arm that needs to play catch-up as his foot lands:

These mechanical changes could mean a number of things. It’s possible this is an intentional change to try and add velocity, or to mitigate a recurrence of his shoulder issue. Or these could be subconscious changes as Bieber’s body tries to find a pain-free path to delivering a pitch. If you want to assume that this change is part of the loss in velocity and that it’s helping him stay healthy, then it could be a worthwhile tradeoff. However, if this is a less intentional tweak and it’s the result of his body subconsciously favoring his shoulder, it could lead to added stress on other areas that are currently healthy.

Given that we’re about a quarter of the way into the season, we have a pretty good sample by which to gauge how Bieber is trying to pitch through his velocity decline. It might seem like the obvious solution to a diminished fastball would be for Bieber to lean in to his two good breaking balls. Look no further than the success of Clayton Kershaw in recent years for a blueprint to mimic. Kershaw has evolved from throwing 94 mph fastballs 60% of the time to throwing a 91 mph fastball only 36% of the time. He is now a slider-first pitcher and it has allowed him to have a tremendously successful decline phase – if you can even call his 72 ERA- over the last five seasons a decline. A Kershaw-like evolution from Bieber may not be so straightforward, however, as he’s never relied on his fastball nearly as much as Kershaw did and has always heavily featured his breaking stuff. In fact, it may come as a surprise to see that Bieber hasn’t decreased his fastball usage at all; at 38.3%, it’s pretty much right in line with his 2020 season:

Bieber’s continued use of his declining fastball has come at a cost. While his wOBA allowed on his fastball is only .364 so far this season, his xwOBA has risen somewhat ominously up to .435, compared to .320 last season and .290 in 2020. Instead of throwing fewer fastballs, Bieber has opted to change his breaking ball usage, throwing more sliders in lieu of his curveball. The problem is that his slider hasn’t been that effective for him this season (.300 wOBA, 18.8% SwStr%) after being one of the best sliders in baseball last year (.207 wOBA, 24.8 SwStr%). More than just its increased usage, the movement profile of the pitch has undergone a change as well:

Bieber is getting significantly less depth on his slider while gaining a small amount of horizontal movement. These changes come from him putting more back-spin on the pitch than in years past; previously, the spin he imparted on the ball was much closer to that of his curveball. As a result, his slider has more cutter-like qualities and he’s lost about 200 rpm from last year, leading to a pitch that is generating fewer whiffs and fewer swings outside the zone than at any other time in his career. If you look closely, you can see the subtle change in his fingers, which are pushing a bit more behind the ball, giving the pitch a touch more backspin than before:

These changes to his slider have given him a bigger movement and velocity difference between his slider and curveball, which is helping to diversify his arsenal after years of having a slider and curveball that were eerily similar. But it’s hard to say whether this is a good change, especially considering that it is now his most used pitch. His curveball, on the other hand, has been his best pitch (.201 wOBA, 16.8% SwStr%) and may be benefitting from these changes to his slider.

This new movement profile coupled with the mechanical changes highlighted earlier may be creating some issues when it comes to his typically great command of the pitch. Bieber is currently leaving double the number of sliders up in the zone compared to 2020. Check out his slider heat map and you’ll get a better sense of the frequency of his mistakes this season:

There’s been a lot of doom and gloom in this piece so far, and I would like to leave things on a more optimistic note. For that, I’ll mention Bieber’s most recent start against Detroit last Sunday afternoon. Things were a bit rocky in the beginning, with Miguel Cabrera ripping a hanging slider for an RBI double, but Bieber eventually settled in to what turned out to be a dominant performance. It was the best his slider has looked since before his injury. He found success with the pitch by consistently commanding it to the low-and-away corner, earning whiffs all afternoon — he generated 11 whiffs on 39 such pitches thrown (28.2% SwStr%) with an 84.9 mph average exit velocity. On the day, he notched a season-high 10 strikeouts over seven innings.

