This is a post about the similarities between Matt Bush and Aroldis Chapman on the baseball field. On the baseball field.

Which, really, it’s remarkable that any similarities exist at all, given Matt Bush was first a shortstop, and then incarcerated, and has only since been pitching professionally again since April of this year. Seriously. April 7, 2016 was his first professional pitching appearance in more than four years. Two months later, here we are talking about the characteristics his fastball alongside the most powerful fastball in the game.

What makes a fastball dynamic? Well, velocity of course. That’s what you know Chapman for. That’s what a good fastball’s always been. But more recently, we’ve learned the importance of spin rate, too, which helps influence both movement and deception. There’s more to any pitch than just velocity and spin, but if you had to pick only two quantifiable characteristics to measure a fastball, you’d pick these two. Or at least, I did. And when I did that, the results looked like this:

That’s every starter and every reliever with at least 50 four-seam fastballs thrown this year. By velocity, Bush’s fastball ranks eighth, averaging 97.2 miles per hour. By spin rate, Bush’s fastball ranks second, averaging 2,626 revolutions per minute. Put the two together, and you’ve the closest thing to an average Aroldis Chapman fastball, and perhaps the most lively heater displayed by any right-handed pitcher in baseball this season.

Observe:

Guy was supposed to be a shortstop.

Something interesting caught my eye this morning while doing the research for my post on Alcides Escobar’s first-pitch swing tendencies: Matt Carpenter has led off 42 times for the Cardinals this year, and in those 42 leadoff starts, he has not yet swung at a single first pitch to begin the game. Forty-two first pitches, forty-two takes.

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Position: LA Angels Assistant Baseball Systems Developer

Location: Anaheim

Description:

The Assistant Baseball Systems Developer will help build and maintain application and database systems to assist in the decision making process of the Baseball Operations Department.

Responsibilities:

• Work with the current development to team to help design, develop, improve, and maintain new and existing applications and data systems.
• Develop web-based applications displaying data at multiple levels of detail.
• Design ad hoc SQL queries to facilitate baseball operations.
• Implement and optimize advanced algorithms for player projection from software prototypes.
• Continually work with baseball operations staff to identify features and areas of improvement within the player information system to facilitate a user-friendly research tool.
• Integrate new information sources and multimedia displays into player information and tracking system.
• Communicate results to appropriate staff members through presentations, written reports, and tools.
• Other duties as assigned by members of the Baseball Operations Department.

Qualifications:

• Experience with at least one object oriented programming language, preferably C# or Python.
• Familiarity with SQL querying and database design principles (experience with Microsoft SQL Server a plus).
• Comfortable with modern web development technologies including HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript.
• Knowledge of the software development lifecycle and industry best practices.
• Working familiarity with advanced statistical concepts, particularly those relevant to sabermetric player projection techniques that include experience implementing statistical calculations, derivations, and graphical representations into software applications.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field from a four-year college or university or equivalent work experience.

To Apply:
Please apply here.

On Friday night, the Dodgers were set to start LHP Alex Wood against the Mets in New York, but he has been scratched due to tightness in his triceps. To replace Wood, LA is calling up 19 year old sensation Julio Urias to make his big league debut.

To say Urias has earned the promotion would be an understatement. Just 19, even making it to Triple-A is an accomplishment, and for most pitchers in the PCL, the goal is to just not suck too badly. For instance, two years ago, a 21 year old Noah Syndergaard ran a 4.60 ERA/3.70 FIP, as he controlled the strike zone but got torched for a .389 BABIP, thanks to the fun-sized ballparks and offensive environments that make the league a hitter’s haven.

Urias, though, is running a 1.10 ERA/2.89 FIP in his first 41 innings in the PCL, and four of the five runs he’s allowed came in one appearance, back on April 16th. He allowed the fifth run in his next outing on April 22nd, a five inning affair where he gave up just two hits, walked one, and struck out eight. He’s pitched in five games since then, and posted the following line.

26 IP, 13 H, 0 R, 6 BB, 24 K.

In the toughest environment for a pitcher in baseball, Urias is destroying the competition. As a 19 year old.

So tomorrow, we’ll get to see how ready he is to get big leaguers out. His initial test, pitching against the defending NL champs in Citi Field, is not an easy one, but Urias has been dominating hitters in less-than-friendly environments all year. There is always a tremendous amount of uncertainty when it comes to projecting pitching prospects making the leap to the big leagues, but with Urias doing what he did to Triple-A batters this year, it was time to see how well he’ll handle the transition.

Steamer’s already sold on Urias, projecting him for a 3.43 ERA/3.58 FIP over the rest of the season, which would work out to put him on a pace for +3 WAR if he were to pitch a full season’s worth of innings. Whether the teenager can live up to those lofty projections and the hype that surrounds him is something we’re all about to find out.

An interesting nugget from a recent edition of the always-excellent Ken Rosenthal notebook:

White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper accepted responsibility for Jeff Samardzija’s struggles last season, telling reporters, “Man, I failed.”

Samardzija, with the benefit of hindsight, takes a more magnanimous view, saying that Cooper only was trying to help him. As it turns out, the foundation of his early success with the Giants came in his final two starts with the White Sox, a one-hit shutout of the Tigers and a strong seven-inning effort against the eventual World Series champion Royals.

Samardzija, 31, said he made an adjustment in September after realizing that he was tipping pitches based upon the time he stayed set in the stretch — coming out of it quickly, he threw a fastball or cutter; taking more time, he threw a slider or split.

A handful of times each year, an article will surface with a pitcher, manager, or even reporter, suggesting that a struggling starter might be tipping his pitches. Seems like, more often than not, these suggestions are sort of brushed aside, either because they’re viewed as nothing more than an excuse, or because without any explanation regarding the nature of the tipping, they’re just viewed as hearsay. Well, Rosenthal provided some pretty specific explanation, and so I went looking to see if I couldn’t find some good ol’ Jeff Samardzija pitch-tipping in action.

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Giancarlo Stanton has always had a lot of swing and miss in his game, offsetting all the whiffs with ridiculous power displays on his way to being one of the game’s elite sluggers. So when you look at Stanton’s 2016 numbers, it’s easy to just look at the overall line (which includes a 115 wRC+) and note the unsustainably low .256 BABIP — he’s at .324 for his career, given that he hits the crap out of the baseball — in thinking that everything is going to be fine once that corrects itself.

And that’s mostly true, but probably not comprehensive enough, because beyond the BABIP, Stanton’s current struggles include one actually-concerning trend. Here are his contact rates, by season, for his career.

Stanton’s Contact Rate

Season	Contact%
2010	70%
2011	66%
2012	68%
2013	68%
2014	70%
2015	66%
2016	62%

Stanton’s contact rates have always been low, but they’ve been on the low-end of the normal range. If you look at the guys who have run the lowest seasonal contact rates in the PITCHF/x era, you’ll see Stanton hanging out with a bunch of Ryan Howard‘s good seasons, some productive Adam Dunn stretches, Josh Hamilton’s last valuable year, and the recent versions of Chris Davis. You can be a good hitter while making contact at around 67-68% of the time, as long as you have elite power, which Stanton obviously has.

But he’s currently at 62%. Here’s the full list of players who have posted a contact rate that low over a full season, since PITCHF/x allowed us to start tracking contact rate.

Contact Rates Below 63%

Player	Season	Contact%	wRC+
Mark Reynolds	2010	61.7%	96
Mark Reynolds	2009	62.7%	127
Mark Reynolds	2008	63.0%	97

Mark Reynolds is not really the guy you want as your only comparison; those three seasons were his last as a semi-productive regular, and he’s kicked around the league as a barely-above-replacement-level player ever since. Of course, Reynolds doesn’t have Stanton’s power, and no one is suggesting that Stanton is headed for a precipitous cliff, but it’s worth noting that there are basically no examples of productive hitters who swing and miss this often.

The good news for Stanton is he’s sort of had this problem before. Here’s his career K% on a 30-day rolling average basis.

In the second half of 2012, Stanton struck out in 35% of his plate appearances over 180 PAs, slightly higher than his 34% K% in 182 PAs so far this year. And then in 2013, he got his K% back down to 28%, and then 27% in 2014, when he put up a +6 WAR season. But in that second half of 2012, Stanton’s contact rate was still 66%; on the low-end of his range, but a lot higher than it is now.

Stanton has never really made contact this rarely for very long before, and when you swing and miss this much, all the power in the world doesn’t bail you out. Stanton is still the best guy on the planet at crushing baseballs, but for him to get back to what he has, he’s going to have to start hitting them more often again.

Over the course of last week, the author published the results of this site’s television broadcaster rankings — itself the product of reader crowdsourcing and an update to a similar exercise that was performed here roughly four years ago.

Click the relevant links to read about the 31st- and 32nd-ranked broadcasts, Nos. 30 – 21, Nos. 20 – 11, and Nos. 10 – 1.

The full sortable table appears below. But first, three notes:

• Teams are ranked in descending order of Overall rating. Overall ratings are not merely averages of Charisma and Analysis.
• Ratings aren’t intended to represent the objective quality or skill of the relevant announcers, but rather to provide a clue as to which broadcast teams are likely to appeal most (or least) to the readers of this site.
• Due to an error made by the author, Toronto’s broadcast team was originally ranked 31st overall. They now rank 25th in the amended version.

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Last night, the Baltimore Orioles dealt Brian Matusz and the 76th overall pick in the draft to Atlanta for minor-league pitchers Brandon Barker and Trevor Belicek. As lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen noted on Twitter, the $838,900 in bonus money tied to that pick bumps the Braves’ draft and international bonus pool up to $13.2 million, which gives them the third-largest pool in baseball. Only the Reds and Phillies have more.

Neither of the two pitchers involved cracked Baseball America’s top-30 prospect list for Atlanta heading into the year, which tells you just about everything you need to know about them: they’re fringy. Barker did earn a mention on our Braves list, but was relegated to the “Quick Hits” section.

Brandon Barker is a 23-year-old righty who’s had a moderate amount of success in a starting capacity. He spun a 3.25 ERA and 3.49 FIP in 147 innings last year, but did so with an unremarkable 18% strikeout rate. The Braves bumped him up to Double-A this year, where he’s had a good deal of success. His strikeout rate has ticked up over 22%, resulting in a 2.00 ERA and 3.46 FIP. KATOH pegs him 0.9 WAR over his first six years in the majors.

Trevor Belicek was drafted as a starter in the 16th round of last year’s amateur draft, but has worked exclusively out of the bullpen this year. He seems to have taken well to his new role. In 28 innings pitched, the southpaw has spun a 2.50 FIP with a 28% strikeout rate. However, he’s made just one appearance above Low-A, so he’s completely untested against polished hitters. The outlook for 23-year-old Low-A relievers isn’t great, so KATOH pegs him for 0.3 WAR over his first six years in the majors.

The two minor-league arms headed to Baltimore have pitched well in the minors this year, but since they’re both 23 and don’t have much of a track record, they aren’t really prospects. It’s unlikely they’ll make any sort of noticeable impact at the big-league level. Matusz was once a top prospect, but he’s an unremarkable lefty reliever these days. He’s been all sorts of terrible this year, and the Braves have already designated him for assignment. The real asset trading hands here is the bonus-pool money. The Braves are essentially agreeing to take on the remainder of Matusz’s one-year, $3.9 million contract in exchange for more spending power in the draft.

Last week, Jeff Sullivan showed how easily pitchers can exploit the flaws in Yasiel Puig’s approach right now; simply pitch him away. He’s swinging at something close to two-thirds of the pitches on the outer third of the plate or further outside; the league average on those pitches is roughly half of Puig’s rate. While he’s never been a selective hitter, Puig’s approach is undermining his entire offensive game right now.

But the problem with chasing pitcher’s pitches isn’t just that you stop drawing walks. It has that effect too — Puig has drawn just two walks in his last 126 plate appearances, dating back to April 12th — but swinging at pitches on the fringes of the strike zone means that you are much less likely to make quality contact. Puig’s problem isn’t really that he’s swinging through pitches; his contact rates are not that different from what they were a few years ago. He’s not even striking out any more than he used to; his 20.3% K% this year is lower than his 20.7% career mark.

But there has been one huge change in Yasiel Puig’s game this year, and it’s killing his production; he’s turned into a pop-up machine.

Yasiel Puig’s Infield Flies

Season	Plate Appearances	Infield Flies	Popup%
2013	432	9	2.1%
2014	640	11	1.7%
2015	311	7	2.3%
2016	158	13	8.2%

Puig has already set a career high for infield flies in a season, and we’re six weeks in to the year. And as the season has gone on, this has only gotten worse.

12 of Puig’s 13 infield flies have come in the last 30 days. During that stretch, 39% of his fly balls have not even reached the outfield, a staggeringly high total; no other player is over 30% during the same stretch, and the guys who are over 25% are guys like Billy Burns and Didi Gregorius, and they only are that high because they rarely hit the ball in the air.

His popup rate per plate appearance over the last month is a staggering 11.8%, over five times higher than the league average. It’s easy to look at his .203 BABIP over the last month and say there’s some positive regression coming, but when you’re just hitting towering fly balls to the shortstop, that’s not bad luck; that’s bad hitting.

And that’s why Yasiel Puig is batting .180/.196/.300 over the last month. And it’s one of the main reasons the Dodgers offense is scuffling. If the Dodgers are going to contend for the NL title this year, they’re going to have to figure out how to get Puig to stop hitting so many infield flies.

Earlier today, I published a post over on the main site digging into Cincinnati’s historically bad bullpen. Within that post, I noted that the Reds’ staff of relievers entered the day with the worst team ERA since 1961, the worst team FIP since 1961, and the worst team home run rate since 1961. The consolation prize, as it were, is that their team walk rate of 11.6% was “only” 1,390th of 1,476.

Well, as I write this post, the Reds’ bullpen’s walk rate is 12.5%, up nearly a full percentage point from this morning, dropping them 70 spots on the all-time leaderboard from 1,390th to 1,460th. It’s the bottom of the seventh in their game in Cleveland, and Reds relievers have retired six batters and walked seven. Also, they’ve made history in the process. More history. More of the kind of history teams and players don’t want to make.

That history looks like this:

In the bottom of the fifth inning, starting pitcher Alfredo Simon was removed from the game and relieved by right-hander Steve Delabar. Delabar walked Jason Kipnis to load the bases and struck out Francisco Lindor. Then, with the bases still loaded, Delabar walked four consecutive batters, effectively hitting a grand slam for Cleveland while re-loading the bases with a fresh set of legs.

I asked FanGraphs researcher Jonah Pemstein to run some numbers on this phenomena, and this is what he found.

This marks just the sixth time in recorded history (dating back to 1974) that a team drew four consecutive walks with the bases already loaded, and the first time in 12 years. The other teams to achieve the feat are as follows:

• Pittsburgh, 5/9/2004
• Texas, 4/19/1996
• Boston, 5/7/1992
• Atlanta, 5/25/1983
• Boston, 8/28/1981

Not only that, but Delabar himself made history. In each of the five previous instances of a team walking four consecutive batters with the bases already loaded, at least one pitching change was made during the streak. The Reds did not make such a change:

Steve Delabar is the only pitcher since at least 1974 to walk 4 straight batters w/ bases already loaded, per FG research (h/t @japemstein)

— August Fagerstrom (@AugustFG_) May 18, 2016

At least they’re making history.