A man in black stands in the bullpen. He looks different than the last time we saw him here, almost six months ago now. The strange uniform hangs off him so loosely; his hair is clipped shorter; his beard is longer. It is the early evening, and the sky is loosely clouded, the light and shadow falling in that way that is so familiar now, the way it only does in this specific place, this close to the ocean in the west.

The energy, though, is not familiar for this building: the loud blue everywhere, the excitement of thousands who are experiencing something they can only have once a year, or once every few years, or even once in a lifetime. They are not here for the man in black; he might as well be one of the shadows.

In the corner, though, above the bullpen, the faithful form their block of yellow. They hold up their signs, and the kids wear their little foam crowns. And if it wasn’t for the fact that the words they hold up mirror the ones sewn to the back of his uniform, you might not know that the person they were so excited to see is the same subdued presence now taking the man.

It is the 209th time that Félix Hernández has started a game in this ballpark. Read the rest of this entry »

Christian Yelich won NL MVP honors while leading the Brewers to a division title and within one win of a trip to the World Series last year, but hopes for repeating that magic took a severe blow on Tuesday night. In the first inning of the Brewers’ game against the Marlins in Miami, the 27-year-old right fielder fouled a pitch off his right kneecap and was forced from the game. In the aftermath of the team’s 4-3 victory, general manager David Stearns told reporters that Yelich had fractured the kneecap and will be out for the remainder of the season, a crushing blow to a team that has overcome a slew of injuries to win five straight games and climb to within one game of the second NL Wild Card spot.

Ouch. Ugh. F***. A player with a reasonable claim as the NL’s best is down for the count as far as 2019 goes, and while thankfully it’s not an injury with career-altering ramifications, right now there’s no joy in Mudville or Milwaukee. This completely sucks.

Facing righty Elieser Hernandez, Yelich fouled a 1-1 slider squarely off his right knee, crumpled to the ground, and remained there for several minutes while being tended to by Brewers athletic trainer Rafael Freitas. He could not complete the plate appearance (pinch-hitter Trent Grisham completed the strikeout, which was charged to Yelich) and limped off the field under his own power (you can see the video here).

Stearns said that Yelich would be flown back to Milwaukee to meet with team doctors and determine whether surgery would be necessary and what the prognosis would be going forward. He praised his star slugger, saying, “Look, I think first and foremost, we feel awful for Christian. This is a guy who has carried us in a number of ways over the last two years. He could have been two and a half weeks away from a repeat Most Valuable Player Award. That’s where our thoughts go first.” Read the rest of this entry »

I confess that I haven’t watched many Marlins games this year. The team is projected to have the third worst record in baseball, potentially losing 100 or more games for just the third time in organization history. They average fewer than 10,000 fans per home game, the lowest in the league in 2019, which would be an all-time low, surpassing the 2018 season. It’s been a bumpy ride for Don Mattingly’s rebuilding Miami club.

But the Marlins do have some interesting players who are capable of doing interesting things not many other players are capable of doing. After Caleb Smith’s solid outing this past weekend, I spent some time perusing Statcast and discovered that, among left-handed pitchers who have thrown a minimum of 50 four-seam fastballs in 2019, Smith’s has the third most horizontal movement in the game. Right behind him is his teammate, Adam Conley. One spot ahead of him is Chris Sale. And one spot ahead of Sale, leading all 113 lefties in this sample in horizontal movement, is Smith and Conley’s teammate Jarlin Garcia.

Three of the top four left-handed big leaguers in four-seam horizontal movement all pitch for the Marlins.

That piqued my interest. In 2018, Garcia was one of the worst pitchers in baseball, carrying a -1.3 WAR and 6.37 FIP in 66 innings pitched. His xwOBA-against and xSLG-against were both in the first percentile in the league. In 2019, Garcia’s strikeout rate is up, his walk rate is down, and as of this writing, he has contributed 0.4 WAR and has a 3.79 FIP. What seems to be the likeliest cause of this improvement? His fastball’s horizontal movement was still 98% better than league-average last year, but its value was -1.57 wFB/C. This year it is 110% better than league average and its value has been 0.86 wFB/C. What changed more than his fastball movement, however, was his slider movement and usage:

Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Miami Marlins Data Engineer, Baseball Operations

Location: Jupiter, FL

Description:
The Miami Marlins are seeking a full-time Data Engineer for the Baseball Operations department. The position will be responsible for developing and maintaining ETL processes that ingest, clean, validate, and organize baseball data. The Data Engineer will support the information requirements of the Marlins’ analysts, coaches, and scouts. Strong applicants will have experience with ETL processes and database management, with extensive knowledge of both SQL and object-oriented programming.

Responsibilities:

• Continually enhance the department’s access to information, making new data sources available and improving the completeness, cleanliness, and timeliness of existing sources.
• Develop production quality Python and SQL scripts for automated and ad-hoc data loading, using clean, concise, and modular code.
• Maintain high data quality standards. Proactively identify, diagnose, and resolve data issues.
• Ability to work with a variety of data types (statistics, video, etc.) coming from a multiple different sources (APIs, FTPs, .csvs, etc.).
• Learn, extend, and improve the existing database architecture – ensuring data is well organized for end-users and easy to connect to other data sources.
• Maintain a source controlled code repository of ETL scripts.
• Communicate with analysts and Baseball Operations staff to understand the organization’s information needs. Effectively prioritize workflows and share relevant expertise to best support data users.

Qualifications:

• Strong work ethic, attention to detail, and ability to self-direct.
• Passion for engineering development, creativity, intellectual curiosity.
• Excellent interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills.
• Demonstrated experience with SQL.
• Demonstrated experience with object-oriented programming; preferably Python.
• Demonstrated experience with ETL processes and database management.
• Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or equivalent.
• Understanding of and passion for baseball and baseball research.
• Ability to work extended hours including evenings, weekends, and holidays.

To Apply:
Please apply with your resume, cover letter, and other supporting materials (relevant past projects) on TeamWork Online here.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Miami Marlins.

The last time I wrote about Trevor Story, this was the lede:

Don’t make any Trevor Story puns, Devan. Don’t do it.

Too late. The Rockies’ rookie shortstop has been a mammoth story this season, as he continues to break record after record.

I’m not proud of this, just as I’m not proud of the pun in the headline above. But when you can make a pun, you make the pun. There’s not much more to it than that.

That’s why I’m here to talk about Trevor Story. He has always been an offense-first shortstop. During his rookie season in 2016, Story became the fifth player in baseball history to homer in each of his team’s first four games of the season. He also became the fastest player to six career home runs. Today, I’m here to change the conversation regarding Story’s bat-first reputation.

This season, Story’s offense has still been the best part of his game. In 585 plate appearances, Story has slashed .296/.356/.548 with 30 home runs and a 116 wRC+. He’s produced 17.4 runs above-average of offensive value, a slight step back from 2018 (+23.9), but it’s still a figure that ranks seventh among all shortstops this season. (Alex Bregman is listed first on the leaderboard, but he’s been primarily a third baseman.)

That’s not bad, but the dropoff becomes even less of a concern when one realizes that Story’s defensive value has been quite high this season. Among primary shortstops, Story’s +12.9 defensive runs are the third-most in baseball, and among all players, they are the 12th-most. His eight-run increase in year-over-year defensive value is the 17th-highest in baseball among players who received ample playing time in both 2018 and 2019. Story is evolving from an offense-first shortstop to an all-around great one. Read the rest of this entry »

With president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski fired and the team’s playoff odds heading into skim milk territory, the Red Sox have effectively thrown in the towel on 2019. Who will be charged with cleaning up the situation — a competitive roster that will nonetheless have significant holes to fill, a massive payroll that could limit their ability to do, a depleted farm system, and sky-high expectations nonetheless — remains to be seen. One thing is certain, however: at or near the top of the incoming executive’s to-do list will be figuring out how to handle Mookie Betts‘ pending free agency following the 2020 season. For as tempting as it may be to trade him before he walks away, the Red Sox could be making a serious mistake.

