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In the past few years, we’ve seen instances of hitters improving their production and changing their fortunes by learning new swing mechanics that were once deemed unconventional but that are now fueling change. If you have followed this trend, you may have heard of Doug Latta, a hitting instructor who works out of his facility, “The Ballyard,” in the Los Angeles area. FanGraphs has written about Latta’s work in the past (as have many other publications), and how he defines efficient swing movements (setup, balanced move to the pitch, longer swing path in the zone) and their desired results (increased exit velocity, better launch angle).

Latta’s name first surfaced on the professional baseball mainstream’s radar back in 2013. Beginning in July of the 2012 season, Latta worked with outfielder Marlon Byrd on revamping his swing while Byrd was serving a 50-game suspension for testing positive for Tamoxifen. Byrd was coming off a season in which he had posted a paltry 26 wRC+ in 48 games with the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox. After working with Latta, he burst back onto the scene with a .291/.336/.511 line, 25 home runs, and a 137 wRC+ in 147 games in 2013. (His performance after declined, and following another PED suspension for 162 games in June of 2016, Byrd retired.) Not long after Byrd’s swing started to see success, Latta helped engineered another notable career breakout in Justin Turner.

This part of the story is well-documented. Turner, originally a 2006 seventh-round pick by the Reds out of Cal State Fullerton, made it to the major leagues with the Baltimore Orioles in 2009. But after a .111/.226/.111 slash line in 17 games for Baltimore, he was designated for assignment in 2010. He was then claimed off of waivers by the Mets. He would spend the next three seasons in Queens, hitting .265/.326/.370 with only eight home runs in 301 games. Following the 2013 season, he was non-tendered by the Mets, making him a free agent. During that offseason, Byrd, who was teammates with Turner in 2013, shared how the swing overhaul from Latta was doing wonders for his career. The pair worked together at the Ballyard that winter, and the result showed right away.

In February 2014, Turner signed a minor league deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers and earned a spot for the Opening Day roster by hitting .389/.477/.528 in 19 Cactus League games. He proved the performance was no fluke, hitting .340/.404/.493 with 7 home runs (158 wRC+) in 107 games. And Turner has continued to hit. As a Dodger, he has posted a .305/.383/.505 line with 85 home runs in 619 contests. He also earned a four-year, $64-million contract after the 2016 season and was named an All-Star in 2017, a stark and positive contrast to his position just a few years prior.

Turner and Latta still keep in close contact and work together, Latta says. “We talk or text often, and we’ll hit together as needed at my facility or at Dodger stadium.” Read the rest of this entry »

The outbreak of extension fever might now be classified as a pandemic. Tuesday brought news not only of Jacob deGrom’s four-year, $120.5 million deal for 2020-23 (bringing his total take over the next five seasons to $137.5 million) but also of that of Kyle Hendricks. The 29-year-old righty has agreed to a four-year, $55.5 million extension with the Cubs for that same four-year period, buying out his final year of arbitration eligibility and what would have been his first three years of free agency at a rather club-friendly price.

Hendricks has been a reliable mid-rotation presence since joining the Cubs in July 2014; the former eighth-round pick out of Dartmouth had been acquired from the Rangers at the July 31 deadline just two years earlier in exchange for Ryan Dempster. He provided his share of magic in Chicago’s epic 2016 season, leading the NL in ERA (2.13), ranking fourth in FIP (3.20), and seventh in WAR (4.1), then placing third in the NL Cy Young voting behind Max Scherzer and teammate Jon Lester. That October, Hendricks posted a 1.42 ERA in five postseason starts, though only twice was he allowed to go even five full innings; his best outing was a 7.1-inning shutout of the Dodgers in the NLCS clincher. In 2018 he threw a career-high 199 innings and delivered a 3.44 ERA, 3.78 FIP, and 3.5 WAR, numbers that respectively ranked 13th, 12th, and 11th in the league. For the 2015-18 period, his 3.14 ERA ranked 14th in the majors, his 13.3 WAR 19th, his 3.54 FIP 28th.

