Who’s the best reliever in baseball? There are multiple ways to go about answering that question. You could pick the guy with the lowest projected ERA; that’s Josh Hader, with Emmanuel Clase, Liam Hendriks, and Taylor Rogers close behind. You could pick the guy with the best reputation; I’d go with Hendriks or Hader, but if you’re a giant Raisel Iglesias or Aroldis Chapman fan, I wouldn’t hold it against you.

If you want to look at what’s happening on the field, though, the best reliever in baseball is clearly Ryan Helsley. It’s not “probably Ryan Helsley.” It’s not “Ryan Helsley is in the conversation.” It’s just Ryan Helsley. He’s been absolutely dominant to start the year, so dominant that I’m not sure I have the right words for it.

If you follow the NL Central, you’ve surely heard of Helsley. He’s been in the majors for parts of the last four seasons as a flamethrowing reliever, and that part isn’t changing. He topped out at 103 mph this weekend, the kind of heat that makes Pitching Ninja sprint to his computer and search for the right emoji (he used fire, if you’re keeping score at home). But that pitch reduces Helsley’s performance to “he throws hard sometimes,” which undersells him to a comical extent.
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It would be an understatement to say that Eric Hosmer’s contract with the Padres has generally not worked out. Over the first four years of his eight-year, $144 million deal, the former Royal netted -0.1 WAR in over 2,000 plate appearances, making him one of the majors’ least valuable players to receive substantial playing time in that span. He’s been red-hot in the season’s first few weeks, however, and while he won’t sustain his current .382/.447/.579 clip, the question is whether he can still help a team that was close to unloading him just a month ago.

Hosmer signed with the Padres in February 2018 (right around the time this scribe joined the FanGraphs fold and shortly after noted Hosmer skeptic Dave Cameron — who included the first basemen among his free agent landmines — joined the Padres’ research and development department). In his first four seasons in San Diego, he produced WARs of -0.5, -0.9, 0.7, and 0.6, with the high coming in his 38-game 2020 season, during which he missed time due to a stomach ailment and a fractured left finger but hit .287/.333/.517 (128 wRC+) in 156 PA.

In the context of the first 11 seasons of Hosmer’s career, it would not be unreasonable to call that season a small-sample fluke. From 2011-21, he had nearly 200 38-game stretches across which he slugged .500 or better even if we limit those stretches to the same season and count overlapping ones. Yet he has never slugged .500 or better over a 162-game season, nor has he posted an isolated power of .200 or better. He maxed out on both of those in 2017, when he hit .318/.385/.498 with a .179 ISO while matching his career high in homers (25), a performance that led to the Padres backing up the Brinks truck. 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.

Calvin Ziegler, RHP, New York Mets
Level & Affiliate: Low-A St. Lucie Age: 19 Org Rank: TBD FV: 40
Weekend Line: 4.1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 9 K

Notes
Ziegler was generating enough buzz during minor league spring training that a scout in Arizona mentioned his name to me totally unprompted, as a heads up that he might be breaking out. A Canadian high schooler in the Toronto area, Ziegler was in a bind ahead of the 2021 draft because travel restrictions were going to make it hard for him to be seen by scouts. He transferred to TNXL Academy, an athletics “school” in Florida, for his pre-draft spring. The Mets made him their second round pick and signed him for just over $900,000, then shut him down during the regular season.

He’s come out hot to start 2022, at least from a bat-missing standpoint, with last Friday’s outing his most efficient from a strike-throwing standpoint. Ziegler’s stuff isn’t appreciably different than when he was in high school, though he is mixing in his secondary stuff more heavily. He used his fastball over 75% of the time on the summer showcase circuit, but his usage has been closer to 50% so far this year. Both Ziegler’s trademark breaking ball and his mid-80s changeup show bat-missing potential, though the former has much more consistent finish. While Ziegler doesn’t have the prototypical pitching prospect’s frame at a fairly mature six feet tall, his delivery is very athletic, with the power and balance he shows in his lower half and the flexibility of his upper back generating optimism that he might yet throw harder than his current 91-96 mph range. Ziegler’s “lack” of height and the way he gets deep into his legs during his delivery give his fastball a tough-to-hit line. Changeup and overall command refinement are all that stand between Ziegler and pretty comfortable projection into a rotation. Read the rest of this entry »

I have some good news about the Yankees. Their collective 120 wRC+ is tied for first among all teams in baseball, an achievement that seems like an amalgamation of skill rather than luck. Case in point: They’re leading the league in every conceivable Statcast metric, including average exit velocity, hard-hit rate, and barrel rate. By hitting baseballs at blistering speeds, the Yankees are turning them into valuable extra-base hits. It’s an ideal process, especially in a season where said hits have been harder to come by.

