The A’s are nearly on the outside looking in. With about two weeks left in the season, there’s still room for a pair of AL East cold streaks to swing things around, but the odds of Oakland reclaiming a Wild Card spot and making the playoffs for a fourth straight year are slim.

Those odds cratered in the past month; some of that collapse is more succinctly summarized here. Any four-year playoff run is impressive, but the Oakland teams of the past three years, including two 97-win squads, have been devoid of the quality of starting pitching that their record would suggest. This season will be the first the A’s have had in that stretch with any starting pitcher compiling 3-plus WAR, let alone three of them. But while the gains in starting pitching are most certainly helpful, there has been a considerable dip in the quality of Oakland’s relievers.

Read the rest of this entry »

On April 14, 2016, Vince Velasquez took the mound for his second start as a member of the Phillies, having come over in an offseason trade with the Astros that sent Ken Giles to Houston. In an afternoon matchup against the Padres, he twirled one of the best-pitched games of the last decade, striking out 16 and walking none in a complete game shutout, allowing just three hits to boot. In the last 10 years, just 11 pitchers have struck out 16 or more in a game, and in these 13 performances (Max Scherzer has done it thrice), just five were complete game shutouts. He started his Phillies career on the highest of notes.

Fast forward more than five years, and Velasquez has now signed with those very Padres on a minor league deal in name only. As San Diego desperately tries to find pitching depth to stay afloat in the NL Wild Card race, Velasquez will start on Friday night in a pivotal series against the Cardinals, though he will not be eligible for postseason play if the Padres do secure a spot in October since he signed after the start of September.

The fact that a starting-caliber arm became available in free agency in the middle of the last month of the season tells you two things, both obvious. For the Padres, it shows just how dire their need for pitching is. But I want to focus on the second obvious reality: To get released at this point in the year is proof that Velasquez hasn’t been particularly good. Indeed, in 81.2 innings, he’s posted a 5.95 ERA and 5.59 FIP, production that has been exactly replacement-level.

Velasquez has shown flashes of productivity, but his time with the Phillies ran thin after continually falling short of expectations. In May, Matt Gelb of The Athletic covered what he referred to as the righty’s last stand in Philadelphia and how he hoped to reinvent himself to increase his effectiveness. One thing stood out: He came into this season wanting to mix his pitches more effectively, reflecting on that April 2016 start to explain his change in mindset for 2021.

“Cool, I had 16 strikeouts,” Velasquez said. “But I fucking threw all fastballs. OK, that’s unique. But it’s not part of pitching. It’s not pitching. It’s not sustainable at all.”

As the Padres look to tinker with Velasquez, it is interesting to consider where they may start. Was his plan of throwing fewer fastballs working? Might he have just been choosing the wrong pitches to put in the four-seamer’s place? What is the way forward here? Read the rest of this entry »

It didn’t explicitly come up in the Effectively Wild podcast spot I did highlighting this year’s Team Entropy series, but one reason why the Wild Card races that I covered in my second installment early this week are so wild — with five teams chasing two spots in the AL, and five more chasing one spot in the NL — is a handful of prominent collapses. The Mets, Padres, and Red Sox all spent a good chunk of the season occupying playoff positions, with New York and Boston occupying the top spots in their respective divisions for more days than any of their competitors. Yet all three teams could miss out on October baseball thanks to some of the most drastic first half-to-second-half drop-offs we’ve seen in recent years.

The Mets, despite a slew of injuries, led the NL East — at times with company in first place — for nearly four months, from April 13 to August 6, with a slight return after falling out of first that stretched the window to August 13. They somehow did that by posting winning records only in May (17-9) and July (14-13), and even after being overtaken, they remained within striking distance for about half of a dreadful August during which they went 9-19. Since the July 30 trade deadline, when they acquired Javier Báez but arguably didn’t do enough to bolster their rotation — a decision that was exacerbated by Jacob deGrom’s subsequent setback, which came to light almost immediately after the deadline passed — they’ve gone just 17-28. At this writing, they’re 72-75, 5 1/2 games behind the Braves in the NL East, and five behind the Cardinal for the second NL Wild Card spot, with cumulative playoff odds of 2.1%. I’m skeptical they’ll be relevant by the time I next cover Team Entropy.