Hendricks has done this not by overpowering hitters but by limiting hard contact, generating a steady stream of groundballs, and rarely walking hitters. Via Pitch Info, his average fastball velocity — whether we’re talking about his four-seamer, which in 2018 averaged 87.7 mph and was thrown 17.5% of the time, or his sinker, which averaged 87.1 mph and was thrown 44.3% of the time — was the majors’ lowest among qualified starters, about two clicks slower than runner-up Mike Leake for either offering. He accompanies those pitches with an excellent changeup, which in 2018 generated a 19.8% swinging strike rate and just a 36 wRC+ (.180/.201/.288) on plate appearances ending with the pitch. According to Statcast, the 85.2 mph average exit velocity he yielded ranked in the 92nd percentile, and his hard hit rate of 30.6% in the 83rd percentile.

Hendricks is already signed for 2019 at a salary of $7.405 million. Under the terms of the new deal, he’s guaranteed $12 million in 2020, and then $14 million annually from 2021-23. If he finishes second or third in the Cy Young balloting, his base salaries for each season thereafter increase by $1 million; if he wins the award, they increase by $2 million. He has a $16 million vesting option for 2024 based upon a top-three finish in the Cy Young voting in 2020 and being deemed healthy for the 2021 season; if it doesn’t vest, it becomes a club option. Per the Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, the deal can max out at $78.9 million.

(I’m not quite sure how he arrived at that figure, both with respect to the decimal and the slim possibility of multiple Cy Young results that as I understand it, would push his value even higher. Imagine him winning the 2020 Cy Young award — go on, I’ll wait — thereby making each of the next three years worth $16 million and vesting the $16 million option for 2024; that’s $12 million plus four times $16 million, or $76 million all told. If he wins again in 2021, he’s banked $28 million, and then his salary should escalate again, to $18 million for at least the next two seasons, which pushes his total to $80 million even if the vesting option remains unchanged.)

Escalators aside, Hendricks’ four-year, $55.5 million guarantee looks rather light when compared to the four-year, $68 million free agent deal that Nathan Eovaldi, who’s also 29, inked with the Red Sox in December and the four-year, $68 million extension Miles Mikolas, who’s 30, signed earlier this month; the latter covers 2020-23 as well and buys out just one year of free agency. Mikolas was the most valuable of the three in 2018, producing 4.3 WAR in 200.2 innings, but in 91.1 previous major league innings before going to Japan, he was below replacement level (-0.2 WAR). Eovaldi produced 2.2 WAR in 111 innings last year for the Rays and Red Sox, but over the 2015-18 period produced just 6.1 WAR because he missed all of 2017 and time on either side of that due to his second Tommy John surgery. Expand the window back to 2014, when Eovaldi set a career high with 3.3 WAR and Hendricks had 1.6 in a 13-start rookie showing, and the gap closes, but it still favors Hendricks, 15.0 to 9.4.

What’s done is done; the question is what the three players will do going forward. Towards that end, Dan Szymborski provided ZiPS projections for the trio:

Even while excluding the upcoming seasons of Hendricks and Mikolas, which project to be the most valuable, to focus on the four-year deals, both project better than Eovaldi due in part to the latter’s injury history; ZiPS projects him for a maximum of 110.2 innings (2019) and a four-year total of 411, compared to 602.2 for Hendricks and 587 for Mikolas. Hendricks projects as the most valuable over the four covered years, yet he’s being paid the least, and the one year of arbitration eligibility doesn’t explain the difference , particularly given that Mikolas’ deal covers three years of arb-eligibility.

(As multiple readers have reminded me, Mikolas’ initial contract included language that made him a free agent following the 2019 season, not subject to the arbitration system.)

Even if I place all three on an equal footing by prorating their projections to a flat 180 innings per year — a level Hendriks has reached three times in the majors, Eovaldi and Mikolas just once (twice if you count his 2017 season in Japan) — the Cubs’ righty gets the performance edge, which only underscores the discrepancy in pay:

Even tossing that optimistic scenario aside, reminding ourselves again about Hendricks’ arb-eligible year, and foregoing any assumptions about inflation, we can understand that his contract comes out to about $5 million per win, at a time when we’re debating whether $8 million or $9 million per win is the right assumption. That’s a very club-friendly deal, to say the least.

