OAKLAND — Chris Bassitt spent the month of September on the best streak of his life. In four regular season starts, he allowed exactly one run, a Joey Gallo homer. That works out to a 0.34 ERA, but it was far more than that: it won Bassitt Pitcher of the Month honors and essentially guaranteed him a start in the playoffs.

Why wasn’t more made of Bassitt’s September? Because it looked, well, like Chris Bassitt pitching. He struck out 24.8% of his opponents while walking 4.8%. His 12.4% swinging strike rate barely cracked the top 20 starters on the month. He turned those middling stats into dominance by stranding 100% of the runners he allowed to reach base. He also put up a stellar 3.7% HR/FB mark; hit the ball in the air against Bassitt, and it simply went nowhere.

The A’s know that, but they also knew something else: good luck in September or not, unsustainable sequencing or not, Bassitt is their second-best starting pitcher at the moment. With their backs against the wall, they turned to him to keep their season going — and he put the White Sox to sleep in much the same way he befuddled batters all September.

This wasn’t Lucas Giolito overwhelming the A’s the day before, or Trevor Bauer and Max Fried throwing matching gems today. It was ugly but effective in the same way that Bassitt’s September was: an inch off the barrel here, an escape from a jam there, and pretty soon, baby you’ve got a good start going.
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OAKLAND — As he stood in right field to warm up before the first playoff game of his career, Lucas Giolito looked nervous. One of his first throws off of flat ground went right over the bullpen catcher’s head and into the stands. A few throws later, he spiked one five feet short. He shrugged, bemused. There was no crowd around to heckle him, but who could blame him for feeling a little tight?

If that was a sign of anxiety, the first inning didn’t help matters. He started the game off with a ball low and in to Tommy La Stella, then reached three-ball counts against Robbie Grossman and Marcus Semien. He retired all three — most plate appearances end in an out, after all — but 14 pitches, seven of them balls, didn’t bode well for the White Sox ace going deep in the game.

Fortunately for Giolito, though, past performance isn’t a good indicator of future results. He came out for the second inning, now with a one-run lead, and put his foot on the gas — three up, three down, highlighted by a lovely changeup that turned Matt Olson from a professional hitter into a man fruitlessly attempting to swat a fly. It took another 14 pitches — a deep trip into the game looking less and less likely — but the jitters seemed gone.

This is a game recap, not a teen sports movie, but if it were the latter, this is where the montage would cut in. Giolito powered through the middle innings with increasing confidence, pouring in strikes and daring an overmatched Oakland team to do something about it. The A’s responded appropriately, swinging early and often, but they might as well have kept the bats on their shoulders. Mark Canha and Jake Lamb made good contact in the fifth inning, but both drives were hit in the general direction of Luis Robert, which is another way of saying they were both caught. No one else even troubled the defense. Read the rest of this entry »

The White Sox were one of the better hitting teams in baseball this season, posting a 114 wRC+ over their 60 games. What’s somewhat unusual, as was pointed out to me on twitter, is that they have done their damage by crushing left-handed pitching. Indeed, while that snippet of information might not making this next fact a complete surprise, the White Sox did not lose a start to a left-handed pitcher all season, winning all 14 of their matchups against southpaws. Later today, the A’s will send lefty Jesús Luzardo to the mound for Game 1 of their Wild Card Series against Chicago. What are we to make of this matchup?

The White Sox have a fine offense against right-handed pitchers, with a 106 wRC+, but their 143 wRC+ against southpaws was first in the majors this season:

The Tigers were close, though they put up their numbers in roughly 100 fewer plate appearances. On a seasonal level since integration, it doesn’t appear that any team has had at least 500 plate appearances against lefties and put up better numbers than the White Sox in 2020. Now a full season probably isn’t fair to compare to a shortened slate, so I went through our splits leaderboards, which go back to 2002, and looked at half-season performances that might rival what the White Sox have done:

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The Chicago White Sox very nearly pulled off the shock of baseball’s dramatic final day of the regular season on Sunday. They entered the afternoon trailing the Minnesota Twins by a single game in the American League Central, but could still steal the division crown with a victory and a Twins loss. That bit of intrigue quickly felt moot when the Cubs stormed ahead 6-0 in the second inning and took a 10-1 lead into the bottom of the eighth inning, but with Minnesota in the midst of a tight battle with Cincinnati, the White Sox didn’t quit. They scored seven runs over the final two innings and brought the tying run to the plate in the bottom of the ninth in the form of outfielder Nomar Mazara, who had already collected two hits.

Just as suddenly as Chicago’s rally came together, however, it came to an end. An Andrew Chafin fastball on a 2-2 count finished close enough to Mazara’s knees for the home plate umpire to rule it strike three, putting an end to the hopes of a division title and early home field advantage for the White Sox. Don’t feel too badly for them, though — they still have postseason berth, their first since 2008 and just their second since winning the World Series in 2005. They’ll enter the postseason as the No. 7 seed, meaning they will travel to Oakland and take on the No. 2-seed Athletics in a best-of-three Wild Card series beginning on Tuesday.

The last 11 years of playoff-less baseball on the south side of Chicago haven’t all been lost causes. The 2010 team won 88 games, but missed the postseason because the New York Yankees got the then-lone Wild Card spot with 95 wins. In 2012, the White Sox won 85 games, but again missed the playoffs because there were seven AL teams that won at least 88. The following year, the White Sox slipped to 63-99, and haven’t won more than 78 in any season since. Read the rest of this entry »

Even though he’s still got one start to go and several other pitchers will also see playing time over the next few days, the American League Cy Young race is all but over. Last year, it was a two-horse race between Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander. This year, Shane Bieber has been so dominant that no other AL pitcher can come close to his accomplishments with less than a week remaining. He leads the league in strikeouts by 25 through Monday’s games, with the distance between first and second the same as the distance between second and 18th. His 41% strikeout rate is the best in baseball, and his 2.13 FIP and 1.74 ERA pace the league as well. There isn’t a credible argument against Bieber winning the award and he should even garner support for MVP. As for second place, there are a ton of candidates.

To try to wade through the potential two-through-five slots on voters’ ballots, let’s take a quick look at pitcher WAR through Tuesday night’s games:

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With less than a week to go in the regular season, writers will soon vote on end-of-season awards, and the shortened season makes for some very tight races. That’s certainly true for American League MVP. Through play on Sunday, here’s the WAR Leaderboard for American League position players:

That’s a fine list of players, to be sure, but it doesn’t include one of the top players by AL WAR at the moment. Shane Bieber has made 11 starts and pitched 72.1 innings good for a 2.13 FIP, 1.74 FIP, and 2.9 WAR. He’s struck out 41% of batters, given up three runs in three starts, two runs in two starts, one run in one start, and no runs in five starts. He pitched at least six innings in every start but one, when he threw five frames against the Brewers on September 6, striking out 10 against one walk, giving up a single run. Given Bieber’s runs’ allowed, there is no real difference between his FanGraphs’ WAR and his mark at Baseball-Reference. He also leads the league in xwOBA over at Baseball Savant. Read the rest of this entry »

Without a true minor league season on which to fixate, I’ve been spending most of my time watching and evaluating young big leaguers who, because of the truncated season, will still be eligible for prospect lists at the end of the year. From a workflow standpoint, it makes sense for me to prioritize and complete my evaluations of these prospects before my time is divided between theoretical fall instructional ball on the pro side and college fall practices and scrimmages, which will have outsized importance this year due to the lack of both meaningful 2020 college stats and summer wood bat league looks because of COVID-19.

I started with the National League East, then completed my look at the American League West. Below is my assessment of the AL Central, covering players who have appeared in big league games. The results of the changes made to player rankings and evaluations can be found over on The Board, though I try to provide more specific links throughout this post in case readers only care about one team.

Chicago White Sox

Jonathan Stiever’s promotion was instructive because we got to see his velocity coming off of the forearm soreness that ended his spring. He sat 91-94, which is a little below his peak 2019 breakout when he would touch 6’s and 7’s. His changeup looked good, though, and it was a stabilizing force during a jittery first start. He’ll need to locate his slider more consistently for it to be effective, and the same goes for his heater if it’s going to live around 93. Stiever also incorporated his secondary stuff more often in his second outing — that’s probably the long-term strategy if this is where his fastball velocity is going to live.

You’re probably aware that Garrett Crochet made his major league debut over the weekend, becoming the first 2020 draftee to reach the majors and the first since Mike Leake to skip the minors entirely. He made just one pre-draft start this spring sandwiched between a February injury and March’s shutdown, so he was barely seen by teams this year, if at all, which is why some clubs were hesitant to draft him early in the first round. I’ve updated The Board to include his pitch data now that I have it, but neither his Future Value nor ranking has changed yet (45 FV is a late-inning reliever). He currently has the hardest fastball in baseball, and Crochet joins Zack Burdi and Codi Heuer as White Sox rookie relievers who have among the top 20 fastest heaters in the game. He’s yet another weapon in a bullpen that I consider dangerous enough to carry the Pale Hose deep into October. Read the rest of this entry »

Dylan Cease has a simple calling card: a four-seam fastball that he throws in the upper 90s. Every prospect evaluation of Cease centered on the heater, a bludgeon he would use, the theory went, to leave hitters with no good choices. He backed it up with a curveball and a developing changeup, but those were the backup dancers; the fastball was the star everyone came to see. There were questions about whether he’d be able to make the whole package work, but if it did, the heater would be the reason why.

Nine starts into his sophomore season, however, things haven’t gone according to plan. Cease’s 15.4% strikeout rate is the fourth-lowest among qualified starters, ahead of only Mike Fiers, Antonio Senzatela, and teammate Dallas Keuchel. The White Sox probably hoped Keuchel would help mentor their pitching staff, but uh… not like this. On the other hand, Cease is running a 3.33 ERA, better than team ace Lucas Giolito. Huh?

In an even stranger development, Cease’s fastball appears to be the culprit behind his poor strikeout rate. Though it hasn’t lost any velocity — his 393 four-seamers this year have averaged 97.4 mph — the pitch simply hasn’t missed any bats. Here are the 12 pitchers with the lowest whiff-per-swing rates on their four-seamers, as well as their average velocity:

That’s not a list of bad pitchers. It is, however, disconcerting to see a fastball-first power pitcher sharing space on a list of contact-heavy fastballs with literally Zack Greinke. Cease has an absolute cannon, but he isn’t missing any bats with it. Read the rest of this entry »

The San Francisco Giants have 23 wins on the season. One week ago today they won for the 20th time, with the decision going to Caleb Baragar. It was the rookie left-hander’s second W in two days, and his fifth on the year to go with one loss. This isn’t 1972 Steve Carlton we’re talking about either. Baragar is a reliever who has pitched all of 17-and-two-thirds big-league innings.

Has a pitcher ever recorded six decisions — moreover five wins — in so few innings to begin a career? I wasn’t able to find an answer in time for this column — a call to the Elias Sports Bureau went for naught — but there is a pretty decent chance that Baragar holds a unique distinction.

The 27-year-old Jenison, Michigan native is taking his newfound habit of gobbling up Ws with a grain of salt.

“It’s a stat — ‘winning pitcher’ — that doesn’t always tell the whole story,” said Baragar, who has received some good-natured ribbing from Giants starters. “It’s not something where I’m walking around saying, ‘Hey, I have five wins in the big leagues.’ For me, they’re important because the team won, and this is a shortened season where every game matters. It’s by no means a personal stat that I’m holding my hat on.”

The first of his wins came in his big-league debut on August 25. Notably, it came against the best team in baseball. Having no fans in the stands worked to his advantage. Read the rest of this entry »

Tom Grieve had a relatively nondescript playing career. From 1970-1979, the now-72-year-old former outfielder logged 474 hits, 65 of which left the yard, and a 100 wRC+. Those numbers came primarily with the Texas Rangers, who had drafted Grieve out of the University of Michigan while the franchise was still located in Washington DC.

Grieve is a product of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and while he grew up rooting for the New York Yankees, one of his biggest thrills came in his home state’s most-famous sports venue. The date was May 5, 1974, and the event itself was proceeded by a certain amount of trepidation.

“Billy Martin was the manager at the time,” explained Grieve, who is now a TV analyst for the Rangers. “Jim Fregosi and I had been playing against left-handed pitchers, and Mike Hargrove and Jim Spencer had been playing against right-handed pitchers. Anyway, the people of Pittsfield had called the Red Sox and were somehow able to set up ‘Tom Grieve Day’ at Fenway Park between games of a Sunday doubleheader. Usually when there’s a day for someone at a ballpark, it’s for a Hall of Fame player, so I can remember going to Boston knowing that it was going to happen, and being a little bit embarrassed.”

Not to mention wary of what his manager might think. Not only was Grieve a 26-year-old platoon player, Martin had donned pinstripes for much of his own playing career. Moreover, Martin was notoriously as combative as they come. Read the rest of this entry »