Of course, it’s only one start and it came against the Tigers and their league-trailing offense. Bieber’s fastball velocity didn’t tick up any, and even though his slider was great, none of the underlying metrics suggest it was all that different from what it has been in previous starts this season, still lacking the spin rate and vertical bite of years past. But that doesn’t have to mean that this start is an aberration. Bieber could be finding better ways to use his slider, and his command of the pitch could be improving as he gets more used to its new movement profile. Bieber really needs his breaking pitches to carry the weight if he’s going to remain successful with below average fastball velocity, and this outing serves as a proof of concept for how he can still dominate a lineup even if his Cy Young stuff stays firmly in the rear view mirror.

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Kansas City Royals. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the second year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the numbered prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 976

This week on the show, Ben Clemens and Jason Martinez reconvene after having previously discussed the young baseball season last month.

Offense hasn’t been as quiet as it was in April, and bullpens have gotten a bit shaky — even before being forced to shrink (though it was announced after recording that the pitcher roster limit deadline will be pushed back a bit). Ben and Jason discuss these trends, as well as just how fun the sport has been, including Ben’s early pick for game of the year. The duo also talk about the St. Louis Cardinals, who are having fun and running wild on the basepaths while once again featuring a crop of promising rookie talent. We hear about players like Juan Yepez, Nolan Gorman, and Brendan Donovan, before yours truly asks Ben and Jason to make some fun predictions about rest of the team’s season.

To purchase a FanGraphs membership for yourself or as a gift, click here.

To donate to FanGraphs and help us keep things running, click here.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @dhhiggins on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximate 55 minute play time.)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Position: Data Quality Engineer – Detroit Tigers (Detroit · MI)

Job Summary:
The Detroit Tigers are currently seeking a Data Quality Engineer, Baseball Data Infrastructure. This role will be responsible for designing, managing, and automating data quality processes across our disparate data sources to support Baseball Operations initiatives. This position will report to the Director, Baseball Data Infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design, implement, and use data quality assurance frameworks to support the process of identifying inconsistent data patterns.
• Work with Tigers data engineers and data scientists to implement good data hygiene practices and procedures in our data pipelines.
• Work with external data vendors to triage and remedy data quality issues.
• Automate and execute test cases in data pipelines and manage data issue tracking.

Minimum Knowledge, Skills & Abilities:

• 2+ years of relevant work experience in data analysis and engineering using SQL and Python
• Knowledgeable with data strategies and practices, such as continuous integration, regression testing, and versioning.
• Experience querying SQL data warehouses built for data science and analytics.
• Familiarity with cloud computing, cloud storage, and cloud services.
• Understanding of data quality frameworks and best practices for implementation.
• Passion for baseball and familiarity with current baseball research.

Preferred Knowledge, Skills & Abilities:

• Strong SQL skills (T-SQL preferred).
• Effective communication skills with an ability to explain technical concepts to developers and business partners.
• Experience using Apache Spark (Databricks on Azure preferred).
• Experience in generating reports and visuals on large data sources.
• Experience with DevOps practices for CI\CD pipelines.
• Familiarity with open-source data quality frameworks (Great Expectations preferred).
• Familiarity with Airflow.

Working Conditions:

• Office environment.
• The location may be based in Detroit or fully remote.
• Occasional evening, weekend, and holiday hours may be required.

The above is intended to describe the essential job functions, the general supplemental functions, and the essential requirements for the performance of this job. It is not to be construed as an exhaustive statement of all additional duties, responsibilities, or nonessential requirements. Detroit Tigers, Inc. has the right to change, modify, suspend, interrupt, or cancel in whole or in part any job functions outlined in a job description at any time and without advance notice to the employee.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Detroit Tigers.

Last week, I discussed some of the young, pre-free agency players who teams should be trying to sign to long-term contract extensions. I hadn’t been planning for there to be a part two, but you guys had so many additional players you wanted to talk about, and I can’t remember the last time I got more DMs about a piece than that one — well, about a piece for which everyone isn’t mad at me, at least!

So, let’s oil up and turn the crank on the ol’ ZiPS-o-Matic and get this projection mill hopping for seven more players.

