Yasmani Grandal and I will be forever connected.

Despite his paltry traditional offensive numbers a year ago — including a .229 batting average, 49 runs scored, and 72 runs batted in — I placed Grandal seventh on my NL MVP ballot. I was the only writer to cast a vote for Grandal. I wrote about why I did this back in January when I was still new on the job here at FanGraphs. In summary, I gave a lot of value to Grandal’s framing, batting eye, and power from each side of the plate.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan answer listener emails about performance in interleague games, how rising strikeout rates affect defense, the “foul pole” vs. the “fair pole,” the worst best player on a major league team, Terry Collins’ injury gag order, the best control pitcher of our era, “doubles up the middle,” strikeout terminology, the worst pitchers ever, a Barry Bonds fun fact, what makes baseball leaderboards interesting, a starter bait-and-switch, and more.

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While pace of play has been an issue discussed by the league for some time now, I’ve personally been slow to regard it as an actual problem for the sport. It’s been, for me, a matter that only casual fans would take note of — and that if they weren’t complaining about this issue, they would surely find another one about which to complain.

A couple of developments have changed my thinking, though. First, Grant Brisbee took the time to actually investigate two games held 30 years apart and came away with the conclusion that a pitch clock actually may make a substantial difference in the length of games. Second, players have continued taking longer than ever between pitches this season, despite the increasing talk about the league’s problem with pace of play.

Let’s start with a graph that illustrates the problem on a league-wide basis. Data is as of Thursday morning, but the Pace numbers won’t have changed much in a day, so that’s fine.

You can see the one time in the past decade that saw any marked shift downward was in 2015, when the league put a new rule in place mandating that batters had to keep one foot in the box (except after foul balls) during a plate appearance. From my viewing experiences, the rule doesn’t appear to have been enforced with the same vigilance over the last two seasons, and the data suggest the same thing. The effect has been a rise in the average pace of more than a second and a half since 2015, and 0.7 seconds more than the previous high in 2014.

This is a problem on a couple of levels. First, it shows that the players aren’t taking the Commissioner’s Office very seriously, unless there was a new memo or rule put in place that I have missed. Second, it shows that the players cannot be trusted to follow the honor system — and, as such, more heavy-handed methods of enforcement might be necessary.

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Fringe Five Scoreboards: 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013.

The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a few years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own fallible intuition to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.

Central to the exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe, a term which possesses different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of the column this year, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion among the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above who (a) was omitted from the preseason prospect lists produced by Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com, John Sickels*, and (most importantly) lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen and also who (b) is currently absent from a major-league roster. Players appearing on any updated list — such as the revised top 100 released last week by Baseball America — will also be excluded from eligibility.

*All 200 names!

In the final analysis, the basic idea is this: to recognize those prospects who are perhaps receiving less notoriety than their talents or performance might otherwise warrant.

Wilmer Font, RHP, Los Angeles NL (Profile)
The right-handed Font made his debut among the Five last week following a 15-strikeout performance that represented his career-best mark as a professional. In his lone start since that appearance, Font struck out 10 of the 22 batters he faced against Padres affiliate El Paso (box), which itself appears to represent his third-largest single-game total. As of Thursday night, Font continued to possess the highest strikeout rate among 514 qualified pitchers in the minors.

How much enthusiasm is one capable of mustering for a 27-year-old pitcher who compiled over 150 innings in indy ball over the last two seasons? However much it is, that’s likely how much Font deserves. Whatever his flaws, a limited repertoire doesn’t appear to be one of them. What follows is video footage excerpted from a single plate appearance during his last start — over the course of which he appears to throw no fewer than four different pitches, including a 93 mph fastball for a strikeout.

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In the second half of last season, the Reds played just about .500 baseball, and they were driven in large part by a new version of Joey Votto — a version of Joey Votto that refused to strike out. However, while Votto drew himself a little bit of attention, it never became a major story, mostly because of the Reds’ miserable first half knocking them off of everyone’s radar. By the time August rolls around, there are teams that are already out of the hunt, and those teams don’t get very much coverage.

It’s still the first half of this season, and the Reds have played just about .500 baseball. They’ve been driven in large part by a sustained version of Joey Votto — a version that still refuses to strike out. Don’t get me wrong, Votto was never particularly whiff-prone. It’s not like this is Chris Davis learning to put everything in play. But Votto’s a guy who’s entered his mid-30s. Contact is thought of as a young-player skill. In this way, Votto’s turned back the clock, and also bucked the league-wide strikeout trend that so many others have fallen into.

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Previously
Changeups: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Curveballs: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Cutters and Splitters: MLB Starters.
Four-Seamers: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Sinkers: MLB Starters.
Sliders: AL Starters.
Two-Seamers: MLB Starters.

This series seemingly began eons ago, but here we are: the final installment of our pitch-specific evaluation of 2016 ERA title-qualifying MLB starters. The best may have been saved for last, as today we examine NL starters’ sliders.

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Let me set two arbitrary thresholds for you. One is going to be 25% strikeouts. Nice, clean, familiar dividing line. The other is going to be 20 innings pitched, as a starter. That’s not very many innings, but it’s probably enough to show whether you’re a strikeout starter or not.

Between 2008 and 2016, the Dodgers had 17 pitcher-seasons meet those criteria. That’s a lot! The Indians are in second, with 11. Then the Nationals had 10, and the Tigers had nine, and so on. The Orioles had one. The Rockies had one. The Twins had zero. They’re the only team with zero, and this just further demonstrates a point we’ve all understood seemingly forever: The Twins haven’t collected strikeout starters. It’s been a while since Francisco Liriano, and it’s been even longer since Johan Santana.

This is one of the reasons why there’s been so much hype around Jose Berrios. Berrios, last year, had a chance to make an impression. I suppose he did make an impression, but it wasn’t the one anyone wanted. The winter afforded the opportunity to hit the reset button. Berrios has gotten a chance of late to make a *new* impression, a better impression. This time, he’s succeeding. This time, Berrios is pitching like he ought to pitch. Don’t look now, but the Twins have a quality starter.

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Strategy in the game of baseball has always evolved. As it pertains to pitcher usage, that evolution has been particularly swift over the last few decades. The four-man rotations of the 1950s and ’60s morphed into five-man groups in the ’70s and early ’80s. The 200-inning season has become increasingly rare in more recent seasons. Bullpens have become more specialized and diverse. In part due to the frequency of injury among pitchers in today’s game, teams and individual players have become more curious about prevention and efficiency.

My best guess, and I am hardly alone in this thinking this, is that the future of pitching-staff organization will eventually look much different. The structure will perhaps begin with tandem starters as part of four- or three-man rotations, or the rotations will be extended to six-man rotations. Perhaps there will be a battle of ideas and practices.

While 25-man rosters limit creativity, the new 10-day DL has allowed teams to experiment, and the Dodgers — as was forecast before the season by many — have best taken advantage of the truncated disabled list. The Dodgers entered the season with the greatest number of quality rotation options in the game, and that depth came with plenty of talented but risky options like Rich Hill, Scott Kazmir, and Brandon McCarthy. The Dodgers were the first natural test case and Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci procured an interesting quote from a Dodgers official while reporting on the club’s pitching strategy in 2017:

“There’s no team that has the kind of depth we do,” said one club source. “This team is built to win 95 games on the strength of depth carrying us over six months. We should get to 95 wins. But the year comes down to this: Clayton, Richie and Julio being healthy and ready to go to start playoff games. That’s it. So if it means they throw 170 innings instead of 200, that’s fine. They’ll actually be better for it.”

The disabled list has always been loosely governed. It’s always been used as a roster-manipulation tool in addition to a place to earnestly store injured players. And the 10-day DL certainly hasn’t ended that. As Eno Sarris noted last week, days spent on DL this year are up about 50% compared to the 2011-15 five-year average.

Wrote Sarris:

The positive spin on this situation is that maybe, once the dust settles, we’ll see some reduction in days lost. Players can take a 10-day breather in a situation where they would have previously attempted to return too early. Maybe a little bit of preventative rest will reduce the amount of catastrophic injury. Trips up, days down might be the slogan.

But that’s a maybe. In the meantime, we’re left a very real explosion of unavailable players. And a few teams that are perhaps superior at manipulating that rule change and new situation, whether due to resources or superior preparation.

And perhaps thanks to resources, and superior preparation, the Dodgers are leading the way in a practice that is surely to be copy catted — if it works. And it is working: the Dodgers lead baseball in fewest runs allowed per nine innings by starting pitchers (3.59 runs). They’re one of three teams with starting rotations allowing fewer than four runs per nine innings. Sure, having Clayton Kershaw helps. But the Dodgers ranked fifth last season in the majors in runs per game from starters (3.94), they allowed 3.67 in 2015, second in MLB, and 2014 (3.81), when the Dodgers ranked 10th and the game was still in a modern dead-ball era.

To date this season, the Dodgers have never pitched more effectively in the Andrew Friedman Era, and Kershaw is just getting his slider back.

And while a number of factors could be at work, this is also the first year of the 10-day DL, and the Dodgers are leading MLB in something else: the number of starts made by starters on more than four days of rest. Consider the leaders in “Long Days Rest”, tracked by Baseball Reference:

In 2014, the Dodgers ranked 11th in starts made on four days rest or more (85). The league average was 83. In 2015, Dodgers starters made 83 such starts. The league average that season was 84. Last season, the Dodgers jumped to second (103), and the league average jumped to 87. This season, they’re on pace to shatter that mark, with 130 such starts, while the league average will grow to near 90. In 1990, the league average was 55. In 1970, it was 45.

And the Dodgers aren’t just giving their starters more rest between starts; they’re also limiting them to 87 pitchers per start, tied for the third fewest in the majors.

The Dodgers represent an interesting experiment this year: never in the history of game will a staff have been as well rested throughout a season — or, presumably, entering the postseason.

While the Rich Hills and Kenta Maedas and Alex Woods are receiving more rest and trips to the DL, Kershaw is also receiving more time between starts. He’s already made six starts on more than four days rest, according to Baseball Reference. The most such starts he’s made in a season was 17 in 2011.

The Dodgers are creating a de facto six-man rotation. If this experiment works, if the team plans for it and has the depth for it, perhaps it will become a new model going forward.

In theory, a four- or three-man tandem rotation makes a lot of sense. Starting pitchers are less effective each time they work through a stating lineup, and a team can more often create platoon advantages by flipping to an opposite-handed tandem starter. (And in the NL, for as long as DH doesn’t exist, pitchers will less often bat.) But in speaking with executives, coaches, and players on the subject, the problems with the idea include how it would stretch a staff, the limited roster spots available, and when the plan blows up on a given day. If a pitcher fails to log his innings, it really stresses a roster.

So while the piggyback rotation is ideal in theory — and could perhaps become a reality with a combination of expended rosters and a 10-day DL — perhaps it’s the six-man rotation, or some sort of 10-day DL-enabled variety, that will eventually win the day.

If a fresh Dodgers rotation rolls through October, it will be a model to be copied.

When Eduardo Rodriguez came up in 2015, he relied heavily on his four-seam fastball, throwing it 69% of the time, the greatest frequency in major-league baseball among pitchers with at least 100 innings. He mixed in a slider and and change and was mostly successful, putting up league-average numbers at just 22 years old.

Last year, Rodriguez missed time at the beginning of the season due to a dislocated kneecap. He never really got on track after that, getting off to a bad start that included a demotion to the minors. He improved somewhat by the end of the season but never really put up great numbers. Clay Buchholz beat him out for the third spot in the playoff rotation, and Cleveland’s sweep of Boston meant there was no need for a fourth starter.

It would have been fair, not so long ago, to regard Rodriguez as the fifth starter — behind David Price, Chris Sale, Rick Porcello, and Drew Pomeranz — on the 2017 Red Sox. Two months into the season, though — with Price injured, Porcello failing to repeat last year’s success, and Pomeranz continuing to struggle since last year’s trade — Rodriguez has been the team’s clear No. 2 option after the excellent Chris Sale. His 3.10 ERA is quite strong; his 3.34 FIP, 20% better than league average and bordering on ace level. It’s early, but Rodriguez has made a few different changes that have helped him become a more successful pitcher

We could simply write off last season as one plagued by injury and not bother to examine it any more thoroughly than that, but there’s some solid data in there. One thing to keep in mind — and something we should do for all pitchers, especially younger ones — is that it generally takes time to figure things out at the major-league level. Pitchers can be tinkering with different pitches, different pitch mixes, in order to get things right. A pitcher might not be pitching well at times, but he also might be taking the next step to becoming a better pitcher. Some of this should be taken with a grain of salt, but here is Rodriguez’s pitch mix over the last three seasons.

As noted above, Rodriguez threw his fastball a ton when he first arrived in the majors, mixing in his slider and change. Last season, he introduced a two-seam fastball and upped his slider usage. The slider was a pitch on which he worked in the minors and used it a lot when he came back up, but ultimately didn’t have a lot of success with it. Rodrgiuez’s best pitches in the majors have been the fastball and change. This season, he has gotten back to using those pitches the most. He throws both pitches for strikes, induces swings close to 50% of the time, and generates above-average whiff rates for each pitch (11% for the fastball and 22% for the change, per Brooks Baseball). Throwing those pitches more has yet to lessen their effectiveness. While increased use of his four-seam fastball is notable, as is continued use of the change, the decrease in the use of the slider is a big difference.

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