To the surprise of no one, the Dodgers are good. They lead all of major league baseball with a 10-2 record. They’ve outscored their opponents by 32 runs. Barring catastrophic injuries or a long run of bad luck, they seem poised to end the season as one of the league’s winningest teams.

You may be wondering where I’m going with this. It’s to introduce the idea that good teams are good by design. In a game whose goal is to maximize runs scored and minimize runs allowed, their hitters launch dingers, their pitchers compile strikeouts, and numerous depth players allow them to deal with injuries. But today, I want to focus on a single characteristic: plate discipline. As of writing, the Dodgers have the lowest in O-Swing% in the league. They’re also second in Z-Contact%, behind only the Astros. Laying off bad pitches, making contact with hittable ones – that seems like a recipe for success. And currently, no Dodger hitter is more emblematic of this approach than Max Muncy.

We haven’t written much about the first baseman here at FanGraphs. One reason might be that he isn’t the flashiest athlete – like Trout, he achieves greatness through consistent production at the plate. Theatrics are kept to a minimum, save for when he feuded with Madison Bumgarner. But another, more relevant reason might be that Muncy had remained true to himself since 2018, his breakout year. Sure, his wRC+ plummeted in 2020, but he sported an uncharacteristically low BABIP in one of baseball’s weirdest seasons. Besides that quirk, nothing much had changed. He drew his share of walks; he hit for power.

That is, until now. Somehow, someway, Muncy has become an even more extreme version of his patient, slugging self. His O-Swing rate of 12.5% is the lowest among all hitters, which is also the lowest of his career. But wait, that’s based on 12 games! How do you know this isn’t some small-sample blip? I wondered about that too, but looking at his rolling O-Swing% tells a different story, one which began in 2019:

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On his 110th pitch of the night, Carlos Rodón hit 99 mph on the radar gun. It was a wasted pitch, a ball that evened the count to Jordan Luplow at 2-2. Four pitches later, Rodón slowed it down, dropping in a changeup that Luplow rolled harmlessly to third base. Yoán Moncada fielded it cleanly and fired to first for the last out of the game. Rodón had thrown a no-hitter, the first of his career.

Don’t worry, we’ll get to that momentous event. I want to talk about that fastball first, though, because it’s also remarkable. That pitch was the fastest pitch a White Sox starter has thrown this year — tied, actually, with a Dylan Cease offering. Cease is a flame-throwing 25-year-old with a 70 fastball grade — a plus-plus pitch that anchors his entire game. Rodón hadn’t crested 93 mph in average fastball velocity since 2017. He pitched only 7.2 innings last year, and hasn’t topped 150 since 2016. In an increasingly young man’s game, Rodón seemed somehow past his prime at only 28.

In last year’s playoffs, he made the roster as an afterthought. He faced three batters, as a last resort in the team’s disastrous playoff exit — all three reached, the third on an intentional pass that fulfilled the three-batter minimum, and it would hardly have been a surprise if that was his last pitch in black and white. In a money-saving move, the Sox didn’t tender him a contract after the season.

He signed a one-year deal in February to return to the team, but his rotation spot was anything but guaranteed; the team held a more-or-less open competition for its fourth and fifth starter spots this spring. An offseason workout regimen and some rare but welcome good health helped him secure a spot, and a successful first start against the Mariners — 95 pitches and nine strikeouts in five scoreless innings — cemented it.

That brings us back to Wednesday night. After an uneventful top of the first, the White Sox offense did their best to remove all drama from the game. They pounced on an ineffective Zach Plesac, chasing him from the game after seven hits and six runs. Rodón, whose first fastball of the night left his hand at 91.1 mph, sat in the dugout and watched. Read the rest of this entry »

Corbin Burnes was still flying below the radar when he was featured here at FanGraphs in June 2017. He’d come into the season ranked No. 18 on our Milwaukee Brewers Top Prospect list, and Baseball America was even less bullish, slotting him 24th on their own. When I talked to him for the article, the 2016 fourth-round pick out of St. Mary’s College had yet to throw a pitch above the A-ball level.

He’s not under the radar anymore. Burnes broke out in last year’s pandemic-shortened season, and two weeks into the current campaign he’s the hottest pitcher on the planet. Over his first three starts, the 26-year-old right-hander has allowed four hits and one run in 18-and-a-third innings. Moreover, he has 30 strikeouts and has yet to issue a free pass. In a nutshell, hitters have been helpless against his five-pitch mix.

Burnes has much the same mindset as four years ago. He told me at the time that he considered himself a power pitcher, and that his M.O. was missing bats. Each time he took the mound, it was with the belief that he was better than the person standing in the batter’s box. He was out there to dominate.

