All the pitchers in the league seem to have gotten together and decided that someone has to throw a no-hitter each week. One of our best matchups this week involves a guy who already threw one, two guys meeting in LA who are certainly pitching well enough to nab one of their own, and an AL Central altercation between pitchers – and teams – trending in opposite directions.

Tuesday, May 11, 7:10 PM ET: John Means vs. Marcus Stroman

John Means got his 15 minutes of fame last week after methodically tearing the Mariners apart. Means’ destruction of the M’s lineup earned him a no-hitter and the baseball world’s spotlight, but the Baltimore bro has been reliably great all season. He’s allowed just five hits and three earned runs over his last 22.1 innings, striking out 27 hitters along the way. If we zoom out and look at his entire body of work across seven starts, we find that Means has become one of the best pitchers in the game thanks to one little trick.

Like a local magician bringing their act on the road, Means risked letting the secret out of the bag when he performed the trick over and over again in Seattle. The Orioles’ breakout star threw first pitch strikes to 26 of the 27 hitters he faced, elevating his first-pitch strike percentage to a maniacal 73.5%. Not only is this 12 percentage points above Means’ career-high, it’s also the highest of any American League starter. As a predominantly fastball-changeup artist, one would think that Means adheres to the traditional method of fastballs in the zone, changeups just underneath it. While he still utilizes his changeup in that fashion – to the tune of a 33.3% chase rate – it’s actually the pitch he throws most frequently in the zone, per Baseball Savant. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Robert Hassell III, CF, San Diego Padres
Level & Affiliate: Low-A Lake Elsinore   Age: 19   Org Rank: 5   FV: 50
Line: 3-for-5, HR, 2B, BB, 2 SB

Notes
Perhaps the most important thing about Hassell’s first pro season will be how he looks in center field. His first step out there is pretty good, but he sometimes struggles to close the deal, especially when he’s approaching the wall. Hassell hit with substantially more power during 2020 instructs, then arrived to 2021 spring training (where he got a lot of run with the big league team) with a really steep, uphill swing, and I watched him swing through a lot of fastballs with lateral action during minor league spring training. Clearly games like last night are an indication that’s okay, I’m just noting there may be a contact-for-power tradeoff happening here based on my spring looks. Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday evening, Texas’ Hyeon-Jong Yang made his first career start. While a low pitch count and a fourth-inning jam limited him to 3.1 innings, the southpaw still managed to impress: He struck out eight and walked only one while missing 15 bats on 37 swings. This was just a spot start in place of injured Kohei Arihara, but it was almost certainly good enough to warrant another look sooner rather than later.

Yang didn’t arrive with the same fanfare as fellow KBO transplant Ha-seong Kim. The 33-year-old had to settle for a minor league deal; he didn’t even make the Rangers’ Opening Day roster. Still, he’s a legend back home in South Korea. With two KBO Series titles, an MVP trophy on the mantle, and numerous international accolades there was little left for him to prove in Gwangju, and he understandably wanted to test his mettle at the highest level while he’s still near the peak of his powers.

I watched several of Yang’s starts last season. His overall numbers weren’t particularly impressive, but he looked much better once he shook off some early-season rust and got his best fastball back. As a command-reliant starter with a low-90s heater, above-average fading change, and functional slider, he seemed like a big leaguer, if not an impact one.

Across his first three games in Texas, Yang’s results have been pretty good. In 12 innings, he’s struck out 13 hitters while allowing only two walks and 10 hits. But while his start against the Twins was mostly encouraging, it also revealed some limitations in his skillset and highlighted the difference in competition between the KBO and the major leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

The end of April always sees some teams with their hands hovering above the panic button, some pitchers wondering what the heck is happening, and others hoping their newfound glory is more than just a phase. As the month comes to a close, we’ll see all of those tropes beautifully on display. Here are the week’s best matchups.

Tuesday, April 27, 6:10 PM ET: Kenta Maeda vs. Aaron Civale

Heading into the season, three AL Central teams had playoff odds above 24%. Nearly a month into things, two of those teams are struggling with losing records (Minnesota and Cleveland), while the Royals, who had the fourth-lowest playoff odds of any AL team, are the surprise of the spring. This week brings the first Minnesota-Cleveland series of the year as both sides try to find their mojo. On Tuesday, they’ll each turn to guys with a wide array of pitches who currently occupy different ends of the success spectrum.