Betts, who will turn 27 on October 7, is in the midst of another fine season, if not one that measures up to last year’s high standards. Through Monday, he’s hitting .290/.388/.522 with 27 homers, 14 stolen bases, a 133 wRC+, and 6.1 WAR. Among American League players, his on-base percentage (fourth), WAR (fourth), and steals (10th) rank among the top 10, but for as impressive as that may be, it’s a marked contrast to 2018, when he led the AL in batting average (.346), slugging percentage (.640), and WAR (10.4) while placing second in on-base percentage (.438) and wRC+ (185), fourth in steals (30), and ninth in homers (32) en route to winning AL MVP honors in a landslide and helping the Red Sox to a championship. Not only was that 10.4 WAR higher than any player’s — even Mike Trout’s — since Barry Bonds’ 11.9 in 2004, but Betts posted that mark during his age-25 season, younger than any other 10-win player from the post-1960 expansion era save for Trout.

By that yardstick, Betts’ 2019 looks like something of a disappointment, though he has dug his way out of an early-season funk that saw him hit an unremarkable .243/.375/414 (108 wRC+) in May and June. Since July 1, he’s hit .329/.397/.616 for a 155 wRC+ and 3.3 WAR, the last of which is fifth in the majors in that span behind only Alex Bregman (3.8), Trout (3.7), Anthony Rendon (3.5), and Ketel Marte (3.4). Prorate that performance to his season total of plate appearances (670) and that’s 7.8 WAR with 18 games still to play — an MVP-caliber season in most years. Read the rest of this entry »

In Steph Curry’s junior season, his Davidson Wildcats played a non-conference game against Loyola Maryland. Curry led the nation in scoring at the time, and as expected, Davidson rolled that night. But Curry himself didn’t score a point. Loyola’s coach, Jimmy Patsos, instructed his players to double-team Curry up and down the court. So, Curry stood in the corner with two Greyhounds next to him as his teammates played 4-on-3 and won by 30.

After the game, Patsos more or less copped to the farce. Defending his tactics, he asked: “Anybody else ever hold him scoreless? I’m a history major. [Are people] going to remember that we held him scoreless or we lost by 30?”

Whether all that makes Patsos infamous, cynical, or pathetic is up to your interpretation. Regardless, he’s right about one thing: you can generate attention in defeat, even humiliating defeat, so long as you lose in notable fashion.

It’s a lesson the Seattle Mariners reinforced over the weekend. On the surface, Sunday’s matchup between Seattle and Houston looked as lopsided on paper as a major league game can. The Astros are perhaps baseball’s best team; the Mariners may lose 100 games. Cy Young contender Gerrit Cole was on the mound for Houston, opposed by former Cy Young winner but current-6.00-ERA-holder Félix Hernández. The Astros had already defeated Seattle 15 times in 16 tries. Vegas handicappers set one of the highest lines I can ever remember seeing for a major league contest.

This being baseball, anything can happen on any given day, and as it turned out, 35,000 Houstonians saw a pretty spectacular version of “anything:” the most lopsided ballgame in recent memory. Read the rest of this entry »

At the All-Star Break, the St. Louis Cardinals were an even 44-44 with an 11% shot at the division and a 21% chance at the playoffs. Since the All-Star Break, the team is an NL-best 37-18, just a half-game back of the Houston Astros during that time. The team has gotten great individual performances from Jack Flaherty, whose 3.0 second-half WAR trails only Justin Verlander among pitchers, and Kolten Wong, whose 2.2 WAR in the second half puts him in the top 20 for position players. The team has enjoyed a very good bullpen all season long, and it ranks fourth in baserunning, but on its face, this Cardinals team doesn’t have the look of a 90-plus win division winner. Sometimes a solid defense gets overlooked.

