Joe Jacques had an anything-but-ordinary big-league debut with the Boston Red Sox on Monday at Fenway Park. The 28-year-old southpaw not only entered a game against the Colorado Rockies with two outs and the bases loaded in the 10th inning; he did so in a downpour. Moreover, the first of the five pitches he threw came on a 1-0 count. Unbeknownst to Jacques until he returned to the dugout, he’d committed a pitch clock violation before the 20-second countdown had started. More on that in a moment.

Drafted 984th overall by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2016 out of Manhattan College, Jacques had been claimed off of waivers by the Red Sox last December. Almost exclusively a reliever since coming to pro ball, he’d made 146 appearances down on the farm, including 23 with Triple-A Worcester this season. If there were any nerves associated with his taste of high-leverage MLB action, he wasn’t letting on.

“Honestly, I didn’t have that much of an adrenaline spike,” the Shrewsbury, New Jersey native told me on Wednesday. “That’s not the time to be panicking. With the bases loaded, in the rain, you’ve just got to come in and pound the zone. Plus, having been in Yankee Stadium the previous three days — I got hot once — definitely helped my nerves. I was pretty locked in.”

That wasn’t necessarily the case in terms of a pitch clock rule that many fans aren’t even aware of. What happened was initially a mystery to the left-hander. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to say this bluntly because it’s something that most should agree with: Harrison Bader’s defense in center field is special. Unfortunately for Bader and baseball fans, he has never totaled above 430 plate appearances in a single season, so we’ve never had the privilege to see him run around the outfield for a traditional full season and rack up defensive value. But even with this limitation, he’s still at or near the top of just about every aggregated defensive metric leaderboard for the last few seasons. If you watch him roam the outfield — and I mean really watch him — you realize that this is a player who does everything correctly out there and has an unflappable baseball IQ. If you could write a script on how to be the perfect outfielder, all you would need to say is “be Bader.”

Let’s start by addressing where Bader ranks next to his peers this season in terms of defensive metrics. I’m only going to focus on Outs Above Average (OAA) for this piece. Defensive metrics are a great starting point to a conversation like this, but they are a complement to video analysis that will show us the details of a player’s fundamentals and decision making.

Here are the leading outfielders in terms of OAA this season:

One of these is not like the others! Given that OAA is a counting stat, a player with at least 16 fewer games played (usually more) should not be on this list, but Bader only trails Robert this season in OAA, and that is mainly due to his Success Rate Added. That gives some more insight into how valuable he has been in his limited sample this year. Read the rest of this entry »

As contractual blunders go, the seven-year, $70 million extension to which the Yankees signed Aaron Hicks in February 2019 is hardly the worst of general manager Brian Cashman’s 26-season tenure. It’s not even the franchise’s worst contract to an outfielder during the 2010s, not when Jacoby Ellsbury’s deal for more than twice that amount was still on the books when the Yankees extended Hicks. As with Ellsbury, however, Hicks’ ongoing series of injuries left the Yankees hamstrung and prevented the switch-hitting center fielder from playing to the potential he’d once shown. On Saturday, the team finally cut bait, designating the 33-year-old for assignment with more than two full seasons remaining on his deal.

Hicks started just five games in center field this year, along with 15 in left field, but he came into the season unclear about his role, and lately his playing time was on the wane. With the return of center fielder Harrison Bader from an oblique strain that cost him all of April, Hicks had made just two spot starts in middle pasture and one in left since May 10, with Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Jake Bauers filling the latter spot, though not to any great effect. No matter Hicks’ role, he was unable to provide much of an offensive spark, hitting just .188/.263/.261 with one homer and a 49 wRC+ in 76 plate appearances. His 2% barrel rate and 22.4% hard-hit rate both placed in single-digit percentiles among batters with at least 70 PA, and his xwOBA is the majors’ lowest at that cutoff:

Hicks actually had his first three-hit game of the season in last Thursday’s 4–2 win over the Blue Jays, in his penultimate game as a Yankee; that output matched his previous hit total for May, spread over nine games and 23 PA. But even with that big game, Yankees left fielders ranked dead last in the majors with a 63 wRC+ through Sunday, though Hicks only accounted for a little less than one-third of the plate appearances there:

Read the rest of this entry »

So far this year, there have been two ejections and suspensions for sticky stuff, along with two notable non-ejections. In all four instances — two of them just in the last week — the umpires involved made themselves available to a pool reporter for comment after the game. I cannot for the life of me imagine that the umpires want to be making these statements, but here’s the thing: So far as I can tell, they’re not required to. There’s no way that on an umpire’s list of favorite things to do after a game, Describe How Sticky Max Scherzer’s Hand Was ranks anywhere near the top 10. And yet, whether to justify their actions or out of a sincere belief that sunshine is the best disinfectant, the umpires have dutifully attempted to answer that impossible question. Not that I’m complaining. I adore these explanations. I don’t know how anyone could actually do a good job of explaining how sticky a hand was, but watching big league umpires give it their best shot is a truly rewarding experience.

I spent a morning trying to look up how tackiness is measured. It turns out there’s no one answer, but there is an ocean of scientific debate to dive into. I can now tell you the difference between probe testing, loop tack testing, the rolling ball test, and the peel adhesion test. Each test needs to account for variables like dwell time, contact pressure, temperature, and test speed. There’s also something called the finger test, which isn’t as gross as it sounds (but also probably is). Read the rest of this entry »

Caleb Durbin is an underdog’s underdog in an organization that boasts big-time star power. Acquired along with Indigo Diaz by the New York Yankees from the Atlanta Braves last December in exchange for Lucas Luetge the 23-year-old infield prospect is a former 14th round draft pick out of a Division-3 school. Moreover, he’s never going to be mistaken for Aaron Judge or Giancarlo Stanton. Listed at 5-foot-6 (he claimed to be an inch taller when I talked to him earlier this week), Durbin looks like a stockier version of Jose Altuve.

He’s currently hitting not unlike the diminutive three-time batting champion. In 112 plate appearances — 97 with High-A Hudson Valley and 15 with Double-A Somerset — Durbin went into yesterday slashing .319/.446/.385. His bat-to-ball skills have been impressive. The Lake Forest, Illinois native has fanned just nine times while drawing 15 walks.

Durbin’s numbers at St. Louis’s Washington University were even more eye-opening. With the caveat that D-3 isn’t exactly the SEC, the erstwhile WashU Bear batted .386 with 42 walks and 10 strikeouts in 439 plate appearances over his three collegiate seasons. Since entering pro ball in 2021, he has 70 walks and 62 strikeouts in 631 plate appearances.

“Low strikeout rates are something I’ve always had,” said Durbin. “That’s kind of been my elite tool, if you want to call it that. I feel like that’s always going to be there, so it’s just a matter of building on my contact quality.” Read the rest of this entry »

The last thing the Yankees needed amid a slump that’s knocked them into last place in the AL East for the first time since April 26, 2021 was in injury to their best player. Yet that’s what they’re facing, because on Monday they placed Aaron Judge on the 10-day injured list due to a strain in his right hip. While the injury isn’t believed to be a severe one — indeed, the reigning AL MVP and the team waited the weekend to see if he felt good enough to return to the lineup — it comes at a time when New York has already been hit hard by injuries, magnifying the roster’s shaky construction.

Judge injured himself last Wednesday, on his 31st birthday. In the second inning, after collecting his second double of the game off the Twins’ Kenta Maeda and helping the Yankees build up a 5–0 lead, he attempted to steal third base. Catcher Christian Vázquez made a perfect peg to third baseman Willi Castro, who tagged Judge on his helmet as he made an awkward headfirst slide into the bag.

The initial concern about Judge was that he’d jammed his right wrist; cameras and tweets from the Target Field press box showed him flexing and shaking his right hand in the dugout afterwards. That he was serving as the team’s designated hitter that day created some suspense as to whether he’d take his next plate appearance. He did, and reached base two more times. But he departed after four innings and two plate appearances on Thursday against the Rangers due to discomfort in his right hip. “It was just a little grab in the hip area — after that headfirst slide… the whole right side has been a little locked up,” he said after that game. “The culmination of having that [slide] and a couple of swings today, I just really couldn’t get it loose.”

An MRI showed what the team described as a small strain near the top of his right hip. Judge didn’t play in any of the remaining three games of the series, forcing an already beaten-up team to play shorthanded. The Yankees lost all three, scoring just four runs and collecting a total of 16 hits. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite articles from the offseason was Ben Clemens’ piece about Gerrit Cole. It’s a thorough explanation of why and how Cole is still one of the league’s best pitchers, this despite a down year and public perception that several others had surpassed him. Through the first few weeks of the season, we’ve gotten strong reassurance that Cole is indeed still one of the best pitchers in the sport.

Cole has been fantastic through five starts and 34 innings pitched, with a 0.79 ERA, a 2.21 FIP and — get this — zero home runs allowed. That last point is the most important one. Last year, no pitcher in the majors gave up more home runs than Cole (33). It was his kryptonite the entire season. He would be coasting through a game, striking out 29.3% of the batters he faced, and then suddenly a ball would find itself in the seats and his start would blow up in front of him. His longest stretch without giving up a long ball in 2022 was three games, a feat he managed on two separate occasions. But this year, he seems to have turned the corner. The key to Cole’s success during this turnaround has been his fastball. There are a few things contributing to this that tie in with one another, but I’ll start with his four-seam fastball location:

Cole has been excellent in keeping the ball up on his arm side both in and out of the zone. You can see that in the heat maps, but if it helps to know, 32.4% of his four-seam fastballs have been in the upper third of the strike zone, or above and to either side of the upper third. Last year, that mark was only 21.1%, the lowest it has been since before his breakout year in 2018 with Houston. Cole has one of the best four-seam fastballs in terms of velocity and stuff; if he locates the pitch in its ideal spot up in the zone, it’s extremely difficult to hit. The following two pitches are great examples of how hard it is for a hitter to get on top of a precisely located, high-velocity fastball with ride:

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Matt Chapman have been two of the best hitters in baseball this year in terms of both hard contact and results. Both are routinely crushing fastballs. Yet neither was able to get their best swing off due to Cole’s location. Even the best hitters can’t square up Cole when his fastball command is on. That’s perhaps an obvious statement, but it’s necessary to point out. It’s why he broke out with Houston and why he has been one of the most productive pitchers in baseball over the last five seasons. The question, then, is how he returned to having great fastball command. For that, I’ll turn to some information on his release point and extension.

It’s a simple concept. If you want to more precisely target a specific spot in the zone with a pitch you throw half the time, then alter your release point to set yourself up for consistent success. Cole is releasing the ball higher and closer to third base than he ever has in his career, and with the least extension he’s gotten down the mound since his Pittsburgh days. You might be thinking that’s counterintuitive. Typically, a four-seam fastball’s qualities will be the best with more extension and a lower release point, and you’d be right to think so! However, there is some nuance to consider with Cole’s situation.

So far, this is the least amount of induced vertical break (IVB) he has had since joining the Yankees, but a sacrifice in IVB due to an altered release point and decrease in extension has allowed him to have pinpoint command. If you want to learn more about IVB, check out Justin Choi’s incredible piece from last year, but as a quick refresher, it’s essentially the movement that causes a fastball to “rise” relative to a hitter’s expectations. It’s not like Cole’s fastball is suddenly bad — it’s still sitting at 17.6 inches of IVB, a -4.4 degree vertical approach angle (VAA), and 96.8 mph average velocity. The IVB is still well above average. His VAA, the angle at which a pitch enters the zone, is still flat enough to fool hitter’s expectations. And the velo is still top notch! Basically, the sum of the parts still makes for an elite, 99th-percentile pitch, especially when you add the command improvement. The .141 batting average against and -9 run value he’s accrued (-8 last year) prove the sacrifices are paying off.

Cole’s improvements in the top of the zone are having effects elsewhere, too. If I were a hitter facing Cole, I’d be forced to focus my eyes up and nowhere else. You have to pick your spots against a pitcher of this quality. If you don’t hunt the fastball in its most frequent location, you’re going to get beat by it over and over again. Because of that, when Cole does target the bottom of the zone, it’s unexpected — and it’s freezing hitters. He has only thrown 51 total fastballs at or under the bottom third of the zone, but 21 (41.2%) have gone for called strikes. That’s up 10 percentage points from last year and is the highest mark since his 2018 breakout. It doesn’t matter who you are, covering 97 with ride at the top and bottom of the zone is nearly impossible.

Other than the four-seam fastball itself, Cole has made some other tweaks here and there that have contributed to his resurgence. The first is how aggressive he is in 0-0 counts. To put it plainly, he is attacking hitters. The ace has never been within three percentage points of a 70% first-pitch strike rate, but this year, he is at 71.5%. It’s not just from his fastball either; he is using his curve as an 0-0 offering in the zone more frequently than last year. In general, he has continued the uptick in curveball usage that we saw at the end of last year. That’s also in line with Cole’s general willingness to be more adaptable with his pitch usage on a game-to-game basis. This year, he has used his fastball as much as 64.2% of the time and as little as 42.3% of the time. Better command and less predictability keeps hitters honest.

When you’re a great pitcher who hasn’t seen any notable decline in the quality of your stuff, you’re typically a safe bet to regain elite form. At Gerrit Cole’s level of talent, it doesn’t take a dramatic overhaul. A slight adjustment in release point was all he needed to be the top-of-the-zone killer he had been in the previous four seasons. That, along with strategic in-game adjustments, suggests there is no regression coming any time soon.

The mighty Giancarlo Stanton has fallen once again. On Sunday afternoon, the 33-year-old was diagnosed with a Grade 2 strain in his left hamstring, according to Marly Rivera of ESPN. The Yankees placed him on the 10-day injured list, recalling top 100 prospect Oswald Peraza to take his place.

After he crushed a 110-mph double on Saturday afternoon, Stanton returned to the Yankees dugout while Aaron Hicks trotted out to second base. It wouldn’t be the first time the slow-moving slugger was replaced on the bases, so there wasn’t any reason to worry in the moment. Indeed, the DH walked off the field and was greeted with high fives in the dugout, where he remained to watch the game. As it turned out, however, Stanton had requested the pinch runner himself. He recognized the pain in his hamstring and knew immediately that something was wrong. Although Stanton didn’t show any outward signs of pain, it was certainly an awkward play. He thought he’d hit the ball over the fence and only realized he needed to run as he was rounding first.

While Stanton’s decision to prematurely marvel at his handiwork turned out to be a mistake, there’s no reason to blame his poor baserunning for his injury. The unfortunate truth is that Stanton’s legs – his left in particular – are quite injury-prone. He has spent time on the IL with various leg injuries in each of the past five seasons. In 2019, he sprained the PCL in his right knee and missed 72 games. The year after that, it was a left hamstring strain, much like the one he just suffered; he was out for five weeks. In 2021, he lost two weeks to a left quad strain, and last year, he missed 10 days with right ankle inflammation and another month with tendinitis in his left Achilles. Read the rest of this entry »

This young season has already introduced us to a few unique offerings. Brent Honeywell Jr. throws a true screwball. Kodai Senga throws a ghost fork. But one fascinating pitch has flown somewhat under the radar: Ian Hamilton’s slambio.

Maybe it’s because of the right-hander’s lack of a pedigree, or his status as a non-roster invitee during spring training. After all, Hamilton is a 27-year-old reliever who struggled through injuries and ineffectiveness over the past four years. At the same time, he looked like a find as recently as 2018, when he pitched to a 1.74 ERA and 2.44 FIP across 51.2 innings between Double- and Triple-A; he even averaged 96.7 mph on his heater in a brief eight-inning callup. The next season, he seemed poised to play an integral part in the White Sox bullpen, but he was struck by a foul ball while rehabbing separate shoulder and head issues stemming from a car accident. His poor luck nearly brought his career to an end, but he finally began to feel back to normal this offseason.

If you didn’t know about Hamilton before, I’ll be the first to tell you that he has been a joy to watch this season, not only because of his unique offering but also his comeback story, parlaying his rediscovered health into a spot in the Yankees’ pen, where he’s found early-season success with a resurgent fastball (averaging 95.4) and the slambio. The latter pitch has been nothing short of excellent thus far: a ludicrous 29.9% swinging-strike rate and worth 3.8 runs, which rank third and tied for fourth, respectively, among the 85 sliders thrown at least 50 times this year (as of Saturday night). The pitch’s unusually high rate of called strikes, 15.6%, given its whiffiness, also places it second among the 85 sliders in CSW%. Read the rest of this entry »

In case you were worried that Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge somehow forgot how to be excellent at baseball since the end of last season, fear not. The 2021 and ’22 American League Most Valuable Players are off to strong starts this season, highlighted by a shared distinction: both have gotten on base in every game thus far, extending lengthy streaks that have carried over from last season.

Admittedly, on-base streaks aren’t as sexy as hitting streaks. Nobody rhapsodizes about them or scrutinizes their mathematical unlikelihood the way they do Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak from 1941. Comparatively few people — professionals as well as fans — could tell you who holds the record for consecutive games getting on base. The answer is Ted Williams in 84 straight games from July 1 through September 27 in 1949, which makes perfect sense given that the Splendid Splinter is the career on-base percentage leader (.482). DiMaggio is a distant second at 74 games, with his more famous streak occupying games 2–57 of the longer one. Williams also owns the third-longest streak at 72 games bridging 1941 (the year he hit .406) and ’42, but as for the fourth-longest one — and the longest of the post-1960 expansion era — it belongs to Orlando Cabrera, he of the career .317 OBP and 83 wRC+. Cabrera reached base in 63 straight games from April 25 through July 6 in 2006. Go figure. Read the rest of this entry »