Through the Mets’ first nine games this season, J.D. Davis has 28 plate appearances. Jeff McNeil has 27. This, despite our playing time projections; we expected Davis to make just 67 trips to the plate all season. McNeil, on the other hand, was pegged for 509.

Davis, to say the least, has made the most of his early boon in playing time. He’s slashed .280/.357/.600, with two homers, three walks, and six strikeouts. He has also hit the ball incredibly hard. And, when I say incredibly hard, I really do mean it. Of Davis’ 17 batted balls, two have already left the bat at 108+ mph. Why is 108 mph a significant figure? Because, as Rob Arthur wrote in The Athletic in April 2018, “For every mile per hour above 108, a hitter is projected to gain about 6 points of OPS relative to their predicted number.” (Arthur looked at this correlation using a hitter’s projected OPS from PECOTA, Baseball Prospectus’ player projection system.)

On Saturday, Davis hit this home run off of Patrick Corbin at a whopping 114.7 mph off the bat, the hardest hit ball he has hit all season:

Going off of Arthur’s findings, this would mean Davis could gain up to 40 points of OPS off of his projected value, which our Depth Chart projections have as .718. By no means would 40 “bonus” points take Davis into elite territory — it only ups his projected OPS to .758 — but having a max exit velocity of 114.7 mph this early in the season is clearly not a bad sign. In fact, it’s the third-highest max exit velocity of any hitter in the big leagues (minimum 10 batted ball events), behind only Aaron Judge (118.1 mph!) and Joey Gallo (115.4 mph). That is some pretty good company to be in. And perhaps it means that Davis could be tapping into new potential. Read the rest of this entry »

As anybody who follows my weekly chats in the early part of baseball seasons can attest, I’m a big proponent of shooing off small sample size worries with a brush of the hand and a curt reply of “April.” That answer mostly applies to players, but for teams that are fringe contenders, it’s possible to dig a hole in April that’s nearly impossible to escape from, especially in a competitive division. Expected playoff teams such as the Red Sox and Cubs have had wretched starts of their own, but they also had some room for error based on their talent level. For the Cincinnati Reds, however, it may be closer to panic time.

One reason why it’s easier to panic on the team level than it is for individual players at the start of the season is due to the fact that the bright lines for team success are quite different than the foggier ones for players. If a four-win player has a replacement-level month but then otherwise plays at his normal levels, his eventual 3.3-3.4 WAR still contributed greatly to the team’s bottom line. But the playoffs provide a much sharper divide for team success, and a team that makes the postseason by a single game has a much different penumbra of success than one that misses it by that margin.

So let’s talk about the Reds. On a basic level, it’s disheartening that they’ve struggled to this degree, being one of the few teams this past offseason to aggressively push their roster forward and try to open their contending window early. Teams being successful when they do this kind of thing is something I feel is fundamentally beneficial to baseball.

The Reds didn’t go after the big stars this offseason, and if they ever talked with the Harper, Machado, or Corbin camps seriously this winter, it’s news to me (though there was a rumor last fall they were at least interested in Corbin). But they did make significant moves and take on salary, adding Yasiel Puig, Sonny Gray, Alex Wood, and Tanner Roark in a bid to provide a short-term boost to their weakest spots. They’ve already committed to Gray for an even longer period, extending him through 2022 with a $12 million team option for the 2023 season. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Luis Robert, CF, Chicago White Sox
Level: Hi-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: 4   FV: 55
Line: 2-for-4, HR, 2 HBP

Notes
Off to hot start, Robert has multi-hit efforts in each of his first four games and has already stolen three bases and homered three times. After watching LouBob a lot last year (first while he rehabbed multiple injuries, then in the Fall League), I grew concerned about how his bat path might limit the quality of his contact (he sometimes struggled to pull pitches he should have) or his rate of contact, which we don’t have a large-enough sample to properly assess because of his injuries. So far, the pull-side stuff hasn’t been founded, as all but two of Robert’s balls in play so far this year have been to the right side of the field, and those were both pop-ups to the second baseman. He’s one of the more physically-gifted players in pro baseball.

