Bobby Dalbec is a bona fide music nerd. The son of a longtime Atlantic Records executive, the 26-year-old Boston Red Sox rookie not only plays piano and guitar, he’s an ardent fan of multiple genres. Growing up around the business influenced that. His father, Tim Dalbec, has worked with a diverse group of artists that include — to name just a few — Bruno Mars, Robert Plant, Smash Mouth, and the Zac Brown Band.

While he listens to everything from rap, to house, to Neo soul —“If it sounds good in my ear is all that matters” — guitar-based rock is clearly in his wheelhouse. Talking to the young power-hitter prior to a recent game at Fenway Park, I learned that he enjoys Jimi Hendrix, John Mayer — “a lot of people think he’s a pop guy, but his his guitar playing is pretty top-tier” — and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Another favorite is Goose, a jam-band out of Connecticut.

Somewhat surprisingly, Dalbec only recently began playing the guitar.

“My dad never pushed me toward music,” said Dalbec, whom the Red Sox selected in the fourth round of the 2016 draft out of the University of Arizona. “He was a drummer growing up, but I never learned drums. The first instrument I learned was actually piano, and that was three or four off-seasons ago. I was self-taught. Piano was kind of a gateway into learning guitar, which I really dove into after the first COVID outbreak.”

Why piano before guitar? Read the rest of this entry »

Josh Bell has long been stuck in a quagmire. He possesses the rare quality of hitting the ball extremely hard (92nd percentile HardHit%) while not striking out much (66th percentile K%); only Juan Soto, Manny Machado, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. have a better hard hit rate and better strikeout rate. We’ve seen stretches where this elite combination led to tremendous results, like his two-month tear in 2019 when he put up a 178 wRC+, but for the most part, Bell has settled in as a hitter who falls far short of those lofty heights. And since that breakout 2019, his production has fallen below even his stats before that season, with a 94 wRC+ over his last 634 plate appearances.

One characteristic of Bell’s career is that he is a swing tinkerer. It’s hard to analyze a player when every week you might be looking at a different stance or a new load. If you remember Ben Clemens’ article on Bell from 2019, you may be familiar with some of the tinkering that he has done. That year, he mostly settled into a quieter setup and consistent pre-swing routine, which may have led to his career-low ground-ball rate of 44% and career-high 37 home runs. Fast-forward to this last off-season, when Tony Wolfe wrote up his trade to the Nationals and pointed out that, in 2020, he was back to tinkering with his swing constantly. That is the Josh Bell quagmire: Is he struggling because he’s constantly changing something, or is he constantly changing something because he’s struggling?

I’ve decided to wade into this muck because I never tire of seeing Bell hit home runs, and I simply want there to be more of them. Take the following one, for example:

Notice how he is off-balance. That swing was all arms, and it didn’t matter.

Sure, you’ve seen prodigious power before. You’ve retweeted a Joey Gallo “pop-up” that left the yard or ogled at Franmil Reyes hitting an opposite-field line drive that just never stops going, but those guys strike out over 30% of the time. Bell does weird stuff like that while running a strikeout rate under 20%. Read the rest of this entry »

The other day, I was listening to an episode of Rates and Barrels, an always informative baseball podcast on The Athletic hosted by Eno Sarris and Derek Van Ripper, and learned something new. The two went over each team’s ‘Location+,’ a metric developed by Max Bay that quantifies pitcher command, with teams like the Brewers, Giants, and Rays recording the highest marks. That’s no surprise; what did surprise me is that the Padres stood out as being uniformly bland, receiving average grades for every pitch type except cutters.

San Diego’s’ pitching staff is underperforming, injured, and recently experienced a change in leadership. But I figured it’s still one of the league’s better ones. Since Location+ is proprietary, I can’t consult the exact numbers, though it did inspire me to look at where Padres pitchers had been locating their pitches. And in doing so, I came to a realization: They might have a four-seam fastball problem.

