High-performing under-the-radar prospects have been featured frequently in this space over recent months, and Brandon Phaadt fits that description to a T. Unranked coming into the season, the 22-year-old right-hander in the Arizona Diamondbacks system posted a 3.21 ERA while fanning 160 batters in 131-and-two-thirds innings. Moreover, he did so while pitching at three levels —Pfaadt’s last six starts came with Double-A Amarillo — as a 2020 fifth-round pick out of a DII school.

The Bellarmine University product pushed back slightly when I suggested that his auspicious performance came out of the blue.

“I guess it did in some people’s eyes,” said Pfaadt. “But I knew I had it all along. I had a long offseason to train, and I also think it was really important that I was able to work with three different pitching coaches this year. I got feedback from all three, and was able to take bits and pieces from each of them.”

Asked for examples, Pfaadt told me that Barry Enright (Low-A Visalia) was more mechanics-based and worked with him on the consistency of his delivery, while Shane Loux (High-A Hillsboro) was more about pitchability. At Amarillo, Doug Drabek provided an effective combination of old-school and new-school acumen. As Pfaadt put it, Drabek “knows what worked back then, and what works now.”

Pitch design didn’t play a role. Read the rest of this entry »

LaMonte Wade Jr. was hardly a household name coming into this season, just another roster hopeful buried on the Giants’ depth charts. But like several other pickups by the Giants in recent years — players coming off lousy seasons elsewhere, or ones who had never gotten a full shot in their previous organizations — he’s become an essential contributor this season. Despite barely playing in the majors before the end of May, he’s tied for fourth on the team in home runs, and has shown a penchant for collecting timely late-inning hits.

Wade’s most recent big hit came on Tuesday night. Facing the possibility of dropping into a tie with the Dodgers atop the National League West, the Giants clawed their way back from an early 4-1 deficit against the Padres before Wade drove in the go-ahead run in the ninth inning with a bloop single off ex-Giant Mark Melancon:

That was the seventh time since June that a Wade hit put the Giants in the lead in the eighth inning or later, which is tied with five other players for the major league lead. All of them — namely Michael Conforto, Aaron Judge, Austin Meadows, Jorge Polanco, and Kyle Seager — have at least 96 more plate appearances than he does, and all of those hits helped the Giants win those games. Here’s the supercut:

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Sandy Alcantara has taken the next step. Already one of baseball’s better groundball-inducers, Alcantara has added the strikeout to his game in the second half of this season. In the process, he’s transformed from an above-average starter into one who is knocking on the door of ace status.

Over the last three years, Alcantara has been worth 7.2 WAR, a figure that ranks 27th among starting pitchers in that time. It has been volume-heavy value: his 3.94 FIP since 2019 grades out as just slightly above-average (93 FIP-), while his 434 innings pitched ranks ninth among all pitchers. His 21% strikeout rate and 8% walk rate scream nothing special, though his near-49% groundball rate kept the homers off the board.

Up until this season — and really up until its second half — that was Alcantara’s story. He was a very good pitcher, but there was still tantalizing potential he was seemingly leaving on the table. Even from 2019-20, when he struck out less than 19% of the hitters he faced, Alcantara’s average fastball velocity ranked near the top of the majors. Throwing both a four-seamer and a sinker, he averaged 95.7 mph with his fastballs, an 88th percentile mark. He also featured a slider and a changeup that both offered above-average called-strike-plus-whiff rates, suggesting Alcantara could better optimize those pitches for more strikeouts. If he could just strike out more hitters while maintaining his groundball rate, he had the potential to become an elite starter. And over his 12 starts since the All-Star break, that is exactly what has happened:

In the second half, Alcantara has struck out 28% of the batters he’s faced and walked fewer than 5%, all while keeping more than 50% of his batted balls on the ground. He has a 3.12 FIP over 78 innings, making him the 14th-most valuable pitcher in the game since the break. He’s been even better since August 1: with a 2.61 ERA and 2.80 FIP over 69 innings, Alcantara moves all the way up to eighth on the WAR leaderboard in that span. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ll start with some screen shots.

The author of that trickery is Ryan Weathers, a 21-year-old rookie for the San Diego Padres who leads all of baseball in pickoffs this season with nine. Runners have only stolen two bases off of him and he hasn’t been called for a balk yet. His pickoff proficiency has been historic, as he has retired those nine runners in only 89.2 innings, or 127 baserunners allowed. On a per baserunner basis, Weathers is having one of the best pickoff seasons of all time:

Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 941

On this edition of the podcast, David Laurila offers a pair of interviews with some insightful pitching minds.

