Nick Allen is definitely going to show up on my FanGraphs Walk-Off page. I’ve checked in on him a lot over the last month, but of the 1,664 stats on his player page (yes, I counted them all), I’ve really only been paying attention to one number. I just want to know how many plate appearances Allen has. The answer is 304, and that won’t do.
A month ago, I wrote about homerless qualifiers, the all-but-extinct subset of players who come to the plate often enough to qualify for the batting title – a minimum of 3.1 plate appearances per team game, or 502 over a 162-game season – without hitting even a single home run. At the time, Xavier Edwards was the only homerless qualifier left, but I didn’t believe in him – which is to say that I did believe he had the capacity to hit a home run. He did just that on July 12, blasting a 97.8-mph wall-scraper off Scott Blewett:
On any given pitch, a swing-and-miss is the best possible outcome for the pitcher. The ball isn’t put in play, the count advances in favor of the pitcher, and the batter may look a little foolish in the process. It stands to reason that pitchers who possess multiple pitches that run above-average whiff rates will likely have strong strikeout rates, too. Then there’s another, much smaller group of pitchers who have multiple pitches with elite whiff rates. Those rare hurlers will surely have the best strikeout rates in baseball, right? Among all starting pitchers this season, there are just eight who possess multiple pitches that generate a whiff more than 40% of the time.
MacKenzie Gore leads the way with three of these elite bat-missing weapons, followed by a few of the game’s best strikeout artists. At the bottom, though, are two pitchers whose strikeout rates are much lower than you’d expect given their ability to generate whiffs: groundball specialist José Soriano and rookie Cade Horton. (As an aside, Horton’s changeup has the third-highest whiff rate of any pitch thrown at least 100 times this year, yet his strikeout rate is an unimpressive 17.6%.)
What happens if you lower the threshold to pitches with whiff rates north of 30%? There are 18 starters with three or more of these less-effective-but-still-impressive pitches. Spoiler: Soriano shows up again. Read the rest of this entry »
Tyler Mahle was 23 years old and had 20 big league innings under his belt when our 2018 Cincinnati Reds Top Prospects list was published in January of that year. A seventh-round pick out of an Orange County high school five years earlier, Mahle was ranked fourth in the system, with Eric Longenhagen assigning him a 50 FV.
Mahle has gone on to have an injury-marred career. Most notably, he underwent Tommy John surgery in May 2023, less than a year after he’d been dealt from the Reds to the Minnesota Twins in exchange for Christian Encarnacion-Strand, Spencer Steer, and Steve Hajjar at the trade deadline.
When healthy, the 30-year-old right-hander has been a quality pitcher more often than not. In 2021, he made 33 starts for Cincinnati and went 13-6 with a 3.75 ERA and a 3.80 FIP over 180 innings. Moreover, Mahle was on track for an even better season when he went on the shelf seven weeks ago with what has since been diagnosed as a right rotator cuff strain. In 14 starts comprising 77 innings with the Texas Rangers, Mahle had a record of 6-3 to go with a 2.34 ERA and a 3.37 FIP. His status for the remainder of the current campaign is unclear.
What did Mahle’s 2018 FanGraphs scouting report look like? Moreover, what does he think about it all these years later? Before he went on the injured list, I shared some of what Eric wrote and asked Mahle to respond to it.
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“After 24 hyper-efficient starts at Double and Triple-A, Mahle finally got a four-start cup of coffee in Cincinnati at the end of the season. His ability to locate was not on display in the big leagues, but it’s what got Mahle there.”
“Not great,” Mahle said of his four starts in 2017. “I was wild. My first two or three starts, I’d thrown something like 50 pitches by time I got through two innings. So yeah, not very efficient. But I got through it. Then I got off to a decent start the next year, in 2018, but pitched kind of hurt toward the end of that season.”
“He has above-average fastball command despite a somewhat noisy delivery; it should tighten another half-grade as Mahle hits his peak.”
“Hmm… yeah, my delivery back then was super stiff,” he said. “I held my glove up high and it stayed there until I broke my hands. Looking back, my delivery was, again, super stiff. A lot has changed there.
“Honestly, I don’t remember exactly,” Mahle said when asked when he made the adjustment. “It must have been with [Reds pitching coach Derek Johnson]. We kind of took away some movement in the hands. Instead of going from up high to down low, we started going from the belt to make it a little simpler.”
“His stuff is middling, spearheaded by a slightly above-average fastball/slider combination out of which Mahle squeezes every ounce of juice due to his ability to locate.”
“I was pitching with pretty much all fastballs at that time,” the righty recalled. “My slider was super inconsistent. I didn’t have a splitter like I have now. I basically just relied on the fastball.”
“He adds and subtracts from his fastball, exhibiting velocities anywhere from 88 to 95, touching 96 regularly, and maxing out at 98.”
“Yeah, but not so much anymore,” Mahle admitted. “I kind of live low 90s now and will top around 95. But relying so much on my fastball back then, I had to try to overpower guys with it. I had to try to throw it hard.”
“While Mahle’s change doesn’t have terrific movement, his ability to manipulate pitch speed without noticeable arm deceleration helps make it a viable third offering.”
“Yep. I mean, that was me,” Mahle said. “I didn’t have much of a changeup, so I had to try to place it in the zone, or wherever I was trying to get it. Like my slider, it was just super inconsistent. The arm speed… I actually feel like I probably did have to change it, based on what I was throwing. I maybe telegraphed a lot back then. Now I can throw everything with pretty much the same arm speed.”
“His stuff isn’t overwhelming, but his command should allow him to survive as an average big league starter.”
“That’s how I’ve gotten by,” the nine-year veteran acknowledged. “My command, still now… like, my fastball isn’t an overpowering pitch velo-wise, but I locate it. I also get some good ride on it. Back then, I didn’t know that. I just knew that it did well up in the zone. But yeah, I kind of lived off the location of my pitches.
“I understand everything a lot more now,” Mahle added. “I know why it works well up in the zone, and what the separation is on each pitch, and why they’re doing what they’re doing. Compared to now, back then I was pretty much just throwing.”
Over the past month, every red-blooded American with a phone and a passing familiarity with baseball has posted some version of the following sentiment: This crop of trade candidates stinks. It’s true.
Somewhat conveniently for the purposes of my argument, Ben Clemens wrapped up his annual Trade Value series this morning. He has 50 players on his rankings proper, plus 65 more in the Honorable Mentions post. I’ve seen persistent, at least semi-credible trade rumors about one player on the top 50: Byron Buxton. Buxton is one of the most talented baseball players who ever lived, but his injuries and maddening inconsistency have become his reputation. This is reflected not only in his incredibly incentive-laden Twins contract, but his spot on the trade value list: no. 41.
More to the point, Buxton recently declared that he has no interest whatsoever in waiving his full no-trade clause to allow a move to a contender. His exact words: “I don’t want to play anywhere else.” It doesn’t get more unequivocal than that. Read the rest of this entry »
Last July 29, Erick Fedde was a key piece in a three-way blockbuster that ended up having a major impact on the postseason. Unfortunately, that impact wasn’t for the Cardinals, who acquired him from the White Sox; instead Tommy Edman, who was dealt from the Cardinals to the Dodgers in the same eight-player trade, won NLCS MVP honors and helped his new team to a championship. Fedde pitched reasonably well for St. Louis — who missed the 2024 playoffs — late last season, but his performance this year suddenly took a sharp turn for the worse. On Wednesday, the day after he was roughed up by the Rockies, the struggling 32-year-old righty was designated for assignment, a likely prelude to being released.
The move isn’t exactly a shock, and it comes as the Cardinals have slipped in the standings, in all likelihood ruling out an aggressive approach as the July 31 trade deadline approaches. The team has gone 5-12 in July to drop their record to 52-51, plummeting from three games out of first place in the NL Central to 9 1/2 out, and from having a one-game lead for the third Wild Card spot to being 3 1/2 back, with both the Reds (53-50) and Giants (54-49) between them and the Padres (55-47):
Change in Cardinals’ Playoff Odds
Date
W
L
W%
GB
Win Div
Clinch Bye
Clinch WC
Playoffs
Win WS
Thru June 30
47
39
.547
3
14.7%
4.4%
30.0%
44.7%
1.6%
Thru July 22
52
51
.505
9.5
0.6%
0.2%
15.7%
16.3%
0.5%
Change
-14.1%
-4.2%
-14.3%
-28.4%
-1.1%
While losing five out of their last six to the Diamondbacks and Rockies, the Cardinals’ Playoff Odds dipped below 20% for the first time since May 8:
There is a time in life when you expect the world to always be full of new things. And then comes a day when you realize that is not how it will be at all. You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realize, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps, though you can put your hand out to where things were and feel that tense, shining dullness of space where the memories are.
– Helen Macdonald
On Tuesday night, Rich Hill made his first major league start of the season and his first ever as a Kansas City Royal. Although he took the loss, the game lived up to its billing as a feel-good story. The 45-year-old lefty went five innings against the second-best offense in baseball, allowing one earned run and two unearned. He walked two Cubs, struck out one looking, induced 11 groundballs, and left the game with a 1.80 ERA. Stylistically, it was a vintage Rich Hill performance (from a vintage Rich Hill), featuring not-so-fastballs, loopy curves, and dropdown frisbee sliders. It was also a vintage Hill performance from a sensorial perspective, in that it involved a whole lot of strange human sounds.
