Tyler Clippard got top billing in this column nine months ago. A Toronto Blue Jay at the time, he boasted a 3.17 ERA, and had allowed just 6.5 hits per nine innings over 696 career appearances. Thanks in part to a lack of save opportunities, he was one of the most-underrated relievers in the game.

Twisting a familiar phrase, the more things remain the same, the more they change. Clippard is now a Cleveland Indian, and while he’s still gobbling up outs — his 3.05 ERA and 5.2 H/9 are proof in the pudding — he’s getting them in a new way. At age 34, having lost an inch or two off his fastball, the under-the-radar righty has pulled an old pitch out of his back pocket.

“Toward the end of last season, I started to incorporate a two-seamer,” said Clippard, who’d scrapped the pitch after transitioning to the bullpen in 2009. The new role wasn’t the primary driver, though. As he explained, “I mostly got rid of it because it wasn’t necessarily sinking. I thought, ‘If it’s not sinking, why should I throw it?’”

A decade later, a reason for throwing it emerged.

“Traditionally, I’ve been a fly-ball pitcher and have given up home runs,” said Clippard, who has surrendered 99 of them at baseball’s highest level. “In the overall scheme of things, I have’t been too concerned about that. There was a year, 2011, when I gave up 11 home runs — which is a lot for a reliever — but I had a 1.83 [ERA]. I can give up home runs and still be fine. At the same time, if I can keep the ball in the ballpark a little bit more, that’s obviously going to benefit me.”

Hence the reintroduction of a two-seamer… this despite the fact that it isn’t diving any more now than it did a decade ago. Read the rest of this entry »

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 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

Baltimore Orioles
6/20/19: OF Dwight Smith Jr. activated from 10-Day IL.

Smith had been struggling since a strong start, posting a .638 OPS in 111 plate appearances before a concussion knocked him out of action for two weeks. Batting in the cleanup spot on Thursday, the 26-year-old went 0-for-3 with a walk and two strikeouts. He should continue to see regular at-bats as the starting left fielder, but he’ll have to get back on track soon. With his next home run, Smith will surpass his father’s career-best total when he hit 11 for the Cubs in 1993.

Depth Chart | Roster Resource Read the rest of this entry »

When looking at the differences between midseason and original projections, it’s always fun to see where reality shredded expectations the most. The American League in 2019, on the other hand, is fairly boring. We have one big surprise, bordering on the edge of truly affecting the playoff hunt, and a relatively mild switcheroo in the AL Central leader. Sure, the White Sox are a bit better than projected and the Angels a bit worse, but it’s generally a league in which most teams are at least in the same time zone as their preseason win prognostications.

So how do the ZiPS in-season projections work? For the Big Official ones, I use the full-on ZiPS model rather than the comparatively simple in-season one, to try to get the best estimates possible. Each player gets a percentile projection, with ZiPS randomly selecting from each player’s distribution to get a range of the expected roster strength for each individual team. Then each team is projected against every other team in their schedule a million times for the rest of the year. All this has the benefit of getting more accurate tails as opposed to the binomial distribution when you’re working with an assumed roster strength; one of the most important things in ZiPS is that on all layers, it’s designed to be skeptical about its own accuracy.

So let’s dive right into the American League. Read the rest of this entry »

Some years ago, Ian Kennedy was a reliable mid-rotation starter, utilizing a four-seam-heavy attack and leaning on his ability to generate fly-ball outs for success. Kennedy eclipsed 190 innings pitched in a season five times, highlighted by a 2011 campaign in which he threw 222 innings for the Diamondbacks, finishing with a 2.88 ERA, a 3.22 FIP, 4.4 WAR, and fourth place in the National League Cy Young Award voting.

Kennedy’s fastball has always been his go-to pitch. Since debuting in 2007, Kennedy has thrown a four-seam fastball 61% of the time, the highest percentage among any pitcher with a minimum of 1,000 innings pitched during that timeframe. Kennedy’s fastball has shown flashes of brilliance, with impressive wFA/C totals of 1.43, 0.73, and 0.97 in 2011, 2014, and 2016, respectively.

Of course, someone with such a fly-ball-heavy approach could find himself running into some barriers to success as modern hitters continue to adjust and hit the ball out of the park. Kennedy’s success as a starter in 2016 for the then-defending World Series champion Royals dwindled in the next two seasons as his FIP ballooned and hitters continued to hit the ball out of the park against him. Kennedy’s 2017 and 2018 campaigns resulted in his lowest innings pitched totals in nearly a decade, as well as career-low strikeout rates. During those two seasons, opposing hitters were especially productive against his fastball, putting up a wOBA of .359 and hitting 48 extra-base hits against the pitch. Their average exit velocity and launch angle against fastballs in 2017 and 2018 were 90.7 mph and 24 degrees.

With Kennedy still owed $33 million through the end of 2020, the Royals needed to find a way to once again extract value out of their veteran right-hander and announced in spring training that Kennedy would move to the bullpen. The hope, ostensibly, was that Kennedy’s struggles would diminish as he no longer faced the task of turning over lineups. In 2018, Kennedy’s opponents had a .971 OPS the second time through the lineup, the worst mark in baseball out of 162 pitchers who faced at least 100 hitters a second time through. Opening up rotation spots could afford the rebuilding Royals a chance to challenge some younger pitchers while trying to extract value out of Kennedy in the bullpen. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Cardinals played the Marlins on Wednesday night, two of the hardest throwers in baseball made appearances. Jordan Hicks was flawless, getting two strikeouts and four grounders in two perfect innings. Tayron Guerrero pitched a 1-2-3 inning, but with a tad more excitement than Hicks produced. He allowed a fly ball to medium-deep center field, and fly balls are always adventures given the current state of home runs. As I listened to the game, however, the announcers were quick to mention that Guerrero wasn’t in great peril with that fly ball, because it’s hard to hit home runs off of someone who throws so hard.

