At the end of January, I observed that the Astros projected to get a lot better at making contact. Making contact, of course, is not the primary goal for any hitter in the box, since some kinds of contact are hardly worth making, but we still think of certain lineups as being strikeout-prone, and I think we’d all prefer more contact, if we had our druthers.

Anyway, that post was done when we had end-of-January depth charts. More importantly, that post was done when all we had were the Steamer projections. Now we have the blended Steamer and ZiPS projections, so, long story short, here are all 30 projected team offensive strikeout rates, for non-pitchers. (We don’t project pitchers batting.) (Why would we?) (Ugh)

The lowest projected rate belongs to the Red Sox, barely. The highest projected rate belongs to the Brewers, less barely. This order of teams might not tell you very much — I don’t know — so for another look, here are the projected changes in strikeout rate, relative to last year’s numbers. A negative here means more contact, because a lower strikeout rate minus a higher strikeout rate yields a negative result.

This confirms what the original post already said: The Astros should make plenty more contact this time around. Projections can be wrong, and hitters can make adjustments, but strikeouts tend to be one of those “sticky” things year-to-year. Coming up behind the Astros, the Padres also project to make a lot more contact than they just did. Good for them! There’s a difference of more than a percentage point between the Astros and the Padres, but then between the Padres and the Indians, there are almost two percentage points. The Angels and Giants bring up the rear, even though they still project to have team strikeout rates within the best 10. They should be both good at contact and worse at contact. If the projections hold, which, you know, they often don’t. That’s baseball!

Late last September, in this very space, I put up a short post entitled “Clayton Kershaw Experimented On the Rockies.” The idea: Two times, in low-leverage situations, Kershaw showed Rockies hitters a new twist. Specifically, the over-the-top southpaw dropped his arm angle to deliver what was more of a tailing fastball. It’s weird whenever a high-profile pitcher does anything different, and it was fair to wonder whether Kershaw might bring the tweak into the playoffs. He did! Take a look.

Borrowing from Texas Leaguers, here are Kershaw’s release points last year, before and then beginning from the Rockies start.

It’s easy to spot the exceptional pitches. When Kershaw dropped down — which he apparently did a total of 25 times — his release point dropped a half-foot, and it shifted over roughly a foot and a half. That’s a significantly different throwing motion, and you could see from Kershaw’s follow-throughs that nothing about it was ordinary. The lower slot was supposedly how Kershaw used to throw in high school. He was inspired to bring it into game action by teammate Rich Hill.

Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher in the world. Therefore, one should always be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. You’d think that whatever Kershaw touches should turn to gold. But how did this experiment actually do? I’ll note that, of Kershaw’s 25 lower-slot pitches, all of them were fastballs. They averaged two inches more drop than Kershaw’s normal four-seamer, and six inches more horizontal break. Over the games in which Kershaw dropped down, his regular fastball averaged 93.9 miles per hour, and his drop-down fastballs averaged 95.3. Hey, that’s pretty good!

Yet there is more information. All but one of the drop-down fastballs were thrown in one-strike or two-strike counts. Of the fastballs, 16 counted as strikes, and there were three whiffs. There were also 15 swings, and eight of those hit a ball fair. Based on that last part, Kershaw wasn’t exactly successful in screwing with the hitters’ timing. Here’s the last drop-down fastball of Kershaw’s 2016:

From earlier in the same game:

And, I showed you the Anthony Rizzo home run. The start before, Kershaw tried the same thing on Rizzo, and Rizzo *almost* went deep. Or, I guess he did go deep, but just not the right kind of deep.

We’re talking about 25 pitches. One can reach no firm conclusions. Encouragingly, Kershaw’s drop-down fastballs were fast. Discouragingly, they didn’t seem to screw with hitters that much. Encouragingly, Kershaw had the confidence to drop down in playoff situations in the first place. Discouragingly, his motion was weird and his command of the fastball was lacking. Kershaw’s average drop-down fastball was higher than his average normal fastball, even though the movement would dictate putting in lower zones. More than a few times, the pitch was left up.

I don’t know if we’ll see Kershaw do this anymore. Maybe the experiment is over. Maybe, like the changeup, Kershaw will work at this without ever perfecting it. Maybe, like the slider, Kershaw will perfect it, and the best pitcher in the world will get even better. Plenty still to find out! I would suggest that, if this is something Kershaw does intend to keep up, he learn a second lesson from Hill.

Hill, you see, throws both fastballs and breaking balls from his lower slot. Kershaw didn’t do that, and so one could interpret his drop-down as something of a tell. It’s worth keeping in mind. Kershaw’s experiment, in its first run, was nothing fantastic. Maybe there’ll still be more trials.

Last April 4, Adam Jones swung at the first pitch two times. He swung at the first pitch five times on April 6, and then he swung at three more first pitches on April 14. By bedtime April 20, he was up to 16 first-pitch swings. The next day, he added four more.

