On Saturday night, I was at a wedding in Washington, DC. The bride was a Nationals fan and the groom was a Phillies fan. The band played “Dancing on My Own,” and the groom’s friends continued to sing the chorus well after the band had stopped playing. I had only met the happy couple a few times, but due to a last-second swap and a quirk of the venue’s layout, I ended up seated immediately in front of the spot from which everyone made their speeches. And I mean immediately in front of it. I was so close that I slouched down in my chair the whole time so that the back of my head wouldn’t ruin all the pictures. I was so close that I had to alternate between looking down at the table and looking past whoever was speaking and out the window, because I honestly thought that making eye contact from that distance would be too distracting for someone trying to deliver a heartfelt message of love. Otherwise, here’s what they would have seen whenever they looked down at their speech:

I’m aware that I bring some awkwardness with me every time I enter a room, but on Saturday, the room really met me halfway.

Not long after the father of the bride tearfully recounted the time, all those years ago, when he was away on a business trip and he called his pregnant wife from a payphone in the Atlanta airport and found out that they were going to have a little girl, I started vibrating. All of a sudden, my phone was blowing up.

Needless to say, I couldn’t exactly reach into my pocket and start scrolling at that moment. I had to wait until all of the wonderful people finished wishing the beautiful couple a long life filled with love, laughter, and happiness. The answer was worth the wait.

On June 5, I wrote about the Kutina Club for Insistently Unsuccessful Basestealers. This exclusive group is named after first baseman Joe Kutina, who stole zero bases on seven attempts in 1912. It welcomes all players who have been caught stealing at least four times in a season without successfully swiping a bag. At the time, McMahon was leading the big leagues with a sparkling 0-for-4 showing that featured one old-fashioned caught stealing, two pickoffs, and one stolen base that was overturned when a replay showed that his cleat came off the bag for a nanosecond. Not only was McMahon in line to join the Kutina Club, he was very nearly on pace to become its record-holder. Joe Coscarart went 0-for-11 in 1936, while McMahon was on pace to get caught 10.8 times.

Even if he didn’t want the record, all he needed to do to get his membership card and cool embroidered jacket was stay put for the rest of the season. Instead, McMahon not only stole his first base of the season, he stole home! That’s the hardest base to steal, since catchers like to squat right behind it on their big haunches, and pitchers like to throw their pitches right to the catchers, and when catchers are attempting to catch would-be basestealers at home plate, they often put up pop times in the neighborhood of 0.00 seconds. The next morning, I saw how McMahon pulled it off: With some help from Pittsburgh catcher Yasmani Grandal. Grandal, it turns out, is something of a soft-tosser.

We already have a term for when the defense concedes a stolen base: defensive indifference. We might need a new category for this play: indifferent defense, which describes when the team out on the field is indifferent not just to the advancement of the runner, but to the very concept of defense itself. Maybe defensive obliviousness would be more accurate, but either way, this is one of the easiest steals of home you’ll ever see. Grandal had been throwing the ball back to the pitcher like this all game. When McMahon reached third, Grandal started taking a quick peek at the runner before tossing it back, but his lollipops were as soft as ever. In fact, I went ahead and timed him.

From the time the ball left Grandal’s hand to the time it hit Jared Jones’s glove, 1.86 seconds elapsed. Even with 19th percentile sprint speed, that was slow enough that McMahon could time him up and waltz home. To be clear, this wasn’t entirely Grandal’s fault. McMahon was able to take an enormous lead with impunity because Ke’Bryan Hayes was shaded way over toward short and never made the slightest pretense of checking in on him. The side angle tells the story quite elegantly. Here’s the moment that the pitch hit Grandal’s mitt.