Walker Buehler, Los Angeles Dodgers: Eight years, $204 million

Buehler is currently in the second and final year of an extension with the Dodgers that pays him $4 million a year. His next deal will be a tad more pricey. Clayton Kershaw is still around in Dodger blue, but his injury history and mild decline resulted in 2021 being the year that Buehler became The Man in the rotation, reducing Kershaw to the role of deuteragonist. And while Los Angeles still has a rocking rotation, the depth isn’t quite what it was in recent years, so there should be more than slight concern that the franchise’s most valuable pitcher is unsigned. With Buehler two years from free agency, the Dodgers aren’t likely to get any massive discounts, but this is the best time to sign him if you don’t want to pay him Gerrit Cole money later. The Dodgers don’t necessarily have to stop at this figure, either; what’s the fun of being wealthy if you don’t use that cash to pay for cool things?

There may be some concern in some places about the dropoff in Buehler’s strikeout rate, but while strikeout rate changes do tend to stick very quickly, they stick far more when the underlying stats support the drop-off than when they don’t. In this case, the contact rates and swinging-strike rates haven’t worsened at all, nor has his velocity fallen off a cliff, suggesting that it’s a blip rather than a plunge. You can make a similar argument for the Dodgers signing Julio Urías to an extension, likely for a significantly lesser haul, but given the workload Buehler has shown he can handle, he’d be my priority. Read the rest of this entry »

Whether or not you’ve seen it, you likely know the premise of Freaky Friday. A mother and her daughter switch bodies in a great cosmic mixup, and hijinks ensue. Hello! Welcome to FanGraphs. I’m Ben Clemens, and today we’ll be covering classic teen cinema of the early 2000s (and mid-1970s), as personified by last night’s Giants-Mets game.

Tuesday night could have been just another day at the (beautiful, well-appointed) office for the Mets and Giants. After a comfortable win by New York in Monday’s series opener, the Giants returned the favor early in last night’s game. Chris Bassitt, the steadiest starter in a rotation buffeted by injuries, had his worst start of the year, surrendering eight earned runs in only 4.1 innings thanks to three homers, two by Joc Pederson. Logan Webb, meanwhile, cruised through five innings (six strikeouts, one walk, two runs), turning what was billed as a pitching duel into an 8-2 rout.

Teams don’t come back from six-run deficits. When Pederson launched his second homer, a two-run shot that pushed the score to 8-2, the Giants’ win expectancy climbed to 98.2%. Tune into 50 games, and you might see the trailing team pull one out. The Mets behaved accordingly; they brought in Stephen Nogosek, the last reliever in their bullpen, to eat some innings.

That’s the way the game could have ended – but let’s get back to Freaky Friday. In 2021, the Giants won these games, whichever side of the 8-2 score they were on. They were both excellent and a team of destiny, and you have to win plenty of tough ones to end the regular season with 107 wins.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Brewers are atop the NL Central thanks in large part to a rotation that has ranked among the game’s best, but the team’s postseason hopes took a hit this week with the news that righty Freddy Peralta will miss “a significant amount of time” due to a posterior shoulder strain. Milwaukee, which is additionally dealing with multiple injuries in its lineup, believes that Peralta will avoid surgery and return this season, but his loss is a disappointment given the 25-year-old’s recent return to form.

Peralta left Sunday’s start against the Nationals after three-plus innings due to tightness in his left shoulder. He failed to retire any of the three batters he faced in the fourth inning, and all three came around to score, the last two on reliever Brent Suter’s watch along with three others. The five runs that Peralta was charged with were as many as he had allowed over his previous five starts.

Indeed, Peralta had been on a roll. After starting the season by allowing nine runs in seven innings in his first two turns, he went on the aforementioned five-start run. In 28.2 innings, he struck out 38 (a 34.2% rate) and walked six (5.4%) without allowing a single homer, a run capped by his seven-inning, two-hit, 10-strikeout game against the Braves on May 16. Granted, the competition he faced during that strech wasn’t fierce, as the Phillies, Pirates, Reds (twice), and Braves are all below .500, and only Philadelphia has a team wRC+ higher than 94, but such is the schedule of an NL Central contender.

Peralta underwent an MRI on Monday, which revealed the strain. The Brewers expect the injury will heal with rest, but it will take some time. “He will be back this season but it’s going to be a lengthy absence,” manager Craig Counsell told reporters on Monday. “We’re confident that there’s gonna be no aftereffects to this thing but it’s going to take a while to heal and then build it back up.”

Through the ups and downs of his season so far, Peralta’s ERA is a gaudy 4.42, but among the 66 NL pitchers with at least 30 innings through Monday (the cutoff point for all stats here unless otherwise noted), his 2.10 FIP was the league’s lowest, his 0.23 homers per nine ranked third (teammate Adrian Houser was first at 0.21), his 1.3 WAR and 30.3% strikeout rate were sixth, his 22.4% strikeout-walk differential was seventh, and his 2.88 xERA was 14th.

Those peripherals are in line with the All-Star campaign he put up last season. After three years of careful workload management — a span during which he struck out 258 in 192.2 innings but never threw over 85 innings in a season — Peralta broke out with career highs of 27 starts and 144.1 innings in 2021. Among NL pitchers with at least 140 innings, his 2.81 ERA placed sixth and his 3.12 FIP was seventh. His 33.6% strikeout rate was third behind only teammate Corbin Burnes and Max Scherzer, and his 24.0% strikeout-walk differential was good for fourth behind that pair and Aaron Nola. Only a late-season bout of shoulder inflammation, for which Peralta spent 15 days on the injured list and had a few shortened starts on either side, put a damper on his strong campaign and prevented him from down-ballot consideration in the Cy Young voting. Read the rest of this entry »

“When you’re pitched away, take the ball to the opposite field.” It’s a training mantra that seemingly exists everywhere. I heard it in Little League. I hear it on major league broadcasts to this day. The data show that hitters do it, and it’s just a natural swing. I can think of few hitting sayings I believe more than this one.

Of course, just because you can hit the ball the other way doesn’t mean you have to. Over the last two years, the list of righty hitters who have pulled the ball most when they swing at away pitches (from right-handed pitchers, just to standardize the sample) probably matches your intuition:

You basically understand the kinds of hitters on here. The guys ranked sixth and seventh are similar types: Salvador Perez and Mike Zunino. It’s big boppers who try to lift and pull the ball no matter where they’re pitched, as well as guys like Marcus Semien who sell out to pull in an attempt to juice their power. If you do the most damage on the pull side and accrue most of your offensive value through power, it’s a natural approach. You think anyone’s coming to the ballpark to see Patrick Wisdom slap a well-placed cutter the other way? They want dingers!

The list of the hitters who pull the ball least often when pitched away is mostly who you’d expect, and also not who you’d expect at all. Feast your eyes on the top five:

The top four are contact-oriented hitters with elevated groundball rates… and the fifth might be the most powerful baseball player in history. Read the rest of this entry »

The Cardinals are only second in the NL Central right now, but they’ve been having some fun lately. On back-to-back Sundays, they sent elder statesmen (and likely future Hall of Famers) to the mound to close out lopsided games — first Albert Pujols against the Giants and then Yadier Molina against the Pirates. What’s more, the Cardinals were on top in both of those games by double-digit scores, placing the pair in a rare subset within the annals of position players pitching.

That’s not the only interesting recent development when it comes to those accidental moundsmen. But as it’s been awhile since I last delved into the topic, it’s a good place to start.

So let’s set the wayback machine to May 15, the night that the Cardinals faced the Giants in St. Louis for ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball broadcast. With lefty Carlos Rodón on the mound for San Francisco, the 42-year-old Pujols, who returned to the nest this spring after a decade-long run with the Angels and, briefly, the Dodgers, was in the lineup. Though righties are still a problem, he’s ably served as a platoon designated hitter against southpaws; to date he’s hit .227/.329/.439 (125 wRC+). On this night, Pujols and company went to town on Rodón, scoring nine runs over the first four frames, with eight of them charged to the starter, and the veteran slugger collecting a double and an RBI single within that onslaught. The Cardinals kept scoring, adding two runs apiece in the fifth, sixth, and seventh; by the end of the eighth, they led 15–2. Read the rest of this entry »