Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
As we’ve covered in this column a few times, the only way to acquire major league players from other teams for the rest of the season is via waivers. We have yet to see an Angels-level dumping of impact players en masse this season, but there has still been some movement since the trade deadline passed. Let’s take a look at some of the notable players who changed teams recently, as well as some guys in DFA limbo who could get claimed in the coming days.
On any given day in the not-too-distant past, the Yankees, Orioles, Guardians, Dodgers, and Phillies might have laid claims to the best record in their respective leagues, yet all of them have also gone through recent stretches where they’ve looked quite ordinary — and beatable. To cherrypick just a few examples, at the All-Star break the Phillies had the major’s best record at 62-34 (.646), but since then, they’re 11-17 (.393). They were briefly surpassed by the Dodgers, who themselves shirked the mantle of the NL’s top record. Over in the AL, on August 2 the Guardians were an AL-best 67-42… and then they lost seven straight. The Yankees and Orioles have been trading the AL East lead back and forth for most of the season, but over the past two months, both have sub-.500 records. And so on.
At this writing, not a single team has a winning percentage of .600, a pace that equates to just over 97 wins over a full season. If that holds up, it would not only be the first time since 2014 that no team reached 100 wins in a season — excluding the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, of course — but also the first since ’07 that no team reached 97 wins.
Every spectator sport has its own tradeoffs between watching on TV and going to a game in person. And while there are some that can only be truly appreciated live, I personally think television does a pretty good job of portraying baseball at its best. This is a game of inches, and inches can be hard to perceive from the cheap seats.
One exception is exceptional center field defense. By the time the camera angle turns around on a fly ball, the outfielders have already covered dozens of feet in their pursuit of the baseball. To appreciate the speed and timing required to play this position well, you really have to see it live.
There aren’t many guys who can really go out and get it. There definitely aren’t 30 who can hit well enough to stick in a major league lineup every day. Most center fielders, therefore, fall into two camps: Good hitters who can kind of hang but should probably be in a corner, and the genuine article. Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier this week, Michael Baumann wrote about how Kirby Yates has a chance to join Craig Kimbrel and Wade Davis as only relievers in MLB history with multiple seasons of 40 or more appearances and an ERA south of 1.25. Five years after logging a 1.19 ERA over 60 outings with the San Diego Padres, the 37-year-old right-hander has come out of the Texas Rangers bullpen 44 times and has a 1.19 ERA.
I procured subject-specific quotes from Yates for my colleague’s article, but there were a few other perspectives I wanted to glean from him as well. That he has quietly put up better numbers than many people realize was one of them. For instance, since he began throwing his signature splitter in 2017, the underrated righty has a 36.0% strikeout rate that ranks sixth-best among pitchers who have thrown at least 250 innings.
“It’s almost like a tale of two of two careers,” Yates said upon hearing that. “It’s before the split and then after the split. Now I’m getting into a situation where you could call it three careers in a sense — since [March 2021 Tommy John] surgery and how I’ve been coming back from that. Last year was good, but also kind of shaky. The two-and-a-half to three years off, I felt that. This year I feel more comfortable. I’ve felt like I could attack some things I needed to attack.”
Yates doesn’t feel that his splitter is quite as good as it was pre-surgery, although he does believe it is getting back to what it was. His fastball is another story. He told me that it’s never been better. Read the rest of this entry »
If you’re speaking with someone from Toronto who doesn’t follow baseball, they can probably tell you two things about the Blue Jays. The first is that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is the best player on the team. The second is that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. sucks.
The first point is pretty accurate, and it’s absolutely true this season — more on that in a moment. The second point is categorically false, but alas, such is the curse of superstardom. The player who has his face on posters all around the city is going to get plenty of credit when things go right, but he’s also going to shoulder an excessive amount of criticism when things go wrong. When you’re the guy starring in the Uncrustables ads, fans expect a crust-free performance on the field, too.
Guerrero made a name for himself in 2021, which was no easy task considering the man with whom he shares his name. Yet, with 48 home runs, 111 RBI, and a runner-up finish for AL MVP, Guerrero gave the average Torontonian a reason to talk about baseball for the first time since José Bautista was punched in the face. Then, Guerrero spent the next two years corroding his golden reputation. To be clear, no one who knows what they’re talking about ever thought he was a bad ballplayer — heck, he set a new record for the highest salary ever awarded in an arbitration hearing this past offseason — but his performance certainly went downhill. If all you were comparing him to was the best version of himself (like that motivational poster in your gym always tells you to do), he really was pretty disappointing last year: Read the rest of this entry »
As the man who inspired Brad Pitt’s most memorable role once said, “My shit doesn’t work in the playoffs.” Assuming Billy Beane wasn’t explaining an October Metamucil purchase to a grocery store cashier who simply asked how his day was going, what Beane likely meant was that the statistics used to construct his major league rosters don’t accrue large enough samples during postseason series to eventually even out in his favor. Over the course of 162 games, a team’s production settles into a reasonable representation of the squad’s true talent. But zoom in on any random seven-game stretch and the team on the field might look like a bunch of dudes in baseball player cosplay.