McMahon was a solid 20 to 25 feet from the bag, but he could have easily ventured much farther. Hayes was so far from the bag that he’s not even in the frame. McMahon’s lead was so enormous that both the home and away broadcasts cut to shots of it before Jones released the fateful pitch, but nobody on the Pirates showed the slightest concern. Maybe someone told them about the Kutina Club, or maybe McMahon just really wanted out of it. McMahon gave the slightest deke back toward third base when Grandal gave his cursory look down the baseline, but perhaps the most embarrassing part of the whole story is that he started running well before Grandal threw the ball. Here’s a still from the moment when it left the catcher’s hand.

McMahon is already in a full sprint. Hayes is walking even farther away from third base. Only the home plate umpire has noticed that the score is about to change.

In terms of effective velocity, ignoring the arc Grandal put on the ball and solely measuring how long it took for it to cover the 60-foot, 6-inch distance from home plate to the mound, it traveled at 22.2 mph. For reference, there have been only nine balls hit between 22 and 23 mph this season, and seven of them were bunts.

From the time Grandal released the ball, it took just McMahon just 2.43 seconds to touch home plate. Jones knew that home plate was McMahon’s long before he caught the world’s saddest successful Hail Mary pass. Here’s a GIF that shows moment of Grandal’s release, the moment the ball reaches its apex, and the moment it hits Jones’ glove. You can’t even call it a tragedy in three acts. It’s a play where the hero gets stabbed in the first act, and then acts two and three just consist of him slowly bleeding to death.

A few minutes later, the Pirates broadcast noted that third base coach Warren Schaeffer had sneaked over to McMahon right before the pitch, presumably to whisper that home plate was wide open. However, when they cut to a replay, he didn’t appear to say anything whatsoever. All the video showed was Schaeffer shuffling over toward McMahon while attempting to chew a wad of gum the size of a Jeep Cherokee.

I’m not sure Schaeffer could have said anything to McMahon if he wanted to. He looked exactly like my little brother did when he was 8 and he stuffed an entire pouch of Big League Chew in his mouth. Maybe Schaeffer’s stroll represented some sort of non-verbal signal — he was wearing a slight smirk at the end of the clip — but if Schaeffer did tip off McMahon by way of speaking, it probably came out something like, “Roo shud sfeel fome.”

The most amazing part of the whole ordeal is that the next time the Rockies got a man in scoring position — which was in the very next inning — Grandal hadn’t learned from his mistake at all. Here he is throwing the ball back to the pitcher. It’s still a lob! The ball still travels so high that it leaves the frame entirely! It’s one inning later! What are we doing here?

With that, McMahon was out of the Kutina club. What’s more, he led a mass exodus. The list below is from my original article on June 5. It shows all five players who had at least two caught stealings and zero steals at the time.

Jeimer Candelario stole two bases the very next day. Nick Senzel stole a base the day after that, and Brendan Donovan stole one a week later. That leaves Justin Turner and Nick Martini (who picked up his second caught stealing on Monday) as the last players standing to be caught twice without stealing a base. We’ll have to wait until the end of the year to find out whether they end up joining the club. However, McMahon is now in a club that’s only slightly less exclusive.

I was curious how many players ended the season in McMahon’s position, with their only stolen bases coming on a steal of home. This is a tricky thing to search for, so I reached out to Katie Sharp of Stathead, who graciously ran a query and found 183 players and 189 player seasons that met this criteria. The list includes legends like Joe DiMaggio, Roy Campanella, and Edgar Martinez, but I’ve decided to name this club after pitcher Ray Fisher. Five of the players managed to steal home twice in a season, and five players managed to make the list twice, but only Fisher made it three times, in 1915, 1916, and 1919.

So far this season, only McMahon and Andrew McCutchen are in line to join the Fisher Club of Exclusively Domiciliary Basestealers. McCutchen’s steal of home was even flukier than McMahon’s, only coming to pass because J.T. Realmuto threw the ball into center field when the runner at first took off for second. If either player finishes the season without stealing second or third, they’ll join Yordan Alvarez as the only player to enter the club this decade. If they do end up stealing second or third, I look forward to feeling my phone blow up at the most inopportune time possible.

I’ve written about the Colorado Rockies so many times over the past two years that I think we can all take the normal disclaimer as read. They’re not very good, and they’re probably not going to be very good in the short or medium term.

However, there is some good news. Colorado has put quite a bit of faith in two young players who put up monster defensive numbers at up-the-middle positions: center fielder Brenton Doyle and shortstop Ezequiel Tovar. The latter signed a seven-year contract extension this spring. These guys are so good defensively it almost doesn’t matter if they hit at all. And that’s a fortunate coincidence, because last year, they didn’t hit at all.

That part wasn’t the good news. This is the good news: In 2024, Doyle and Tovar are hitting a little. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, we’re here to talk about Ryan McMahon, but before we can do that, we need to talk about Joe Kutina. Joe Kutina didn’t steal any bases in 1912. A 6-foot-2, power-hitting first baseman in his second season with the St. Louis Browns, that wasn’t necessarily his job. Kutina earned his spot in 1911, batting .374 with a .589 slugging percentage for the Saginaw Krazy Kats of the Class-C Southern Michigan League. He joined St. Louis at the end of the season, putting up a 96 wRC+ with three home runs in 26 games with the Browns. In 1912, his wRC+ dropped to 59 and he launched just one homer in 69 games. He also got caught stealing seven times.

I know that getting caught stealing seven times sounds like a lot, but things were a little different back then. In the 1912 season, 73 players got caught stealing at least seven times. Ty Cobb led the league with 34 unsuccessful steal attempts, and three other players also got nabbed at least 30 times. The difference is that Cobb and those three others combined for 203 successful steals. Kutina, once again, stole zero bases. That made him the first player in AL/NL history to get caught stealing at least four times without successfully stealing a single base in a season — or at least to be recorded doing so in that era of spottier record keeping. According to Stathead, over the last 112 years, just 216 players have replicated Kutina’s dubious accomplishment. Although that averages out to a bit below two per season, the distribution isn’t exactly even.

We’re only third of the way into this decade, but unless the pace picks up dramatically, we’ll end with the lowest total since the days when Joe Kutina was lumbering around the bases with reckless abandon. As it turns out, one of the changes wrought by the data revolution was an unwillingness to let players who were incapable of stealing a base keep trying and failing over and over again. This is why people don’t like analytics. Read the rest of this entry »

The Portland Sea Dogs roster includes three Top 100 prospects, but neither Roman Anthony (15), Marcelo Mayer (42), nor Kyle Teel (83) has been the Double-A affiliate’s best player so far this season. That distinction belongs to a 23-year-old, shortstop-turned-left-fielder whom the Boston Red Sox drafted 69th overall in 2019 out of the Carlos Beltran Baseball Academy. Along with playing stellar defense at a new position, Matthew Lugo is slashing .306/.404/.653 with 10 home runs and an Eastern League-best 191 wRC+.

Markedly-improved plate discipline has played a big role in his breakout. Last year, Lugo logged a 5.9% walk rate and a 27.6% strikeout rate. This year those numbers are 13.4% and 22.5%.

The key to his newfound ability to dominate the strike zone?

“Timing,” explained Lugo, who takes his cuts from the right side. “Last year, I had a lot of movement with my hands, which made me inconsistent being on time with the pitcher. My hands were very low, and then when I got to the launch position they were very high; there was a lot of distance for my hands to go through. This year, I’m closer to my launch position before I swing. I also had a [bat] wiggle and this year I just get to my spot with no wiggle. I’m getting into my spot early and have more time to see the pitch, so I’m making better swing decisions.”

The decision to move Lugo off of his natural position and into an outfield corner wasn’t based on defensive shortcomings, but rather on the arrival of Mayer. The high-ceiling shortstop was promoted to Portland last year on Memorial Day weekend, and given his first-round pedigree, he wasn’t going to be the one moving. Read the rest of this entry »

On the first knuckleball thrown at Coors Field in 16 years, Matt Waldron hit home plate umpire Bill Miller right in the nuts.