I mentioned Hill’s vocalizations when I wrote about the minor league deal he signed with the Royals back in May. They’re right there in my mental map of a Hill start. But memory just can’t do justice to some things. It fades. It falters. Even the events that imprint upon us most deeply tend to loosen their hold with time. It’s cruel, but it’s for the best. If our memories could transport us exactly to who we were when we felt that first rush of puppy love, heard that one perfect song, tasted that one croissant in Paris, would we even bother to seek out new experiences, or would we just live within the old ones and keep playing the hits? All of this is to say that I thought I was prepared for the Rich Hill experience. I tuned into the game Tuesday night expecting to hear the man grunt. But then I actually heard the man grunt. I was not prepared. Read the rest of this entry »
Andrew Abbott is establishing himself as a top-shelf starter. Now in his third big league season, the 26-year-old southpaw has a record of 8-1 to go with a 2.13 ERA and a 3.42 FIP over 97 1/3 innings. Moreover, he represented the Cincinnati Reds in last week’s All-Star Game. An honorable mention in Ben Clemens’ ongoing Trade Value series, Abbott merits attention — and he’s been receiving his fair share of it here at FanGraphs. Jake Mailhot wrote about him in mid-May, and Michael Baumann followed up by doing so in mid-June; Baumann also covered Abbott as a rookie in this piece from August 2023.
Accuse us of being AbbottGraphs if you’d like, but the University of Virginia product is getting yet another write-up courtesy of yours truly. Being a big fan of crafty lefties, I wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to talk to Abbott — as well as to others about Abbott — when the Reds visited Fenway Park earlier this month.
Not surprisingly, his self-assessment pretty much matched what I’ve read and seen.
“I’m not an overpowering guy,” acknowledged Abbott, whose 92.4-mph fastball velocity ranks in the 21st percentile. “Mixing speeds and getting guys off balance has always been the name of the game with me. That and staying in the zone as much as possible. I also take pride in being available, being able to throw 100 pitches every fifth day.” Read the rest of this entry »
Every baseball season, we see something unexpected. “You can’t predict baseball,” in the words of an axiom from a decade ago. And it’s true. But because baseball occurs in such great volume, over such a long period of time, unexpected things can happen in different ways, and at different rates. Sometimes, an overachieving team picks up one extra game every two weeks, gently floating to the top of the standings with minimal fuss. We get drip-fed this surprise gradually, like an irrigation system designed not to drown your basil plants.
And sometimes you fall into a lake.
On either side of the All-Star break, the Milwaukee Brewers won 11 games in a row. Even after that streak ended with a paper-thin 1-0 loss in Seattle on Tuesday, they are the hottest team in baseball right now. They’re red hot. No, white hot. They are, to quote the poet, so hot it’s hurting everyone’s feelings. Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday, I wrote up the news that David Robertson had signed with the Phillies. In my (and, I assume, everyone else’s) favorite paragraph, I mentioned that several teams had reportedly been in on the veteran right-hander. Ken Rosenthal and Jon Heyman combined to mention interest from the Mets, Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers, and “many others.” Depending on your perspective, this marked either the last We Tried of the 2025 free agency period or the first of the trade deadline period. As a quick refresher, We Tried is a catch-all term for any time we find out, after a player has ended up with one team, that another team also tried to land them. In its purest form, the We Tried is a front office’s bid for partial credit, an attempt to curry favor with the fans by demonstrating that it is trying to build a winner for them. I spent the offseason documenting each and every one in a disturbingly comprehensive spreadsheet.
I didn’t make a meal of this yesterday, mainly because Robertson’s free agency was a real outlier. The offseason ended months ago. He’s a 40-year-old reliever who didn’t get an offer he loved, so he stayed in shape and spent the spring hanging out with his family, then held a workout for teams on Saturday in order to sign before the deadline. Lots of teams were in on him and lots of teams showed up to watch him pitch, so word of who was there was bound to come out at some point. It definitely represented a We Tried, but it didn’t seem earth-shattering, and it was by no means a typical one. Read the rest of this entry »
The Arizona Diamondbacks, like King Solomon confronted with a baby, split their first 100 games straight down the middle. With the trade deadline looming a week from Thursday, the Diamondbacks could use a little wisdom right now, because it’s tough to tell whether they should buy or sell.
As of this writing, Arizona sits in fourth place in the NL West, nine games behind the Dodgers. Even after sweeping the Cardinals, a direct Wild Card rival, over the weekend, the Snakes still need to leapfrog four teams — including St. Louis — in order to slither in to the National League’s final Wild Card position. Five and a half games out of the playoffs with 61 games to go is a substantial hill to climb, especially for a team that’s been devastated by injuries. And the Diamondbacks, with their plethora of impending free agents, could command the market if they chose to sell.
Selling is the pragmatic move, the temperate move, the sustainable move, the move for the guys with the longest view in the room, and all the other business school-informed malarkey that gets spouted by the quarter-zips upstairs.
