The New York Yankees are incredible. They control first place in a strong American League East division by seven games; our playoff odds project them as having an 88.3% chance of winning the division, with 16.2% odds to win the World Series. This, despite an astonishing volume of injuries suffered by key players over the first half of the season, a series of events that thrust bench bats and backups who once seemed somewhat redundant into the spotlight. DJ LeMahieu, for example, didn’t have a clear starting spot when the team signed him to a 2-year, $24 million contract over the offseason. But a week away from the All-Star break, he’s been the Yankees’ best player, and it isn’t particularly close.

At 3.6 WAR, LeMahieu is a full win better than the next-most valuable player on the roster. He leads his team in batting runs above average (20.8) and defensive runs above average (3.5). He is second in wRC+ (145) and wOBA (.389). He’s the AL’s leader in batting average (.345). The Yankees are an outstanding offensive team, ranking fourth in team wRC+ and hitting the fifth-most homers in baseball, despite the long absences of sluggers like Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge, Miguel Andujar, Aaron Hicks, and Didi Gregorius. Yet, it is LeMahieu — he of the 94 career wRC+ and 61 total homers over nine seasons — who has served as the linchpin of the New York lineup.

LeMahieu has been popular around these parts for a while now. In early 2018, Travis Sawchik caught up with him to discuss his shift away from being an extreme opposite field hitter, and over this past offseason, Jeff Sullivan discussed his potential were he ever to unlock more power. This seems like a good time to check back in with LeMahieu, though, because he has spent the past few weeks setting the baseball world ablaze. Since going 3-for-5 against the Blue Jays on June 5, LeMahieu has hit .424/.467/.717, with six homers, eight walks, and 27 RBIs in 22 games. His production in that span gives him an absurd 213 wRC+ and 2.0 WAR, both of which lead the majors.

It’s been a long time since LeMahieu was this hot:

That previous spike came in August 2016, when LeMahieu rattled off a similarly torrid stretch. In 22 games from August 2-28, he hit .447/.544/.647 with four homers, 17 walks and just seven strikeouts. That happened to be his best year in the majors, as he finished with a .391 wOBA and 4.4 WAR as a member of the Colorado Rockies and won the NL batting title. Before that season, LeMahieu had always been a below average hitter; in the two seasons that followed, he was one again. Now, he’s back to being a revelation, and continues to show an ability to adapt.

One of the knocks against LeMahieu during his free agency was his predictably uncomfortable home/road splits. During his tenure with the Rockies, he recorded an OPS of .834 and a wRC+ of 96 at Coors Field, but had his OPS fall to .681 when he played on the road, with his wRC+ taking a corresponding dip to 84. That makes a good bit of sense. Because his low number of fly balls limits his power potential, LeMahieu’s offensive production relies upon him having a high BABIP, the way he did in 2016 when he hit .388 on balls in play. Coors’ spacious outfield will serve players like that well — between 2012 and 2018, three of the top four home BABIPs in baseball belonged to Rockies hitters, with LeMahieu ranking at the top of that list at .374. Away from Coors Field, his BABIP was .310. Skepticism over how valuable he could be when calling a different ballpark home was reasonable. This year, however, LeMahieu has done all he can to put that criticism to rest. At Yankee Stadium, he’s hitting a robust .335/.402/.555 with a BABIP of .357 and a wRC+ of 152 a tOPS+ of 108. His road numbers look pretty good too: .350/.375/.497, with a .385 BABIP and a 136 wRC+.

The matter of LeMahieu’s home/road splits wasn’t the only one he needed to address as a Yankee. He also needed to prove he could hit something other than a fastball. In 2018, LeMahieu was a solid fastball hitter, posting a wOBA of .356. That came honestly enough — from 2015 to 2018, only one hitter in baseball, Ben Revere, saw a higher percentage of fastballs than LeMahieu (65.8%). He struggled, however, against breaking and offspeed pitches, with wOBAs of .254 and .275 against them, respectively.

This year, opposing pitchers have begun to change the way they approach LeMahieu. Just 56% of the pitches he’s seen in 2019 have been fastballs, down 11% from a peak rate of 67% in 2017. Slider and cutter usage against him has gone up a combined 6.5% from just one year ago, and he’s seen about 2% more changeups and splitters. Added together, that’s a notable change, and in response to seeing a more balanced repertoire, LeMahieu has made himself into a more balanced hitter:

One of the keys to LeMahieu’s great 2016 season was his ability to get positive results out of just about any pitch thrown his way. With his resurgence in 2019, it’s no surprise he’s seeing similar results. LeMahieu has been one of the 10 best hitters in baseball against both the slider and the curve this year, after struggling with each of those pitches in the past. At the same time, he continues to hit fastballs well. In 2016, LeMahieu recorded a .412 wOBA against the fastball. In 2019, that number is .394. As you might imagine, striking this kind of balance isn’t easy. Across all of baseball, just two hitters have posted at least a wFB of 4.0, a wSL a 4.0, a wCB of 4.0, and a wCH of 3.0: LeMahieu, and former Rockies teammate Charlie Blackmon.

