This week’s 40-man roster deadline was less eventful than usual (we only had one trade on deadline day), but as always, a number of young players became big leaguers in a certain sense, and teams had no choice but to indicate what they think of lots of fringe prospects who they either did or did not choose to roster. This day of clerical activity is the culmination of the efforts of the players themselves, the people in player development who have helped turn them into big leaguers, and the scouting and decision-making portions of each org that put their stamp of approval on the prospects. Is any one move here as impactful as signing a Yoshinobu Yamamoto or a Matt Chapman? No, but when your favorite team experiences a rash of injuries in June, whether or not they have the depth to scrap and compete is often dictated by the people and processes that surround this day. I’m more focused on analyzing roster depth, fit and flexibility in this space than on scouting players (especially when they’re star prospects you already know well). I’ll have a separate post on the National League. Read the rest of this entry »
Brooks Raley has been an effective reliever since returning to MLB in 2020 after five seasons as a starter with the KBO’s Lotte Giants. He’s been especially good for the past two. Taking the mound for the Tampa Bay Rays in 2021 and for the New York Mets this past season, the 35-year-old left-hander has logged a combined 2.74 ERA and a 3.21 FIP over 126 relief appearances. Moreover, he’s allowed just 81 hits and fanned 122 batters in 108.1 innings. Working primarily in a setup role, he’s been credited with a pair of wins and nine saves.
Raley is also a bona fide pitching nerd. That wasn’t the case when he got cups of coffee with the Chicago Cubs in 2012 and ’13, but then came a career-altering adoption of analytics when he was overseas. Looking to optimize his talents, the Texas A&M University product schooled himself on how his pitches played best, and what he could add, subtract or tweak in order to attack hitters more effectively. The result was a successful return to the big leagues, and not only has he put up a good FIP and a solid SIERA, but he also knows exactly what those acronyms mean.
Raley discussed his analytics-influenced evolution as a pitcher when the Mets visited Fenway Park this summer.
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David Laurila: You played five years in Korea. What was that experience like?
Brooks Raley: “I loved it. I learned a lot. We’re talking analytics, and I went over there not very polished. I was a starter but didn’t have a changeup or a cutter, so I started watching YouTube videos of all the different shapes, spin rates, tilts, extension — all that stuff. For a little bit, I tried to throw like Chris Sale. I kind of leaned over and tried to create some different angles and see what kind of shapes I could get. I really got into that side of the sport. I found my cutter, found my arm slot, and then the sinker got better. My slider also got better. That all happened when I was in Korea. It’s how I got back [to MLB].”
Laurila: Why hadn’t you gotten into analytics and begun making changes prior to going to the KBO?
Raley: “I wouldn’t change anything about my career, but coming across analytics and what defines your strengths better… when I was coming through the minors, it was ‘sinkers down and away are safe’ and ‘ground balls over strikeouts.’ But I actually and naturally pitch better inside. That’s to both sides. To righties, I throw the cutter and the slider and have the changeup and sinker to keep them honest. To lefties, I’ve got the running sinker. It’s been inconsistent this year, I can’t really figure that out, but it’s been between 14 to 19 horizontal and probably anywhere from eight to two vertical. It’s kind of a unique pitch because it spins 2,400 [RPMs] or so. It’s got some life and late dart to it.
“I always struggled with changeups before I went over there, because I’d always try to throw the 10 miles an hour off [from the fastball]. Now I throw a Viulcan change, so I don’t really kill spin but I put it on the horizontal axis. I get around 19 and I’m either on the line or under the line. Basically, I found some unique shapes to really broaden my left and right, because I can throw a slider at 22 inches of horizontal and a changeup at 20 [in the opposite direction].” Read the rest of this entry »
This post is part of a series covering the 2024 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee Managers/Executives/Umpires ballot, covering candidates in those categories who made their greatest impact from 1980 to the present. For an introduction to the ballot, see here. The eight candidates will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in Nashville on December 3, and anyone receiving at least 75% of the vote from the 16 committee members will be inducted in Cooperstown on July 21, 2024 along with any candidates elected by the BBWAA.
* Average based on the careers of 21 enshrined AL/NL managers from the 20th and 21st centuries
Lou Piniella
Lou Piniella spent even more years managing in the majors (23, between 1986 and 2010) than he did playing the outfield (18, between 1964 and ’84). To both, “Sweet Lou” brought a flair for the dramatic and a fiery intensity — his dust-kicking, hat-stomping, base-throwing tirades became the stuff of legend — as well as tremendous baseball acumen. Like fellow Contemporary Baseball candidate Davey Johnson, he won championships in both phases of his career, but his failure even to reach the World Series a second time as a manager cast a long shadow on every successive stop. Unlike Johnson, however, he came close to election, missing by just one vote on the 2019 Today’s Game Era Committee ballot from which Harold Baines and Lee Smith were elected. Read the rest of this entry »
On Wednesday night, the Rangers scratched their names off of one of baseball’s most undesirable lists: the franchises that had never in their history won a World Series. Major League Baseball is known for its historical championship parity; the sport’s 23 seasons without a repeat champion is the longest streak in the four major American sports leagues, and the Rangers became the ninth unique World Series champion in the last 10 years. But heading into Wednesday’s Game 5, six of the 30 MLB clubs — a full 20% — had never reached the promised land. On Thursday morning, it was down to five: the Brewers, Padres, Mariners, Rockies, and Rays. With the Rangers happy to leave that club, who should we expect to be the next to follow?
You might have noticed a surfeit of bunting in this postseason, or at least it seemed that way because Geraldo Perdomo was in the World Series. I, the man who launched an impromptu Bunt Week two months ago, could not let the opportunity pass to sit in judgment of these bunts.
