Andrew Miller made a batter look silly last night. Andrew Miller makes batters look silly most nights, but last night, a batter looked particularly silly. One surefire way to identify a batter who just got done looking silly is to check whether he’s laying down in dirt right after he swung. Let’s see.

Q: Was This Major Leaguer Laying Down in the Dirt Right After He Swung?

A: Sure was

That there batter sure looked silly. The good news for Khris Davis is, he’s not alone. He didn’t even take the season’s most ill-advised swing against Miller. As our own Jeff Sullivan pointed out back in May, maybe the thing Miller does very best is force hitters to take ill-advised swings, at least certainly relative to the ones they don’t take. I’ll explain. When Jeff wrote his article in May, Miller’s O-Swing% against was higher than his Z-Swing% against, making him the only pitcher in baseball with such a distinction. To translate that into English: batters were swinging at would-be balls from Miller more frequently than they were swinging at would-be strikes. That’s not how hitting is supposed to work.

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The Reds are bad, and the Dodgers just clobbered them. As a part of that clobbering, Adrian Gonzalez socked three dingers. Here, you can watch them all! Each is impressive in its own way, I suppose. They’re most impressive as a group.

There was a time when Gonzalez’s power was absent. He hit three home runs in April. He hit three home runs, combined, in May and June. The fairly obvious culprit was a back injury, and it takes no imagination at all to figure out how an achy back could affect a swing. Gonzalez got some treatment. He insisted his back felt better. The numbers still didn’t quite show up.

Now they’re showing up. From the looks of things, Gonzalez is indeed healthy again, and it simply took him a short stretch to re-find what previously had made him successful. Adrian Gonzalez is looking like Adrian Gonzalez again. The most compelling evidence is probably what follows, as drawn from Baseball Savant. Here are nearly two years of Gonzalez’s batted balls, as tracked by Statcast. This plot shows rolling average launch angles.

That dip is impossible to miss, as an injured and compromised Gonzalez plummeted toward 0. He’s reversed that, again successfully putting batted balls in the air. And he’s once more hitting with authority. Here’s a rolling-average plot of hard-hit rate, and this doesn’t include Monday’s game, not that it would make a huge difference:

Gonzalez is getting his swing back, and he’s also showing a better ability to hit the ball hard to right. Of course, at his best, he’s been more of an all-fields threat — and Monday, he pulled two homers while sending another the other way. I know it was a day game in Cincinnati against the Reds, but big-league homers are big-league homers. Gonzalez can hit them again, and he can do other things, and suddenly he’s up to a 123 wRC+. That’s in line with where he’s been for a while.

The Dodgers are still playing without Clayton Kershaw. The Dodgers are still winning without Clayton Kershaw. The Dodgers, of course, would love Kershaw back, but since the All-Star break, Gonzalez has been a key part of what’s been the best offense in the National League. Kershaw’s important. He’s pretty far from being everything.

The Giants faced Noah Syndergaard Sunday night, and they tried to steal two bases. Both times, they were unsuccessful. That’s notable because Syndergaard, this year, has been horrible about controlling the running game. It’s been his one drawback — before Sunday, runners in 2016 were 40-for-44 in their attempts. The Giants assumed they’d be able to take advantage of his vulnerability. Plans went awry and for those reasons, and others, the Giants lost.

The first runner to get thrown out was Trevor Brown. Brown, as you might know, is a catcher. Before Sunday in the majors this year, Brown was 0-for-0 in trying to steal. He doesn’t run. He was trying to test the limits of Syndergaard’s weakness, and Brown got himself out, after Rene Rivera made a strong throw to second.

There’s nothing too interesting about that. Syndergaard was slow to the plate. Rivera did his job well. Brown got a bad jump and he doesn’t sprint well to begin with. That caught steal is almost a direct result of other players not getting caught stealing. The weakness encourages non-runners to run. Just as Syndergaard is slow enough that any decent runner can advance, some runners are slow enough that even Syndergaard can’t be exploited.

I’m more interested in the second runner to get thrown out. That was Eduardo Nunez, and, unlike Brown, Nunez has had a big year in swiping. He’s an obvious running threat. Here’s Syndergaard’s first pitch after Nunez reached:

And now, here’s the second pitch:

You see that? Nunez had seen enough. He read Syndergaard and took off on the second delivery. Rivera was excellent here — he was quick to his feet and his throw was outstanding. So, Rivera absolutely played a role. But Syndergaard also showed Nunez a twist. The first pitch:

The second pitch:

Syndergaard lowered his leg lift. He mixed up his timing, and while for the first pitch I had him close to 1.7 seconds to the plate, on the second pitch he was at almost 1.4. He shaved roughly 15% off his time, and though he was still short of the 1.3 mark that most pitchers want to achieve, that’s a healthy leap forward. Syndergaard gave Nunez a different look, and he gave his own catcher a chance. Nunez easily could’ve wound up safe if Rivera’s throw were any worse, but what matters is just that there was a possibility he’d be out. This is something Syndergaard’s been working on, and getting Nunez out is an encouraging step.

