The Boston Red Sox beat the New York Yankees 9-7 on Friday night, and regardless of which team you might have been rooting for, the game was an absolute gem. The lead changed hands fives times, the 28 combined hits included four home runs — one of them a titanic 470-foot blast by Aaron Judge — and the tying runs were on base when Kenley Jansen recorded the final out for his 440th career save. Moreover, the atmosphere at a packed Fenway Park was electric throughout. It was as close to a postseason atmosphere as you will find in July.
The loss was New York’s fifth in sixth games, so I was admittedly a bit apprehensive about asking Aaron Boone a particular question prior to yesterday evening’s affair. I did so anyway. Prefacing it by relating a press box opinion that it had been as entertaining as any played at Fenway all season, I wanted to know if, as a manager, he allows himself to think about the aesthetics of a baseball game in that manner.
His answer didn’t disappoint.
“I always try to have a little appreciation for that,” Boone replied. “Especially with what we’ve been going through as a club. We’ve struggled. There are a handful of games where I’ve felt that way, like, ‘Man, this is a really good baseball game going on.’ When you come out on the bad end it kind of sucks, but you try to have that appreciation for ‘That was a really good one.’ Hopefully we can start to be on the right side of those.” Read the rest of this entry »
After the Orioles made two trades on Friday afternoon, the old-money machine has sputtered to life with 72 hours until the trade deadline. The New York Yankees have acquired center fielder Jazz Chisholm Jr. from the Miami Marlins in exchange for three prospects: Triple-A catcher Agustin Ramirez is the headline name, but the Marlins also get A-ball infielder Jared Serna, along with Abrahan Ramirez from the Yankees’ Complex League team.
Having a player named Jazz on the Yankees is like Christmas morning for the folks who write headlines for the New York Post. If I could have any job in mass media, it’d be writing back page headlines for… probably not literally the Post, but a tabloid with a slightly more erudite tone.
I bring up the tabloids because any conversation about Chisholm seems to end up being a conversation about the conversation about Chisholm, so let’s get that out of the way first. Read the rest of this entry »
After a somewhat slow start to this year’s trade deadline, one of the better pitchers available has a new team, with Zach Eflin heading from Tropicana Field to the land of Old Bay and Natty Boh. (That’s Baltimore, for those of you unfamiliar with properly seasoned shellfish and/or nostalgic mass-market budget lager.) Heading back to the Rays from the Orioles are three prospects, right-handed starter Jackson Baumeister, infielder Mac Horvath, and outfielder Matthew Etzel. In his second season with the Rays, Eflin has a 4.09 ERA and 3.65 FIP over 19 starts, good for 1.8 WAR.
Entering the season, the depth of Baltimore’s rotation was something of a concern. Acquiring Corbin Burnes in his walk year did a lot to alleviate the situation, and with the seventh-best ERA and 10th-best WAR in baseball, the rotation hasn’t really hindered the Orioles’ quest to win their first World Series trophy since I was just a wee cynical kindergartener. Still, despite their positive starting pitching rankings, the water has gotten pretty choppy. Both Kyle Bradish and John Means underwent Tommy John surgery in June, and Tyler Wells is out for the season after an internal brace surgery on his UCL in . Further complicating matters is the fact that Cole Irvin, a pleasant surprise in the season’s early going, had a worse June than the Soviet army in 1941. Cade Povich was decidedly mediocre in his debut and was optioned to Triple-A earlier this month, and Chayce McDermott still has command issues to iron out. The team has good reason to expect more from those two in the future, but that future isn’t going arrive this week, and the team needed a bit more certainty in the rotation behind Burnes and Grayson Rodriguez. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and Ben Clemens break down the Randy Arozarena, A.J. Puk, James Paxton, and Austin Hays trades (plus real-time reactions to the Yimi García and Zach Eflin deals), Stat Blast (29:21) about the most WAR ever dealt at a trade deadline, banter (54:45) about Garrett Crochet’s extension desire and the MVP cases of Francisco Lindor and Bobby Witt Jr. (and Witt’s/the Royals’ home-road splits), and discuss (1:12:27) the toughest calls, biggest snubs, and process changes in Other Ben’s annual Trade Value ranking.