Teammate J.J. Hardy also swung at the first pitch 16 times. All season. Out of 438 first pitches.

Hardy has never been aggressive early on. His highest-ever first-pitch swing rate is 11.9%, set as a rookie. His career rate is 8%, against a league average north of 27%. Last year, though, he was particularly patient. Not that Hardy is aggressive in any count, but I’ve highlighted him in this plot of first-pitch swing rates and all-other-count swing rates.

The next-lowest first-pitch swing rate was more than twice as high. Hardy’s other-pitch swing rate isn’t so weird, around 47%. But he swung at the first pitch just 3.7% of the time. The other players in his peer group, by other-pitch swing rate, went after the first pitch 25.7% of the time. It’s not that Hardy would never go after the first pitch, but every single time, it came as a surprise.

You’d figure Hardy might be really selective then, right? Welp! Of the 16 first-pitch swings, seven came at pitches out of the zone. Seven swings put the ball in play, but Hardy wound up with one hit, on a grounder. Perhaps it’s additionally worth noting that Hardy took all of three first-pitch swings when there was no one on base. When he was aggressive, mostly, he was just trying to move runners around.

It should go without saying that I don’t know exactly what Hardy’s plan is, because I’m not J.J. Hardy. He might just feel a lot more comfortable after he sees one pitch out of the hand. But just looking at this from the outside, Hardy could probably stand to just pay closer attention from the on-deck circle, because he’s been taken advantage of. Unsurprisingly, Hardy last year had one of the league’s very highest first-pitch zone rates. And no other hitter in the game had a higher percentage of his plate appearances advance to an 0-and-1 count. Hardy went through that count in about 61% of his trips. The average was 49%. If anything, it might be strange these rates weren’t even higher.

Again, hey, Hardy’s his own man. He’s coming off a much better season than the one he had the year before, so more power to him for his 2.3 WAR. He’s not doing everything wrong. But that’s an Orioles lineup full of guys unafraid to take an early hack. Maybe Hardy’s just trying to be different on purpose, but it seems to me he’s doing himself a disservice by watching as much as he does. There has to be a better way to get yourself prepared.

Shifts. They’re everywhere! They take different forms, some more extreme or unusual than others, but this is, without question, the era of non-traditional defensive positioning. Defense will never again look like it used to, because there’s no reason to go back. I was watching a WBC game the other day and the broadcasters pointed out that one of the teams wasn’t shifting. That’s what’s newsworthy now. We take defensive movement for granted.

This is an InstaGraphs post, instead of a front-page post, because there’s nothing surprising about the images or data that follow. I just want to show you, graphically, how the sport has changed over the past decade or so. You know we have numbers like pull rate, correct? That information, on the league-wide scale, seems to be stable going back to about 2006. Here is how batted balls have been distributed:

Super consistent. Balls are being pulled as often as before, and they’re being sent the other way as often as before. Maybe you expected that, or maybe you didn’t! I’m not in your head. Let’s just move on to the more interesting stuff. Here is league-wide directional wRC+:

The pull line has stayed consistent. Yet there are recent increases in the other two lines. How about we focus on just batting average on balls in play?

Pull line down. Opposite line up! This is all very intuitive. To go one step further, here is the same plot as above, only in this one I’ve included only ground balls:

I could’ve broken out right-handed hitters and left-handed hitters, but these days there are adjustments against hitters on both sides. And anyway, all this does is prove what you presumably would’ve already guessed. Pulled ground balls were never great, but they used to be hits more than a fifth of the time. That rate has dipped, because almost everyone pulls the majority of their grounders, so that’s where the defenders are going in greater number. Grounders back up the middle have seen a slight rise in success, with a weird spike in 2014. And then the line for grounders to the opposite field has taken off. The BABIP as recently as 2009 was .287. Last year it was .373. You know what those grounders look like when the defenders have moved. They’re frequently routine rollers, hit to an area where nobody is.

The end result of all this? A decade ago, the league BABIP on grounders was .239. Last season, the league BABIP on grounders was .239. That isn’t meant to suggest that shifting in general is a complete waste of time. It’s just — it’s complicated. Baseball will find its own levels, regardless of what you want or expect.

Drew Storen’s breaking ball is probably a slider, but for the purposes of this piece, let’s imagine he has a curveball. Sometimes called a hammer, or a yellow hammer, the curveball’s downward trajectory and velocity gap off the fastball serves to elicit balls that pound the ground.