What applies to team outcomes applies just as well to player outcomes. A player with a perfectly respectable stat line in the regular season might morph into a pumpkin as the calendar shifts to fall, or on the flip side, an unlikely hero may emerge from the ashes of a cruel summer and put the whole team on his back.
With the law of averages in mind, I’d always assumed that the more consistent hitters would be better positioned to perform well in the playoffs. My thinking went like this: The natural variation in these hitters’ performances would never wander too far from their season-long average, making them the safer, more predictable options. Whereas streaky hitters — the ones with high highs, low lows, and steep transitions between the two — would be too reliant on “getting hot at the right time” to be the type of hitter a front office should depend on in the postseason.
Eleven seasons after making his big league debut, David Peralta might best be described as a professional hitter. As clichéd (and definitionally daft) as that label is, it’s pretty much what the 37-year-old San Diego Padres outfielder is at this stage of his career. A reliable left-handed bat now with his fourth team — the bulk of his time has come with the Arizona Diamondbacks — Peralta is slashing .268/.327/.439 with six home runs and a 118 wRC+ in the current campaign. His career numbers are actually somewhat similar. Over 1,200 games and 4,492 plate appearances, the Valencia, Venezuela native has a .279/.334/.449 slash line to go with 123 home runs and a 109 wRC+.
Peralta talked hitting when the Padres visited Fenway Park earlier this season.
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David Laurila: How different a hitter are you now compared to when you reached the big leagues?
David Peralta: “I’m different now, because every year, every day, you learn something to get better, how to approach the game, how to approach pitching. That’s especially true now. When I first got called up, in 2014, you didn’t see that many guys throwing 99-100 mph. Now that’s normal. So, it’s a different approach that you have to have.”
Laurila: Have there been any notable changes over the years?
Peralta: “I’ve always been more simple and short, but I tried one time in my career to change my mechanics. It worked for a little bit and then stopped working.”
Laurila: This was when?
Peralta: “In 2022, in the offseason, I started doing something different with Michael Brantley. I started hitting the way he does. Again, it worked for a little bit, but then for some reason I came off of that and couldn’t find myself again. I ended up going back to my mechanics. You have to know what type of player you are, what type of hitter you are. I know that I’m not a home run hitter. I’m a line drive hitter, so I have to work on things that way.”
Laurila: Brantley hasn’t been a home run hitter either. What was he doing that you were trying to emulate? Read the rest of this entry »
Aaron Judge has ascended to another plane of existence. On Wednesday, he hit his 300th career home run in his 955th career game, making him by far the fastest player to reach that milestone. He’s currently on pace for 57 homers and 11.3 WAR, and in the two weeks since I compared him to a seven-foot-tall god-child, he’s somehow gotten even better, raising his wRC+ from 212 to 219. All of this is to say that the occasion didn’t need any help in the drama department, but the White Sox couldn’t help themselves.
In the top of the eighth inning, down four runs with one out and Alex Verdugo on second, brand-new manager Grady Sizemore chose to intentionally walk Juan Soto in order to get to Judge. Let me say that again: The White Sox intentionally walked someone so that they could pitch to the guy with the best batting line since 2004 Barry Bonds – whom they were going to have to face anyway unless Verdugo somehow got doubled off second base – with two runners on base rather than one. And it worked, in the sense that Judge quickly freed the White Sox from having to play in a competitive baseball game. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. It’s an incredible time to be a baseball fan, particularly one who isn’t tied to a single team or division. There are three tight division races, and both wild cards hold some intrigue. Some of the brightest stars of the game are playing incredibly well right now. The A’s are on a kelly-green-clad respectability streak that is both improbable and delightful. The White Sox are fun to watch for their ever-evolving pursuit of futility (more on that below). There’s no time for August doldrums when the games are this exciting. So no more talking vaguely about what a great week this was; let’s get right to it. And thanks, as always, to ESPN’s Zach Lowe for the format I’m borrowing here.
1. Barry Would Never
Perhaps the least likely story of the season, on an individual level, is Tyler Fitzgerald, who has turned into one of the great offensive forces in the game overnight. After putting up average offensive numbers as he climbed through the minors across four seasons plus the lost COVID year, he has established an everyday role on the Giants and unexpectedly caught fire this season. He’s now hitting home runs faster than I can count and getting his name in Giants history next to Barry Bonds for his power feats. (As an aside, this clip of Bonds and Greg Maddux discussing an old at-bat is amazing, and I highly recommend it.) Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
As a massive roster construction and player usage wonk, I probably spend more time than anyone looking at lineups and bullpen usage, especially for someone who’s not in a single fantasy baseball league. My latest focus has been on the incredulity with which some teams construct their lineups, specifically the Yankees’ continuing to bat Alex Verdugo leadoff. But for as much as some Yankees fans may want to believe that lineup construction is a failing of their manager specifically, this problem isn’t limited to one team.
I wish I could say this was just Boone but almost every manager makes wild lineup decisions stick for weeks, no matter if the team is good (CLE cycling through no. two hitters, none of them good) or bad (Nationals cleanup hitters) https://t.co/DWF5Trx6JW
To be clear, putting together a perfectly ordered lineup is not the most important part of a manager’s job, and more than just the Yankees, Guardians, and Nationals run with questionable batting orders, but few things irk fans more than poorly constructed lineups. So today, let’s focus on the lineup-construction woes of these three teams, because their issues represent crucial spots at [insert Rick Dalton pointing meme here] … the top of the order:
The Yankees’ Leadoff Spot
No team has gotten less production from its leadoff spot than the Royals, but Yankees leadoff batters have been downright dreadful in their own right (80 wRC+).
Whereas the Royals’ woes there can be pinned on mostly one guy (Maikel Garcia, who’s batted first in 96 of the team’s 132 games), the Yankees have given four players significant run there: 76 starts for Anthony Volpe, 17 each for Verdugo and Gleyber Torres, and 10 for Ben Rice.
Of those four, only Rice has been above average batting first, with his 133 wRC+ in that spot buoyed by his three-homer game against the Red Sox in early July.
There’s also Volpe and Torres, neither of whom has taken to the leadoff spot well. Both players have been below league-average hitters overall this season — Volpe’s wRC+ is at 94, Torres’ 88 — but they’ve been even worse hitting leadoff. Volpe has an 83 wRC+ batting first; Torres’ leadoff wRC+ is 59. That’s more small sample funkiness than anything, but it seems that, at least for the time being, the Yankees are better off having the two of them bat lower in the order.
Verdugo, as mentioned in the intro, has been the guy lately, leading off in each of the Yankees’ last six games, including against three fellow lefties. In that small sample he’s hit just .240/.310/.280, giving him a 77 wRC+ in his 17 games in the leadoff spot, even worse than his overall season line.
While there’s really nothing redeeming for Verdugo himself out of that spot, the Yankees have managed to win when he’s there regardless; New York is 12-5 when he leads off. And since Verdugo started hitting mostly leadoff on July 26, his wRC+ (including in other spots) is 106, 16 points better than his 87 mark for the season. The Yankees have gone 12-6 in that time, and Verdugo has led off in 14 of those 18 games. So I don’t necessarily blame Boone for rolling with him, but it’s not like Verdugo is lighting the world on fire batting first. Rearranging the order shouldn’t be out of the question.
Aaron Judge wouldn’t get first-inning intentional walks batting leadoff (at least, I don’t think so), and he’s taken just fine to batting first in the past, with a gaudy .352/.466/.711 line across his 35 starts as the leadoff man. Juan Soto has led off just twice in his career (one start as a rookie in 2018 and another in ’21), but his OBP-heavy approach would certainly play well there. Still, the Yankees are vying for the best record in baseball this season because Soto and Judge have dominated for them batting second and third, respectively, all year, and I can understand why Boone wouldn’t want to change that up. That said, why not move current cleanup batter Austin Wells up to the top spot?
As long as we’re talking about not moving hitters away from where they’re doing well, we have to acknowledge how good Wells has been since his first game in the cleanup spot on July 20. Including a couple pinch-hit appearances and three games hitting fifth against lefties, Wells has hit .341/.404/.524 (160 wRC+) since then.
Even just at a glance, Wells looks like a great candidate to bat leadoff, with a .347 OBP and 12% walk rate giving him ample opportunity to reach base ahead of Soto and Judge. Zooming into more recent games, though, he looks even better: Since the start of June, well before he began hitting fourth, his OBP is .382. He’s walking about as frequently, but over the past two and a half months, he’s having much more success on the balls he puts in play (.336 BABIP, compared to .238 through the end of May). Wells seems to enjoy hitting cleanup, for what it’s worth, even though his hot stretch began well before that:
“[Hitting cleanup has] actually helped me,” Wells told the reporters. “Getting to watch Soto and Judge before me allows me to see a lot of pitches up close and gives me a lot of confidence to have a quality at-bat and try to put a good swing on a good pitch. For me, I welcomed it and enjoyed it.” But knowing that Wells has been hitting well in different lineup spots for months now, he shouldn’t have to be anchored there.
Hitting a catcher leadoff may not be traditional, but I’d argue it’s the best option for the Yankees and may even give Judge better protection hitting behind him in the form of Giancarlo Stanton, who came off the IL nine days after Wells began cleaning up.
All of these machinations underscore the unfortunate loss of Jazz Chisholm Jr., whose excellent beginning to his Yankees career has been halted by a UCL injury. If he’s able to return this season, he could be another leadoff option if Boone wants more dynamism than Wells, Verdugo, Volpe, or Torres atop the lineup. At the time of the trade, Boone seemed to like the idea of Jazz in the middle of the lineup.
Aaron Boone said he sees Jazz Chisholm Jr. hitting in the middle of the order, since they are seeing good signs from Alex Verdugo & Gleyber Torres at leadoff. Chisholm will soon begin working out at 3B, as will Torres.
The depth that Chisholm provided in his handful of games as a Yankee was obvious, and his is a tough loss to paper over, but that doesn’t change the issues I have with how the Yankees lineups are being constructed, with or without him. Yes, the Yankees are winning again after their abysmal month-and-a-half skid, and they might not want to switch things up too much while things are going well, but that doesn’t change the fact that they should be hitting their best four batters — Judge, Soto, Stanton, and Wells — in the top four lineup spots.
The Guardians’ Second Spot
Stephen Vogt has done a fantastic job managing the Guardians this year, to be clear. I watch a lot of their games, and the rookie manager really knows how to get the most out of his bench and bullpen; he pinch-hits aggressively to get the platoon advantage and presides over the league’s best bullpen by ERA. Where there’s room for improvement, though, is in writing the initial lineup card.
Cleveland is getting the fourth-worst production out of its two-hole hitters, but we can’t blame Vogt for not trying. Eight — count ’em, eight! — different players have started at least four games there, and the team’s most frequent no. 2 hitter, Andrés Giménez, hasn’t started there since June 26.
This comes with an even more straightforward solution than the Yankees’ leadoff woes: Bat your best hitter second. For the Guardians, that means moving José Ramírez up from third to second. That may just create further issues lower down the lineup — Josh Naylor would probably move up to third in this scenario — but the key words there are “lower down.” Wouldn’t you rather have Ramírez hitting rather than left in the on-deck circle in a key spot? David Fry can mash lefties and makes perfect sense to hit fourth in that scenario, and big Jhonkensy Noel is hitting well against everyone to start his major league career and is certainly formidable enough for the cleanup spot. If Vogt doesn’t want to mess with his three-four duo of Ramírez and Naylor, Noel could also fit batting second too, even if he’s more of your prototypical cleanup-hitting masher.
The Nationals’ Cleanup Spot
Of the lineup spot/team combos I highlighted in my initial tweet, the Nationals actually fare best, with a group of cleanup batters that ranks 23rd in baseball.
So this is more anecdotal and just an opportunity for me to vent about my displeasure with Dave Martinez’s lineups, which have lately included hitting Keibert Ruiz fourth in seven of his last nine starts, even as the switch-hitter has a 72 wRC+ with no real advantage from either side of the plate. His 80 wRC+ in 13 games as a cleanup hitter isn’t much better, and batting someone who is 20% worse than league average — who hits a ton of ground balls and doesn’t have much pop — in a key run production spot just defies logic. Over the last two games, Martinez has finally moved Ruiz down to sixth, and the catcher has responded well there so far; he hit two home runs last night’s game, which the Nats lost 13-3. Hopefully, Martinez doesn’t use that as a reason to move Ruiz back to batting fourth, a role for which he is not well suited. Instead, Ruiz should remain in the six-hole, because Washington isn’t lacking for quality clean candidates.
The obvious man for the job is rookie James Wood, who surely is more fearsome to opposing pitchers than is Ruiz. Just as Joey Meneses hit cleanup basically up until he was sent down to the minors, Martinez stuck far too long with a struggling bat right in the middle of things. Rookies Wood and Andrés Chaparro should be anchoring things instead as the Nats work to develop their next winning team.
