Another series, another bundle of home runs for Aaron Judge. The Yankees’ superstar has set a scorching pace this September, and on Sunday, he hit his 58th and 59th home runs in a victory over the Brewers. As is customary, I’ve updated our game-by-game odds of him reaching his 60th, 61st, and 62nd home runs in a given game the rest of the season. If you want to see Judge tying Babe Ruth, tying Roger Maris, or leaving every previous Yankees (and American Leaguer) in the dust with 62, you can see our predictions below.

One note: I’ve added a few bells and whistles to this projection to handle Judge’s rest situation. The Yankees have been more aggressive than I expected in terms of getting him into games this September. To reflect that, I’ve changed the way I handle an off day. Previously, I set a specific day and simply gave Judge no plate appearances that day. As we’re getting closer to that scheduled off day, and closer to some milestones, that deterministic way of handling a day off feels wrong to me. Read the rest of this entry »

Sheesh. It’s been exactly one game since our last update on Aaron Judge’s pursuit of hitting 60, 61, and 62 home runs. At that point, Judge seemed more likely than not to eclipse Roger Maris‘ 61-homer mark, though only marginally. But after two home runs last night against the Red Sox, the pace is heating up again. Now, my simulation model thinks Judge is extremely likely to surpass Maris:

If that feels like a huge jump in odds to you, you’re in good company. If you think about it for a bit, though, it’s not so crazy. Judge has played 138 games this year and hit 57 homers. That’s a pace of less than half a home run per game, and still wildly impressive. Two in one game is always unlikely, though; it’s Judge’s 10th time doing it this year, for example. The finish line is getting close now; with 20 games to accrue five homers, one more barrage could put him over the top. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, we at FanGraphs came up with a fun idea: we simulated Aaron Judge’s remaining games a million times to figure out if and when he’s likely to hit some milestone home runs: numbers 60, 61, and 62. At the time, the takeaway was clear: Judge was most likely to hit each of those milestone home runs during the Yankees’ series in Toronto on September 26–28.

Since that article was published, Judge has played six games and hit only one home run. That changed the odds significantly. More specifically, per my simulation, here are his odds of reaching at least 60, 61, or 62 homers, both now and six games ago:

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I took a look at a few starters who have changed their pitch mix after being traded halfway through this season. Today, I’m finishing the set. Here are the relievers who have changed their pitch selection the most in the month after joining new teams. One note: since relievers throw fewer pitches, the variability in their mix is greater; a few extra sliders to get the feel for them in a random game can tip the percentages meaningfully. I’m focusing on five relievers who made interesting changes, but you could add others to the list.

Lou Trivino, New York Yankees

The Change: -12% Four-Seamer, -6% Changeup, +8% Cutter, +14% Slider
Trivino is a rarity, a legitimate five-pitch reliever. He’s thrown his changeup, slider, sinker, cutter, and four-seamer each at least 10% of the time this year, and mixed in an occasional curveball for good measure. The Yankees are working to change that.

Since donning pinstripes, Trivino is down to three pitches he uses at least 10% of the time: sinker, slider, cutter. His slider is new this year, one of the sweeping types that are all the rage these days, and he’d already taken to the pitch in Oakland, using it nearly 20% of the time. He’s using it even more in New York; a third of the pitches he’s thrown as a Yankee have been sliders. Read the rest of this entry »

Aaron Judge is doing something that most baseball fans, myself included, haven’t seen in their lifetime: He’s making a run at the American League home run record. Even if you don’t do some steroid-related asterisking of Barry Bonds et al., passing Babe Ruth and Roger Maris is a heck of an accomplishment; if you want to stick your fingers in your ears and ignore the late 1990s and early 2000s, it only makes Judge’s chase more consequential. Truly, this is an exciting time to follow baseball.

Normally, I’m the writer who pours cold water on everyone’s fun during chases like this. “Sure, he’s doing well now,” I’d say, “but if you look at his career numbers, he’s on pace to fall short.” Well for once, that’s not true! If you look at our Depth Charts projections, our median expectation for Judge gives him a 62-homer season.

That’s a boring and dry number, but in baseball statistics nerd land, it’s rare and exceptional. Projecting someone to break a record is obviously rare – records usually get broken by phenomenal performances, not by median outcomes. In celebration of that, I thought I’d layer on a bit more analytical rigor and give people an idea of not just if, but when Judge might hit home runs number 60, 61, or 62.

I wanted an easy-to-understand process, so I kept it simple. I took the Yankees’ remaining schedule, then noted each remaining team’s HR/9+ (from our suite of Plus Stats), the venue’s righty home run park factor (from Statcast’s new park factors), and whether I think Judge will play that day. I also used our projections to get what we consider to be Judge’s current true home-run-per-plate-appearance level (it’s 7.14%, for those of you keeping score at home). Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 989

This week on the show, we hear great stories from a veteran minor league broadcaster and discuss those darn Yankees, but not before talking about the new FanGraphs app!

• In the first segment, David Laurila welcomes Tim Hagerty, broadcaster for the Triple-A El Paso Chihuahuas. We learn about a number of interesting Padres prospects playing for El Paso, including Jay Groome, Luis Campusano, and Ryan Weathers, before hearing about Tim’s upcoming book, Tales from the Dugout: 1,001 Humorous, Inspirational & Wild Anecdotes from Minor League Baseball. Tim tells us about the PA announcer who got tossed by an umpire, the minor league team that spent a night in jail, the team that set its field on fire on purpose, the pitcher who got locked in a bathroom, and many more fun tales from his research. [6:50]
• After that, Ben Clemens and Jay Jaffe get together to talk about the New York Yankees, who dominated the first half of the season but have found themselves in a skid since the trade deadline. Jordan Montgomery has been superlative since his trade to the Cardinals, while Frankie Montas has been inconsistent with New York, and the combination isn’t helping the mood among Yankees fans. The duo discuss those deals as well as the Yankees having their eye on October, how hard it is to catch a home run on video at the ballpark, and how it seems like everyone in the Yankees lineup (apart from Aaron Judge) has struggled. [28:59]

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NEW YORK — More than three weeks after the Yankees made him their top trade deadline acquisition — and a night after the pitcher he replaced, Jordan Montgomery, spun a one-hit shutout to further an impressive opening run with the Cardinals — Frankie Montas was able to show the Bronx a representative version of his capabilities. Facing the Mets in front of a Yankee Stadium season high of 49,217 boisterous fans, the 29-year-old righty survived a rocky first inning, got strong support on both sides of the ball (save for one glitch), and moved Pete Alonso to bat-breaking frustration in what turned out to be a 4-2 Yankees win, giving the team its first series victory in August and salvaging a split of the season’s four-game Subway Series.

Montas allowed two runs in 5.2 innings, scattering six hits and a walk while striking out six — his highest total since his seven-strikeout effort at Yankee Stadium on June 28 while pitching for the A’s. His 15 called strikes was his highest total since that outing, and his 27% CSW (which included 10 swinging strikes) matched his season rate, heralding a return to form following a rough stretch of nearly eight weeks, during which shoulder inflammation, the trade, a trip to the bereavement list and poor performance limited him to a 5.90 ERA and 5.08 FIP in seven starts totaling just 29 innings.

“Packed house in the Bronx, [his] first Subway Series, he went out there and did his thing,” marveled Aaron Judge afterwards. “Working all his pitches, kind of similar to [Domingo] Germán… Backdoor cutter and backdoor slider to some of those lefties early on to kind of steal a strike, and then he got to that sinker-splitter combo. It’s pretty tough to tell the difference between both of those.”

“He showed some bulldog,” added Judge, whose fourth-inning solo homer — number 48 for the season and his second in as many nights — off Taijuan Walker kicked off the scoring. Judge also capped off a go-ahead two-run rally in the seventh by plating the Yankees’ final run via a single off Joely Rodríguez. Read the rest of this entry »

Once upon a time, a powerhouse in the Bronx dominated the opposition to such a degree that it was on pace to challenge the single-season record for wins. But a funny thing happened on the way to the record books: the power went out, and over the course of a few weeks, the team did an about-face, suddenly turning into one of the league’s doormats. Such is the saga of the 2022 Yankees.

It was just over two months ago, on June 20, when I noted in this space that the Yankees’ 49–17 record (.742 winning percentage) was the majors’ best start since the 2001 Mariners went 52–14 on their way to 116 wins; only a half-dozen other teams, including the 1998 Yankees, had won 49 or more of their first 66 games. I additionally noted that even with a 48–48 record the rest of the way, the Yankees would finish with 97 wins. Since that point, they’ve gone just 26–31, and their pace over 162 games has dropped to 99 wins:

Those jagged little peaks reflect the fact that until Sunday’s victory against the Blue Jays and Monday’s win over the Mets, the Yankees hadn’t won two games in a row since July 29–30, and they still haven’t won a series since then, or put together a winning streak longer than three games since June 26–29. But for all of that, the team is still four wins better than last year’s squad at the same juncture (71–52).

A 99-win season would rate as impressive by just about any other standard, but with regards to these Yankees, it not only reads as a disappointment given the arc of their season, but it also highlights the vulnerabilities that may yet again prevent them from reaching the World Series for the first time since 2009. That drought is approaching their 1982–95 one and has already exceeded their ’65–75 one; for all of their wealth in terms of both money and prospects, they’ve been unable to break through. Read the rest of this entry »

Tristan Peters covered a lot of miles in the days surrounding this year’s trade deadline. A 22-year-outfielder now in the San Francisco Giants system, Peters was playing for the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, the High-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers, when his madcap travels began.

“I was told that I was being promoted to Double-A Biloxi,” Peters told me before a recent game in Portland, Maine. “That was on Sunday, and on Monday I drove from Appleton, Wisconsin to Jackson, Mississippi to meet the team there. I did 11 of the 14 hours that day, stayed in Memphis, Tennessee overnight, then drove the last three hours on Tuesday.”

He wasn’t in Jackson very long. Playing cards in the clubhouse prior to what would have been his Double-A debut — Peters was penciled into the starting lineup as Biloxi’s leadoff hitter — he was informed that he was being traded to the Giants.

His new organization requested that he report to their Double-A club in Richmond, Virginia, so the next morning Peters climbed into his car and made another 14-hour drive. This time, he covered the entire distance in one day. Read the rest of this entry »

Jameson Taillon was 20 years old when he was first featured here at FanGraphs in September 2012. Drafted second overall by the Pittsburgh Pirates out of Woodland (Texas) High School just two years earlier, he’d only recently been promoted to Double-A when he sat down for an interview. The subjects at hand were his repertoire and his early-career development as a professional pitcher.

A decade later, Taillon is now pitching for the New York Yankees. Acquired from Pittsburgh prior to last season — this after missing most of 2019 and all of the shortened 2020 season while recovering from Tommy John surgery — the 30-year-old right-hander is having a solid campaign. In 23 starts comprising 127.2 innings, he is 11–3 with a 3.95 ERA and a 4.02 FIP.

Taillon discussed his decade-long evolution on the mound when the Yankees visited Fenway Park this past weekend.

———

David Laurila: You were in the minors when we first spoke 10 years ago. How would you describe your progression as a pitcher since that time?

Jameson Taillon: “One of the interesting things about pitching is that you’re in constant pursuit of trying to get better. The trends change, the hitters change, the scouting reports change. But I feel like I’ve kept a lot of my strengths the same. My curveball is still a pretty decent pitch for me, I throw a four- and a two-seam, just like I did 10 years ago.

“I’ve added a slider. I’ve probably used the changeup a little bit more in the big leagues than I did at the beginning of my career. But yeah, for a while there I was heavy sinkers and ground balls. Last year I went heavy four-seam. Now I’m kind of finding that sweet mix, that balance.”

Laurila: Is that mostly based on feel? Read the rest of this entry »