We are truly living in the age of blazing fastballs. Pitchers are throwing harder than ever, and measurements like spin rates are getting recognized as a crucial tool for effectiveness. At the same time, the fastball is also getting rarer than ever, but the pitch is still quite valuable and that will never change. Having the most valuable fastball in the league is something that will catch a lot of fans’, scouts’, and front office members’ attention.

It’s easy to think that the most effective fastball in 2019 would be that of a classic fireballer. One could guess names like Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole, or Max Scherzer. While those three are all having good seasons, our metrics have so far crowned someone else as having the best fastball of 2019 so far. The current fastball champ is none other than Jake Odorizzi. Depending on how much you’ve been following the Twins, you may be surprised to hear that Odorizzi has a 2.24 ERA and a 3.00 FIP in 14 starts this year. He’s boasting a career-best 28.3% strikeout rate while limiting home runs (0.71 HR/9IP) despite being an extreme fly-ball pitcher (29.4% ground-ball rate). Prior to this year, Odorizzi’s been known as a decent, middle-to-back-end pitcher, but not quite a top-of-the-rotation caliber starter like he’s been this season.

Arsenal-wise, Odorizzi’s fastball has been his best pitch in his career. It has accumulated 59.6 in wFB while the only other pitch that netted a positive value is his slider at 2.9. His other pitches — a cutter (-10.3), curveball (-8.2), and changeup (-18.9), have not. He’s done that without significantly backing off fastball usage, having used it 55.4% of the time in his career. This year, that figure is that 60.7%, which is the highest after his debut 2012 season (71.1%) in which he made only seven starts. Read the rest of this entry »

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Before Peter Alonso’s otherworldly power sent him soaring through the New York Mets’ farm system and into an everyday starting job with the major league squad in 2019, the team had another well-regarded first base prospect that was expected to anchor the position for years to come. Because of a great hit tool, Dominic Smith was ranked by our Eric Longenhagen as the No. 73 prospect in baseball heading into the 2017 season. He failed to produce much as a rookie that year, posting a 75 wRC+ in 183 PA, and he only marginally improved to a 84 wRC+ in 149 PA last season. When Alonso came out of the gates mashing, the defensively limited Smith was effectively reduced to being a bench bat. With his once-rising star dwarfed and his playing time dwindling, the pressure was on Smith to prove himself quickly.

It might be a stretch to say he’s proven anything yet, but Smith has certainly recaptured some attention. In 105 PA, Smith has hit .348/.448/.562, posting a 172 wRC+ that ranks fifth-best among all major league hitters with at least 100 PA. Those numbers ought to become even more impressive when considering the fact that Smith has only started 16 of the 60 games he’s appeared in this season, making 30 appearances as a pinch hitter. His numbers in those situations are outstanding: a .318/.500/.545 slash line, with seven walks and just four strikeouts when coming off the bench.

The key to Smith’s improvement has been a cooler, more confident approach after watching his plate discipline stats completely bottom out a year ago. In 2018, Smith struck out 47 times and walked only four times, good for a 31.5% strikeout rate and 2.7% walk rate. This year, he has 20 strikeouts against 15 walks — a 19% strikeout rate and 14% walk rate. The sample size is still a tad small, but his near-9% walk rate in the minors suggests his discipline had never been in question before, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest the changes in his approach are real. Read the rest of this entry »

Tyson Ross has had an uneven career since being selected in the second round of the 2008 draft by the Oakland Athletics. Along with his original organization, he’s pitched for the San Diego Padres, Texas Rangers, St. Louis Cardinals, and now the Detroit Tigers. Injuries have been an issue. Currently on the 60-day Injured List with ulnar nerve neuritis, the 32-year-old right-hander previously underwent Thoracic Outlet Syndrome surgery in 2016.

When healthy, he’s been a quality big-league pitcher. Ross was an All-Star with the Padres in 2014, and the following year he led the National League in games started. His ERA over that two-season stretch was 3.03, while his K/9 was a robust 9.4. A mid-90s fastball played in a big role in that success, but it’s never been his best pitch. Ross has — when at full strength — one of the game’s best sliders.

Ross talked about his signature pitch, as well the cutter his college coach didn’t know he threw, and what he’s learned since purchasing a Rapsodo, when the Tigers visited Fenway Park in late April.

———

David Laurila: You’re known for your slider. What is the history behind it?

Tyson Ross: “It’s always been my go-to pitch. I went to college at Cal-Berkeley and threw a ton of sliders when I was there. But I originally learned the pitch when I was 11 years old. I was in All Stars, playing third base, and we ended up needing an emergency pitcher. I could get on the mound and throw strikes with a fastball, but I needed a second pitch. My buddy’s dad said, ‘Hey, grip it like this and throw it like a fastball.’ The second or third one broke. He didn’t actually call it a slider — he just called it a breaking ball — but it felt good in my hand, and I’ve been throwing it the same way ever since.”

Laurila: Is there anything unique about it?

Ross: “Nothing special. It just works the way it does, for whatever reason.” Read the rest of this entry »

In the winter of 2017, Lance Lynn was coming off a season with a solid 3.43 ERA but poor peripheral numbers and couldn’t get the multi-year deal he desired, eventually settling with the Minnesota Twins. Lynn got off to a rough start, but from May on he put up a 3.34 FIP and a 4.13 ERA with the Twins and Yankees (following a trade), with the former number making Lynn one of the top-15 pitchers in the game and the latter number befitting an average-to-slightly above-average innings-eater. Heading into 2018, Lynn was paid based on his poor FIP and not his solid ERA, but heading into 2019, Lynn received a contract based on his average ERA and not on his very good FIP. Lynn agreed to a three-year deal worth $30 million to pitch for Texas, and 15 starts into in his Rangers career, the MLB pitching WAR leaderboard looks like this:

There’s Max Scherzer at the top, and right behind him is Lynn with 3.2 wins above replacement on the season. While some might have the urge to point to Lynn’s 4.16 ERA and insist there is something wrong with WAR, particularly at FanGraphs, I would request fighting against any such urges. First, I’d like to note that over at Baseball-Reference, Lynn’s 2.7 WAR ranks 12th in all of baseball and isn’t too far off from the one above. As for that ERA, Lynn has put together an unusual season with respect to runs allowed. First, Lynn has no unearned runs on the year. While most pitchers’ earned run totals are around 90%-95% of their runs allowed, Lynn’s runs have all been earned. Indeed, Rangers pitchers outside of Lynn have earned run totals that are 93% of their total runs allowed. While it is possible that Lynn has benefited from great defense, that’s unlikely as we’ll get to below. In any event, that explains roughly 0.3 of Lynn’s higher ERA. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller review Sam’s latest observations on Jeff Sullivan-era EW episodes, including musings on Ketel Marte, the worst team draft of all time, and Johnnie LeMaster, then banter about Shohei Ohtani’s tools, Todd Frazier’s wild swings, Max Scherzer’s nose-breaking bunting practice, and Mickey Callaway’s odd pitching-change justification. They also answer listener emails about Scott Rolen and aliens, the Angels and the .500-est teams of all time, the Houdini-esque masters of escaping bases-loaded, no-outs jams, and a stolen base that wasn’t one, plus a Stat Blast about Ryne Sandberg and the rise of Rynes.

Audio intro: Blink-182, "Aliens Exist"
Audio outro: Cary Ann Hearst & Michael Trent, "Swing Low"

Link to Jeff’s Marte post
Link to Sam’s draft piece
Link to video of 2019 Frazier swing
Link to video of 2017 Frazier swing
Link to video of Pillar swing
Link to video of Scherzer bunt attempt
Link to Scherzer’s tweet about pitcher hitting and the DH
Link to “games above .500” discussion
Link to Callaway explanation
Link to picture of JBJ not stealing second
Link to order The MVP Machine

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Nobody can definitively say whether the Reds will be sellers at the trade deadline this year. At 33-38 and near the bottom of the National League Central, they certainly look the part of sellers. Their Pythagorean record is quite a bit better than that, but they’re well back of the Brewers and Cubs and drifting away from the Wild Card slots. They have several guys on the roster playing out the final years of their contracts, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if they sold. If so, one of the players plenty of teams will be interested in David Hernandez.

You’d be forgiven for not grouping Hernandez with the game’s best relievers. His 4.50 ERA is below league average, and though he’s had a solid career, he’s never been one of the game’s premier late-inning arms.

However, glance past his surface numbers, and he starts to look a little better.

That’s a list of some of the most feared relievers in the game, and Hernandez’s name is right there with them. His elite FIP stems from his ability to keep the ball in the park. He’s allowed just two dingers in 32 innings, good for the 13th-best HR/9 ratio in baseball. That would be his best mark since 2012, but it isn’t far off from the 0.65 HR/9 figure he posted in 2017 or his 0.84 mark last season.

Hernandez is also generating plenty of strikeouts. His 11.8 K/9 ratio represents something of a breakout, or at least a resurgence. He was an elite strikeout pitcher back in 2012, when he punched out 98 hitters in 68 innings and posted a 2.50 ERA and a 2.08 FIP. He traded a few strikeouts for ground balls in the years following, as he struck out a still-solid 9.3/9 from 2013-18. In 2019, the strikeouts are back, and he’s again exceptional. Read the rest of this entry »

One element missing from the Oakland A’s in recent years has been an ability to develop long-term, high-quality starting pitchers. The cupboard hasn’t been completely bare, with Sonny Gray notably appearing on the cusp of establishing himself as one of the best starting pitchers in the league before a series of injuries waylaid him starting in 2016. Whether ultimate responsibility comes down to failure in developing pitchers or not choosing the right ones in the draft, the A’s have a poor record at finding starters. Gray remains the most-recent drafted pitcher to amass even five WAR in his MLB career.

The legacy of the trio of Mark Mulder, Tim Hudson, and Barry Zito leaves a long shadow on the franchise. In the past 20 years, the A’s have a total of 39 top-50 starting pitcher seasons. That’s above-average (you’d expect an average team to have roughly 33 of these seasons), but it’s also skewed very heavily in favor of the pitchers the team had back when we were worried that the Y2K bug would destroy humanity something something.

Wait, Gil Heredia had a top-50 season? Read the rest of this entry »

It’s an exciting time to be a Blue Jays fan.

Despite the team being firmly out of contention, the presence of Cavan Biggio and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (both sons of Hall of Famers) in the lineup provides substantial watchability. Guerrero is known for his 80-grade raw power, an attribute which has already translated to the majors. Biggio, however, is known more for his plate discipline and approach, also something that has already been on display during his first three weeks in the big leagues.

In 77 plate appearances entering Wednesday, Biggio has slashed .222/.364/.492 with five home runs and a 130 wRC+. He’s already drawn 14 walks. Among players with at least 50 plate appearances this season, his 18.2% walk rate ranks fifth. Particularly for a player with no prior big league experience, Biggio’s discipline numbers are impressive.

But we must be careful in touting him. It has only been 77 plate appearances, after all. It is hard to draw any firm conclusions about any player in this small of a sample. That can be the issue with early-season baseball writing. Of course, it’s not early in the season anymore, but it’s still early in Biggio’s season. Read the rest of this entry »

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