Just 14.1 innings: that’s all we’ll get from Michael Kopech at the big-league level until 2020. On Friday afternoon, the White Sox announced that the 22-year-old fireballer has a significant tear in his ulnar collateral ligament and will require Tommy John surgery. Unlike the previous gut punch that baseball fans were dealt just two days earlier — that Shohei Ohtani needs the surgery, as well — there was no dramatic buildup, no injection of platelet-rich plasma after the first report of a UCL sprain, followed by rest and hope backed with worry that it wouldn’t be enough to stave off surgery. On Wednesday, Kopech was pitching. On Friday, he was cooked, though he’ll go about getting a second opinion before the fork, and ultimately the knife, are stuck in him.

Granted, there were signs on Wednesday: Kopech exhibited diminished velocity even before sitting through a 28-minute rain delay. When play resumed, he surrendered three homers and six runs to the Tigers while retiring just one hitter in the fourth inning. The guy who, two years ago while still in the Red Sox organization, was reportedly clocked at 105 mph threw just one first-inning fastball that topped 95, according to the data at Brooks Baseball. His average four-seam fastball velocity for the first inning declined for the third time in a row — in a major-league career that’s four outings long:

Oddly enough, rain affected Kopech’s first and third starts, as well, also in Chicago. His debut ended after two rain-shortened innings and his August 31 start ended after three. He didn’t allow a run in either outing and conceded just one in six innings in his lone road start, in Detroit, on August 26. His tally entering the fateful start was thus one run allowed in 11 innings, with 11 hits, nine strikeouts and one walk, an extension of the second-half strike zone-pounding roll that carried him to the majors in the first place. Because he has learned to dial back his velocity in order to improve his control, he didn’t crack 99 mph on any pitch, let alone 100.

Kopech didn’t sound any alarms about his elbow in Wednesday’s postgame interview, telling reporters, “I missed a lot of spots and got taken advantage of, which is going to happen when I’m not throwing the way I need to. I was pitching like I was throwing 100 [mph], and I was throwing 93-94.”

After the news of his diagnosis, however, Kopech was reported to have experienced trouble getting loose during warmups, believing that he was simply dealing with stiffness:

“If you’re looking for a specific pitch or date, I couldn’t tell you,” Kopech said. “It’s been gradual.”

“I thought it was just a little discomfort. I thought it was something I could throw through,” he said… “[I wanted] to see if there was something I could fix. This isn’t the answer I expected.”

“There were no inklings whatsoever,” said general manager Rick Hahn while delivering the bad news. “Nothing that he reported, nothing in the injury reports, nothing with his delivery, nothing with any of the analytics of his mechanics, nothing until yesterday, when he rightfully shared with us that he didn’t feel quite right getting loose during that start against Detroit.”

It’s been a particularly rough year for the UCLs of top prospects. Going back to the FanGraphs’ top-100 list from February, we’ve lost not only Kopech (No. 20 on that list) and Ohtani (No. 1) but also the Rays’ Brent Honeywell (No. 15), the A’s A.J. Puk (No. 30), and the Reds’ Hunter Greene (No. 42). Per Baseball America’s list, those five were all in the top 30. Depending upon which of those lists you’re consulting, that’s five of the top-18 (FG) or -14 (BA) pitching prospects felled, counting the two-way players (Ohtani, Greene, and the Rays’ as-yet-unharmed Brendan McKay) as pitchers because that’s where the risk is. Whether their UCLs are actually more vulnerable due to double duty is a question for another day.

The more important question from an industry-wide perspective is the extent to which the UCL tears of this cohort of blue-chippers and so many others are connected to the game’s trend towards increasing velocity. (According to Pitch Info’s data, this year’s average four-seam fastball speed of 93.3 mph is down 0.3 mph from the previous year but still 1.1 mph higher than in 2009.) In a 2015 study by Julien Assouline published on the FanGraphs Community blog, Assouline used PITCHf/x data dating back to 2007 and Baseball Info Solutions data dating back to 2002. He found higher rates of Tommy John surgery among major-league pitchers in the 92-95 mph bucket (~27% for both sources) than the 89-92 bucket (20-21%) — and higher still in the 95-plus bucket (31-35%). The trend was generally applicable both to relievers and starters, though regarding the latter group, he found some ambiguities when using BIS data, which had a larger sample size.

Meanwhile, a study conducted by the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Henry Ford Hospital, published in the April 2016 Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery (abstract here via PDF), found a connection between higher fastball rates but not necessarily higher velocity. The study, which covered 83 pitchers who had endured the surgery over an eight-year period (a smaller sample than Assouline’s study) and compared them to a control group matched for age, position (starter/reliever), size, innings pitched, and experience, found no differences in pre-surgery pitch velocities for fastballs, curveballs, sliders, or changeups. However, research also revealed that the pitchers who received Tommy John surgery threw significantly more fastballs than the control group, with a 2% increase in risk for UCL injury for every 1% increase in fastballs thrown, and that fastball usage above 48% was “a significant predictor of UCL injury.”

For what it’s worth, the small sample of Kopech’s Pitch Info data for his four starts shows him throwing four-seam fastballs 62.5% of the time. For Ohtani’s 10 starts, he threw four-seam fastballs 46.3% of the time and split-fingered fastballs — which went unmentioned in the study, as did cut fastballs and any distinction between two- and four-seamers — 22.4% of the time (sinkers just 0.1%). For what scant data we have from Honeywell (the 2016 Arizona Fall League and the 2017 Futures Game) and Puk (that Futures Game and one 2017 spring-training outing) via Brooks Baseball, the aggregated rates of fastball usage are well above 50%, but the sample sizes and relief-length outings make it unwise to draw conclusions.

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Perhaps the biggest surprise for the White Sox in 2018 was just how long they clung to their mathematical chances of reaching the postseason, surviving weeks longer than either the Royals or Orioles. But as goes the way of all flesh, the Pale Hose became pale dust — along with five other teams in the last week, meaning Dan is going to be busy over the next five days.

The Setup

Unlike with the Orioles, who still had at least a plausible argument coming into the season about playoff volatility, and the Royals, who pretended to have one, nobody was ever under the illusion that the White Sox would play October baseball.

Which is perfectly fine, of course, given that the team only threw in the towel late in 2016. Unfortunately, that was well after acquiring James Shields from the Padres (though this trade has turned out way worse than could be expected on average).

Chicago wasn’t among those clubs, like the Braves and Phillies, poised to return from the depths of their rebuild and compete for a place in the postseason. They’re still very early in that period of sorting out which of their prospects and low-risk pickups will help them in that capacity.

The White Sox entered the 2018 campaign clearly intent on avoiding expensive moves — costly in terms of dollars or prospects — that were unlikely to help make the team better in the future. Giving Miguel Gonzalez a one-year, $4.75 million deal isn’t crazy for a team that’s just trying to cover 162 starts a year. The team believed Welington Castillo was enough of a bargain at two years and $15 million that, even if the team failed to compete in the second year of the deal, they could always flip him for something useful.

Outside of a clever little trade of Jake Peter, a low-ceiling now-or-never utility-type for trade bait in Luis Avilan and Joakim Soria, it was a quiet offseason.

The Projection

ZiPS projected the White Sox to go 68-94, tying with the Tigers and a game behind the Royals. Who says I’m not optimistic about the Royals?

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Mike Clevinger has been channeling Trevor Bauer. Not just in terms of effectiveness — the long-maned righty has a 3.11 ERA and a 9.3 strikeout rate — but also with competitiveness and ingenuity. While the Cleveland Indians teammates aren’t exactly two peas in a pod, Clevinger is certainly being influenced by his mad scientist of a rotation mate.

“He’s a wealth of knowledge, and a really good resource, especially with our new cameras and stuff like that,” Clevinger said of Bauer, who uses 2,000-frames-per-second video to parse the movement and spin of pitches. “We have the same mindsets and goals on the mound. It’s never going to be a completed process. For us, it’s always going to be ‘What’s the next step? What’s the next move to get better? What’s the next level to take it to?’ Throw harder. Make it nastier.”

An 80-MPH slider is one of Clevinger’s nastiest pitches, and while Bauer didn’t play a role in its development, he has broken down its nuts and bolts. Read the rest of this entry »

When Chris Sale started for the American League in the 2018 All-Star Game, he was in the midst not only of a fabulous season that was worthy of the honor, but quite probably the best stretch produced by any starter this year. A year after he became the first AL pitcher to notch 300 strikeouts in a season since the turn of the millennium, it appeared that the 29-year-old lefty, an All-Star and Cy Young vote recipient every year since 2012, might finally take home the hardware that had eluded him in the previous six seasons. Alas, shoulder inflammation sent Sale to the disabled list on July 31 and has limited him to just one start since. While he still leads the league in a host of key categories, it seems entirely possible that his missed time could cost him the award he deserves.

Sale missed two starts in his first stint on the DL. Upon returning, he threw five innings of one-hit shutout ball against the Orioles, striking out 12 — his 11th double-digit game of the year — despite throwing just 68 pitches, 19 fewer than any of his other outings this season. Though he has since said that his shoulder feels “like Paul Bunyan’s ox” and recently declared, “There was never any major issue with my shoulder… This wasn’t something that happened on a single pitch or a mechanical issue or anything,” he returned to the DL after that start. He has been throwing bullpen sessions lately, and while the Red Sox have not announced when he will make his next start, manager Alex Cora said this past weekend that “he might become an ‘opener’ for one or two starts” during the team’s September 7-16 homestand. “We’re not worried, he’s in good spirits, he should be fine,” added Cora.