The Red Sox had an on-and-off relationship with first place in the AL East, occupying at least a share of it from April 8 through May 23, and then again for most of a stretch that ran from June 19 through July 30. They’ve gone just 20-24 since the deadline passed, for the third-worst record in the AL; they did so while the Rays (29-14), Blue Jays (31-16), and Yankees (29-16) peeled off the AL’s top three records in that span. A wave of COVID infections has played a part, knocking 12 players — including Xander Bogaerts, Enrique Hernández, Chris Sale, and Matt Barnes — out of action since August 27; notably, the Red Sox are one of the six teams that has failed to reach the 85% vaccination threshold to loosen protocols, though the majority of those infected were vaccinated. They’re now 8 1/2 games back in the AL East, but occupying the second Wild Card spot, a percentage point behind the Blue Jays and half a game ahead of the Yankees, with Playoff Odds of 75.3%.

The Padres were projected to be one of the NL’s two best teams, albeit in a division occupied by the other one, the Dodgers. But while the defending champions have indeed been one of the top two, it’s been the Giants, not the Padres, who have provided their closest competition; San Diego has spent just 14 days in first place in the NL West. Even so, they spent nearly three-quarters of the season with Playoff Odds of 75% or better, but have gone just 16-25 since the deadline, and 10-21 since August 10. Having just won back-to-back games for the second time in the past five weeks, they’ve closed the gap behind the Giants to, uh, 18 1/2 games, but their Playoff Odds have dwindled to 32.0%.

As you can see, there’s a pretty wide spread when it comes to these three teams’ chances of playing October baseball, but each has fallen significantly from the spots they occupied earlier in the season. Depending on where I set the endpoints, their slumps might appear even more acute, which works for storytelling purposes, but is harder for comparative analysis. Since all three were riding rather high in early July, I decided to see how their declines in winning percentage from the first 81 games — a point the Padres reached on June 29, the Red Sox on June 30, and the Mets on July 4 — to the second compared to those of other teams in recent years.

As it turns out, the Padres’ drop from a .593 first-half winning percentage — the first 81 games of the season, not the uneven “halves” defined by proximity to the All-Star break — to a .422 second-half mark so far is the fourth-largest since 2012, the start of the two Wild Card team era; their dip ranked second until this two-game hot streak. Meanwhile those Red Sox and Mets rank among the dozen largest drop-offs, with yet another team from this year, one I hadn’t even considered for this piece given my apparent East Coast bias, in the top 20:

That’s not really a list you want to be on, judging by the minimal postseason impact of those teams. Obviously, we don’t yet know the playoff fates of the Padres, Red Sox, Mets (well, I think we know that one), and A’s (welcome to the party). Of the other 16 teams, seven made the playoffs; four won Wild Card games (the 2013 Pirates, ’15 Astros, ’16 Giants, and ’18 Yankees), but the only one that won a Division Series or a later round was the ’17 Astros, who, well, you know. Only one team with a drop-off of at least 87 points and a sub-.500 record in the second half won so much as a Wild Card game, namely the 2015 Astros.

Since the A’s turn up here, their arc is worth retracing as well. Despite being outscored in both April and May, strongly suggesting that they were playing over their heads, they climbed to the top of the AL West, and spent all but a single day of the next two months there, from April 20 to June 20. Despite their stellar June (17-9), an Astros team that had been lurking just behind them overtook them, and while the A’s were just 1 1/2 games back at the 81-game mark, and just 2 1/2 back at the 115-game mark (August 14) after some ups and downs, they’ve lost 18 of their last 29 and fallen seven games back. Their Playoff Odds peaked at 76.9% on June 18, and spent the next two months mostly in the 40-60% range, but they’ve plummeted from 62.5% on August 12 to just 4.3%.

So that’s two AL and two NL teams that have each taken rather dramatic tumbles this season. As you can see from the table above, it’s the second time within this span we’ve seen four teams from a single season take such falls; in 2018, the Yankees and Mariners both crumbled, as did the Phillies and Diamondbacks, with Philadelphia even sliding below .500 for the season to finish 80-82.

Not surprisingly, all four of these teams that have crashed in 2021 have underachieved relative to their Pythagenpat records during the second half. The Padres are the only ones who were underachieving during the season’s first half as well:

For the Padres, this has mainly been about the collapse of a rotation projected to be the majors’ best coming into the season; it’s been lit for a 5.52 ERA and 4.82 FIP in this second half. Yu Darvish has been battered for a 7.67 ERA and 5.74 FIP in 54 innings during this slide, that while landing on the injured list twice, for left hip tightness and lower back tightness. Ryan Weathers has completely collapsed (9.00 ERA, 7.55 FIP in 38.1 innings) after a promising beginning, Chris Paddack (5.74 ERA, 4.13 FIP in 42.1 innings) has had some bad luck, and even Joe Musgrove has regressed (3.79 ERA, 4.31 FIP). On the other hand, Blake Snell (3.03 ERA, 3.34 FIP) turned his season around, but a groin strain forced him out during the first inning of his September 12 start against the Dodgers. Adding insult to injury, the Padres reportedly were close to acquiring Max Scherzer at the deadline, only to watch as the Dodgers snatched him away, and he’s been brilliant. Scrapheap pickup Jake Arrieta? Not so much.

