Albert Cesare/The Enquirer/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Over the 30-plus years that I’ve been following baseball, it seems like a collection of newfangled stats comes out every couple years. WAR, DiPS, wOBA, UZR, exit velocity, spin rate — America’s most rigorously empiricized sport has gone from scribblings in Henry Chadwick’s notebook to having more inscrutable acronyms than the Department of Defense.
My default position on new stats is one of interested skepticism. As a public-facing analyst, I don’t want to stake my reputation on a new metric that might still have serious flaws. It usually takes months or even years for people smarter than me — or at least, people who did more than barely pass their graduate statistics class — to iron out the kinks and figure out how to read and utilize the trendy new stats.
We haven’t even reached May, but on Sunday, Elly De La Cruz made what will certainly go down as one of the best defensive plays of the 2025 season. In the bottom of the second inning in Baltimore, Reds opener Brent Suter clipped the outside corner with a slider and Jackson Holliday fought it off, sending a weak line drive up the middle off the end of his bat. The ball was ticketed for center field, but nobody told De La Cruz, who ranged to his left and did his best Superman impression. He seemed to hang in the air forever as he corralled what would have been the game-tying hit.
At this point, it’s possible that Superman is going to start doing an Elly De La Cruz impression. Truly, on this Easter Sunday, Elly was risen. De La Cruz got full extension, utilizing every inch of his 6-foot-5 frame. He sacrificed his face in the process, selling out for the catch so completely that he smacked his chin and the brim of his hat into the dirt when he finally landed. When the ball found leather, the Orioles fans who had started cheering in anticipation of an RBI single instead found their voices rising in both pitch and decibel level as their disparate vocalizations merged into one united “Awww!”
I spent a significant portion of my Monday morning watching this play on repeat, then searching for as many angles of it as I could. I wanted to see the catch, but even more than that, I wanted to see the reactions. You know how when you’ve watched your favorite movie enough times, you no longer need to keep your eyes on the focus of the frame at any given moment? You start to notice all the subtle things going on in the background, the way one extra covers their face to keep from laughing, or a tiny visual joke on a blackboard. After I’d marveled at De La Cruz’s athleticism until my eyes lost the ability to focus, I started watching everyone else marvel at it. Read the rest of this entry »
Max Scherzer has had a Hall of Fame-quality career. Now with the Toronto Blue Jays, the 40-year-old right-hander has accumulated 73.0 WAR to go with 216 wins and a 133 ERA+ across his 18 big league seasons. Moreover, his 3,408 strikeouts rank 11th all time, and his résumé also includes three Cy Young Awards, eight All-Star selections, and a pair of World Series rings. Writing about his Cooperstown chances last summer, my esteemed colleague Jay Jaffe called Scherzer “a lock for election.”
Let’s turn the clock back to 2007, when Scherzer made his professional debut that summer a full year after he was drafted 11th overall by the Arizona Diamondbacks out of the University of Missouri. The following spring, Scherzer was ranked fourth in the D-backs system when Baseball America’s 2008 Prospect Handbook was published. Rankings and in-depth scouting reports weren’t yet a thing here at FanGraphs.
What did Scherzer’s 2008 Baseball America scouting report look like? Moreover, what does he think of it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what BA’s Will Lingo wrote and asked Scherzer to respond to it.
———
“The 11th overall pick in 2006, Scherzer pitched for the independent Fort Worth Cats and held out before he would have reentered the draft pool.”
“That’s right,” replied Scherzer. “Now that you think about it, the rules have changed since then, but when I got drafted by the Diamondbacks… actually, let’s go back to pre-draft. That season, my junior year, I slammed a door on my finger. I tried to pitch through it and developed biceps tendonitis. That scared off a lot of teams.
“I came back at the end of the year and pitched well, so I went into the draft saying that I was still looking for a top-college-pitcher contract. That was when you could still sign major league contracts out of the draft, and it’s what I told teams I was looking for. Arizona drafted me under those pretenses, but then tried to tell me I was hurt. I was like, ‘You guys literally just saw me at the Big 12 tournament. Everything is back. I’m good.’ I let them know that I wasn’t going to take 11th-pick slot; I was looking for a major league contract, which is what the top college pitchers in the past few years had gotten. Read the rest of this entry »
Chandler Simpson may be the fastest player in baseball. At the very least, the 24-year-old center fielder is one of the few major leaguers with 80-grade speed, befitting a player who stole 104 bases in 110 games at two minor league stops last year. A day after making his major league debut with the Rays, Simpson’s speed figured into a controversial play in Sunday’s game against the Yankees at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, as he broke up Max Fried’s no-hitter… retroactively. That might not even have been the game’s most contentious call, as Aaron Judge lost an apparent home run on a towering fly ball that was ruled foul, even after a replay review.
Fried had held the Rays hitless through 5 1/3 innings when he faced Simpson for the second time in the bottom of the sixth inning. With a 2-2 count, Simpson hit a 78.6-mph grounder between first and second base. Yankees first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, a four-time Gold Glove winner, ranged over to his right to field the ball, but as he did, it deflected off the heel of his glove and towards second base. Simpson reached safely.
The play was initially ruled an error on Goldschmidt, and Fried carried on, retiring five of the next six hitters — the exception being when he grazed Curtis Mead’s right foot with a sweeper — and keeping the no-hitter intact through seven innings while the Yankees stretched their lead to 3-0. By the time the 31-year-old lefty took the mound for the eighth, the official scorer had reversed his previous decision, wiping out Goldschmidt’s error, crediting Simpson with a hit, and ending Fried’s no-hit bid. Read the rest of this entry »
First impressions are everything, the expression goes, and a poor one could have doomed Juan Soto’s 2024 season. The Yankees dealt five quality players for one year of his services; a slow start in the Bronx would have invited the wrath of tabloids and fans alike. But Soto started with a bang, gunning down a runner at home plate to preserve a ninth-inning lead in his debut and going on to hit .325/.438/.561 in his first month as a Yankee. From day one, he was undeniable.
This time around, he hasn’t been as lucky. Soto remains in New York, albeit in a different borough, and he’s fresh off signing the largest contract in professional sports history. By those standards, his start this season is underwhelming. His batting line is 25% above league average, but the shape of his production is essentially Soto at his least productive: tons of walks, a few too many groundballs, and not much extra base damage. The quasi-slow start prompted a story written by The New York Post’s Mike Puma headlined “Juan Soto opens up to The Post about pitchers’ new approach without ‘the best hitter in baseball’ behind him.” Read the rest of this entry »
Penn Murfee was mentioned in the interview with Trent Blank that ran here at FanGraphs on Friday. Discussing pitch profiles, Seattle’s director of pitching strategy recalled the erstwhile Mariners reliever being “a guy who had cut-ride” on his four-seam fastball.
Murfee is now with the White Sox, and Chicago’s South Side club is in Boston for a weekend series, so I took the opportunity to get his own perspective on the offering. What I learned talking to him at my home base of Fenway Park is that the movement he gets on his heater is circumstantial. Moreover, it’s legal.
“Back in 2021, in [Triple-A] Sacramento, my pitch profile changed from a running arm-side fastball,” explained Murfee, who was in the Seattle system from 2018-2023, the last year-plus of that span in the majors. “For whatever reason, I started choking the ball a little tight, and began throwing what was classified as a cutter. It went to zero inches of horizontal movement. My pitching coach at the time said, ‘Whatever you changed, don’t change it back.’ He said that I went from having a very average fastball to something unique.”
Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. There must have been something in the water across the league over the past seven days, because while this column always highlights delightful oddities that I caught, they aren’t often so delightful or so odd. This week, rarities abounded. There were runners getting hit by throws, wild acrobatics, no-look passes, and even a pitchout. Hot teams and cold teams clashed, errors got compounded, and situations that felt in hand rapidly got away. So keep an eye on the runner at first base, and let’s get started – after my customary thanks to Zach Lowe of The Ringer, who popularized this column format for basketball.