Next, I have some not-as-good news about the Yankees. It’s something I noticed while looking into Joey Gallo. The lefty slugger recently recorded his first two homers of the season, but his overall batting line is still under water. He’s striking out over 40% of the time, and the little contact he does make hasn’t returned much. You might think this is because Gallo goes after pitches he shouldn’t à la Javier Báez, but last season, he ran one of the best out-of-zone swing rates around. The problem is that even when he’s offered an attractive pitch, he has a gruesome tendency to whiff at it. When Gallo slumps, he doesn’t do so in a manner that’s even the slightest bit flattering. Read the rest of this entry »

“If something cannot go forever, it will stop.” Credited to economist Herb Stein, this tautology, sometimes known as Stein’s law, has broad application past the field of economics: the Earth will end, the sun will end, the ability of the universe to sustain life will end, all the non-Top Chef shows on Bravo will end (hopefully), and we’ll end. Joey Votto does not exist outside of the space-time universe, and his 2022 season so far makes it look like his career will end before all of these things. Or will it?

Votto’s career has looked shaky at times before, but he has made comebacks before: from a leg injury that cost him half a season, a mid-career power outage, and a huge dropoff in play at age 35. He’s had enough successful comebacks to become a rarity in baseball: a highly paid star first baseman who doesn’t make his team regret a very large contract covering his 30s. But while he’s gotten off to slow starts before, a .122/.278/.135 line is something else.

Perhaps even worse is that so many of his non-baseball card stats look abysmal as well. Votto is striking out at nearly triple the rate of his 2017 peak. His soft-hit and hard-hit percentages of 22% and 20%, respectively, are closer to Ben Revere than a slugger, and those numbers are twice and half his career rates, respectively. Votto’s average exit velocity of 86.4 mph is six ticks off last year’s 92.9 mark, and his 70% contact rate is the lowest of his career. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and we’re once again hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features Wil Crowe on his circle changeup and Nick Martinez on his made-in-Japan Vulcan changeup.

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Wil Crowe, Pittsburgh Pirates

“I learned a changeup when I was about eight or 10 years old. Ex-big leaguer Steve Searcy lived in Knoxville, and my dad wanted to find me lessons — he’d played college ball, but wasn’t a pitcher — and that’s who he found. Steve was always big with fastball/changeup. I didn’t throw a curveball or slider until I was a senior in high school. Growing up, it was fastball/change. Locate the fastball, and the changeup comes off of it.

“The grip is a circle change. Now it’s a little modified; it’s out in my fingers a little more than it used to be. Middle finger and ring finger hold onto the laces, and the thumb is underneath. So it started out more of a traditional circle ball, and now it’s more on the end of the fingers. I did that in college, after I grew into my body. My hand was bigger and I was able to grip the ball better. But I think that starting at such a young age helped, because it’s a comfort thing. Read the rest of this entry »

The Los Angeles Angels are off to a 13-7 start. A couple of the big reasons for that are not unexpected. Mike Trout, who hadn’t played in a regular-season game in 11 months, is off to a blazing start even by his robust standards, sporting an OPS north of 1.200 and already nearing the sort of WAR we expect a league-average player to post over six months. Shohei Ohtani isn’t torching the league to quite the same degree but he’s also on a 6-WAR pace when you combine his hitting and pitching. Still, in the past, the team has struggled even with two superstars at the top of their game. What’s working for Los Angeles now is truly unusual compared to recent years: getting lots of contributions from the other guys. And none of “the other guys” have stood taller so far than Taylor Ward.