Sale has been more than fine this year, he has been flat out, ass-kicking dominant. In 23 starts totaling 146 innings, he owns the league’s lowest ERA (1.97) and FIP (1.95) among qualifiers, and his numbers look even better when you consider that he calls Fenway Park home. Though he’s made just nine of his 23 starts there this year, his 0.05 edge in ERA over second-ranked Blake Snell becomes a five-point edge via ERA- (44 to 49); meanwhile, his 0.42 edge in FIP over second-ranked Trevor Bauer is a nine-point edge via FIP- (47 to 56). Sale additionally owns the league’s highest pitching WAR, “whether you prefer the FIP-driven variety (6.1), our version based on runs allowed (6.7), or Baseball-Reference’s own metric (6.5). He has the majors’ highest strikeout rate (38.7%) and K-BB% (32.9 points) among starters despite toiling in the DH league.

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On Tuesday, the Brewers beat the Cubs 11-1. It was the 71st game this season decided by 10 or more runs, and the 183rd decided by eight or more, and it got me thinking about failure. Baseball has an awful lot of failure. So much, in fact, that it feels sort of trite to mention it. It’s mostly failure of the small, survivable variety. We learn a lot from those sorts of tumbles. It makes our moms worry, but life’s lessons generally come after we’ve strung a bunch of snafus together. The how and why of a pitcher getting lit up, or a defensive alignment not working, enhances our understanding of the game, even if just to say, “Well, don’t do that again.”

But baseball also does big failure, extreme failure. Baseball does blowouts. Some of them come early, while others develop late. Sometimes they’re the result of a series of foul-ups; other times it’s one big inning. But in their extremity, we learn something about the everyday. So I took a look at blowouts, adopting pitchers as our guides through this land of suck, to see what we might discover. I present a not-brief, incomplete study.

The Reliever Whose Boss Only Cares About Him a Little

One of the crueler things about blowouts, and baseball more generally I suppose, is that no matter the score, someone has to pitch. The game doesn’t believe in mercy; the game believes in wearing one. We’re used to feeling the cruelty of a starter who has to stay in down seven runs to save the bullpen. It’s natural to feel sympathy for someone having a bad day. But cruelty isn’t the exclusive province of losers; there’s a smaller meanness reserved for victors, too.

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Back in April, I wrote about the lawsuit former Indians uberprospect and current Padres backstop Francisco Mejia had filed against Big League Advance. As I wrote earlier this week, that case is now over. Michael Schwimer, the CEO of Big League Advance, who was good enough to talk to me after my initial post on the case, spent some time this week answering my questions about how the case ended. Once again, Schwimer was forthcoming about his company, the Mejia suit, and the future for himself and his business.

I first asked Schwimer what happened at the end of the case. Schwimer told me that Mejia dismissed his case voluntarily, without providing a specific reason. That said, Schwimer suspects “peer pressure [on Mejia] from players” might have had something to do with it. “[We got] overwhelming support from minor-league players,” Schwimer said regarding the suit, adding that BLA clients were largely supportive of the company through the litigation. Schwimer also corrected one assumption I’d made in my previous article — that no discovery had been performed. BLA, at least, had responded to document requests propounded by Mejia’s attorneys. Schwimer thought that response had something to do with Mejia’s decision to dismiss his case, as well. “We had proof to back up literally everything,” Schwimer told me.

Among Mejia’s allegations was that BLA purportedly hired a lawyer for him — and paid that attorney to advise him — solely with a view to including language in the contract that he’d had the benefit of counsel. But Schwimer told me that BLA had correspondence with Mejia’s private attorneys refuting the claim. “We had the emails with Francisco’s lawyer, where [the lawyer] redlined the contract for Francisco’s benefit,” Schwimer said. “He reduced the endorsement from 6% to 2.5%, and made other changes that helped Mejia.”

As I noted in my postmortem on the case following its dismissal, apologies in lawsuits are incredibly rare, and I was curious to know how this one came about. “We did ask him to apologize, no doubt,” Schwimer said. In this case, the apology was part of a settlement, but not of Mejia’s claim. Instead, Schwimer explained that Mejia voluntarily dismissed his claim and settled BLA’s counterclaim. The apology was part of that settlement.

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This time last year, Jeff Sullivan posited that the Indians might have assembled the best pitching staff in baseball history, a distinction that unsurprisingly included one of the best collections of starting pitchers ever. Even though the club wasn’t able to translate their success into October glory, it would be hard to pin whatever shortcomings the team exhibited on the rotation, the worst regular member of which, Josh Tomlin, recorded “only” a league-average FIP. It was an impressive season.

Perhaps surprisingly, the 2018 campaign has seen the Indians repeat that success. The rotation as a whole leads baseball with 19.9 WAR, with its four best starters — Trevor Bauer (6.0 WAR, fourth in baseball), Corey Kluber (4.9 WAR, ninth), Carlos Carrasco (4.1 WAR, 11th), and Mike Clevinger (3.9 WAR, 12th) — ranked among the top 12 of the league by that metric. That quartet has already exceeded their combined WAR from 2017 by half a win with a month to go. Notably, that isn’t even the only way in which the rotation has improved.

Instead of Tomlin, the Indians have turned to rookie starter Shane Bieber since the end of May. In 15 starts, Bieber’s has produced a 4.66 ERA but has also posted an incredible 3.23 FIP and 2.0 WAR in a mere 85 innings. He strikes out over a batter an inning (9.21 K/9) and has excellent control of his pitches, as evidenced by a top-10 walk rate (4.2%). Putting those figures two together, Bieber’s 5.8 K/BB is exceeded by only six pitchers with at least 80 innings pitched. Some impressive names are counted among those six, including Clayton Kershaw, Chris Sale, Justin Verlander, and Bieber’s teammate, Kluber.

The Indians seem to have struck gold with Bieber. While the team doesn’t seem to need it this year — thanks to the remarkably weak AL Central — Bieber is a key piece for the Indians in the future. His repertoire, ability to deploy his pitches, and command make him an especially valuable (and foundational) starter.

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It’s been a few years now since we first discovered that Javier Baez has an elite tagging skill. At the time, it wasn’t obvious that a player actually could have an elite tagging skill. Applying a tag seems like a pretty specific, rote act. There’s not a lot of variation. Baez, though, somehow found a way to do it better than everyone. Baez has a way of doing that.

Well, it seems possible Baez has managed to somehow find value where none seemed clearly available — in this case, by causing fielders to self-combust while he runs the bases. It’s a skill that leads to errors and extra bases for Baez and his friends, and it was on display Wednesday night as Baez stood at first base with Anthony Rizzo up to bat. The Cubs’ first baseman hit a single to center field. Then this happened:

Baez scored on the throwing error and Rizzo advanced to second, eventually making it to third thanks to another throwing error. A guy on Twitter with 1.7 million followers asked for a post on this.

Hey, @fangraphs can we get an article on Javy’s supernatural ability to induce errors in the defense? https://t.co/wZ4L6X7i0p

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 6, 2018

 

This is that post.

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Reynaldo Lopez remains a work in progress. The 24-year-old right-hander has been brilliant in his past two outings — allowing just a pair of runs over 14 innings — but his overall performance this season has been a mixed bag. In 28 starts for Chicago’s South Side club, Lopez has a 4.37 ERA, and he’s fanned just 6.8 batters per nine innings.

That doesn’t mean he isn’t making strides, nor does it mean that he can’t miss bats when he needs to. Acquired by the White Sox along with Lucas Giolito and Dane Dunning in the December 2016 deal that sent Adam Eaton to the Washington Nationals, Lopez has been removing the word “raw” from his reputation. Tutelage from a pair of baseball’s best pitching minds is a big reason why.

“I’ve matured a lot,” Lopez told me this summer via translator Billy Russo. “Four or five years ago my mindset was to throw hard and overpower the hitters. Now it’s more about location and pitch selection, and managing the game. You have to be smart in order to succeed at this level.”

The native of San Pedro de Macoris began learning that lesson upon his arrival in the nation’s capital midway through the 2016 season. His initial outings were rocky, and teammates were in his ear. Their messages were straightforward. He couldn’t just throw hard. He needed to have a plan.

His first tutorial came from one of the game’s best, and most cerebral, pitchers.

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A while back, I wrote about Angel Hernandez and his lawsuit against Major League Baseball. In said piece, I noted that “[p]layers in both the American and National League voted Hernandez one of the game’s three worst umpires. (In case you’re wondering, Joe West was worse in both leagues.)”

It’s time to talk about Country Joe West. West hasn’t sued anybody lately, but he did manage to get himself in a kerfuffle involving the Phillies, Austin Davis, and a piece of paper.

So as to prolong the suspense, it’s worth noting why West is considered a bad umpire. Unlike Angel Hernandez, his reputation isn’t necessarily for creative calls. In fact, back in 2007, The Hardball Times named him baseball’s most consistent umpire (though he called this balk on Tony Cingrani).

No, West is more known for his colorful personality. He was suspended for calling Adrian Beltre the “biggest complainer” in baseball. And he also likes staring matches. Like this staring match with Madison Bumgarner.

And this staring match with Jimmy Rollins.

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