It wasn’t long ago that the Cardinals viewed Paul DeJong as a foundational player. Coming off a 25-homer 2017 season in which he was the runner-up in the NL Rookie of the Year voting, they signed him to a six-year, $26 million extension — a record at the time for a player with less than a year of service time. But since his 30-homer All-Star showing in 2019, he’s battled injuries, illness, and himself with diminishing returns. On Tuesday, the Cardinals addressed his increasing struggles by optioning the 28-year-old shortstop to Triple-A Memphis.

DeJong is hitting just .130/.209/.208 for a 30 wRC+, ranking among the bottom four in the majors in all four of those categories among players with at least 80 plate appearances (he has 86). His dismal showing has followed two disappointing seasons with very different shapes, a 2021 campaign in which he hit for power with little else (.197/284/.390/, 86 wRC+, 19 HR) and a ’20 season in which he showed little pop (.250/322/.349, 87 wRC+, 3 HR).

Despite missing nearly three weeks (but just 11 games) when the Cardinals had a COVID-19 outbreak in August 2020, DeJong actually rebounded and hit quite well until mid-September of that season, but he closed in a 6-for-46 funk that dragged his numbers down, and went just 2-for-10 in the Wild Card Series against the Padres as the Cardinals were eliminated. He missed a month in May and June of last season due to a non-displaced rib fracture, then tweaked his back later in the year, and started just 19 of the team’s final 47 games as fill-in Edmundo Sosa outplayed him. Sosa, who hit .271/.346/.389 (104 wRC+) last year, got the call in the Wild Card Game, which the Cardinals lost to the Dodgers. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a fun time to be a Blue Jays fan. (Well, Tuesday night’s loss to the Yankees notwithstanding.) Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s titanic home runs are fun, George Springer’s diving catches are fun, and Kevin Gausman’s wicked splitters are fun. Basically, the entire team is a blast to watch. To a casual fan, Toronto must look like the best baseball has to offer. And to a serious nerd like myself, Toronto also looks like the best baseball has to offer — in one specific regard, that is.

Here at FanGraphs, I’ve written extensively about the shift. It’s a subject I’m passionate about not only because there’s a lot of room for analysis and debate, but also because teams seemingly never agree on how to use it, and dissent is entertaining. The Padres only shift against left-handed hitters. The Dodgers shift against everyone! Last season, it looked like teams started to cut down on shifts against right-handed hitters. This season, they’re more popular than ever. And if there’s a protagonist in the latest (and potentially last) story surrounding baseball’s grasp of the shift and all its variations, it’s none other than the Toronto Blue Jays.

I’m hardly the first to take note of this. Summarizing the season’s first weekend, Mike Petriello wrote about how the Blue Jays were shifting against everyone. Emma Baccellieri covered the continued rise of infield shifts and how Toronto has been leading the charge. In addition, what follows isn’t anything groundbreaking. These observations have been made before, but they bear repeating because they’re ridiculous. It’s as if the Blue Jays are participating in an entirely different game. But if we just look at the most common variety of shifts, the ones against lefties, there’s nothing all that special to be found:

A quick note on this graph and those ahead: they display volume and not rate, making them inaccurate in judging which teams are the most and least shift-enthusiastic. For example, while the Yankees are 29th by number of shifts against lefties, they’re 23rd by shift rate, simply because their pitching has faced a league-trailing number of left-handed hitters. But for the purposes of this article, using each team’s total seemed like the best option. You’ll get to see why later on.

Getting back to the point, the Blue Jays are around the middle of the pack when it comes to shifting against lefties. They follow a rare shift-related consensus but not overly so, which is that most left-handed hitters are good shift candidates. Why? Compared to right-handed hitters, lefties pull a higher rate of groundballs and tend to strike out more often when faced with the shift. A standard lefty alignment also leaves considerably fewer holes in the infield. Even the most conservative teams are shifting way more against lefties than they did some three or four years ago.

In that sense, the Blue Jays are moderates. But not for long, because this is where things kick into overdrive. While all teams have shifted against a righty at least once this season, extremists are few and far between. That’s because those righties are a risky bunch; they don’t pull as many of their grounders and strike out less often against the shift. A standard righty alignment can cover the pull side, but any ball hit even slightly the other way has base hit potential. Most teams prefer to focus on the lefties. The Blue Jays, though? They simply do not care:

What’s fascinating is just how fast the Blue Jays came around to the idea of targeting right-handed hitters. They shifted against righties in 11.3% of opportunities last season, a rate that has skyrocketed to 66.4% this year. Some time during the offseason, the Jays’ front office folks pondered the possibility of this, ran the numbers, and arrived at the conclusion that it is indeed viable. I have no idea what sort of revelations led to such a rapid shift in philosophy, and from the outside looking in, they seem bonkers. Public research suggests that shifting against so many righties is a bad idea. But evidently, certain teams are arguing otherwise. The Blue Jays, beyond joining them, are now spearheading their campaign.

Teams aren’t only paying attention to their infield defense, however. As both Rob Arthur and Russell Carleton have detailed, outfield positioning has had a far greater impact on hitter BABIP than infield shifts, which receive the bulk of the sports media spotlight. One method teams use to snag hard-hit line drives and fly balls is shading the centerfielder to the right (versus lefties) or the left (versus righties). Hitters also tend to pull their air balls, and it’s those pulled balls that are the most dangerous. Labeled as a “strategic” outfield on Baseball Savant, it’s subtle, effective, and has spread across the league. Let’s see where the Blue Jays stand in terms of usage:

There’s not much to add here. The Jays are once again in first place, and this time by an even greater margin. They alone have accounted for 16% of all strategic outfields this season. Since these outfield shifts happen concurrently with infield ones, it’s pretty much never the case that Toronto’s defense is normal. Regardless of your feelings about the shift, you kind of have to applaud this dedication, right? Oh, and the Blue Jays are also connoisseurs of the four-man outfield, which few teams attempt due to the risk involved. It’s certainly an acquired taste, but the Blue Jays have a voracious appetite:

This graph isn’t missing any values — there really are only six teams thus far who have dared to place four men in the outfield. Fittingly, the Blue Jays’ total is greater than that of the five other teams combined. It’s interesting how among the six, four of them are AL East teams. That’s partly because of Joey Gallo and Anthony Rizzo, two Yankees who rank first and second in most four-man outfields faced. But what separates the Blue Jays is their relentlessness. Rather than reserve four-man outfields for extremely specific situations, they’ve been keen on using them against select hitters without consideration for the opposing pitcher or count. They aren’t just dipping their toes in the water; they seem fully committed.

In conclusion, the Blue Jays shift a lot. How much is a lot? This much is a lot:

A bunch of teams squished together, with one Toronto skyscraper towering over them. That graph perfectly encapsulates why the Blue Jays have been so unbelievable this season. The players are good, sure, but from a front office perspective, this is also what a desire to win looks like. Not that a maximalist approach is necessarily good, but the Blue Jays sure seem convinced that more than 4,000 shifts and counting are an integral part of their formula. They’re all in! That can’t be said about a lot of teams.

What I’m not going to do here is try and figure out what their reasoning is, and if it really is sensible. That’s maybe an article for later — no math this time. The Blue Jays’ aggressive ways do give us plenty of questions to consider, however. Did their acquisition of Matt Chapman encourage them to push the limits of what’s possible in the infield? Does the spacious outfield of Rogers Center give them an incentive to cover extra ground? Or have they somehow found a way to nullify the walk penalty? For now, though, I’m content with stepping back and admiring their efforts. If the shift does becomes a relic of baseball’s past, we’ll always have the 2022 Blue Jays to remind us how far it was taken.

Every year, Byron Buxton seems to find another gear. With the exception of his abbreviated 2018 (94 plate appearances in the majors), Buxton’s OPS has increased every single season compared to the year before. In 2022, partly thanks to becoming a fastball-crushing machine since the start of last year, he’s continued this pattern, hitting .278/.342/.722 in 79 plate appearances (all stats are through Monday’s action). He’s even tied for the league lead in home runs with nine, especially impressive given that he’s missed more than a third of Minnesota’s games.

It’s that last fact that is troubling, as Buxton’s career has been hampered by an unfortunate inability to stay healthy. And it hasn’t been one, consistent problem that keeps him out of games but rather a succession of nagging ones, with each season bringing a mystery grab bag of misfortune. This year, it’s been a sore knee from a slide, a hand contusion, and a hip problem. Last year, it was a hip, a hamstring, and a broken hand. Before 2021, he missed time due to a concussion, a sore left shoulder, a sprained left foot, a torn labrum, another concussion, a hit by a pitch to the wrist, a different strain to the same wrist, a broken toe, serious migraines after an outfield wall collision, a strained groin, and a sprained knee — and that doesn’t count the myriad day-to-day issues.

The last time Buxton played even 100 games in a season was in 2017 (while there were only 60 games in 2020, he still missed a third of them). I was born in 1978; growing up, Eric Davis was the five-tool, mega-skilled exemplar of the dynamic superstar who couldn’t stay healthy, but even he still managed to get into 130 games a year during his 1986–90 peak. Buxton debuted almost seven years ago, in June 2015, and barely has three years’ worth of playing time in the majors to go along with another half-season in the minors due to Minnesota’s early proclivity for demoting him every time he fell into a slump. Read the rest of this entry »

This season, Eric and Tess Taruskin will each have a minor league roundup post that runs during the week, with the earlier post recapping some of the weekend’s action. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

Darius Vines, RHP, Atlanta Braves
Level & Affiliate: Double-A Mississippi Age: 24 Org Rank: TBD FV: 35+
Weekend Line: 6.1 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 0 BB, 11 K

Notes
Even though Vines had K’d a batter per inning leading up to it, his trademark changeup hadn’t been consistently plus this year until Sunday’s outing. It’s actually been Vines’ fastball, which has lift and carry through the strike zone, that has induced most of his swings and misses this year, even though he hasn’t had any kind of velo spike and is still sitting in the 89-92 mph range and topping out close to 94. A fringy, low-80s slurve rounds out a solid if unspectacular pitch mix that has been weaponized by Vines’ command. Fastball playability, a good changeup, and plenty of strikes drive spot starter projection here. Vines will likely enter the offseason on Atlanta’s 40-man bubble. Read the rest of this entry »

Liam Hendriks got shelled last night. After it looked like the White Sox had put the game away — they led 8–2 after the bottom of the eighth inning — the Guardians made things interesting by stringing together hits, errors, and walks to trim the deficit to 8–4. With two outs, Tony La Russa called for Hendriks, who promptly surrendered a single and a grand slam to tie the game.

It was the the first blemish on what otherwise would have been a sterling week for Hendriks. From May 2 to May 7, he’d been an absolute workhorse, making five appearances in six days without allowing a run. We’ll probably never know whether Monday’s game — his sixth in eight days — was affected by fatigue; Hendriks wouldn’t likely admit that even if it were the case. But it’s reasonable to wonder whether something could have gone differently, somewhere in the sequence of events, that gave the White Sox a better chance of hanging on last night.

Six games in eight days is an effective cap on reliever usage these days. No reliever has thrown seven games in eight days in the past three years; six games in eight days has happened 23 times over that same stretch. Hendriks himself accounts for three of those, with the rest a hodgepodge mix of closers and low-leverage middle relievers and Raisel Iglesias as the only other pitcher with multiple entries.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox may not be as catastrophically awful as the Reds, but at 10-19 they’re running last in the AL East and own the league’s second-worst record ahead of only the Tigers (8-20). Cripes, they’re looking up at the 12-17 Orioles, losers of at least 108 games in each of the last three full seasons. But while Baltimore is in the midst of a seemingly interminable rebuilding effort, Boston is coming off a season in which it won 92 games and fell just two wins short of a World Series berth, and its payroll — $236.6 million for Competitive Balance Tax purposes — is over the tax threshold. At the moment, the Red Sox look like the worst team that money can buy.

You’re forgiven if this feels somewhat familiar, because the Red Sox have made precipitous falls something of a specialty. In 2011, they won 90 games, then crashed to 69 wins the following year while carrying a $175 million payroll, second only to the Yankees. They followed that with a 97-win rebound and their third championship in a decade in 2013… only to plummet to 71 wins a year later. They fell even further from 2018 (108 wins) to ’19 (84) than from ’11 to ’12, but they at least finished above .500 in the latter campaign before plummeting to 24-36 — and last place in the division — during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.

Here’s a quick look at where this start fits in among expansion-era Red Sox teams:

This current team is tied with the 1996 edition for the third-worst record to this point. While some of the above squads were able to scramble back above .500, none of them made the playoffs; the slow start cost the 1972 team a spot in the strike-shortened season. No team that has started 10-19 since the playoffs last expanded in 2012 has even claimed a Wild Card spot, though an 11-18 Pirates team did in ’14, and five other 11-18 teams did so from 1995-2011, when each league only awarded one Wild Card spot. Read the rest of this entry »

Shelley Duncan has a job befitting a longtime FanGraphs reader with deeps roots in the game. A big league outfielder/first baseman from 2007-13, the 42-year-old son of legendary pitching coach Dave Duncan is the Analytics Coordinator for the Chicago White Sox. Hired for the in-uniform position in November 2020, Duncan previously managed in the Arizona Diamondbacks system and served as both a field coordinator and a special assistant of baseball operations with the Toronto Blue Jays.

Duncan discussed his current role, and the way analytics are changing the way teams game plan, when the White Sox visited Fenway Park over the weekend.

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David Laurila: Your title is Analytics Coordinator. What does the role entail?

Shelley Duncan: “It’s a position that is starting to become more popular with some teams, to have somebody in the dugout that can help other staff members, and players, with information. You can translate information and be an intermediary between them and the analytics part of the front office. You’re not replacing any of the relationships, or any of the jobs, just being a source for everyone.

“There are so many areas of focus on a baseball field that involve information. Whether it’s players knowing stuff about themselves, about the opponent, decision-making during games, advance work… half of the advance work is digging into numbers and information, and then blending video. One guy can’t do all that — I can’t do all that — but what I can do is support everybody with my experience and knowledge, including the work I do with the analytics department.”

Laurila: I assume you’re consulting with the analytics department on a regular basis… Read the rest of this entry »

The Reds won a series this weekend, beating the Pirates in two out of three games. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t rate as news, but it’s the first time since they swept the Nationals last September 24-26 that they could claim such an accomplishment, and the first time all season that they came from behind to win a game. They entered Friday with a 3-22 record — a standard of futility surpassed by only one team since 1901 — and had won just one of their previous 21 games in the wake of president Phil Castellini’s now-infamous “Where are you gonna go?” speech before the team’s April 12 home opener. Even with the series win, which came at the expense of the garden-variety bad Pirates (now 11-16), this undermanned team has been unsightly so far.

After making the expanded playoffs with a 31-29 record in 2020, the Reds went 83-79 last year, but missed out on the postseason thanks to their payroll slashing and then gutted the roster even further. With general manager Nick Krall euphemizing the teardown by telling reporters, “We must align our payroll to our resources and continue focusing on scouting and developing young talent from within our system” in November, the team was similarly aggressive in slashing payroll this past winter. They let lefty Wade Miley — on whom they held a $10 million club option after a solid, 2.9-WAR season that even included a no-hitter — escape via waivers to the Cubs, made no attempt to retain Nick Castellanos after he opted out, and traded Tucker Barnhart to the Tigers, though at least they had a ready successor to him in Tyler Stephenson. Once the lockout ended, they quickly dealt away Sonny Gray, Jesse Winker, Eugenio Suárez, and Amir Garrett. They did sign four free agents to major league deals, though all were for a single year, and only those for Donovan Solano ($4.5 million) and Tommy Pham ($7.5 million) came in north of $2 million. In fact, only two players, Joey Votto and Mike Moustakas, are signed to guaranteed deals beyond this season. Read the rest of this entry »

Chances are you haven’t thought much about Edmundo Sosa recently. He lost the Cardinals’ starting shortstop gig to Paul DeJong before the season began, leading to inconsistent playing time. When given opportunities, he’s been hitting a paltry .160/.250/.160; striking out 42.9% of the time and walking zero percent of the time will do that. Making matters worse, his placement on the COVID-19 injured list last week further removed him from the action. He’s seen better days.

But wait — if you’re an astute reader, you might have noticed a curious detail. If Sosa has yet to draw a walk, how is his on-base percentage that high? I’m so glad you asked (and not me, who definitely didn’t need a segue). While Sosa has just 28 plate appearances to his name, he’s already been hit by a pitch three times. That seems like quite a high rate of plunkings! Indeed, here are the much-too-early-but-relevant leaders in hit by pitches per plate appearances so far this season. Guess who’s at the very top:

Take that, Michael Hermosillo. It’s Sosa who claims the throne by a small margin, but considering his offensive woes, the man needs any victory he can take. To Cardinals fans, though, his capabilities as a pitch magnet are nothing new. In 326 more successful plate appearances last season, Sosa dutifully bore the brunt of 17 pitches, which formed the backbone of a respectable .346 on-base percentage; he’s not the type to wait out four balls for it. That, in tandem with flashes of gap-to-gap power, made Sosa a sneaky component of the Cardinals’ yearly devil magic, as they made the postseason in stunning fashion.

It’s unfortunate that Sosa’s bat is dormant to begin 2022, but at least one offensive skill remains. Skill? Absolutely: certain hitters are better than others at getting plunked, and while there’s evidence that pitchers are driving the recent spike in hit-by-pitches, there’s also research suggesting that the latest generation of hitters are eager to endure pain for a free base. In Sosa’s case, any pitcher influence seems minimal; he’s seen about a league-average rate of pitches up-and-in thus far. That he led the league in HBP per PA last season (among hitters with 300 or more PA) and is continuing his reign is no accident. Sosa gets beaned a lot, and he’s good at it. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and once again, we’re hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features a pair of right-handers — Toronto’s Trent Thornton and Minnesota’s Josh Winder — on their distinctly different sliders.

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Trent Thornton, Toronto Blues Jays

“Last year, I struggled with putting away righties. My slider wasn’t playing very well. I feel like curveballs are normally better to lefties anyways, so I started tinkering with a new slider grip that [Blue Jays pitching strategist] David Howell showed me. I started throwing that halfway through spring training, saw some pretty promising results, and took it straight into this season. I feel pretty confident with that pitch, being able to throw it in the zone, or out of the zone.

“It’s kind of an interesting grip for a slider. Normally, when guys are throwing a slider they want to think fastball as long as possible and kind of get that short, late action. But with this one, I’m almost thinking, ‘Completely on the side of the ball.’ In my mind, I’m trying to up-shoot it almost. I want to go straight across. It’s weird, because when I throw it, my wrist is literally like this; it’s kind of sideways. Basically, I’m thinking about bringing the back of my hands straight at the hitter. Read the rest of this entry »