The Dodgers have an injury-prone lefty who’s been dominating hitters lately, and it’s not Clayton Kershaw. Nor is it Rich Hill — it’s Hyun-Jin Ryu. The 32-year-old South Korea-born southpaw has yet to allow more than two runs in any of his eight starts (one of which, admittedly, was curtailed by a groin strain), and lately, he’s been utterly stifling. On May 1, he threw eight innings of four-hit one-run ball against the Giants. On May 7, he threw a four-hit shutout of the Braves. On Sunday in Los Angeles, he no-hit the Nationals for 7.1 innings before Gerardo Parra — who on Saturday night hit a game-winning grand slam — clubbed a ground-rule double that proved to be the Nationals’ only hit of the day.

Here’s some good company:

Though Ryu wasn’t as efficient as in his previous turn, where his 93-pitch outing gave him the season’s second Maddux, after Kyle Hendricks‘ 81-pitch job on May 3, he had allowed only one baserunner to the point of Parra’s hit, via a fourth-inning walk issued to former teammate Brian Dozier. He had served up just two hard-hit balls, a 99.1 lineout off the bat of Kurt Suzuki in the second inning, and a 95.5 mph fly ball from Anthony Rendon in the fourth, and had been the beneficiary of every no-hit bid’s seemingly obligatory defensive gem. In the sixth inning, Stephen Strasburg appeared to have singled to right field… only to be thrown out at first base by right fielder Cody Bellinger (it’s just after the one-minute mark here):

Alas, the lefty-hitting Parra, who earlier this month drew his release by the Giants and entered the day hitting an anemic .194/.276/.290, sliced a 98.0 mph drive to the warning track in left centerfield, where it bounced over the wall for the Nationals’ first and only hit of the day. That was Ryu’s 105th pitch of the afternoon; he completed the frame having thrown 116 pitches, the highest total of his MLB career.

Completing the no-hitter had seemed like an unlikely proposition; Ryu had finished the seventh inning at 98 pitches. Given the 24 pitches he burned in the fourth (including eight on Adam Eaton’s leadoff groundout), he appeared hellbent on testing the length of manager Dave Roberts‘ leash. Since taking the reins of the Dodgers for the 2016 season, Roberts has been at the forefront of a growing trend of pulling pitchers with no-hitters in progress (forget the openers, we’re talking those of at least five innings). His total of three in that span is tied with the Marlins’ Don Mattingly for the MLB high. Roberts famously gave the hook to Ross Stripling after 7.1 no-hit innings on April 8, 2016, then removed Hill after seven perfect innings on September 10 of that season, and told Walker Buehler to hit the showers on May 4 of last season; three relievers helped the rookie finish the job.

What’s more, Ryu had never thrown more than 114 pitches in a stateside start, and had been above 105 only twice in the past three seasons: 108 pitches against the Padres on August 12, 2017, and 107 pitches in the aforementioned May 1 start. “I’m not sure there’s a pitcher/manager combo alive less likely to push him through 9 just to try for a no hitter,” tweeted MLB.com’s Mike Petriello. Roberts suggested that he would have been more flexible…

…which was easy to say in hindsight, but anyway, enough about the manager. The pitcher struck out nine to go with his one walk and one hit, generating 14 swings and misses, including seven via his changeup and four via his cutter. In doing so, he lowered his ERA to 1.72, second in the NL; he’s tied for third in FIP (2.71), and ranks fifth in WAR (1.5). Most impressive within his stat line is his 54-to-3 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 52.1 innings. That’s a 28.6% strikeout rate (eighth in the NL) and a league-low 1.6% walk rate; his 27.0% K-BB% is third.

Combine that stingy walk rate with a .230 BABIP (second in the league, thanks in large part to the Dodgers’ stellar defense thus far) and you’ve got a pitcher who rarely has anybody on base. I haven’t played fantasy baseball in nearly a decade, so I seldom look at stats like WHIP or strand rate for even casual purposes, but dig: his 0.726 WHIP is second in the majors behind only Chris Paddack (0.689), while his 94.6% strand rate is in a virtual tie with Justin Verlander for the highest mark of the post-strike era. Blake Snell (88.0% last year) and Kershaw (87.8% in 2017) own the highest marks among full-season ERA qualifiers, while Pedro Martinez (86.0% in 2000) and Zack Greinke (86.5% in 2015) are tops among those who reached 200 innings.

Putting this in more analytical terms, albeit with the usual sample size caveats, here’s a scatter plot of pitcher performance (wOBA allowed) with the bases empty versus when men are on base:

Ryu is the red dot, Paddack the yellow one (the Padres righty is one of the reasons I had to lower the threshold of batters faced with men on base).

This is actually the second season in a row that Ryu has ranked among the majors’ stingiest pitchers. Last year, in 15 starts, he posted a 1.97 ERA and 3.00 FIP, with a 27.5 % strikeout rate and 4.6% walk rate. He missed 3.5 months due to a left groin strain so severe its description included the cringe-inducing phrase “tore muscle off the bone,” but he did not require surgery. That was just the latest in a string of injuries that has dogged the burly lefty since coming over from Korea, most notably a torn labrum that cost him all of 2015 and the first half of ’16, then elbow woes that culminated in debridement surgery after he made just one start in the latter season. Only in his 2013 rookie season did he make 30 starts or qualify for the ERA title, yet he owns a career 3.11 ERA and 3.36 FIP. Among the 112 pitchers with at least 600 innings in that span, his 82 ERA- ranks 17th, his 85 FIP- 18th, but because of his less-than-perfect attendance, he’s a modest 47th in WAR (11.9).

Ryu doesn’t have exceptional velocity; per Statcast, his four-seamer’s 90.4 mph average velo ranks in the 11th percentile as does his fastball spin. He’s in the middle of the pack as far as exit velocity (87.7 mph) and hard hit rate (38.8%) are concerned too. His 11.7% swinging strike rate is in the 66th percentile, though his 34.5% chase rate is in the 81st percentile. As The Athletic’s Eno Sarris pointed out last week, he’s the rare pitcher who has above-average command of five different pitches according to Stats LLC’s new Command+ metric, along with Marco Gonzales, Merrill Kelly, Mike Leake (who has six such pitches), Max Scherzer, and Noah Syndergaard; for Ryu, that would be his four-seamer, sinker, cutter, changeup, and curve. Obviously, that group includes a couple of impressive names, but it’s nonetheless a mixed bag, and only tells us so much.

The exceptional results Ryu has been getting owe a considerable debt to his changeup and cutter. The former, which he throws 22.0% of the time, averages just 79.1 mph according to Pitch Info, giving him more than 10 mph of separation from the, uh, heater. It falls out of the zone more often than not, batters can’t resist chasing it, and when they make contact, they tend to hit it on the ground. His results are more or less on par with the two young changeup artists I covered last week, Luis Castillo and Chris Paddack; he allows fewer baserunners with the pitch thanks to the low walk rate, but gets hit a little harder:

I’ve included Ryu’s 2018 numbers there to illustrate that the pitch is working even better for him than it did last year, when it worked pretty well. The big differences from then to now are last year’s lower groundball rate and tendency to work further off the plate against righties (and in to lefties):

Petriello has a good look at how the vertical gap between Ryu’s four-seamer and his changeup has widened this year, though that’s mostly due to his working higher with the heater. As for the cutter, it’s a pitch Ryu didn’t introduce into his arsenal until 2017. It’s about three clicks slower than the fastball, averaging 87.3 mph, and it now accounts for 21.2% of his pitches thrown; over that three-year timespan, he’s mothballed his slider and cut way back on the usage of his curve. The pitch didn’t work especially well for him last year:

Look at that jump in swinging strike rate! I don’t see a great deal of year-to-year variation in his spin rate (2029 to 2063 rpm in that span) or movement to account for the jump, but location-wise, he’s not only throwing it in the zone less often (while getting significantly more chases), he’s keeping it out of the middle third:

Obviously, the caveat all over this is that of small sample size; we are talking about a body of work that covers a modest 134.2 innings over the past two seasons. Still, it’s been an impressive run, and if Ryu — who returned to the Dodgers upon completion of his six-year, $36 million deal by accepting a $17.9 million qualifying offer — can stay upright while fleshing out this body of work, he should be in line for some kind of multiyear payday this coming winter, though one with some complexity of structure likely — incentives, a vesting option or a club option. J.A. Happ’s two-year, $34 million deal with a $17 million vesting option for year three comes to mind.

While Ryu’s fragility makes him one more pitcher in a rotation full of less-than-durable ones, his early-season performance has provided a best-case scenario while helping the Dodgers weather the late arrivals of Kershaw and Hill, whose combined total of eight starts matches his own. His rise to the occasion is just one more reason why the Dodgers (27-16) are vying for the league’s best record and remain the favorites for a third straight NL pennant.

Catching is a thankless job, but it’s widely considered to be one of the most important roles on the field. In 2018, there were 721,191 pitches thrown in the major leagues, and there was a catcher on the receiving end of all of them. Of those pitches, umpires got the ball or strike call wrong nearly 5% of the time. Every umpire has quantifiable tendencies, some of which adjust from pitcher to pitcher and some of which remain consistent. Nearly all umpiring careers follow a trajectory similar to that of players, in that they start in the minor leagues and work to be promoted, calling balls and strikes in front of TrackMan arrays, often for years.

As such, the sample of data teams can use to detect those tendencies grows quickly. The more pitches called, the more data teams collect, meaning that by the time umpires reach the upper levels of the minor leagues, their tendencies are a known commodity. And while umpires can and certainly do improve their craft, old habits are tough to kick. In March, building on previous research, FanGraphs released an update to our catcher WAR that includes the value of pitch framing. Which catchers generate more called strikes for their pitchers can be quantified, but the question remains: How can catchers improve their receiving abilities?

To start, it’s probably better to think of it not as pitch “framing,” but as pitch “absorption.” Consider the following. A baseball is about five ounces. That might not seem like much, but try to envision yourself catching an object that is moving in different directions and hitting different locations with the speed of a major league pitch and not only being able to keep still, but guide the ball in a motion that we call “framing” in order to make the pitch seem closer than it is. Of those 721,191 major league pitches thrown in 2018, 604,007 were “competitive” — more than 124 pitches per game, per team, that had a chance to be called a strike. Read the rest of this entry »

12:06

Dan Szymborski: OK, I’m here!

12:06

Dan Szymborski: I’d like to say something out of my control happened, but I tend to start Twitter rants two minutes before I have to be somewhere

12:08

Dan Szymborski: Should be fixed now.

12:08

Dan Szymborski: He’s certainly looked better. There’s still hope.

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 — Jalen Beeks, Dallas Braden, and John Means— on how they learned and developed their changeups.

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Jalen Beeks, Tampa Bay Rays

“I had a changeup in high school, but it wasn’t very good. When I got to college, I changed the grip; I moved my pinky finger down. It’s pretty much a circle change. I grip it hard and think about it almost like a fastball. I don’t pronate. No one taught it to me. I just threw it one day and it worked. You have to tinker. You have to figure out what works for you.

“It’s gotten better over the last year. I think that’s mainly from my mechanics having changed a little bit. I use my legs more, and have shortened my arm action. I’m not so tall on the mound now. I’m activating my legs more, by getting into more of a squat position. And like I said, I think fastball. I throw it as hard as I can. My average fastball is around 92 [mph] and my changeup is around 88. Read the rest of this entry »

When baseball fans quibble with sabermetrics, one of the arguments I hear is, “If we can already predict everything that will happen, then why isn’t baseball just played on a computer?” It’s a funny stance to me for two reasons. First, statistics can’t predict everything; they can only tell you the odds of an event occurring. And, second, the randomness of baseball — and, really, sports in general — is something that even the most devout statisticians can marvel at.

Mike Fiers threw the second no-hitter of his career last week. Rachael McDaniel did a brilliant job of explaining how unlikely it was for Fiers, the individual, to have the fortunate of joining the group of 35 pitchers to throw two no-hitters in the big leagues. I just want to borrow a few lines from McDaniel’s prose, but you should really read the whole thing. It’s great:

That’s the wonderful thing about pitching achievements, the no-hitter and the perfect game. With their length and intensity, with the level of collaboration and the sprinkling of luck that is necessary to sustain that nine-inning walk along the knife’s edge, there is so much room for serendipity. In the annals of the no-hitter, you can just as easily find the greatest of all time proving why they’re the greatest as you can a roster of unlikely heroes — rookies, journeymen, washed-up veterans — who, for those few hours, reach out and find perfection.

I want to take a second crack of explaining how unlikely Fiers’ second no-hitter was, but with a different angle: math. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 861

FanGraphs writer Craig Edwards joins the program to discuss various causes of potential baseball panic. For instance, ought we to panic over Vladimir Guerrero, Jr.’s slow start given the early-career performances of other former top prospects? No! Should we shift uncomfortably in our seats over Sinclair Broadcasting Group’s recent acquisition of 21 regional sports networks given how it may impact the pricing and availability of baseball broadcasts? Maybe! We also discuss the St. Louis Cardinals, for Craig is a Cardinals fan.

Craig’s piece on Vlad Jr. can be found here. His most recent piece on Sinclair can be found here.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @megrowler on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximate 38 min play time.)

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Rowdy Tellez’s weapon of choice is 34 inches long, weighs 32 ounces, and is made out of maple. Trey Mancini’s is 33-and-a-half inches long, weighs 31 ounces, and is made out of birch. Both do damage. The Blue Jays first baseman is known for his light-tower power, while the Orioles outfielder is coming off of consecutive 24-home-runs seasons.

How they went about choosing, and then settling on, their bat models differs.

“When I first got into pro ball, I signed a bat contract with Victus,” explained Tellez, who was drafted by Toronto out of an Elk Grove, California in 2013. “I told them what I wanted, and they sent me bats. I didn’t really like it at first, so I tweaked it a little more. I got to what they called an AC24, which is kind of a combination of models. It’s kind of like a 271 knob and handle, maybe a little bit thicker heading towards the barrel, and then almost like an I13 barrel, but circumference-wise a little bit thinner, and a tick longer. I’ve kind of stuck with that. It’s a comfort thing.”

Mancini was drafted by Baltimore out of Notre Dame in 2013. Three years later, a C243 model Louisville Slugger became his bat of choice. Read the rest of this entry »

The best prospects in baseball generally become very good major league players. When I looked at prospect valuations last year, on average, position players ranked first or second in baseball became three-win players in the big leagues with more than half playing at an All-Star level or above. Those averages and All-Star rates were far and away the best results for ranked prospects, with players just five spots down worth roughly half of what the players who were ranked among the top-two prospects in baseball were worth. There are certainly busts (with Delmon Young at the forefront), but most players do well. When I looked at players like Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. yesterday, one player showed up as bust-like in some of the charts, but I don’t think those charts were completely fair to Byron Buxton.

Here’s the chart showing top prospects in their 600 plate appearances after their first 10 games or so and how they performed over the rest of their careers. Byron Buxton should be pretty easy to spot.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you read about baseball on the internet these days, it’s tough to miss pieces on the changing relative skill levels of relievers and starting pitchers. As Sam Miller pointed out on Effectively Wild, relievers have a higher ERA this year than starters. Not only that, but the strikeout rate advantage relievers have traditionally had over starters is plummeting. Look at almost any statistic, and the historical edge relievers have had over those in the rotation has diminished.

At the same time, relievers are setting volume records left and right. For five straight years, relievers have set a new record for largest share of pitches thrown. In 2012, Rockies relievers struck out more batters than Rockies starters for the first time in baseball history, and you could convince yourself that it was a Coors field oddity. In the next six years, however, four more teams did it. From a bulk perspective, relievers are pitching more and more innings, carrying ever more of baseball’s pitching workload.

Clearly, these two effects are correlated. You’ve undoubtedly heard of the times-through-the-order penalty, the concept that starters fare worse each time through the batting order. In tandem with the innings spike by relievers, the number of pitches starters throw their third time through the order is plummeting. It’s not rocket science — the third time through the order is the time when starters are weakest, and those weak points are disappearing. Of course starters’ stats look better!

Given the changing roles of starters and relievers, it’s probably not right to look at unmodified splits to figure out whether starters are actually getting better relative to relievers. Even if the talent level of every pitcher remained exactly the same, cutting out a chunk of third-time-through plate appearances from starters’ cumulative totals will change their statistics. To actually see whether relievers are getting better relative to starters, we’ll need to do something a little fancier. Read the rest of this entry »

Things haven’t been going the Mariners’ way lately. With Tuesday’s loss to the Yankees, they fell to 19-19, thereby setting a record for the fastest plunge to .500 for a team that started the season 13-2. In the third inning of Thursday night’s contest, second baseman Dee Gordon departed the game after being hit on the right wrist by a J.A. Happ fastball, and after manager Scott Servais pinch-hit for fill-in Dylan Moore in the top of the eighth, he resorted to calling upon first baseman Edwin Encarnacion to shift to second base, a position he’d never played before during his 20-year professional career. When the Yankees’ DJ Lemahieu led off the bottom of the eighth with a 100-mph grounder towards second, the 36-year-old Encarnacion gamely dove for the ball, not only coming up empty but rolling the wrist of his left (glove) hand.

Encarnacion was able to continue, but Gordon is still being evaluated. So much for one wag’s theory that the move would improve the Mariners’ defense, which has been downright dreadful, as I noted in passing during my look at the Nationals’ porous defense and disappointing start. Read the rest of this entry »