Nobody — not Waldron, not his catcher Kyle Higashioka, not Miller — appeared to know where the ball was going. Despite Higashioka frequently (and understandably) struggling to track the flight of the ball throughout the rest of the night, Waldron delivered a career-best performance, allowing just one run over six innings.

Perhaps the most surprising part of his performance was the setting. Since 2008, knuckleballers have dodged outings at Coors Field, which sits 5,200 feet above sea level. Conventional wisdom dictates that knuckleballs at altitude are a bad idea, as Cy Young-winning knuckleballer R.A. Dickey told Dave Krieger back in 2012. 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.

When I think about openers, I think about Ryne Stanek. His statistics as a Ray in 2018 and 2019 were comical: Before he was traded to the Marlins in 2019, he made 100 appearances over those two seasons; 59 of them were “starts.” In those opening appearances, he never threw more than 37 pitches, recorded more than six outs, or faced more than nine hitters. But since leaving the Rays, despite appearing in 234 games, he’s pitched for more teams (three) than he’s made starts (zero). In fact, he’s averaging less than one inning per appearance.

I searched my brain to figure out who is today’s version of Stanek circa 2018-19, only to realize that there isn’t one. I turned to Stathead and confirmed my inkling: The opener has gone by the wayside in 2024.

In my query, I set a couple of filters as guardrails. First, I limited my search to pitchers who were on, at most, three days of rest. That way, I could eliminate the true starters who got hurt or blitzed out of games from this sample. I also capped the number of batters faced at nine. Facing the leadoff man twice goes against the spirit of the opener, where the aim is to prevent batters from seeing any one pitcher too many times.

It doesn’t take a math degree to know that nine is far fewer than 154. But it’s not quite that simple. Remember, we’re only a quarter of the way through the season, and there will almost certainly be more openers used the rest of the way. That said, baseball is on pace to use 33 openers in 2024, which would be the fewest since the opener was first utilized in 2018 — yes, that includes the shortened 2020 campaign. It’s worth noting that only 12 openers were used at this point in 2023, so we could see opener usage ramp up as this season progresses, too. Even so, it’s clear that something has changed.

I don’t really have a take on whether or not the opener is a good strategy in today’s game. I also don’t think there’s an obvious explanation for why the fall of the opener is happening. Some of it may just be circumstance. Gabe Kapler’s Giants frequently used openers, and he’s no longer managing. The 2018-19 Rays had Blake Snell and Charlie Morton, but they also had plenty of pitchers who were best deployed in short outings. This season, the Rays feature a deeper group of pitchers who are capable of carrying a starter’s workload. Five years ago, Tampa Bay turned to openers out of necessity; now, that’s no longer necessary.

What To Look Forward to This Weekend

• The Mariners have played great baseball of late, winning eight of their last nine series, bringing their record to 24-20, and entering play Friday in first place in the AL West. But they’ve got a big test coming up, with three games in Baltimore followed by three games in the Bronx, two exciting series that will give the Mariners ample opportunity to show the league they’re for real. George Kirby and Corbin Burnes face off in a marquee pitching matchup on Sunday.

• The Rockies are looking to extend their winning streak that currently sits at seven games, beginning tonight in San Francisco. Colorado started out its streak last week with a win against the Giants, scoring seven runs off Keaton Winn, who is set to start for the Giants on Sunday. Whether or not the Rockies will be riding a nine-game streak at that point will depend on San Francisco starters Kyle Harrison and Jordan Hicks, as well as a piecemeal Giants lineup that’s without Patrick Bailey, Michael Conforto, Jung Hoo Lee, and Jorge Soler.