We often decry the sacrifice bunt as a needless waste of outs, but a bunt for a hit can be one of the most audacious, skilled plays in the sport, as beautiful in its own way as a light-tower home run. In fact, every bunt is distinctive and wonderful, and so each must be examined — all 26 of them — for procedural and results-based value, tactical and strategic context, as well as aesthetic value. These are just the 26 bunts that resulted in action, according to Baseball Savant, so be warned: failed bunt attempts are not featured. If you’re looking for that failed Trea Turnerpush bunt in Game 7 of the NLCS, you will not find it here. (Though for the record, I didn’t hate it.)
The wild card round is already short enough, and this year, all four matchups ended in sweeps. That’s not much postseason baseball for the Rays, Blue Jays, Brewers, and Marlins. Suffice it to say, none of those teams took October, despite what the t-shirts promised.
While I feel a twinge of heartache for the losing side in any postseason matchup, I feel especially bad for the first-round exits. After a 162-game slog with the playoffs as the only goal, their season is over in the blink of an eye. With time, some will be forgotten as contenders entirely. That seems a shame, considering how well each of these teams performed in the regular season.
With that in mind, I wanted to take one last moment to recognize the playoff performances of Miami, Milwaukee, Toronto, and Tampa Bay, before the winds of the postseason blow on to the Division Series matchups. To be clear, there isn’t a ton to celebrate; they were each swept, after all. Still, every eliminated team had at least one player whose postseason showing deserves a pat on the back. Read the rest of this entry »
As I’ve done for the past fewyears, I’m going to be grading each eliminated postseason manager on their decision-making. We spend the year mostly ignoring managers’ on-field contributions, because to be honest, they’re pretty small. Using the wrong reliever in the eighth inning just doesn’t feel that bad on June 22; there are so many more games still coming, and the regular season is more about managing the grind than getting every possible edge every day. The playoffs aren’t like that; with so few games to separate wheat from chaff, every last ounce of win probability matters, and managers make personnel decisions accordingly. What better time to grade them?
My goal is to rank each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things – getting team buy-in for new strategies and unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable – but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.
I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Coverage of the Twins’ sweep of the Blue Jays focused on Carlos Correa’s crafty veteran playoff leadership, but Royce Lewis, Pablo López, and Jhoan Duran were key parts of Minnesota’s victory too. Forget trusting your veterans – the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Correa is important because he’s a great player and great leader, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process. Let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »
The Texas Rangers locked up their first postseason series since 2016 with an exclamation point, once again dominating the Tampa Bay Rays, this time by a score of 7-1. Nathan Eovaldi shook off his late-season struggles to deliver a masterclass, while Corey Seager and Josh Jung chipped in a pair of doubles each (with the latter also adding a triple), and Adolis García and Evan Carter went deep. For the Rays, this marked their third season in a row of playoff disappointment, and while they won’t sit atop the list of postseason scoreless streaks after Curtis Mead’s RBI single in the seventh, they’ll head into the offseason with more question marks than they’ve had in recent memory.
After the lefty Jordan Montgomery shut them down in Game One, the Rays made a couple of notable changes in advance of facing the right-handed Eovaldi. First, they shed the Devil Rays uniforms that may have doomed them to the fate of their World Series-less ancestors. Second, and more directly in response to yesterday’s events, they swapped the recently returned Jose Siri — who made critical errors on both sides of the ball yesterday — for the left-handed hitting Josh Lowe, shifting Manuel Margot from right field to center in order to accommodate him. Read the rest of this entry »
Extremes in defense were on display as the Wild Card round kicked off on Tuesday afternoon. In the Rangers-Rays opener, Texas left fielder Evan Carter laid out for a great catch of an Isaac Paredes line drive in the first inning, starter Jordan Montgomery dove to make an impressive snag of Jose Siri’s popped-up bunt in the second, and Josh Jung made a nice grab on Manuel Margot’s soft liner in the seventh. On the other side, Siri’s day from hell continued as he missed catching Corey Seager’s wall-banging double in the fifth, then deflected and briefly lost control of a Seager bloop before airmailing it over third base in the sixth, costing the Rays a run. And misery loves company — his Rays teammates made three additional errors in their 4-0 loss.
Well that was decisive. The Texas Rangers dominated the first contest of their Wild Card Series in all three phases of the game. Bruce Bochy’s club outhit, outpitched, and absolutely out-defended the Tampa Bay Rays en route to a 4-0 victory. If baseball involved special teams, they surely would’ve crushed Tampa on that front too. Fresh off the best season of his seven-year career, Jordan Montgomery silenced a Rays team whose 118 wRC+ was second in the majors only to Atlanta’s this year, and whose 120 wRC+ against left-handed pitching ranked fourth. Meanwhile, the Tampa defense, which ranked 18th on our leaderboard this season, set a franchise single-game postseason record with four errors.
Surprising no one, Randy Arozarena’s playoff heroics continued, as he went 2-for-4 with a double. Unfortunately, he didn’t have much help, as the rest of the team notched just four hits.
Defense was the story from the very beginning of the game, overshadowing an impressive performance from ace Tyler Glasnow. Clad in their fun (but possibly cursed) throwback Devil Rays uniforms, Tampa Bay made three errors in the first three innings. Although none of them led directly to a run, they did contribute to Glasnow’s rising pitch count; he needed 51 pitches to get through those first three frames. And it wasn’t just the errors. There were several plays, some of them very tough but all of them makable, that the Rays just couldn’t come up with. Corey Seager, batting second, reached on an error by first baseman Yandy Díaz in the first. Glasnow was able to work through the mistake, striking out the last two batters of the inning. Read the rest of this entry »
