There wasn’t much movement in the power rankings this week, as teams have sort of settled into their tiers now that we’re about a quarter of the way through the regular season.
This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model using a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings or FiveThirtyEight’s defunct sports section, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant solution that measures teams’ relative strength and is very reactive to recent performance.
To avoid overweighting recent results during the season, we weigh each team’s raw Elo rank using our coinflip playoff odds (specifically, we regress the playoff odds by 50% and weigh those against the raw Elo ranking, increasing in weight as the season progresses to a maximum of 25%). As the best and worst teams sort themselves out throughout the season, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise will remain reactive to hot streaks or cold snaps. Read the rest of this entry »
The Angels haven’t had a whole lot to cheer about this season aside from Mike Trout’s power outburst before he suffered his knee injury. They’re 15-26, last in the AL West, and given both their lackluster offense and dreadful run prevention, they appear on track for their ninth consecutive sub-.500 season. Amid that, one positive development worth noting is the progress of Jo Adell, who looks as though he’s finally carved out a spot in the majors.
The 25-year-old Adell recently homered three times in a four-game span, and none of them were cheapies. Last Wednesday against the Pirates, he hit a Martín Pérez cutter 407 feet to center field, a third-inning solo homer that kicked off the scoring in a 5-4 win. On Friday against the Royals, he crushed an Alec Marsh sinker, sending it 436 feet into the Angel Stadium rockpile; alas, that was the Halos’ only run in a 2-1 loss. On Saturday he destroyed a Cole Ragans slider for a 419-foot three-run homer that led to a 9-3 win.
Adell is now hitting .255/.314/.532 (134 wRC+) with seven homers and seven steals in 105 plate appearances. While those slash stats aren’t as eye-catching as the .316/.365/.614 (171 wRC+) that he posted in April, his recent outburst has followed an 0-for-16 skid that could have sent him into a deeper slide or worse, the bench or Triple-A. What’s more, Adell now has enough plate appearances and batted ball events for several of his key stats to have stabilized, which should hopefully make this check-in more illuminating. Read the rest of this entry »
Less than a year after being drafted first overall, Paul Skenes made his first major league start for the Pirates. On Saturday, nearly 35,000 fans packed the stands at PNC Park in Pittsburgh for the occasion, hoping to get the first glimpse of a new era for the long-struggling home team. It was impossible not to draw comparisons to Stephen Strasburg’s debut in 2010, a masterpiece in which he struck out 14 batters, coincidentally against the Pirates. Perhaps no pitching prospect in history has come with the same hype that Strasburg did as he ascended through the minors, but the buzz surrounding Skenes comes close. Let’s see how he began his big league career.
Even those who haven’t read the full scouting report on Skenes know that he throws incredibly hard, and he needed just one pitch to associate himself with triple-digit Trackman readings. While he’s averaged 99 mph during his (mostly abbreviated) minor league starts over the past month, Skenes opened up the game with 101 mph heat and sat at 100 throughout the start. He threw mostly fastballs to leadoff hitter Mike Tauchman, save for a slider that missed outside. After reaching full count, Skenes collected his first strikeout in style.
Prior to Saturday, no starting pitcher in 2024 had thrown a pitch at 101 or higher. Skenes did so six times before his debut was over. While velocity might be the best known part of his game, Skenes has developed a deep arsenal of pitches, the newest of which he put to work against the next batter, Seiya Suzuki.
This splitter-sinker hybrid, or “splinker,” is a pitch with few comparisons; only Jhoan Duran and José Soriano throw any offering remotely similar. It feels impossible to throw in the mid-90s while simultaneously killing enough spin to give the pitch a negative induced vertical break, but Skenes rips these off with ease. He tends to use this pitch as more of a sinker than an offspeed offering (after all, it averages 95 mph), deploying it mostly against right-handed hitters while saving his lesser-used, upper-80s changeup for lefties. Suzuki could only watch the splinker go by. He couldn’t do much more with the next two pitches he saw, either. Let’s play them back to back.
First, Skenes claimed strike two with the harder version of his slider. After seeing something that broke a foot toward him, Suzuki flinched a bit at a that pitch, which ended up solidly in the zone. Well ahead in the count now, Skenes went in for the kill. This sweeping slider was his most-used pitch against righties in his start, featuring 15 inches of gloveside break. Moreover, because Skenes releases the ball so far on the third base side of the mound, it approaches the plate at a more extreme angle and makes it even more difficult to hit. All Suzuki could do was flail at it for strike three.
Skenes finished his first three innings of work without allowing any runs, though he issued two walks and hit a batter. At times, he struggled to find his release, finishing late with the fastball and ending up with a clump of misses below the zone to the gloveside. He also threw a sizable number down the heart of the plate, and Cubs hitters squared up a trio of them. With his slider, he would sometimes release early and cause the pitch to back up over the plate, but the few that he landed on the outside corner, mainly of the sweeper variation, were among his best pitches of the day.
While Skenes certainly has room to grow with his fastball and slider command, he threw his splinker with remarkable accuracy and consistency throughout his start. With the exception of the pitch that hit Nico Hoerner, Skenes’ splinkers lived at the bottom of the zone or right below it; that’s especially impressive considering he’s been throwing that pitch for only a couple months. Spotting it on the edges of the zone makes it so challenging for hitters to decide whether to swing, let alone make contact if they do. The pitch led Skenes’ arsenal with a 55% chase rate, 53% CSW, and seven swinging strikes, including these two to Ian Happ to start the fourth inning.
After dispatching Happ with a fastball, Hoerner stepped up for his second plate appearance. He quickly exacted his revenge for the second-inning plunk, pulling a first-pitch slider left over the middle for a home run that barely cleared the left field fence. Many gyro sliders feature late downward break, but unlike those thrown by the likes of Jeff Hoffman and Dylan Cease, Skenes’ has a few inches of rise compared to a ball thrown without spin. Without the downward bite, batters have an easier time barreling it up when he doesn’t locate it well. That’s what happened with the slider to Hoerner, who easily kept his swing on its plane and hooked the pitch out of the yard because it didn’t dive low and away from him. In his report, Eric Longenhagen explained that Skenes’ low arm slot is a likely cause of this pitch shape, as Skenes tends to get around the side of the ball instead of imparting motion on the vertical axis.
Skenes recovered nicely from the blemish on his line, fanning two more Cubs to put his total at seven through four innings. He had thrown 74 pitches, one shy of his season high in Triple-A. Had his day ended here, I think most would have been satisfied with what they saw – a dominant yet imperfect performance that gave a rosy glimpse into the future. But his start wasn’t over yet.
Much of what I’ve written about here explains why things happened. Skenes overwhelmed hitters with his fastball because he threw it so hard. He had success with his splinker because he located it so well. He gave up a homer with his slider because he hung it up in the zone. But I have no rational explanation for what happened next. Skenes, on a short leash, was pulled quickly after ground balls from Tauchman and Suzuki found just the right holes to end up as hits. Kyle Nicolas entered the game in relief, quickly striking out the next two batters before hitting the third. With two outs and the bases loaded, he proceeded to throw 12 consecutive balls, allowing a trio of runs to score, two of which were charged to Skenes. But even as Nicolas was removed from the game, the inning was far from over. Josh Fleming and Colin Holderman combined to walk in three more runs before the inning’s merciful conclusion, which took nearly three hours thanks to a rain delay.
Skenes, in a rather unfortunate feat, tripled his ERA while sitting on the bench. But he certainly gave a lot to be excited about while on the mound. Despite having just 34 minor league innings under his belt, he is certainly a different pitcher than he was this time last year at LSU. Most notably, he has expanded and diversified his arsenal considerably, and while some wondered whether he would have a viable third pitch in the majors, he showed off a six-pitch arsenal in his first career game.
Pitch Mix By Batter Handedness
Batter Hand
Fastball
Splinker
Gyro Slider
Sweeper
Curveball
Changeup
vs. L
47%
21%
6%
13%
4%
9%
vs. R
27%
30%
10%
33%
0%
0%
SOURCE: Baseball Savant
Sliders were manually classified into gyro and sweeper varieties.
We still talk about Strasburg’s debut 14 years after it happened, not only because of the incredible results but because of what he meant for the future of the Nationals franchise. Soon after, Strasburg was joined by other homegrown talents like Bryce Harper and Anthony Rendon, and much later, Juan Soto. Washington won a World Series after a decade of contention, and Strasburg was the series MVP. What Skenes brings to Pittsburgh is no different, with his call-up carrying the optimism that he would be one of a new wave of young talents who’d come to reverse the fortunes of a team and city. Skenes didn’t have the legendary debut performance that Strasburg did, but he certainly pitched well enough to keep that hope alive.
For years, Statcast cameras (and before that, radar systems) have captured reams of data about every single play in every single major league game. We know not just the speed of a pitch, but its release point in three dimensions, where it crosses the plate, and the spin imparted on the ball. When a hitter makes contact, we know how fast the ball is moving when it comes off the bat, as well as the angle and the exact place it lands in (or out of) play. But there’s one thing we haven’t seen publicly – until now. Baseball Savant has released bat tracking data to the public, and it’s an exciting time to be analyzing hitters as a result.
The Statcast team was kind enough to provide us with an early look at things. So while you’re playing around with the new leaderboards and reading this excellent article by Mike Petriello that breaks down how this new data works, I wanted to give you a few early observations of my own, to spark some discussion and hopefully make you as excited about this new treasure trove as I am.
First things first: You’re going to love squared-up rate. You can think of this as a mathematical way of describing Luis Arraez. For a given swing speed and a given pitch speed, there’s a maximum possible exit velocity. That’s essentially what you’d get if you hit the ball on the sweet spot exactly on plane. If you’ve ever swung a metal bat, you know what this feels like. Statcast considers a ball squared up if its actual exit velocity is at least 80% of its maximum theoretical exit velocity. In other words, it measures whether you caught the ball flush. Read the rest of this entry »
Your local beat reporter has the power to shape the way you see your favorite team. Day in and day out, it’s their voice delivering the good news and the bad, telling you what’s happening on the field and in the locker room. If you’re lucky enough to love a team with a good beat writer, it can absolutely deepen your relationship with the sport. A reporter might become required reading because they write beautifully, make you laugh, really know the game, ask good questions, or build great relationships with the players. If you don’t have a good beat writer, it’s easier to drift away from the team, and even the sport. They matter quite a bit, is what I’m saying. Despite that fact, beat reporters are rarely the focus. For all they mean to us, we don’t even see their faces all that often. Most of the time, all we see of a beat reporter is a disembodied hand holding a recording device (or, as in the picture below, the very tip of their nose).
It’s a complicated job. It requires knowledge of the game, constant creativity, tight deadlines, long hours, travel, and the ability to forge good relationships with players despite the fact that you sometimes have to stick a recorder in their face and ask, “So what was going through your mind when you made the error that cost your team the game?” In order to learn more about what the job actually entails, I reached out to Andrew Golden, who took over as the Washington Post’s lead beat writer covering the Nationals this season and has been on the beat for a few years.
Although he’s barely three years out of college, Golden’s credentials are imposing. In high school, he played baseball and wrote about sports for the school paper and for a blog he ran with some friends. He double-majored in journalism and African American studies at Northwestern, where he covered sports for the student newspaper, the Daily Northwestern, earning internships at the Kansas City Star, Chicago Tribune, and Washington Post. The Post internship came immediately after graduation, and he was hired full-time when it ended. Golden had spent three months covering the Washington Commanders and another three covering various sports when an editor asked him if he’d like to cover the Nationals, working with the lead beat writer at the time, Jesse Dougherty.
“I always loved baseball,” he told me. “It’s my first love, and so l hoped at some point I could cover it. I just didn’t think it would happen the way that it did.” He joined the club during the last week of Spring Training in 2022. “To go from helping out with Navy basketball coverage to then suddenly you’re in the clubhouse and you see Juan Soto and Josh Bell, it was very much a culture shock… I don’t think I talked to Juan Soto for the first month, I was so starstruck.” When I spoke to Golden last week, he took me through the nuts and bolts of the job, and humored me when I asked questions like whether it was possible for a beat reporter to be an introvert.
For Golden, 24, a normal day on the beat starts at 9 a.m., earlier if it’s a Sunday. The first thing he does is go over the previous day’s game. “I typically like to look back at the night before and see the big trends,” he said. “Obviously, when you’re writing on deadline, there are certain things that you might miss because you need to type or something happened in the late innings that maybe you missed. So I typically like to go back and look at the night prior and do some studying… I go back and look at Baseball Savant. Does anything stand out? Did this pitcher utilize one pitch more than he normally does? Those sorts of things. What trends did I miss?” He’ll also catch up on the previous day’s news at each level of Washington’s farm system and read whatever might have been written about the Nationals or their players from other news outlets. For the first of several times throughout the day, he’ll consult with his editors about what he’s working on now and what he might work on next.
Most importantly, he’ll research and write. In addition to writing game stories, beat reporters write everything from statistical deep dives to profiles of coaches and players to breaking news about the business side of the game. At 5:12 on Friday morning, the Post published an article Golden wrote about how Trevor Williams has succeeded by using his four-seamer less often. On the day we spoke, he mentioned that he was researching Luis García Jr.’s recent success at the plate. If all that sounds like a lot, well, it is. Later in the interview, I had to circle back and make sure that I understood the logistics of, specifically, at what point of the day Golden has time to do normal person things like go to the store. The answer: whenever he finishes all of the work above. “I get normal things done,” he laughed. “There is that free time, that flexibility during the morning, definitely. I promise I have groceries in my fridge.” For that reason, he dreads 4:00 p.m. games, which don’t leave time to do anything either before or afterward. “I love 1 o’clock games or 7. You know you’re going to have the front or the back end free, but 4 o’clock is right smack in the middle.”
It’s not always feasible, but for a typical 7 p.m. game, Golden prefers to get to the ballpark at 1:45. The clubhouse opens to reporters at 3, and until then he writes down questions he’d like to ask and keeps an eye on the field. “I like to be there early. Sometimes you’ll see a guy on the field doing something and it might pique your interest.” At 3, he goes down from the press box to the clubhouse. “It’s open for 45, 50 minutes, so that’s your time to talk to players, talk to front office people if they’re there, talk to whoever’s around.” Reporters are only allowed in certain parts of the clubhouse. Places like the kitchen, training room, and bathroom are off limits. Some parts Golden has never seen even once. “There’s two sections,” he said, “an office area and a coaches’ locker room area where we’re not really allowed. And there’s a back section we’re not allowed either, and I truly can’t tell you what’s back there.” Manager Davey Martinez talks to reporters at 4, and after that reporters go on the field to watch batting practice.
“You can still get players then if you want,” he explained. “If you can grab them coming off the field, that sort of thing. That’s typically when I like to talk to Darnell Coles, the hitting coach. The hitting coach is really busy, but I always know that he has to come off the field and walk past me, so I can get him when he’s coming off the field.” Golden laughed as he said the last part, but he explained that learning each player’s routines and figuring out how to be in the right place at the right time is actually a crucial part of the job. “I think that’s one of the things about the beat that people don’t realize. There’s definitely a rhythm to how things go. You know the relievers will always be around because they’re not doing a ton of prep work before the game… But starting pitchers are rarely around because they’re obviously going through their whole routine to get ready. And the hitters are kind of hit or miss. It depends on when they go to the cage and what their routine is. That’s one thing I didn’t know early on, like, ‘Oh, I want to talk to Josiah Gray.’ And Josiah was figuring out his routine and going through his stuff, and I was like, ‘Man, why is he never here?’ You have to kind of give these guys these moments and try to figure out what their routines are, and you build around that.”
Once batting practice is over, reporters return to the press box to eat dinner before the game. For a night game, Golden’s 700- to 800-word game story is due when the final out is recorded, which means that he’s taking notes and writing throughout the game, then rewriting when new developments come up. “That was an adjustment too,” said Golden. “When do you start writing? Because obviously things can change. If somebody hits a go-ahead home run in the eighth inning, it can completely flip your story… Sometimes it just takes time to kind of develop that muscle and learn how to do that. I think that was a struggle at first, but then it starts to get a little bit easier, it starts to come to you a little more naturally.” Many beat writers also tweet the play-by-play throughout the game. Here’s a sample of Golden’s Twitter feed during last Wednesday night’s 12-inning affair between the Nationals and Orioles. Luckily for him, colleague Spencer Nusbaum was in charge of the game story that night.
As soon as their stories have been filed, reporters head back down to the clubhouse to hear from players and coaches again. “While we’re down there, our editors are editing the story,” said Golden. “And then we’ll come back up, and then we’ll add quotes in, and that’ll be the final story. So it’s probably an hour between when I file the first one and the second one.” At that point, the reporters finally get to go home or to their hotel, unless it’s getaway day. Golden generally prefers to go straight from the ballpark to the airport so that the next day, he can wake up in the city where he’ll be covering the game. I stammered a bit after Golden finished walking me through a normal day on the beat. It was a lot to take in. “So, so that’s — I mean, that’s a long day,” I said. “Yeah,” he said, laughing. “It is a grind. I’m sure people kind of know that, but I don’t think they know the extent. I mean, I have friends who are like, ‘Well, the game starts at 7. Don’t you get there at like 5:30?’”
It’s a grueling job: a month away from home during spring training, then a six-month-long season of days like the one described above, half of them on the road, with few days off. Knowing that, I asked Golden whether my impression of the beat writer demographic was correct. I’d noticed that beat writers tend to be either very young reporters or veterans who have been doing it forever because they’ve found a way to balance the lifestyle. “Yeah, that’s absolutely correct, at least from what I’ve seen,” he said. “I remember somebody telling me when I started, ‘Yeah, this is a job that you have when you’re single and have no kids’… You do it when you’re young, because it’s easier to manage a 162-game season when you don’t have all those other responsibilities, families, all that stuff.”
Golden recently got engaged, and the quirks of his job have been a part of the relationship from the very beginning. His first date with his now-fiancée was supposed to take place on the first Sunday of October 2022, but the Nationals and the Phillies needed to play four games in three days, all of them rain-soaked because a hurricane was bearing down on the east coast. Golden was texting her throughout the weekend, trying to explain the scheduling and scoring arcana that would determine whether he could make it or whether they’d need to reschedule. “It’s hard to explain how ridiculous it is. I’m trying to explain to her… we just have to get to the fifth inning and then we’re good. She’s like, ‘Why do you only need to get through half a game?’ There are so many things about baseball that we think are so normal that actually are not normal to normal people.” To make the grind more manageable, he now sends his parents and his fiancée an email every month with his entire travel itinerary, down to the flight numbers and hotels.
Golden mentioned another challenge to working the beat for an extended period of time: finding new ways to tell the same story. “I think when you first get started on the beat, everything feels new,” he said. “Coming up with ideas can be challenging when you’ve written stuff before. Trying to think, ‘How can I make this new?’ or ‘How can I make this different from before?’” As with any job, some days are harder than others. “There are some days where you just don’t have it. There’s just some days where you’re tired, you just got off a plane this morning and you drove to the stadium. And it’s day eight of a road trip and you’re like, ‘Man, I just don’t have it today.’ Those days definitely happen.”
All of this makes Golden more impressed by the veterans who have been doing it for years and years. “There are people who do balance both and who do this for a very long time. Mad props to them for that,” he said. “I can imagine trying to balance all those things, but it definitely is either younger people or people who have been doing this like 40 years and really know the business, know everybody in the business, and know the organization. The people who have institutional knowledge, it’s really interesting. One of our beat reporters is Mark Zuckerman [of MASN]. He’s been covering the team since 2005. He has an institutional knowledge that I just don’t have.”
That brought us to another important part of the job: Beat writers need to develop relationships with the people they’re covering. I asked Golden whether he has an easier time talking to players now than he did when he first started. “Definitely, yeah,” he said. “When you first join the beat there is a bit of — it’s not discomfort, but — I guess discomfort is the right word. They don’t really know you, you don’t really know them, and now you’re developing trust with them.” The most important thing is putting in the time, especially on road trips. “When you travel, and they realize that you’re traveling with them a lot and they see you on the road a lot, you’re going through the ride with them. I think they start to respect you more and they start to open up more, because they also understand you are going to be around.” Traveling and befriending writers in other cities has also made that easier. For example, when the Nationals signed Eddie Rosario, Golden asked Justin Toscano, who covered Rosario for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, for advice on how to connect with him. He also traded notes about Jeimer Candelario and Nick Senzel with Charlie Goldsmith of the Cincinnati Enquirer, which was easy because Goldsmith also happened to be Golden’s college roommate.
Golden mentioned several other ways to build trust with players. When they see you keep your word about not printing off-the-record comments, they start to trust that you’re not there to make them look bad. Similarly, they appreciate when a writer strikes the right balance when someone’s struggling. Some of the Nationals follow Golden on social media, where it is sometimes his job to talk about what’s going wrong with the team. “It can be a little bit awkward having to go to guys and be like, ‘Hey man, what happened there? Why’d you make that mistake?’ Or, ‘What was going through your mind?’ It can be awkward, uncomfortable. Nobody wants to ask about failures.” Managing to tell the truth respectfully makes a difference. “As long as you’re fair, and you’re not attacking them personally, I think people can respect that… I think a lot of times, people think the players will get upset if you say something negative. But I also think if you pretend like everything is positive and going well, I think they get upset with that too. Where the guy is 2-for-40 in his last 10 games, and you’re like, ‘What do you think you’re doing well at the plate right now?’ And they don’t want to hear that… You don’t want to personally attack somebody or say something negative about them as a person. But I also do think there’s a balance. You want to be honest with where they’re at. And if they get upset with your honesty, you have to live with that.”
Toward the end of the conversation, I asked Golden what people might not understand about his job. He mentioned the hours and the various unseen aspects, but he also talked about the perspective that comes from doing it day in and day out, and the way that all of his research allows him to ask the right questions. “Having to know the ins and outs of the team, and thinking critically about every roster move. What does this mean? Even just now, Robert Garcia just returned from a rehab assignment, and then Matt Barnes got DFA’d. And what does it mean? What does it mean for Tanner Rainey? I think my first year, I was not thinking like that. Now, your brain naturally goes like that. It’s an odd thought, like, ‘Man, my brain moves like this now?’ But there’s a lot of thought that goes into this.”
Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
Matt Olson’s streak of consecutive games played is expected to hit 500 on Saturday against the Padres, but he’s far from the only iron man in Atlanta this season. Third baseman Austin Riley, center fielder Michael Harris II, right fielder Ronald Acuña Jr., and designated hitter Marcell Ozuna have started every Braves game at their respective positions, and Orlando Arcia has started 36 of 37 games at shortstop. Second baseman Ozzie Albies would’ve been in the Never Takes A Day Off club, too, if he hadn’t missed eight games with a broken toe — yes, only eight games.
All told, except for catcher and left field (where Jarred Kelenic and Adam Duvall platoon), the remaining seven positions have had 259 starting opportunities (seven positions times 37 games), with only nine of them going to backups: six for Luis Guillorme (five at second and one at shortstop) and three for David Fletcher at second base. But that lack of playing time hasn’t stopped the Braves from shuffling players into and out of the two bench spots not occupied by one of the two left fielders and backup catcher Chadwick Tromp. (Starting catcher Sean Murphy has not played since Opening Day, when he strained his oblique; while Travis d’Arnaud, an All-Star catcher in his own right, has started 24 games behind the dish.)
Atlanta signed Guillorme to a $1.1 million contract in the offseason, a move that seemed to assure him a spot for the entirety of the season, even though he didn’t fit the roster perfectly. (Guillorme doesn’t have the speed to be a pinch-running threat, for example.) With all those bulletproof starters, the Braves didn’t really need him to do much of anything; he’d be there in case of an emergency because he could play any of the four infield positions. However, it turns out the Braves really didn’t need him, as Guillorme is now a member of the Angels. Outfielder Forrest Wall, who occupied the last bench spot on Opening Day (along with Guillorme, Duvall, and d’Arnaud), is now back in Triple-A.
In all, the two bench spots that don’t belong to a catcher or a left fielder have been occupied by five players this season: Wall, Guillorme, Fletcher, Luke Williams, and Zack Short, who was acquired from the Red Sox ahead of the Guillorme trade. Currently, the two rotating members of the ghost bench are Short and Williams. Those five have combined for just 34 plate appearances across 21 games, with Atlanta sticking to its brand of having its everyday players be exactly that.
Of course, after I filed this column, the Braves lifted Riley from last night’s 4-3 loss to the Mets with what Atlanta announced was “left side tightness.” As of now, it’s unclear whether Riley will be in the lineup tonight against the Cubs, but the Braves said his exit was precautionary, so the discomfort — for now it feels too early to call it an injury — doesn’t seem to be serious.
3B Austin Riley was removed from tonight’s game as a precaution with left side tightness.
During this era of load management, teams stress the importance of having a deep bench, but that just doesn’t seem to be necessary for the Braves. Indeed, one of the main reasons the Braves have been so good these last few years is their most talented position players have also been their most durable.
Christian Scott Looks Legit
Christian Scott has acclimated himself quite nicely to the big leagues in his first two starts with the Mets. In his debut on May 4, he pitched six innings of one-run ball against the Rays. He followed that up with eight strikeouts in Saturday’s quality start against the aforementioned tough and durable Braves lineup. The Mets lost both starts, though, providing Scott with one run of support in each game.
Scott, who entered the season ranked no. 98 on our Top 100 Prospects list, was heralded coming up through the minors for having a fastball that — as Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin wrote — “jumps on hitters,” though that’s been his least impressive pitch thus far. He has demonstrated the promise of the pitch getting opponents to whiff on 37% of their swings against it, but it has been inconsistent, as batters have also piled up nine hits off the heater, including a home run. That actually portends well for Scott since it shows that he can get by on more than just his signature pitch. He also has two devastating breaking balls that, along with his fastball, could make him a capable member of the next great Mets rotation.
Weekend Wrap Up
Let’s run through some things that stood out to me this weekend:
• Tyler Glasnow and Michael King had a pitcher’s duel for the ages on Friday. Each starter threw seven innings: Glasnow allowed just one run on one hit (a solo homer to Luis Campusano) and struck out 10; King didn’t give up a run and struck out 11, surrendering just two hits. The homer kept the game at 1-0 until the top of the eighth, when Yuki Matsui coughed up the lead on a Freddie Freeman sac fly. Ultimately, Luis Arraez delivered the victory with a walk-off hit in his first home game with the Padres; he’s helped to lengthen the lineup in a big way, mostly as San Diego’s DH.
• Jo Adell kept his hot streak going over the weekend. His Saturday homer was his third in four games, and his wRC+ is now 134. With Mike Trout on the shelf and Taylor Ward scuffling, Adell is the only Angel I’d be particularly afraid to pitch to right now, and yet he remains in the seventh spot in the lineup. That rigidity for the sake of comfort feels unwise.
• We’ll have more on Paul Skenes’ debut later on today, but my general take on his outing is that he looked good! Surprising for the top pitching prospect in the sport, I know. The command definitely came and went, but the stuff looked like it can get anybody out, and I think his splinker will prove to be his best pitch, especially at neutralizing lefties. Skenes allowed three runs over four-plus innings, though two of those runs came in after he was removed with runners on first and third and nobody out in the fifth. He finished with six hits, including a home run to Nico Hoerner, two walks, and seven strikeouts.
As hyped and box-score-filling as Skenes’ outing was, it was far from the most interesting thing about that game. Once Skenes departed, the Pirates issued six (!!!) bases-loaded walks in the fifth inning, with a long rain delay in the middle of all the chaos. Despite that ignominious relief-pitching performance, the Pirates still won, 10-9, thanks to five homers.
Blade Tidwell has a five-pitch arsenal and a future on a big-league mound. Two years removed from being drafted 52nd-overall out of the University of Tennessee, the 22-year-old right-hander ranks among the top prospects in the New York Mets organization. “An old school power pitcher” in the words of our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen, Tidwell has made six appearances for the Double-A Binghamton Rumble Ponies this year and has a 2.59 ERA, a 1.85 FIP, and 38 strikeouts in 31-and-a-third innings.
He’s developed a good understanding of his pitch metrics, a process that began when he was playing with Team USA following his 2021 freshman season at UT. Tidwell “started studying analytics” on his own, and would often discuss the subject with fellow Mets prospect Drew Gilbert, his roommate that summer. He subsequently “didn’t dabble too much into it” during his sophomore year — the Columbia, Tennessee native played just two collegiate seasons due to the pandemic — but that changed after he signed a professional contract. There was a lot more to learn… and to improve upon.
His four-seamer, which sits 94-96 mph and tops out at 98, has grown meaningfully since his amateur days. The 6-foot-4 righty got “around 14-15 inches” of ride in college, and now he gets “around 19 inches on a good day.”
Janzen Blade Tidwell — his father picked his middle name, his mother his first name — also gets good movement on his sweeper. Moreover, he can massage the movement by upping or lowing velocity. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh talks to Rays pitcher Zack Littell (4:33) about his expectation-surpassing conversion from relieving to starting and his affinity for cruise ships. Then (23:33) Ben brings on author and film critic Noah Gittell to discuss his new book about baseball movies and American culture, Baseball: The Movie, followed by six Stat Blasts with frequent Stat Blast correspondent Ryan Nelson (1:16:14).
The best pitching prospect in baseball, 21-year-old Pittsburgh Pirates righty Paul Skenes, is slated to be called up tomorrow to make his major league debut against the Cubs. The 6-foot-6 leviathan has a 0.99 ERA in seven Triple-A starts this year and has struck out 42.9% of the hitters he’s faced across 27 1/3 innings. He’s a ready-made front-of-the-rotation starter, a Herculean physical presence with even bigger stuff, and perhaps the most important part of an increasingly promising situation in Pittsburgh, a city with three baseball playoff appearances over the last 30 years. Read the rest of this entry »
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