• Although they’re still the league’s worst team, the White Sox have played less embarrassingly of late, going 8-4 over their last 12 games. This weekend, though, they head to the Bronx to face the first-place Yankees. Led by a ridiculously hot Aaron Judge, New York has won four straight games and 10 of its last 12. During the Yankees’ three-game sweep of the Twins in Minnesota, Judge went 7-for-11 (.636) with five doubles and two home runs. On the season, he’s slashing .262/.393/.555 with 11 homers and a 169 wRC+, which is remarkable considering how much he struggled in April.

Lastly, a quick programming note. Beginning next week, we’ll be shifting Top of the Order to a twice-weekly schedule, running on Tuesday and Friday mornings. See you then!

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

The Kansas City Royals’ strong start has been one of the most surprising stories of the season thus far. With a comeback win over the Mariners last night, the Royals raised their record to 26-18 and pulled into second place in the AL Central, just a game and a half behind the Guardians for the division lead. Bobby Witt Jr. is playing like a legitimate MVP candidate, Salvador Perez is walking more and striking out less than ever (at age 34!), and Seth Lugo is pitching like he wants a Cy Young award in his trophy case.

But take a look at Kansas City’s lineup and offensive statistics and it doesn’t exactly look like one of the best teams in the American League. Entering Tuesday, the Royals had a 94 wRC+ (22nd in the majors) and a .307 wOBA (16th); they also ranked 14th in average (.242), 20th in on-base percentage (.304), 14th in slugging (.390), and tied for 18th in home runs (40). That’s a middling offense at best and a bottom-third group at worst.

The easy explanation for Kansas City’s success this year is its pitching staff, which entering Tuesday ranked ninth in baseball with a 3.49 ERA and a 3.73 FIP. More specifically, the rotation has been one of the best in the majors. Royals starters have combined for a 3.26 ERA (5th), a 3.44 FIP (4th), and 4.6 WAR (2nd), again as of the start of play Tuesday.

But a great rotation alone doesn’t make a good team. If the season ended yesterday, the Royals would be in the playoffs right now because they are producing at the plate in the moments that matter.

That 94 wRC+ overall? Forget it. Their wRC+ was 132 with runners in scoring position, 131 with runners on, and 137 in their few dozen bases plate appearances with the bases loaded. They weren’t as excellent in high-leverage spots (101 wRC+), but that’s still notably better than their wRC+ in all other situations (94).

So, is this a skill? Eh, probably not, but if you’d like to re-litigate Esky Magic from 2014 and 2015 in the comments, have at it. More likely, it’s some combination of luck and random variation in a quarter-season sample. Players don’t suddenly become better or worse depending on the situation, they just perform better or worse. The statistics I shared above are merely what has happened; they’re not predictive of what the rest of the season will hold. Jeff Sullivan put it best back in 2018 when looking at “clutch” through a win probability lens: The most important thing about clutch is that you shouldn’t count on it continuing.

Now, this isn’t to say that the Royals are frauds, because the flip side of the above statement also holds true. Just because you shouldn’t count on clutch continuing doesn’t mean that it won’t. Also, Kansas City isn’t winning only because of its situational hitting. They’ve got Witt and Salvy and all that starting pitching! The Royals may not be this good, but they certainly aren’t bad. And when it’s all over, they might just be good enough. They’re a weird team in a weird division, and maybe they can ride that weirdness all the way into the postseason.

Quick Hits

• Bob Nightengale put it best: “Break up the Colorado Rockies!” Wednesday’s win over the Padres gave the Rockies their sixth straight win, and if five meant we should break them up, what are we supposed to do now? And they haven’t beaten bad teams either! The streak started with a win against the Giants, followed by a three-game sweep of the Rangers and a back-to-back victories against the Padres at Petco Park.

This strikes me as positive regression more than anything else (like the White Sox being above .500 since Tommy Pham joined the team), but Colorado’s sweep of the Rangers was quite the spoiler. Scoring just six runs across those three games, the vaunted Texas lineup was shut down by starting pitching luminaries Ryan Feltner, Austin Gomber, and Ty Blach. Even Dakota Hudson got in on the fun on Monday against the Padres. After going 0-6 in his first seven starts, he earned his first win of the season.