• In the podcast’s first segment, David is joined by Collin McHugh. The Rays right-hander (and occasional podcast host) talks about what it is like to be a major league veteran in a game that is getting younger, how he feels about converting to relief, and the best season of his career. McHugh also shares his thoughts on pitcher wins, striking out the side, and the extra-innings runner, before he tells David about getting his first hit off of Clayton Kershaw and trying to strike out Prince Fielder. [2:39]
• After that, David welcomes Kyle Boddy, founder and owner of Driveline Baseball. Kyle talks about his recent departure from the Reds, as well as the great progress he and his team were able to make while working there. Kyle also shares his thoughts on a number of exciting Cincinnati prospects, including Hunter Greene, Nick Lodolo, Stevie Branche, Lyon Richardson, and Graham Ashcraft. [29:33]

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The Learning and Developing a Pitch series returned this summer after being on hiatus last year due to the pandemic. Each week, we’re hearing from three pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features DJ Herz, Aaron Loup, and Trevor Williams on their changeups.

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DJ Herz, Chicago Cubs prospect

“It was 2020 spring training and I was in the pitch lab. [Cubs pitching coordinator] Casey Jacobson was with me. I threw my regular four… I never had a changeup going into pro ball. So, I threw it off my four-seam grip, and it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good, either. It was too firm, only about four miles off my fastball. Casey had me try another grip, and again it was just all right. Then, the second grip we tried was kind of Vulcan-ish.

“I put it deep into the wedge between the middle and ring finger. I‘ve got the middle finger off the two-seam grip, so I can just rip down on it. I mean, the first pitch I threw like that, it was like, ‘All right, let’s stick with that one; that’s the pitch right there.’

“I went back home and just kept throwing it. I’ve always been told that the changeup is one of the hardest pitches to learn. I was determined. I said, ‘Man, I want to learn this pitch so much.’ I’d hear these interviews with guys saying that having a good fastball and a good changeup is an awesome combo, so I would throw that pitch every single day. I’d long-toss with it sometimes. I kept working on it, and it’s paid off, man. Read the rest of this entry »

The Phillies’ rotation hasn’t been a total disaster this season. Zack Wheeler is a top Cy Young candidate, and Aaron Nola has held his own as one of the league’s best starters, with the two combining for 10.8 WAR. But the rest? Zach Eflin went down in mid-July with a knee injury before getting surgery earlier this month. Vince Velasquez spent nearly two months on the injured list with a blister and was recently DFA’d; he now wears a Padres uniform. Spencer Howard had his own sophomore struggles before being traded to the Rangers at the deadline. Enter 26-year-old left-hander Ranger Suárez, who, after picking up the slack in the bullpen and briefly filling in as the team’s closer, was called upon to step into the rotation.

Suárez has been remarkably consistent since being stretched out as a starter, going at least five innings and allowing two earned runs or fewer in each of his last six starts:

During that stretch, he has only given up one home run. He’s been prolific in that regard all season, having allowed just four homers total and boasting a minuscule 0.26 HR/9 rate over those last six starts. If we extend that to the beginning of August, when he first took the mound as a starter, that becomes an even more impressive 0.18 HR/9 over 49.2 innings pitched. Not only does he seem to have the home run thing figured out, but he also doesn’t give out many free passes either: He’s issued no more than two walks in each of his last six games, good for a 5.6 BB%.

Read the rest of this entry »

On a hot afternoon in St. Louis on August 8, in a game that felt meaningless at the time, the Cardinals rallied for three runs in the eighth inning to tie their game with the Royals at 5–5. In the next half inning, a Paul Goldschmidt throwing error and a go-ahead single by Nicky Lopez dropped St. Louis to 55–56, mired in third place in the National League Central. The team was 10.5 games behind Milwaukee for the division lead, 8.5 games behind the Padres for the second wild card spot, and, per our Playoff Odds, had a 1.4% chance of reaching the postseason.

But following that ugly loss, back-to-back sweeps of road series in Pittsburgh and Kansas City put the Cardinals back over the .500 mark for good, and a 10-game winning streak entering Wednesday’s game in Milwaukee has them with a commanding lead for that second Wild Card spot, and the overwhelming favorites to stay that way. Since that loss to the Royals, St. Louis has gone 26–13, but those hot streaks show just how, well, streaky the team has been; those 16 wins wrap around a 10–13 run.

Still, whether the wins come in bunches or not, the Cardinals have been one of the stories of September, and that story feels largely ignored, mostly due to the five-team dogfight that is the AL Wild Card and the back-and-forth NL West battle between the Dodgers and Giants. On last week’s episode of Chin Music, Joe Sheehan and I wondered why everyone was talking about the Blue Jays and not the Cardinals in the battle of surging birds. Our take: the team is boring. The Blue Jays have swag, infectious energy and cool jackets for when somebody hits home runs. The Cardinals, meanwhile, are relative automatons, getting overshadowed by a Toronto club that is just more fun to watch.

That’s not to take anything away from St. Louis. Entertainment value be damned, this is suddenly looking like a postseason team planning to line up a surprising ace for the coin-flip game. Here are five key factors as to how the Cardinals went from under .500 six weeks ago to being in the driver’s seat for that final playoff slot.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Cardinals’ 10-game winning streak has given them control of the race for the second NL Wild Card spot, as they’ve built a four-game lead over the Reds, reduced their magic number to clinch a spot to eight, and threatened to cut my Team Entropy workload way down. Monday’s victory over the Brewers, their ninth win in that streak, marked the 200th career win for Jon Lester, thereby increasing the count of active hurlers who have achieved that milestone from two to three, as the 37-year-old southpaw — who was acquired from the Nationals at the July 30 deadline — joined Justin Verlander (226) and Zack Greinke (219).

Before you ask: no, I don’t think this does much for Lester’s Hall of Fame case, not with a 39.5 JAWS, which ranks 156th among starting pitchers, below the likes of Cliff Lee, Jamie Moyer, Carlos Zambrano, Brad Radke, Bartolo Colon and current teammate Adam Wainwright — and more than 20 points behind Verlander, Greinke, and Clayton Kershaw, all of whom are around the Hall of Fame standard (61.7). Two-hundred wins, five All-Star appearances, three World Series rings, and three top-five Cy Young award finishes is a nice set of credentials, but let’s not go overboard.

Anyway, Lester pitched badly with the Nationals, and he wasn’t so hot over his final two-plus seasons with the Cubs, either, as his diminished strikeout rate caught up with him. His tenure with the Cardinals — who were just 51-51 with 2.1% Playoff Odds when they traded outfielder Lane Thomas to the Nationals in exchange for him — began in similarly dismal fashion. Yet over his last six turns, he’s delivered a 2.27 ERA in 35.2 innings, allowing no more than two earned runs in any of those outings, which have come against the Tigers, Reds (twice), Brewers (twice), and Mets. Then again, a peek at Lester’s FIP during that six-start stretch (5.68) — driven by a gaudy 2.02 homers per nine — suggests that not all that much has changed for him, so the question is, what’s underlying those better results? Read the rest of this entry »

If you want to figure out who the most fearsome power hitters in the majors are, you can consider any number of criteria. The longest home runs? The hardest-hit batted balls? Those both make some sense. The raw number of home runs? Sure, why not? Personally, I like to look at barrels per swing — how frequently a given batter converts a swing into loud contact.

That’s often what we’re asking when we think about sluggers. If you hit 30 bombs but do it by swinging frequently and putting the ball in the air with average raw, that’s not really what I’d consider a slugger. Similarly, if you almost never make contact, I don’t care too much what happens when you do. Turning swings into smashed baseballs? That’s pretty much what I want to see.

The statistic has the added bonus of mostly passing the sniff test. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Shohei Ohtani are in the top 10. So are Ronald Acuña Jr., Fernando Tatis Jr., Yordan Alvarez, and Max Muncy. Some of this year’s fun surprises — Byron Buxton and Joey Votto — are on there, too. Aaron Judge is 11th. Who tops the list? I’m glad you asked:

That’s right: Mike Zunino is, by this metric at least, the best pure power hitter in baseball. He’s having a whale of a season, too, hitting .209/.296/.553, good for a strange-looking 131 wRC+. Though he’s barely above the Mendoza line, he’s clubbing enough homers (and it’s really just homers — he only has 10 doubles) and taking enough walks (9.4%) to make up for his ghastly 35.6% strikeout rate. Read the rest of this entry »