One of my favorite things about baseball is how Clayton Kershaw has never been able to master a changeup. There’s absolutely no one in baseball who needs a changeup less than Clayton Kershaw, but, drive is drive. He’s been frustrated by his own lack of progress, because as far as he’s concerned, he’ll forever see room for improvement. He still has an ERA. Runs are mistakes.

Kershaw wants to be better. It doesn’t matter to him how silly that sounds. He’s willing to try different things, and that brings us to this past weekend, when Kershaw and the Dodgers blew out the Rockies. We’re going to fast-forward to the seventh inning, when the Dodgers were up by eight runs. Actually, no, before we do that, here’s an image from Texas Leaguers. Kershaw’s estimated 2016 release points:

Three pitches stand out. Here’s the high one, from April:

You might’ve forgotten about that. The baseball season is long. Anyway, now, seventh inning, facing the Rockies. Here’s Kershaw throwing a pretty ordinary Kershaw-y pitch to Nolan Arenado:

Real good pitch. Here’s the following delivery:

You see that? So, Arenado singled. He was shortly eliminated. With two outs, up came Gerardo Parra. A typical Kershaw pitch:

And, the very next pitch:

You see Parra look out at the mound. Arenado did the same thing. That’s presumably because Kershaw gave them both a sudden, weird, different look. I’ll use screenshots now. The first of the two shown Parra pitches:

The second of the two shown Parra pitches:

Look at the arm. Look at the release point. Two times in the seventh inning, with the leverage about as low as it can get, Clayton Kershaw dropped down. He threw one ball, and he threw one strike, which earned a strikeout. Here’s a one-image comparison, with the ordinary release point shown by the yellow dot:

Just as Clayton Kershaw doesn’t need a changeup, he doesn’t need a second slot. He’s already the best at what he does in the game. But, I mean, what’s the harm? Especially at 8-0? I’m going to guess he’s tried this a few times in the bullpen. Might as well see if it plays in a game, with the playoffs coming up. Anything for an edge. I suppose even the best players have to work hard to remain the best.

I will say, Kershaw’s low-slot delivery doesn’t look so smooth. It doesn’t quite seem comfortable, and maybe you shouldn’t expect it to. That’s not how he’s thrown, but that second fastball was perfectly located, and you don’t need to be flawless if you’re offering a second look, for the surprise of it. The ball gets to the catcher in less than half a second. That doesn’t give hitters much time to process. I wonder if this was Kershaw’s idea, or if he’s been having conversations with Rich Hill. Hill loves his unpredictability. Imagine Hill’s deception with Kershaw’s stuff.

Or, don’t. The result would be terrifying. And besides, there’s not yet any indication this is going to keep up. For the time being, all we know is that Clayton Kershaw tried an experiment two times in a low-leverage inning. Maybe that’s all we’ll ever see. Or maybe, you know, it’s not. What am I, God?

Update

As shown in the comments, Kershaw was indeed inspired by Hill. And it turns out the strikeout pitch to Parra was the fastest pitch Kershaw has thrown in 2016, by a few tenths of a point. So.

With the minor-league playoffs finished, the Baltimore Orioles summoned first-base prospect Trey Mancini from Triple-A Norfolk this week to help sure up their offense. Mancini wasted no time making an impact for the O’s, notching his first career home run in Tuesday’s game against the Red Sox. Mancini broke out in 2015 when he slashed an outstanding .331/.370/.539 between High-A and Double-A. His raw numbers regressed a bit this season as he moved to a more pitcher-friendly park, but he still managed a strong .282/.357/.458 showing, with almost all of that coming at Triple-A.

Mancini’s power is enticing. In each of the last two seasons, he’s reached the 20-homer mark and ISO’d over .175. However, some of his other attributes take away from some of that shine. Mancini’s a first baseman, meaning he’ll need to hit a bunch to have a long-term future in the bigs. He also turns 25 next spring, making him a bit old for even the Triple-A level. And perhaps most importantly, he kind of strikes out a lot — likely due in part to his long swing.

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On Monday, I published a post about Addison Reed, and his Andrew Miller-like transformation with the New York Mets. Within that post, I talked about the Mets’ abundant, high-leverage usage of Reed, and to support that claim, I drew from some numbers hosted on Baseball-Reference — a combination of multi-inning relief outings (meaning three outs or more) and average leverage index upon entering the game — and found that only three relievers with more multi-inning outings also had a higher average leverage index.

And honestly, I’d never really thought to combine those two figures before. Each is capturing, at the upper limits, a very different type of pitcher. At the top of the multi-inning outing leaderboard, one finds a group of swingmen, long relievers, and mop-up pitchers. At the top of the leverage index leaderboard, one finds the game’s most elite closers and set-up men. Very little overlap exists between the two.

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All summer, we’ve been partnering with Pitch Talks to tour the country and be part of their great baseball events, and this Thursday, we’re bringing the party to Chicago. Specifically, we’re coming to The Metro, which is a stone’s throw from Wrigley Field, with a lineup that you definitely don’t want to miss.

Craig Edwards and I will be representing FanGraphs at the event, and we’ll share a panel with Jonah Keri, Rob Arthur, Harry Pavlidis, and Rany Jazayerli. The following panel will feature a group of writers from The Athletic along with local scribes Dan Hayes and Cat Garcia, and then Jonah will host a live version of his podcast with broadcasters Len Kasper and Jason Benetti.

It should be a great time. We had a blast at the events in Boston and San Francisco the last few months, and we’re excited to talk Cubs and White Sox with a bunch of you on Thursday night. You definitely don’t want to miss out if you’re around.

The show starts at 7:30, but doors open at 7:00, and it’s probably worth getting there early. You can buy tickets in advance for $26 each, or pick them up at the door for $28. We’ve had a blast with the Pitch Talks crew all summer, and this event promises to be just as fun, so come hang out with us on Thursday night; you won’t regret it.

To be clear, there are two postings here.

Position: Kansas City Royals Baseball Systems Developer

Location: Kansas City

Description:
The Kansas City Royals Baseball Club is seeking a highly motivated developer to support baseball operations. The ideal applicant will be able to manage multiple concurrent projects that facilitate enhanced communications, reporting, and other interactions between teams internal to the organization.

Responsibilities:

• Assist in development tasks and data operations.
• Assist in daily task monitoring to ensure data health, quality assurance, and reliability of systems.
• Support schema and testing of databases of various sizes.
• Develop, test, and optimize performance and accuracy of scripts used to calculate derived data.
• Automate, manage, and report data lifecycle based on retention and storage requirements.
• Explore novel tools to visualize data and explore models by implementing UI/UX in HTML, CSS, JavaScript/JQuery in conjunction with lead developer.
• Collaborate with baseball operations staff to create and improve internal analysis and informational tools.
• Apply mobile technology enhancements.

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Last night, the Giants took a 1-0 lead over the Dodgers into the 9th inning. They lost anyway. At this point, the team’s lead-blowing prowess has become so well known that it wasn’t even really a surprise, and the last week has cemented the tire-fire status of the team’s relief corps. They gave up two in the ninth to lose by one last night. They gave up two in the ninth to lose by one on Saturday. They gave up five in the ninth to lose by one last Tuesday. In the last seven days, the Giants bullpen has handed over three should-win games with three outs to go, and as a result, the Giants are now six games back in the NL West race, and tied with the Cardinals for the second Wild Card spot.

Those words make it sound bad, but I thought some graphs might more adequately represent the disaster that was the Giants bullpen over the last week.

This is a scatter plot of shutdowns and meltdowns, a couple of relief pitcher metrics we track here on FanGraphs. A shutdown is any relief appearance where the team’s win probability goes up by at least six percentage points during the outing, and a meltdown is an appearance where it goes down by at least six percentage points. The standard ratio of shutdowns to meltdowns is a little under 2:1, though for high leverage relievers, they usually earn those roles because they do much better than that.

As the graph shows, the Giants ratio last week was 1:7. They had the fewest shutdowns in MLB and the most meltdowns. Their bullpen essentially only pitched well when the game wasn’t really on the line, and then was a total disaster if the game was close.

So let’s look at the league’s relievers total Win Probability Added last week, or in the Giants case, Win Probability Lost.

I probably didn’t have to highlight the Giants line there; you likely would have known it was them even without the assistance. They racked up nearly -2.0 WPA last week, which is astonishingly bad for a seven day stretch.

Let’s finish up with a table. Here is how hitters performed against various Giants relievers in high leverage situations over the last week, thanks to our handy new splits tool.

That isn’t so much closer by committee as it is a Jonestown Massacre reenactment. Bruce Bochy has taken a good amount of flak for his bullpen management in the second half of the season — especially his loyalty to Casilla — but no one could look good managing a group of pitchers who did that.

The Giants still have a chance to turn this around and make the playoffs, but they’re going to need their bullpen to pull it together. Like tonight.

We can all agree that Mike Trout is probably the best player in baseball, right? And if Mike Trout is the best player in baseball, that means Anthony Rendon is not the best player in baseball, right? OK, so it’s settled. Rendon is good, but he’s no Trout. That being said, let’s have fun!

This year, 188 players have batted at least 400 times. Of those, 90 have a walk rate that is at least a hair better than the league average.

Of those 90 players, 49 have a strikeout rate that is at least a hair better than the league average.

Of those 49 players, 28 have a BABIP that is at least a hair better than the league average.

Of those 28 players, 14 have an isolated slugging that is at least a hair better than the league average.

Of those 14 players, five have a baserunning rating that is at least a hair better than the league average.

Of those five players, three have a defense rating that is at least a hair better than the league average.

The three players we’re left with: Mike Trout, Anthony Rendon, and Jonathan Lucroy. These players are above-average at walks, contact, hits, power, baserunning, and defense, at least as far as the 2016 season is concerned. The defense rating uses UZR, and maybe you don’t love that, but DRS likes Trout even better. We know that Lucroy is a strong defensive catcher. And DRS likes Rendon, too. So it makes for an interesting group. These are regular position players who have made positive contributions across the board. Trout’s positive contributions have been the most positive, but if you’re looking for well-roundedness, Rendon is very nearly by himself.

Injuries mostly spoiled what Rendon tried to do a year ago. If you go back two years, though, there were 209 players who batted at least 400 times. Going through all the same process as above, one would’ve been left with just two players: Anthony Rendon and Alex Gordon. So Rendon has had a season like this before, and now that he’s healthy again, perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that he’s back to being fantastic.

He could even maybe be an MVP candidate, were it not for an awful first month. Since the beginning of May, Rendon has been good for a 127 wRC+ and a WAR of 4.5. That puts him right around his 2014 pace, and back in 2014, it was Rendon who felt like the underrated borderline superstar. Last year did nothing to help his perception, but now he’s back and just 26 years old. He’s not as flashy as Bryce Harper, and he doesn’t have the offensive potential of Bryce Harper, but Rendon does a little bit of everything, which makes him enormously valuable. It really shouldn’t be a secret why the Nationals have been so good even with Harper mysteriously coming somewhat apart.

Once before, Rendon has been among baseball’s most underrated players. Now he’s back to being exactly the same. When you think about the Nationals, you think about Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg. You’re doing your own self a disservice if you stop there.

Just a little more than a week ago, the Indians had a reportedly healthy Danny Salazar, a totally healthy Carlos Carrasco, and their odds of winning the World Series, according to our projections, sat at 13.4%. Aside from a 24-hour window back on July 5 during which Cleveland’s odds jumped up to 14.2%, last week’s figure was the highest of the year for the soon-to-be American League Central Division champions.

Of course, Salazar is no longer healthy, having finally given in to the right elbow that’s been barking at him for much of the season. He seems unlikely to contribute again until 2017. And of course, Carrasco is no longer healthy, having been knocked out just two pitches into his most recent start after being struck by an Ian Kinsler line drive and fracturing his throwing hand. He won’t contribute again until 2017.

Understandably, this has provided a huge blow to Cleveland’s odds, which our own Corinne Landrey touched upon this morning. While the Indians will still have a better shot at winning it all than all but seven teams come October, their odds have been cut from 13.4% to 9.3% in the blink of an eye, a 30% decrease that couldn’t occur so quickly without a devastating injury or two. Our projections have long viewed Cleveland as either the strongest contender for the American League pennant, or at least the team most likely to stand in someone else’s way. No longer is that the case.

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Hi! You read FanGraphs, so you probably like Joey Votto. As such, you’re probably aware that, two seasons in a row, now, Votto has gone crazy in the second half. Last year, he boosted his game by increasing his hits, his power, and his walks. He ran a second-half wRC+ in the neighborhood of 200. This year, Votto is again running a second-half wRC+ in the neighborhood of 200. Once again, he’s increased his power. Once again, he’s increased his hits. Yet this time, the walks have stayed where they were. Votto isn’t earning free pass after free pass. Rather, somewhere around the middle of this season, Joey Votto just decided that he didn’t like striking out anymore.

So he stopped. Votto, earlier, was more strikeout-prone than ever in his life. More recently, Votto has been less strikeout-prone than ever in his life. That graph seems like it should be impossible — where first-half Votto struck out a quarter of the time, second-half Votto has struck out a tenth of the time. To put it another way, while second-half Votto again has one of the highest walk rates in the league, he’s also managed a lower strikeout rate than Jose Altuve. You just can’t get the ball by Joey Votto anymore. He doesn’t allow pitchers to do it.

Perhaps just as amazing — second-half Votto hasn’t done any better in terms of avoiding two-strike counts. In the first half, Votto saw 29% of his pitches while in a two-strike count. In the second half, that’s risen, ever so slightly, to 30%. Votto is still disciplined, and, clearly, Votto is still letting counts run deep. And even when swinging in two-strike counts, Votto hasn’t necessarily gotten more aggressive or better at hitting the ball fair. His swing rate has risen just a couple points, and the same could be said of his in-play rate. That’s not where you can find an explanation for the whole drop-off.

The answer involves foul balls. When Votto swung with two strikes in the first half, he hit 38% fouls. That ranked him in the 39th percentile. When Votto has swung with two strikes in the second half, he’s hit 49% fouls. That ranks him in the 98th percentile, or, put differently, it puts him in second place. Votto has replaced two-strike whiffs with two-strike fouls, and there’s no penalty for a two-strike foul for a hitter. If you foul off a tough pitch, you earn the opportunity to see another pitch. Votto has fought pitches off and earned himself additional looks, and that’s how he’s maintained his sky-high walk rate while also keeping the defense on its collective toes. He’s refused to strike out, and he’s remained really good at everything else.

I don’t know why it would just click like this, and I don’t know why Votto wouldn’t have done this before, given how well it’s worked. I’m sure there’s a little bit of a hot-streak factor involved. But it’s not like there’s ever been any question that Votto is outstanding, and while there’s limited evidence that hitters overall are able to fight pitches off consistently when they need to, it makes sense that Votto could be an exception, given his almost unparalleled bat-to-ball skills and knowledge of the strike zone. At some point this year, Joey Votto didn’t want to strike out so much anymore. So he quit striking out so much. Everything else, he’s mostly maintained. You can’t say it’s mattered very much for the Reds, in the bigger picture, but at least Votto’s been able to have himself some fun.

Live from wherever we live: it’s FanGraphs Live (on Facebook)!

New to our chat lineup will be video chats via Facebook Live. Various writers will pop our Facebook page to recap or preview games, answer your question or talk about events with which we’re involved in video form. Want to ask a question? Just comment on the video and we’ll see it.

Hang tight with us as we work out some the kinks in the system. As we get going, we might run into some technology struggles, such as not being able to see the comments. Dave Cameron and Jeff Sullivan figured that one out last time though while on the road!

Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen will pop in to give updates and thoughts on various players he’s seen recently, as well.

Keep an eye on our Twitter for alerts on when we’ll have a new Live chat and be sure to follow our Facebook page to be able to tune in.