It’s easy to evaluate a recent free agent signee in the midst of an unsustainable hot streak and say a bunch of teams missed out on him. But LeMahieu makes the impulse difficult to resist. Just two teams have gotten at least LeMahieu’s 3.4 WAR out of their second basemen, and no team has gotten more value out of a position player free agent who signed this offseason:

With the return of Hicks and Judge, as well as their trade for Edwin Encarnacion, the Yankees are closer to full strength than they’ve been in a long time. But they still have a long way to go. Stanton and Cameron Maybin are likely out until at least August, while Andujar won’t return until 2020. Injuries persist on the pitching side. A deep postseason run remains very likely, but it will continue to require constant adjusting and refining for the team to reach its potential. Perhaps that makes LeMahieu the perfect player for the Yankees.

The lingering suspense over whether the Yankees could break the major league record for consecutive games with a home run, which they had tied at 27 on Monday night, lasted until Tuesday night’s sixth pitch from Blue Jays starter Clayton Richard to Yankees leadoff hitter DJ LeMahieu. Boom!

In the brief interval that it took this scribe to tweet about that record — admittedly, while juggling a beer and a scorebook in section 422 of Yankee Stadium — Aaron Judge homered as well. In fact, solo home runs accounted for the Yankees’ entire output in their 4-3 victory, with Gleyber Torres and Edwin Encarnacion joining the party, too. The latter even broke out the parrot against his old team for just the second time since departing in the winter of 2016-17, that while a hawk literally watched his dinger from atop the right field foul pole.

Here’s the Yankees’ new perch after Wednesday, when Didi Gregorius’ second-inning home run off Toronto’s Trent Thornton further extended the streak (LeMahieu added another one in the Yankees’ come-from-behind win as well):

It doesn’t take the eyesight of a hawk to note that 11 of those 13 seasons are from the post-1992 expansion era, which has featured at least one home run per team per game — a level previously topped only in 1987 — in all but five seasons (1993, and every year from 2010-14 except for ’12). Four of those seasons, including three of the top seven, are from the 2016-19 period, which, as I noted on Monday in relation to Justin Verlander’s performance, is the first four-year stretch with at least 1.1 home runs per team per game. This year’s 1.36 per game is the all-time high, 0.1 ahead of the previous high set just two seasons ago, an increase of 8.7%. It’s 0.21 home runs per game (18.8%) higher than last year, and 0.5 homers per game (58.4% higher) than in 2014, the year of the post-1992 low:

If we factor in the ever-increasing strikeout rates, the rise is even sharper. This year’s rate of home runs per batted ball — that is, HR/(AB-SO+SF) — is 5.31%, 0.49 points (10.1%) higher than the previous high in 2017, 0.86 points (19.3%) higher than last year, and 2.08 points (64.2%) higher than 2014.

I’ll get back to that momentarily, but it’s worth noting that when the Yankees’ streak began in late May, only three of the seven players who contributed the most home runs to last year’s record-setting total of 267 were active, namely Aaron Hicks (who tied for second on the team with 27 homers), the sixth-ranked Torres (24), and seventh-ranked Gary Sanchez (18). Since then, the 1-2 punch of Giancarlo Stanton (38) and Judge (27) has returned from lengthy stints on the injured list, and Gregorius (27) has returned from off-season Tommy John surgery. Miguel Andujar (27) is out for the remainder of the season due to surgery to repair a torn labrum, but on June 16, the team traded for Encarnacion, who currently leads the league in homers (24, including three as a Yankee).

All of which is to say that it’s been a mix of A- and B-list players who have not only propelled this particular Yankee streak but have helped the team out-homer all but three other teams, namely the Twins (149), Mariners (145), and Brewers (138):

Such are the Yankees’ power reserves that the acquisition of Encarnacion led to Frazier, who has hit a robust .283/.330/.513 (117 wRC+), being optioned to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, and remaining on the farm even as Stanton went back to the IL with a sprained posterior cruciate ligament in his right knee, the result of a baserunning mishap early in Tuesday night’s game. He’ll miss the upcoming London series against the Red Sox, and will be out for longer than the 10-day minimum. With or without Stanton, who has played just nine games this season, it’s not hard to imagine a more complete Yankees lineup overtaking the Twins in the home run department. But even if they don’t, the rather patchwork lineup has kept them on pace to eclipse last year’s total, which is a hint that the homer situation is simply getting silly.

League-wide, no individual is on pace to challenge Barry Bonds‘ single-season home run record of 73; Christian Yelich, who leads the majors with 29 homers, would finish with 62 if he were to keep hitting them at the same pace over the Brewers’ final 82 games as he has over his first 73 (he’s missed seven games with assorted aches and pains). However, with only five teams past the halfway point in their schedules heading into Thursday (the Mariners have played 84 games, the other four of those teams 82), a total of 56 players had reached the 15 homer plateau, meaning that they were on pace for 30 homers. The league-wide record for such players is 47, set in 2000. Four of the top five totals hail from the 1996-2001 stretch, with the fifth coming in 2017, when 41 players reached it. Similarly, 18 players have reached 20 homers, and are on pace for at least 40. The record for players with 40-homer seasons is 17, set in 1996, and we haven’t seen more than nine players do it in any Statcast-era season; there were nine in 2015, but just three last year. Yelich, Pete Alonso (27 homers through the Mets’ 81 games) and Cody Bellinger (26 homers through the Dodgers’ 82 games, including one on Wednesday) are on pace for at least 50 homers. Only in 1998 and 2001 did more than two players reach that plateau, with four apiece in both of those years, including the single-season record breakers, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds.

Meanwhile, 14 of the majors’ 30 teams are on pace to set franchise records, with the top four surpassing last year’s Yankees:

All but three of the 30 teams are averaging at least one homer per game. Twenty-two teams are on pace for 200 homers, one fewer than in all of baseball prior to the 1994 players’ strike. Only in 2017, when 17 teams reached that plateau, have there even been as many as a dozen teams to do so. Eight teams are on pace for 250 homers, a level reached by just six teams ever prior to this year. The mind reels at these numbers.

While one can point to the general trend of batters making greater efforts to elevate the ball — whether to hit it over shifted infielders or not — it’s more accurate to call that an adaptation to the new reality. The scientific evidence again points to the ball itself as being the driving factor. Earlier this week at The Athletic, Dr. Meredith Wills published a follow-up to last year’s breakthrough article, which itself was a follow-up to MLB’s Home Run Committee report. That committee, led by Dr. Alan Nathan, professor emeritus of physics at the University of Illinois, had found that the recent home run spike was caused by a decrease in the ball’s aerodynamic drag, but found no physical difference in the balls that would explain the change.

Conducting her own measurements using digital calipers and disassembled baseballs, Wills concluded that post-2015 balls’ laces, which were an average of nine percent thicker than balls from the 2010-14 period, were producing less bulging at the seams, yielding a more spherically symmetric ball with less aerodynamic drag — thus allowing them to fly further.

For her latest study, Wills examined 39 balls from this season, which she found differed from the 2015-18 balls and even earlier ones. Most notably, she found “demonstrably lower” seams, only 54.6 percent ± 15.0 percent as high as those on balls from previous seasons. By measuring the coefficient of static friction, she also found that the leather on this year’s balls is relatively smoother, concluding, “the static friction for the 2019 balls is 27.6 percent lower, a statistically significant result demonstrating the leather covers are genuinely smoother.” She measured the bulging of the seams and found, “Not only were the 2019 balls virtually round, what bulging they did show was slightly negative, suggesting the seams might be slightly ‘nestled’ into the leather.” The significantly rounder balls, which have thinner laces than last year’s (more in line with 2000-14 samples) produce even less drag than before, and thus even more carry. Wills noted that both the seam and smoothness issues jibe with anecdotal reports from pitchers about difficulties in gripping this year’s balls, as voiced by players such as Sean Doolittle, Jon Lester, and Noah Syndergaard.

As for commissioner Rob Manfred’s recent suggestion that a better-centered pill (the core of the ball) is a factor in creating less drag, Wills was largely dismissive, writing, “[T]his is the most difficult result to produce without significant manufacturing changes, since existing techniques make it hard to keep the pill from being centered to begin with… Therefore, it seems unlikely that pill-centering would explain a sudden change in drag; at the very least, we would be remiss not to also examine other possible sources.”