Pitchers perform differently depending on the count; they’re great when they’re ahead, about average when even, and terrible when behind. Unless a microscopic sample size is involved, this principle applies to pretty much everyone. So when looking at how Padres pitchers have performed by count, these results shouldn’t seem out of the ordinary:

Consider, though, how they compare against the league averages. The Padres are comfortably better than the average pitcher when ahead in the count, but the same can’t be said for other instances. In disadvantageous situations, they seem mediocre at best, and the whole picture is underwhelming. You might have guessed where I’m going with this, but basically, the idea is that four-seam fastballs are to blame. Here are the wOBAs against them by count, along with where the Padres rank league-wide. I’ve also included xwOBA to isolate the effects of batted ball luck:

As the kids say, this ain’t it. A .193 wOBA against four-seamers once ahead in the count is great. But a whopping .500 wOBA after falling behind is… not so great. The gap does narrow with xwOBA as the metric of choice; after all, part of the Padres’ recent struggles are due to good players underperforming, which is naturally fixable. But there’s a significant gap nonetheless, and it does seem tied to how they are locating their fastballs. For the sake of time and sample size, I focused on the team’s starters with 50 or more innings pitched. If we examine where their fastballs have ended up, perhaps we can also analyze why they have been hit hard.

Alright, enough talk. You’re here for the meat and potatoes. First up is Blake Snell, whose fastball locations I categorized by count type and batter handedness, presented from the pitcher’s point of view:

You can see that he likes to live higher up when ahead in the count, which is ideal, since batters are more likely to chase. Otherwise, however, Snell’s fastballs are heading straight down the pipe. Even his higher fastballs are still squarely in the strike zone; with the amount of ride he generates, he can afford to climb the ladder more often, a feat he accomplished in previous seasons. He’s also all over the place, which the wide contours illustrate. The command isn’t quite there, and it shows.

Next is Yu Darvish, the Padres’ other ace. Unlike Snell, his four-seamer isn’t his primary pitch, but it still accounts for around 20% of his repertoire. Another detail to note is the wOBA against his four-seamer by month:

• April: .328
• May: .178
• June: .066
• July: .398
• August: .513

After appearing invincible in June, the four-seamer has spiraled out of control in recent months. Because the downward trend coincides with the crackdown on sticky stuff, though, it’s easy to think Darvish’s heater has become worse. That’s true, but not markedly so. An average spin rate of 2,577 rpm before the June 15 ultimatum is now down to 2,473, and it only cost Darvish about an inch of ride, which isn’t all that significant.

There hasn’t been a change to how he’s locating his heater, either. But maybe there should, because Darvish seems like another pitcher who isn’t capitalizing on the vertical movement he generates:

When ahead in the count, Darvish is hitting the outside corner against lefties and righties alike, but besides that, there’s not much else in terms of location. And like Snell before, the high fastballs aren’t really all that high. The contours are also wide and scattered across the strike zone, which might suggest a lack of strategy. I could be reading too much into it, but even at a glance, those heat maps aren’t very appealing.

Joe Musgrove is similar to Darvish, in that the four-seamer acts as a secondary pitch but is nonetheless an integral part of his arsenal. Without it, his fantastic breaking pitches probably aren’t as attractive. So how does he locate the heater? Here’s a look:

That’s better! Those ahead in the count fastballs, they’re up (sort of), but at least they aren’t centered around the heart of the zone. I also appreciate how Musgrove is seemingly exploring the bottom third of the zone when behind, as a way to sneak in a called strike or two.

In his case, though, the stuff is arguably a greater issue than command. Despite an elite raw spin rate, Musgrove doesn’t actually generate much vertical movement on his heater; in fact, it’s one of the league’s worst relative to his velocity. This is presumably why he has continued to shy away from it, gradually replacing his four-seamers with cutters and more breaking balls. Maybe right now demonstrates the best usage of it; I’m not entirely sure. But among Padres starting pitchers, his fastball woes are the least severe.

Then we move onto the youngsters, Chris Paddack and Ryan Weathers. To avoid beating the same drum for too long, I’ll sum up Paddack with words: He probably can and should live up in the zone more often, but there’s been a snag in his stuff. After a solid rookie campaign, his fastball lost a ton of vertical break in 2020, and as far I can tell, he’s still working toward returning to those 2019 levels. The ERA and dearth of strikeouts this season are concerning, but it’s doubtful he’s this ineffective of a starter moving forward. We’ll give him a pass.