1. Not-Quite-Free Bases Jarren Duran is off to a slow start to the 2025 season. And while the problems have mostly come at the plate, everything seems a little off. Take this misadventure on the basepaths last Thursday. Duran led off the bottom of the 10th inning with a game-tying single. That made him the winning run, and he immediately started plotting a theft of second base to get into scoring position. Nick Sandlin checked on him:
Then he checked on him again:
That’s two disengagements; Sandlin wasn’t likely to try again. Duran stole 34 bases last year. He’s blazing fast. He was 5-for-5 on the season and had already swiped one in this game. Second base was as good as his. And so the Blue Jays took extreme measures, calling for one of the least-used plays in modern baseball, a pitchout:
The Mets upgraded their outfield in a big way this past winter simply by signing Juan Soto, but even with the $765 Million Man hitting reasonably well — if not up to his own high standards — the unit has been one of the majors’ least productive thus far. Now an injury has shaken up the roster, as Jose Siri has been sidelined by a fractured tibia, leading the team to test Jeff McNeil in center while he’s on a rehab assignment and setting up some further experimentation.
The Mets acquired the 29-year-old Siri in a trade with the Rays last November 19. Through the first two and a half weeks of the season, he shared time in center with Tyrone Taylor; both players are righties, so the Mets didn’t have a strict platoon in place. On Saturday, Siri fouled a ball off his left shin, and while initial X-rays were negative, a follow-up MRI taken two days later revealed a fracture. The Mets finally placed Siri on the 10-day injured list prior to Thursday’s game, but they haven’t given any indication as to when he’ll return. As manager Carlos Mendozasaid, “[H]e’s going to be out for a while.”
Trent Blank plays an integral role in one of baseball’s top pitching organizations. Now in his sixth season on the major league coaching staff, Blank is the director of pitching strategy for the Seattle Mariners. He’s well-suited for the job. The 35-year-old former minor league hurler holds an MS in Kinesiology and Exercise from Dallas Baptist University, and he previously worked at TMI Sports Medicine as a baseball performance specialist. Along with his current position, Blank has served as Seattle’s bullpen coach.
Blank sat down to talk about the Mariners’ pitching process prior to the start of the regular season.
———
David Laurila: Let’s start with a pitcher the Mariners [purchased from the Cincinnati Reds] shortly before spring training. What made Casey Legumina an attractive acquisition?
Trent Blank: “Whenever we sign anybody, we look at them through a lot of different lenses, and he popped for both our player development and analytics groups. From my perspective, we really liked some of the unique things that he does with the baseball. He has good uphill plane since he kind of changed his delivery. With his spin profile, we think we can add a couple of pitches. We’re also thinking about bringing a couple of pitches back, and repurposing them. He has a lot of raw materials we feel we can put together in a different way.”
Laurila: Can you elaborate on that?
Blank: “When we add stuff, it’s generally based on a certain spin profile we see. Then, when we talk about repurposing… with Casey in particular, it’s the sweeper. He’s had different versions of it, because he’s had different slots. We like the pitch. Adding some aggression is one thing. We’re still working through it, but the main thing is getting his fastball going at the top rail a little bit more.”
Laurila: Generally speaking, how does the organization approach introducing changes to a pitcher’s arsenal? Read the rest of this entry »
The Chicago White Sox, coming out of the worst season in modern major league history, started 2025 with a bang: an 8-1 win over the Angels on Opening Day. They lost the next two games, then pounded the Twins into smithereens on the last day of March. Since then, the Sox have dropped 12 games out of 14 and once again settled like silt on the bottom of the American League standings table.
It’s not going to be their year after all. But I don’t think it’s going to be as miserable as it was in 2024, and Chase Meidroth is one reason why. Read the rest of this entry »
