Lourdes Gurriel Jr. needed a reset. It was April 14, and he was hitting .175/.250/.275 over 44 plate appearances. After starting the season 2-for-27, he’d recorded hits in four straight starts, but the Toronto Blue Jays still saw enough significant problems to warrant time in the minor leagues. They sent him down to Buffalo, where he hit .276/.308/.480 with a 94 wRC+ in 31 games. It was a perfectly cromulent performance, but nothing that suggested he was a brand new man capable of wreaking havoc on big league pitching.

Then in his first game back in the majors on May 24, Gurriel hit his first homer of the season. The next day, he homered again, and the day after that, he homered again. He hit another three games later, was quiet for a week after, and then rattled off 10 homers in his next 18 games. That included back-to-back two-dinger performances last Wednesday and Friday. Since his return from the minors, no one in baseball has better numbers than Gurriel in homers (14), slugging percentage (.750), wOBA (.466), or wRC+ (199). Just three hitters have produced more WAR.

Gurriel’s hot streak is a surprise, though not because his talent has ever been in doubt. A native of Sancti Spiritus, Cuba, he was known in his young Havana Industriales career for being an athletic player with a nice glove, but he began to break out with the bat by hitting .344/.407/.560 in the 2015-16 season. That’s the kind of performance that will help put a player’s name on the map, but in Gurriel’s case, plenty of people already knew his name. His father, Lourdes Gourriel, is a former Cuban National Series MVP winner and won a gold medal with Team Cuba in the 1992 Olympics. Meanwhile, his older brother Yuli had already been a star in Cuba for the better part of a decade. Lourdes Gurriel Jr. definitely had strong baseball genes, and in November 2016, he signed a seven-year, $22-million contract with the Toronto Blue Jays, a team that has shown quite an affinity for signing players who come from prominent baseball families. Read the rest of this entry »

How would you adjust your pre-draft evaluation of a high school pitcher if you knew he couldn’t pass a physical? That is what teams needed to decide about White Sox righty Dylan Cease, who after a surgery, a year of rehab, and four years of development, will make his first big league start today.

Some version of this scenario occurs almost annually: High school pitcher throws hard during his showcase summer, becomes very famous, comes out the following spring throwing even harder, then breaks. In Cease’s case, he was 93-96 and touching 98 during showcases, then touching 100 early the following spring before he was shut down with an elbow injury that would, as teams knew ahead of the draft, eventually require surgery.

For some teams, the injury shut the door on Cease as an option entirely. He was a Vanderbilt commit whose long arm action some teams had already feared increased his risk of injury, or at least might impede his ability to develop command and a changeup, and funnel him toward a bullpen role.

But Cease also had among the 2014 draft’s best velocity and breaking ball combination. The Cubs properly assessed his signability, and after cutting an underslot deal with Kyle Schwarber for $1.5 million at pick No. 4, they suddenly had a bunch of extra bonus pool money to play with. They ended up signing three high school pitchers to overslot bonuses — Cease, Justin Steele and Carson Sands — and cutting underslot deals of varying amounts at every other pick in the first 10 rounds.

Cease signed for $1.5 million, which was the slot value of that draft’s 38th pick and is around where high school pitchers with this kind of stuff, albeit healthy ones, typically come off the board these days. It took a fortuitous intersection of several variables: Cease’s talent, the Cubs optimistic evaluation of it and his signability, the opportunity created by the underslot deal with Schwarber, and a level of comfort in taking an injured player aided by risk diversification in the other overslot high schoolers. The high school pitching crop in 2014 was wild, and a few of those players probably contributed to the current reticence to pick a similar guy very early. Read the rest of this entry »

Nathan Eovaldi hasn’t pitched in a major league game since April 17, and he won’t until sometime after the All-Star break, but this week, before even beginning a rehab assignment, he’s been cast as a potential solution for one of the Red Sox’s biggest weaknesses: their bullpen. On Tuesday, in the aftermath of the team’s drubbing by the Yankees in the two-game London Series — during which that bullpen was torched for 21 runs and 23 hits in 12.1 innings — manager Alex Cora and president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski announced plans to use Eovaldi as their closer, a job the 29-year-old righty has never held before.

Eovaldi, who is recovering from arthroscopic surgery to remove loose bodies in his right elbow, struggled with his command and control while making just four starts in April, getting hit to the tune of a 6.00 ERA and 7.12 FIP. That comes after last year’s strong rebound from his second Tommy John surgery, during which he threw 111 innings with a 3.81 ERA, 3.60 FIP, and 2.2 WAR. Integrating a relatively new cut fastball into his arsenal, he set career bests with a 22.2% strikeout rate and 4.4% walk rate. As Jeff Sullivan pointed out last November, his penchant for pounding the strike zone with such precision is rare among pitchers with such high velocity — and oh, can he bring it. According to Pitch Info, his average fastball velo of 97.4 was tied for third among all starters with at least 50 innings.

Eovaldi has rarely pitched out of the bullpen during his eight-year major league career, not only never notching a save in eight regular season relief appearances — four with the Dodgers as a rookie in 2011, three with the Yankees in an exile from the rotation in 2016, and one last year — but never even pitching in a save situation.

That said, he shined amid his crash course in high-leverage relief work last October, making four appearances during Boston’s championship run, two of them in save situations and one in extra innings. He threw 1.1 scoreless innings in front of Craig Kimbrel in the ALCS Game 5 clincher against the Astros, two days after making a strong six-inning start, then added scoreless innings in Games 1 and 2 of the World Series against the Dodgers, and pitched the final six innings of the 18-inning epic Game 3, taking the loss when he served up a solo homer to Max Muncy but winning the hearts of New England for his gutsy, 97-pitch effort. That was the only earned run he allowed in 9.1 relief innings; he yielded four hits and walked one while striking out seven.

Read the rest of this entry »

Paul DeJong will represent the St. Louis Cardinals in next week’s All-Star Game. He’ll do so with solid, albeit unspectacular, offensive numbers. The 25-year-old shortstop is slashing .260/.344/.455, with 13 home runs and a 110 wRC+. Thanks in part to plus defense, he leads the Redbirds with 2.9 WAR.

Two years ago, in an interview that ran here at FanGraphs, DeJong discussed the mental side of hitting. This past weekend, the Illinois State University graduate — his degree is in biology — sat down for a far-wider-ranging conversation about his craft.

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David Laurila: How would you describe your hitting approach?

Paul DeJong: “My general approach is to hit something hard through the middle. I’m usually looking for a fastball that I can hit gap-to-gap; not pull, not oppo, but kind of through the middle. That gives me the best chance of adjusting to different speeds and different locations. I’m able to open up, or if I’m late, I still have time to keep it fair.”

Laurila: Something I’ve been asking players about is the idea of an A-swing, and whether hitters have multiple swings.

DeJong: “Hitters absolutely have multiple swings. For instance, if you get fooled on a breaking ball, you’re kind of adjusting your body. But for me, it’s more about keeping my hands back. If you do that, you can drift forward with your body — you’ll be off balance out front — but if your hands are still back, you’re able to deliver the barrel, still put the ball in play hard.”

Laurila: What about on fastballs riding high in the zone? Read the rest of this entry »

I’m here today to tell you about a player who has been hitting the ball tremendously hard of late. That’s nothing new — it’s a common genre of FanGraphs article. You know the deal, because I’ve written plenty of them this year already. Josh Bell is great now, Pete Alonso only hits lasers, Niko Goodrum can apparently hit, etcetera. Inevitably, these stories catch players near a performance peak. That’s just the nature of the beast; when you look for noteworthy and exceptional performances to write about, there’s very likely some luck involved, even if the underlying statistics look good.