Hendricks’ deal guarantees that at least one member of this year’s Cubs rotation (which ranks 10th in our depth charts) will be around in 2021, barring a trade. Cole Hamels will be a free agent after this season, and Yu Darvish, whose first year of a six-year, $126-million deal was an injury-shortened mess, can be if he chooses to opt out after the season, which seems like a long shot. Jose Quintana has a very affordable $10.5 million option for 2020, while Lester is signed through 2020 with a $25 million mutual option that can vest if he throws 200 innings in 2020 or 400 innings in 2019-20. Tyler Chatwood is signed through 2020 as well, but he was so bad last year that he doesn’t even project to be part of this year’s starting five, so who knows what happens down the road.

It’s not hard to understand why the Cubs want to keep Hendricks around, particularly given the glowing words team president Theo Epstein used in discussing the extension (“a wonderful representative of the whole Cubs organization… someone who is incredibly dependable, trustworthy, hardworking, thoughtful”). And it’s not hard to understand why Hendricks wants to stick around, given how strong the team has been during his tenure. Still, in light of the prices being paid elsewhere for players foregoing free agency, it’s not hard to think he could have done better, either.

This morning, Dan Szymborski took us through the back end of the bullpen rankings. Now, we conclude the player rankings (a summary will run tomorrow) with the best bullpens in baseball.

“Relievers are volatile” is something that people say all the time. I happen to believe it is true, and here are two illustrations of how. First, Craig Kimbrel is not in these rankings because he has yet to sign. Below you will find the 15 best-projected bullpens. If Kimbrel were to sign with all but the Marlins or Royals on the list of the 15 worst-projected bullpens, they would appear on this list. Further, he would take any team covered below and put them in second place except for the Yankees, who would still be in first.

The second illustration has to do with the narrow band of reliever performances given the small sample they work under. If we were to consider a good but not great position player projected for three wins, and that player finished anywhere between two and four wins, we might not even notice. At any rate, we’d see that player as having come close to his projected result. If we were to take a good reliever, projected for one win, and that player finished between zero and two wins, that reliever was either really bad or one of the best relievers in the game. It makes breakouts a bit easier, but also takes presumably valuable relievers and makes them a lightning rod for fans. What I’m saying is, don’t get too worked up over these rankings. Look for the potential two-win relievers and dream on them. Bullpens already cause enough stress to fret too much over rankings.

As the Brewers lined up to open their division-winning 2018 season, right-hander Chase Anderson took the hill. By shutting out the Padres over six innings, allowing just one hit and striking out six, Anderson pitched the Brewers to the Opening Day victory, helping them win their first of 96 games.

Now, almost exactly one year later, Brewers manager Craig Counsell has announced that Anderson will be moving to the bullpen, opting to roll with a rotation of Jhoulys Chacin, Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff, Freddy Peralta, and Zach Davies to begin the season instead.

This move is interesting for a number of reasons. First, it is true that Anderson has pitched poorly this spring, posting a 6.19 ERA across 16 innings. He’s allowed 11 runs, four homers, struck out 13 and walked four. But, for what it’s worth, Davies (7.17 ERA) and Burnes (5.79 ERA) haven’t looked much better, and each of them comes with fewer years of starting experience than Anderson.

The Brewers also have injuries in their bullpen and may need more depth there, something Anderson can provide. Both Jeremy Jeffress (dealing with a sore right shoulder) and Corey Knebel (out indefinitely with a partial tear of his UCL) are expected to begin the season on the Injured List. Still, it’s probably a bit unreasonable to expect Anderson to make this quick of a transition from being a starter to a reliever who can replace either Jeffress or Knebel, both very good backend arms. But maybe this move could be good for him and his performance. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

In last season’s awards voting, there were 24 players who finished in the top-six of MVP and Cy Young in their leagues, with Jacob deGrom the only one to finish in the top-six in both categories. Of those 24 players, 10 have signed contract extensions this winter to push free agency further down the road. Ten of the best players in baseball have reached an agreement with their teams on contracts worth roughly $1.2 billion. Five of those players (Nolan Arenado, Paul Goldschmidt, Miles Mikolas, Chris Sale, and Justin Verlander) were set to become free agents after this season. Mike Trout became the first player this offseason to sign a major extension two years from free agency, and now Jacob deGrom has become the second, as first reported by Andy Martino.

The contract is set to pay deGrom a total of $137.5 million over the next five years, but it includes an opt-out after 2022 and a team option for 2024. The deal is further complicated by deGrom’s arbitration status. His 2019 salary was already set at $17 million, and he receives the same amount of money this season but $10 million now comes in the form of a signing bonus, per Joel Sherman’s breakdown, which looks like this.