Run prevention has become a major issue for the Red Sox as well, with both the rotation and bullpen (4.42 ERA and 4.59 ERA, respectively) underperforming their FIPs by about four-tenths of a run. High-leverage guys such as Barnes, Adam Ottavino, and Hansel Robles have been particularly lousy. On the offensive side, the Sox have been a juggernaut, but while they’ve received a 100 wRC+ or better from nine out of the 11 players with 90 or more PA since July 1, Bogaerts (107 wRC+) and J.D. Martinez (108) haven’t been themselves, and rookie center fielder Jarren Duran (50) was over his head before landing on the COVID-19 injured list.

The Mets have continued to show holes on both sides of the ball. Offensively, Jeff McNeil (91 wRC+), James McCann (66), and Dominic Smith (56) have come up notably short even while the arrival of Báez (156), the return of J.D. Davis (118), and the upswing of Francisco Lindor (139) after a dreadful beginning to his season have helped; the last of those made the 36 games he missed due to an oblique strain a particularly big thumbs down. While late July additions Rich Hill and Trevor Williams have been pretty good, they don’t add up to a deGrom; meanwhile, the much-awaited arrival of Carlos Carrasco (5.59 ERA, 4.38 FIP) hasn’t really panned out, and Taijuan Walker (7.04 ERA, 6.90 FIP) has turned into a pumpkin. Key relievers such as Seth Lugo, Trevor May, Jeurys Familia, and Edwin Díaz have taken steps backwards of varying size at the wrong time as well.

By runs scored and allowed, the A’s have produced the same Pythagenpat winning percentages in both halves, but have gone from overachieving by 37 points to underachieving by 59 points, making for both the largest second-half shortfall and the largest overall swing relative to their expected record. The second-half fades of Sean Manaea and James Kaprielian and the frightening loss of Chris Bassitt (who’s still rehabbing his way back) have loomed large in the rotation. The bullpen — particularly Lou Trivino, Sergio Romo, and Yusmeiro Petit, three of the most four heavily-used relievers in the second half — has proven shaky as well.

For as much as these four teams have in common in terms of the severity of their second-half slides, and for as crowded as they’ve made the Wild Card races, it’s clear by now that the A’s and Mets are just hanging on, while the Red Sox are odds-on favorites to make it through, and the Padres are hardly out of it. Still, when the playoff slate is finally set, at least some of these teams will look back and wonder what might have been, and how they fell so far.

These are notes on prospects from Tess Taruskin. Read previous installments of the Daily Prospect Notes here.

Bobby Witt Jr., SS, Kansas City Royals
Level & Affiliate: Triple-A Omaha Age: 21 Org Rank: 1 FV: 60
Line: 1-for-4, HR, BB, 2 K

Notes
Witt’s ninth-inning dinger on Thursday was his 32nd of the year, the third-most of any minor leaguer this season. Only seven guys have hit at least 30 homers in the minors in 2021, and in comparing Witt to the others in that group, it’s impossible not to notice his impressive and rare combination of speed and power. Of those seven power hitters, Witt is the only one to match his 30-plus homers with 30-plus doubles, and his 24 steals amount to quadruple the second-highest mark on the list (Andy Pages‘ six). He also has the highest average and more hits than anyone in that elite group, and his strikeout rate is the third lowest of the bunch, which may help calm the nerves of those concerned about his swing-and miss-potential. If he can improve upon his walk rate, his already-high profile could be boosted even further. Read the rest of this entry »

As the end of the regular season draws near, the Wild Card race in the NL is as tight as it comes. The Dodgers currently control the top spot, while the Padres, who held onto second for most of the year, have faltered in the face of adversity, going from 91.7% playoff odds on July 27 to 24.2% as of today. That has left the door open for the Reds and Cardinals, with the former riding a torrid August and withstanding a slow September for a 36.2% chance to make the playoffs (though the latter currently leads in the chase for the second wild card by half a game).