• You’re not a baseball writer if you don’t write a story that needs to be updated after it is published. So I would, of course, like to note that after I filed Monday’s column about how infrequently the Braves use their bench, Austin Riley left Sunday night’s game with an inflamed oblique. Riley isn’t expected to go on the IL, but he was kept out of Atlanta’s lineup on both Monday and Tuesday, allowing Zack Short to beef up those ghost bench statistics.

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. As always, thanks to Zach Lowe for coming up with the idea for the column, because it’s a great excuse to watch a ton of baseball and write about plays that make me smile. This week had a little bit of everything: close and fun games, lopsided and fun games, idiosyncratic batter behavior, and even an all-time major league record (nope, not a good one). Let’s get started. One quick note: Five Things is taking a week off next week for workload management. No word on whether I’ll be assigned to FanGraphs Triple-A to keep my typing arm fresh, but the column will return a week from Friday.

1. High-Stakes Games in April
Two division leaders faced off in Seattle on Monday night. The juggernaut Braves need no introduction; they have the best record in baseball and won 104 games last year. The Mariners have ridden a dominant rotation to the top of the AL West despite a sputtering offense. The first game of the series pitted Bryce Miller against Max Fried, and while neither was projected as their team’s ace coming into the season, they both looked the part in this game.

Miller started things off with his customary dominant fastball. He got Ronald Acuña Jr. looking and Ozzie Albies swinging in the first inning, and kept going from there. When Miller’s fastball is cooking, it’s hard to imagine making contact against him, never mind getting a hit:

Fried got off to a slow start this year after missing half of last season with injury, but he’d just thrown a three-hitter against the Marlins, and he picked up right where he left off. He baffled the Mariners with an array of fastballs, sliders, and delightful slow curves:

These two battled long into the night, exchanging scoreless innings and confident struts. One thing they didn’t exchange was baserunners; through six innings, they combined for three walks and no hits allowed. They traded strikeouts – 10 for Miller, seven for Fried – and made every 2-1 count feel like a rally.

The Braves lineup is too good to hold down forever. Acuña recorded the first hit of the game with a smashed groundball single in the seventh. Then he stole second. Then he stole third. Then Albies cracked a ground-rule double to bring him home. Miller recovered to escape the inning with no further damage, but Fried and the relievers that followed him could work with that. They made it through eight innings without any damage, setting up a dramatic clash between Atlanta closer A.J. Minter, trying to protect that one-run lead, and the two goats of the Seattle offense so far, Jorge Polanco and Mitch Garver. Polanco led off the bottom of the ninth with a single through the six hole before Garver clobbered a walk-off blast:

More games like this in April, please. More games like it in May and June. I like whimsical baseball just as much as the next person – probably more, in fact. But when games are this well played and this tight, it’s like a little piece of the playoffs escaped October and landed in my living room. My heart couldn’t handle every game being like this, but getting one every once in a while is a delight.

2. Wyatt Langford in Space
Wyatt Langford’s debut has been uneven, to be kind. He’s hitting .239/.311/.312, not exactly the offensive juggernaut Rangers fans expected after he tore up the minors last year. He has top-of-the-scale power; he hit six homers in spring training this year, and 10 in fewer than 200 minor league plate appearances last season. So far, that power hasn’t shown up. He only has a single home run in the majors this year. But oh boy, was that home run fun:

It feels weird for a power hitting DH to have an inside-the-park home run and no regular ones, but Langford is a strange DH. The fact that he isn’t a plus corner outfielder is surprising, because he can absolutely fly. Statcast clocks his average sprint speed so far this year at 29.6 ft/sec, one of the fastest marks in the sport. That somehow hasn’t translated to defense yet, but on offense? The man can move.

