If you know one thing about Kolten Wong, you probably know that he’s a great defender. Honestly, great defender might be underselling it. Since 2014, his first full year in the bigs, he’s third in Defensive Runs Saved at second base. Maybe UZR is more your speed? Wong is third there, too. This isn’t some trick of innings played, either — he’s fourth in UZR/150 among qualifiers. He hasn’t won a Gold Glove yet, but it’s not because he doesn’t deserve it.

If you know Kolten Wong for a second thing, you probably know him for the endless flashes of potential, the bumpy road he’s followed throughout his major league career. In 2013, when he’d barely had a cup of coffee in the regular season, he got picked off of first base to end a World Series game. After two average-ish seasons in the majors, he found himself playing the outfield (?!) so that the team could squeeze more at-bats out of… um… Matt Adams? Brandon Moss? Greg Garcia? Mike Matheny-run teams had some interesting substitution patterns, let me tell you.

In any case, whatever you know about Kolten Wong, elite plate discipline probably isn’t on your list. After all, Wong is on the field for defense. Take a look at his yearly wRC+ numbers, starting with his first full year: 90, 96, 85, 107, 98. Those numbers are totally acceptable for a premium defender (Wong’s career wRC+ bests Andrelton Simmons’), but they also lead to batting at the bottom of the lineup more often than not.

Here’s the thing, though: Wong is certifiably great at controlling walks and strikeouts. It’s not just a 2019 thing, though it’s certainly been the case so far in 2019. Take a look at the list of qualified batters with more walks than strikeouts this year:
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12:02

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon folks, and welcome to today’s chat. I’ve been buried in studying career strikeout rates and totals in anticipation of CC Sabathia’s 3,000th K, which did not go off last night (hency my shelving the piece until next week, most likely). Anyway, on with the show.

12:07

Jay Jaffe: First off, thanks for your support! I appreciate you taking the time not only to read but to think about your purchase decision, even if you did go with the lowest price (as I quite often do myself). Basically, the way it works with The Cooperstown Casebook is that I was given a significant advance up front by the publisher, which means that I don’t see any royalties until that figure is reached. And like most books, my sales have not yet reached that mark (in part because the book has not come out in paperback, though I’d make less on those copies). So I wouldn’t sweat the decision too much. I do like it when people choose to support independent bookstores in purchasing the Casebook. You can do so via indiebound.com to find, say, a local one near you; I fulfill requests for signed copies at a bookstore near me in Brooklyn, Greenlight Bookstore. https://cooperstowncasebook.com/2017/07/21/signed-copies-of-the-cooper…

12:08

Jay Jaffe: Am I the new Jonah Keri? I wrote about Clint Frazier earlier this week and now he’s on the IL.

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Attempting to discover pitching jewels — guys who may have some value in MLB — in international leagues is a relaxing hobby I recommend you try in your free time.

First, you will be doing something that forces you to watch (non-American) baseball all year long. The TV memberships you will need to start watching are really cheap. And there is something appealing about imagining yourself as the one who “discovered” a 2-WAR, 32-year-old pitcher for a major league team.

Of course, finding complete treasures shouldn’t be the main goal of this exercise unless you want to live in a constant state of frustration. Instead, as someone who has played this little game for years now, I have to advise that instead of searching for a potential major league pitcher, you keep an eye out for a particular pitch that could do some damage in the best baseball league in the world. It’s still a hard task, but at least your odds will look less like winning the lottery and more like being struck by lighting in an open field.

Take what I found in Efren Alexander Delgado’s changeup for example. This guy is a 24-year-old lefty starting pitcher for Guerreros de Oaxaca with no outstanding numbers in Mexico. Then again, if you look closely, you will see that he went full “Bumgarner Mode” on the 2018 Mexican League postseason: a 2.25 ERA, with 39 strikeouts and nine walks in 32 innings against tough teams such as Diablos Rojos Del México, Leones de Yucatan, and Sultanes de Monterrey.

