Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Kyle Lewis’s debut, Rich Hill’s brief return, Daniel Palka’s second hit of the season, the Braves and Dallas Keuchel, and the Diamondbacks’ Brewers-style rebuild, then (18:13) talk to Will Leitch about what (if anything) Dave Dombrowski’s firing says about MLB teams’ competitive priorities, how the Cardinals (and Jack Flaherty) became the NL’s most successful second-half squad, and the NL Central and NL wild card races.

Audio intro: The Resonars, "Attention Here"
Audio interstitial: Supertramp, "The Meaning"
Audio outro: The Mountain Goats, "Bluejays and Cardinals"

Link to Tony Wolfe on Keuchel
Link to Ben Clemens on the Diamondbacks
Link to Will’s Dombrowski column
Link to Rob Arthur on Dombrowski
Link to Evan Drellich on Dombrowski
Link to Peter Gammons on Dombrowski
Link to Zach Kram on Flaherty
Link to Andrew Simon on Flaherty
Link to Craig on the Cardinals’ defense
Link to Will’s Cardinals podcast
Link to Will’s newsletter
Link to order The MVP Machine

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There hasn’t been much to celebrate this year in Miami, but the Marlins starting rotation has been a source of a few positive developments. Caleb Smith and Pablo López started off the season strong but faded in the second half. Zac Gallen and Jordan Yamamoto both made their major league debuts, and while Gallen was shipped out at the trade deadline, Yamamoto has shown some promise as a 23-year-old rookie. But the most exciting progress has come from Sandy Alcantara.

On the surface, Alcantara’s stat line doesn’t look that impressive. His park and league adjusted FIP sits just seven percent above league average but that’s more due to some luck in keeping the ball in the ballpark. His 18% strikeout rate is one of the worst in the majors among qualified starters despite a fastball that sits in the mid-90s. The biggest question mark attached to him as a prospect was his command of his repertoire. In his 42 major league innings prior to this year, he ran a walk rate above 15%. He’s managed to drop that down to 10.7% this year, but that’s still one of the worst walk rates in the majors.

The fourth ranked prospect in the Marlins organization and 127th overall at the start of the season, there were plenty of doubts that Alcantara could stick in a major league rotation as he developed. He’s likely going to make 30 starts this year, which has to be seen as a success for the Marlins player development group, shoddy peripherals be damned. But since the start of August, Alcantara has shown flashes of brilliance, giving Marlins fans another starting pitcher to dream on for next season.

In his seven starts since the end of July, Alcantara has posted a park and league adjusted FIP 19% better than league average. More importantly, his strikeout rate has jumped up to 22.3%, a nearly six point improvement from where it sat after the first four months of the season. The highlight of this stretch came in his last start at home against the Royals. He threw a complete game, holding Kansas City scoreless while allowing just six base runners and striking out eight. That was actually the second complete game shutout he’s thrown this year, his first coming back in May against the Mets. Read the rest of this entry »

Dallas Keuchel wasn’t supposed to still be on the market when the Winter Meetings commenced in December. He certainly wasn’t supposed to still be there as the calendar turned to 2019, and it was completely unthinkable that he would still be available at the start of Spring Training. It is only through the dark alchemy of a ghoulish lack of shame and self-awareness on the part of team owners mixing with Keuchel’s demands that he was still available after the conclusion of the Amateur Player Draft, but there he was, still waiting for a phone call from his agent, telling him a professional baseball franchise had made him a reasonable contract offer. That call finally came on June 7, when the Atlanta Braves signed Keuchel to a one-year, $13-million deal, which by that point was more of a three-and-a-half-month deal. At the very start of the free agency period, Kiley McDaniel predicted Keuchel would receive four years and $84 million on the open market. Instead, he couldn’t even secure a multi-year commitment.

Keuchel wasn’t the only player who endured this kind of unexpected wait. Former Red Sox closer Craig Kimbrel signed just one day before Keuchel, inking a three-year deal with the Chicago Cubs. Kimbrel’s season has been a disaster so far, with the 31-year-old holding a 5.68 ERA and 6.63 FIP in 19 innings. Keuchel, on the other hand, hardly missed a beat. In 16 starts after getting a late start in Atlanta, Keuchel owns an ERA of 3.35, with a FIP of 4.39 and an xFIP of 3.87. He leads the majors with a 61.5% groundball rate (min. 90 IP), with second-place Dakota Hudson well behind him at 57.2%. Of those 16 starts, 13 have ended with Keuchel surrendering three earned runs or fewer. He was pretty reliable in his first few games of the season, but after a brief blow-up in Miami of all places, he’s been totally lights-out.

In a 3.2-inning appearance against the Marlins on August 8, Keuchel allowed eight runs on 10 hits, including three homers. His ERA jumped from 3.86 to 4.83 that evening, and at the time, it seemed like it might be a sign of real danger for the 31-year-old southpaw and the rest of the Braves’ pitching staff. While his ERA had been fairly solid coming into that appearance, his 4.74 FIP was still a distressing reminder of the kind of pitcher Keuchel was, and the risk he poses. He wasn’t missing a lot of bats, with his K/9 sitting at just 6.75. Meanwhile, he had a BB/9 above 3.0 for what would have been the first time since 2012, and he was allowing a career-high HR/FB rate of 24%. Keuchel has consistently overcome low strikeout totals throughout his career thanks to excellent command, but suddenly, he was throwing strikes much less often than he used to (32% zone rate in 2019 vs. 38.6% for his career), and he was much easier to leave the yard against, even if the juiced ball has made preventing homers more difficult for everybody. That night in Miami could have altered Keuchel’s entire season, and damaged his future earning potential even further.

But that isn’t what happened. Keuchel has bounced back from getting torched in Miami to post his most dominant six-game run in years. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the second installment of this year’s Team Entropy series, my recurring look not only at the races for the remaining playoff spots but the potential for end-of-season chaos in the form of down-to-the-wire suspense and even tiebreakers. Ideally, we want more ties than the men’s department at Macy’s. If you’re new to this, please read the introduction here.

It’s been 12 days since I launched this year’s Team Entropy series, and I’m happy to report that for connoisseurs of chaos, the news is generally good, at least when it comes to the Wild Card races. The division races… eh, we’ve seen some tightening in both Centrals, but of greater significance are the pages torn off the calendar; there are but 16 days remaining in the regular season.

The Dodgers became the first team to clinch a division title this year, claiming their seventh straight NL flag on Tuesday, September 10. No other clinching is imminent, but by coincidence, the magic numbers for both East division leaders (the Yankees and Braves) and that of the AL West (the Astros) all stood at eight entering Thursday; the Yankees, with the sweep of their doubleheader against the Tigers and the Rays’ loss to the Rangers, cut theirs to five, though the other two remain at eight. It’s only a matter of time for them; there’s no reason to hold your breath in those races.

In the AL Central, the Twins — who since my last installment have lost both Michael Pineda and Byron Buxton for the season, the former to a drug suspension and the latter to shoulder surgery — have lost ground since the previous check-in. At 89-57, they now lead the Indians (86-61) by just 3 1/2 games, but with the shrinking schedule, their odds have only dropped by 0.6%, to 93.8%. The two teams face off for a three-game series this weekend in Cleveland, their last head-to-head matchup. The Indians lead the season series 9-7, and realistically probably need to sweep to keep things interesting given that they have the harder remaining schedule of the two (.487 vs. .443).

As for the NL Central, the Cardinals (82-64) have a four-game lead over both the Cubs and Brewers (78-68), each of whom has recently lost a key player for at least the remainder of the regular season, namely Javier Báez (fractured thumb) and Christian Yelich (fractured kneecap). Since reaching their season high-water mark in terms of leading the division (3 1/2 games on August 8), the Cubs are just 15-16, while the Cardinals are an NL-best 24-9 and the Brewers 18-12; the latter has won seven in a row despite the loss of the reigning NL MVP and a few other players. Since the previous Team Entropy installment, St. Louis’ odds to win the division have jumped a honkin’ 12.3%, to 76.7%, with the Cubs’ odds more than cut in half to 16.3% and the Brewers’ odds now visible to the naked eye at 7.0%. The Redbirds host the Brew Crew this weekend, and with a 9-7 series lead, need just one more win to clinch the upper hand. The odds of a season-ending tie atop the division, which would require a tiebreaker game, are at 10.1%, 0.4% higher than when we last checked in. Read the rest of this entry »

Quick: Who are the best five hitters in baseball this year? Take a quick gander at the leaderboards, if you’d like, before answering. There’s the WAR leaderboard:

That’s not what you want, though, because defense gets involved there. How about a wRC+ leaderboard instead? That should keep the Xander Bogaerts’s and Marcus Semien’s of the world from intruding on our hitting party:

Trout, Yelich, Bregman, Bellinger, and Rendon. That’s a pretty solid five. It’s also missing an obvious name: Yordan Alvarez, quite possibly the best hitter in baseball this year.

Why isn’t Alvarez on the list? It comes down to the tyranny of the qualified hitter. Setting a plate appearance minimum is a reasonable idea: without it, the best wRC+ this year would belong to Oliver Drake, who singled in his only plate appearance. No one wants that, except perhaps Oliver Drake.

