Before the season, the San Francisco Giants were expected to be bad, and the Milwaukee Brewers were expected to compete for a playoff spot. So far this year, the Giants are 30-39 with a -82 run differential, last in the NL West. The Brewers are 40-31 and first in the NL Central. Both teams have been more or less what we thought they were. With that in mind, you probably didn’t have much reason to watch Friday night’s Brewers-Giants clash. If you did watch it, however, you caught a singularly bizarre series of plays that highlighted the absurdity and joy of baseball.

In the bottom of the seventh with one runner aboard, the Brewers called on Alex Claudio to keep the Giants off the board. Down 3-2, Milwaukee couldn’t afford to let the Giants pad their lead any further, and the lineup set up perfectly for Claudio, a side-arming lefty with extreme career platoon splits. With Kevin Pillar standing on first, the Giants had four lefties in a row due up, and Claudio is on the Brewers more or less solely to get lefties out.

With Alex Claudio on the mound, there’s a certain minimum amount of weirdness involved in every pitch. His pre-pitch routine is hypnotizing — a few torso-and-arm shakes, an uncontrollable toe tap, and finally a corkscrewing, impossibly angled sidearm release. He looks like a kid impatiently sitting in a doctor’s office waiting room, right up until he explodes into a tremendously athletic delivery. Here, watch him throw an 84-mph sinker past Steven Duggar for the first out:

As much fun as it is to watch Claudio pitch, it would be hard to call this inning fun if he did his job and set down the three lefties in order. The Duggar at-bat made it look like that was a possibility. Even if 84-mph sinkers that strike out major league batters are fun, there’s a limit to how much fun an inning can be to watch if nothing happens. Fortunately, things were about to get weird. Read the rest of this entry »

Edwin Encarnacion is 36 years old now, but age hasn’t stopped him from mashing baseballs. Among qualified American League hitters, he ranks 12th in wRC+ (139), leads the league in home runs (21), and is fourth in isolated power (.290). He’s accrued 1.7 WAR, which is pretty good at this point of the season, especially given his subpar defense. Of course, nobody is employing Encarnacion for his glove.

When Seattle acquired Encarnacion this past offseason, everybody knew he’d be traded sooner rather than later. The Mariners are in the midst of a rebuild and are reportedly “trying to trade everyone” before the July 31 deadline. Encarnacion, with his age and contract, was an obvious candidate to be moved.

It only took until the middle of June for the Mariners to find a suitor. The Yankees now employ Edwin Encarnacion.

Yankees Get:

• 1B/3B/DH Edwin Encarnacion (though it’s likely he’ll primarily be a DH)

Mariners Get:

• RHP Juan Then

Let’s touch on the Mariners’ return first before talking about the big parrot in the room. Juan Then was actually a Mariners farmhand two years ago. The Yankees acquired Then (and minor league hurler JP Sears) during the 2017-18 offseason in exchange for Nick Rumbelow.

Then is only 19 years old and he’s still in rookie ball. Prior to this season, Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel ranked Then as the No. 31 prospect in New York’s system, noting that he is “advanced for his age” but has “middling stuff and physical projection.” It’s worth noting that Then seems to have developed a better fastball in the Yankees system. But again, it’s awfully hard to project a 19-year-old who hasn’t reached full-season ball. We know he’s a young arm of some promise, but the delta in his potential outcomes is very wide.

As an interesting side note, reports suggest that the Mariners chose to deal Encarnacion to the Yankees because New York was willing to absorb more money than other interested clubs. By prioritizing salary flexibility, Seattle’s move is somewhat reminiscent of how the Marlins handled the Giancarlo Stanton trade, in which the Yankees gave up significantly less player value to bring in another slugger because they were able to take on big money. It’s not ideal for rebuilding teams to prioritize monetary value over player return on transactions, but it is what it is. Money is a big part of how organizations operate, and sometimes you’re going to see deals like that. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the Yankees acquiring Edwin Encarnacion and some surprising names near the top of the MLB home-run leaderboard, Kenley Jansen’s intentional balk, and a fun fact starring Hyun-Jin Ryu, then reckon with some of the most perplexing player seasons of 2019, focusing on the enigma that is the boom-and-bust trajectory of Cleveland’s Jose Ramirez.

Audio intro: The Olivia Tremor Control, "Mystery"
Audio outro: The Beach Boys, "You’re Still a Mystery"

Link to video of Jansen balk
Link to video of Segura baserunning play
Link to 2018 trade value rankings
Link to order The MVP Machine

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Matt Hicks has been Eric Nadel’s partner in the Texas Rangers radio booth since 2012. Prior to that, the Maryland native called games for the Frederick Keys (1989-1994), the El Paso Diablos (1995-2004), and the Corpus Christi Hooks (2005-2011). One month into his professional baseball broadcasting career, he learned an important lesson, courtesy of an incredulous Fat Jack.

