I’ll forgive you if you thought Adam Wainwright was cooked in 2018. He landed on the IL after three middling starts (12 strikeouts in 15.2 innings, a 3.45 ERA and 5.20 FIP), made a single short start in May, then didn’t pitch again until September. His sinker had never been slower; his curveball had never had less bite. At 37, that’s a scary combination, and it hadn’t come out of nowhere; he posted an ERA of 5.11 in his previous season, along with career-worst marks in K%, BB%, and FIP.

Three years later, Wainwright is a down-ballot Cy Young candidate. He’s accrued as much WAR as the next five Cardinals starters combined. St. Louis probably won’t make the playoffs, but it won’t be because of the once and current ace, a timeless wonder having his best season since before tearing his Achilles in 2015. How has he done it? I’m glad you asked.

Major leaguers are so good these days, on both the pitching and hitting side. Batters have never hit the ball harder on contact or tried so hard to hit home runs. It’s scary out there for a pitcher; any contact could leave the park at the drop of a hat. Pitchers have compensated in the obvious way: throwing pitches that avoid contact. Swinging-strike rate and strikeout rate are both marching inexorably higher, with occasional step changes (the sticky stuff crackdown, for example) fighting the tide.

Wainwright doesn’t have that option, though. If you asked him candidly, I’m sure he’d love to throw 95 mph and snap off sliders that turn into Pitching Ninja GIFs. But that was never his game, and he wasn’t going to suddenly turn into that kind of pitcher at age 39. In fact, when Wainwright began to decline, that was the common diagnosis. An aging sinker-first pitcher in the age of four-seamers? Sounds like a recipe for failure.

That’s all true! Wainwright’s sinker virtually never induces an empty swing. That’s not even a new thing; he’s only had one year in his entire career with a swinging-strike rate above 5% on the pitch. He’s only had a whiff rate higher than 10% in two of his 14 seasons. When batters take a cut, they mostly hit the ball.
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The Orioles woke up on Thursday morning as winners for the first time in over three weeks, with their 10–6 defeat of the Angels snapping a 19-game losing streak. It’s just Baltimore’s second victory this month, though they need quite a few more — 24 in their final 37 games, to be exact — in order to avoid a third 100-loss season in the last four years. It’s a miserable run, but one not wholly unexpected when Mike Elias took the reigns and devoted all of his resources to building a farm system that could produce a consistent winner, all but ignoring the big league roster.

Still, the major league product is unwatchable, and fair questions are starting to be asked. Can this team start to pull out of what feels like a never-ending tailspin? The answer is yes, as long as the bar is set at simply not being awful anymore as opposed to hanging some new flags in the stadium. Prospects are wonderful, and having one of the best, if not the best, farm systems in baseball is fantastic, but it’s more of a guarantee of betterment as opposed to becoming a good team, especially for a team that is starting at a level that might be comparable only to the 1899 Cleveland Spiders at this point.

The Orioles’ August misery has been defined by pitching. The offense has been below average, but not dreadful, with a wRC+ of 94 during the month, which ranks 19th among the 30 teams. The pitching, on the other hand, has been unimaginably awful. Here was Baltimore’s collective line during the losing streak:

It’s hard to be that bad. You could take a random Triple-A starter and expect better than that. The average start during the streak saw more runs allowed (4.53) than innings pitched (4.1).

It shouldn’t have to be like this. Major League Baseball’s rules should incentivize teams to put their best product on the field as opposed to what Baltimore (and others, to be fair) are doing. But for the purpose of this exercise, let’s stick to the unfortunate reality that is the worst big league roster combined with one of the best minor league systems. Does that combination automatically mean things will get better?