For a lot of players, this would be a triple. I clocked him at just under 15 seconds around the bases, and that could have been even faster if he didn’t think he hit a homer at first:

Now, did the Reds defense help out? Sure. Jake Fraley didn’t play the carom well at all; if he’d simply been less aggressive chasing the ball into that corner, this would have been a double or triple at most. But that one mistake is all it took (and for the Sam Miller enthusiasts out there, note Elly De La Cruz taking the cutoff throw from right field). But even accounting for the defensive miscue, Langford’s speed is what made this play happen.

Langford doesn’t seem like a track star to me, though I’m not sure how much of that is because I keep seeing “DH” next to his name. (He was playing left field in this game, for what it’s worth.) But watching him round the bases, you can’t miss it:

I particularly liked this close-up angle the Rangers posted:

Maybe it’s the red gloves. Maybe it’s the stride length. There’s just something simultaneously soothing and surprising about seeing him round the bases. He’s a large man with flailing arms, but there’s a grace to it too; his torso and head barely bounce around even as he accelerates to full speed. It’s a joy to watch, is my point. And Adolis García loved it just as much as I did:

3. Walk Offs
It all started with a mistake. In the bottom of the first inning last Thursday, Yoshinobu Yamamoto missed just low to Joey Meneses in a full count. Umpire Brian Walsh didn’t see it that way:

You can see Meneses at the edge of the frame looking back in shock. That was a ball! But the game moved on. The next three-ball pitch Yamamoto threw was a walk to Joey Gallo. The next one after that? Another one to Gallo with a different result:

I do think that one was a strike, but Gallo clearly didn’t. And now the battle lines were set: The Nationals were walking to first on every three-ball pitch they saw. Jacob Young got the memo:

And then on 3-2, he got the memo again:

Jesse Winker looked to me like he was ready to trot off – but Yamamoto’s 3-2 curveball caught so much of the plate that he instead pivoted around and marched back to the dugout:

Yamamoto was commanding the edges of the plate masterfully, and getting some help there to boot. But I loved Washington’s strategy. Just trot down to first base if it’s close. Maybe you’ll influence the umpire. Yamamoto threw eight pitches in three-ball counts in the game. The Nats swung at one and ran down toward first on five. That’s aspirational living right there. Maybe Mike Rizzo should put up a sign that says “no one cares how fast you run down to first base on strike three.” Or maybe he shouldn’t – I had a lot of fun watching them do it.

4. Revenge
You can only pull off this play when a catcher is hitting:

Don’t get me wrong, José Ramírez is a great defender. That was a heck of a play, a difficult barehanded scoop and an impressive off-platform throw. Not many third basemen can combine those two so smoothly. But if pretty much anyone else on the Braves were running, that would have been a single. Travis d’Arnaud is a 35-year-old catcher, and he moves like one, with 18th percentile sprint speed and 10th percentile home-to-first splits.

A series of unlikely events needs to happen for that to be such an unlucky out. Replace Ramírez with a slightly worse defender and it’s a hit. Replace d’Arnaud with a slightly faster runner and it’s a hit. Take a mile per hour off of the contact, or move it just a bit more away from Ramírez’s path, and it’s a hit. Part of being a good defender is making a lot of these edge-case plays, but I’m sure d’Arnaud was unhappy about losing a hit that way.

It’s OK, though, because he got his revenge two nights later. With two out and no one on in the top of the 10th, Ramírez singled off of A.J. Minter. He got a huge jump on the second pitch of the next at-bat and stole second standing up. Or at least, he thought he did:

Blink and you’ll miss it. Orlando Arcia’s swipe tag was way late, and it didn’t even make contact. A reverse angle is even more confusing. I have no idea why Ramírez didn’t slide, but he looks pretty clearly safe on this one:

Surely replay would fix this, right? Wrong:

What a remarkably perfect throw. Without meaning to, d’Arnaud hit Ramírez’s back pocket batting gloves from 130 feet away. Ramírez was out the moment Arcia caught the ball. The after-the-fact swipe was just instinctual, because Arcia has caught thousands of throws like that in his life but probably never received one that precise. I’ve heard of letting the ball do the work on a tag, but this takes that to a new level.