I’m always one of the first to yell “April!” about small-sample-size stars, but Ward’s performance has still been stunning. His .381/.509/.762 line calculates out to a 269 wRC+, besting his teammate Trout and everyone else with at least 50 PA this season. What makes it even more impressive is that some of the numbers fueling that line are of the sort that are meaningful in a small sample.

There’s a bit of a fallacy with extreme data in small samples (if it has a name, I don’t know it). In baseball, when a .280 hitter hits .300, people accept it as normal, but when a .280 hitter hits .500, it is generally written off as a fluke. But while the “hitting .500” part is, the .280 hitter who is hitting .500 is more likely to have improved than the one posting .300. Read the rest of this entry »

We went over this just a couple of weeks ago: between Kyle Schwarber, Nick Castellanos, Rhys Hoskins, and Alec Bohm, the Phillies have no shortage of defensively challenged players who might be better served as the team’s designated hitter, and luckily for them, the DH is now a permanent thing in the National League. The team’s plan at the outset of the season was to use its two new free agent sluggers, Castellanos and Schwarber, to occupy that role while minimizing their exposure in the field, yet for almost two weeks now, the position has been occupied by Bryce Harper. The reigning NL MVP was supposed to be the team’s starting right fielder, but an elbow injury has led to him shelving his glove for the moment — and it’s coincided with him heating up after a slow start.

Harper started eight of the team’s first nine games in right field, but he hasn’t played the position since April 16. Instead, he’s remained in the lineup as the team’s DH for 12 straight games. He apparently injured the elbow while making a throw to home plate on an RBI single by the Mets’ Francisco Lindor on April 11:

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Mike Trout is climbing up the WAR leaderboards; nature is healing. Still, it’s probably best to remember that we’re in the season’s early going. Eric Hosmer is batting .415! Meanwhile, Yuli Gurriel is batting .203. Some players have been unbelievably hot, others have been mysteriously cold — these extremes tend to balance out by season’s end. Players usually remain who they are, despite the memorable breakouts.

That principle also extends to changes in a player’s approach, pitch mix, or swing mechanics. Often, those eager to better themselves will start the season with a completely different look. Reality tends to get in the way, though. Sometimes injuries happen, or old habits prove hard to shake. Many players won’t see their changes through a year’s worth of trouble. It’s just the nature of things.

With that in mind, let’s talk about Austin Meadows. He’s a Detroit Tiger now, having arrived from St. Petersburg in a trade only his former team would dare to orchestrate. And he’s off to a pretty good start, with his .304/.418/.411 line translating to a 154 wRC+ in an offensively challenged season. It’s not so surprising, since Meadows has proven himself many times to be a great hitter. What is worth noting is how he’s arrived at that mark. In a few ways, Meadows looks like a different hitter than the one he was a year or two ago. So if you’re willing, I’d like to highlight some interesting (warning: subjective) things that have defined his productive April. I’ll present them in three parts. Read the rest of this entry »

Jeff McNeil has been pretty good so far this year. He’s hitting .328/.388/.492, good for a 163 wRC+. He’s starting all over the field, making the Mets’ complicated lineup decisions easier. That’s great! That’s all good. Today, though, I’m more interested in the fact that he’s displaying strike zone judgment usually reserved for Juan Soto, Joey Votto, and God.

McNeil has always been one of the most aggressive hitters in baseball. That hasn’t changed this year. Here are the hitters who swing the most at pitches in the strike zone:

This is not news. From 2018-21, his career prior to this year, McNeil led baseball in zone swing rate. This year, he leads baseball in zone swing rate. He is continuing to do what he’s always done! More at 11.

But wait, there is more. You know how these swing-happy types work. Take a look at the list again. García has a career 6.3% walk rate and it’s heading lower this year. Anderson has a career 3.5% walk rate. Mountcastle hardly walks for a slugger. Seager – well, okay, Seager is just great. But swinging a lot at pitches in the strike zone also generally means swinging a lot at pitches outside of the strike zone.

Indeed, García and Anderson are the two hitters chasing the most pitches outside the zone. Mountcastle is in the top 15. Seager – yeah, still great. But McNeil is nowhere near that! He’s chasing only 29.1% of pitches outside the zone, a lower rate than the league as a whole and by far a career low. His in-zone swing rate, by the way, is a career high. Did Jeff McNeil crack the code? Read the rest of this entry »