There are currently 47 players in the big leagues with at least four wins on the season. None play for the Cardinals. And St. Louis doesn’t really make up for a lack of star-power with high-end depth, either. Of the 102 players with at least three wins on the season, the Cardinals have just three (Wong, Flaherty, and Paul DeJong). Individually, they might look like the roughly average team they were at the All-Star Break. Even collectively, the numbers don’t impress. As a team, their 99 wRC+ from non-pitchers ranks 17th. Including their good baserunning numbers only ups their offensive rank to 16th in baseball. On the pitching side, their 9.6 WAR from their starters ranks 14th while their bullpen, with the unknown Giovanny Gallegos as their best pitcher, does better at seventh with 4.6 WAR, though the bullpen fails to make a dent overall; the staff still sits in 14th place.

The Cardinals have a thoroughly average offense and an average staff, but are currently projected to win 90 games and only need to go 9-10 the rest of the way to do so. We might chalk some of this up to luck, but their Pythagorean record based on run-differential equals their actual record, and their BaseRuns record is only two games behind their wins in the standings. That means that of the roughly 10 wins that would need to turn to losses to make the Cardinals a .500 team, only a couple have to do with sequencing and getting better results with runners on base than when the bases are empty. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Chance Adams, Domingo German, and Nick Pivetta — on how they learned and developed their curveballs.

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Chance Adams, New York Yankees

“When I was in college my pitching coach was Wes Johnson, who is now with the Twins. He taught me my curve. For awhile it was kind of slurve-slider, then it went to a curveball, and now it’s kind of slurvy again. But it’s interesting, because when I got [to Dallas Baptist University] it was, ‘OK, I throw it like this,’ and he was like, ‘Well, have you tried spiking it?’ My curve was moving, but it wasn’t sharp, and I was like, ‘No, not really.’ Spiking it was uncomfortable at first, but after I got used to it, it was pretty interesting. It started moving better.

“My pointer finger is off the seam, with just a little pressure on the ball. Wes said to try spiking it and see what feels good, so I worked on it with this much spike, that much spike. Even now, the spike kind of varies for me; I’ll move it back or forward for comfortability, but also movement-wise. Sometimes it’s sharper when it’s more spiked. It kind of depends on the day, and if I’m controlling it or not. Read the rest of this entry »

At the end of August, the Philadelphia Inquirer suggested that Mets rookie sensation Pete Alonso and Phillies first baseman Rhys Hoskins could be the next generation’s greatest player rivalry in the NL East. At that point, Alonso was slugging a hundred points higher than Hoskins and had almost 20 more home runs on the season. Unlike Alonso, Hoskins regularly slips away from the Phillies lineup, disappearing for weeks at a time: There’s streaky, there’s bad luck, and then there’s hitting under .230 in the clean-up spot for three months.

Meanwhile, Alonso broke the Mets’ single-season home run record on the first pitch he saw against Yu Darvish on August 27. If all Alonso had done was break the record, the only history we’d have to mention is from the recent past: Carlos Beltran and Todd Hundley held the previous Mets record, 41, having set it in 2006 and 1996, respectively. But because of Alonso’s rookie status, his accomplishment is made even more distinct.

You only get one season to set rookie records — or set records as a rookie — and through that slim window, Alonso has slipped his 6-foot-3, 245-pound frame. This is due in part to his classification by baseball scientists as a “pure hitter.” Determining what is meant by this term usually leads to a loudly shouted or frantically typed mention of historic figures like Ted Williams or Joe DiMaggio. The eyes of baseball puritans light up when talk begins of Alonso “pure-hitting” like sluggers did back in the good old days, when pure-hitting was America’s pastime, along with losing everything on the stock market and the rampant abuse of benzedrine.

Anyone who has swung a bat can tell you what a pure hit feels like: when timing, mechanics, and strength align to allow the barrel of the bat to connect with the sweet spot of the ball. But being a pure hitter means doing all that more than once. To make the impression of a Pete Alonso, you’ve got to keep doing it within the span of one season — your first season facing big-league pitching. Alonso is doing just that, and you have to go back pretty far to the find the last guy who did: Johnny Rizzo, in 1938 for the Pirates — a man who gives us a historical post to which we can tie Alonso’s accomplishments, while also viewing them through the filter of… well, being on the Mets. Read the rest of this entry »