Michael Kopech didn’t even crack the headline in our coverage of the three-way July 29 trade involving the Dodgers, Cardinals, and White Sox that sent him to Los Angeles, and we were hardly alone. Just about everywhere outside of Chicago and Los Angeles, the focus of the trade landed upon Tommy Edman and Erick Fedde, and rightfully so given the expectations that both would be starters in one sense or another. A fireballing reliever with a 4.74 ERA and -0.2 WAR switching teams may not have been a footnote given Kopech’s history and stuff, but he rated as more of a project than an obvious solution.

Yet even then it wasn’t hard to appreciate that there might be some method to the Dodgers’ madness. After all, in recent years the team has gotten strong results from similarly underwhelming pickups ranging from starters Tyler Anderson, Andrew Heaney, and Alex Wood to relievers Anthony Banda, Ryan Brasier, and Evan Phillips. As Noah Syndergaard’s tenure showed, not all of their salvage jobs were successful. “But more often than not,” wrote the Los Angeles Times’ Mike DiGiovanna in January, “the Dodgers have revitalized the careers of middling pitchers and optimized the production of pitchers they have, their ability to identify and acquire those with untapped potential and implement plans to maximize performance helping to fuel their run of five 100-win seasons in the last seven years.”

While the fact that he has one year of club control remaining probably factored into his acquisition, Kopech has paid immediate dividends. In the three weeks since the trade — a small sample of work all the way around, admittedly — he’s easily been the most productive of the five big leaguers in the three-way deal (the Cardinals’ Tommy Pham and the White Sox’s Miguel Vargas being the others apart from Edman and Fedde). The 28-year-old righty has flat out dominated opponents, allowing just one hit and one walk in 9.1 scoreless innings for the Dodgers, earning the trust of manager Dave Roberts. Last week, with their NL West lead whittled down to two games by the surging Padres and Diamondbacks, Roberts called upon Kopech to close out a pair of one-run games against the Cardinals, and he converted both chances. With the team concerned about overusing a “gassed” Kopech, Phillips and Daniel Hudson have been tapped for the two save situations since (both of them protecting three-run leads). Nonetheless, it’s clear that Roberts has another late-inning weapon, and a much-needed one at that. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re not a Mariners fan, you maybe haven’t noticed how good of a season Collin Snider is having. While most of the attention — at least pitching-wise — has gone to Seattle’s stellar starting rotation, the 28-year-old right-hander has quietly logged a 1.01 ERA and a 2.07 FIP over 27 relief appearances comprising 26 2/3 innings. Moreover, he has fanned 30 batters while issuing just six free passes and allowing 22 hits, only one of which has left the yard.

Snider was cut loose twice over the offseason, first by the Kansas City Royals, with whom he’d spent parts of two mostly nondescript seasons, and then by the Arizona Diamondbacks, who had claimed him off waivers. The Mariners signed him off the scrap heap in early February, and they’re certainly glad they did. The sample size is admittedly small — again, he’s made just 27 appearances — but the results have nonetheless been noteworthy. To little fanfare, Snider has been superb.

———

David Laurila: You’ve obviously taken a huge step forward this year. Did changing organizations play a role in that?

Collin Snider: “I think changing orgs had a big role in it. I had a meeting in spring training with the pitching staff here, and they showed me the difference in my numbers pitching ahead in the count and pitching behind in the count. There was a substantial difference in good results versus bad results. From that point on it was more of just, ‘Get your stuff over the plate early and often.’ My stuff plays well enough that I didn’t have to really try to do anything else after that.” Read the rest of this entry »

Friends, I come to you today to relieve my soul of a burden I’ve been carrying. I’ve been harboring a cranky, irrational, old man opinion, and worse still, I’ve been lying to you about it.

Time and again, while evaluating pitchers, I’ve praised the slider. Dylan Cease’s slider? Incredible. Andrés Muñoz, Chris Sale, whoever. In the kayfabe my position demands, I must praise a slider that gets outs. But my heart isn’t in it. I am awed by the slider’s effectiveness the same way I’m awed by the voraciousness of a swarm of locusts.

Deep down, I detest the slider. It is a crude instrument, with none of the curveball’s grace or the changeup’s playfulness. The curveball is a calligraphy brush, all swooping lines and fine control. The changeup is a Blackwing pencil, rich and precise, its marks here one moment and gone the next.

The slider is a crayon. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the stretch run, the “championship season,” the surprising solidity of the playoff picture, and how the playoff field could change before the end of the season. They also discuss the turnarounds of Jeff McNeil and Corbin Carroll, the return on the Rangers’ pitching blueprint, and whether A’s fans should consider supporting other MLB teams. Then (1:02:30) they Stat Blast about hitters who hogged pitches in an inning, Kris Bryant’s Colorado decline, and a claim about catchers and infield hits, with diversions into whether HR-reliant lineups are inconsistent scorers, whether Bryant or Anthony Rendon has been the bigger disappointment, and why broadcasters say the darndest things.

Audio intro: Grant Brisbee, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Josh Busman, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to “championship season”
Link to FG playoff odds
Link to BaseRuns standings
Link to Baumann on the M’s
Link to O’s hydration station
Link to Clemens on Carroll
Link to JJH episode
Link to Stat Blast song cover
Link to Russell on HR reliance
Link to Ryan Nelson’s Twitter
Link to pitch-count % data
Link to Rockies/Bryant data
Link to Blum on Bryant
Link to FB Bryant/Rendon post
Link to Sam’s Bryant tweet
Link to Casali play
Link to Krukow clip
Link to Jason Bernard’s Twitter
Link to sprint speed table
Link to study on bad-team hitters
Link to Ben on hustle singles
Link to Ben on catcher fatigue
Link to Tim Kniker on catcher fatigue
Link to 2023 C IFH total
Link to all IFH% early
Link to all IFH% late
Link to C IFH% early
Link to C IFH% late
Link to non-C IFH% early
Link to non-C IFH% late
Link to Casali IFH% early
Link to Casali IFH% late
Link to ballpark meetup forms
Link to meetup organizer form

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NEW YORK — On June 2, the Mets’ season was looking grim. At Citi Field, Jake Diekman served up a two-run ninth inning home run to the Diamondbacks’ Ketel Marte, turning a 4-3 lead into a 5-4 deficit. Within a matter of minutes, the Mets fell to 24-35, a season-worst 11 games below .500. After last summer’s deadline sell-off, 2024 wasn’t supposed to be their year, and two months into the season, it seemed clear that was the case. In the two and a half months since, the Mets have reeled off the majors’ fourth-best record (41-26), climbing back into the NL Wild Card race, though an 8-10 record in August has kept them on the outside looking in.

This week has already been full of ups and downs. On Monday night against the Orioles, Francisco Alvarez hit an epic no-look walk-off home run to pull the Mets to within a game and a half of the third NL Wild Card spot. The homer opened what has suddenly become a crucial stretch of the Mets’ season — 10 games in a row against contenders, the last seven of them on the road — with a bang. But the momentum did not carry over to Tuesday, when starter Jose Quintana turned in his fourth sour outing in a row. The 35-year-old lefty served up two big homers while plodding through five innings, while the offense was held to just two hits over six innings by starter Dean Kremer. A late-inning comeback not only fell short but produced a groan-worthy LOLMets moment.

Still, the Mets’ season has featured more good days than bad in recent months, and regardless of what happens going forward, Monday’s win was one for the books. The Mets had squandered a 3-1 lead when starter David Peterson overstayed his welcome in what had otherwise been an excellent outing. With two outs in the seventh, he balked in a run, then served up a game-tying homer to Ramón Urías on his 98th pitch of the night. Meanwhile, from the fifth inning on, 11 out of 14 Mets struck out against starter Trevor Rogers and relievers Colin Selby, Keegan Akin, and Seranthony Domínguez before Alvarez stepped in.  Read the rest of this entry »

Tayler Scott is having a career-best season, and the primary reason is equal parts straightforward and confounding. Thirteen years after being drafted by the Chicago Cubs out of a Scottsdale, Arizona high school, and five years after making his major league debut with the Seattle Mariners, the 32-year-old native of Johannesburg, South Africa is finally featuring his best pitch. Now with the Houston Astros — his 10th big league organization — Scott has put his two-seamer in his back pocket and is throwing a heavy dose of four-seamers.

The numbers speak for themselves. Coming into the current campaign, the right-hander had made 39 big league appearances and logged a 9.00 ERA over 46 innings. This year, Scott has come out of the Astros bullpen 53 times and boasts a 1.86 ERA over 58 innings. Moreover, he has allowed just 32 hits and has a 26% strikeout rate. His seven relief wins are a team high.

Again, the four-seamer — a pitch he’d thrown sparingly in the past — has played a huge role in his success. Per Statcast, he’s throwing the pitch 47.4% of the time to the tune of a .120 BAA and a .265 SLG. Augmenting the offering is a new-ish splitter that has yielded a .122 BAA and a 184 SLG, as well as a slider (.220 BA,.339 SLG) he views as his third option.

Scott shared the story behind his fastball changeover, including why his four-seamer is so effective despite ranking in the 29th percentile for velocity, when the Astros visited Fenway Park earlier this month.

———

David Laurila: You began featuring a four-seamer this year and are having by far the best season of your career. Given that your 92.6 mph velocity is well below the big league average, what makes it so effective?

Tayler Scott: “I learned about vertical approach angle, which is guys with lower slots throwing four-seams up in the zone and creating a flatter angle for the four-seams coming to the plate. They’ve discovered that gets a lot of swings and misses. That’s when I started to throw four-seams. Over the last couple years, it was a pitch that I kind of only used late in counts to strike guys out; I would never really throw it at other times. One reason is that I tended to have a hard time locating it in the strike zone. Read the rest of this entry »

About two weeks ago, Kyle Kishimoto wrote about a shift in the AL West race as the Astros, who had been trailing the Mariners all year, pulled level in the division. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t revisit a topic so soon, especially because Kyle was himself issuing an update to his own previous appraisal of Seattle’s success. But between Kyle’s two posts, the Mariners blew a 10-game division lead to Houston. And in the two weeks since then, well at the risk of steering directly into stereotype, let’s take a look at a graph.

On the morning of August 5, when Kyle’s second piece ran, the Mariners were still actually slight favorites to win the AL West. In the ensuing 15 days, their division title odds dropped by 43.4 percentage points, to just 10.8%. Seattle’s odds of making the playoffs in any fashion are now just 16.4%, which is down 41.6 points. Only three other teams have seen their playoff odds move even 20 points in either direction in that time. One is the Padres. The other two are the Astros and Royals, two of the major beneficiaries of the Mariners’ ongoing slide. Read the rest of this entry »

Remember the halcyon days of April? The season had just kicked off. Aaron Judge was bad. Alec Bohm was one of the hottest hitters in baseball; Colt Keith was the worst. Blake Snell couldn’t buy an out. The Cubs led the NL Central. The White Sox… okay, the White Sox have been bad all year, but my point is that we ascribe outsize importance to the first month of the season as it’s happening.

Bohm was hitting so well that it felt like he was a completely different hitter. Since May 1, he’s been almost exactly the same as his prior career self. Snell figured things out. Judge obviously did too. But there was also signal in that first month. Bobby Witt Jr.’s breakout was center stage. Juan Soto and Gunnar Henderson set the tone for their impressive campaigns. The key to interpreting early-season results is to let a bunch of ideas in, ideas suggested by that first month, but to be willing to discard them quickly if they turn out to be flashes in the pan.

In that spirit, I’m about to get breathlessly excited about some post-All-Star break statistics. Some of what’s gone on in the last month won’t surprise you – Witt, Soto, and Judge are absolutely incandescent. Chris Sale is on his way to a Cy Young. The Brewers are cruising to an NL Central title. All of those things have mostly been true all year, so seeing them in the first month of the second half doesn’t feel strange. But there’s other stuff happening too, and the bits that feel shocking now but would have seemed normal if they’d taken place in April are what I’m focusing on today. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about whether the custom-painted bats featured during Players’ Weekend should be usable all season, Alex Verdugo’s batting-glove allergy, Rich Hill’s predictable-yet-curious choice of team, where the Rookie of the Year races stand, how the Pirates should handle Paul Skenes down the stretch, the magnitude of the Skenes Day attendance boost, the active player who possibly best embodies replacement level, a (slightly) better proposal to promote pitcher’s duels, the unsung skills of Carlos Santana and José Soriano, the pros and cons of this season’s post-superteam standings, and more, plus a postscript.

Audio intro: Jonathan Crymes, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Cory Brent, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to custom bats roundup
Link to another bats roundup
Link to bat company article
Link to Players’ Weekend explainer
Link to Players’ Weekend wiki
Link to Verdugo article
Link to compression neuropathy
Link to Trumbo bathtub post
Link to Ringer on Caped Crusader
Link to MLBTR on Hill
Link to Episode 1780 Stat Blast
Link to rookie hitter WAR leaders
Link to rookie pitcher WAR leaders
Link to pitcher WAR since 5/11
Link to Dunne’s Skenes cosplay
Link to Rosenthal on Skenes
Link to Skubal usage info
Link to team SP WAR
Link to Ben on pitcher draws
Link to FG on Merrill
Link to MLBTR on McKinney
Link to Tango on Bloomquist
Link to Jeff on Bloomquist
Link to ESPN on six-inning starts
Link to Sheehan on six-inning starts
Link to Sheehan on pitcher’s duels
Link to Santana’s Savant page
Link to 1B OAA leaders
Link to end of end of Pujols SB streak
Link to projected team wins
Link to Neil’s Substack
Link to Passan’s tweet
Link to Jaffe on struggling top teams
Link to MLBTR on Freeman
Link to MLBTR on Riley
Link to prior plaque talk
Link to Beltré Rangers event
Link to Wade/Ward wiki
Link to ballpark meetup forms
Link to meetup organizer form

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