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You could have been forgiven for giving up the Braves for dead in the water last month. Heading into the July 30 trade deadline, they were 51–52, four games behind the NL East-leading Mets and eight back in the Wild Card race, with four teams between them and the second-slotted Padres. Three weeks earlier, they’d lost their best player, Ronald Acuña Jr., to a season-ending torn ACL, plus they were down last year’s NL home run and RBI leader (Marcell Ozuna), their starting catcher (Travis d’Arnaud), and three key members of their rotation (Ian Anderson, Huascar Ynoa, and Mike Soroka). Yet nearly four weeks later, the division race has been upended, and Atlanta is squarely in the drivers’ seat. What happened?

The short version is that the Braves were aggressive in giving their outfield a much-needed makeover at the deadline and entered Tuesday with an NL-best 17–5 record since then, albeit largely against a soft schedule. Even after their nine-game winning streak came to an end against the Yankees — themselves riding a nine-game winning streak at the time, making for a first-in-120-years matchup — to knock them back to 17–6, a half-game behind the Dodgers, they’ve left the Mets in the dust, as New York has run into buzzsaw after buzzsaw. Here’s the full picture of how the NL East standings and Playoff Odds have changed:

For those who prefer a picture, here you go (this one shows only the division-winning odds):

For the Braves, this run has come the old-fashioned way, as they’ve held their own against the other strong teams and steamrolled the weak ones. They’ve played series against just four teams with a .500 or better record: the Brewers (against whom they lost two of three), Cardinals (whom they swept), Reds (against whom they won two of three), and Yankees (who swept a two-game series) That’s a 6–5 mark against four teams with a weighted winning percentage of .560. Meanwhile, they’ve gone a combined 11–1 against the Nationals (5–1), Marlins (3–0), and Orioles (3–0), teams with a weighted .395 winning percentage. At the same time, the Mets went 3–14 against the Reds (1–2), Phillies (0–3), Dodgers (1–6), and Giants (1-3), four teams with a weighted winning percentage of .592, and 4–3 against the Marlins (1–3) and Nationals (3–0), a pair with a combined winning percentage of .417.

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On Monday night, the Rockies lost to the woeful Cubs, 6–4. It brought their road record to 14–46, good for a .233 winning percentage. That’s the worst mark in baseball, but the Rockies aren’t the worst team in baseball — merely the worst road team. At Coors Field, they’ve gone a spectacular 43–22, the third-best home record in the game.

It’s hard to imagine that this huge discrepancy comes down to a roll of the dice. Are the Rockies this bad on the road? Probably not. Are they this good at home? Also probably not. But this gap calls out for an investigation, so I set out to answer: what in the heck is up with their home field advantage — if that’s even what’s going on here?

Obviously, I’m not the first person to try to answer this; earlier this year, Neil Paine tackled the subject when Colorado was a woeful 6–32 on the road. The Coors hangover effect is real, and it gives us a good reason to think that the source of the Rockies’ problems might be the road side of things rather than the home side of things. I won’t try to solve the issue of what ails the Rockies today, but still, we can gawk at their incompetence and speculate about what it means for their true talent, which sounds fun enough to me.
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Whether it’s because they’re only just getting healthy or someone ahead of them has gotten hurt or their talent is kicking down the doors of roster manipulation made brittle by actual competitive spirit, some potentially important participants in postseason play are currently in the minors as we speak. This is especially likely when it comes to pitching, where health and effectiveness are tenuous, and team behavior surrounding promotion tends to be more opportunistic and aggressive.

For both leagues, I’m providing a scouting-centric update on pitching currently in the minors, either because the players are prospects who could conceivably play a September role or make a postseason roster, or because the player in question is a rehabbing big leaguer. Pitching can be streaky and fragile, so any of these guys could be in the big leagues at the drop of a hat, or they may simply convince their front office, like several rookies did last year, that they’re one of the best 26 guys in the org and need to be put on the playoff roster. The level of impact could range from Hunter Greene or Shane Baz dominating like Francisco Rodriguez in 2002, to Connor Seabold or Thomas Hatch humbly eating innings in a blowout loss in effort to save the rest of the bullpen for the series’ next game like J.A. Happ in 2008.

I’ll touch first on the American League this week, then provide some National League options next week. If any prospects moved on The Board due to info or opinions brought to light from this piece, I’ll note that below.

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Taylor Hearn has added a pitch to his arsenal. More specifically, the 26-year-old Texas Rangers southpaw has reintroduced a pitch that he’s throwing in a notably different way. Unveiled mere months ago, it’s a potential career-changer.

Recently moved from the bullpen to the Rangers’ starting rotation, Hearn discussed the pitch when Texas visited Boston this past weekend.

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David Laurila: You’ve added a sinker to your repertoire. Was that a simple matter of wanting to induce more ground balls?

Taylor Hearn: “Honestly, I was getting ground balls, It was a pitch I’d thrown before, and I kind of wanted to learn it again but in a different way. I’m always trying to figure out what I can add to my repertoire, whether it’s a curveball or whatever else.”

Laurila: When had you thrown a sinker?

Hearn: “I had it when I came over here, to [Double-A] Frisco [from the Pirates via trade in July 2018]. I wasn’t really throwing it too much, and it wasn’t really even a sinker — it was just a regular two-seamer — and it just didn’t have the movement, because I’d never really had anybody teach me that. This year, I asked about throwing a sinker. They showed me one, I threw it, and we got numbers I’d never had before. I decided to run with it.”

Laurila: Was this in spring training?

Hearn: “No, this was actually during the season. I started throwing it in Minnesota [in early May]. The first game I threw it in was away, against Seattle [in late May].”

Laurila: How does it differ from your old two-seamer? Read the rest of this entry »

Monday night brought something unseen in the majors since September 7, 1901: a matchup between two teams on winning streaks of nine or more games. In this case, both the visiting Yankees and the hosting Braves were riding streaks of exactly nine wins, and it was New York who prevailed with a 5–1 victory.

Monday’s game also brought something with only slightly more precedent: the fourth appearance by the tallest outfield in AL/NL history, one made possible by the Yankees’ aggressive approach at the trade deadline and their momentary good fortune when it comes to injuries. Their lineup featured 6-foot-5 Joey Gallo in left field, 6-foot-7 Aaron Judge in center, and 6-foot-6 Giancarlo Stanton in right, each of whom figured significantly in the team’s win. That trio of elite power hitters has played a played a prominent role in helping the Yankees blow past the Red Sox, A’s and Mariners to the top of the AL Wild Card standings.

Facing the Braves’ Huascar Ynoa at Truist Park, Stanton swatted an opposite-field solo home run in the second inning to give the Yankees a 1–0 lead, then added a two-run double that scored both DJ LeMahieu (who was hit by a pitch) and Gallo (who walked) to break a 1-1 tie in the sixth. His first drive left the bat at 103.4 mph, his second at a scorching 119.2 mph:

The Yankees extended the lead against Edgar Santana in the eighth via a two-out Judge single, walks by Gallo and Luke Voit, and then a two-run single by Gary Sánchez, effectively sealing the game. Gallo, meanwhile, had the defensive play of the night via his diving catch of a Guillermo Heredia drive in the second inning:

Judge traveled a long ways — 87 feet, according to Statcast — to haul in Jorge Soler’s fly ball in the third:

Quipped Yankees manager Aaron Boone afterwards, “It’s nice to see the jumbo package out there playing really well.”

The Jumbo Package, or the Big Boy Outfield, or the Large Adult Sons of Brian Cashman — by whatever name, this is the tallest outfield in major league history, at least going by the listed heights at Baseball Reference. Those measurements may contain their share of fudge, but unless you’ve got a tape measure, that’s the best we’re going to do.

