9/28 Late Morning Update

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The original data and methodology are below.
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We’ve reached the final week of the 2021 regular season, and for fans of high-intensity, stretch-drive baseball — a group I think we can refer to as “everyone” — there’s still quite a lot to play for. Only five of the 10 playoff spots are claimed, with two of those five teams in a battle for a division title. And since there are just a handful of games left to play, we can move the ZiPS projections from the macro to the micro. In April, it’s always hard to project specific pitcher matchups, but with a week left to go in the season, it’s a more reasonable task of extrapolation. As a result, that allows me to adapt the ZiPS model into a game-by-game projection of the final week of the season for the relevant teams.

I’ve focused on three of the playoff spots, the two AL wild cards, and the NL East, along with the division versus wild card battle in the NL West. The Astros can still technically lose the division to the Mariners (one-in-about-1,800) or the Athletics (one-in-about-2,150), and the Cardinals could still have an epic collapse in which they lose six, the Reds win six, and they lose the tiebreaker (one-in-about-3,300). These could also become mathematical impossibilities quickly; if they become plausible rather than proverbial lottery tickets, I’ll update with the data.

Let’s start with the easy races.

NL East

The Braves enter the final week with a 2 1/2-game lead in the division but three games remaining against the Phillies. Their schedules are similar in strength, with Atlanta getting home games and Philadelphia on the road, something that’s largely canceled out by the former getting the slightly harder opponent (the Mets versus the Marlins). The edge comes from the cushion.

With the edge in the standings, ZiPS projects just over a four-in-five chance that the Braves will not have to play the Rockies in a makeup game on Monday. Overall, the Braves win the division 87.7% of the time without the makeup game, and the Phillies stick the Braves in at least a 1 1/2-game hole 1.0% of the time.

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With a doubleheader win on Friday, a bizarre 3-2-5-4-2-8-6 double play and a ninth-inning comeback on Saturday, and more late-inning heroics on Sunday, the Cardinals ran their winning streak to a franchise-record 16 games. The streak is the longest in the majors since Cleveland won 22 consecutive games in 2017, and the longest in the National League since the Giants won 16 in a row in 1951 as part of the comeback that culminated in Bobby Thomson’s pennant-winning homer, “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World.”

The Redbirds’ winning streak has turned a team that was 71-69 with just 5.0% Playoff Odds into one that’s on the verge of cinching the NL’s second Wild Card spot, suddenly giving the Cardinals a look of invincibility. “With 16 Straight Wins, the St. Louis Cardinals May Never Lose Again,” reads one headline. “Cardinals Look Unstoppable Right Now,” reads another.

For as unbeatable as the Cardinals appear right now, the history of late-season winning streaks tells us that while this run may certainly help the team secure a playoff berth, it doesn’t tell us anything about how they’ll fare in October. Look no further than that aforementioned Cleveland team for a harsh reminder of that lesson. From August 24 to September 15 of the 2017 season, the defending AL champions steamrolled opponents, piling up wins in close games and in blowouts until they’d set an American League record. The team finished with 102 wins, the highest total by the franchise since 1954, and hopes were high that they could secure the title that they’d come so close to winning just the year before. Yet when the postseason rolled around, Cleveland was unceremoniously bounced, losing a tight five-game series to the Yankees.

The story was similar for the team whose AL record they broke. The 2002 A’s won 20 straight games from August 13 to September 6 and finished with 103 wins, the franchise’s highest total since 1988. Yet they too were defeated in a five-game Division Series, losing to the Twins.

In fact, no team that’s run off a late-season streak — starting in August or September — of more than 11 wins has even reached the World Series during the division play era (1969 onward):

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During last year’s shortened season, Ian Happ led all Chicago Cubs batters with a 130 wRC+ and 1.9 WAR. It was a strong followup to his 2019 breakout season and it looked like Happ had established himself as an integral part of the core of Chicago’s roster. Unfortunately, he got off to an extremely slow start this year. He blasted a home run in the third game of the season, but collected just nine other hits the rest of April. Heading into the All-Star break, he was hitting a paltry .183/.296/.330, good for a 74 wRC+. His early-season struggles weren’t the main reason behind the Cubs collapse this year, but they certainly didn’t help the team’s cause.

Happ continued to struggle after the break, collecting just six hits in 16 games during the rest of July. His issues at the plate had forced him into a part-time role, but then the Cubs traded away a bunch of their roster prior to the trade deadline. Suddenly, Happ was thrust into an everyday role in the heart of the Cubs lineup and he responded with one of the best two months stretches of his career:

Since the calendar turned to August, Happ has hit 14 home runs and posted a .301/.361/.607 slash line, good for a 153 wRC+. His 186 wRC+ in September is the 11th highest mark among all qualified batters in the majors. This two month stretch of success comes a bit too late for the beleaguered Cubs, but it’s a great sign for Happ’s development. Read the rest of this entry »

There are tons of great hitters in the game today. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is having the breakout season presaged by his pedigree and minor league success. Shohei Ohtani has 45 home runs and somehow also pitches. Fernando Tatis Jr. has a .618 slugging percentage and plays shortstop. I haven’t even mentioned the old guard of “best hitters” — Mookie Betts, Bryce Harper, and ringleader Mike Trout.

They’re all great — and they’re all worse than the best overall hitter on the planet, Juan Soto. Soto is comical. He put on a rookie performance for the ages, and has done nothing but improve since then. The Ted Williams comps he’s drawn aren’t given out lightly. All those wonderful hitters — and Wander Franco, and whoever else you want to name — are looking up at him.

Normally, I’d try to write a “here’s how he does it” article. That doesn’t work with Soto. How does he do it? My best guess is that he’s a time-traveling wizard from the future who set his sights on being the best hitter he could be. Since I’m not an expert in either time travel or wizardry, you’ll have to settle for three vignettes about Soto’s unparalleled excellence. Read the rest of this entry »

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:

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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 »