On the other hand, Weathers sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s okay that this is his first season in the big leagues. It’s not okay that every pitch he has — fastball, slider, and changeup — ends up in a terrible spot. He’ll figure it out as he accumulates innings and experience, but for now, here’s a slice of reality for the Padres:

Those aren’t good areas to place a fastball even with superb movement, which unfortunately Weathers has lacked so far.

But let’s put everything we’ve explored into context. What’s an example of good fastball command, and how does that turn out when visualized? Originally, I’d planned a comparison between the Giants’ and Padres’ fastball locations, then scrapped it after realizing how daunting the task would be. There’s a useful remnant, though. Below is a heat map of Johnny Cueto’s four-seamers this season:

It’s the year 2021, and Cueto has a higher whiff rate and a better run value on his four-seamer than Snell. Yes, Cueto uses his less frequently, but consider where they’ve ended up. Ahead in the count, those fastballs are perched right on top of the strike zone, with a tendency to veer away from right-handed hitters. Naturally, they aren’t as high up when the count is even, but remember, that’s where Snell roamed after getting ahead, not even. And even when behind in the count, Cueto has done a solid job of avoiding the bottom third of the zone.

If you buy pitch location as a reason for the Padres’ pitching woes, their unexpected dismissal of Larry Rothschild makes a bit more sense. There’s not much a coach can do about a pitcher’s stuff; no decree will magically add three inches of movement to a slider. Location, however, is within his realm of control. To wit, Mets pitchers in 2018 went from generally avoiding the inner half to thriving there, which then-pitching coach Dave Eiland had emphasized. Over time, perhaps the Padres realized Rothschild’s own philosophy was doing more harm than good.

I’m not 100% sure if location, let alone fastball location, is the main culprit. Heat maps are hardly an exact science; they’re approximations of a pitcher’s command whose gaps are colored in by a model and charted. They also don’t factor in pitch sequencing, another element a pitching coach could influence. So maybe this is all wrong! But two facts remain true: (a) the Padres, in general, haven’t been able to avoid dangerous fastball locations; and (b) their fastballs are either getting smacked or taken for balls. If they do indeed need help, it needs to come fast.

Shohei Ohtani does something amazing virtually every time he sets foot on a baseball field, and Thursday was no exception. Leading off the afternoon’s contest against the Orioles in Camden Yards, he connected with Keegan Akin’s second pitch of the day, a hanging curveball in the middle of the zone, and hit a towering homer:

It wasn’t just the fact that this was Ohtani’s 41st homer of the year, extending his major league lead, or that it was the third time he’s led off a game with a homer, which he did on June 25 against the Rays in Tampa Bay and on August 14 against the Astros in Anaheim. No, what stood out to these eyes was the combination of the Statcast specs — a 45-degree launch angle and a 110.7-mph exit velocity — on this shot that made it such a majestic drive, and one that particularly caught the eye of this launch angle aficionado.

I have a thing for what I’ve sometimes termed “launch angle porn,” one that predates the Statcast era. Even amid the unending barrage of home runs and their resultant highlights, I find that the visceral thrill of watching the beginning of a sky-scraping home run is the best part. Particularly when viewed on a two-dimensional screen of whatever size, we have no idea of the final distance that struck sphere will travel, but after the sight and sound of contact — and particularly, the mellifluous melody of a ball hitting the sweet spot of a wooden bat — launch angle is the first feedback we get, whether or not there’s a number attached to that steep ascent. As for exit velocity and distance, those come later, whether it’s a couple of seconds after when we see where that ball lands, or once the Statcast numbers are in.

Wherever you sit along the spectrum of baseball observers, from newcomer through casual fan, diehard, junkie, nerd, and professional, you are by no means obligated to care about such numbers. But if you’re the type that gets a kick out of at least an occasional peek at them, not for their own sake but because they increase our understanding of the game (and of ourselves): welcome to the club, and to today’s tour of the season-to-date’s Statcast extremes. This ride isn’t for everyone, but if it’s your thing, buckle up.

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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.

———

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 »