For the first month of every baseball season, I’m a bit notorious for simply answering “April” as the convenient, one-stop-shop for questions relating to why someone’s favorite player is hitting .150. Once we start heading into May, telling people to be patient when 1/6th of the season is already over becomes an increasingly unujustifiable task. While rebuilding teams are in a place at which they can be patient, avoiding judgment is tricky for contenders, especially when every division leader is in first place by fewer than three games.

So let’s get out the guillotine and guess who can be saved and who is a lost cause.

Ryan Braun, Milwaukee Brewers

I remain quite torn about the state of doneness of the Hebrew Hammer. On one hand, he can still hit the ball with authority as seen by the fact that his average exit velocity, dipping under 90 mph, isn’t all that different from the numbers in 2016 and 2017, years in which Braun was still a contributor offensively. If you dig deeper into his pitch-by-pitch stats, Braun appears to be going dead-red for fastballs, and despite a career-low contact rate, he is actually making contact with fastballs at better-than-career-average rates (14.6% whiff/swing rate in 2019 vs. 19.8% career). But other than fastballs, he’s making much worse contact, missing almost half the changeups and sliders he’s offered at (career rate under 30%).

It makes me wonder about Braun’s bat speed. To my naked eye, it looks like he’s trying to compensate for decreased bat speed by making contact with his bread-and-butter pitch (Braun was one of the best fastball hitters in baseball in his prime). He also suggested he was changing his swing in order to hit more home runs. It’s unfortunate that swing speed isn’t one of the things you can get easily, but Alex Chamberlain identified stats that correlate with swing speed when reverse-engineering the scanty data available a few years ago. Isolated power, xwOBA, and contact rate all have a relationship, and in each of the three, Braun is at his career’s nadir.

I think there’s still hope for Braun, but if his bat is slowing down, I wonder if he’s taking the wrong approach in trying to hit for more power. A player with slower bat speed but who is also pulling the ball more (57% compared to 38% career) seems like one trying to cheat on the fastballs. I don’t think Braun’s as doomed as some on this list, but I think that he’d be better off not trying to capture his early-career power because it’s making him a one-dimensional hitter. Read the rest of this entry »

2018 wasn’t supposed to be the year of Juan Soto in Washington. It was supposed to be the year of Victor Robles. Robles, the consensus No. 1 outfield prospect in the Nats system and probably the No. 2 outfield prospect in all of baseball behind Ronald Acuña, was ready for the majors. Only a hyperextended elbow kept Robles from making an impact in the majors last year, but in abbreviated playing time in August and September, he looked like he was making up for lost time (.288/.348/.525, 131 wRC+).

Robles’ 2019 hasn’t been quite as impressive, but you can see in his performance why he’s such an exciting talent. Even while running a 30.5% strikeout rate and walking only 4.8% of the time, Robles has put up a league-average batting line (.265/.308/.480, 102 wRC+). Watch Robles play, and you can immediately see what the hype is about. He’s electric both at the plate and in the field. With all that said, I’m not here today to talk to you about Robles’ tremendous potential or his jaw-dropping athleticism. I’m here for the bunts.

Victor Robles leads the major leagues in bunt singles this year (he’s actually tied for the lead with teammate Adam Eaton). It’s a good thing, too, because he’s also first in bunts (fair balls that were bunted — it’s hard to get a good count of foul bunt attempts). If that seems weird to you, you’re not alone. We’re talking about a guy with non-negligible power — the FanGraphs prospect team graded him at 50 raw power this offseason. He has four home runs so far this year, and he ran a .157 ISO in the minor leagues, which isn’t Joey Gallo level or anything, but is certainly not poor.