“That first year in Frederick, we played in a Babe Ruth League park because the stadium was still being built,” Hicks told me recently. “Center field was 355 feet from home plate. As you can imagine, the stands were rudimentary; we had metal bleachers, we had a small roof. Anyway, it was April, freezing cold, and we were playing a doubleheader. There was hardly anybody there for the night portion — 100 people, if that.”

In the aftermath of a clumsy call of a boneheaded play, a voice punctured the chilly, nighttime air. Clear as a bell, it was directed at the rookie broadcaster.

“We had a runner on second base, and one of our guys laid down a bunt,” explained Hicks. “The play was made — the batter was thrown out — and when I looked up, I was expecting to see a runner at third base. He was still at second. I didn’t know what to say. When I got to that part of calling the play — the guy’s name was Scott Meadows — I said, ‘Meadows is still at second base; he didn’t go to third because…’ Then I paused and said something lame. I said, ’He didn’t have any choice.’

Cue up the choice words. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Shohei Ohtani’s hot streak and future as a two-way player, Sam’s decision to listen to all of the Jeff-era EW episodes and his reactions to a few topics from the final few (including a description of Stan Musial’s retirement tour), and two research papers about pitchers’ perceived effort level and arm strain. Then they answer listener emails about where to host baseball games overseas, future universal uniform number retirements, outsourcing strategic experiments to other teams, and what type of player should make a minor-league hall of fame, plus a Stat Blast about Roy Smalley’s 1979 season and the worst- and best-case scenarios for Cody Bellinger’s second half.

Audio intro: Rain Parade, "Look Both Ways"
Audio outro: Roxy Music, "Both Ends Burning"

Link to Kram on Ohtani and Ruth
Link to Sam on the Ohtani two-way math
Link to first Fleisig paper
Link to second Fleisig paper
Link to Sam on the fastest fastballs
Link to Max Marchi on the fastest fastballs, part 1
Link to Max Marchi on the fastest fastballs, part 2
Link to 2015 Pacific Association simulation data
Link to article on minor-league halls of fame
Link to order The MVP Machine

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Below you’ll find a roundup of notable moves from the past few days, as well as future expected moves and a Minor League Report, which includes a list of recent major league debuts and a few players who are “knocking down the door” to the majors (Mondays edition only). For this column, any lineup regulars, starting pitchers, or late-inning relievers are considered “notable,” meaning that middle relievers, long relievers, and bench players are excluded. You can always find a full list of updated transactions here.

Lineup Regulars

Kansas City Royals
6/14/19: 1B Ryan O’Hearn optioned to Triple-A.
6/13/19: 1B Lucas Duda activated from 10-Day IL.

Duda and O’Hearn, both left-handed hitting first basemen, didn’t make much sense on the roster together. Duda’s back injury, however, gave the 25-year-old O’Hearn a significant amount of time to show the Royals that he was the better man for this particular job. He did not.

In 135 plate appearances while Duda was on the injury list, O’Hearn slashed .190/.267/.306 with three homers and 35 strikeouts. Duda is batting 5th and playing first base on Friday, while O’Hearn is likely en route to meet up with his Triple-A Omaha teammates.

Depth Chart | Roster Resource Read the rest of this entry »

Do you remember when Chris Archer was really good at throwing baseballs? You should, because it was very recent! From 2014-17, only 12 pitchers across the majors accumulated more WAR than Archer. He was a strikeout maestro who kept his FIP consistently low with a knack for gobbling up innings and a sweet head of hair to boot, looking like an ace in pretty much every sense of the word.

Those days feel far away now, however, after a disastrous start on Tuesday brought his rough season with the Pittsburgh Pirates to a crescendo — he surrendered five home runs to Braves hitters in six innings, leading to an ugly seven-run outing. He has now allowed 16 homers in just 59.2 innings, giving him the fifth-highest HR/9 rate among all big leaguers with at least 50 innings pitched. His ERA of 5.79 is actually outperforming his 6.15 FIP. The old Archer seems long gone, but what caused him to vanish?

Typically, when a player regresses this swiftly and severely, there can be multiple issues to blame for their struggles. If you squint, you can see a few present with Archer. His four-seamer has lost two miles per hour in velocity over the past two seasons. He’s also throwing fewer strikes than he has in past years — something that is evident in his skyrocketing walk rate, up at 4.53/9 from a career average of 3.03/9 — but just 1.5% less than his career average. We can nitpick and analyze a million different data points to paint a picture of why Archer has lost his groove, but instead, let’s just talk about the issue right in front of us: His sinker has been absolutely dreadful.