It’s going to take more outs before runners stop trying. And it’s worth noting that, when Syndergaard lowered his leg lift, he threw his slowest fastball of the first five innings. The Mets don’t want for him to sacrifice too much, and they need to keep an eye on his mechanics. But for the time being, Syndergaard is coming off an outstanding start, and in that start, runners trying to steal went 0-for-2. One of those runners even knows how to run. It’s something to build on.

Kevin Kiermaier missed a good chunk of the season after breaking his glove hand in late May, and that’s a shame, because when Kiermaier is in the field, he’s among the most exciting players in baseball. Kiermaier is must-see television with a glove in his hand. Decidedly less so at the plate. He’s been roughly a league-average hitter through 1,100 career plate appearances, and so it’s understandable that when we’re paying attention to Kiermaier, it’s usually for his defense.

But I want to flip the script for a minute. The Rays are bad, and Kiermaier missed time, and we’re usually paying attention to the defense, so this may have been easy to miss, but Kiermaier’s undergone some rather radical changes at the plate, relative to last season. Cutting to the chase:

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Back in May, we told you guys that we were teaming up with the Pitch Talks crew for a summer tour. We had our first event in Boston back in July, and it went really well, with a few hundred Red Sox fans packing the house for a fun evening with GM Mike Hazen, Bill “Spaceman” Lee, and a bunch of local writers mixed in.

In the next few weeks, the tour really picks up steam, however, with three events happening over the upcoming month.

First up, we’re heading to San Francisco in 12 days.

The Giants GM and play-by-play announcer will both be joining us at The Independent, and Eno Sarris and I will represent FanGraphs among a couple of panels of terrific writers. It’s going to be a good time, and is a steal at just $25. Buy your tickets now.

A week after that, Eno will be traveling to Toronto to take part in the next event up there, joining Jeff Passan and the local Blue Jays writers who have made the events up there so successful.

Then, finally, I’ll be heading to Chicago in September to meet up with Craig Edwards and a bunch of smart baseball folks from the windy city for an event at The Metro right around the corner from Wrigley Field.

Jonah Keri will be joining us for that one as well, and you’ll want to get your tickets before they’re gone, as that promises to be a fun show.

If you’re in SF on August 29th, Toronto on September 8th, or Chicago on September 22nd, make sure you come out and spend an evening talking baseball with a bunch of other die-hard fans. We’re looking forward to seeing you all there.

Clutch hitting isn’t that real of a thing. We don’t need to dwell on this, right? We’ve been over this so many times and I think we all share a common understanding. Sure, there’s room for clutch hitting to be a legitimate skill. Even when it might be a legitimate skill, it doesn’t make or break a player or team. The majority of what we observe appears to be luck, at least when it comes to significant over- or underachieving. That’s it. That’s where the conversation is.

So, boy, do I have a graphic for you! We have a win-expectancy-based statistic, known as Clutch. There’s Clutch for relief pitching, Clutch for starting pitching, and Clutch for hitting. In this plot, I’m showing 2015 team offensive Clutch, and 2016 team offensive Clutch. You should immediately notice two things. One, the distribution is random. Two, the Astros.

In offensive Clutch, last year, the Astros ranked second-worst. In offensive Clutch, this year, the Astros rank third-worst. So they haven’t been in the basement in either individual season, but when you combine them, then the Astros show up in last, and they’re buried. They have a combined offensive Clutch score of -13.8. Next-worst are the Brewers, at -8.7. That’s a difference of five wins. This is how unclutch Astros hitters have been.

Now, I should note the league average isn’t zero — it’s actually about -3 or -4. These numbers suggest that hitters overall are slightly unclutch, maybe because of advancements in bullpen usage. Anyway, between the Astros and the average would be something like 10 wins. That’s 10 wins over less than two full seasons. That’s 10 wins the Astros might have if their hitting had simply not been unclutch. I know I’ve already said it’s mostly random. I continue to believe it’s mostly random. Maybe a very small factor here is how the Astros strike out. But their offensive timing has just plain sucked. I don’t know how to explain it, but I do know how to observe it, and I’m sure it’s frustrated the clubhouse and the whole organization.

Since the start of last season, the Astros rank first in baseball in team OPS in what Baseball-Reference considers low-leverage situations. Bump it up to medium leverage, and the Astros rank 19th. Go all the way to high leverage, and the Astros rank 25th. In a sense that would be the explanation, but that doesn’t really explain things as much as it just re-states them. What we know about is the bad timing. If not the strikeouts, it could conceivably have something to do with general player inexperience. But I’m here grasping at straws. If there’s anything to research, it’s beyond what I can do in a small amount of time. Let’s just agree to end here today.

Last season, the Astros finished second in the AL West, two games out of first. This season, they’re in the hunt, but off the pace for the wild card. Who knows how things could be? Who knows how things could’ve been? Timing isn’t everything, but it’s an awful lot of it.

I just wrote a little bit about Joc Pederson making gains in his ability to make contact. The first commenter underneath got me thinking about Javier Baez. In the Pederson post, I began by reflecting on George Springer, but Baez was a little like Springer to an even somehow more extreme degree. When Baez was a prospect, it’s possible no one else had his maximum bat speed. But at the same time, few shared his propensity for swinging and missing. Fold in an over-aggressive approach and every single at-bat was boom or bust.

Baez got extended playing time as a rookie in 2014. During the PITCHf/x era, there have been more than 3,000 player seasons with at least 200 plate appearances. Baez posted the lowest contact rate out of all of them, at 59%. He wasn’t too hard to diagnose. Barring something almost unbelievable, Baez would need to get better at contact in order to have a real big-league career.

Good news! Javier Baez is making it. He’s 23, he has a league-average wRC+, and this is how his contact has gone:

He still misses the ball, and he still swings at a whole lot of pitches out of the strike zone, but where Baez as a rookie struck out an impossible 42% of the time, now he’s down to 25%. Javier Baez is putting things together. He should factor firmly into the Cubs’ plans, if nothing else but as a valuable trade asset. The bat is meeting the ball more often, and that was always going to be the struggle.

Shifting gears, turn your attention to the Royals. Last offseason, the Royals re-signed Alex Gordon, getting something of a hometown discount in the process. I wrote about that, and here’s a quick excerpt!

[…]one, Gordon shouldn’t hit the wall all of a sudden[…]

Gordon this year has been worth 0.3 WAR. After back-to-back wRC+ marks of 122, this year he’s down at 77. Even more troubling, Gordon hasn’t been hitting the baseball. His approach and his results were always consistent. In a sense I guess they might still be considered consistent, but they are also much much worse. Gordon’s career contact:

There’s nothing subtle about that. And you could blame a wrist injury he sustained toward the end of May, but there’s something curious — Gordon, before that, batted 166 times, with bad offense and an elevated strikeout rate. Gordon, after that, has batted 171 times, with bad offense and an elevated strikeout rate. Alex Gordon was having problems making contact before getting hurt, so I don’t know what one’s supposed to make of that. Gordon has gone through ruts before, and he’s earned the benefit of the doubt. But this is worrisome, not just because Gordon is a franchise legend, but also because the Royals are a team that can’t afford to spend such big money on underachievers. Don’t sleep on Gordon as one of the big reasons why these Royals probably aren’t getting back to the playoffs.

Baseball is wonderful and baseball is horrible. There’s evidence for both of these everywhere, but Baez and Gordon are stuck in my mind. As recently as 2014, Gordon had the higher wRC+ by 69 points. He had the higher contact rate by 19 points. Now it’s 2016, and they’ve both cleared 300 trips to the plate. Baez has been the better hitter. And so much more improbably, Baez has made more frequent contact. I’ll be damned. This is a hell of a thing that we watch.

Just to be clear, there are two positions here.

Position: New York Yankees Baseball Operations Web Application Developer

Location: The Bronx

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.

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I’m not really in the business of piling on. We know the Reds haven’t been very good, and we knew the Reds weren’t supposed to be very good. They are openly rebuilding, and while rebuilding teams don’t get to completely neglect the big-league product, it’s not really the priority. We all know how this works. And, say, wouldn’t you know it, but since the calendar flipped to July, the Reds have actually won more games than they’ve lost! Good for them. It would be nice to see the bad teams rise perhaps quicker than they ever thought possible.

There’s just something I can’t let go by, not without calling attention to it. The Reds, overall, have been bad. They’ve been bad in large part because their pitchers have been bad. Here are the month-by-month WARs for the Reds’ collective pitching staff:

• April: -1.4 WAR
• May: -1.3
• June: -0.8
• July: +1.8
• August: +0.1

They don’t seem to add up so cleanly, but if you look at the full-season statistics, Reds pitchers have combined for -2.1 WAR. Unsurprisingly, that’s the lowest mark in baseball — the Angels are second-worst, at +3.0. It seems like the Reds might have last place sewn up. But let’s step beyond just 2016. Let’s look at forever? Here are the worst team pitching staffs since 1900, according to FanGraphs WAR and FanGraphs WAR alone:

WAR is just one measure. I know. It doesn’t get everything perfect. I know. It does do a lot more right than wrong. And according to WAR, these Reds could end up being the worst pitching staff in modern baseball history. No team yet on record has rated below replacement level. That’s where the Reds are, underwater by a couple of wins, and while July suggested they could pull themselves out of this and get a breath of fresh air, there’s work to be done. The Reds have 52 games to go, assuming they play them all. They don’t necessarily need to pitch well. They just need to pitch better, or else they could rank as the worst anyone’s seen. That’s something to avoid. That’s something to play for!

Homer Bailey has returned. That’s a plus for the Reds. Alfredo Simon is on the disabled list, and J.J. Hoover is in the minors, and those are both pluses for the Reds. Quietly, Anthony DeSclafani has been super effective. The Reds should have the arms they need. As I look, the Reds are projected the rest of the way for +3.7 pitching WAR, which would get them out of…the…red, so to speak. But if nothing else, just know what’s already happened. The Reds pitchers have been historically lousy. You might’ve suspected that to be true, but it always helps to confirm. Or, maybe, it helps nothing at all.

I think everyone agrees the White Sox haven’t had the year they wanted. So, at present, they’re probably not too keen on celebrating individual accomplishments, but I don’t care, because I’m not them, and because I need material to write about. Therefore! Take a look at Adam Eaton’s player page. There’s something kind of weird that might jump out to you. Eaton as a regular last year was worth 3.6 WAR. Eaton as a regular this year is looking to push 5 WAR. That on its own isn’t real crazy for a 27-year-old, but look over at some other columns. Compared to last year, Eaton has hit worse. Compared to last year, Eaton has run the bases worse. Still, his value has gone up.

That’s because of his defense. What’s funny there, too, is that Eaton moved over to right field from center. So he’s handled a less-important position, but he’s been absolutely fantastic in the corner. Part of what’s happened is that Eaton has shown exceptional range. Yet that doesn’t come close to being a full explanation. You probably know that we have UZR on the site, and we also display many of its components. One of those components is ARM rating, and we have that information going back to 2002. Here are the top 10 player-seasons in ARM per 1,000 innings, for outfielders with at least 750 innings played on the grass. (As you understand, this season isn’t yet over.) (Just, be cool.)

That should go to show you how good Eaton has been. And now, I want to show you another table. I looked at every outfielder who played at least 750 defensive innings in the outfield for two years in a row. Here are the biggest year-to-year ARM-rating improvements:

If the season ended now, Eaton would officially rank first in the table. The season actually has a whole lot left — perhaps to the White Sox’ collective chagrin — but Eaton is still positioned well. He’s never had strong ARM numbers before. Now he’s having one of the best ARM seasons on record.

You don’t have to get too complicated with things. How can you explain these numbers? According to stats at Baseball-Reference, Eaton has been one of the best right fielders in terms of holding baserunners. He’s also held a lot of runners when he’s shifted over to center for occasional spells. And the thing you most closely associate with ARM rating is the outfield assist. Eaton leads all outfielders with 16 assists. Nobody else has more than 12. That kind of gap gets you a big positive number.

In the past, according to the Fan Scouting Report, Eaton wasn’t perceived to have a real strong arm. However, Eaton’s arm did eclipse 100 miles per hour on a throw in 2015. The strength was there, and it stands to reason Eaton this year has gotten more accurate. He might’ve also gotten better about his anticipation and his attack angles. This throw right here is a thing of beauty:

Of course, ARM success can also be tied to bad baserunning decisions:

…so it’s a noisy stat. Runners learn, and assists can come down to fractions of a second. There’s plenty of luck involved, to fold in with the skill. Adam Eaton might not actually have one of the most valuable arms in recent baseball history, but that arm has had a strong season. Most strong seasons are about both skill and luck.

Adam Eaton used to be a center fielder of questionable defensive adequacy. Now he’s a right fielder who looks more comfortable than perhaps any other right fielder. He’s done well to improve his angles, but even more importantly, Eaton’s arm has been playing incredibly well. It’s not close to enough to salvage the White Sox’ disappointing season, but Eaton, overall, has been among the least of their problems.