In one sense, it looks like there is $120.5 million in new money being guaranteed to deGrom, but that $23 million in 2020 is roughly what deGrom would have received in his final year of arbitration. In terms of free agent seasons, the Mets guarantee the equivalent of a $23 million team-option in 2020 and $97.5 million over the following three seasons. Comparing this deal to the one Chris Sale just signed presents some interesting similarities and differences. One interesting similarity is that both deGrom and Sale receive $90 million beginning in 2020 over a three-year period before an opt-out can be triggered. However, Sale has $55 million coming to him after the opt-out compared to deGrom’s $30.5 million, which is a function of two big differences. Read the rest of this entry »

If you watch enough baseball, players start to blend together in your brain. You know what I’m talking about — Corey Seager is injury-prone Carlos Correa. Ozzie Albies is caffeinated Jose Altuve (no small feat, since Altuve is a Five Hour Energy spokesperson). Newly minted $100 million man Alex Bregman is Anthony Rendon with good hair. The Bregman/Rendon comparison occurred to me even before I saw Bregman play. A highly-drafted college third baseman with an excellent all-around game? More power than you’d think despite a swing that seems designed to put the ball in play? Probably a little better at baserunning than you’d expect, even if he isn’t a burner? Yeah, that pretty much covers both guys.

Nothing Bregman has done since reaching the majors has changed this early comparison in my mind. Between 2017 (Bregman’s first full year in the bigs) and 2018, he’s recorded a 141 wRC+ to Rendon’s 140. Bregman has walked 11.3% of the time, Rendon 11.6%. Bregman has struck out 13.7% of the time to Rendon’s 13.6%. Bregman has a .219 ISO; Rendon’s is .230. Bregman has 50 home runs; Rendon has 49.

You get the general idea — both players have been incredible, and both have done it in really similar ways. Rendon has been worth 13 WAR over the past two years, second-best among third basemen. Bregman has been worth 11.1 WAR, good for fourth. Here’s another thing they have in common — they were both among the most extreme swing-rate changers from 2017 to 2018. Plot twist, though! It was in opposite directions. Bregman decreased his swing rate by the third-most among qualified hitters, while Rendon increased his by the second-most. Yes, we’ve finally found a place where Anthony Rendon and Alex Bregman are different — extremely different.

For Alex Bregman, 2017 must have been a mix of satisfaction and frustration. His 217 PA in 2016 exhausted his rookie eligibility, and while he held his own in his first big league action (114 wRC+), he looked very much like someone struggling to adjust to big league pitching. He struck out in 24% of his plate appearances, light years higher than his 10% career minor league rate (and 7.5% college rate). His swinging strike rate was 11.8%, meaningfully above league average. In short, he didn’t look like the hitter scouts expected him to be. 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 — Jon Duplantier, Carl Edwards Jr., and Sal Romano — on how they learned and developed their curveballs.

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Jon Duplantier, Arizona Diamondbacks

“I learned my curveball in college. Rice is a big breaking ball school — at least it was when I was there — and depending on where you are, you call it a different thing. It’s a spiked curveball, but I know that at Southern Miss, they call it a Rice slider. Essentially, it’s just a concept where you’re looking for this general break. You spike the curveball, with the idea being that you want something hard, with depth.

“My freshman year, I threw a slurve. The velocity on it was fine — it was 76-78 [mph] — but I would lose feel for it every now and then. When I’d lose feel for it, teams would start sitting on my heater. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the second-half of the bullpen rankings, so there will be no Yankee ‘pens packed from top-to-bottom with scarily elite arms. You will not find a dominating Blake Treinen or a deep Astros corp or a team that made some big offseason signing.

What you will find is despair, hopefully tinged with some kind of hope. As the fan experience goes, nothing seems to feel as bad as a bullpen, because when a bullpen does its job poorly, you see late-game wins evaporate into losses. For those at the game, beer sales are likely over, so even an alcohol-fueled respite is hard to find. Fans of teams with terrible bullpens are always convinced they could add 20 wins with a top closer and while that’s ludicrous, a bad relief corps does cast a pall of doom over a game.

When you have a below-average bullpen, your challenges vary. For a contending team, how do you minimize the damage to the rest of your team? For a rebuilding team, can you find arms that are interesting with upside?

So, how’d they do? Read the rest of this entry »