My statistical curiosity was piqued by that comment. It’s something I’ve heard from time to time, and it seems logical — I’ve watched a fair amount of Hicks appearances in the past two years, and batters seem tremendously uncomfortable when facing him. On the other hand, there are plenty of things I’ve heard about baseball that seem logical but aren’t true. I grew up knowing when the right time to bunt was and how some batters were just better at hitting in the clutch, and those have since been proven false. What’s to say that “throwing harder suppresses home runs” isn’t just another in a list of untruths?

To a certain extent, every time you use xFIP to describe a pitcher’s skill level, you’re ignoring this pearl of broadcaster wisdom. After all, if you’re regressing everyone’s home runs back to a league-wide average, that implies that no one has special skills to suppress home runs when the ball is hit in the air. No one would say that xFIP is a perfect and foolproof predictor, but it does do fairly well when it comes to ERA estimators — it beats FIP and ERA, for example.

As a general believer that skill is over-ascribed in baseball (not every 2.5 ERA or 150 wRC+ is hiding a great process — sometimes it’s just a hot stretch), I’m naturally inclined to go with xFIP’s explanation of how fly balls become home runs. That’s not to say that throwing hard doesn’t have advantages, obviously — baseball’s ever-creeping velocity increase is proof of that. It helps with swinging strike rate, of course, and therefore directly helps increase strikeouts, the most valuable thing a pitcher can do. When the ball is struck, however, the hitter has, necessarily, not swung and missed. In fact, you’ve probably heard people say that when a hard thrower allows contact, it’s usually harder than normal because the ball was coming in so fast. Wouldn’t this increase home runs per fly ball? Sounds like something worth looking at. Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Mets made an out-of-the-box move yesterday, hiring 82-year-old Phil Regan as their interim pitching coach. The former big-league hurler, and longtime coach, takes over for Dave Eiland, who along with understudy Chuck Hernandez, was relieved of his duties in the throes of what has been an underachieving season.

As you should be aware, Regan’s nickname is “The Vulture.” It was given to him by Sandy Koufax, in a year that Regan went 14-1 out of the Dodgers bullpen with 21 saves and a 1.62 ERA. Prior to that 1966 season, he’d pitched primarily as a starter for the Detroit Tigers, the team he grew up rooting for in rural Michigan. Overall, Regan appeared in 551 games, for four teams, from 1960-1972.

The excerpted interview that follows was conducted approximately five or six years ago and was intended for inclusion in a book project — conversations with Detroit Tigers players of yesteryear — that has remained on the back burner. Given the timeliness of Regan’s hiring, I am choosing to share highlights from the interview here.

David Laurila: You were born in 1937, and grew up in southwest Michigan rooting for the Tigers.

Phil Regan: “Yes, I grew up in a town called Wayland. My earliest recollection of the Tigers was listening to Harry Heilmann call games on the radio. I recall players like George Kell, Johnny Lipon, Hoot Evers, Johnny Groth, and Vic Wertz. But my favorite of all was Hal Newhouser. He always seemed to be the one who pitched on Sundays, often against Bob Feller. He was my hero.

“During the week, I’d rush home from school, turn on the radio, and listen to Harry Heilmann and then, later on, Van Patrick. In those days we didn’t have a lot of television, but we always had the games on the radio. Of course, being from Michigan, I grew up wanting to play for the Tigers.”

Laurila: You ended up signing with them after graduating from high school.

Regan: “I did. As a kid, I never really got to play many games of baseball, because I lived out on a little farm, near a little town. Mostly I threw against a barn, with my brother, and stuff like that. But I had a good arm, and after graduating I was invited to Tiger Stadium to work out. They offered me a contract, but I decided that I wanted to go to Western Michigan [University]. After a year at Western, I decided to sign with the Tigers. From there I went into their minor league system.”

Laurila: How much did you sign for? Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and guest co-host Ellen Adair banter about Ellen’s acting career and baseball background, the causes of (and possible solutions to) the Phillies’ post-McCutchen slump, what the (extremely far-fetched) idea of the Rays splitting time between Tampa Bay and Montreal might look like in practice, Ellen’s script for a baseball series, and her solution for maintaining her Phillies fandom in the wake of Odubel Herrera’s domestic violence suspension. Then (44:51) they bring on San Diego Padres Baseball Operations Fellow Sam Schultz to discuss her work in the Padres’ front office, her indirect route to baseball, her training in physics, the MLB Diversity Fellowship Program, the value of diversity of thought, why she chose to work for the Padres, her recommendations for baseball job-seekers, and more.

Audio intro: Jason Isbell, "Brand New Kind of Actress"
Audio interstitial: B.o.B., "Mellow Fellow"
Audio outro: Family of the Year, "Diversity"

Link to Craig Edwards on Nola
Link to Ellen’s website
Link to Ellen’s article about Herrera
Link to article about Sam
Link to website for MLB’s Diversity Fellowship Program
Link to Ben on the sabermetrics of marketing
Link to Ringer MLB Show episode on baseball business analytics
Link to Astudillo’s catch
Link to Ben’s Trout piece
Link to order The MVP Machine

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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 »

Read the rest of this entry »

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 »