I’ll admit his sinker has accounted for just 22% of his pitches this season, and that’s if you go by Baseball Savant’s pitch tracking. Our own Pitch Info data says he’s thrown it less than 15% of the time. How bad can a pitch be to be singled out as possibly the biggest cause of a player’s struggles if he throws it with less than one quarter of his pitches? In this case, extremely bad! In 2019, Archer’s sinker has resulted in a .370/.485/.815 slash line for opposing hitters. The Statcast data for the pitch is equally gruesome: .403 xBA, .761 xSLG, .522 xwOBA. Read the rest of this entry »

Shohei Ohtani is a fascinating player. He’s perhaps slightly less fascinating this season while he is only hitting and not pitching as well, as he did in his first campaign. Although the fact that pitching can be taken away from him for a season and he can still be a useful baseball player is still pretty incredible. On the season, Ohtani is hitting .281/.350/.512, good for a 131 wRC+ in 137 plate appearances. Last night, Ohtani added the latest interesting wrinkle to his career by hitting for the cycle.

Here’s the first plate appearance of the game, in which Ohtani hit a three-run homer.

While the triple is the most difficult part of the cycle, the home run is the most important in terms of its impact on the field. This was particularly true last night, as Ohtani’s homer put the Angels up 3-0, increasing the team’s win probability by 18% as the biggest play of the game. The next time Ohtani came up, he hit a double. Read the rest of this entry »

In August of last year, Ramón Laureano burst onto the scene with the Oakland Athletics. A mid-level prospect with the Astros, the strength of their big league outfield and the depth of their farm system pushed him out of the picture in Houston. He was traded to Oakland for a pittance in the fall of 2017 and made his major league debut on August 3. Just a week into his time in the majors, he made The Throw. You probably remember this one:

He hasn’t stopped throwing runners out with his rocket arm.

He’s made four more outfield assists since the above tweet was posted, giving him 15 across 115 career games in center field. Over the past two years, he’s second in the majors in outfield assists behind Teoscar Hernández, who has almost 400 more innings in the field than Laureano. The advanced defensive metrics back up what all those assists tell us. Since the beginning of 2018, he’s sixth in the majors in UZR’s ARM component and seventh in DRS’s rARM component. And remember, he didn’t make his major league debut until well into last season, so he’s had far fewer innings to accumulate positive marks for his throws. Read the rest of this entry »

Heo Koo-Yeon in his office

Heo Koo-Yeon is one of the biggest names in Korean baseball history. At this moment, you could say that he is the most influential figure in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO). Heo was originally an athlete. As a star high school player, he partook in international competitions in the pre-KBO era of Korean baseball. Starting 1982, the inaugural KBO season, he has been a commentator (with a brief detour to a managing job for the Chungbo Pintos in 1986). Outside of the broadcasting job, Heo’s contributed in speaking for the better overall infrastructure and facilities around KBO. He influenced the building of many of the newer KBO venues, which were built closer to the modern style rather than the old high-school style that classic venues adhered to. Most recently, he advised on the construction of the new NC Dinos venue, Changwon NC Park, which is said to be “major league quality” by many. Outside of KBO, he’s also donated close to $100,000 to build Cambodia’s first baseball stadium and helped build a ballpark in Vietman as well. As a baseball lifer who saw the growth of the sport in Korea, he has his vision set on continuing to build baseball in unfamiliar areas.

At 68 years old, Heo is still going strong as a commentator for the MBC while serving as an adviser to the commissioner for the KBO. I sat down in his office to talk about his relationship with MLB, the road to the advent of first Korean major leaguer, and the status of Korean amateur players wanting to sign with a major league club.

Beginning of the MLB – KBO relationship:

As a baseball lifer, Heo, like many others in Korea, was influenced by the Japanese idea of baseball from the time he was an athlete.

“Starting in 1968, as a high school player representing Korea, I’ve been back and forth to Japan a lot,” he recalled. “We knew that our baseball system, at the time, was quite Japan-based. Our leaders and managers were educated during the Japanese occupation era (1910-45).” In 1984, Heo had a chance to go to the United States, thanks to Los Angeles Dodgers owner Peter O’Malley.

“O’Malley emphasized the globalization of baseball and invited me.” Heo got to go to Vero Beach and Dodgertown for their spring training camp. It was the first time Heo got to see the major league players with his own eyes.

“That, in the big picture, changed and influenced my life,” Heo says. “It also influenced Korean baseball a lot. I would say it was the turning point of our nation’s baseball.” Read the rest of this entry »