Storen also has a literal hammer, designed to pound… gloves.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll admit from the top that this is just an experiment. But anyway, I won’t waste your time. Justin Smoak is 30 years old. He’s coming off a 90 wRC+ and a WAR of -0.1. He already has seven seasons of big-league experience, and in precisely zero of those has he measured in at even one win above replacement. Relative to what he was as a prospect, he’s been extremely disappointing. Last July, weirdly, the Blue Jays signed Smoak to a multi-year contract extension. Here’s a clip from his player page:

RotoWire News: Smoak, who was previously presumed to be in line for a platoon role, is the Jays’ preferred everyday first baseman, Shi Davidi of Sportsnet reports. (2/19/2017)

Strange! But maybe…not so strange? Stick with me. As a hitter, your primary skills involve how often you make contact, how hard you make contact, and where the ball goes after contact. I’ve messed around before with pitch comps, looking for similar pitches based on velocity, horizontal movement, and vertical movement. In this somewhat similar experiment, I’ve looked for similar hitters to Smoak based on 2016’s exit velocities, launch angles, and contact rates. Same methodology and everything — it’s all based around z-scores. In the big table below, the most similar hitters to Smoak last season, based on this method. I’ve included everyone with a combined comp score of 2.0 or lower.

The single best comparison to Smoak: Freeman, who was and is one of the best players on the Braves. You’ll notice there are but two below-average wRC+ marks out of 17. The overall average wRC+ in this group is 118. The median is 119. Last season, Jose Bautista’s wRC+ for the Blue Jays was 122.

I’ve never looked at players quite like this before, so don’t take this to mean more than it does. It seems, at least, modestly encouraging — Smoak’s exit-velocity numbers were quite good, and he didn’t struggle at all to generate lift. Maybe there’s just something about his approach that holds him back, but then, maybe he’s better than he looked. Given that he’s a slow-footed first baseman, he’s never going to top a WAR leaderboard. Yet perhaps the Blue Jays correctly identified that there’s upside still in there. The track record is what it is, but I can’t very well look at that table and dismiss it.

Everyone loves to observe a rebuild, so along those lines, we’re all waiting to see where the White Sox ultimately deal Jose Quintana. The Yankees have been in there, and the Pirates have been in there, but another team to draw frequent mention has been the Astros. As the Astros have been evaluated, it’s been my impression that the rotation is considered the potential weakness. Hence the Quintana link. You get how this works.

You’ve presumably noticed that Jose Quintana doesn’t play for the Astros yet. The Astros themselves are inclined to open the year with what they already have. Among the in-house options is a free agent the team signed fairly quietly last November. The Astros inked Charlie Morton to a two-year, sort of speculative contract after he was injured last year in his fourth start. Morton is entering his mid-30s, and he has an extensive injury history. Plus, there’s the 119 career ERA-. What grabbed the Astros’ attention was this:

Before Morton got hurt, he was throwing harder than ever. He had his hardest sinker, his hardest curveball, and his hardest splitter, plus a new-ish, hard cutter. Among pitchers who started games in both 2015 and 2016, Morton had the third-biggest fastball-velocity improvement, behind only David Phelps and James Paxton. It was enough to take a chance, considering Morton’s injury was to his leg. There’s upside in ground-ball pitchers with new velocity.

The question was whether the velocity bump would be real. So far, so good.

Morton, who saw a velocity spike last March and April before blowing out his hamstring, said afterward he felt like the ball came out of his hand well. His sinker sat between 94 and 96 mph, according to one scout’s radar gun.

The bulk of spring-training results are pretty much useless. Velocity is one of those things that’s difficult to fake. Beyond that, historically, spring velocity has been a little lower than regular-season velocity, since pitchers are still working up to 100%. So: It’s early, but it’s very encouraging. Charlie Morton seems to still have that zip, at a time when not having the same zip would be forgivable. More velocity tends to make pitchers better.

Morton’s sinker is a proven ground-ball pitch. With more speed, it would also become a less hittable pitch. He trusts his splitter, and as far as his curveball goes, last year’s closest pitch comp was Stephen Strasburg’s curveball. Morton’s curve ranked 10th in average spin rate, out of 507. He’s there ahead of names like Jeremy Hellickson and Lance McCullers. The Astros also intend to have Morton keep using that cutter to keep lefties honest.

It doesn’t mean anything’s a lock. It certainly doesn’t mean Morton will stay healthy enough to make 20 or 25 starts. But the Astros took a chance, and based on how Morton is throwing, he resembles a legitimate power pitcher with ground-ball and putaway stuff. The Doug Fister flier didn’t pan out. This one could make a good rotation great.

Over the last few years, the quantity of terrific baseball writing has exploded online, with a widening variety of publishers putting out interesting commentary and analysis about the game we all love. While we are proud of the work we do here at FanGraphs, there are a lot of people putting out fantastic pieces at other outlets, and we’ve long had a desire to connect some of these great baseball writers with our audience, and help you guys discover other talented scribes to whom you may not have been exposed before.

So, today, we’re proud to announce the FanGraphs Residency program. We’ve reached out to a number of writers we like, and will be giving them an opportunity to publish their work here on FanGraphs during a given month. The number and types of articles they publish will vary, as we’ll mix in research, analysis, and commentary, and our hope is that the different voices to which the program will give a platform will help provide a wide array of content. With different kinds of writers taking turns, we think there’s a good chance everyone will find a new voice to follow, and that this program will help provide some additional exposure to those who have been doing good work at outlets who might not get as much traffic as FanGraphs does.

We’re excited to launch this program by announcing our Resident for the month of March: Kate Preusser. Kate is currently the Managing Editor at Lookout Landing, and if you purchased the 2017 Hardball Times Annual, you likely enjoyed her AL West review, which was highlighted by Paul Swydan as one of his favorite chapters in the book. She also co-hosts the Icosahedron Podcast, and we think you’re going to enjoy getting to read more of her work here during the month of March.

Along with the written articles, each resident will also be joining Carson for an episode of FanGraphs Audio during their month with us, so you’ll get to hear their voices, as well as read their work, during their time here. We hope that this combination will allow you to get to know writers of whom you may not previously have been aware, and hopefully you follow them at their other outlets after their residency here is finished.

We should note that we’re using the residency term more to describe the short-term nature of this position, and won’t be working our residents to the bone in the way that medical residents are sometimes used. These are also paid positions, so we’re not simply asking these writers to provide content to us in exchange for exposure; we believe they are quality writers who deserve larger audiences, and we simply want to give them that opportunity.

We’re excited about this program, and hope that you guys enjoy what each resident brings to the site, as well. Some of the names who are lined up for this summer will already be familiar to you, while others will likely be new, and we think this mix of voices and perspectives will help round out the content that our staff currently provides on a daily basis.

If you have someone you’d like to nominate for a residency position, we’d love to hear about them; you can email residency@fangraphs.com to suggest a writer for a future spot here. This position is designed primarily for those who already have shown that they can provide quality published content, but if you know someone who may not yet have had an opportunity to publish their work but has interesting and insightful things to say about baseball, we’d be happy to consider them as well. If you’re a writer who is interested in a spot, we will ask that you do not nominate yourselves for a residency position, but instead be referred by someone who has enjoyed your work and thinks you would benefit from access to a wider audience.

A few hours from now, you’ll be reading Kate’s first piece here on FanGraphs, and we think you’ll enjoy getting to know her (or know her writing a bit more) over the next month. We hope this program can be a win for both interesting writers and our audience, and look forward to connecting you all with people we think you might really enjoy.

So I don’t want to make too much of a couple swings early in spring training but…

Here’s Bryce Harper’s first at-bat of the spring from last week.

And here’s his second homer in nine spring at-bats, an event having taken place on Thursday.

In Harper’s first four spring games, he’s gone 4-of-9 with two homers and three walks against two strikeouts. It’s really early. This might not mean anything. But after last season’s dramatic decline from his 10-win, MVP-earning 2015 campaign, maybe it’s something. There were whispers about Harper playing through a shoulder injury last season, and his agent Scott Boras said last month that there was “an issue” with which Harper dealt. There sure seemed to be something not quite right.

His average exit velocity on fly balls and line drives fell from 94.5 mph in 2015 to 92.7 last season. Here’s his rolling 2015 exit velocity compared to the league average from Baseball Savant…

And his 2016 average exit velocity…

Or maybe the Cubs just got in Harper’s head in early May, walking him 13 times in a four-game series, three times intentionally. After a 19% walk rate during the first half of last season, that mark slipped to 14.7% in the second half. At the same time, his strikeout rate rose from 15.8% to 22.8%. But this is a player who posted a 20% walk rate in 2015. He’s used to being pitched around. So maybe Harper was playing through injury, though he or the Nationals never acknowledged that. Maybe he fell out of a good approach and comfort level at the plate. Maybe it was a combination of factors.

Whatever the reason, his very different 2015 and 2016 seasons make him one of the more interesting players to watch early this season. And if you believe he was hurting after an outstanding April last season, he sure looks healthy right now.

The expectations for 2017 are tempered surrounding a player who is considered to be a generational talent. PECOTA is projecting a four-win season, a .270/.375/.501 slash line, and 27 homers in 575 plate appearances. ZiPS forecasts 4.4 WAR, 29 homers, and a .280/.406/.521 slash line over 600 plate appearances. The Fans projections have Harper being about equal in value to Gary Sanchez.

While Harper’s 2015 was fueled by to some extent by an overperformance on fly balls, pulling a Tyler Naquin, it was still an all-time great season.

And while it’s dangerous to make something of a few spring at bats, sometimes they can mean something. And if these two swings indicate Harper is healthier than he was a year ago, then perhaps he’s a good bet to exceed his projections, and do some in dramatically.

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