I updated the Top 100 Prospects list today. This post goes through the pitchers and why they stack the way they do. Here’s a link directly to the list, and here’s a link to the post with a little more detail regarding farm system and prospect stuff and the trade deadline. It might be best for you to open a second tab and follow along, so here are the Top 100 pitchers isolated away from the bats. Let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »
Count me among those who worried that, with about 12 teams in the National League playoff hunt in the week before the trade deadline, there might not be enough sellers to kickstart a trade market. Well, the Philadelphia Phillies — who have the best record in baseball — and the Baltimore Orioles — who are tied for the best record in the American League — have come together and said, “To heck with all that.”
The Orioles are sending outfielder Austin Hays north in exchange for reliever Seranthony Domínguez and outfielder Cristian Pache. This being a transaction between Baltimore and Philadelphia, I assume there’s a quantity of Old Bay changing hands in the deal, but how much is as yet unspecified.
An exchange of three major leaguers between two first-place teams? Hallelujah, a challenge trade! Read the rest of this entry »
This has been a relatively down year for the no-hitter. Entering play yesterday, Ronel Blanco’s masterpiece during the first week of the season was the only no-no of the season, a far cry from the first half of 2021, which saw six solo no-hitters in 41 days, along with the ever-increasing number of combined efforts in the modern era. And while the rookie Blanco was the unlikely hero in baseball’s first no-hitter of 2024, it was an established star who broke the nearly four-month drought: Dylan Cease.
We haven’t written about Cease since his blockbuster trade to San Diego, so let’s check in on his debut season with the Padres. By most metrics, he’s taken a leap forward with his new team. His 32.5% strikeout rate and 7.6% walk rate are both the best of his career, the latter mark a huge development from someone who’s always run a walk rate in the double digits. Both PitchingBot and Pitching+ view 2024 as his finest season; his 3.03 FIP and 3.01 SIERA are also personal bests, and his 3.50 ERA sits behind only his mark in 2022, when he finished as the AL Cy Young runner-up. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s no secret that Shohei Ohtani’s game is missing a dimension. After three straight seasons of excelling both at the plate and on the mound — a span that netted him two American League MVP awards, a runner-up spot, and a fourth-place finish in the Cy Young Award voting — the two-way phenom underwent his second ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction last September, and won’t pitch again until 2025. Even so, while moving from the Angels to the Dodgers via a record-setting 10-year, $700 million free agent deal, the now 30-year-old superstar is amid another dominant season, one that could earn him a third MVP award and bolster a unique case for the Hall of Fame.
Ohtani is a unicorn. No player in 20th- or 21st-century AL/NL history, not even Babe Ruth in his last two seasons with the Red Sox (1918–19), has sustained regular duty in both a rotation and a lineup over a full season, let alone excelled at both endeavors. From 2021 — after returning from a lost, pandemic-shortened season in which he threw just 1.2 innings — to ’23, Ohtani did just that. He hit a combined .277/.379/.585 across those three seasons, posting the majors’ second-highest slugging percentage and fourth-highest wRC+ (157) and home run total (124), as well as the fourth-highest strikeout rate (31.4%) and sixth-lowest ERA (2.84) of any pitcher with at least 300 innings. By FanGraphs’ reckoning, his 26.1 WAR for the span was 4.9 more than second-ranked Aaron Judge, while by that of Baseball Reference, the margin was 7.4 WAR (28.5 to 21.1).
While he’s not pitching every sixth or seventh day this season, Ohtani is balancing his daily presence in the Dodgers’ lineup with the typically arduous rehab from UCL surgery — he did not undergo a traditional Tommy John surgery but a hybrid procedure that involved both an artificial internal brace and the insertion of a tendon to repair the damaged ligament. Though he’s gone through streaks and slumps, you’d hardly know it from his numbers, as he’s hitting .312/.399/.635 while leading the National League in slugging percentage, homers (31), wRC+ (185), and position player WAR (5.5 fWAR, 5.7 bWAR). With six more steals, he’ll notch his first 30-homer/30-steal season, and with 0.4 more bWAR (or 1.1 more fWAR), he’ll set a career high for position player WAR. Per his rest-of-season ZiPS forecast, he’s projected to add another 2.1 WAR. (For the rest of this piece, I’ll be referring to the B-Ref version of WAR unless otherwise indicated.) Read the rest of this entry »
CJ Abrams is one of the blossoming stars in today’s game. Entering play Friday, the 23-year-old shortstop who recently made his first All-Star appearance is batting .260/.333/.467 with 15 home runs, 16 stolen bases, a 122 wRC+, a .344 wOBA, and 1.9 WAR over 422 plate appearances. During the first month of what’s turned out to be his breakout season, I wrote about Abrams’ stellar offensive start. About a month-long slump followed, but he bounced back in late May and is showing that his plus-offensive profile is here to stay.
Now in his third season, Abrams is proving he can be the centerpiece that the Nationals can build around. Beyond his bat, his aggressive baserunning and speed make him one of the most dynamic young players in the game. Last year, despite his inconsistencies at the plate, Abrams was a menace on the paths. Thanks to his 28.6 ft/sec sprint speed (82nd percentile), according to Baseball Savant, he was worth +3 runs on the bases; he swiped 47 bags and had a 9.2 BsR.
This year, Abrams has been just as fast, but at least according to BsR, he is no longer a plus baserunner. (Baseball Savant says he’s been worth +1 run on the bases this year, which ranks 71st; he was no. 23 on last year’s leaderboard.) That’s because he’s been caught stealing 10 times already, with five of them coming via pickoffs, plus another pickoff that didn’t come on an attempted steal.
In 2023, Abrams went 47-for-51 on stolen base attempts. If he took off, the odds were in his favor. Pitchers weren’t exposing him for taking too big of leads or being overly aggressive. This year, his precipitous drop to 16-for-26 has been staggering. When a player who was so recently a great basestealer runs into a slump like this, it warrants a deep dive into understanding what exactly is going on. There are a few components of the steal that we have to pay attention to when trying diagnose this type of issue: the lead, the jump, and the situation. Let’s go through each piece and find out what’s gone wrong for Abrams. Here is a compilation of his pickoffs this year:
None of these look particularly great. He was either off balance or out by a good margin on almost every play. We can trace some of this back to his leads, so let’s start there. There are two main ways to take a lead against a lefty if you are thinking about attempting to steal second. You can take a normal 12-foot lead like Abrams did against Sean Manaea and then run on the pitcher’s first movement (as soon as the pitcher lifts his leg). Or, you can take a larger, one-way lead to possibly draw a throw over and get a feel for the pitcher’s pickoff move.
For the first one, you want to stay close enough to the bag so the pitcher doesn’t pick you off, but you want to get far enough out there that you have a good chance to be safe at second even if he does throw over; as soon as the pitcher lifts his leg, you break for second. For the one-way lead, you are an extra step or two toward second, but you are not attempting to steal on the upcoming pitch. Instead, you put all your weight on your left foot, toward first base, so you can dive back safely if the pitcher attempts to pick you off. If the pitcher doesn’t throw over, you are timing up his delivery so you can get a better jump if you decide to steal later. That doesn’t appear to be what Abrams was doing in the video above. All three times he has been picked off by a lefty this season have come early in the count, twice on the second pitch of the plate appearance and once on the first pitch.
In the 1-0 count against Manaea, Abrams took a standard 12-foot lead. He attempted to go on first movement but realized he would’ve been dead to rights, so he hesitated into shuffles instead. He should have just kept going and forced Pete Alonso to make a play. This was the most obvious mental mistake of the three. Against left-handers Kirby Snead and Alex Vesia, Abrams went on first movement, but because each pitcher expected him to go and was well-prepared to throw over, the defense caught him easily. As a pitcher, you know Abrams is an aggressive runner, but why in these two cases was it so easy? Well, this is a good time to point to Abrams’ tendencies.
Eight of his 16 swipes this season came on the first pitch, and of his six pickoffs, four were on the first pitch. If you’re a pitcher looking to control Abrams’ aggression, do it early. For lefties, it’s even easier to execute because you’re facing him as he leads off first. This goes back to the situational aspect I brought up before. Pitchers are smart, and these are the exact types of tidbits they become aware of as they prep for a good basestealer. Combine the early counts with pitchers being more willing to throw over if they haven’t yet used their allotted disengagements, and you have tough recipe for success. A potential solution here is for Abrams to wait for deeper counts before trying to steal.
The right-handed pitchers in these clips are equally prepared for Abrams to run early. He often uses the vault lead against righties. As a reminder, the vault lead is when you take your primary lead at about nine or 10 feet instead of 12. You take your same athletic stance and shuffle about 2-3 feet just as the pitcher lifts his leg. The momentum from your vault helps you accelerate into your sprint quicker than you would with a traditional, static lead, albeit with risks. The key to a successful vault lead is not the size of your shuffle; it’s your timing. If you venture too far out before or after the shuffle, or you mistime your vault and are in the air when the pitcher disengages to throw over, you risk getting picked off.
At times this season, Abrams has made both mistakes on his vault leads: Either his primary leads or his shuffles are too large. The vault lead is more technical than physical, based more on mechanics than reflexes and pure speed. Abrams is fast enough and reacts quick enough to steal bases with a traditional lead against favorable matchups, so if I were him, I would temporarily abandon the vault lead and work on getting the fundamentals down again before bringing it back in games.
Before letting you go, I also want to look at the plays on which Abrams was thrown out by a catcher to see if these caught stealings were because of bad decisions, poor jumps, or good defense. Here is a quick reel:
Off the rip, there are three plays that stick out. If you’re going to attempt steals against Gabriel Moreno and Patrick Bailey – perhaps the two best throwers in the sport – you have to pick your spots wisely. In the Arizona game, the Nationals were up two runs and the count was 0-2, providing a good opportunity to run and try to avoid a double play; against the Giants, my guess is he wanted to get into scoring position with two outs. These are valid enough reasons to run despite the poor matchups and are not comparable to the pickoff mistakes.
In the game against the Red Sox, righty Brayan Bello, who has an extremely quick slide step, was on the bump. Even runners who are faster than Abrams would have trouble reaching second safely when a pitcher delivers a 96-mph heater in the middle of the zone on a slide step. And perhaps not surprisingly, this came on the first pitch of the at-bat.
On the first play in the clip, against the Rockies, Abrams attempted to swipe third with a left-handed batter up. Even without seeing the quality of the lead that Abrams took, this was a bad decision. Dakota Hudson never took his eye off of Abrams before he delivered his pitch, making it much more difficult for him to get a good jump. On top of that, catchers love when this happens because with a lefty batting they have a clear throwing lane to third base; when righties are hitting, catchers have a more difficult play because they need to step back and around the batter before firing. Even with an inaccurate throw from catcher Jacob Stallings, Abrams was canned.
Abrams is an aggressive runner. Without his aggressions, he wouldn’t be able to steal nearly 50 bases in a season like he did last year. This isn’t something you want to take away from him. However, he does need to learn from these mistakes so he can use his speed and aggression more effectively. Most of these pickoffs and unsuccessful steals resulted from some a combination of being predictable and getting too jumpy. The good news is he is talented enough to make the necessary adjustments. Once that happens, we’ll get to see a much more complete version of Abrams, one who can swipe 40 bags at a high clip and pepper the gaps with line drives.
With the most recent list cycle completed and the draft concluded, I’ve updated the Top 100 Prospects list, which you can now find over on The Board. I’ll have a couple of posts detailing the player movement up shortly, starting with the pitchers. Remember that you can see whose FV grade has changed with this update in the “Trend” column. There are several cases where a player’s ordinal ranking shifted a bit but their FV grade (which is the more important thing) did not, and thus they have no trend arrow.
In addition to the handful who made the Top 100, recent draft picks have been added to the team-by-team prospect lists. Graduating rookies have been pulled off the Updated 2024 Report and can be found on the 2024 Graduates tab. The pre-draft/pre-graduation 2024 Report can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »
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