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Walker Buehler has been on a tear in the second half, leading all pitchers in WAR since the All-Star break at 1.8, just a hair ahead of Adam Wainwright, Frankie Montas, and Max Fried. For the season, he now ranks fourth in WAR among qualified starters (fifth if you include Jacob deGrom’s 92 preposterous innings), toting a 26.9% strikeout rate and a park-adjusted ERA 47% better than league average. His 2.11 ERA is more than half a run better than any other season in his career, and the park adjusted figure is his best by 15 points. It’s another great season from one of the consistently best pitchers in the majors; since becoming a full-time starter for the Dodgers back in 2018, Buehler has posted the 11th-most pitching WAR with the 19th-most innings pitched.

I am not breaking any news by pointing out that Buehler has been and continues to be excellent. The surface-level numbers indicate he has never been better. What caught my eye, however, was how he has gone about doing that. There have been some noticeable changes under the hood. For example, at age 26, he has lost over a full tick of velocity on his fastball compared to any prior season; based on my own research, you would expect a player of his age to lose only about 0.15 mph.

Buehler has also lost almost two percentage points on his strikeout rate. On its face, missing less bats and losing velocity is never something you want to see in a pitcher. (That said, he has brought his ground-ball rate back to pre-2020 levels, going from 35.5% last season to 43.8% this year, similar to his ’19 rate as well as a tick above the rest of the league in 2021.)

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Jimmy Kerr is pretty low-profile as far as prospects go. The 24-year-old infielder was a 33rd-round senior-sign in 2019 and currently playing for the Detroit Tigers’ High-A affiliate, the West Michigan Whitecaps. A standout during the College World Series in his draft year, he remains relatively unknown beyond the University of Michigan, where he earned a degree in Industrial Operations Engineering.

His knowledge of hitting promises to increase his profile. Kerr faces long odds to reach the big leagues, but he’s already begun gaining a foothold as an instructor. Last year, he co-founded K2 Baseball, an elite training facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Kerr talked hitting prior to a Whitecaps game earlier this month.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with your training facility. How did that come about?

Jimmy Kerr: “It was over the pandemic. A couple of my college teammates and I were up in northern Michigan — my parents have a place in Walloon Lake — kind of escaping for the summertime. We were working out at the local high school, trying to stay in shape, and had also ordered some workout equipment. Everybody was trying to start their own home gym at that time, so it was backordered and took awhile [to arrive].

“Once the weather turned and guys were going back to school, we rented out a space in Ann Arbor and put all the workout equipment in there. We put in a batting cage, turf, a portable mound, and started running a little baseball facility. It started with just some of our Michigan teammates who are in pro ball now, and then we turned into a business where we’ve got high school kids and youth baseball players. We’re doing training programs, lessons, and all that.”

Laurila: Who else was involved? Read the rest of this entry »

See if this story is familiar. A pitcher’s fastball appears so-so using traditional metrics but is revealed to possess off-the-chart spin rates. The pitcher then succeeds by locating up in the zone, taking advantage of that trait. At first glance, Astros reliever Phil Maton fits the bill. Here’s what he usually does with his four-seamer:

Maton’s fastball velocity is in the 20th percentile, but that doesn’t matter too much, because its spin rate is in the 92nd percentile. It’s what makes him big league viable — well, at least that’s the popular narrative. What isn’t as commonly known is this: Maton might have the league’s zaniest fastball. Zaniest? Trust me, this is an appropriate use of that word.

The anatomy of a fastball is complex, but let’s start with movement. Using our site’s pitch type splits, we see that Maton’s fastball has averaged 6.5 inches of ride (vertical movement) and 0.5 inches of run (horizontal movement) in 2021. The lack of vertical movement is strange, but hardly outlandish; plenty of major league fastballs are similarly deficient. What stands out is the absence of arm-side run. Consider Gerrit Cole’s fastball, the gold standard for righties, which features around seven inches of run and 10 inches of ride. There’s ample movement in both directions with an emphasis on the upward, bat-missing variety. Maton’s fastball is different; it’s as straight as an arrow and sinks like a stone. What gives?

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