One year removed from finishing second in Cy Young voting and AL starter WAR, Kenta Maeda is searching for answers. He’s only seen the sixth inning once in his four starts this year, going exactly 6.0 innings in a game against the clawless Tigers. He’s had two starts flame out at 4.1 innings; his other outing was a meltdown at the Coliseum on April 21. The A’s clobbered three home runs, whacked five balls with exit velocities above 100 mph, plated seven earned runs, and hooked him after three innings.

Those big-time exit velocities are becoming a troubling trend for Maeda, a pitcher who thrived in his first five major league seasons by limiting hard contact. According to Statcast, Maeda had the lowest average exit velocity among all starters from 2015-20 who threw at least 500 innings. Today, he’s floundering in the 28th percentile for average exit velocity and the 29th percentile for hard-hit percentage, partially due to the fact that his four-seam fastball just flat out ain’t working.

Last season, when Maeda had the lowest average exit velocity of any starter and the highest K% of his career, hitters flailed their way to a .086 batting average and .103 wOBA (.150 xwOBA) on his fastball. The average exit velocity against that pitch (83.4 mph) was even weaker than his league-leading overall average (85.3). This year, that’s all gone awry. His fastball is getting lit up for a .313 average and .372 wOBA (.430 xwOBA). He even allowed a home run on the fastball for the first time in his Twins tenure. This Matt Olson skyscraper, measured at 107.8 mph on a middle-middle meatball, is a perfect encapsulation of how things are going for Maeda when his catcher puts down one finger.

Aaron Civale, on the other hand, has taken the thump out of opponents’ bats. Cleveland’s third-year righty is in the 88th percentile of exit velocity, and his heater is the one steadying the ship. As Devan Fink laid out, Civale has overhauled everything, mainly his philosophy on fastballs. After throwing a four-seam 2.5% of the time in 2020, he’s shot that percentage all the way up near 30.

It’s now Civale’s turn for a tour of the exit velocity leaderboard. His revamped changeup – which, as Devan also mentioned, is now a split-change – is working so well that he may even want to consider upping its dosage. The split-change is sending everyone back to the dugout having made weak contact (or no contact at all), but particularly left-handers, who have yet to record an extra base hit, and are slap boxing a 78.0 average exit velocity against this diverting action.

Like a scrap-hungry seagull or a fan with the day off tomorrow, Civale is also sticking around late into the game. As opposed to Maeda, Civale has pitched into the sixth inning in each of his starts, twice going seven frames or longer. With both teams looking to course-correct after chumpish starts, and the Royals’ making things even more crowded in the Central, Tuesday’s Maeda-Civale ticket is one to pinpoint.

Friday, April 30, 9:40 PM ET: John Means vs. Jesús Luzardo

Fresh off a resounding 8-1 win that ended Oakland’s 13-game winning streak, the Orioles meet the A’s for a second straight weekend series. John Means will attempt to keep Oakland earth-bound on Friday, matched up with the same youngster he defeated last time out. Means and Luzardo had a timeshare of the strike zone when they last linked up, pouring in strikes on over 60% of their identical 101 pitch counts.

Means has stuck to the same script for virtually his entire career, though this season he’s relegating his slider from supporting actor to bit part. With roughly 10 mph separating his fastball and changeup – Means’ most common offerings – the rock of the Orioles’ rotation is letting those two do the lion’s share of the work. Eighty-three of his 101 pitches in the clubs’ first meeting were either a fastball or changeup, and the A’s could only scrape together two hits in 6.1 innings. Will Means follow the same path when they collide this weekend, or will he try to confound Oakland by peppering in more sliders and curves?

Both pitchers will throw their fastballs more often than not, though they use different lanes of the highway. Per Baseball Savant, Luzardo was responsible for each of the 23 highest-velocity pitches in Sunday’s game against Means, topping out just a hair under 98 mph.

The Athletics’ Peruvian prodigy took the L thanks to Austin Hays’ two home runs, giving Luzardo five gopher balls in 25 innings, all provided by right-handed hitters. Since his big-league career began in 2019, Luzardo has allowed 15 home runs, 14 of which have come from the right side of the batter’s box. (To satiate your daily need for useless trivia, the only lefty to take Luzardo deep is Mariners’ 28-year-old rookie José Marmolejos.) Don’t let the Orioles band of nameless, faceless offensive players fool you. Though they’ve managed just one souvenir shot against lefties this season, Baltimore’s left-handed hitters are fifth in wRC+ against same-handed pitchers.

Friday, April 30, 9:40 PM ET: Jon Gray vs. Madison Bumgarner

Friday evening will be extremely conducive to the two-screen lifestyle, as Gray vs. Bumgarner gets underway at the same time as Means vs. Luzardo. Both of these towering NL West staples are intimately familiar with their opponent. Gray has tussled with the Diamondbacks 13 times in his seven-year career while Bumgarner’s career stats against the Rockies read like a full season for a 1960’s workhorse: 37 starts, 230.1 innings, 218 strikeouts, 62 walks. Despite inhabiting the same division as Bumgarner for his whole career, Gray has only matched up with the inimitable lefty twice. Entering round three, both guys are hot.

Gray shut out the non-Bryce Harper parts of Philadelphia’s lineup on Sunday, allowing just two runs on a pair of solo shots to the Phillies’ right fielder. Though he’s running the first double-digit walk rate of his career, Gray is doing well at keeping those base on balls from becoming runs. His 85.8 LOB% will surely come down, and his .208 BABIP will likely come up, but there are some encouraging trends that suggest Gray’s early-season fortune could be here to stay.

Keeping balls on the ground means they can’t be added to the collection of Coors Field moon shots, and Gray has gotten his groundball percentage back above 50%, much more in line with his 46.6% career average than the 36.7% outlier from last season. The Rockies also have to love their ace’s hard-hit rate, as it mirrors the numbers he maintained in 2016-17, the only seasons he’s eclipsed 3.0 WAR. So far Gray has been riding the slider – a pitch that’s been his best since 2019 – until the wheels fall off. Hitters began whiffing on it 40% of the time during that 2019 breakthrough, and this year they’re hardly faring any better, swinging and missing at a 42.5% clip and striking out in 19 of the 51 plate appearances that have ended with this unrighteous pitch.

The desert faithful will get their first look at Bumgarner since his seven-inning no-hitter. The zero hits part jumps out of the box score, but Sunday’s shortened no-no was also MadBum’s best all-around game as a Diamondback. It was his first start for Arizona without a walk, and he matched his Diamondback-high with seven strikeouts. Bumgarner generated 10 swings and misses on his cutter and curveball, the latter of which is quickly becoming an essential out pitch. With a Whiff% of 40.0 (and a staggering 75.0 against lefties), Uncle Charlie is bringing gifts every time he visits Bumgarner.

This could spell doom for Ryan McMahon, the Rockies’ left-handed hitting outfielder who’s carrying around an 0-for-10 with three strikeouts against the legendary lefty. Trevor Story, the only current Rockie with more than 18 plate appearances against Bumgarner, has also had a bad time. His 8-for-41 (.195/.233/.561) numbers are hilariously heightened by the fact that five of those hits have landed in the seats.

Under the Radar Matchup – Friday, April 30, 8:05 PM ET: Nathan Eovaldi vs. Kohei Arihara

Here’s the situation: Eovaldi has one of the lowest barrel percentages of any starter; Arihara has one of the highest. Unsurprisingly, Eovaldi has been one of the more valuable pitchers around, becoming one of the first American League hurlers to hit 1.0 WAR. He’s done it by converting to the church of groundballs, getting disgusting ride on his fastball, and harnessing a curveball that’s experienced a 180-degree turnaround in just two years.

As recently as 2019, Nathan Eovaldi was downright bad, trying to smile through the pain of home runs and walks. That is no longer the case, as Eovaldi is working on a streak of 42.2 consecutive innings without allowing a dinger, and his walk rate is a microscopic 4.2%, down from the 11.6% that severely hampered him two years ago.

While Eovaldi’s aversion to hard contact has very plainly made him Boston’s best pitcher, his Friday counterpart’s success has been much more confusing. Arihara was managing a 2.21 ERA (3.05 FIP) heading into his last start despite constantly getting hit on the thick part of the bat. After coming over from Japan on a two-year pact with the Rangers, Arihara experienced unbelievable luck through his first four starts until stopping by Guaranteed Rate Field on Sunday. His 93.9 EV (highest of any starting pitcher), 12.9% Barrel% (fifth-highest), and 50.0% HardHit% (tied for highest in the league), tell us that hitters are having a very easy time squaring him up. Yet, he went longer than five innings with zero earned runs in his two previous starts before getting beat up by the White Sox in his worst showing to date, pushing his ERA to 4.03 (4.17 FIP). Even after getting his “Welcome to MLB” moment in Chicago, Arihara still has a HR/9 under 1.00 and is feeding groundballs to 40.6% of his adversaries.

His teammate Mike Foltynewicz, who has the dubious distinction of being neck-and-neck with Arihara on HardHit Mountain, has a 5.32 ERA, 6.78 FIP, and leads the world in home runs allowed. Baseball is hard and unfair.

This recent tweet from Daren Willman caught my eye:

#Rangers Kohei Arihara threw 7! different pitches in the first inning. pic.twitter.com/X86J6NpvFH

— Daren Willman (@darenw) April 20, 2021

Partially it was because I was already intrigued by Kohei Arihara, but the pure absurdity of this fact stands out, too. He threw seven different kinds of pitches in his most recent start against the Angels. Seven! In one inning! The only other player to accomplish this feat in 2020 was Arihara’s countryman Yu Darvish, who coincidently did so in seven different innings last season. Since 2008 (the first season with public PITCHf/x data), there have been 909 instances of a pitcher throwing at least seven different pitch types in a single inning. When you think about how many innings of regular season baseball have been played since 2008, you can appreciate how rare this type of occurrence is.

If you are not familiar with Arihara yet, let me fill you in. The right-hander came over from NPB after playing six years for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters. He was posted going into his age-28 season and signed a two-year deal with the Rangers for a total of $7.44 million, $1.24 million of which was the posting fee awarded to his now-former club. At the time of signing, this seemed to be a very good deal for Texas. Arihara lacks the explosive fastball and mind-bending breaking pitches frontline starters in MLB today; his strikeout rate his final season in Japan was 19.4%. But his repertoire was deep. Eric Longenhagen wrote up a scouting report back in December outlining his pitch mix and fastball velocity, comparing him to other high-profile players from NPB. Eric concluded that Arihara profiled as a back-of-the-rotation type, placing a 40 FV on him. Getting a guy who can fill the back of a rotation for about $3.7 million per year (when accounting for the posting fee) seems like a solid deal to me. Read the rest of this entry »

Prospect writers Kevin Goldstein and Eric Longenhagen will sometimes have enough player notes to compile a scouting post. This is one of those dispatches, a collection of thoughts after another weekend of college baseball, minor league spring training, and big league action. Remember, prospect rankings can be found on The Board.

Editor’s Note: This piece originally incorrectly stated Cole Winn had had a Tommy John surgery. It has been removed. FanGraphs regrets the error.

Eric’s Notes

Chase Walter, RHP, San Diego Padres

Most of the teams that ended up signing several non-drafted free agents for $20,000 bonuses last year were the ones with thinner farm systems, like the Reds or Nationals. But the Padres inked several as well, and the first one to pop up and look like a real steal, at least for me, is Western Carolina signee Chase Walter. Walter sat 96-98 out of the bullpen in a minor league spring training game late last week. His breaking ball shape varied pretty significantly, looking like a lateral slider sometimes and a power overhand curveball at others. Regardless of its shape, Walter’s breaking ball bent in at 84-87, and the ones that had more of a curveball look to them were plus. He looks like a potential quick-moving relief piece.

Asa Lacy, LHP, Kansas City Royals

Lacy’s first career pro outing against hitters from another org lasted two innings (the second of which was rolled), and was more of a check-in to see where he’s at rather than a look that should alter anyone’s opinion of him. I went into this look knowing that some scouts had seen him throw a live BP about a week and a half earlier and that Lacy was pretty wild during that outing, which is totally fine considering he’s just getting going for the year. He was a little wild in my look, too, and to my eye seemed to have a noticeably lower arm slot while throwing some of his sliders, even during warm-ups.

Lacy came out sitting 94-96 in his first inning of work and then was 95-98 in the second. He doesn’t need to have precise fastball command because his is the sort of fastball that has huge carry and can compete for swings and misses in the zone. Maybe it’s because of the arm slot variation stuff, or because it’s a developmental focus for him, or just because Lacy faced so many right-handed batters, but he ended up throwing many more changeups than anything else during this outing. They were often in the 85-88 mph range and some of them were quite good, while others were not. He broke off a single plus curveball (his curves were about 80-81) that froze a righty hitter and landed in the zone for a strike, while Lacy’s sliders (86-ish) often missed well below the zone but still garnered some awkward swings. Read the rest of this entry »

On April 6, Minnesota Twins slugger Nelson Cruz added a new feather to his cap of many accomplishments: he became the king of the Tiger killers, those elite hitters who seem uniquely capable of besting Detroit Tigers pitching at every turn. After hitting all three of his 2021 home runs against the Tigers this past week, Cruz look the top spot among active players on the leaderboard of all-time home runs against the Motown team. With 26 regular season homers, he usurped the title previously held by Alex Gordon, and can rightfully claim his place as the biggest thorn in the Tigers’ paw.

For Tigers fans, the only surprising thing about this fact is that it hadn’t happened years earlier.

If you’re a fan of a team that has shared a division rivalry with the slugger, ask yourself: do you remember the first time your favorite team was personally victimized by Nelson Cruz? My first memory of having my hopes crushed by a Cruz home run is from Game 2 of the 2011 ALCS. The Tigers were vying for a rematch of their 2006 World Series rivalry against the St. Louis Cardinals, but one thing stood in their way: the Texas Rangers.

In Game 2, with the Tigers leading 3-2 and heading into the bottom of the seventh inning, a 31-year-old Cruz came to the plate against Max Scherzer. He absolutely crushed a home run to tie the game for the Rangers. It was a tie that would last for almost two and a half more hours. As the game headed into the 11th inning, Cruz came to the plate again with the bases loaded, this time against Ryan Perry. With the game on the line and the crowd restless, howling over every foul ball, Cruz obliterated an offering from Perry for a game-winning grand slam. Read the rest of this entry »

The long Rougned Odor era in Texas has ended. On Tuesday, the Texas Rangers traded their second baseman, the incumbent since 2014, to the New York Yankees for minor league outfielders Antonio Cabello and Josh Stowers. The trade represents the final dismantling of the team’s longtime Odor-Elvis Andrus double play combo, a process that began last September when the cellar-bound team benched both players.

The interests are clear for both sides of this minor trade. The Rangers had already all but moved on from Odor despite the two seasons remaining on the six-year, $49.5 million contract he agreed to before the 2017 season. The second baseman didn’t even make the team’s final roster cuts this spring; he was designated for assignment last week. So getting two players in return for a guy they were willing to let go for free had to be attractive to the Rangers. In 2017, Odor was still just 23 and coming off two very solid seasons as the starter, albeit with some notable flaws. Odor’s power was always compelling, but his glovework was inconsistent, and though his contact rates weren’t that lousy, he still had abysmal strikeout-to-walk ratios. Odor never really developed an ability to leverage plate discipline into actual performance. For example, where the league tends to slug about .650 after 1-0 and 2-0 counts, Odor was only about 50 points above his career slugging percentage in these situations.

ZiPS didn’t anticipate much growth from Odor from age-23 on due to these issues, but thought he would at least plateau as a low-OBP hitter with excellent power for a second baseman and a below-average glove that wasn’t so abysmal as to force a move off the position. Read the rest of this entry »

Joey Gallo is a walking archetype. You know the rough outlines: strikeouts like you wouldn’t believe, gobsmacking power, and the walks that accompany those two. When he’s good, he’s blasting his way to success; the park almost doesn’t matter when he gets into one, so titanic is his power.

If you knew only that about Gallo — and to be clear, it’s the most important thing — what would you think about his BABIP? It could be sky-high; he whiffs quite a lot, but that doesn’t matter for BABIP, and when he makes contact, it’s the loudest contact there is. He’s barreled up a fifth of his batted balls, and hit 50% of them 95 mph or harder. That makes it easier to find a hole — or make one.

It could be low, though! Many of those hard hit balls leave the park. What might be doubles in the gap or smoked line drive singles for another player might be home runs for Gallo, and singles and doubles are the bedrock of BABIP. Grounders and pop ups are no good; the real juice is in line drives and low fly balls, and he might simply hit his too hard to keep them in the field of play.

The answer is depressingly pedestrian. Gallo’s career BABIP stood at .270 entering this year, below average but not atrocious. That’s 40th-worst in baseball over that time period, in the same general area as many homer-happy sluggers. Mike Moustakas, Kyle Schwarber, Rhys Hoskins, Chris Davis — basically, hitters who get a disproportionate amount of their value by putting the ball in the air and over the fence. Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Sport Science Analyst

Summary: The Texas Rangers are seeking a candidate to provide research and analysis through statistical modeling, visualizations, and other assigned projects. This individual will support the Sport Science staff as well as other branches of the Performance, Player Development, and Baseball Operations staffs. This position is based in Arlington, TX.

Basic Duties & Responsibilities:

• Work with Sport Science, S&C, Medical, Nutrition, and Mental Skills departments to aide in driving Performance initiatives through integration of statistical analysis.
• Utilize Athlete Management System to effectively display data and produce reports (written and visual) for the Performance Group, Field Staff, and Front Office.
• Conduct statistical analysis, quantitative research, and data modeling on motion capture data and other information related to biomechanics.

Read the rest of this entry »