The ideal form of this type of article finds something that’s truly different about the player, something other than mere batted ball luck. Josh Bell’s simplified stance, for example, really is different. Even so, baseball is a game with a lot of inherent luck to it, and if you single someone out for doing tremendously well, there was probably some luck involved. Today, though, we’re going to subvert the genre. Today, let’s look at a player who is, per the trope, hitting the ball harder than ever and turning fly balls into home runs at the highest rate of his career. There’s a twist, though: Wil Myers is doing all that, but he’s also having his worst season in five years. That sounds like something worth writing about.

Myers has always had power. He’s had a 30 home run season and a 28 home run season despite playing in a home park that suppresses home runs. Despite that, 2019 is seeing the highest HR/FB% of his career. (All stats are through Tuesday’s action.) His exit velocity on line drives and fly balls is in the 97th percentile of hitters with 50 air balls this year, tied with teammate Franmil Reyes. He doesn’t fare quite as well in terms of barrels per ball hit in the air, as he’s been a bit inconsistent, but he’s still in the top 20% of baseball. There are no two ways about it; Wil Myers is hitting baseballs as hard as he ever has.

So, what have the offensive rewards of Myers’ bruising new power been? He’s batting .218/.314/.399, good for a 91 wRC+. His batting average is the lowest of his career, and his OBP and slugging percentage are higher only than his disastrous 2014 Rays campaign. That batting average is especially jarring when you consider that it’s not BABIP-driven; he’s batting .316 on balls in play, higher than his career average and significantly higher than his Depth Charts projections. High BABIP and low batting average? Strikeouts have to be the culprit here, and my goodness, Myers has struck out a lot this year — 35.6%, to be exact. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Thursday, after Edwin Díaz’s meltdown in Philadelphia — five runs allowed in 1/3 of an inning, including the game-tying and game-winning home runs — I tweeted about Díaz’s 2019 performance in comparison to his 2018 performance. I argued that Díaz wasn’t that much worse this year compared to last, citing his strikeout-to-walk numbers and his xFIP. In response, others felt that Díaz had experienced a significant drop-off, contending that an increase in hard contact allowed as well as a lower strikeout rate suggested a serious fall in performance.

This discussion is what prompted this post. My followers and I agreed on one main point: Díaz is worse this year. Where we disagreed is more complicated: Just how much worse is Díaz, and why?

First, it cannot be understated just how good Díaz was in 2018. In 73.1 innings with the Mariners, he posted a 1.96 ERA and a 1.61 FIP. His 38.2% K-BB rate was the highest among all relievers with at least 10 innings pitched, and his 3.5 WAR ranked second. Seattle sold high on Díaz, trading him (along with Robinson Cano) to the Mets in December in a seven-player deal. They received Justin Dunn and Jarred Kelenic, and while it’s far too early to declare a winner of this trade, the Mariners’ end looks quite strong so far.

This season, Díaz has been undeniably worse. As alluded to above, his strikeout rate has experienced a dip, but his K-BB rate still ranks eighth among the 174 qualified relievers through the end of June. This drop is probably not due solely to regression, but it’s still worth noting that Díaz has only fallen from the 99th to the 95th percentile in the statistic. He’s still elite in that regard. Of course, strikeouts and walks aren’t the only things that matter, but relievers have less of an opportunity (at least compared to starters) for batted ball luck to even out within one season. One bad outing, like Díaz’s against the Phillies, can influence their full season numbers pretty significantly. Díaz has allowed 17 earned runs this season (4.78 ERA). Twelve of them have come across just three outings. Read the rest of this entry »

On the heels of the record-setting free agent contract that he signed in February, Manny Machado’s career with the Padres began inauspiciously. He hit just .236/.325/.368 in March and April, and as recently as June 12 was slugging less than .400. Since then, he’s been just about the hottest hitter in baseball, and it appears that he’s turned his season around.

Off the bat, it’s worth remembering that this hasn’t been a typical season for Machado. The 26-year-old superstar agreed to terms on his 10-year, $300-million deal with the Padres on February 19, officially signed two days later, and thus got a late jump on spring training. He didn’t make his Cactus League debut until March 2, a full week into the exhibition season, and it’s fair to wonder if he was fully in shape to start the regular season. He struck out in 25% of his 120 plate appearances in March and April, a figure more than 10 points higher than last year’s 14.7%, and more than eight points above his career 16.4% mark. His 88 wRC+ for the period was the first time he left the gate with a below-average month; last year, he sizzled at a 157 wRC+ clip (.361/.448/.676) in March and April.

Machado was much better in May (.283/.365/.485, 120 wRC+), and he even cut his strikeout rate to a much more normal 16.5%. Towards the end of the month, however, he fell into a 4-for-40 slump, his worst stretch of the season. That carried into June; through the games of June 12, his line stood at .240/.329/.397 with 10 home runs and a 93 wRC+, placing him in the 25th percentile among all MLB qualifiers. Since June 13, Machado has been nearly unstoppable, batting .400/.427/.914 in 75 PA through July 1. His slugging percentage and 10 home runs in that span are both tops in the majors, while his 237 wRC+ is tops in the NL (it fell behind DJ LeMahieu’s 248 with an 0-for-2 showing in Monday’s loss to the Giants).

Through all of those ups and downs, and the aforementioned arbitrary endpoints, Machado is now batting a respectable .276/.349/.513. His 20 homers are tied for 10th in the NL, and he is on pace to surpass last year’s career-high of 37. His 124 wRC+ is tied for 25th in the league and is three points ahead of his career mark. His 2.3 WAR is tied for 20th. He spent five weeks manning shortstop in the absence of the injured Fernando Tatis Jr., where the small-sample metrics say he was slightly below average, but now back at the hot corner, he’s been above average. 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 — Carson Fulmer, Lucas Giolito, and Clayton Richard — on how they learned and developed their changeups.

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Carson Fulmer, Chicago White Sox

“I’ve always thrown a four-seam fastball, so early on I wanted to throw a four-seam changeup. I could never get enough velocity off of it, so I needed to come up with something else. What I came up with was kind of a fosh. This was about two years ago. But I couldn’t find enough consistency in the zone — it would throw me into bad counts — so I kind of got away from it. Read the rest of this entry »

We have arrived at the part of the season where teams start to identify themselves as buyers and sellers. In turn, we can start assessing which players are likely to be traded.

The San Francisco Giants are clearly sellers. Stuck in last place in the NL West, with one of the weakest farm systems in baseball, the Giants need an influx of young talent. Madison Bumgarner will almost certainly be traded, but come the end of the month, he shouldn’t be the only Giants lefty on the move.

Will Smith was once a failed starter for the Royals. The Brewers acquired him in exchange for Nori Aoki prior to the 2014 season, and quickly turned him into a successful reliever. He was traded to the Giants near the deadline in 2016, and after missing the entire 2017 season with Tommy John surgery, he came back as an even better reliever, maintaining his high whiff rates while throwing more strikes. Smith is now one of the top closers in the league, and contenders will be lining up for his services.

Several surface numbers — including his 40.9% strikeout rate and 6.1% walk rate – indicate that the lefty has pitched well this season. But perhaps nothing underscores the point like WPA. Relievers are often thrust into high-leverage situations without much room for error, and in that regard, Smith has starred:

WPA isn’t designed to predict a player’s future success: It’s just a measure of how they have harmed or enhanced their team’s chances of winning. Still, it’s useful in evaluating relievers, as the context in which they are deployed shapes our understanding of their performance. By this measure, Smith has clearly thrived.

Quietly, Smith has been a pretty solid reliever for a few years now. In 2018, he posted career-low walk rate (7.1%) while striking out well over a hitter per inning. Back in the offseason, Jeff Sullivan examined Smith’s brilliance, concluding that his strong numbers and San Francisco’s needs made him an obvious trade candidate. This season, he’s been even better. Here’s how he ranks among major league relievers in several important categories:

Smith’s rise from a good reliever to an elite one can be partly explained by a small shift in his pitch mix. Last year, Smith threw his slider 36% of the time, establishing it as his main go-to weapon. It induced a .129 wOBA and a .129 xwOBA. This season, it’s got even deadlier, good for a .120 wOBA and a .108 xwOBA, even as he’s thrown it more often (42.1%). To better illustrate his slider’s effectiveness, here are a couple of gifs for your viewing pleasure:

Smith will be a free agent this winter, and so he’s just a rental. That’s dings the potential return San Francisco’s brass can expect to receive, but Smith will still fetch some talent that could help the club long-term. To get an idea of how he could be valued, let’s compare his 2019 numbers to those of other relievers who were traded as half-season rentals in recent years.

Smith’s numbers look top-notch even when compared to this stellar group. One could make an argument that Smith has performed better this season than Aroldis Chapman at the time he was traded in 2016, though the Giants certainly won’t be acquiring a prospect of Gleyber Torres’s caliber.

As always, several teams pushing for the playoffs are in need of bullpen help. The following clubs in particular could really use Smith’s services:

While just about any contender could find a place for Smith, teams with deep bullpens — like the Rays, Brewers and Indians — will probably be looking to bolster other parts of their roster. In addition to the teams listed above, the Astros are also a potential partner. Houston’s relievers have pitched very well, but they don’t have a southpaw in their bullpen right now.

With so many contending teams needing to beef up their bullpens, Smith will attract plenty of calls to the Giants front office. That’s a good news for San Francisco: the more suitors, the better their leverage. The odds are that, come August, Smith is going to make someone else’s bullpen happier. We just don’t know who, and for what return, quite yet.

In April, Matthew Boyd gave up two homers. In May, five balls left the yard against the Tigers lefty. Last month, Boyd’s breakout season slowed as he gave up 10 homers. As we enter July, Boyd has a solid 3.57 FIP and a 3.72 ERA, and has been worth 2.6 WAR, which ranks 17th among pitchers this season. Those are good numbers to be sure, but as June began, Boyd’s ERA and FIP were both 2.85 and his 2.5 WAR ranked third for pitchers behind only Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg. Boyd’s strikeouts and walks have been slightly better than they were earlier in the season; his BABIP is slightly higher and his LOB% is a little bit lower. But that doesn’t explain his 5.90 ERA and 5.37 FIP. It’s the home runs that are hurting Boyd, and with the trade deadline a month away, trying to determine whether they are randomly bunching across a few starts or the beginning of a trend is an important exercise for teams looking to reinforce their rotations.

As for how Boyd broke out in the first place, the answer is a bit easier to find — the work has already been done for us. Sung-Min Kim detailed Boyd’s transformation earlier this season, showing how Boyd lowered his arm slot to gain spin on his fastball, and raised the location of the pitch. He also buried his slider more often, gained a consistency in his delivery, and basically eliminated the two-seamer. David Laurila also wrote on Boyd earlier this season, discussing his work with Driveline to create a better slider.

Boyd’s season can be carved up any number of ways depending on how you might want to use (and abuse) arbitrary endpoints. If we took away the first three spectacular Boyd starts of the season, where he struck out 29 and walked six, his FIP is 4.09, his ERA is 3.95, and he’s averaging nearly two homers every nine innings. If we look at just his first 10 starts, he’s one of the best pitchers in baseball. He has five starts with 0 or 1 runs. He’s only got two starts where his strikeouts don’t at least equal his innings pitched. The only time he walked as many as three batters, he struck out 13 Yankees. If Boyd had evenly spaced out his 17 homers across his starts, we’d be discussing a moderate breakout. Instead, we have a massive breakout followed by concern. Read the rest of this entry »