Which isn’t to say that nothing has changed. Burnes had a four-seamer with natural cut when we first spoke, and now he’s sans the four, and in possession of baseball’s best cutter.

I asked Brewers pitching coach Chris Hook about the righty’s meteoric rise. Read the rest of this entry »

Prospect writers Kevin Goldstein and Eric Longenhagen will sometimes have enough player notes to compile a scouting post. This is one of those dispatches, a collection of thoughts after another weekend of college baseball, minor league spring training, and big league action. Remember, prospect rankings can be found on The Board.

Kevin’s Notes

Jonathan Cannon, RHP, Georgia: 7 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 9 K

After throwing 11.2 scoreless innings out of the pen last spring as a freshman for Georgia, Cannon entered the year as a potential late-first round pick this summer, earning draft eligibility as a sophomore due to age. He’s had an up-and-down season, but was at his best over the weekend as he shutdown one of the top teams in the country in Vanderbilt, while throwing 75 of his 111 pitches for strikes. At 6-foot-6 and 215 pounds, Cannon has a classic starting pitcher’s frame to go with an on-line delivery and clean arm action. On the season his stats don’t impress, with a 4.35 ERA and 21 hits allowed in 20 innings, but with just three walks and 24 strikeouts, the numbers indicate an ability to locate, which is exactly what he did against the Commodores.

Cannon has decent velocity, with a fastball that averages 94 mph and touches 97, but his three-quarters arm angle produces less than desirable shape to the heater. His mid-80s slider isn’t a big breaker and his upper-80s changeup has decent fade but is a bit on the firm side. There’s nothing even bordering on nasty in the arsenal, but Cannon can locate any of his pitches in all four quadrants of the strike zone, and knows how to work outside it when looking for a chase. With continued success, he should return to those pre-season late first-round projections, and overall feels like a classic safety-over-upside pick. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a kind of depressing infamy that comes with being a player on the losing end of a lopsided trade. Players like Glenn Davis, Ernie Broglio, and Larry Andersen are more famous for the players they were traded for than anything they did in their own careers. It’s an unfair bit of notoriety, too; there’s not much cosmic justice involved when Harvey Kuenn, who played in 10 All-Star games, is remembered more for a decision to trade Rocky Colavito he didn’t make rather than being a .314/.360/.426, 23.5 WAR hitter in seven full seasons with the Detroit Tigers. Jim Fregosi is another star who’s a member of this unfortunate club.

In the case of Fregosi, his run as an elite shortstop might actually be a distant third in the ol’ memory banks. If you asked a random baseball fan in 2021 what they know about him, at least one who isn’t an Angels fan, you’d likely get one of two responses: his status as the player traded for Nolan Ryan or his 15-year post-playing career as a manager for four teams, most famously those notorious misfits, the 1993 Philadelphia Phillies. But when Mike Trout blew through the Angels record for the most career WAR for a position player, the previous holder wasn’t Tim Salmon or Brian Downing or Darin Erstad or Bobby Grich. It was Jim Fregosi. Read the rest of this entry »

It has to be a wildly difficult thing, standing on a pitching rubber for the first time after a long absence caused by injury. Really, I’d submit that it is scary to do things in general. But I imagine it would be a special kind of burden to confront your fears on the mound, one of the loneliest places on earth. Sure, the defense is behind you, and the catcher does his best to guide you through; you have teammates and coaches cheering you on from the dugout. But the time has past for any of them to help you align your mechanics, or throw the ball as hard as you once did. You’re on your own, asking your body to do something it wasn’t built for and willing it not to fail you like it did last time.

The first time Jameson Taillon went through this process, he surely hoped he wouldn’t need to do it again. It was April 13, 2016, 955 days removed from the most recent game in which he appeared. Taillon, the second overall pick of the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2010, was coming off a 2013 season in which he tossed 165.2 innings between Double- and Triple-A, and looked sharp enough that a big league call-up early the next season looked like a sure thing. But plans changed when it was announced he would need Tommy John surgery in April 2014, then were disturbed even further when a sports hernia kept him off the mound in 2015 as well. When he returned to a Triple-A mound for Indianapolis in 2016, he was brilliant, holding a 2.04 ERA across 10 starts before finally earning his belated major league debut.