He sporadically touches 90 mph with his fastball and has an average curveball, but he does have a magic changeup. Just watch this at-bat and try to identify who Delgado is striking out:

Yes, what you are seeing is rare footage of the only strikeout folk hero Willians Astudillo suffered in the Venezuelan Winter League last postseason while he was playing with Caribes de Anzoategui. This part of the game wasn’t broadcast (Nicolas Maduro was speaking and every Venezuelan network was forced to broadcast him), but thanks to my little birds in Venezuela, we manage to salvage this piece of baseball history. Read the rest of this entry »

The Milwaukee Brewers signed a famous lefty starting pitcher out of free agency Wednesday, bolstering the back of the rotation. No, not that famous lefty starting pitcher, but a still quite respectable one in Gio Gonzalez, most recently biding his time with the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Rail Raiders. In MLB terms, Gonzalez’s contract with the team is barely even a wallet-opener at one-year, $2 million with performance incentives.

Milwaukee’s rotation necessitated another arm after the early season struggles of Corbin Burnes. Burnes struggled to hit locations with his hard stuff, resulting in a slugging percentage over 1.000 against his fastball and a total of 11 home runs allowed in 17 2/3 innings. That’s a 58% home run to fly ball ratio! Gonzalez was brought in as an emergency option for the Yankees, and with the team’s injury emergencies largely being hitters, they never called up Gio and he exercised his out clause.

The Brewers and Gonzalez have a recent history, one that went swimmingly after the late August trade with the Washington Nationals. In 2018, Milwaukee was generally content to let Gonzalez go through five solid innings and then go to the bullpen, something that worked out well, at least during the regular season (3-0, 2.13 ERA/3.63 FIP in five starts). ZiPS projects 1.0 WAR for Gonzalez, assuming 100 innings for the rest of the season, which is comparable to the team’s other options. There’s a catch of course, in that the other options aren’t actually available at this moment; Burnes shouldn’t be working out his problems in a pennant race and Jimmy Nelson and Freddy Peralta haven’t yet returned from injury, even though they’ve made progress. Gonzalez doesn’t really add wins to the standings directly so much as serving as inexpensive insurance for other pitchers.

Gonzalez joining the Brewers is only a bit of a surprise in that they weren’t actually the team most in need of Gonzalez’s services. The buzz has been that about a third of baseball was interested in Gio, but why didn’t a team more in need blow away a measly one-year, $2 million option. After all, if you’re in desperate straits and you’re not going after Dallas Keuchel, where else are you going to get viable a starting pitcher outside of the system in late April? It’s not as if the Giants are begging (yet) to trade Madison Bumgarner. Read the rest of this entry »

It would be inaccurate to say that Jeff McNeil came out of nowhere, but unless you were a Mets fan with a deep knowledge of the team’s minor league system, chances are that you hadn’t heard of him before he was called up last July 24. Since then, he’s done nothing less than post the majors’ fourth-highest batting average (.339) as part of a contact-centric profile with echoes of yesteryear. Having additionally shown himself capable of manning multiple positions, the 27-year-old lefty swinger has become a staple of manager Mickey Callaway’s lineups, and a key cog in a much-improved offense.

McNeil arrived as a man of mystery largely because of his age and injury history. A 12th-round 2013 draft pick out of Cal State Long Beach, he hit for high batting averages with minimal power (a total of four home runs) in his first three professional seasons, most notably leading the Florida State League with a .373 on-base percentage in 2015. Just as he reached the high minors, surgeries to repair a pair of sports hernias and a torn labrum in his hip limited him to a mere three games in 2016; he played in just 48 games in 2017 due to a groin injury. Between the lack of playing time and minimal power, he barely grazed even the deepest prospect lists. Just before the injury bug bit, Baseball America included him as a 40-grade prospect, 27th in the Mets’ system, in its 2016 Handbook. He was an honorable mention on FanGraphs’ Mets list that same year.

