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Daniel Mengden has bested the Red Sox twice this season. On April 22nd, the Oakland A’s right-hander was credited with a win after allowing the visiting Boston squad a lone run over 6.1 innings. This past Tuesday, he got another W while giving up a pair of runs, one of them unearned, over six equally effective innings at Fenway Park. In the combined outings, Mengden fanned eight, walked none, and surrendered just three extra-base bits, only one of which left the yard.

On Wednesday, I asked the mustachioed 25-year-old about his attack plan versus four of the Boston batters he’s faced. Here is what he had to say.

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Mengden on Mitch Moreland and Andrew Benintendi: “Mitch Moreland and Andrew Benintendi… when I faced [the Red Sox] in Oakland, I had a changeup-heavy game against them. My changeup was working really well that day. Moreland got me twice yesterday, once on a changeup. He also got me on a 1-2 curveball that I should have bounced. I left it up and he flipped it down the [right field] line. He’s one of those guys who I feel sits offspeed, and you have to be tricky with some of those guys.

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Although the Diamondbacks snapped a six-game losing streak on Tuesday night via a 2-1 come-from-behind victory over the Brewers at Chase Field, an 8-2 drubbing on Wednesday means they’ve now lost seven of eight and 10 of 13 to fall to 25-18. Particularly with the loss of A.J. Pollock to a fractured left thumb, the NL West leaders have begun to look quite vulnerable. Their offense has ground to a halt, eking out just 2.53 runs per game this month, they’ve got an increasing number of rotation concerns, and according to our Playoff Odds report, they’ve lost more ground over the past week than any other team.

The big news is the loss of Pollock, who rolled his glove hand awkwardly after coming up empty in a dive for a drive off the bat of Tyler Saladino on Monday night. Pollock suffered an avulsion fracture, meaning one that occurred where a tendon or ligament attaches to bone. Fortunately, he doesn’t need surgery. Adding insult to injury, however, Saladino was able to round the bases for an inside-the-park home run in what turned out to be a 7-2 defeat.

The shame of it is that Pollock — who, after a breakout 2015, missed most of 2016 with a fractured right elbow and a good chunk of 2017 with a groin strain — appeared to be on his way to an impressive season, hitting .293/.349/.620 with 11 homers, a 156 wRC+, and 2.3 WAR. As Craig Edwards noted just last week, the 30-year-old center fielder had benefited from a more aggressive approach and some tweaks to his swing, sacrificing some amount of contact for power. Both his slugging percentage and WAR lead the National League, while his home-run total ranks third, and his wRC+ sixth.

As Arizona Central’s Nick Piecoro pointed out, Pollock is the third Diamondback to miss significant time this season due to an injury sustained while diving for a ball, after right fielder Steven Souza Jr. and third baseman Jake Lamb. Souza suffered a right pectoral strain in late March — a spring-training game — and didn’t make his season debut until May 3. Lamb sprained the AC joint in his left shoulder while going for a foul ball on April 2 and then battled a bout of inflammation while rehabbing. He’s finally on track to return this weekend.

For as much as manager Torey Lovullo may have praised each of the injured players’ maximum effort, the losses of Souza (who posted a 120 wRC+ for Tampa Bay last year) and Lamb (111 for Arizona) have contributed to the Diamondbacks’ offensive struggles, and that of Pollock figures to as well. The team’s .220 batting average ranks dead last in the majors, their .300 on-base percentage just two points out of last, their .380 slugging percentage is 28th, and their 84 wRC+ 27th. Amid this month’s offensive drought, they’ve slipped to 13th in the league in scoring at 3.95 runs per game. Thanks to the improbably solid work of Daniel Descalso, the owner of a career 83 wRC+, the team’s third basemen have combined for a solid .242/.333/.425 (106 wRC+) line, but between Jarrod Dyson, Chris Owings, and Souza, who’s 6-for-39 since returning, the team’s right fielders have “hit” a combined .166/.236/.276 for a 37 wRC+. All three need to find their strokes, as Dyson and Owings figure to cover for Pollock’s absence. Whatever gains Owings (.202/.266/.316, 56 wRC+) and shortstop Nick Ahmed (.213/.275/.412, 82 wRC+) made early in the season via what Piecoro described as a team-wide philosophical shift to a hitting approach based upon pitch tunnels appear to have vanished.

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On May 12th, in the first inning of the Cubs’ game against the White Sox, Jon Lester did something a little bit unusual: he swung at a 3-1 pitch. Now, if Jon Lester were not a pitcher, that wouldn’t be all that unusual. Since 2011, non-pitchers (another word you might use for these people is “hitters”) have swung at 3-1 pitches about 56% of the time — 55.9% of the time, to be precise. But Jon Lester is a pitcher, and he still swung at a 3-1 pitch. And the thing is, over the same time period — that is, from 2011 (when our data starts) to present — pitchers faced with 3-1 counts have swung at the next pitch just 38.3% of the time. Of those swings, just one in five was at a pitch outside the zone, like the fastball on the outside edge at which Lester swung and missed. It’s just not something you see that often.

That’s because, if you’re a pitcher, swinging at a 3-1 pitch is usually not a very good idea. If you swing at such a pitch, you might get a hit (pitchers did hit 27 home runs last year, after all!), but you might also put the ball in play and record an out. If you don’t swing on 3-1, you definitely won’t record an out. You might still get a strike called against you, which would put you that much closer to recording an out, but you might also walk or get hit by the pitch — and a walk or hit by pitch, for a lot of pitchers at the plate, is a very good outcome. Last year, pitchers took 5,277 plate appearances. They recorded outs in 4,522 of those plate appearances (85.7%). I think it’s fair to say pitchers are looking for any means to reach base available to them. Swinging at 3-1 pitches is not a good way to do that. And so, two-thirds of the time, pitchers don’t.

Everything I’ve just said applies doubly to 3-0 counts. Even regular hitters don’t swing at those pitches all that often — just 8.2% of the time since 2011, in fact. With two strikes still available, it just doesn’t make any sense not to give the pitcher a chance to walk you, and so upwards of nine times out of 10, hitters will let the pitcher prove he can find the zone on a 3-0 count. And when it’s a pitcher at the plate, the odds of a swing on 3-0 are even smaller. Vanishingly small, in fact. Thanks to a database query performed by my colleague Sean Dolinar, I’m able to report to you now that a pitcher swing on a 3-0 count has happened only seven times since 2011, or about once a season. Seven times, out of 578 opportunities. About 1 in every 100 times. Almost never. And — here’s the fun thing about this story, I think — six of those seven swings were taken by just two men, and all seven came in the span of just three seasons. Let’s investigate the history of this strange baseball phenomenon together, shall we? Come with me on a journey back to May 20th, 2014.

Whoops! I jumped ahead in the story a little bit. That there on your screen, right above this text, is Madison Bumgarner of the San Francisco Giants swinging at a 3-0 pitch in the fifth inning of a game against the Colorado Rockies. Now, Bumgarner can hit a little bit — at least as well as the worst big-league hitters can hit, that is. His career wRC+ is identical, for example, to Drew Butera’s. And he was behind in this game 1-0 in the fifth, with two runners on base and an out in the inning to spare. Perhaps he felt that his cause would be best served by a Very Large Home Run against Franklin Morales, who at this point in the game was pitching a gem (those of you who are familiar with the life and work of Franklin Morales may not be shocked to discover it did not end that way, though it wasn’t a terrible start, on the whole).

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the fallout from Robinson Cano‘s 80-game suspension, the league’s latest adjustment to Shohei Ohtani, Jason Castro‘s injury and Willians Astudillo’s opportunity, and the resurgent Jordan Lyles, then answer listener emails about the topsy-turvy National League, the evolution of orthodoxy about bullpens, the impact of Willson Contreras on Cubs pitchers, preemptive PRP treatments, a Yankees and Padres roster-swap, streakers helping pitchers warm up, detecting called strikes by sound, expected prospect value and Mike Sirotka vs. Michael Soroka, the correlation between double plays and team success, Mike Trout and Mookie Betts, a pitcher who watches the wave, a player who always makes outs on the bases, sabermetric bar debates and advanced milestone stats, and judging players by their eras’ standards, plus a Stat Blast about bunting success.

Audio intro: Joel Plaskett, "Deny, Deny, Deny"
Audio outro: Koufax, "Let Us Know"

Link to Ben’s post about Shohei Ohtani
Link to Jeff’s post about bullpen inconsistency
Link to prospect-value research

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Articles about great players have this habit of turning into articles about Mike Trout. That’s because Mike Trout is the best player in the world. I’m not certain it’s even up for debate. It will be one day, and maybe that day will be soon, but Trout has proven so much, for so long. Players sometimes flirt with Trout’s level of performance. They’ll do it for a month, or even two or three. Then they fade away, while Trout remains. That’s his big secret: never slump. Never slump, and always be awesome.

I understand that, these days, there’s a conversation comparing Mike Trout and Mookie Betts. As you could guess, despite Betts’ start, I’ll still take Trout. I’m a Trout guy. But the Betts side does raise a valid point: Betts’ offensive bar doesn’t have to be so high, because he’s so incredibly valuable in the field. Betts is baseball’s best defensive right fielder. That gives him a leg up. He doesn’t have to hit like Trout to be more valuable than Trout. That much is correct.

That much would also apply to Francisco Lindor. Lindor is a wizard at a premium defensive position. He’s a threat when he gets on the bases. And now, at the plate, Lindor has leveled up. To be clear, I’m still a Trout guy. But Lindor, at least, is closing the gap.

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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 the eighth installment of this series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Sean Manaea, Blake Treinen, and Steven Wright — on how they learned and/or developed a specific pitch.

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Sean Manaea (Athletics) on His Changeup

“My college roommate, Tyler Pazik, showed me his changeup before the last start of my sophomore year [at Indiana State]. Three days later I took it to our regional game against Austin Peay and threw it pretty well. It was one of those things where I could just pick it up and throw it, and not have to think about it. Then I took it to the Cape and had a good summer there. Then I took it to my junior year.

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In a bit of surprise, even in the year of almost no-hitters, Jordan Lyles took a perfect game into the eighth inning on Tuesday. Shortly after Trevor Story hit a single to end that particular quest, Lyles was removed, having gone 7.1 innings with one hit, one walk, and 10 strikeouts.

This start comes on the heels of a five-inning, six-strikeout, one-walk, one-earned-run performance in his first start of the season last week. Yesterday was the first time since April 2016 that Lyles pitched at least five innings and yielded no earned runs. It was the first time since June 2013 that Lyles pitched consecutive games of at least five innings and allowed one or zero earned runs. The Padres right-hander was just 22 years old at that time. He’s 27 now, and it is fair to say not a great many people have spent a lot of time thinking about Lyles in the interim.

While Lyles might not have garnered a lot of attention, he was actually a decent starter as recently as 2015. After his trade from the Astros to the Rockies in the winter ahead of the 2014 season, Lyles made 32 starts across the next two seasons, pitching 175.2 innings with a decent 4.10 FIP and 2.1 WAR. He was basically an average pitcher with a slightly elevated 4.56 ERA. He didn’t strike out a lot of hitters, but he got a lot of ground balls and kept the ball in the park.

His 2015 season ended with a sprained toe, and he got off to a poor start in 2016 that included multiple trips to the minors and an eventual bullpen stay. That reliever role continued into 2017, but he didn’t perform well and the Rockies released him. The Padres picked him up and let him start a handful of games, but those didn’t really go well, either. Lyles opened this season in the Padres bullpen and pitched well enough to get back in the rotation. Thus ends the recent history of Jordan Lyles and brings us to today.

Lyles is no longer the contact-oriented sinker pitcher of his Rockies days. To illustrate the changes Lyles has made, let’s run through his first batter faced yesterday, David Dahl.

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The Rockies advanced to the postseason last year (albeit only for a brief stay) for the fourth time in club history, and they did it in a manner uncommon for them: through pitching.

The Rockies ranked eighth in pitching WAR (18.6) in the majors last season and seventh in ERA- (90). The mark tied the 2007 club, which advanced to the World Series, for the best ERA- in their history, and it was just the eighth time the club has been better than average off the mound when adjusting for park and league run-scoring environments.

The Rockies, 23-20 entering play Wednesday, are following a similar path this year, ranking seventh in pitching WAR (4.8) and fourth in the NL. They have a 96 ERA-.

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