Last week, I modeled Shohei Ohtani’s chase for 50 home runs and 50 steals to predict when he might reach that historic dual milestone. That prediction isn’t static, though. Every time Ohtani plays a game, the likelihood of his getting to 50/50 changes. Good news, though: Updating the model is as easy as hitting a few keys and listening to my computer hum for a bit.

This isn’t going to be a long article. It is, however, an updated set of probabilities, which is the whole point of this exercise. Ohtani hit two homers in his weekend series against the Guardians, which leaves him only four home runs and four steals short of a half century in each statistic. His odds of reaching 50/50 are up to 61.3% in my simulations – they were 55.6% before this series.

As a quick refresher, I’m simulating the likelihood of his hitting 50 of each statistic with a Monte Carlo simulation that takes his talent, his opponents, and the stadiums where he plays into account. I also introduce a random fluctuation in his home run talent: Sometimes he’s hot, sometimes he’s not, and sometimes he’s in between. I then simulate the season a million times and note whether he hits 50/50, and if so, in which game he does it.

The two homers in the weekend series have slightly moved up the most likely date for when he’ll reach the 50/50 threshold. Before his series against Cleveland, my simulation suggested that the single game most likely to see Ohtani either steal the base or hit the homer that pushes him over the line was the Dodgers’ September 27 game in Colorado. That’s still the case – but it’s now dead even with the previous game, September 26 in Los Angeles against the Padres. Furthermore, the Padres series has overtaken the final Rockies series as the three-game set in which he is most likely to set the mark.

Here’s the complete set of game-by-game probabilities:

I think these projections do a good job of handling a tricky problem. But I do want to make one point about their limitations: Steals aren’t quite as easy to model as home runs. Pretty much every time that Ohtani comes to the plate, his ideal outcome is a home run. He swings to hit home runs, and pitchers do their best to prevent them. The past does a great job of predicting the future here, because intent doesn’t change from one plate appearance to the next. Steals don’t work quite like that. Sure, Ohtani’s speed is a consistent and important input; the same is true for his baserunning instincts, the opposing pitcher’s ability to hold him on, the catcher’s throwing arm, and so on. But how much he wants to steal is also crucially important. He’s attempting to steal more frequently in the second half of the season than he was in the first, and his desire to run presumably will only accelerate if he’s sitting on, say, 50 home runs and 49 steals. I’m modeling a steady-state true-talent world, but I think it would be reasonable to tilt the distribution slightly earlier if Ohtani hits the homer plateau before the stolen base one, which looks more likely today than it did last week.

In any case, some takeaways: The last six games of the season are the most likely time to see history. The series against the Padres is now the best bet despite San Diego’s excellent pitching staff. The last series of the season, at elevation against a bad pitching staff, is the next most likely. The likelihood of Ohtani’s getting to 50 during both series is higher now than it was on Thursday, and I might even be underestimating it given that he might decide to attempt more steals as he nears the border of history.

Last week, my colleague Jay Jaffe noted that Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor had just entered the list of top 20 shortstops in JAWS, his system for assessing players’ Hall of Fame worthiness, which factors in a mix of career value (WAR) and peak value (WAR over their seven best seasons). That’s not the only notable thing about Lindor’s season, of course, as after a slow start to 2024, he has forced his way into the NL MVP conversation. With a .270/.339/.492 line, 135 wRC+, and 7.2 WAR, he may be having his best season in a career that has him looking increasingly Cooperstown-bound.

It seems almost absurd, but Lindor’s OPS didn’t take even the tiniest of peeks over .700 until June 5 — he’s been so hot that you’d think he was produced in Brookhaven’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. With Shohei Ohtani fighting for the first ever 50-50 season, Lindor may now be the biggest obstacle to the former’s coronation. Given the relatively modest impact even the biggest baseball stars have in comparison to their peers in football or basketball, no individual can really carry a team, but Lindor is certainly trying his best: The Mets have the second-most wins in baseball since the start of June (54), with the offense going from 17th to sixth in seasonal wRC+ over the same timeframe:

In that stretch, Lindor has edged out the other NL hitters by nearly 2 WAR. One of the odder consequences of the shape of Lindor’s performance is that it may result in a Hall of Fame player having missed the All-Star Game in the best season of his career. In fact, despite ranking fifth in WAR among hitters since the start of 2020 (behind Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, Freddie Freeman, and José Ramírez), Lindor hasn’t made an All-Star squad since 2019. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible for a player who plays in baseball’s largest market and has a $341 million contract to be underrated, but here we are!

Ranking 20th at your position in JAWS is already a mighty impressive feat, but it’s even more impressive when you’re only 30 years old, meaning there’s a lot of time left to add heft to your career WAR, which makes up half of JAWS. With Lindor’s (relatively) disappointing 2021 Mets debut even farther back in the rear-view mirror, it seems like a good time to provide an update on his rest-of-career projections:

Even projecting a typical decline through his 30s — there’s a reason the vast majority of Hall of Fame cases are largely built when players are in their 20s — Lindor’s mean ol’ ZiPS forecast offers ample opportunity for him to put up some seriously gaudy career totals. The median ZiPS projection has Lindor finishing with 400 career homers on the nose, enough to rank him as one of the best power-hitting shortstops in baseball history:

Whether you look at players who primarily played shortstop or only consider performance while playing the position, Lindor features prominently. His 30 home runs this season gives him 245 for his career, 10th all-time among shortstops, while finishing with 400 would be enough to put him fourth all-time. If we look only at home runs while playing short, Lindor is sixth and is just over 100 homers behind Cal Ripken Jr. for the top spot. Given that Lindor is an elite defensive player, it doesn’t seem like he’s ticketed for an easier position anytime soon, short of a serious injury that necessitates a move.

Before last season, I gave ZiPS the ability to project career JAWS. In an era that’s rich in star shortstops, Lindor is currently projected to finish at the top of this generation. Here’s a projected JAWS chart, once all the currently active major league players have headed off into the sunset:

Even just the median projection would make Lindor a shoo-in on his first Hall of Fame ballot and put him meaningfully ahead of the other shortstops who debuted in the 21st century — for now, at least. If Bobby Witt Jr. keeps his beast mode switched on, he’ll rocket up this list fairly quickly (Gunnar Henderson just missed the list, along with Trea Turner). Given his already impressive place in history, I think Lindor would still make the Hall pretty easily even if his career ended tomorrow, as the Sandy Koufax of shortstops. The Mets’ penchant for sudden, often hilarious implosions makes watching them sometimes feel like an especially cringe-inducing episode of The Office. But if you aren’t tuning into their games, you’re missing out on the peak of a possible future Hall of Famer. And as countless players from Mike Trout to Miguel Cabrera to Ken Griffey Jr. have demonstrated, the opportunity to see these players at their best is frequently far more fleeting than we hope.

Jaden Hamm was surprised when he was selected by the Detroit Tigers in last year’s draft. That it happened in the fifth round wasn’t unexpected — he’d been projected to go in the three-to-five range — but the organization he would soon ink a professional contract with certainly was. The right-hander out of Middle Tennessee State explained it this way when I talked to him prior to a game at West Michigan’s LMCU Ballpark last month:

“I get a call [from my agent] and he’s like, ‘The Tigers are you taking you in the fifth,’” Hamm recalled. “ I was like, ‘What?’ He was like, ‘The Tigers.’ I was like, ‘I know who you said, but I didn’t expect that.’”

Subterfuge played a role in the surprise. Hamm had talked to Detroit’s area scout only a handful of times during his junior season, and while he went to the draft combine and had meetings with teams. the Tigers weren’t one of them. His best guess was that he was going to be drafted by the Arizona Diamondbacks, Atlanta Braves, or Houston Astros. That none of them — nor any other team — pulled the trigger in time has turned out well for the Tabbies. Hamm has emerged as the second-best pitching prospect in Detroit’s system, behind only shooting star Jackson Jobe.

The numbers tell a big part of the story. In 99 innings with West Michigan, the 22-year-old (as of earlier this week) Hamm has overpowered High-A hitters to the tune of a 2.64 ERA, a 3.10 FIP, a 30.6% strikeout rate, and just 73 hits allowed.

Another part of the story are Hamm’s metrics, which include 20-21 inches of vertical ride on his low-to-mid 90s four-seamer. Learning how best to employ his heater is yet another part of how he’s gone from relatively unknown to a breakout prospect. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the impressiveness of a prediction by Carlos Estévez, how to say the score from the losing team’s perspective, and getting hit in the head by a hot dog. Then (23:13) they discuss getting hit in the head (or the hands) by a baseball: how often it happens, how dangerous it is, and whether (as Whit Merrifield argues) MLB must act to discourage it. Then (58:28) they brainstorm about visiting teams’ first-inning disadvantage and answer listener emails (1:08:42) about Triple-A teams as playoff warm-up acts, an obscure Rich Hill record, post-PitchCom performance in past sign-stealing situations, headfirst sliding vs. feet-first sliding (and whether running more can cause one to slump at the plate), the concept of a “natural position,” and the ethics of a UCL exclusivity deal.

Audio intro: Moon Hound, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Ian Phillips, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Estévez story
Link to Estévez game
Link to Estévez game highlights
Link to McMahon homer
Link to Estévez game story
Link to 2022 Merrifield HBP
Link to Merrifield Athletic article 1
Link to Merrifield Athletic article 2
Link to Ben on HBP in 2021
Link to Mains on HBP in 2021
Link to Arthur on HBP and batters 1
Link to Arthur on HBP and batters 2
Link to FG on HBP in 2022
Link to HBP per PA by year
Link to HBP per pitch by year
Link to avg. HBP velo
Link to avg. FB HBP velo
Link to HBP FB% by year
Link to avg. HBP height
Link to avg. FB HBP height
Link to HBP in danger zones by year
Link to Shadow Zone HBP by year
Link to HBP in the strike zone by year
Link to BP Recovery Dashboard
Link to Rosenthal on command
Link to Sarris on command
Link to BP on hitter injuries
Link to Mains on HFA by inning
Link to Smith on first-inning HFA 1
Link to Smith on first-inning HFA 2
Link to Japanese baseball rules
Link to 2015 Japan Times column
Link to Ben C. on playoffs layoffs
Link to Hill Stathead query
Link to MLBTR on Hill’s DFA
Link to Hill’s 2024 game log
Link to B-Ref bases-occupied splits
Link to runner-on-second offense
Link to no-runner-on-second offense
Link to sliding mitts blog
Link to Mark Simon’s Twitter
Link to SIS Twitter
Link to injury rates on slides
Link to Andrews on Cruz
Link to Benz on Cruz
Link to info on lefty defenders
Link to Buck on butts
Link to mindset explainer
Link to listener emails database
Link to gunk story 1
Link to gunk story 2
Link to gunk story 3
Link to ballpark meetup forms
Link to meetup organizer form

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There’s only one playoff race this year. That might not sound right to you. The Yankees and Orioles are deadlocked in the AL East. The Guardians are holding the Twins and Royals at bay in the Central. The Padres are looking menacingly northwards toward LA. But those aren’t playoff races, because everyone involved is making the playoffs either way. The only race where the winner is in and the loser is out is the one for the last NL Wild Card spot, and it’s taking place between divisional rivals: the Mets and the Braves.

It’s weird seeing so little actual drama in September. Those two teams are the only ones with playoff odds between 20% and 80% right now. That’s rare for this time of year. There were seven such teams last year, six in 2022, and three in the top-heavy 2021 season. Even if we go back to the 10-team playoff era, the years from 2015-2019 averaged four teams in that 20-80% range with a month left in the season. Despite no truly dominant teams, the playoff races are abnormally set in stone this year.

That only makes the last race more exciting, though. In one corner, we have the Braves, who came into the year as the best team in baseball. They were so good, in fact, that we used them as a model when delving into some new depth chart data this spring. What might the Braves look like if they lost Spencer Strider and Ronald Acuña Jr. to injury? Our model thought they’d be a .551 team. Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Chapman is the lone member of the so-called “Boras Four” — the quartet of top-tier free agents who remained unsigned when spring training began — who has played well enough to merit consideration in the postseason awards voting, not only with respect to a potential fifth Gold Glove but also down-ballot MVP mentions. As I noted last week, from among the group that also included Cody Bellinger, Jordan Montgomery, and Blake Snell, the 31-year-old third baseman was also the one who appeared headed towards a long-term extension with his current team. Late Wednesday night, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that Chapman and the Giants had agreed upon a six-year, $151 million extension, one that replaces the final two years of his existing deal, both of which were preceded by player options.

The contract ultimately validates Chapman’s decision to turn down what was reported as a six-year, $120 million extension offer from the Blue Jays — with whom Chapman spent 2022–23 — at some point last season. While the Jays pursued Chapman to some extent early in his free agency, the Mariners, Cubs, and Giants were the only other teams publicly connected to him. Chapman finally agreed to a three-year, $54 million contract on March 2. While it included opt-outs after 2024 and ’25 as well as a mutual option after ’26, it was the only deal from among those of the Boras Four that came in with a lower average annual value than projected by our FanGraphs Top 50 Free Agents list. List wrangler Ben Clemens estimated a five-year, $120 million deal ($24 million AAV), while the median crowdsource one was for four years and $80 million ($20 million AAV). Where Chapman wound up with an $18 million AAV, his new pact raises that to $25.17 million, a figure that ranks fifth among current third basemen:

Read the rest of this entry »

PITTSBURGH — Crossing the Roberto Clemente Bridge over the sun-shimmering Allegheny River two Thursdays ago, I came upon a vendor with Pittsburgh sports merch hanging from the golden steel structure about three and a half hours before first pitch.

At any other time, in any other place, such a scene wouldn’t have caught my eye. After all, in this weird world of sports, it is totally normal to see an enterprising middle-aged man trying to make a quick buck — or 80 — by selling fabrics of faith to his fellow congregants. That’s just good business. But the vendor’s specific assortment of apparel was notable because it was limited to three of the most important symbols in Pittsburgh sports these days: Terrible Towels, Roberto Clemente, and Paul Skenes.

That’s right, the 22-year-old right-hander who has yet to complete his first full season of professional baseball — at any level — has already become something of an institution in this city. Over the last few months, Skenes has returned the Pirates to relevance for the first time in nearly a decade. His first start, on May 11, was the most highly anticipated starting pitcher debut since Stephen Strasburg’s in 2010. Against the Cubs at Wrigley Field six days later, Skenes dazzled for six no-hit innings; he struck out 11, including the first seven batters he faced and nine of the first 12, and he didn’t allow anyone to reach base until he walked Michael Busch with one out in the fifth. A month into his career, pitching for the first time against the Cardinals at Busch Stadium, Skenes received a standing ovation as he walked off the mound after carving up the St. Louis lineup for 6 1/3 innings; he gave up five hits and no walks and finished with eight strikeouts. He started the All-Star Game for the National League, an honor that rewarded him for his early success and platformed him as one of the faces of baseball for years to come. Read the rest of this entry »

Late Wednesday night, I was poking around the internet looking for inspiration. A badly timed bout of writer’s block had kept me working on my Spencer Schwellenbach article well into the evening, so I wanted to get a head start on Friday’s piece and pick a topic before I went to bed. That’s when I saw this, from Weird Twitter agenda-setter and Batting Around podcast host Lauren:

i think all the 2024 white sox team records should stand but somehow player records should get expunged. like, the MLB stat nerd community has a duty to figure out how stuff was handled when individuals were held responsible for plagues that effected cities in babylon

— lauren (@Very__Regular) September 5, 2024

Over the past few days, you’ve probably seen something about how the AL Central has four teams with winning records, but the White Sox have been so bad they’ve dragged the division as a whole dozens of games under .500. This fun fact relies on the Detroit Tigers keeping their heads above the break-even point — a delicate tightrope act if ever one existed — but it speaks to an exciting possibility: That the White Sox might be so bad they’re breaking the curve for everyone. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

It takes a lot to get a Scott Boras client to eschew free agency in favor of an extension, but Matt Chapman’s new pact with the Giants certainly qualifies. Chapman’s first trip through free agency culminated in him signing a below-expectations three-year deal for $54 million that allowed him to opt out after each season. The late signing led to an understandably slow start (a 79 wRC+ in April after signing the deal in March), but he’s more than made up for it since. In fact, his 4.5 WAR is his best since 2019. As a result, Chapman was rewarded with a six-year, $151 million deal, with a $1 million signing bonus and annual salaries of $25 million across the six years.

Chapman sticking around further solidifies a Giants core that also includes Logan Webb, Patrick Bailey, LaMonte Wade Jr., Heliot Ramos, Jung Hoo Lee, and Ryan Walker, as well as complementary players like Robbie Ray, Jordan Hicks, and Taylor Rogers, all of whom are under contract next year. Mike Yastrzemski, Tyler Rogers, and Camilo Doval should all stick around through the arbitration process as well. That’s a good start, but obviously not quite enough for a team that isn’t making the playoffs this year and is set to lose some key players to free agency. Barring something catastrophic, Blake Snell seems sure to opt out, and Michael Conforto and Mark Canha are also set to hit the open market.

Fortunately for Farhan Zaidi and the rest of the Giants front office, they have plenty of payroll flexibility with which to backfill the roster. Including Chapman’s new contract, we project the Giants’ 2025 luxury tax payroll at just under $136 million. That’s $117 million below this year’s number, and $104 million below the first luxury tax threshold — a threshold the Giants may view as something of a cap since they’ll be over the tax line this year.

Of course, some of that $104 million gets eaten away rather quickly. Wilmer Flores will almost certainly exercise his $3.5 million player option after a trying and injury-plagued year, and Yastrzemski, Wade, Doval, and Tyler Rogers are all arbitration-eligible. At minimum, that’ll add another $20 million to the club’s payroll. Nonetheless, $80 million is a big chunk of change, one that Zaidi needs to allocate appropriately to turn the Giants back into a contender and perhaps even save his job.

The most pressing need for the Giants, as it has been since the end of Barry Bonds‘ career, is power hitting. Not since Bonds’ 2004 season has a Giant hit 30 or more home runs, an ignominious streak that’ll hit 20 years at the conclusion of this season unless Ramos or Chapman pop off this month. Fortunately for San Francisco, the upcoming free agent class has plenty of power bats: Juan Soto and Anthony Santander should finish the year with at least 40 home runs, and Pete Alonso, Teoscar Hernández, Willy Adames, and perhaps Tyler O’Neill ought to end up somewhere in the 30s. Oracle Park’s unfriendly dimensions — augmented by the marine layer around McCovey Cove — doesn’t make hitting homers easy, so we can’t simply transfer a big bat’s statistics to Oracle Park and call it good. But any of the listed hitters, especially Soto and Santander, have the pop to end the 30-homer-hitter drought. Wade and Yastrzemski are the only lefties locked into starting roles for next year, so the lefty Soto or switch-hitting Santander would fit better from that perspective. Other non-righties set to become free agents include Josh Bell, Carlos Santana, Cody Bellinger (if he opts out), and old friend Joc Pederson.

The top of the rotation is in better shape entering the offseason than the lineup; no Giant bat is as impactful as Webb is on the mound. He’s one of the best and most durable pitchers in baseball, and he’ll be joined in the rotation by Ray, upstart youngster Kyle Harrison, and likely Hicks. To go along with that quartet, the Giants have a stable of young pitchers who could fill out the rotation, including Hayden Birdsong, Mason Black, and Tristan Beck; Birdsong is especially intriguing.

The depth is pretty good as there are options aplenty, but that doesn’t mean that the Giants shouldn’t look to replace Snell. While San Francisco is going to miss out on October baseball this year, the co-ace plan of pairing Webb and Snell worked well as soon as Snell finally got rolling in the second half. The Giants have the cash to try the same thing again, whether it means bringing Snell back, or adding Corbin Burnes or Max Fried. Neither Burnes nor Fried is nearly as prolific as Snell at inducing swings and misses, so the Giants would have to be cognizant of how they build their defense; they currently rank 14th in OAA and 20th in defensive runs saved.

The number of options that Zaidi and co. have on both sides of the ball is pretty overwhelming, and the front office is almost certainly doing pre-work right now to determine who exactly to go after. With $80 million or more to play with, the offseason could go in a ton of different directions. Chapman’s extension is just the first step in what will be a consequential winter for the Giants, especially if they aren’t able to wait out the market like they did with Snell and Chapman. That could lead to San Francisco tying up a whole bunch of money beyond 2025, decisions that could make or break the front office’s future, not to mention the team’s.

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Giants extending Matt Chapman and Manny Machado’s pursuit of Nate Colbert’s Padres home run record, Stat Blast (20:42) about Luis Arraez’s extreme three-true-outcome avoidance, Ben Joyce’s potentially unprecedented pitch speeds, and whiff-averse flamethrowers, and then discuss (54:31) the Yankees’ left-field dilemma(?) involving Alex Verdugo and Jasson Domínguez, the Brewers’ expectations-surpassing success, and NPB’s suspicious power outage, before finishing with several follow-ups (1:33:35).

Audio intro: Xavier LeBlanc, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Harold Walker, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to MLBTR on Chapman
Link to Rosenthal on Chapman/Boras
Link to Dan S. on Chapman in 2022
Link to 3B defense leaders
Link to Colbert Stat Blast
Link to Stat Blast song cover
Link to Levitt Arraez tweet
Link to Ben on Arraez
Link to Arraez batting title article
Link to FG + stats
Link to Arraez IBB game
Link to Madlock trivia
Link to TTO%+ sheet
Link to TTO% by season
Link to TTO% leaders
Link to MLB.com on Joyce
Link to ESPN on Joyce
Link to Joyce pitch-type splits
Link to Chapman pitch-type splits
Link to 2024 FAv leaders
Link to FBv and K%+ at FG
Link to Ben on Joyce in 2012
Link to velo sheet 1
Link to velo sheet w/xK%
Link to velo sheet (95+ mph)
Link to Jeff on Capps 1
Link to Jeff on Capps 2
Link to Verdugo/Domínguez article 1
Link to Verdugo/Domínguez article 2
Link to Verdugo/Domínguez article 3
Link to Verdugo/Domínguez article 4
Link to LF defense leaders
Link to BaseRuns/Pythag page
Link to Jeff on team depth
Link to NEIFI on team depth
Link to team Def Eff
Link to team defense at FG
Link to Petriello team projections
Link to Pacific League at B-Ref
Link to Central League at B-Ref
Link to MLB velo by year
Link to DeltaGraphs
Link to Ben on DeltaGraphs
Link to Jim Allen’s Twitter
Link to Jason Coskrey’s Twitter
Link to Jim on small ball
Link to Tony Adams tweet
Link to Swanson on EW
Link to WP+PB data
Link to 2013 NPB ball change
Link to 2B team offense
Link to monthly power/speed data
Link to EW wiki
Link to ballpark meetup forms
Link to meetup organizer form

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