Take a look at this list of players with the most bunts per plate appearance since 2017, Robles’ first playing time in the majors. I liberally filtered out pitchers and people with less playing time than Robles:

Robles sticks out like a sore thumb on this list. Magneuris Sierra literally had a zero ISO in 64 plate appearances in 2017. He’s never hit more than four home runs in a season, minors or majors. Delino DeShields hit six home runs in 440 plate appearances in the bigs — once. Robles has four this year already. Depth Charts projects him for another 11 over the balance of the year. Heck, he had three homers in 66 PA last year when he was called up. Maybe he’s not a power hitter, but he’s certainly not a slap hitter either. What’s up with the love for bunts? Read the rest of this entry »

The past weekend was a very good one for Kris Bryant. While helping the Cubs take two games out of three in Arizona, he sandwiched his second and third home runs of the season around a rally-sparking double. It’s the first time in nearly a year that the former MVP has connected for extra-base hits in three straight games, and after a season marred by left shoulder woes, a possible sign that his power is returning.

Facing the Diamondbacks’ Robbie Ray in the third inning on Friday night, Bryant hammered a 3-2 fastball over the left centerfield wall for a two-run homer:

The home run went an estimated 444 feet and had an exit velocity of 111.1 mph according to Statcast, making it Bryant’s hardest-hit homer since July 16, 2017 (113.0 mph off Ubaldo Jimenez). It’s also the third ball this year that Bryant has hit with an exit velocity of at least 110 mph, two more than all of last season, the least productive of his career.

Bryant’s second homer, a two-run opposite field shot off Luke Weaver, was less majestic (102.0 mph and an estimated 374 feet), but every bit as necessary in the Cubs’ 15-inning, 6-5 win:

The last time Bryant collected extra-base hits in three straight games was May 16-19 of last year, the last a date that figures prominently in our story. He had just two other streaks running at least that long in 2018, compared to six in each of the previous two seasons.

To review: from 2015-17, Bryant was one of the majors’ top players, batting .288/.388/.527; his slugging percentage and 94 homers both ranked 16th in the majors, while his 144 wRC+ ranked 12th, and his 20.6 WAR was third behind only Mike Trout (25.8) and Josh Donaldson (21.8). During that time, he won the NL Rookie of the Year and an MVP award, and helped the Cubs to three straight postseason appearances, including their first championship since 1908.

The first seven weeks of 2018 surpassed even that high standard (.305/.427/.583, 169 wRC+, eight homers), but Bryant’s production took a downturn after suffering a bone bruise in his left shoulder, which is believed to have happened when he slid headfirst into first base (!) on May 19 (not the first time he’s injured himself in such fashion). Though it would be just over a month before he went on the disabled list for the first of two stays totaling 57 days, he hit just .252/.338/.382 (96 wRC+) with five homers in 272 PA from May 20 onward, decidedly non-Bryant-like numbers. By Dr. Mike Tanner’s calculations, from the point of that May 19 date, Bryant’s exit velocity dipped by five miles per hour, and his average fly ball distance decreased by 28 feet.

After rest and rehab for his shoulder, Bryant declared in February, “I’m back to who I am,” but until he got to Arizona, his power and overall production had been similarly meager (.232/.364/.366, 102 wRC+). Even now, his .229/.353/.417 (108 wRC+) line isn’t particularly robust. He’s walking more often relative to last year’s overall numbers (12.1%, up from 10.5%) while suffering a fall-off in batting average on balls in play (.264, down from .342). His exit velocity — never his strong suit despite his power — is up relative to last year, but so is his groundball rate:

Thus far in 2019, Bryant has produced 75 batted balls, five short of the point where the stat starts to stabilize, so we can’t make definitive assertions, but one thing that stands out is that while his pull rate is about the same as last year, an increasing percentage of those pulled balls have been grounders, which are far less productive than pulled fly balls:

Even when Bryant does pull fly balls, he’s not getting typical results, though since we can literally count those times on one hand thus far — four of them according to our splits, which are based on Sports Info Solution data, but only three via Statcast’s data — that’s less important than the sheer drop in frequency. That two of those pulled fly balls were in Arizona, namely the homer off Ray and Sunday’s sacrifice fly off Matt Andriese, may be a sign he’s coming around.

Bryant has gone to the opposite field with more frequency and productivity than before, at least in the air, though it hasn’t come close to matching his results when he pulls the ball:

A few weeks ago, The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma noted that Bryant’s mechanics were out of whack, quoting scouts describing him as “lunging,” with one saying, “He’s falling all over the plate.” Via Sharma, from the start of 2016 to the day of the aforementioned shoulder injury, Bryant had slugged .731 on pitches Statcast defines as being over the heart of the plate (I get .728 using the same parameters). For the remainder of the 2018 season through April 25, the point prior to the Arizona series, he slugged just .474 on such pitches. With this weekend’s pair of homers, he raised that nearly-yearlong figure to .514; separating his full 2018 and ’19 seasons, the numbers are .558 and .615, respectively.

Beyond that, while he whiffed on 3.4% of such pitches last year, he’s up to 4.8% this year, 0.1% off the career high from his rookie season, before he successfully tamed his swing, but only one of this year’s 21 swings and misses from the heart of the plate has taken place since April 19, yet another good sign.

It would be premature to say that Bryant is back to where he was as a hitter, and it’s probably worth noting that even with Chase Field’s humidor in place, fly balls are traveling farther there this year than last (331 feet, up from 329), and farther than at Wrigley Field in either season (321 this year, 315 last year). Still, for a Cubs team that has been scoring 5.5 runs per game but is struggling to escape the pull of .500, the possibility that he’s turned the corner could be a major key in the NL Central race.

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Happy April!

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Don can go spit on a sparkplug

12:03

Dan Szymborski: (that’s a reference to the TV-version-edited line from Barry Corbin in WarGames)

12:04

Dan Szymborski: I have a zBABIP that I use for minor leaguers, as expected it doesn’t translate cleanly

Read the rest of this entry »

The Rangers beat the Mariners 15-1 on Saturday, and then — as if afraid it wouldn’t stick — 14-1 on Sunday. On the season, Texas has scored 162 runs, which is more than any club except those hapless Mariners and the powerhouse Dodgers, and their .342 wOBA is also among the 10 best in the game. The problem in Texas has not been the bats. The problem that has kept the Rangers just barely above .500 and battling the As for third place in the AL West has been the pitching.

Nineteen pitchers have taken the mound for the Texas Rangers in 2019, and as a group they have performed substantially less effectively than reasonable observers might have hoped for coming into the season. Our preseason depth charts had the Texas rotation pegged for a 4.82 FIP (23rd overall) and the bullpen for a 4.40 mark (12th). Texas’s actual performance to date has been among the poorest in the game. So far in 2019, Rangers starters have a better FIP (5.50) than only the Orioles, Angels, and Cardinals, and the bullpen’s identical mark is better only than Baltimore. Something, clearly, is going wrong. But what?

The obvious answer is that the Rangers are walking far too many hitters (11.3% of batters faced, which is the second-worst mark in the league) and not striking out all that many opponents, either (19%; also second-worst, this time to a different team). No team has a K/BB worse than the Rangers’ 1.68. No team, in fact, even comes all that close. The Rangers have been bad at striking hitters out and have also been bad at not putting them on base via the free pass. Those are bad things to be bad at. But this is a little bit like saying that a house is on fire because it’s burning. We know — but what started the fire? Read the rest of this entry »

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 — Kevin Gausman, Bob Scanlan, and Matt Shoemaker — on how they learned and developed their splitters.

———

Kevin Gausman, Atlanta Braves

“I want to say I started throwing it my sophomore year of high school. I had a coach at the time who had pitched — his name is Chris Baum — and he had been trying to teach me a circle changeup. I couldn’t really figure it out, so he showed me this fosh, this split-change, that I throw now.

“It was a pretty frustrating pitch at first, because it’s tough to gain consistency with. He kind of told me from Day One, ‘Hey, if you keep throwing it, you’ll eventually have a feel for it.’ I trusted him, and he was right. It’s a big weapon for me.

“The only thing I’ve really changed is where my thumb is on the ball. I’ll kind of mess around with it when I want to throw a strike, or when I don’t want to throw a strike. Moving the thumb affects the speed, and how much break, and tilt, you get on the pitch. If my thumb is under it, it’s going to be a little bit straighter. When my thumb is on the side of it, it might be a little bigger, with more fading action. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most popular idioms in the English language is “guinea pig.” It’s simple — we’ve probably all used it — and yet it means so much. To be a “guinea pig” is to be the subject of something new or different. It can be as simple as being the first to try a new toothbrush, and range to something as weighty as testing a new drug.

In baseball terms, the Atlantic League is serving as Major League Baseball’s guinea pig this season. In a deal struck in early-March, the two organizations agreed to change certain rules for the Atlantic League’s 2019 championship season as a way to test said modifications before MLB considers implementing them itself.

One of the more contentious rule changes was the prohibition of the infield shift. The rule itself, as explained in the press release, was simply the requirement of “two infielders to be on each side of second base when a pitch is released.” If the rule is broken, “the ball is dead and the umpire shall call a ball.”

Well, last Thursday, the Atlantic League’s Opening Day, the anti-shift rule was utilized in a game between the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs and the Sugar Land Skeeters. Former big leaguer James Loney (remember him?) was at the plate in the bottom of the fourth inning. On the first pitch from Blue Crabs righty Daryl Thompson, Loney hit a soft ground ball to second baseman Angelys Nina, who easily threw him out at first to begin the inning. Read the rest of this entry »

Daniel Norris has a lot of friends. They include a fastball, a slider, a changeup, and a curveball. The Detroit Tigers southpaw doesn’t actually converse with them — not in the way that Mark “The Bird” Fidrych once talked to the baseball — but they are nonetheless part of his coterie. They are his compadres. His amigos.

Norris is known for his unconventional ways. A few years back he gained a certain amount of notoriety for living in a VW van. His beard — since shorn — is often bushy, his soliloquies on life thoughtful. Moreover, his responses to reporters’ questions have rarely been of the paint-by-numbers variety. A few hours before he fanned the first big-league batter he faced — David Ortiz, in September 2014 — I happened to ask Norris if he’s imagined what his debut would feel like. His response was, “I have, and it will be like that times 10.”

A few days ago, I asked the now-26-year-old about his arsenal. The answer I received didn’t disappoint. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Rich Hill‘s dominant rehab start, the most famous catches in history and Sam’s article about recreating Kevin Mitchell’s barehand catch, their own best baseball plays, and when it becomes objectionable to sit a player who’s pursuing a single-season record, then answer listener emails about the entertainment value of high-strikeout teams, whether rebuilding teams should try to plan for forthcoming rules changes, how fast a pitch would have to be to knock over a catcher, and the pitchers with the most one-pitch outings, plus an email-inspired Stat Blast about teams with DHs who bat toward the bottom of the order (and why apparent positional trends are sometimes spurious).

Audio intro: Billy Idol, "Catch My Fall"
Audio outro: Super Furry Animals, "Show Your Hand"

Link to story on Hill’s rehab start
Link to Sam’s tweet about famous catches
Link to Sam’s Mitchell article
Link to Galvis catch
Link to research on the value of a day off
Link to Sam on third base as a power position
Link to Dave on first base offense
Link to dying DH post
Link to Ben on why WAR always changes
Link to David Kagan’s baseball physics site
Link to Steve on unwritten-rules origins
Link to preorder The MVP Machine

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UMP: The Untitled McDongenhagen Project, Episode 13

This is the 13th episode of a sorta weekly program co-hosted by Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel about player evaluation in all its forms. The show, which is available through the normal FanGraphs Audio feed, has a working name but barely. The show is not all prospect stuff, but there is plenty of that, as the hosts are Prospect Men.

This episode is unique because Kiley and Meg Rowley have hot Game of Thrones takes to fire off but Eric is tied up with prospect travel.

0:21 – Surprise, the cohost is Meg and she’s not happy with Kiley’s intro.
0:46 – The elite nut-milk hipster coffee situation has expanded to Twitter beef.
3:11 – Kiley explains what’s happening in this episode.
3:45 – Kiley tries out some standup material about coupon codes.
5:55 – Okay, he has one more chunk about IKEA.
9:20 – Meg launches a lifestyle podcast on the Goop network.
9:40 – The Game of Thrones thoughts flow freely.
31:45 – The GOT episode three Death Draft commences.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @kileymcd or @longenhagen or @megrowler on Twitter or at prospects@fangraphs.com.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 44 min play time.)

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