The absence of Mike Trout, however unfortunate, has the possible effect of opening up the field for the American League’s MVP award. It’s also possible we’ll see a position player other than Trout lead the league in wins above replacement for the first time since 2011, when Jacoby Ellsbury posted a 9.4-win season. Trout still leads the league this season (3.3). Given that he could miss two months of time to injury, however, he could be hard pressed to finish ahead of his peers for a sixth consecutive campaign.

So that brings us to the No. 2 player on the American League leaderboard, Aaron Judge.

I received some questions about MVP odds during my Monday chat and Judge’s name came up. As impressive as Judge has been this season, including a 510-foot batting practice shot in Toronto…

… I sense there are questions, concerns about the league’s ability to punch back when it accumulates more scouting material against an inexperienced hitter who possesses both a long swing and unusual baseball body. Judge doesn’t yet have the same type of exposure to major-league pitching and defenses that other MVP candidates have. When pitchers began to refine their approach against him, will Judge be able to counter punch?

There’s already some evidence that a considerable slow down is imminent: Judge’s strikeout rate has been inching up.

While Judge deserves credit for his offseason work — including a swing adjustment that has resulted in dramatically improved bat-to-ball skills and allowed his raw power to translate into games — the forecasts call for merely a good player, not a great one. Our Depth Chart projections, which are a combination of Steamer and ZiPS with curated playing-time estimates, have Judge slashing .253/.338/.500 for the rest of the season, with 22 more homers and 2.2 wins.

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At this time last year, Luis Severino had just finished up his second minor-league start of the season. It was only his second minor-league start of the season because he had started the season in the majors. But seven starts were all Yankees manager Joe Girardi needed to see before he and the Yankees organization sent Severino packing, first for a start at High-A and then to Triple-A. On June 3, 2016, he allowed three runs in 3.2 innings for Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Yesterday, a year and a day later, he allowed two runs in seven innings against the Blue Jays. A year after his demotion, Severino is one of the best pitchers in baseball.

Let’s start with his demotion. In his first seven starts last season, Severino threw 35 innings. He allowed 30 runs, 29 earned, for a 7.46 ERA. Yuck. His 5.52 FIP also was unsightly, but showed that his 27 strikeouts against 10 walks painted a somewhat brighter picture. But then there was his 3.98 xFIP, a more or less league average mark. The discrepancy is the result of the eight homers allowed by the Dominican Republic native — six in Yankee Stadium, and two in Oriole Park at Camden Yards. That’s quite a bit for 35 innings pitched. It works out to a 2.09 every nine innings, a mark that has only been achieved twice by qualified pitchers in major-league history — Sid Fernandez in 1994 (2.11) and Jose Lima in 2000 (2.20). So, it stood to reason that Severino wouldn’t keep allowing homers at such a high rate. Or, you could make the argument that only two pitchers had allowed homers at such a rate because usually, when a pitcher is doing that, he’s unlikely to compile enough innings to qualify for the ERA title. Because he’d probably get sent to the minors. Which Severino did.

Severino would work diligently in the minors. After the aforementioned June 3 outing, he would make nine starts. In eight of them, he allowed three runs or less. In the final of those nine starts, he struck out 11 in six innings and got himself a ticket back to the Show. He would make two starts, one in Boston and one versus Tampa, and the results were a carbon copy of his previous major-league work: eight innings pitched, 15 hits allowed, 12 runs allowed, 10 strikeouts, one walk, two homers. He was doing his job in terms of walks and strikeouts, but too many batted balls were finding green pasture or outfield bleacher. At this point, Girardi could be forgiven for not sticking with Severino. And he didn’t. Severino went right back to the minors and didn’t come back up until rosters expanded. When he did, he was a reliever, until the end of the season, when he made a couple of nondescript, short starts.

For the 2016 season as a whole, Severino made only 11 starts. He only reached the six-inning mark in three of them, and only one of those three cleared the bar for a quality start. Fast forward to this season, and Severino has already reached the 11-start threshold. He’s gone at least six innings in seven of them, and all seven have been of the quality-start variety. That is underselling the difference in his seasons.

Last season, Severino finished with a 102 FIP- and 0.6 WAR. This year, he’s posted a 71 FIP- and 1.7 WAR. Last year, of the 273 pitchers who pitched at least 60 innings, Severino’s 0.6 WAR ranked 186th. This year, his 1.7 WAR ranks 12th, and seventh in the American League. That’s pretty good, if you weren’t aware.

Luis Severino has widened the velocity differentials on both his changeup and slider. (Photo: Arturo Pardavila III)

So, how did we get here? Well, various ways. A little here, a little there. One thing that’s interesting is that Severino’s success isn’t a product of him having suddenly learned how to stop fly balls from becoming home runs. For the entire 2016 season, Severino’s home run rate on fly balls (HR/FB) was 16.4%; this season it’s 16.3%, which is, you know, the same. It’s 27th highest among qualified starters. And yet, he has improved significantly, which is impressive.

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When you look up and see that the Athletics are in the midst of a two-game mid-week series against the Marlins in late May, you might suspect that the major-league baseball schedule is simply an exercise in randomness. At this point in the campaign, that’s actually sort of the case. The combination of interleague play and the random vagaries of an early-season schedule conspire to mean that your favorite team hasn’t had the same schedule as your least favorite team. Let’s try to put a number on that disparity.

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My wife is a school psychologist here in the Pittsburgh area, so naturally I learn about the profession and the field. One test of interest, and some amusement, that she’s discussed involves children and the concept of delayed gratification. Testers use all sorts of sugar-laden incentives for the evaluation. The tester presents a child with a cookie or chocolate or something else and informs the four-year-old that, after a short period of time, if the child can avoid the temptation to indulge in the first snack, that said child will receive a second. (I’m not sure such a test of will power would be all that easy for adults, either.)

The study, I believe, traces its origins to the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment conduced in the late 1960s by psychologist Walter Mischel. The kids tested were given one marshmallow, and then a second if they were able to endure about a 15-minute wait. Follow-up studies found that the children who were able to wait generally had better life-outcomes, though the experiment is not without their critics. The Atlantic revisited the study in 2014:

Studies showed that a child’s ability to delay eating the first treat predicted higher SAT scores and a lower body mass index (BMI) 30 years after their initial Marshmallow Test. Researchers discovered that parents of “high delayers” even reported that they were more competent than “instant gratifiers”—without ever knowing whether their child had gobbled the first marshmallow.

While such a study and its small sample is, of course, imperfect, I think reasonable people can agree there are many merits to delayed gratification for children and adults.

So that brings me to the New York Yankees. The club is somewhat surprisingly resides in first place in the AL East more than a quarter of the way through the season, and boasts of the second-best run-differential in the American League (+53), trailing only the Astros (+58). BaseRuns suggests the Yankees actually deserve to be a game better than their actual standing (27-16).

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So much is going well for the Yankees. Aaron Judge has exceeded everyone’s expectations. Aaron Hicks has found another level. Top prospect Gleyber Torres has been promoted to Triple-A. Luis Severino has a 21.1-point K-BB% mark. Michael Pineda owns an even better 24.5-point K-BB% mark — and finally has some better BABIP luck to go with his elite swing-and-miss stuff. Many believe, including this author, that it’s better than even odds that we will see Bryce Harper somewhere in the Yankee outfield in 2019. If feels like the next Yankee dynasty is taking shape.

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Previously
Changeups: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Curveballs: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Cutters and Splitters: MLB Starters.
Four-Seamers: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Two-Seamers: MLB Starters.

With May running out of days, it’s about time we laid to rest our series evaluating the individual pitches of 2016 ERA-qualifying starting pitchers. By the end of the week, we’ll be done. I’m splitting up the final two articles in a slightly unorthodox manner in order to make them run about the same length. There were so many good sliders in the NL last season that they deserve their own article later this week. Today, it’s the sinkers in both leagues, plus the AL sliders.

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As you may have heard, the Yankees are retiring Derek Jeter’s number on Sunday. ESPN’s coverage of the ceremony — and the subsequent game, of course — will begin at a surprisingly early 8:00 a.m. EST. The first pitch of the game between the Astros and Yankees, two of the powerhouse teams in the American League, is scheduled for 7:35 at night. Sunday Night Baseball usually kicks off at 8, but the Yankees got ESPN to agree to moving the game up to give the pre-game ceremonies (and theoretically the game itself) a larger audience and reach.

Of course, a player can’t have his number retired unless he himself is retired, and indeed, Jeter hasn’t suited up since 2014. His retirement was kind of a big deal, as you likely remember. It turned into a media bonanza that facilitated the sale of many tickets and even more merchandise. Jeter struggled that year to a -0.1 WAR and the Yankees just barely missed the playoffs. He started at shortstop in the All-Star Game. Even when he clearly had overstayed his welcome as a productive player, he still represented a massive source of revenue for the Yankees and for the sport.

MLB social media has spent the week doing a tournament of Jeter’s best moments under the #Jeets16 hashtag. Budweiser just put out an ad that uses the number retirement as its inspiration. The league, and a corporation as huge as Anheuser-Busch, wouldn’t be doing a Jeter-shaped media blitz if there wasn’t profit to be made here. And there is, of course, seeing as Jeter was the most recognizable figure in baseball, and one of the most recognizable people in all of sports, for nearly two decades.

There’s still something a little strange, though, about having this much hullabaloo about a retired player. The Sunday night game features two strong teams chock full of exciting young talent. Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa, Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, and George Springer will all be taking part in this game.  There’s absolutely room to celebrate both Jeter’s past and those players’ present and future. Given the pre-game focus on Jeter, it will be interesting to see how much of the game broadcast is spent discussing him and not the game itself. It could go some way to revealing ESPN’s production interests.

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Back in the spring, there was a gaggle of starting pitchers under consideration for the final spot in the Yankees rotation. Eventually, the lesser-known starter who wowed management got the chance. Jordan Montgomery has been a top-five rookie starter this year so far and, by all accounts, looks like a major leaguer. Now, the question has shifted. Now, we ask not “Will he pitch in the majors?” but “How good will he be?”

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It’s not supposed to be the Yankees’ time — not yet. I think we’ve all sensed a coming resurgence, given their resources, and given their farm system. We knew the Yankees would bounce back eventually, and it’s considered a foregone conclusion they’re going to grab at least one of the big-name future free agents. But this year — this was supposed to be an average year. Maybe a wild-card year, one of those years where, if everything went right, the Yankees could scrape to 85 or 90 wins. The division was going to belong to the Red Sox. How could that division not belong to the Red Sox?

Still might. Red Sox are good. But everyone’s aware of the Yankees, now. They opened the season 1-4, losing consecutive series to the Rays and Orioles. Yet they just pulled off a road weekend sweep in Wrigley Field. If you sort the regular standings, the Yankees have baseball’s best winning percentage. If you sort the nerd-friendly standings, the Yankees have baseball’s best BaseRuns winning percentage. By outcome and by process, the Yankees have been better than anyone, and what might be truly frightening is just how much has gone wrong.

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The Yankees have gotten off to a surprising start, sitting in a first-place tie in the AL East even despite having mostly played without Gary Sanchez. These being the Yankees, there’s not much that happens under the radar, and I’ve already fielded a number of chat questions about a reasonably young outfielder with a high walk rate and a 191 wRC+. He’s helped to power the Yankees to where they are today, far exceeding expectations with a slugging percentage of .640. Aaron Judge, also, has been terrific.

Judge, in fact, has been the club’s best player. For one month, he’s played at his ceiling, and he’s become a household name just as a function of his highlight home runs. Yet Aaron Hicks, too, has also been playing at his ceiling. Where Judge is a 25-year-old prospect, Hicks is a 27-year-old post-prospect, if you will. Until now, he felt a little like a bust. It might still end up a bummer of a season. But maybe, just maybe, for Aaron Hicks, it’s clicking.

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