Darwinzon Hernandez, LHP, Boston Red Sox
Level: Double-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 2   FV: 45
Line: 5 IP, 2 H, 4 BB, 0 R, 10 K

Notes
We do not think Hernandez is a long-term starter and instead think he’ll be an elite bullpen arm. His fastball often sits in the upper-90s when he’s starting so it should at least stay there if he’s moved to relief and, though his feel for it comes and goes, his curveball can be untouchable at times. Maybe the strong early-season performances of Matt Barnes, Brandon Workman, and Ryan Brasier has stifled some of the disquiet about the Red Sox bullpen, but in the event that they need an impact arm, I think it’s more likely to be Hernandez than a piece outside the org. Some of this is due to the quality of the farm system, but Hernandez might also just be better than a lot of the options that will eventually be on the trade market. Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Dan Szymborski: Oh god, I’m here exactly at the time I intend to be here. IT IS TIME TO PANIC

12:01

Dan Szymborski: Smack hard balls with hard sticks, but not in a homoerotic fashion.

12:02

Dan Szymborski: First question: Baseball would lock up and blue screen of death and we’d have to start 2019 over again.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jacob deGrom’s 2018 will go down in history as one of the best pitching seasons of all time. There’s almost no way it couldn’t — pitchers don’t put up sub-two ERAs very often, and they record sub-2 FIPs even less frequently. By those stats alone, deGrom had the seventh-best ERA and eighth-best FIP since integration. Adjust for the run-scoring environment, and he falls all the way to ninth. Simply put, deGrom was sublime in 2018.

After a season of such historic magnitude, we’d be crazy to not expect regression. Everything broke so well for deGrom in 2018 that he could pitch every bit as well in 2019 and end up with meaningfully worse results. Indeed, ZiPS and Steamer both projected deGrom’s ERA to increase by essentially a run this season. Despite that, both projected him to put up the second-best ERA and FIP among starters, behind only Chris Sale. When you’re as far ahead of the pack as deGrom, you can significantly regress and still be one of the best.

It isn’t just projection systems that peg deGrom to come back to earth — the broad sweep of history suggests it as well. No matter how you slice it, pitchers who record a season like deGrom’s decline the next year. Want to focus on ERA? There have been 26 times since 1947 when a pitcher qualified for the ERA title and had an ERA below two. Excluding 2018 deGrom and 1966 Sandy Koufax (he retired after 1966 and so didn’t have a next season), these pitchers averaged a 1.77 ERA. The next year, they recorded a 2.78 ERA. 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 — Tyler Anderson, Steven Brault, and Mike Leake — on how they learned and developed their change-of-pace pitches.

———

Tyler Anderson, Colorado Rockies

“In high school, I tried to learn how to pitch by watching other people. And I was doing all kinds of stuff. I was dropping down, throwing from all arm angles, throwing sliders. Then I got to college. At the University of Oregon, they preached fastball-changeup. Not only that, in the fall you weren’t allowed to throw breaking pitches; you had to go fastball-changeup only. Then, just before the season started, you could start mixing in curveballs and sliders.

“Before that, I’d thrown a palm ball. Honestly. I would hold it in my palm and throw a palm ball. It was slower. My dad knew about it from back in the day — it’s an old-school pitch — and mine was actually pretty good. It didn’t have a lot of spin, and as you know, limited spin creates drop. Mine would drop a lot, but it was too hard to control. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh, Sam Miller, and Meg Rowley banter about Mike Trout leading MLB in WAR and follow up on the bad ad from Episode 1358, then draft all 30 teams in terms of how fun they are to follow in 2019.