Cincinnati’s success this season is in large part due to contributions from players like Joey Votto and Wade Miley. One unit that hasn’t helped, though is the bullpen; Reds relievers carry the fourth-highest FIP (4.69) in the majors and account for just 1.0 WAR. But in the last month and a half, the bullpen has shown some improvement, albeit modest, with a 4.40 FIP since August 1 and a 4.02 mark in the month of September, which ranks 11th in baseball during that time. That improvement has been particularly noticeable in the late innings:

All that is despite a closer situation has been fluid, to say the least — one riddled with injuries and poor performance throughout the year. Back in the offseason, the Reds surprisingly sent incumbent closer Raisel Iglesias to the Angels for middle reliever Noé Ramirez, betting that their stock of young arms and less expensive veteran alternatives would make up for his departure. The plan backfired. Iglesias is following up his excellent 2020 with a career year in which he’ll challenge previous career highs in saves and strikeouts, and his WAR this season is nearly twice that of the entire Reds relief corps.

Read the rest of this entry »

For much of the 2021 season, the story of the Milwaukee Brewers has been the dominant pitching they’ve gotten from their three aces, Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff and Freddy Peralta. Those three all have ERAs under 3.00 and have combined for 14.6 WAR. Since July 1, the Brewers have been on an absolute tear, going 41-23; the once competitive NL Central has turned into a blowout. The roll they’ve been on hasn’t come entirely from who you might expect, though. Look at their starting pitching since July 1:

Please attempt to ignore the nonsense that Burnes has been up to and check out how good Eric Lauer has been. Yes, Adrian Houser has been great, too, but I want to focus on Lauer. His 3.10 ERA is nearly a run and a half better than his previous best and even with him outperforming his peripherals (3.94 FIP, 4.22 xFIP, 4.05 xERA), those marks remain career bests as well. So how has he done it? Read the rest of this entry »

The announcement was inevitable, with only its timing in question. On Tuesday, Ryan Braun formalized what had been presumed since last winter, namely his decision to retire from baseball. The 37-year-old slugger made his announcement via the Twitter feed of the Brewers, the team that drafted him out of the University of Miami with the fifth pick in 2005, and the one with whom he spent his entire 14-year major league career.

Today, more than 14 years after I first took the field as a Milwaukee Brewer, I’ve decided to retire. While it’s impossible to summarize my emotions, what I feel most is one, simple thing – gratitude.

I just wanted to take a moment to say ‘thank you’.

– Ryan Braun pic.twitter.com/pQxuW9qk1z

— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) September 14, 2021

Braun hit just .233/.281/.488 for a career-low 99 wRC+ last season, as back and right index finger injuries limited his playing time to 39 games and 141 plate appearances. In late October, the Brewers declined their end of a $15 million mutual option, choosing instead to pay him a $4 million buyout. It was the first time he’d ever reached free agency, as he spent all but his 2007 rookie season playing under two long-term extensions, first an eight-year, $45 million deal that covered 2008-15, and then a five-year, $105 million deal that covered 2016-20.

Braun and the Brewers remained in touch through the winter, and he went so far as to visit the Brewers during spring training. Even so, he told MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy in February that he was enjoying his time with his family and business interests and didn’t foresee resuming his career, saying, “I’m continuing to work out and stay in shape, but I’m not currently interested in playing.” Braun reiterated that stance in May, when Team USA reached out to ask whether he was interested in pursuing a spot on the US Olympic squad, which ultimately won a silver medal with the similarly unsigned likes of Ian Kinsler and Scott Kazmir taking on pivotal roles. Team Israel had expressed interested as well, given Braun’s Jewish heritage. Read the rest of this entry »

Josh Donaldson has a 138 wRC+ since becoming a full-time player in 2013, and power has been a big part of that equation. Not counting last year’s pandemic-shortened season, and an injury-marred 2018, the 35-year-old third baseman has averaged 31 home runs annually. Now in his second year with the Minnesota Twins, Donaldson is a three-time All-Star who has been awarded a pair of Silver Sluggers.

He’s also an analytics-savvy hitting nerd who spends a lot of time thinking about his craft, and he doesn’t always do so in a predictable way. When Donaldson sat down for this interview in late August — the Twins were playing in Boston — he didn’t wait for a question; he asked a rhetorical one of his own.

———

Josh Donaldson: “Are barrels overrated? In 2019, my OPS was good. Last year, I didn’t really have enough at-bats to log. This year, my OPS isn’t good — not for my standards — but if you go look at the charts, all of my [quality of contact] categories are red. They’re well into the 90s for percentiles.

“I looked at guys around the league who are having really good years. I looked at Marcus Semien, who is having a great year. I looked at a guy like Nolan Arenado, who has been a really good hitter for awhile. You go throughout the league and look at guys’ hard-hit percentages, and it’s like, ‘Is that good?’ That’s one thing I’ve been kind of tinkering with.

“Obviously, you want to be able to hit the ball hard — you want to drive balls — but I think there’s also something to… say, for instance, someone like Tony Gwynn. Are you able to control the barrel with where it’s pitched? Maybe it’s an inside pitch and you’re able to stay inside it and fight it off the other way to get a hit. That’s versus… I mean, I’ve gotten pitches in, or I’ve gotten pitches middle, and I’ve smoked them on the ground, or I’ve hit a line drive where the defense is playing.

“Freddie Freeman. You look at his Baseball Savant page, and it’s really good. He’s in the 99th percentile in a lot of categories, but I know that his thought-process is to hit a line drive to where the shortstop is. He’s always focused on doing that, yet has the ability to turn on some balls as well. So I think there’s an argument to be made… or at least it’s something that I’m kind of digging into a little bit more. Is hitting the ball hard good, or is it bad?” Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments of the Daily Prospect Notes here.

Games on 9/12

Mason Fox, RHP, San Diego Padres
Level & Affiliate: Double-A San Antonio Age: 21 Org Rank: 38 FV: 35+
Line: 1 IP, 3 K

Notes
Fox’s previously dominant fastball (he had a 0.55 ERA and 0.98 WHIP in 2019, mostly in short-season ball) wasn’t as nasty during the spring. Sitting in the low-90s, he struggled and was shut down, and was put on the Development List for most of July and August. Back for about three weeks now, his fastball velocity has more often been in the 93-95 range again, though his curveball still lacks bat-missing power and depth. Because 2021 is his roster evaluation year (either he’s put on the 40-man or subject to the Rule 5 Draft in December) and because he’s thrown so few innings so far this season, the Arizona Fall league is perhaps a logical assignment for Fox and the Padres.

Jackson Rutledge, RHP, Washington Nationals
Level & Affiliate: Low-A Fredricksburg Age: 22 Org Rank: 5 FV: 45+
Line: 4 IP, 3 H, 1 BB, 1 R, 4 K

Notes
Speaking of other potential Fall League candidates (I’m drawing logical conclusions here, not reporting anything or leaking dope), Jackson Rutledge has struggled to take the ball every fifth day because of an early-season shoulder injury, and more recently, recurring blister issues. Sunday was Rutledge’s third blister-free start since his most recent activation. He’s sitting in the 94-98 range since returning, with his stuff intact coming off those dreaded shoulder issues. Obviously context is important here (it’s not as if Rutledge has gone every fifth day all year and is sitting 94-98), but that’s an encouraging sign for his health. Having amassed just 32 innings this season, Rutledge is a prime Fall League candidate. Read the rest of this entry »

There were a lot of reasons Gleyber Torres was fascinating as a prospect. Most of them were based on his offensive potential, but if we turn back the clock four years, there was also hope that Torres would be an adequate enough shortstop that he wouldn’t necessarily need to move down the defensive spectrum (at least not right away) thanks to a strong arm that could compensate for other shortcomings. Both Eric Longehagen and Dan Farnsworth expressed that hope here at FanGraphs, though Eric wasn’t quite as bullish. The Yankees are perhaps the foremost experts in winning lots of games with a defensively unimpressive shortstop who more than makes up for it with fantastic offensive contributions; the height of that ideal, of course, is recently-inducted Hall of Famer Derek Jeter.

Torres had mostly played second base in his rookie campaign, with mixed results, but when incumbent shortstop Didi Gregorius underwent Tommy John surgery, the Yankees had an opportunity to give him an extended look at the position. That seemed to pay off. At -5 runs per 150 by UZR and -6/150 by DRS and OAA, Torres wasn’t a great shortstop by any stretch, but he wasn’t in “let’s see how Todd Hundley does in the outfield” territory, either. Plus, hitting .278/.337/.535 with 38 homers at age 22 has a nice way of neutralizing concerns about mediocre defense.

The wheels came off that particular apple cart last season. He played poor defense, and while he still got on base, his power completely disappeared. All told, Torres hit just three homers in the abbreviated 2020 campaign, and his isolated power dropped in half, from .256 to .125. Last season was a weird year for obvious reasons, but Torres hasn’t bounced back at all in a more normal one, hitting .249/.320/.349 through Monday’s games. At this level of offense, it gets much harder to carry a defensively unimpressive shortstop. In 151 combined games in 2020 and ’21, basically a full season, Torres’ numbers at short have been -6 runs by UZR, -7 by OAA, and an extremely troubling -21 in DRS. Read the rest of this entry »