His latest return to the mound after a years-long absence hasn’t been quite as seamless. Now with the Yankees and looking to rebound from another UCL surgery and another 707 days away from pitching in games, he’s made two starts and allowed seven runs in 8.1 innings. He’s walked one, struck out 10, and surrendered three homers. The numbers from someone’s first two games after that long of a break are hardly worth putting under a magnifying glass, though. Right now, it feels more pertinent to celebrate the fact that he’s pitching again at all, and examine the ways in which he’s changed his process to not only try to stay healthy in the future, but also unlock greater success with his new club. Read the rest of this entry »

Joey Votto was on my mind even before I read The Athletic’s latest dive into the Reds first baseman’s singular personality. Chess devotee? Aldous Huxley reader? Mop enthusiast? Add it all to the Hall of Fame plaque alongside the MVP award, six All-Star appearances, and seven on-base percentage leads.

It wasn’t Votto’s quirks that were on my mind, however, so much as it was his lagging production. When he spoke of a changed approach to The Athletic’s C. Trent Rosecrans and Eno Sarris back in February, my ears perked up, and I made a mental note to track his progress.

Which, yikes. Through Monday, the 37-year-old first baseman was hitting .171/.209/.244 for a 24 wRC+, with a lone homer in 43 plate appearances representing his only extra-base hit. Keep hitting like that and he might wind up tending to a @JoeyMoppo Instagram account (please give us a @JoeyMoppo Instagram account) while somebody else plays first base. I kid, of course, but even in the season’s first two weeks, before any individual statistics have begun to stabilize, a 24 wRC+ isn’t where anyone want to be.

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There might be no player in baseball who is more fun to watch or more talented than Shohei Ohtani. On Tuesday, he beat out what looked like a routine groundball to shortstop for an infield single, with a sprint speed of 29.5 feet per second. Later that game, he drilled a ball 431 feet for a solo home run — one that left his bat at 108.9 mph, already his 11th batted ball of 105 mph or more this season. That’s all business as usual for the two-way star, even as he recovers from a blister that has kept him from making a start as a pitcher since April 4.

That April 4 outing, though, was truly one-of-a-kind. Ohtani put on a show, starting the game and hitting in the No. 2 hole, becoming just the third pitcher to hit for himself in a game with the DH spot available. Though the feat was unique, Ohtani’s appearance in the lineup as a pitcher was not a surprise. He and the Angels thoroughly discussed the strategy in spring training, and he pitched and hit leadoff in a game on March 21. While it was only spring training, Joe Maddon whipped up the coolest lineup card I have ever seen:

Shohei Ohtani pulls double duty today!

?? 1:10pm PT
? Fox Sports Prime Ticket
? @AngelsRadioKLAA pic.twitter.com/qNXDLAkWqo

— Los Angeles Angels (@Angels) March 21, 2021

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Ross Stripling was the featured guest on episode 905 of FanGraphs Audio, and something he said after we finished recording prompted what you’re about to read. Stripling mentioned that he could have spent the entire segment talking about the impact Clayton Kershaw — his Los Angeles Dodgers teammate from 2016-20 — has had on his career. That bug in my ear, I made it a point to circle back to the 31-year-old Toronto Blue Jays right-hander to explore that subject for print.

We ended up covering more than just that. Along with the matter at hand, Stripling delved into what makes Kershaw Kershaw.

First things first.

“I wouldn’t have had the success that I’ve had in the big leagues if it wasn’t for Clayton’s mentorship,” said Stripling, who has a 3.85 ERA and a 3.91 FIP over 444-and-two-thirds career innings. “I met him in the spring of 2014 — that was my first big-league camp — but ended up tearing my UCL and didn’t get to interact with him nearly as much as I wanted to. But he’s a North Texas guy — Highland Park — and I’m from South Lake. We’re 20 minutes apart, so I knew everything about him.”

That includes Kershaw having committed to Texas A&M, only to sign with the Dodgers out of high school in 2006. Stripling chose a different route. He spent four years at A&M, earned a finance degree, and was drafted and signed by the Dodgers in 2012. It was four years later that Stripling’s baseball education truly began to take root. Read the rest of this entry »

The Cubs dropped their third straight game on Monday night in Milwaukee to fall to 4–6, and even that record feels like a miracle for them. Their crew of low-velo/command types in the rotation haven’t performed well, and the offense has been a non-factor with a miserable .164/.264/.321 line in 312 plate appearances; Chicago ranks last in baseball in all three triple-slash categories. Of the regular starters, just three are over the Mendoza line, only three have an on-base percentage over .300, and only three are slugging over .300. The end result is fewer than three runs per game, and even in a wide-open NL Central, that is just not going to cut it.

There are numerous rough starts to dissect on the North Side. But I want to focus on Javier Báez’s continued struggles, in terms of both approach and contact ability, and a future that grows cloudier by the game.

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