Audio intro: Smash Mouth, "Fun"
Audio outro: The Knack, "Serious Fun"

Link to list of drafted teams
Link to poll about drafted teams
Link to Sam’s fun facts about every team
Link to preorder The MVP Machine

 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 Twitter Account
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

If there’s one player whose 2019 season is off to a more conspicuously inauspicious start than Nationals reliever Trevor Rosenthal, who has yet to retire a batter through four appearances (including one on Sunday), it’s Orioles first baseman Chris Davis, who has yet to record a hit. Like Rosenthal, Davis’ run of futility has actually carried over from his previous season. He’s now approaching the major league record for consecutive hitless at-bats by a non-pitcher, held by Eugenio Velez (0-for-46 in 2010-11), and is putting the rebuilding Orioles in an awkward position given his huge contract, which could become the largest sunk cost in major league history.

Already known for his all-or-nothing extremes, which included him hitting 53 homers in a season (2013) and striking out 219 times (2016), the now-33-year-old Davis appeared to find the bottom last year, when he hit .168/.243/.296 for a 46 wRC+ while striking out in 36.8% of his plate appearances, numbers that all ranked dead last among the majors’ 140 qualifying hitters. Whether it was mechanical flaws, eyesight troubles, medication issues (he has a therapeutic use exemption for an ADHD drug, an issue that led to a 25-game suspension in 2014, when it wasn’t properly addressed), or mental struggles, Davis and the coaching staff weren’t able to find the answer to his problems. Including slightly subpar defense (-1.7 UZR), his -3.1 WAR tied for the majors’ sixth-lowest mark since 1901. He closed the season while stuck in a 1-for-39 skid, with a September 14 double off the White Sox’s James Shields his only hit after his second plate appearance on September 5. He went hitless in his final 21 at-bats, with 14 strikeouts (he walked twice and was hit by a pitch within that span). In an act of mercy, the Orioles — who were on their way to 115 losses, the third-highest total of the post-1960 expansion era — didn’t play him in their final eight games, preventing Davis from digging an even deeper hole. Read the rest of this entry »

Griffin Canning on is on the fast track after a delayed start. Drafted 47th-overall by the Angels in 2017, the righty didn’t made his professional debut until last April. By June he was taking the mound for the Triple-A Salt Lake Bees. That’s where the 22-year-old UCLA product is to begin the current campaign, one rung below the majors, with a chance to reach Anaheim in the not-too-distant future.

When the call-up comes, Halos fans can expect to see a pitcher who combines power and pitchability. His approach to his craft is a mixture of art and science.

“I think you can find a middle ground on the two,” said Canning, who ranks fourth on our Angels Top Prospects list. “For me it’s moe of an art — I’ve kind of always thought you can be born with it — but at the same time, you can use those science tools to help you get better.”

When I talked to him during spring training, I asked the youngster what type of artist he envisions himself as. I wasn’t looking for a Monet or van Gogh comp, but I was wondering about his thumb print on the mound. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a Blue Jays fan who’s unfazed by foul balls, a possible comeback for defunct Fox show Pitch, the Mariners (specifically Tim Beckham and Dylan Moore) committing errors in bunches, the offensive futility of Chris Davis, how Nationals fans treated Bryce Harper in his return to DC, Ramon Laureano’s amazing throwing arm, a change in the baseball and the increase in strikeout rate and Three True Outcomes percentage, the inspirational Willians Astudillo, Chris Sale’s worrisome start and the worst outings ever in Cy Young seasons, Mike Trout and the Angels offense, and more.

Audio intro: Butch Walker, "Summer Scarves"
Audio outro: Oh Land, "Human Error"

Link to videos of unfazed Jays fan
Link to Rob’s research about the baseball
Link to videos of Laureano throws
Link to Pitch farewell interview
Link to Ben on Harper’s defense
Link to Astudillo’s Instagram post
Link to data on worst outings by Cy Young winners
Link to preorder The MVP Machine

 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 Twitter Account
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS