By his own definition, Max Scherzer had a shot at a no-hitter. In the nightcap of Tuesday’s doubleheader against the Giants at Citi Field, in his first home start since signing with the Mets, he held San Francisco hitless for 5.2 innings before Darin Ruf lined a single to left field, ending the 37-year-old righty’s quest for his third career no-no. “My rule of thumb is when you get one time through the order, you got something going. You get two times through the order, you got a shot,” said Scherzer afterwards. He had turned the lineup over for the second time earlier in that inning; Ruf was the 21st batter he faced.

Scherzer wasn’t the only pitcher to make a run at a no-hitter this week. In the span of just over 24 hours on Tuesday and Wednesday, five starters made it through at least five innings without yielding a hit. Just hours after Scherzer’s effort, the Braves’ Max Fried retired the first 15 hitters he faced at Dodger Stadium before Hanser Alberto lined a single to right field. The next day, the Brewers’ Brandon Woodruff, the Dodgers’ Tony Gonsolin, and the Angels’ Shohei Ohtani all found the holes in opponents’ bats. While none of them made it as far as the nail-biting time in the eighth or ninth innings, the conditions appear primed for the 2022 season to pick up where last year — a season that featured a record nine no-hitters — left off.

Through the first two weeks of the season, starters have taken no-hitters into the sixth inning 10 times:

Even before the controversy involving Kershaw — who became just the second pitcher pulled from a perfect game in the seventh inning or later — and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, Padres manager Bob Melvin pulled starters with no-hitters in progress in back-to-back games. What’s more, they were his first two regular-season contests with his new team! Like Roberts, Melvin made his moves in light of the fact that his starters hadn’t fully built up their pitch counts after shorter-than-normal spring trainings, and like Kershaw, both Darvish and Manaea publicly supported their manager’s decision. Read the rest of this entry »

When the 2022 season opened to fanfare and excitement, one of the main talking points was the record-setting arrival of top prospects. After countless rebuilds, a global pandemic, and a prolonged lockout, fans deserved to watch budding superstars duke it out in games that matter. Some of them, like Seiya Suzuki and Jeremy Peña, have been thriving right out of the gate; both rank among the top ten in batter WAR as of Thursday’s games. Others like Spencer Torkelson might have fallen a bit off the radar but have still been successful per wRC+ or batted ball metrics.

Much to our annoyance, though, there’s always a flip side we’d like to ignore. Enter Julio Rodríguez, whose triple slash of .136/.208/.159 is terrible not just amongst fellow rookies, but also all of major league baseball. This isn’t to say we should be concerned; Rodríguez remains one of the most talented rookies around, and in the grand scheme of things, 12 games and counting mean next to nothing. Don’t smash that emergency glass just yet!

But in his opportunities to prove himself, Rodríguez hasn’t been offered fair terms. One of the most fundamental and effective traits a hitter can possess is plate discipline, which is partly the ability to ignore unfavorable pitches. It’s something Rodríguez has demonstrated several times in a limited number of plate appearances, with confidence to boot, but that bravado hasn’t quite translated into results:

This is a chart showing all eight (!) called third strikes outside the zone against Rodríguez, a league-leading total. The plotted strike zone is adjusted for his height, by the way, so there’s no ambiguity here. It gets even worse when you actually look at some of these pitches, which the umpires gift-wrapped for pitchers who made objective mistakes. For example, here’s a Sonny Gray sinker that is rarely, if ever, called a strike, especially in a two-strike situation:

Uh-huh. Sure, that’s totally a decision befitting a stadium named Target Field.

You could maybe argue that Rodríguez, whose two-strike swing rate of 40.3% is the third-lowest among all hitters, needs to up his aggression. The cost of taking a third strike is high, so the math tells us that a batter ought to hack away instead. But Suzuki has a similar two-strike swing rate (42.7%), and he’s yet to be punished for his passivity. Whatever flaws Rodríguez might have right now as a hitter don’t excuse the fact that very few calls have went his way. This is a clear problem, one that has Mariners fans understandably angsty. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 971

On this week’s show, we welcome a club’s president of baseball operations to talk about his team’s inner workings before we react to the exciting first few weeks of the season.

• At the top of the program, David Laurila welcomes Derek Falvey, president of baseball operations for the Minnesota Twins. Falvey gives us insight into the José Berríos trade, how much autonomy they give manager Rocco Baldelli, and whether it is easier or harder to trade with general managers you count as friends (such as former podcast guest Ross Atkins). We also hear about players like Simeon Woods Richardson, Jhoan Duran, Joe Smith, and Dylan Bundy, as well as the team hiring Kevin Goldstein away from FanGraphs. [2:46]
• In the second half, Ben Clemens and Jason Martinez get together to chat about the young baseball season. The pair discuss the recent Luke Voit/Tommy Pham drama, and talk about the sometimes-double-edged sword of playing with a chip on your shoulder. The duo also discuss some disappointing clubs (the D-backs) and some pleasant surprises (the Rockies), as well as the game’s overall lack of offense. Finally, Ben is cautiously intrigued by the Baltimore Orioles’ pitching strategy and its early dividends, highlighted by Keegan Akin. [25:36]

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Shohei Ohtani was up to some Tungsten Arm O’Doyle antics last night. He batted twice before throwing his first pitch of the game, something no one had accomplished in the recorded history of baseball. He bunted for a hit in the sixth inning while throwing a perfect game, almost assuredly the first time any pitcher has done that. That’s par for the course for Ohtani.

If you spend too long thinking about his record-breaking unicorn status, though, you might miss this fact: Ohtani has never looked better on the mound. Last year, he was a hitter first and a pitcher second; his 3.18 ERA over 130 innings was certainly impressive, but it wasn’t the equal of his .257/.372/.592 batting line and 46 home runs. This year, he’s off to a slower start with the bat — not a poor start, to be sure, but not the equal of last season. On the mound, though, he’s looking better and better. If 2021 was the year of Ohtani (hitter-first), 2022 might be the year of Ohtani (pitcher-first), with last night’s brush with perfection signaling his arrival. Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Olson isn’t the only recent recipient of a contract extension who’s off to a ridiculously hot start. The Guardians’ José Ramírez is putting up even more eye-opening numbers than Olson, and he added to those with a grand slam and an RBI double against the White Sox during a Wednesday doubleheader, driving his season total to 20 — in 11 games!

I generally don’t care about RBI totals much, particularly since I’m more than a decade removed from my days of playing fantasy baseball. You might not care much about them, either, having grown to appreciate the modern-day cornucopia of statistics that do a better job of measuring batter skill. But hey, we’re just two weeks into the season, and with none of the stats under discussion having stabilized, it’s a good time just to appreciate extremes of performance while connecting them to more solid truths. Ramírez’s incredible hot streak provides us a good opportunity to appreciate the player before us (and I promise you, I won’t spend the entire piece rambling about ribbies).

And so here we are. In Wednesday’s opener, the Guardians piled 10 runs on White Sox starter Dallas Keuchel, one in the first and then nine in the second, during which the Chicago lefty failed to retire any of the 11 batters he faced. A pair of errors by shortstop Tim Anderson didn’t help, and neither did manager Tony La Russa’s apparent desire to avoid going to his bullpen so early. Ramírez, the sixth batter of the inning, unloaded on a center-cut cutter that turned a 3–0 game into a 7–0 one:

Man, that ball got outta here in a hurry, which will happen when you hit one with an exit velocity of 111.6 mph. It was Ramírez’s fourth homer of the season, and his second grand slam; he hit his first one off the Reds’ Daniel Duarte in the ninth inning of an April 12 game, that while batting left-handed:

Beyond the slam, Ramírez didn’t get another hit in the first game, an 11–1 rout. He went 1-for-3 with an RBI double and a walk in the nightcap, a 2–1 win by Cleveland. Read the rest of this entry »

Joe Ryan’s name is well-known to FanGraphs readers, particularly those who are into pitching analytics. As Jake Mailhot wrote when profiling him back in January, the 25-year-old Minnesota Twins right-hander succeeds in part because of an extreme vertical approach angle. Thrown from an atypical arm slot, Ryan’s four-seamer — despite averaging a modest 92 mph — is especially effective up in the zone. As Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin wrote last month, “Throughout his time in the minors, Ryan’s strikeout rate has left many scratching their heads.”

His ability to miss bats has thus far translated to the big leagues. Since debuting with the Twins last September, the former Tampa Bay Rays prospect — Ryan came to Minnesota as part of last July’s Nelson Cruz deal — has allowed just 23 hits, with 41 strikeouts, in 36-and-two-thirds big league innings.

Ryan — No. 6 on our 2022 Minnesota Twins Top Prospects list — discussed his approach angle, and the repertoire that goes with it, prior to a recent game at Fenway Park.

———

David Laurila: The majority of FanGraphs readers are familiar with your pitching profile. That said, how would you describe it?

Joe Ryan: “I’m not sure. I don’t think about it too big-picture, or try to analyze myself in that way. Simplistically, I’m a strike-thrower that fills up the zone, tries to hit my spots, and pitches to my strengths. I’m also always trying to develop new pitches and make everything else better, and more consistent. I’m not trying to overhaul, but rather I tinker a lot. Maybe not a lot, but I am always wanting a little more.” Read the rest of this entry »

Kyle Freeland and the Rockies were set for a tense arbitration session. He had asked for $7.8 million; they countered with $6.425 million. That was the fourth-largest gap between team and player across all of baseball. But good news for people who don’t like contentious negotiations: That’s all in the past, because both parties agreed to a five-year extension that supersedes the arbitration dispute and should keep Freeland in Denver for the foreseeable future.

The deal, which buys out three seasons of free agency, has all kinds of bells and whistles. At its core, it’s a five-year, $64.5 million contract, which will pay him $7 million, $10.5 million, $15 million, $16 million, and $16 million for the next five years. If Freeland pitches 170 innings in ‘26, he’ll trigger a player option for the 2027 season, which would pay him $17 million. But wait, there’s more! If Freeland finishes in the top five in Cy Young voting in either 2022 or ’23, he can opt out after ’24; if he’s showing Cy Young form, he’d presumably do so.

This deal is somehow the largest contract the Rockies have given to a pitcher since Darryl Kile and simultaneously not one of the top five deals signed by starting pitchers since the end of last season. As befits a deal that is simultaneously large and small, I’m of two minds about it. Read the rest of this entry »

As we accumulate enough scouting notes to fill an article, we’ll publish dispatches from our in-person looks. Below are some of those observations from our most recent excursions. Past In-Person Looks can be found here.

Eric’s Notes
I began my Saturday morning at a Giants/Rockies extended spring training game and ran into two of last year’s notable Rockies DSL pitchers, Alberto Pacheco and Angel Chivilli. Pacheco, who was an Honorable Mention prospect on this year’s Rockies list, was up to 95 mph, sitting 91-94, and had a better breaking ball than our reports from 2021 indicated, a two-plane slurve in the 82-85 mph range. He had better feel for landing it as an in-zone strike than he did for burying it as a finishing pitch. His changeup was in the 84-87 mph range, consistent with reports from last year. There are ways you could frame it (teenage lefty up to 95!) to justify a re-evaluation and a move up the Colorado pref list, and Pacheco is certainly a pitcher in their system to know, but let’s see how the velo trends this summer. Pacheco has three pitches in the 45/50-grade area and is still several years away from the big leagues, so he probably still belongs in the Others of Note area.

Chivilli came in in relief and worked a couple of innings sitting 95-98 mph. He is super loose and projectable and might still throw harder, but his secondary stuff (a mid-80s slider and changeup) is currently below average. There’s one obvious impact pitch here in the fastball, and Chivilli only needs to develop one other offering to project in relief. Because he signed in 2018, the 2022 season is technically his 40-man evaluation year. He’s a developmental prospect at this stage, likely too far from the big leagues to be added to the 40-man after the season, and also too raw to be taken (and stick) via the Rule 5 Draft. We’re looking at a two-to-three year timeline for Chivilli to work towards a 40-man spot, probably still in relief. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Angels signed Michael Lorenzen this offseason, it was hard to say what to expect from him. A longtime member of the Reds’ bullpen for nearly his entire major league career, he entered his first time through free agency looking for an opportunity to start again; making that jump to the rotation came with all sorts of uncertainty. But after just two starts for his hometown team, the early returns have been promising.

The former 38th overall pick began his career as a member of the Reds’ rotation, making 21 starts during his rookie season back in 2015 but posting a 5.45 ERA and a 5.48 FIP and getting relegated to the bullpen by the end of the year. He enjoyed a bit of success in shorter outings the next year and wound up in that role for the rest of his time in Cincinnati. At various points during his time there, Lorenzen regularly expressed a desire to return to the rotation, but spring injuries often played a role in pushing him back to the bullpen. In 2016, it was a sprained ligament in his elbow; in ‘18, a shoulder injury. He was on track to join the rotation last spring until another shoulder injury derailed that plan again.

The fact that Lorenzen made it through spring training without an injury and actually made a start this season has to be seen as an accomplishment. Not only that, but his first outing against the Marlins was outstanding: two hits over six innings and a single run that scored on a Jesús Sánchez solo home run. He didn’t walk a batter and struck out seven. His next start was a much stiffer challenge against the Astros in Houston, where he lasted into the fourth inning but was done in by a lapse in command, issuing a walk and hit by pitch both with the bases loaded. He wound up allowing four runs on four hits and two walks in 3.1 innings of work, striking out two.

While the start in Houston didn’t go as well as his first, Lorenzen has shown some interesting changes to his pitch arsenal that could indicate some more success on the horizon. In his postgame comments after his Angels debut, he discussed his pitch profile:

“I worked really hard this offseason to get my stuff where it needs to be. It’s a lot more fun in the rotation. I’m able to use everything and set guys up certain ways for the next time through. It’s just more fun to do that instead of being limited. I have too many pitches to be limited in the bullpen, so I was just able to take advantage of my pitch profile.”

Even as a reliever, Lorenzen continued to use a full, six-pitch repertoire. He leaned on his four-seam fastball and cutter for the most part, but also sprinkled in a sinker, changeup, slider, and curveball. Read the rest of this entry »

Less than two weeks into the 2022 season, the Braves and Dodgers crossed paths for the first time, not only rekindling the rivalry between the teams that have met in the last two National League Championship Series en route to World Series wins but also presenting the chance for their recent free agent additions Freddie Freeman and Kenley Jansen to receive some well-deserved fanfare in the presence of their old pals. Freeman figured prominently in Monday night’s game, clubbing a solo homer in his first plate appearance against his old team, furthering a strong start with his new one, while Matt Olson, the Braves’ choice to fill his sizable shoes, collected his fourth three-hit game of the young season and briefly took over the major league lead in WAR and the NL leads in batting average and on-base percentage. His team ended up on the short end of a 7-4 score, and he took an 0-for-4 on Tuesday, though the Braves evened the series in a 3-1 victory closed out by Jansen.

Few players in recent memory have been placed under the microscope as swiftly as the 28-year-old Olson. On March 13, he was still the first baseman for the A’s, though amid the team’s umpteenth teardown, multiple suitors had expressed interest in trading for him. A day later, he was suddenly the new first baseman for the Braves, as the defending champions acquired him in exchange for four players, effectively slamming the door on the Freeman era. The day after that, Olson became a franchise cornerstone himself by agreeing to an eight-year, $168 million extension. Read the rest of this entry »