If Ramírez had been faster, there would be no play. If he’d been slower, he probably would have slid – honestly, he should have anyway. If the throw had been three inches off in either direction, the tag wouldn’t have been there. Ramírez stole one from d’Arnaud thanks to a series of just-so events. It’s only fair that d’Arnaud did the same to him.

5. Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory
With their loss to the Astros on Sunday, the Rockies fell to 7-21 in their first 28 games, which is bad enough. Even worse, they trailed at some point in each of those games. That tied a “record” set by the 1910 St. Louis Browns for most consecutive games trailing to start a season. Any time you’re tying a record set by the Browns, something has gone wrong.

Luckily for them, the next game, on Tuesday, offered a quick reprieve. They ambushed the Marlins with five runs in the top of the first, and Ryan Feltner was absolutely dealing. He faced the minimum number of batters through six innings, with the two singles he allowed quickly erased by a double play and a caught stealing, respectively. He needed only 79 pitches to get through eight scoreless innings. Bud Black sent him back out for the ninth to try for his first career complete game, a shutout to boot.

Things started to go wrong right away. Vidal Bruján snuck a single through the infield, Feltner hit Christian Bethancourt to add another baserunner, and then Luis Arraez doubled Bruján home to open the scoring ledger for Miami. Feltner’s first complete game would have to wait, because the Rockies needed this win. Closer Justin Lawrence came in to slam the door. But uh… he walked Bryan De La Cruz, and then Dane Myers (in the game because Jazz Chisholm Jr. got ejected for arguing balls and strikes) singled home two runs, and then Josh Bell singled to load the bases, and then Lawrence hit Jesús Sánchez to make it 5-4, and then… well, you get the idea. By the time Jalen Beeks came in to replace Lawrence, the game was tied and there was still only one out. But Beeks wriggled out of the jam without conceding anything further. The Rockies still had a chance to bury this accursed streak – they hadn’t trailed at any point in this game.

They scored a run in the top of the 10th when Ryan McMahon stroked a two-out double. But it wasn’t to be. De La Cruz doubled in the bottom of the inning to even the score. Then Myers – c’mon, the guy who wasn’t even supposed to be in the game! – won it for Miami with a seeing-eye single. Or maybe De La Cruz won it by remembering to touch home. Or maybe catcher Elias Díaz lost it with a bobble:

Oh boy, that one’s gonna sting. The Rockies can’t get out of their own way. They’ve trailed in the two games they’ve played since this collapse, too, extending the record to an outrageous 31 straight games trailing to start the season. Include the end of last year, and it’s 37 straight games trailing. I’m sorry for the Rockies fans enduring this, and for Patrick Dubuque for choosing to live the Rockies fan life for a year in this year of all years. At this point, there’s not much you can do other than stare, like rubbernecking but for sports.

In the ninth inning of Monday night’s game against the Phillies, Rockies catcher Elias Díaz doubled off Jeff Hoffman with two outs, nobody on, and the game tied 1-1. That put Rockies manager Bud Black in a bit of a pickle. With a runner on second, a single would score the go-ahead run, and Colorado’s best hitter — Nolan Jones — was at the plate. If a single were ever going to come, it would come now.

Rather, a single would score a normal runner from second. Unfortunately, Díaz is slow. He’s in the first percentile for sprint speed. He’s so slow, when he puts a pork shoulder in the crockpot it’s done cooking by the time he comes back from the pantry with the barbecue sauce.

If Black wanted to get that run in from second with a single, he had one of two options. First, call a cab. Second, call for a pinch-runner. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Colorado Rockies. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fourth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »