Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Brett Anderson, Anthony Swarzak, and Jimmy Yacabonis — on how they learned and developed their sliders.

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Brett Anderson, Oakland A’s

“My go-to has always been my slider. I’ve evolved into more of a sinker guy now, but at the same time, my slider has kind of been my bread and butter for however long I can imagine. It’s what I get my swings-and-misses with.

“I knew I had a chance to pitch on the varsity team as a freshman [in high school]. I wasn’t going to go in there with a fastball and a changeup only, so I started throwing a curveball. It was a spiked curveball, because I have huge palms and short fingers. I’ve never really been able to throw a conventional breaking ball because of that; everything just kind of slipped out.

“I started off with that get-me-over curveball, just to have something that spun against varsity kids. It was like a 12-6. Then I started throwing one that was straighter and it cut a little bit. I kind of morphed that one into a slider. It’s the same grip essentially, but two different pitches. I get on top for a curveball, usually just to get ahead, or to get back in the count; it’s to steal strikes. The slider is more of my put-away. I spike both pitches, the slider and the curveball. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, we discussed one of the most important and underreported legal issues facing baseball: the discrimination lawsuit umpire Angel Hernandez filed against Major League Baseball. In the 10 months or so since we last checked in on the case, however, things have taken a couple of really interesting turns.

First, the case is no longer pending in federal court in Ohio, instead having been transferred (over Hernandez’s objection) to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. This isn’t in and of itself a major development; the benefits of what lawyers call “forum shopping” (filing a case in what is perceived to be a friendlier jurisdiction) are both absolutely real and also generally overstated. That said, the major benefits to a given friendly forum for a litigant aren’t likely so much in the expected outcome of a case, but rather in the procedural details involved in getting there. Perhaps no single issue drives forum shopping more than the rules and procedures governing fact discovery (the part of the lawsuit where the parties can ask written and oral questions and obtain each other’s relevant documents). Fact discovery procedural rules can sometimes vary widely between jurisdictions, and practitioners will sometimes choose a forum with the friendliest discovery rules to their side.

Why does this matter? Because Angel Hernandez’s lawsuit is now embroiled in a particularly interesting discovery dispute, and the court deciding it won’t be the Ohio forum Hernandez and his lawyers originally anticipated. You see, earlier this year, Major League Baseball sent this subpoena to the MLB umpires union. A subpoena is a special kind of demand for production of evidence, usually documents or testimony, which is issued by a litigant in a lawsuit and backed by court authority. Ignoring a subpoena is generally a bad idea because you can be held in contempt of court. Instead, if you don’t want to answer it, you have to ask the court to quash the subpoena and give a legal reason why. (Note: the word is “quash,” not “squash.” I’ve heard too many people – lawyers and laypeople alike – move to “squash” a subpoena. All that means is that you are wrapping your subpoena around a vegetable.) Read the rest of this entry »

12:02

Dan Szymborski: “Dan Szymborski is chatting now.”

12:02

Dan Szymborski: OH GOD HE ISN’T PANIC

12:02

Dan Szymborski: Now I am.

12:03

Dan Szymborski: It kinda sucks, but their poor fortune is baked into the cake.

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Yeah, they’re 8 games under their Pythag. But the thing is, you don’t get those games back. You expect them to match their Pythags going forward, not get an extra helping from the good luck carnitas.

Read the rest of this entry »

By now, most baseball fans have probably heard about Kenley Jansen’s intentional balk. If you haven’t, let me catch you up to speed.

The rarity occurred on Friday night. It was the top of the ninth inning. The Dodgers held a 5-3 lead over the Cubs, and Jansen was on the mound to close out the victory. The inning started nicely, as Jansen struck out Carlos Gonzalez, but the Cubs did not go down cleanly. Thanks to an error from first baseman Matt Beaty, Jason Heyward reached second base. David Bote then struck out, leaving Victor Caratini as the only roadblock between Jansen and his 20th save.

The oddity commenced when Jansen yelled, “I’m going to balk,” following the strikeout of Bote. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »