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 »

While José Berríos and Corbin Burnes were rightly grabbing everyone’s attention for their dueling no-hit bids on Saturday evening, Byron Buxton played the hero on the offensive side, producing the game’s first hit and first run via his seventh-inning solo homer. It was Buxton’s second game in a row with a homer, as he went yard on Opening Day as well, and even though he left Sunday’s game before he run his streak to third in a row — thankfully, not an injury, merely a “non-COVID related illness” — his start once again kindled hopes that the speedy center fielder can put together a full season worthy of his talents.

First, the pretty pictures. If you haven’t seen Buxton’s Opening Day home run off the Brewers’ Eric Yardley, it was a sight to behold, a towering shot that caromed off the American Family Field scoreboard:

The projected distance on that 111.4 mph blast was 456 feet, a career high that outdistanced his June 5, 2019 homer off Cleveland’s Tyler Olson by two feet. And once again, here’s Buxton’s homer off Burnes, which had a projected distance of 411 feet:

Read the rest of this entry »

This is Matthew’s first post as a FanGraphs contributor. Matthew is a staff writer and podcast host at Lookout Landing, where he ponders great existential questions like, “Why would anyone be a Seattle Mariners fan?” and, “What dark curse did the Mariners conjure to make Mark Canha such an annoyance in their life?” He has written about the lack of Black players in Major League Baseball, recorded parody songs about the Astros’ banging scheme, and interviewed several minor leaguers. In addition to his current role at Lookout Landing, Matthew was previously a writer for Baseball Prospectus and a marginally successful open mic comedian. After a public school and Subaru childhood, Matthew attended the University of San Diego before bravely becoming the first FanGraphs writer to ever live in Seattle.

The first full week of the 2021 season is upon us. To avoid getting trampled in the avalanche of games, let’s focus in on the ones with the juiciest matchups, funniest storylines, and richest histories of batter vs. pitcher ownage. Here are the best pitching matchups in the week’s early going.

Monday, April 5, 7 PM ET: Jacob deGrom vs. Matt Moore

A team’s first game of the season almost always pairs their best starter versus the top of the other team’s rotation. But with a COVID-19 postponement pushing the Mets’ opener back, they get to unleash Jacob deGrom’s fury against a Philadelphia reclamation project. This NL East showdown sets the game’s most dominant pitcher against a guy who hasn’t pitched stateside in two years.

Unable to convince an MLB team to give him a job after knee surgery ended his 2019 renaissance, Matt Moore signed in Japan with the Fukuoka Soft Bank Hawks. He’s back after posting a 2.65 ERA in Nippon Professional Baseball. That’s certainly impressive, but Moore’s ERA in NPB was still not as good as the 2.38 deGrom ran last season (his 2.26 FIP was somehow better), or his 2.43 before that, and especially not the 1.70 from the year before that. Monday’s tilt is a classic story of an established, hegemonic force meeting a redemptive arc on its final curve. Read the rest of this entry »

For fans of dominant pitching, Saturday evening’s Twins-Brewers contest set a high bar for the season. At American Family Field (ugh), Minnesota’s José Berríos and Milwaukee’s Corbin Burnes both turned in electrifying performances, each pitching six complete innings of no-hit ball and reaching double digits in strikeouts. At one point, the pair combined to strike out 10 batters in a row. Burnes carried his no-hit bid deeper into the game, getting one out in the seventh before serving up a solo homer to Byron Buxton and departing. Berríos, meanwhile, became the latest pitcher to be removed with his no-hitter intact. Twins reliever Tyler Duffey finally gave up a hit to Omar Narváez in the eighth, but Minnesota held on to win 2-0.

The two 26-year-old righties offered contrasting styles for their dominance. Berríos, the more established of the pair, averaged 95.3 mph with his four-seam fastball and went as high as 96.9 mph, but racked up strikeouts largely by getting hitters to chase low curveballs. Burnes, the harder thrower and the better hurler last year — his 2.4 WAR tied for sixth among all starters — overpowered hitters with a befuddling cutter that averaged 96.3 mph (3.2 mph faster than last season, when only Dustin May outdid him) and reached 97.9 mph. He paired that with a sinker that averaged 98.0 mph and maxed out at 98.8.

The tone for the matchup was set on the first batter of the game. Burnes, whose 36.7% strikeout rate last year was the majors’ fourth-highest among pitchers with at least 50 innings, struck out Twins leadoff hitter Luis Arraez swinging at a 97.6 mph cutter in the middle of the zone — no small matter given how tough he is to punch out. Last year, Arraez had the majors’ fourth-lowest swinging-strike rate among batters with at least 100 PA last year (3.5%) and the third-lowest strikeout rate (9.1%).

That was the only batter Burnes struck out in a 10-pitch first. Berríos notched his first strikeout by getting Christian Yelich to chase a low curveball to close the first inning, which started the two pitchers’ streak. Burnes returned to strike out Max Kepler, Miguel Sanó, and Jake Cave in the second, with Berríos doing the same to Keston Hiura, Jackie Bradley Jr., and Lorenzo Cain. Then Burnes mowed down Ryan Jeffers, Andrelton Simmons, and Berríos himself, batting under National League rules. The stretch of 10 straight strikeouts finally came to an end when Narváez, who would do double duty in his spoiler role, grounded to third base to start the third inning.

Berríos went on to strike out the side (Kolten Wong, Travis Shaw, and Yelich again) in the fourth. No batter reached base for either side until the fifth inning, when Burnes hit Cave and Berríos hit Hiura in their respective halves. Still, neither team had a hit (or a walk) through six innings, with a 103-mph third-inning flyout by Orlando Arcia to the deepest part of center field the only batted ball with an expected batting average higher than .240 (it was .790). Here’s the highlight reel from the first six innings:

Read the rest of this entry »

Alderson Broaddus University carries an enrollment of fewer than 1,000 undergraduate students and sits in a town — Philippi, West Virginia — with a population just under 3,000 people. Its baseball team plays in the NCAA’s Division II and has produced just two players who were drafted by MLB teams, neither of whom ever actually played in the big leagues. In fact, Alderson Broaddus had never claimed a single major leaguer before Randy Dobnak was called up by the Twins in 2019. Two years before that, he had been playing in a four-team independent league in Michigan, assuming he’d give up baseball for good at the end of the season. After he got to the minors, he drove for rideshare services to make extra money. Even after his first full season in the Twins’ rotation, the team went out and signed two starting pitchers and bumped him to the bullpen. Dobnak’s baseball career has been non-stop uncertainty.

On Sunday, that finally came to an end, as the 26-year-old righty signed a five-year contract extension worth $9.25 million guaranteed and with a potential value of $29.75 million over eight years, per ESPN’s Jeff Passan. The deal offers Minnesota a good deal of flexibility and grants the pitcher a nice guarantee a couple of years before arbitration would have.

Right-hander Randy Dobnak and the Minnesota Twins are in agreement on a five-year, $9.25 million contract extension with three club options, sources familiar with the deal tell ESPN. The deal can max out at $29.75 million with the options and can grow with escalators.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) March 28, 2021

USA Today’s Bob Nightengale provided more details Monday morning.

The breakdown of pitcher/former Uber driver/Randy Dobnak's 5-year, $9.25M contract with the #Twins:
2021: $700,000
2022: $800,000
2023: $1.5M
2024: $2.25M
2025: $3M
2026: $6M Club option or $1M buyout
2027: $7M club option or $100K buyout
2028: $8.5M club option or $100K buyout

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) March 29, 2021

Read the rest of this entry »

Positional versatility has become increasingly important now that teams are carrying 13 or 14 pitchers on their rosters. That leaves benches bereft of depth, meaning that an ability to move around the diamond makes a player especially valuable — if not essential. One-dimensional non-regulars are marginal assets unless they excel in a specific area.

In the opinion of A.J. Hinch, the term “utility player” is anything but a pejorative. Moreover, everyday players who display versatility make a manager’s job easier.

“I don’t want “utility” to be explained as a negative thing,” the Tigers’ skipper told reporters recently. “A utility player has traditionally been defined as a guy who can’t play every day. And that’s not true. Some guys it is, some guys it isn’t. I caution everybody that it’s not a slight.

“When you have an everyday guy that is elite at that position, absolutely, you’re going to leave him at that position,” continued Hinch, who circled back to his Astros days and cited Alex Bregman having played short when Carlos Correa was hurt. “That’s a multiple position for an elite player.”

Hinch’s Detroit team clearly lacks the top-end talent that he had at his disposal during his Houston tenure, which suggests mixing-and-matching might be common in Motown this summer. If spring training is any indication, it might even be the M.O. Hinch has done no shortage of shuffling, and come the regular season, the likes of Jeimer Candelario, Niko Goodrum, Jonathan Schoop, and Harold Castro will be utilized as moving pieces in hopes of optimizing the lineup. Ditto Isaac Paredes, once he’s called up from the alternate site. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about weirdness and whimsy in spring training, the Giants and Cleveland playing an unnecessary bottom of the ninth (without umpires), the 22-pitch plate appearance between Jordan Hicks and Luis Guillorme, Jacob deGrom’s ever-escalating velocity, and two recent research pieces, then preview the 2021 Twins (23:33) with Aaron Gleeman of The Athletic and the 2021 Tigers (59:27) with Evan Woodbery of the MLive Media Group.

Audio intro: Fruit Bats, "The Bottom of It"
Audio interstitial 1: Joel Plaskett, "Catch 22"
Audio interstitial 2: John Frusciante, "Central"
Audio outro: Will Butler, "Finish What I Started"

Link to story about Giants-Cleveland game
Link to Jesse’s Giants-Cleveland Twitter thread
Link to story about 22-pitch PA
Link to RJ McDaniel on the 22-pitch PA
Link to Forman tweet about timing the 22-pitch PA
Link to Russell Carleton on full-count fouls
Link to spring Statcast standouts
Link to story about deGrom’s spring speeds
Link to Matt Kelly on deGrom’s velo in 2020
Link to Travis Sawchik on deGrom’s velo in 2020
Link to Ben on moving the mound back
Link to Rob Mains on the modern TTO penalty
Link to Rob on the TTO penalty in the past
Link to Matt Trueblood’s Twins preview
Link to Aaron on impact Twins rookies
Link to Aaron on the playoff losing streak
Link to Aaron on the closer-less bullpen
Link to Aaron on Cruz
Link to Aaron on Colomé
Link to Aaron on Simmons’s defense
Link to Aaron on a Kirilloff extension
Link to Travis on Garver’s framing
Link to Dan Syzmborski on hitter bust candidates
Link to Evan on the Tigers’ spending
Link to Evan on Baddoo

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Spring training taking place on (what is hopefully) the back end of a pandemic makes for different routines and challenges, and not just for players and coaching staffs. Media relations personnel are impacted as well. Due to COVID-19 protocols, how they’re going about their business is anything but ordinary.

Dustin Morse is among those having to adjust on the fly. Now in his 16th season with the Minnesota Twins — his sixth as Senior Director of Communications — Morse is doing more than masking-up when he arrives at Hammond Stadium every morning. With face-to-face interactions limited, he’s juggling responsibilities in an increasingly-virtual world, and with one of his favorite areas of the Fort Myers facility off limits.

“Not being in the press box is a real change,” explained Morse, who along with colleagues Mitch Hestad and Elvis Martinez have either Tier 1 or Tier 2 status. As they’re allowed in highly-restricted areas, they can’t mingle with reporters or with others in less-restricted areas. “One way we’d been doing it with Derek [Falvey] and Thad [Levine] is that they’d give me information and I’d deliver it directly to the media during spring training. My usual office there is right behind the press box, and we’d have almost-daily briefings. That’s not allowed this year.”

Nina Zimmerman, who is on Morse’s staff as a communications assistant, is being entrusted to run the press box. Her responsibilities include official scoring, keeping track of substitutions, and announcing when players are available to speak to the media in-game. Not being in a tier, Zimmerman doesn’t have access to restricted areas. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2016, Matt Shoemaker had a career year. He made 27 starts, threw 160 innings, and compiled 3.5 WAR on the back of a 3.88 ERA, 3.52 FIP, and truly pinpoint control (4.5% walk rate). In the four years since, he’s thrown 166 innings — total. That’s been worth 1.3 WAR, with his 4.12 ERA, 4.73 FIP, and 8.2% walk rate all representing steps back from his peak form.

Of course, as a pitcher, his services are still in demand: There are never enough arms to cover the innings that teams need, and you can always dream on someone returning to their peak form. This year, that need and dream belong to the Twins, who signed Shoemaker on Sunday to a one-year deal worth $2 million as he attempts to reprise his former success.

From late 2016 to ’20, everything that could go wrong for Shoemaker did. On September 4, 2016, he was hit in the head with a line drive that fractured his skull. He rehabbed from that injury in time for the 2017 season, only to have his year cut short by forearm tightness; he eventually had a compressed nerve surgically corrected. When he returned to the field, his arm still hurt, and he missed most of 2018 after surgery on an elbow tendon.

That was enough for the Angels, who non-tendered Shoemaker, but his woes were only beginning. After signing with the Blue Jays, he tore his ACL during a rundown (as a fielder, but still!) after only five starts. After yet another rehab, he returned for an abbreviated 2020. Even then, he couldn’t stay on the field, missing the better part of a month with shoulder inflammation.

That’s a truly grim five-year stretch, the kind of injury past that some pitchers can’t recover from. But while some pitchers’ arms are never the same after that kind of luck, Shoemaker has been effective when he’s taken the field. It hasn’t been great — as I mentioned above, his ERA, FIP, and walk rate have all been worse — but he’s still been playable, and it’s easy to convince yourself that a healthy Shoemaker might add back some velocity and pick up where he left off.
Read the rest of this entry »

Aaron Sabato went in the first round last summer because of his bat. As Eric Longenhagen wrote when putting together our Minnesota Twins Top Prospects list, “teams were about as sure of Sabato’s hitting ability as they were of any player’s in the 2020 draft.” An accomplished slugger at the University of North Carolina, the 21-year-old first baseman is a masher with an admirable offensive ceiling.

Defense is the question mark. At 6-foot-2 and 230 pounds, Sabato is built for power and not speed, with some pundits already projecting him as a DH. The Rye, New York native’s take on that opinion might be best-expressed as, “Not so fast.” Sabato sees himself as a more-than-capable fielder who can help his team on both sides of the ball. As for what he can do with a bat in his hands, let’s just say that he agrees with the scouting community. Sabato isn’t cocky, but he certainly doesn’t lack confidence.

———

David Laurila: You were a middle infielder in high school, and now there are people projecting you as a designated hitter. What are your thoughts on that?

Aaron Sabato: “Guys read the height and weight, then they’re, ‘Oh, he played shortstop a couple years ago and now he’s on a corner at first base; he must be trending toward DH.’ I don’t see it that way at all. My feet move really well, my hands are really good. If you watch me — my actions and the way my body moves — you’ll know that I’m not a DH. Obviously, I’m not going back to the middle of the infield, but whether it’s third or first — I know it’ll most likely be first — I can play a corner. I think I proved to the coaches, and the staff, down in instructs that they didn’t draft a DH. They drafted a guy who could field, maybe an at elite level.”

Laurila: How big were you in high school?

Sabato: “My weight wasn’t as high — I was probably 215 — but I was chubbier. I grew an inch or two in college, and I also thinned out.”

Laurila: How were you playing shortstop as a “chubbier” kid? Were you at a small school? Read the rest of this entry »