All of Wills’ articles on the topic, which are behind a paywall, are worth reading, but it should suffice to say that there’s ample scientific evidence that the ball is carrying this. And how. Check out these numbers, which combine Statcast’s average distance measurements with those from our stat pages:

Fly balls are carrying an average of four feet further than last year, and eight feet further than in 2015. Add to that a general increase in fly ball rates and you have a recipe for significantly more homers. Perhaps too many homers. Combine that trend with the aforementioned strikeout trend and lower batting averages — though this year’s .251 is three points higher than last year, it’s in a virtual tie with 2014 for the second-lowest mark of the DH era, which began in 1973 — and the result is a greater percentage of runs being scored via homer than ever before. Here’s an historic look at what Joe Sheehan christened “the Guillen Number” a decade ago at Baseball Prospectus:

For a period of over two decades, from 1994-2014 — two decades that saw record home run rates, PED scandals, expansion, new ballparks galore — the rate of runs scored via homers was remarkably stable around 35%, never deviating more than two points in either direction. It hit 37.3% in 2015, and has climbed at a rate of about two points per year since, to heights previously unseen, and now, both statistically and aesthetically, the situation sticks out like a sore thumb. Ken Rosenthal called it “Bludgeon Ball” earlier this month, and I think the description fits. This is brute force baseball, and while it doesn’t lack for a certain amount of excitement, it’s very lacking in subtlety. When nearly half the league is on pace to set home run records, and the vast majority of teams are set to exceed totals that were once very rare, we’ve gone too far.

It’s time for MLB and Rawlings (which the league bought last year) to fix this. Wills noted that while Manfred has maintained that Rawlings hasn’t changed its manufacturing process or materials “in any meaningful way,” this may be an issue of semantics:

The Home Run Committee found that Rawlings regularly implements production improvements, including changes to the yarn (February 2014), the pill (March 2014, May 2015), the leather (June 2014, February 2017, August 2017) and the drying process (March 2016, February 2018). The Committee described these changes as “largely technical in nature and very unlikely to be in any way related to the (2017) home run increase.” That being the case, things like enhancing leather smoothness or drying baseballs more efficiently might not be considered “meaningful” to manufacturing.

While this may have been a reasonable attitude in the past, such enhancements now appear to have compounded, producing a more aerodynamic ball.

Wills recommended another committee report with the goal of using the information to tighten specifications, improve quality control and “determine further production improvements.” To these eyes — and I know I’m not alone — such improvement would include the restoration of some normalcy. When a player’s 40-homer season, or a team’s mountain of 200 homers, is no longer worthy of celebration, is as common as a garden weed, we’ve lost something. It’s worth searching for how to get that special something back.

Edwin Encarnacion is 36 years old now, but age hasn’t stopped him from mashing baseballs. Among qualified American League hitters, he ranks 12th in wRC+ (139), leads the league in home runs (21), and is fourth in isolated power (.290). He’s accrued 1.7 WAR, which is pretty good at this point of the season, especially given his subpar defense. Of course, nobody is employing Encarnacion for his glove.

When Seattle acquired Encarnacion this past offseason, everybody knew he’d be traded sooner rather than later. The Mariners are in the midst of a rebuild and are reportedly “trying to trade everyone” before the July 31 deadline. Encarnacion, with his age and contract, was an obvious candidate to be moved.

It only took until the middle of June for the Mariners to find a suitor. The Yankees now employ Edwin Encarnacion.

Yankees Get:

• 1B/3B/DH Edwin Encarnacion (though it’s likely he’ll primarily be a DH)

Mariners Get:

• RHP Juan Then

Let’s touch on the Mariners’ return first before talking about the big parrot in the room. Juan Then was actually a Mariners farmhand two years ago. The Yankees acquired Then (and minor league hurler JP Sears) during the 2017-18 offseason in exchange for Nick Rumbelow.

Then is only 19 years old and he’s still in rookie ball. Prior to this season, Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel ranked Then as the No. 31 prospect in New York’s system, noting that he is “advanced for his age” but has “middling stuff and physical projection.” It’s worth noting that Then seems to have developed a better fastball in the Yankees system. But again, it’s awfully hard to project a 19-year-old who hasn’t reached full-season ball. We know he’s a young arm of some promise, but the delta in his potential outcomes is very wide.

As an interesting side note, reports suggest that the Mariners chose to deal Encarnacion to the Yankees because New York was willing to absorb more money than other interested clubs. By prioritizing salary flexibility, Seattle’s move is somewhat reminiscent of how the Marlins handled the Giancarlo Stanton trade, in which the Yankees gave up significantly less player value to bring in another slugger because they were able to take on big money. It’s not ideal for rebuilding teams to prioritize monetary value over player return on transactions, but it is what it is. Money is a big part of how organizations operate, and sometimes you’re going to see deals like that. Read the rest of this entry »

Clint Frazier has made significant contributions to a banged-up Yankees team that sits atop the AL East with a hefty 38-20 record, but his performance in Sunday night’s game against the Red Sox in the Bronx was the stuff of which nightmares are made. You know, the kind in which you not only can’t stop doing that thing you’re not supposed to do, but you’re doing it in directly in front of 40,000 people emotionally invested in your success or failure, not to mention the millions more watching on television all around the world. The 24-year-old right fielder misplayed three balls in the late innings that helped to blow open a close game, the latest manifestations of his ongoing defensive woes.

Frazier’s misadventures began in the seventh, with the score 3-2 in favor of the Red Sox following a battle between former Cy Young-winning southpaws David Price and CC Sabathia. With reliever Luis Cessa on the mound, one out, and Michael Chavis on first base following a forceout, Frazier failed to keep Eduardo Nunez’s single in front of him. The ball rolled all the way to the wall, resulting in a two-base error that scored Chavis:

Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Web Application Developer – Baseball Operations

Postion Overview:
The New York Yankees organization is accepting applications for an experienced web developer in their Baseball Operations department. Candidate should have 3+ years of experience developing data-driven web applications using REST services and JavaScript MV frameworks like Angular, Vue.js, or React. Candidates should possess not only the technical skill, but the design sensibilities needed to create a compelling and efficient user experience.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Assist in the design and implementation of web-based tools and applications for senior baseball operations personnel.
• Migrate and adapt existing web applications for mobile devices and various hardware platforms.
• Interface with all departments within Baseball Operations (scouting, player development, coaching, analytics) to build tools and reporting capabilities to meet their needs.
• Work with major and minor league pitch, hit and player tracking datasets, college and other amateur data, international baseball data, and many other baseball data sources.

Qualifications and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree (B.S.) in Computer Science or related field
• MUST have 3+ years of experience with data-driven web application development using:
• REST services, preferably built on ASP.NET WebAPI
• ORM frameworks (nHibernate/Entity Framework/etc)
• JavaScript MV frameworks (Angular/Vue.js/React/etc)
• Front-End CSS frameworks (Bootstrap/Material/Foundation/etc)
• Proficient in SQL databases and various database design principles (Microsoft SQL Server a plus)
• Familiarity with Microsoft Visual Studio and source code management tools (Git, TFS/VSS)
• Knowledge of the software development lifecycle (requirements definition, design, development, testing, implementation, verification), Agile, and industry best practices.
• Excellent communication and problem-solving skills – must be able to breakdown a complex task and put together an execution strategy with little guidance.
• An understanding of typical baseball data structures, basic and advanced baseball metrics, and knowledge of current baseball research areas a plus.

Please note, full-time telecommuting available under the right circumstances.

Job Questions:

• Describe your experience developing REST APIs and how you’ve used them in development of data-driven web applications.
• Describe your familiarity with JavaScript MV frameworks (Angular/Vue.js/React/etc) and how you have used them in your work.
• Have you ever worked with any baseball datasets? And if so, which ones and how have you used them?
• List any active websites or mobile applications you have developed (and the technologies they use) that might showcase your work.

To Apply:
To apply, please submit an application through this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the New York Yankees.

When the 2019 major league baseball season opened, observers generally agreed with the projections that forecast the Baltimore Orioles’ pitching staff has likely to suffer like no other rotation in the American League East. Then again, not even the most pessimistic models could have predicted what the New York Yankees — and more specifically, Gleyber Torres — had in store for the Orioles in the teams’ first 12 games against each other.

First, let’s do a general body count after the latest six-game sweep the Orioles endured at the Yankees’ hands:

• New York launched 36 home runs in 12 games. That’s already the third-most home runs the Yankees have generated against the Orioles in a single season. They are 10 home runs short of their 2017 record with seven games to go.
• The Yankees’ tOPS+ against the Orioles this year is 127. Basically as a group when facing Baltimore, they own an OPS similar to Kris Bryant’s in 2019 (.967).
• The xwOBA of Yankees hitters against Baltimore is .393. This is like if the Yankees lineup were instantly turned into a 2019 version of Franmil Reyes, Mitch Moreland, or Justin Turner.

But the destruction would have never reached these levels if not for Torres. The sophomore infielder has launched 10 of his 12 homers this year against the Orioles, joining Joe DiMaggio, Aaron Judge, Babe Ruth, and Lou Gehrig as the only players with double-digit home runs in a season against the O’s.

His triple-slash versus Baltimore this year is a ludicrous .465/.531/1.233 in 50 plate appearances and his tOPS+ sits at 275 in 2019 when he faces Baltimore.

In other words, Torres has really gone out of his way in order to bash Orioles pitchers. Just for context, if Torres didn’t play again this year against Baltimore, he would own the best tOPS+ of any Yankee hitter in history with at least 50 PAs against any ballclub in a single season:

We really don’t know what happened in 1936 between DiMaggio and the St. Louis Browns (his tOPS+ was a bit lower than Torres’ but he had 108 PAs), but fortunately these days we can dive into Torres’ carnage and play the good old “blame game” but with advance stats.

Did Orioles pitchers really deserve this struggle, or is it just the case of a batter who seems to be ascending into the elite?

To answer this, we’re not going to analyze the 20 hits the infielder has connected versus the Orioles this year. Instead, we’ll just focus on the 10 home runs, and check velocity, type, and location of the pitches Torres took yard while we compare it to the results of similar pitches in the Statcast era.

1) Alex Cobb split fastball down and in.

Pitch location:

This was the first homer of the season for Torres, and it was no-doubter. It had a 105 mph exit velocity and a projected distance of 400 feet. The pitch was an 87.3 mph split fastball. down and in to the inner part of the zone for a right-handed batter.

Verdict:
The location of this pitch is right in Torres’ wheelhouse, so it’s safe to say this was a mistake. Additionally, splitters in that zone have not borne good results for Cobb historically. Since 2016, that pitch in that specific zone has a .629 xwOBA allowed versus right-handed hitters. When he locates it somewhere else, that numbers goes down to .326.

2) Mike Wright fastball up in the zone.

Pitch location:

This was a fastball at 94.6 mph that left the bat with a 101.9 mph exit velocity and was projected for 390 feet.

If you look at Torres’ past home runs, you will see that this is the first (and only) home run he has gotten with a fastball in that specific zone. He has 18 swing-and-misses, four swinging strikeouts, and three hits against those types of pitches. If you add the velocity, this was his first hit versus an upper fastball in the zone with at least 94 mph.

Verdict:
Maybe Wright doesn’t have an elite spin rate to go up there regularly (that pitch was at 2259 rpm), but you can’t blame him for trying this in an 0-2 count. Until that day, he had only allowed three home runs pitching there with his fastball. He also has allowed an xwOBA of .283 with his heater in that zone. The idea and the execution were good on paper, but Torres had other plans. This one is all Torres’ “fault.”

3) David Hess fastball up in the zone.

Pitch location:

This looked a lot like the Wright pitch. A 95-mph heater up in the zone that came back at 104 mph projected at 408 feet. Again, high fastballs have not been Torres’ favorite in the major leagues. This was, according to Baseball Savant, his fifth hit off a fastball in that specific zone and just his second home run. Also, he has swung and missed 21 times at similar pitches and suffered four swinging strikeouts.

Verdict:
Just a day after Torres collected his first home run in the majors against a fastball up in the middle of strike zone, he decided to launch his second career homer against a fastball up and in for strike. Just like Wright, you can’t blame Hess for going up there with good velo and a decent spin rate (2294 rpm on that pitch) in a 3-2 count. Until that day, he had only allowed one homer on his fastball in that zone. Now he has three (Clint Frazier also punished him there later in May). In my book this one was also a Gleyber Torres magic trick.

4) David Hess middle, middle fastball.

Pitch location:

Do we have to explain this?

Torres crushed this fastball at 89.9 mph right at the heart of the plate and sent it home at 108 mph, projected at 427 feet, the fourth-longest home run of his career in the majors.

Verdict:
In 2019, you can’t expect good results if you throw a middle-middle 90-mph fastball with below-average spin rate (that one had 2158 rpm). Just for context, since 2017, fastballs in the heart of the plate with a velocity between 89 and 91 mph and with a spin rate between 2100 and 2200 rpm have a very spooky .445 xwOBA. It’s just not good a pitch. This one is definitely on the pitcher.

5) Andrew Cashner changeup middle out (but in the zone).

Pitch location:

Destruction. This 84.8-mph changeup located in the middle/out part of the plate was demolished by Torres, who sent it out at 104.9 mph to center field. The shot projected at 432 feet, which ranks as the third-longest home run of the youngster’s career.

Verdict:
Cashner was in a 3-1 count and didn’t want to issue a walk, so he decided to use his best secondary pitch in the zone after he saw what Torres had done against the fastballs of a couple of his teammates. Of course the pitch landed in Torres’ hot zone (middle/in), but at least he failed with the secondary pitch he uses more. Cashner has an acceptable .311 xwOBA with his changeup since 2015 versus right-handed batters, and that was the first homer he had allowed to a righty with that pitch in that specific zone in his major league career.

It was good choice in my book, but the execution was a little bit flawed, and Torres was just too hot. There was more than one responsible on this one.

6) David Hess slider down and in (out of the zone).

Pitch location:

This was an 83.3-mph slider slightly out of the zone down and in that ends up in the stands with a 93.5 mph exit velocity, projected at 351 feet.

Verdict:
This was all Torres and Yankee Stadium. In a 3-1 count, Hess couldn’t sell him a fastball again in the zone. Instead he went with his money pitch down and a little bit in, and he suffered the first home run with his slider in that zone in his major league career. It was just a tough break if you consider that those types of hits (balls between 92-94 mph exit velocity and between 27-29 degrees launch angle) have been recorded 957 times in the Statcast era and only 58 of them have turned into a homer (6%).

7) Andrew Cashner middle-middle curveball.

Pitch location:

Torres was entering “God Mode” at right about this moment. An 81.2-mph curveball at the heart of the plate was blasted to center field at a 100.2 mph with a projected distance of 415 feet.

Verdict:
I have to give this one to Torres. Cashner was down in the count and just wanted to get back with a curveball in the zone. Yes, maybe it was a pitch too noble for a guy so inspired, but it was a perfectly fine selection to try to come back in the at-bat. That was just the second homer of Torres’ career against a curveball and the very first homer Cashner has allowed on a curveball in a 1-0 count in the majors. Of course, Cashner’s curveball isn’t a great pitch (.332 of xwOBA since 2015), but a man has to work with the tools he has.

8) Mychal Givens slider down and in (in the zone).

Pitch location:

This was an 85.3-mph slider down in the zone to open up the at-bat against a hitter with seven home runs in 2019 versus the Orioles. The result was a hit at 94.2 mph that turned into a 384-foot homer.

Verdict:
Givens has a solid slider with a career .284 xwOBA allowed, but Torres didn’t care. He just tagged that baseball on the very first pitch and gave Givens his first homer allowed on his slider in 2019.

Yes, you could argue that the pitch hung a bit and stayed in the strike zone too long, but this was just the second time Givens has allowed a long ball with a slider in that zone in his major league career.

This is just Gleyber Torres being hotter than the gates of hell. Look no further.

9) Dan Straily slider down and away (in the zone).

Pitch location:

Torres already had three games with multiple home runs against Baltimore when he started this game. Straily threw his money pitch at 85.3 mph in a reasonably good zone, and Torres blasted a 102.4-mph home run projected at 424 feet.

Verdict:
Straily believes in his slider. He owns a .267 xwOBA with that pitch since 2015, so that trust isn’t unreasonable. Then again, before facing Torres in the third inning, he already had allowed two homers against that pitch courtesy of Thairo Estrada and DJ LeMahieu. Despite that, he decided to go in the zone in a 1-2 count against a hitter that was looking for his ninth homer against his team this year. That was not wise. This home run has two fathers in my book, as it wasn’t the pitch location for the count or the hitter.

10) Gabriel Ynoa’s fastball away.

Pitch location:

At this point there is no way Torres gets something in the zone, right? Well, Ynoa decided to test him with a 92.9-mph fastball away at the edge of the strike zone, and Torres returned the favor with an opposite-field home run of 377 feet and at 101.5 mph.

Verdict:
This one is all Gleyber. You could ask why they were throwing strikes to him, but the Orioles were already down 6-2 in the fifth inning. Ynoa threw a fastball to a specific zone where Torres didn’t do real damage in his rookie season. Then again, this Torres seems different. This was his first homer against a fastball in that zone in his major league career and only his second hit.

Final review:

The Baltimore Orioles may have an underwhelming pitching staff right now, but these things that Gleyber Torres did against them were not entirely their fault. At only 21 years old, the Venezuelan infielder seems to be rapidly learning and reducing his holes at the plate while growing more power in different areas of the strike zone.

Yes, Baltimore pitching helped, but more than that it seems like Torres decided to use the Orioles to make a statement to the baseball world.

A statement that is just beginning to unfold.

The Yankees snuck into first place in the AL East by dint of last weekend’s series win over the Rays, and they’ve since widened their lead to two games by steamrolling the Orioles in Baltimore, bashing 13 home runs during their four-game sweep — four of them by Gleyber Torres in a pair of multi-homer games, and three by Gary Sanchez, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Neither was in the lineup for Thursday afternoon’s contest, but both came up big while pinch-hitting in the ninth inning of a tie game, with Torres walking and scoring the winning run, aided by Sanchez’s single.

Of Sanchez’s three homers, the biggest of in terms of significance — if not distance — was Monday’s three-run shot off Mychal Givens, which broke a 7-7 tie and sent the Yankees to victory in a game they had once trailed, 6-1:

That one had an estimated distance of 389 feet. If it’s distance you crave, here’s Wednesday’s massive 440-footer off Dan Straily:

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve written a lot about James Paxton here at FanGraphs, and deservingly so. The obvious reasoning is that Paxton is a very good pitcher. The intrigue builds once you consider that he throws hard, is a lefty, has thrown a no-hitter, and flaunts a lot of tools that just have the look of being very electric. In 2019, he also plays for the Yankees, which, whether you like it or not, means that he will be in the general media spotlight more.

In the past, Jeff Sullivan wrote several articles on Paxton’s explosive fastball and how he gets swinging strikes with it in the top of the zone. In terms of fastball usage, not a lot has changed. Paxton still throws pretty hard, and he uses his heat pretty frequently and gets whiffs with it. However, there’s always a room for improvement, even for pitcher who’s as good as Paxton is.

Paxton has struck batters out a lot this season. That is not a news. He’s always been a strikeout pitcher in his big league career. But after striking out 32.3% of the hitters he faced last year, his 2019 numbers are up to 36.2%. There was a concern over how Paxton, a fly ball pitcher, would adjust to the home run-friendly confines of Yankee Stadium, but we haven’t seen any problem yet; he’s posted a 0.78 HR/9 IP and 9.1% HR/FB rate so far. And he’s been one of the most valuable pitchers in all of the majors. As of May 2, his 1.5 WAR ranks third among all starters behind Max Scherzer and Matthew Boyd. All in all, he’s having a pretty good season. So what has led to the improvement?

Looking at his pitch usage, we don’t see a huge overhaul, but there is a notable change. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday night in Arizona, CC Sabathia claimed a little slice of baseball history. With his strikeout of the Diamondbacks’ John Ryan Murphy, the 38-year-old Yankee became just the 17th pitcher to reach 3,000 for his career, the first since John Smoltz on April 22, 2008, and just the third southpaw ever, after Steve Carlton and Randy Johnson. It’s a milestone worthy of celebration, a testament to longevity, dominance, and tenacity. It’s also inextricably a product of this high-strikeout era, a point worth considering when placing Sabathia’s accomplishment in context.

But first, to savor the moment. Sabathia, who entered the night three strikeouts short of 3,000, collected all three in the second inning, first freezing David Peralta looking at a sinker, then whiffing Christian Walker on a high cutter. After yielding a solo homer to Wilmer Flores and an infield single to Nick Ahmed — the latter on an 0-2 changeup well outside the strike zone — he induced Murphy (who caught Sabathia’s 2,500th strikeout in 2015) to chase an 84.2 mph changeup:

Alas, while Diamondbacks starter Zack Greinke — himself a potential 3,000 strikeout club member, more on which below — held the banged-up Yankee lineup to a single run over 7.2 innings, Flores also added a fourth-inning RBI double off Sabathia. The big lefty departed on the short end of a 2-1 score, and the Yankees ultimately lost, 3-1, putting a mild damper on the celebration.

Of the major traditional milestones among pitchers and hitters, 3,000 strikeouts is the least common. Thirty-two players have notched at least 3,000 hits, and 27 have swatted 500 home runs. On the pitching side, 24 pitchers have collected 300 wins. Nearly all of the players who have reached any of those round numbers have been elected to the Hall of Fame, with the exceptions generally related to performance-enhancing drugs and other bad behavior. Among the members of the 3,000 strikeout club who have preceded Sabathia, only Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling remain outside, for reasons besides on-field performance. This could very well be the big man’s ticket to Cooperstown. Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees haven’t been able to catch many breaks to start the season. They have an insalubrious number of starters on the injured list with everything from a small labrum tear, to a strained oblique, to a left biceps strain, to a left ankle injury, to a grade 2 lat strain. Despite all that, the team itself, at least when it comes to the standings, isn’t doing badly. They just won nine out of their previous 10 games and are one and a half games back from the Tampa Bay Rays. As of April 29, the Yankees are currently tied with the Astros for the fifth-best winning percentage in the majors (.607).

In the middle of all that is Domingo German, who’s off to a stellar start. We at FanGraphs have noted his talent before, citing his arsenal, his ability to throw strikes, get whiffs, and more. We’re talking about a guy who can make hitters look like this:

Or like this:

But his 2018 left a lot of questions about his future. As a 26-year old, German put up a 5.57 ERA and a 4.39 FIP in 85.2 IP across 21 games (14 starts). True, there were some encouraging numbers — a 27.2% strikeout rate and 14.9% swinging strike rate, for instance — but the Yankees had to have hoped for more. Read the rest of this entry »