Shota Imanaga Is Pitching Like an Ace

Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports

Among the crowd of high-end starting pitchers to sign with new teams over the offseason, perhaps none had wider error bars surrounding his projection than Shota Imanaga. An NPB star for the past half-decade, Imanaga had a track record of success but also many questions about how his skills would translate to MLB. This certainly is reflected in his contract with the Cubs, which came with just two guaranteed years worth $23 million, a far cry from our $88 million estimate. But for the past month and change, the 30-year old rookie has been up there with the league’s best.

Shota Imanaga’s Stat Rankings
K% BB% ERA xERA FIP
18th 4th 1st 4th 8th
out of 79 qualified pitchers

Through his first seven starts, Imanaga has allowed just five earned runs, fewest among qualified pitchers. He’s been downright dominant through much of this stretch, proving his stuff is up to major league standards while controlling the strike zone better than almost anyone else. But he’s done so differently than other top pitching talents. Let’s take a look at his pitch arsenal.

From a quick glance at the stat sheet, the first thing that catches my eye is the sheer frequency with which Imanaga uses his fastball. In an era where nearly two-thirds of starters throw non-fastballs a majority of the time, Imanaga’s 58.4% usage (91st percentile) stands out. As pointed out by MLB.com’s David Adler, Imanaga’s heater has been the best individual pitch in baseball by run value, beating out Corbin Burnes’ notorious cutter Tyler Glasnow’s frightening fastball. But while the other heaters at the top of this list sit in the mid- to upper-90s, Imanaga’s four-seamer averages just 92 mph.

The list of starters who sit at 92 or below is rather short, and mostly consists of names that we certainly don’t think of as strikeout artists. In his piece, Adler noted that Imanaga’s fastball has elite induced vertical break (IVB). But carry alone doesn’t always make a fastball effective; Triston McKenzie’s four-seamer, which currently leads the league in fastball IVB, has the highest xwOBA allowed of any such pitch (min. 50 plate appearances). Rather, what makes Imanaga’s offering so special is its plus movement in combination with its ultra-low release point.

Pitchers like McKenzie and Ross Stripling throw from high, over-the-top arm slots, making their backspin (and thus vertical movement) predictable for hitters. In contrast, Imanaga’s delivery from a low three-quarters slot creates a movement profile much different than what you’d expect from his arm angle. Earlier this week, Michael Rosen broke down the biomechanics of Imanaga’s ability to spin the ball so well from an outlier release point, showing how his hip and lower-body flexibility enable him to “get behind” the ball and create backspin. Throughout the league, no starter gets a higher IVB than Imanaga does from such a low release point – those throwing from lower slots are primarily sidearmers whose deliveries generate run at the expense of carry, while the only two hurlers with more IVB (min. 250 four-seamers), McKenzie and Tyler Anderson, have release points about a foot higher.

Because of its low release point and high carry, Imanaga’s four-seamer has the third-shallowest vertical approach angle in baseball, creating the deception that causes batters to swing under it with surprising frequency. Its 12.5% swinging strike rate and 22.1% putaway rate easily exceed the league averages of 10.3% and 17.9%, respectively, as he’s able to throw it for a whiff in any count.

Imanaga gets more fastball whiffs than most, but his swinging strike rate with the pitch is a far cry from Jared Jones’ league-leading 20.1%. To be the most valuable pitch in baseball, Imanaga’s fastball has to work even when he’s not blowing it past hitters. And at first glance, you might think that a low-90s heater that lives in the zone would get sent a long way when batters connect with it. Indeed, homers were the one knock on Imanaga’s game in NPB, as his 2.9% homer rate (1.04 HR/9) last year was highest in the league in a deadened offensive environment. But he’s allowed just three homers across his seven MLB starts, and the Statcast data indicate this low total is more a product of skill than luck.

Fastball Contact Quality Metrics
Statistic Value Percentile
wOBA .189 98th
xwOBA .279 85th
Barrel Rate 7.6% 66th
SOURCE: Baseball Savant

I’m not saying that a 0.65 HR/9 represents Imanaga’s true talent (ZiPS forecasts a 0.94 mark for the rest of the year), and it’s certainly likely that the results will regress toward his xwOBA as the season goes on, but he’s clearly been keeping pitches away from barrels at an above-average clip, a skill that many evaluators were skeptical of as he made the leap to MLB. Part of this is due to his fastball’s shape – a flat VAA can lead to uncomfortable swings and produce weak outs. While this type of fastball does contribute to a high fly ball rate, opponents haven’t been able to put a charge into their aerial hits thus far. Imanaga’s average exit velocity and hard-hit rates allowed sit around the league average, but his exit velocity allowed on batted balls in the air is a much more favorable 70th percentile. He also has the ninth-lowest line drive rate among qualified starters, almost never allowing squared-up contact.

Imanaga also locates his fastball in places unlikely to produce barrels. Sure, he throws more heaters in the zone than almost anyone else, but he’s not just sending them down Broadway and hoping for the best; instead, he’s consistently hitting his spots at the top edge of the zone. He ranks 10th in fastballs thrown in the upper third of the zone, an area where the flatness of the pitch can play up and create the illusion that it’s rising. Unsurprisingly, his Kirby Index, a stat that measures release angle consistency, ranks in the 90th percentile.

Imanaga’s fastball alone has made him one of the most effective pitchers in the league, and I haven’t even talked about his plus splitter yet. Like the fastball, this is a pitch he throws with remarkable accuracy. Splitters are hard to command – many pitchers’ splitter heatmaps look like giant blobs, and nearly 14% of splitters are wasted, the second highest of any pitch type. But Imanaga repeatedly hits the area at the bottom of and just below the strike zone, an optimal spot for success. His splitter has a 108 Location+ and 57 PitchingBot command grade, both among the league’s highest.

From a pure shape perspective, Imanaga’s splitter doesn’t particularly stand out. It doesn’t have absurd lateral movement like Kevin Gausman’s or fall off the table like Jordan Hicks’; Imanaga’s actually drops a few inches less than average. But when paired with his high fastball, that splitter becomes downright nasty. Thrown from the same release point and angle as his heater, Imanaga’s splitter gets hitters to swing at what they think is a meaty fastball before they have time to realize that the pitch is 9 mph slower and 19 inches lower. He throws it only about half as often as his heater, saving the split for two-strike counts where hitters are in swing mode. And swing they do, coming up empty nearly half the time they offer at it. The end result is that Imanaga’s splitter is one of the best whiff pitches in the league.

Best Whiff Pitches in Baseball
Name Pitch Type Whiff%
Tarik Skubal Changeup 49.5%
Shota Imanaga Splitter 47.7%
Cole Ragans Changeup 45.7%
Dylan Cease Slider 45.6%
Luis Castillo Slider 43.0%
Logan Gilbert Slider 42.9%
Jared Jones Slider 41.7%
Cristopher Sánchez Changeup 41.7%
Jack Flaherty Slider 41.3%
Michael King Changeup 41.1%
SOURCE: Baseball Savant (min. 50 PA)

The splitter has also been integral in maintaining Imanaga’s minuscule walk rate, as hitters swing and miss at them before they can work themselves into deep counts. Opponents have swung at 47.2% of the out-of-zone splitters he’s thrown, a huge reason his overall chase rate nearly tops the charts. His low walk rate and refusal to waste pitches has worked wonders in terms of efficiency, averaging the sixth-fewest pitches per inning among qualified starters. Imanaga’s quick work of opposing lineups has allowed him to pitch deep into games (averaging six innings per start) while acclimating to more frequent outings as part of a five-man rotation.

Just a month into his MLB career, Imanaga has exceeded all expectations and emerged as an ace. His brilliant pitch execution hasn’t just proven what he can be at his best, they’ve also calmed concerns about what his downside risk can look like. When he signed, it was easy for skeptics to compare him to other hurlers without big velocity and forecast doubt. But Imanaga has shown that nobody else pitches the way he does.


Let’s Check in on Reynaldo López

Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports

When the Braves signed Reynaldo López to a three-year, $30 million contract last winter, I was confused. Like most people in baseball, I thought López and Lucas Giolito had an E.T.-and-Elliott thing going on, where they couldn’t be separated. They’d come up together as minor leaguers with the Nationals, before being traded together to the White Sox, then traded again to the Angels, then waivered over to Cleveland, all without breaking the telepathic link.

Denuded of his longtime colleague, López cut a curious figure. The White Sox had tried to make him a starter in the late 2010s and it went badly. The only time López has ever led the league in anything was when he led the league in earned runs allowed in 2019. Since the dawn of the 2020s, he’s been a reliever, and a good one, but it was unlikely he’d return to the rotation, let alone for a team with standards as high as Atlanta’s.

But starting pitching is harder to come by than ever these days, and a major theme of the 2023-24 free agent class was, “OK, but let’s make absolutely sure this guy can’t start.” Jordan Hicks, Jakob Junis, Nick Martinez, Michael Lorenzen, and López, of course. Read the rest of this entry »


Shohei Ohtani Can Win a Triple Crown

Kiyoshi Mio-USA TODAY Sports

Shohei Ohtani has a tendency to make absurd things happen. When he came over to the United States, some were skeptical that his offense would hold up as well as his pitching. Then, he came over and did just fine. Whether it’s being a two-time MVP as a two-way player or making it seem plausible that he could have a 10-WAR season as only a designated hitter, Ohtani has a knack for turning fiction into fact. Now, leading the league in batting average and not trailing by much in home runs and RBI, he has a real chance at another rare feat: winning a Triple Crown.

Going into last season, Ohtani appeared to be an excellent hitter, but we always couched that excellence as partially being due to his ability to also pitch. It’s true that he chased 50 homers in 2021, but his triple-slash line from 2018-2022 of .267/.354/.532 (137 wRC+) had the look of a very good hitter, not one that could claim transcendence on that basis alone. But in 2023, he hit .300 for the first time en route to setting career highs for each of the three triple-slash stats (.304/.412/.654), wRC+ (180), and position player WAR (6.5). He was also on a 51-homer pace when an oblique injury in early September ended his season prematurely; he finished with 44 dingers in 135 games. Projection systems were naturally skeptical about last season establishing a new baseline of offensive performance, generally seeing that as a peak-type season, with a more “normal” 140-150 wRC+ likely in 2024. In fact, ZiPS’ zStats – its equivalent of Statcast xStats with a few more ingredients in the stew and more explicitly designed for predictive purposes – saw Ohtani’s expected 2023 line at .289/.377/.590 with 38 homers. A great season to be sure, but still a 99-point dropoff in OPS from his actual numbers.

And 2024? Well, that’s a horse of a different color. Ohtani’s taken another step forward, entering play Friday slashing .355/.425/.678. But this time around, zStats sees Ohtani’s performance as completely warranted by his Statcast, plate discipline, speed, and spray data. In fact, as of Thursday morning, ZiPS thinks that his 2024 line very slightly underrates him! ZiPS thinks that he ought to be hitting .354/.442/.708 considering how he’s played. I cannot possibly overstate how unusual it is for a player to be having this strong a season and still be underperforming. Usually, for even the most talented players, at least a small part of their career-best OPS can be attributed to luck. Ohtani’s 1.103 OPS, a career high, appears to be the result of some slight misfortune. His zOPS is 1.150. That’s ridiculous!

The first thing to look at it when it comes to Ohtani’s Triple Crown chances is his BABIP, to see if his current average is sustainable. Because of the volatility of BABIP, especially across smaller samples, you should bet on a hitter’s BABIP to regress toward his mean over time as luck balances out.

A career BABIP of at least .350 is incredibly rare; only 13 players in MLB history have done that over a minimum of 5,000 plate appearances, and most of those are from the early days of baseball, when BABIP was much higher than it is today. Looking just since the start of the divisional era, only 16 players have a lifetime BABIP of .340 or higher, topped by Rod Carew at .362 and Derek Jeter at .350. All of this is to say that there’s some justified skepticism when someone’s BABIP is pushing .400, and Ohtani currently has a .391 BABIP. There must be a lot of luck involved, right? Perhaps not! At .401, Ohtani’s zBABIP laps the field, and zBABIP is more predictive of future BABIP than actual BABIP. Here are the zBABIP leaders this season, along with their BABIP marks (minimum 100 PA).

zBABIP Leaders, Through 5/8
Name zBABIP BABIP
Shohei Ohtani .401 .391
Amed Rosario .373 .347
Willi Castro .370 .370
Luis García Jr. .369 .378
Masyn Winn .368 .338
Ronald Acuña Jr. .359 .363
Ryan McMahon .358 .400
Anthony Volpe .356 .308
Ty France .355 .310
Starling Marte .355 .323
Jackson Merrill .354 .317
Isiah Kiner-Falefa .353 .305
Julio Rodríguez .351 .376
Jesse Winker .349 .307
Bryson Stott .346 .282

We’re less than a quarter of the way through the season, and ZiPS already thinks that only 13 of the 210 players with 100 plate appearances have earned a .350 BABIP. Yet there’s Ohtani over .400, with only a single player within 30 points. As such, factoring in zBABIP, the full model of ZiPS projects Ohtani to be a .318 hitter the rest of the way, rather than the .276 hitter that the current rest-of-season model — which does not use zBABIP — expects him to be. That .042 range is easily one of the largest differences between the full and in-season models that I can remember.

In the end, ZiPS projects a 22% chance that Ohtani will win the batting title, which is almost half the battle for the Triple Crown because home runs and RBI are highly correlated with each other.

I probably don’t need to tell you about Ohtani’s power credentials at this point, but I’m going to do it anyway. Remember that word “transcendent” from above? Well, that’s Ohtani as a power hitter in 2024. His Statcast hard-hit rate is over 60% and he’s crushed more barrels than Carrie Nation, with 30 already this season. Since the debut of Statcast in 2015, only a single player, Aaron Judge in 2022, has hit 90 barrels in a season (106). Ohtani is currently on pace for about 120, hitting one at nearly a 25% clip, which is an absurd rate. ZiPS projects Ohtani to finish this season with 45 homers and a 52% chance of leading the National League.

The trickiest part of the trio is RBI, as Ohtani currently sits 11 behind NL leader Marcell Ozuna. But the full model of ZiPS gives Ohtani a solid 22% chance of leading the NL in RBI; the model is skeptical that Ozuna is this good. He’s probably not going to slug .864 with runners in scoring position for the rest of the year, as he has so far, nor will Ohtani continue to slug .275 in such situations.

In the 52% of simulations in which Ohtani leads the NL in homers, he also leads in RBI 70% of the time – remember, they’re highly correlated – giving him a 36% chance to lead the league in both homers and RBI. Add in batting average and ZiPS puts Ohtani’s odds at winning the NL Triple Crown at 14.6%. (And, for what it’s worth, ZiPS projects Ohtani to have a 5.2% probability to lead the majors in all three three categories.)

Throughout his career, Ohtani has expanded our understanding of what is possible, so much so that accomplishing something with 15% odds seems easy for him. And that’s a pretty good description of greatness: making the nearly impossible seem ordinary.


Top of the Order: Pirates Go Paul-In

Jonathan Dyer-USA TODAY Sports

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.

After an interminable wait for Pittsburgh fans (read: under 10 months), the Pirates on Wednesday finally announced they were calling up top pitching prospect Paul Skenes to make his major league debut on Saturday at PNC Park against the Cubs.

The 2023 first overall draft pick rocketed to the majors after just 12 minor league starts and a mere 34 innings. After the organization limited him to only five starts and 6 2/3 innings across three minor league levels last year, Skenes began this season at Triple-A Indianapolis and absolutely dominated hitters. Over seven starts (27 1/3 innings), the 6’6” righty posted a 0.99 ERA and struck out 42.9% of the batters he faced while walking just 7.6% of them.

In many ways, how Skenes pitches on Saturday is the least of the Pirates’ concerns when it comes to their prized prospect. The real puzzle will be managing his workload. Skenes has never thrown more than 75 pitches in a professional game, and his final Triple-A start was his first on just four days of rest, having been eased into a traditional rotation schedule after pitching just once a week at Louisiana State.

Skenes’ situation somewhat parallels that of Pittsburgh’s other stud rookie starter Jared Jones, who’s pitched on regular rest just once this year — a start wherein he was limited to 59 pitches (50 strikes!) in five scoreless innings. We should expect the Pirates to be just as or even more cautious with Skenes when it comes to load management.

The arrival of Skenes also means that Pittsburgh will need veterans Mitch Keller and Martín Pérez to handle more innings when they start to ease the burden on the bullpen, which will almost definitely be covering at least three innings when Skenes pitches. Determining how to piece everything together will be another logistical challenge for the Pirates.

All that said, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. After all, those are problems for the Pirates to figure out, not us. Instead, our job is simple: sit back and enjoy the debut.

Chris Sale Looks Vintage Against His Old Team

Braves lefty Chris Sale got to catch up with his old Red Sox teammates on Wednesday, though it wasn’t exactly a pleasant day for Boston. Sale turned in his best start yet since he was traded to Atlanta over the winter, with six scoreless innings and 10 strikeouts.

The seven-time All-Star topped out at 97.2 mph and averaged 94.8 mph on his fastball, up 0.6 mph from his average in his other six starts. His slider was particularly filthy, with the Red Sox offering at 18 of them with 13 whiffs.

Perhaps it’s still too soon to declare Sale all the way, but he is pitching better than he has in years. Over his last four starts, he is 4-0 with a 1.80 ERA and 32 strikeouts across 25 innings; twice in that span he’s completed seven innings. Overall on the season, Sale is 5-1 (42 2/3 innings) with a 2.95 ERA, a 2.64 FIP, a 30.6% strikeout rate, a 4.7% walk rate, and 1.2 WAR. Yeah, that’ll play.

The Yankees’ Big Boys Are Finally Bopping

Although they lost to the Astros on Thursday, 4-3, to snap a five-game winning streak, the Yankees still got an absolutely massive home run from Aaron Judge, emblematic of why they’ve been playing so well over the past week: their offense has finally come alive.

The most encouraging part of Wednesday’s win — the last of the streak — was that Judge, Juan Soto, and Giancarlo Stanton all homered in the same game for the first time since New York traded for Soto in the offseason. Soto has been better than ever this year, but Judge and Stanton struggled for the first month of the season. Over the last week, though, the two sluggers have started mashing again. Judge hit .500/.591/1.096 (346 wRC+, and no, there are no typos there!) during the five-game winning streak, clubbing two homers and four doubles. Meanwhile, Stanton clobbered two massive home runs in the series against Houston. The first one, off Justin Verlander on Tuesday, was clocked at 118.8 mph off the bat; the next night he one-upped himself, with a 119.9 mph missile — the hardest hit ball in the majors this season.

The one core Yankees hitter who still hasn’t turned things around is Gleyber Torres. He hit .176/.300/.176 with a 54 wRC+ during the streak, before going 1-for-3 with a walk in Thursday’s game. On the season, his final one before free agency, Torres is batting .215/.301/.264 with just one home run, after he hit 25 homers last season, and his 71 wRC+ is a far cry from last year’s mark of 123.

Craig Kimbrel’s Honeymoon Period Is Over

Nobody can really replace Félix Bautista, but Craig Kimbrel was doing his darnedest when Ben Clemens checked in on him on April 16. I won’t call this a Clemens Curse (patent pending) because Kimbrel had three more scoreless appearances after the article was published, but he’s come crashing down since then.

Perhaps owing in part to a back injury that forced him to leave the game on April 28 and then sit out until May 3, Kimbrel has been scored upon in five of his last six appearances. In that time, he’s walked eight of the 23 batters he’s faced, and he’s also given up two homers. When I’ve watched him, he’s falling into the mechanical failure that’s ailed him every year since 2019: He’s yanking his fastball off to the side instead of getting under it and letting it ride at the top of the zone, which he did so successfully in his first 10 outings of the season.

Baltimore needs Kimbrel to figure it out, and figure it out quickly. For whatever reason, he is not someone who’s had much success doing anything but closing, so rearranging the bullpen could make the volatile righty functionally useless. As the O’s eye their second straight division title, they’ll be monitoring the bullpen closely and surely won’t be afraid to upgrade it come July.


Keaton Winn Is a Small Town Kid With a Big Time Splitter

Neville E. Guard-USA TODAY Sports

Keaton Winn is a rare big league pitcher, and not just because he’s the only one who grew up in Ollie, Iowa, with a population of 201 in the 2020 census. The 26-year-old San Francisco Giants right-hander’s primary pitch is a splitter, and by a significant margin. Through seven starts this season, Winn’s usage breakdown is 42.2% splitters, 23.3% four-seamers, 20.4% sinkers, and 14.1% sliders. No starter in baseball has thrown a higher percentage of splits this season.

With one notable exception, his atypical approach has yielded good results. Winn failed to get out of the first inning when he faced the Phillies in his most recent start, on May 4, but even with that turbulent outing — five runs in 2/3 frames — he has a respectable 4.41 ERA and a 3.97 FIP. In each of the three starts that preceded the debacle, he went six innings and allowed just one run. His next start is scheduled for this afternoon against the Rockies in Colorado, at 3:10 p.m. ET.

Winn’s mix was even more splitter heavy a year ago. He made his MLB debut last June and proceeded to throw his signature offering an eye-opening 55.1% of the time in 42 1/3 innings. It’s understandable that he would prioritize the pitch — last month, our prospect writers Eric Longenhagen and Travis Ice called Winn’s splitter “devastating… one of the nastier ones in pro ball” — even if such an approach is unprecedented among starters. San Francisco’s fifth-round pick in the 2017 draft out of Iowa Western Community College is anything but ordinary in the way he attacks hitters.

Winn discussed his splitter when the Giants played the Red Sox at Fenway Park earlier this month.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with your full repertoire. What was it at the time you signed your first professional contract, and what is it now?

Keaton Winn: “When I signed it was four-seam, curveball, slider, and I maybe threw like five sinkers. No changeup. Now it is four-seamer, sinker, splitter, slider.”

Laurila: You obviously throw a ton of splitters. Given how much you rely on it, would it be fair to say that you’re probably not in the big leagues right now had you never developed a splitter?

Winn: “Yeah. That’s definitely crossed my mind before. I mean, I think I ultimately could have competed to get a role, but having the splitter made it so much easier.”

Laurila: What’s the story behind it? Read the rest of this entry »


Let’s Celebrate Some Small-Sample Superstars While We Still Can

Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

We’re far enough into the 2024 regular season that a lot of the extreme flukes and outliers have tumbled back to Earth. Mookie Betts leads the league in position player WAR; Shohei Ohtani leads in wRC+; Patrick Corbin doesn’t quite lead the league in earned runs allowed, but he’s close, and everyone ahead of him on the leaderboard has made more starts.

Nevertheless, we do have a few surprises hanging around at or near the top of various leaderboards. I’d like to take a moment to highlight a few before they disappear. These (mostly) aren’t surprising rookies; rather, they’re players you’ve probably heard of, but might have forgotten about in the past few years while they sorted some stuff out. Read the rest of this entry »


This Isn’t the Same Adley Rutschman

Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports

Yesterday, I wrote about at the mysterious disappearing zone rate of Mookie Betts. Today, we’ll be looking at a player who has seen his zone rate go in the other direction: Adley Rutschman. This season, opponents are throwing 51.7% of their pitches in the zone against Rutschman, up from 47.3% in 2023 (and 45.9% in 2022). That jump of 4.4 percentage points is the fourth largest among all qualified players. The trend is much stronger when Rutschman is batting right-handed, but as you can see from the world’s tiniest table, it’s also there when he’s batting lefty.

In-Zone %
Year Lefty Righty
2022 47.2 47.5
2023 46.2 45.0
2024 49.7 54.9
SOURCE: Baseball Savant

In yesterday’s article, I broke down the reasons that throwing fewer pitches in the zone to Betts (or at least the approach that led to fewer pitches in the zone) made some sense. I don’t have any such argument today. If anything, I think pitchers should be throwing Rutschman way fewer strikes. The reason is simple: He’s chasing way more than he did last year. In 2023, Rutschman swung at 23.4% of pitches outside the zone, which put him in the 81st percentile. This season, he’s at 32.5%, which puts him in the 22nd percentile. That is an enormous change, the third highest among all qualified players, and it hasn’t been limited to one side of the plate. Read the rest of this entry »


Varsho Must Go On (Swinging at Inside Pitches)

Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports

Daulton Varsho must have been bummed. After a breakout 2022, he got traded to Toronto, a World Series contender with a desperate need for outfielders. Then he had a down season, the Jays got swept out of the Wild Card round, and his old team made a surprise run to the World Series. Gabriel Moreno and Lourdes Gurriel Jr., the players Arizona got back for Varsho, were key parts of that run. Oh, what could have been.

The most worrisome of all those happenings, from Varsho’s perspective, was surely his own performance. Everything else was either partially or fully outside of his control, but this one seemed mostly on him, and it’s hard to add value offensively when you’re getting on base at a .285 clip. Yes, he’s a great defensive player and adds value on the basepaths, but most of a position player’s value comes from hitting, and quite frankly, his just wasn’t good enough.

But ah, how the tables have turned. A year after being one of the weakest links on an excellent Toronto offense, he’s one of the best players on a lackluster unit. Among Jays regulars, only Justin Turner and Davis Schneider have hit better. (Danny Jansen hasn’t played enough yet to count as a “regular” in my eyes.) There’s not much he can do about the rest of the team, but Varsho has reversed his own fortunes for the moment. Now there are two questions: How did he do it, and can he keep it going?
Read the rest of this entry »


Los Angeles Angels Top 24 Prospects

Matt Kartozian-USA TODAY Sports

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Los Angeles Angels. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the fourth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »


Effectively Wild Episode 2162: The Kershaw Narrative

EWFI
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Pirates calling up top pitching prospect Paul Skenes, Mookie Betts’s shortstop defense, Willson Contreras, the causes of increasingly common catcher’s interference calls, and catcher technique in an ABS world, rampant reliever shuffling, Chase Anderson as a Phiten necklace “endling,” two ways in which amateur prospects are possibly being exploited or disrupted, Ippei Mizuhara’s guilty plea, Shohei Ohtani’s WAR and two-way future, and a momentous mid-plate-appearance pitching change that never was. Then (1:16:53) they talk to The Athletic writer Andy McCullough about his new book, The Last of His Kind: Clayton Kershaw and the Burden of Greatness.

Audio intro: Grant Brisbee, “Effectively Wild Theme
Audio interstitial: Harold Walker, “Effectively Wild Theme
Audio outro: Cory Brent, “Effectively Wild Theme

Link to MLBTR on Skenes
Link to SS DRS leaders
Link to BP fielding leaderboard
Link to Petriello on Mookie’s defense
Link to Hankook commercial 1
Link to Hankook commercial 2
Link to Pedroia commercial
Link to Contreras injury video
Link to tweet about Contreras move
Link to The Athletic on Contreras catching
Link to Woodward on Contreras catching
Link to Sam on CI last year
Link to Sam on CI this year
Link to CI totals
Link to old EW on CI 1
Link to old EW on CI 2
Link to Tanner Swanson on EW
Link to Ben on moving the mound
Link to BP on disposable pitchers
Link to Russell on disposable players
Link to Ben on pitcher limits
Link to latest MiLB FA draft
Link to endling wiki
Link to story on Anderson’s Phiten
Link to Sam on Phiten
Link to escaped zebra story
Link to EW on youth baseball expense
Link to The Athletic on Perfect Game
Link to ESPN on draft evasion
Link to MLBTR on Ippei’s plea
Link to combined WAR leaderboard
Link to FG hitter projections
Link to Savant trending players image
Link to Kershaw pen session
Link to The Last of His Kind
Link to book excerpt 1
Link to book excerpt 2
Link to Woodward/Trump story
Link to Sam on Kershaw mistakes
Link to Ben on Kersh in 2013
Link to Ben on Kersh in 2020
Link to Ben on pitcher deception
Link to MLBTR on Hill
Link to Ben’s Hill cover mockup
Link to Kershaw career pitch usage
Link to Ward/Wade wiki
Link to The Atlantic on stadium subsidies
Link to ballpark meetup forms
Link to meetup organizer form

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