Finally healthy, and sporting 40 pounds of additional muscle relative to his pre-injury days, the 26-year-old McNeil broke out to hit .327/.402/.626 (182 wRC+) with 14 homers (five more than his previous career total) in just 57 games at Double-A Binghamton last year, then .368/.427/.600 (165 wRC+) with five more homers in 31 games at Triple-A Las Vegas. He began garnering attention, from prospect hounds, though even Baseball America’s midseason Mets top 10, published four days before his debut, merely consigned him to the “Rising” category. He arrived in Queens in late July, just before the team traded incumbent second baseman Asdrubal Cabrera to the Phillies. As the Mets went nowhere amid an otherwise sour season, he hit .329/.381/.471 (137 wRC+) in 248 PA while playing a credible second base (0.4 UZR in 54 games), good for 2.7 WAR. Notably, he struck out in just 9.7% of his plate appearances, the second-lowest mark of any player with at least 200 PA. Read the rest of this entry »

When I was a kid, my dad taught me about baseball whenever he got a chance. A lot of these lessons were just meaningless baseball truisms: always hit to the right side of second base when there’s a runner on, the best count to steal on is 2-0, catchers are never lefties. Most of these sayings stuck in my brain without ever registering on a conscious level, but one of them fascinated me the moment I heard it. “Throw fastballs when the batter is ahead in the count and breaking balls when he’s behind.” It is known. I’ve pondered the reasoning and factuality of that rule of thumb ever since.

At the most basic level, I totally understand the thinking going on. Fastballs are easier to locate for a strike, and when you’re behind in the count you can ill afford to throw a pitch for a ball. It’s not just that, either. When a batter is down in the count, they need to be much more proactive about swinging at any pitch in the strike zone. If you throw a 1-2 breaking ball that starts out looking like a strike, the batter needs to swing. Throw the same pitch on 2-0, however, and even if it looks like a strike at the start, the batter might not swing — they could be looking for a specific location rather than defending the entire plate.

Go one level higher, however, and things get a lot more confusing. Pitchers throw fastballs when behind in the count, and batters know that pitchers throw fastballs in hitters’ counts. If a hitter knows you’re going to throw a certain type of pitch, that makes their job a lot easier. One of the hardest parts of being a major league batter is that you have to determine how a pitch is going to break after leaving a pitcher’s hand almost instantaneously. Curveballs and fastballs might start at the same place, but they end up in different areas entirely. Take this deception out of the equation, and hitting gets quite a bit easier.

That’s only one level up, though. We can go further. Pitchers know that hitters know that pitchers throw fastballs when behind in the count. If you’re getting a Princess Bride vibe here, you’re not alone. This is a complex issue. What batters expect pitchers to do plays a role in what pitchers should do, and vice versa. There’s an entire field of economics, game theory, devoted to solving this problem. Maybe you saw the movie about it, where Russell Crowe inexplicably writes on every glass surface he can find.

Let’s leave that all aside for now, though. Whatever the theoretical equilibrium is, pitchers do indeed lean away from breaking balls when behind in the count. In 2018, for example, pitchers threw sliders and curveballs 18.8% of the time when behind in the count, versus 27.5% of the time when they were ahead. That’s major league baseball as a whole, though. Collin McHugh has gone to a breaking ball 58% of the time when down in the count. Gerrit Cole is above 40%, and Robbie Ray isn’t far behind him.

Trevor Bauer, on the other hand, seems to have listened to my dad’s advice. Bauer has thrown 139 pitches while behind in the count this year. He’s gone to a breaking ball exactly twice. He’s on pace to set a career low for breaking balls while down in the count, and it’s not even particularly close. In 2016, Bauer fired only 43 breaking balls out of 878 pitches he threw while behind in the count. That was a preposterously low 4.9%, and still triple the rate he’s put up this year so far. Read the rest of this entry »

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Marcell Ozuna has had a solid start to his 2019 season. Through 89 plate appearances, Ozuna has hit .256/.348/.615 (150 wRC+) with eight home runs, producing 0.6 WAR. Ozuna’s WAR total puts him in the 67th percentile among qualified hitters to begin the year; that’s not elite, though it’s certainly not bad, either.

But what if I told you that there is a pitcher who has produced as much position player value as Marcell Ozuna, as Nelson Cruz, as Jean Segura, Whit Merrifield, Byron Buxton, Jay Bruce, Mike Moustakas, and a host of other solid hitters? Would you believe me? Could you guess who it is?

One of the (few) fun things about small sample baseball season is the ridiculous numbers that come from it. Jay Jaffe already covered some of these blips from both the pitcher and hitter perspective, but there’s one overlapping case that, at least to me, was worth discussing in its own separate piece, the answer to the above questions, perhaps obvious given this piece’s title: Zack Greinke.

This whole idea came about when I was glancing over the Statcast leaderboards at Baseball Savant a few days ago. At the time, the default setting on the hitter numbers was just 10 batted ball events, allowing for some smaller samples to sneak their way into prominent positions on the board. But there’s no position more prominent than No. 1, and seeing Greinke leading all major league hitters in barrels per plate appearance made me chuckle. It also made me take a second look at his season stats this year.

In 13 plate appearances, Greinke has slashed .500/.545/1.300 (361 wRC+). He has hit two home runs, two doubles, and a single, all while drawing a walk without registering a single strikeout. That’s better than Barry Bonds‘ slash line after 13 plate appearances (.400/.538/.900) in 2004, when he went on to post a ridiculous 1.422 full-season OPS. Let’s marvel at that for a second while we watch Greinke’s two home runs. Read the rest of this entry »

All major league pitchers throw pretty hard, and on average, fastballs are hitting close to 93 miles per hour these days. Pitchers throwing 95 seems common-place, and we regularly see pitches in the upper-90s. Pitchers throwing the ball really hard seems routine, but that should make us appreciate pitchers throwing the hardest even more. As pitch velocities get higher and higher, there are still upper limits, and the players who tend to reach those upper limits seem to find themselves alone. Right now, Jordan Hicks is alone.

The graph below represents all the fastballs thrown, except those by J.R. Murphy, this season.

It might be difficult to see the bars at 102 mph and above, so here’s a chart showing those pitches.

And to further clarify matters, here’s the average fastball velocity for pitchers with at least 10 fastballs this season.

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Michael Chavis lived a dream on Saturday. The No. 3 prospect in the Red Sox system not only made his MLB debut, he banged out a pinch-hit double in his first-ever at bat. He did so against Tampa Bay’s Jose Alvarado, with one on and one out in the top of the ninth inning, and the score knotted at five apiece. Boston went on to score, then held on for a 6-5 win.

There’s a pretty good chance that Chavis was the happiest person in Tropicana Dome that night. He was certainly one of the most excited. At age 23, the native of Marietta, Georgia had done in real life what he once fantasized about doing while batting rocks with a stick in his family’s back yard.

Chavis described the thrill-of-lifetime experience prior to yesterday’s game at Fenway Park.

———

Michael Chavis: “I wasn’t in the lineup — I was on the bench — but I knew the situation. They’d said there was a chance I would get to hit that day. Of course, I didn’t know when, who for, or who would be pitching. Come the eighth inning, looking at the lineup and how the game was playing out, I was thinking there was a chance.

“I’m taking some swings in the cage, and they come in and say, ‘Hey, you’re going to pinch hit in the ninth.’ I’m like, OK. Beautiful. ‘Who’s pitching?’ They say, ‘It’s Alvarado.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, wow.’ He’s a talented guy. Very good fastball.

“I’d faced him in spring training. I’d just come back from being sick, and it was kind of a similar situation in that I didn’t know if I was going to hit. I went up there and K’d on something like four pitches. I hadn’t seen a pitch in seven days, which made a 100-mph fastball that runs like his even more difficult to see. Read the rest of this entry »