That doesn’t mean that it’s always right to ignore everyone who falls short of the qualification minimum, though. Alvarez has 320 plate appearances this year, a far cry from Drake territory. Because he wasn’t called up until June, he won’t qualify for the batting title this year, but that shouldn’t distract you from the fact that he’s one of the best hitters in the major leagues, full stop. Read the rest of this entry »

On September 19, 2018, Carlos Santana was in the Phillies’ lineup, playing third base. It was an experiment that sparked speculation about his role in Philadelphia going forward. After all, he had just signed a three-year, $60 million contract. But after Rhys Hoskins had one of the worst defensive seasons by a left fielder this decade, it was clear that Santana’s usage would need to be adjusted. Having him play first — thus relegating Hoskins to the outfield — would not work long term, especially for a team trying to contend.

Santana’s brief stay in Philadelphia was mixed. He drew walks in 16.2% of his plate appearances, hit for power at about his then-career-average, and was about average defensively. With that information, you’d probably think that Santana had a good year, but reality was different. He was BABIP’d to death; no qualified hitter in 2018 posted a lower BABIP than Santana’s .231. His slash sat at .229/.352/.414 with a 108 wRC+, a decent-yet-unspectacular season. He also made headlines this past March when it was reported that, near the end of the 2018 season, he had smashed a clubhouse TV after witnessing his now-former teammates playing Fortnite during games.

The Phillies went on to have a memorable offseason, to say the least. They signed Bryce Harper, Andrew McCutchen, David Robertson. They traded for J.T. Realmuto and Jean Segura. Once all of the dust settled, Carlos Santana was no longer wearing red and white pinstripes. The seemingly tumultuous relationship lasted one season. Santana was back in Cleveland, the same place where he had spent the first eight seasons of his major league career. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2017 Arizona Diamondbacks were an unexpected delight, an eventual playoff team that was projected to be near the bottom of the NL West before the season. They had star power to burn; with Paul Goldschmidt and A.J. Pollock anchoring the lineup and Zack Greinke and Robbie Ray at the front of the rotation, the team had a top four to rival any team in baseball. After that, though, the drop off was severe. Maybe you could squint and see greatness in Jake Lamb, maybe you believed in the Shelby Miller bounce back, but the depth simply wasn’t there.

Those Diamondbacks made the postseason and won the Wild Card game, fueled by a deadline trade for J.D. Martinez, but their stars-and-scrubs construction was worrisome. Pollock missed time with injury, David Peralta didn’t take a step forward, and the cupboard generally looked bare. While the team’s pitching staff looked more promising thanks to breakouts from Patrick Corbin and Zack Godley, it wasn’t built to last. Corbin was only a year from free agency, Greinke was getting older, and Godley was more league average than a star in waiting.

By the end of 2018, that iteration of the Diamondbacks was no more. Pollock and Corbin left in free agency, Goldschmidt was a Cardinal, and the team made no secret that it was shopping Greinke. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s all their stars other than Ray, and he had underperformed massively in 2018. We baseball fans are pattern matchers, and this pattern is an easy one to spot: it was time for a tank and rebuild.

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to the bottom of the standings. The Diamondbacks, projected for the fourth-worst record in the NL before the season, are clinging to the fringes of the playoff hunt, with a 5.3% chance of reaching the Wild Card game. They’re 75-71, on the verge of putting together their third straight winning season. Most impressively, they’re doing it with an entirely new cast of characters. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

September has been a cruel month when it comes to contending teams losing key players. On Tuesday alone, the Twins placed Byron Buxton on the injured list with a left shoulder subluxation for which he subsequently underwent season-ending surgery, and the Brewers lost Christian Yelich for the duration due to a fractured right kneecap. The day before that, the Cubs found out that Javier Báez would not return before the end of the regular season due to the severity of the fractured left thumb he suffered on September 1, though at least the door is open for him to return at some point in the postseason. Each of those losses compound other injury woes — at this time of year, everybody hurts — but for the Cubs the loss of Báez is particularly acute, as the team has slid from first place into a tie for the second NL Wild Card spot in the span of five weeks.

On August 8, the Cubs’ season reached its high-water mark in terms of both their division lead (3 1/2 games ahead of the Cardinals) and playoff odds (90.8%). Since then, they’ve stumbled to a 14-16 record, and at 77-68, find themselves tied with the Brewers with 17 games remaining. Here’s the graph of the NL Central teams’ playoff odds over the course of the season, with the aforementioned date highlighted:

The 26-year-old Báez initially injured his thumb while sliding into second base in the third inning following a pickoff attempt by the Brewers’ Gio Gonzalez. Though visibly shaken up on the play, he did not depart until the seventh inning:

Read the rest of this entry »

12:02

Dan Szymborski: It’s a’me, Mario!

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Well, until something else changes or I die or something.

12:03

Dan Szymborski: I’m not doing chats after I die.

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Am I supposed to be haunted in my grave, my eternal rest disturbed by sasndwich questions?

Read the rest of this entry »