Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Juan Soto’s free agency and Aaron Judge’s ego, follow up on in-season exhibition games, and (18:51) answer listener emails about the possibility of adding games to the baseball season, bullpen pitchers robbing a home run robbery, redrawing (or enforcing) coach’s boxes, pronouncing “wRC+,” programming ABS to help starters go deeper into games, Joey Votto vs. Lance Berkman, boycotting A’s games on the road, installing a second home plate (and/or double bases), replacing “bullets in the arm” with “throws of the dice,” using pitch counts instead of innings counts, and player development during suspensions.
One thing I love about writing for FanGraphs is getting the chance to cover players who otherwise would receive little (if any) attention from sources outside of their own team’s market. On this little part of the internet, pieces about the Joe Blows of the league aren’t just allowed, they’re encouraged. Yet, almost 10 years ago, the great Jeff Sullivan hemmed and hawed before writing about one such player:
For a while, I’ve personally been interested in Tyler Clippard. I’ve considered on several occasions writing about him, and about him specifically, but on every one of those occasions, I’ve talked myself out of it, because it just never seemed relevant enough. Generally, people haven’t woken up and thought, today I’d like to read in depth about Tyler Clippard.
I get what Jeff meant. I felt the same way before I wrote this article, hence this introduction. Still, it’s a funny train of thought coming from a writer who was so well known for making his readers care about topics they didn’t realize they would have cared about until they started reading. There was no need for Jeff to justify the subject matter of his article, least of all at FanGraphs. It’s also funny because Clippard was coming off an All-Star season in which he pitched to a 2.18 ERA and 1.5 WAR in 75 games. He had been one of the best relievers in baseball for the past five years. Clearly, the landscape of baseball blogging has changed over the past decade; a player with Clippard’s resume wouldn’t even qualify as a niche topic anymore. Indeed, Clippard might as well be a Shohei Ohtani-level mega-star compared to the reliever I’m writing about today. Read the rest of this entry »
At the trade deadline, all fans are equal. No matter their age, location, partisan commitments, gender, religion, emotional disposition, or level of statistical curiosity, they have one thought: “Man, our bullpen stinks. Our GM really needs to do something about it.”
By and large, the GMs agree. That’s why a quick survey reveals that roughly a bajillion pitchers got traded this deadline season. OK, it’s not that many. Between July 1 and July 30 this year, I counted 44 major league pitchers who were traded to a playoff contender. For transparency’s sake, I judged “major league pitcher” subjectively. Some of these trades amount to one team sending the other a Low-A no-hoper or a bag of cash in order to jump the waiver line for a guy they like. And then the team in question waives the guy they traded for three weeks later.
In short, I love you, Tyler Jay, and we’ll always have that killer Big Ten regular season in 2015, but you don’t count as a major league pitcher for the purposes of this experiment. Read the rest of this entry »
Ever since Major League Baseball released the first drip of its bat tracking data this spring, I’ve been keeping an eye on a particular leaderboard. I don’t know if anybody else cares much about it, but I’ve been fascinated by the fast swing leaderboard. I haven’t been tracking it religiously; I’ve just been checking in every couple of weeks. Also, I haven’t been looking at it the way you’re supposed to. I’m only interested the bottom of the list. I suppose that makes it not so much a leaderboard as a trailerboard, but I don’t care. I’m interested in it because there’s an honest-to-goodness horse race going on there.
A fast swing is one where the barrel of the bat is traveling at least 75 mph when it strikes or comes closest to the ball. That number was chosen, per Mike Petriello, “because that’s the line where, on a per-swing basis, a swing goes from negative run value for a hitter to average, on its way to positive.” All things being equal, it’s better to swing hard. On an individual player basis, here’s the correlation between fast-swing rate and wRC+. Roughly speaking, five percentage points of fast-swing rate is worth three extra points of wRC+:
Here’s something that may surprise you: Fast-swing rate (R = .48) has a stronger correlation to wRC+ than average bat speed does (R = .41). I assume that this is the case for the same reason that 90th-percentile exit velocity is a more useful stat than average exit velocity. You’re ignoring a big chunk of less useful information and focusing on the swings that can result in real damage. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. I’m going to keep the introduction short and sweet today so I can get back to my once-annual guilty pleasure: spending all day watching the US Open. But while I’m going full Jimmy Butler, plenty of baseball is happening, so I’ve got my eyes on that as well. You couldn’t watch a game this week without seeing something spectacular. We’ve got great baserunning, awful baserunning, and phenomenal catches. We’ve got teams misunderstanding risk and reward, and GMs touching hot stoves over and over again. It’s a great week to watch baseball, because it always is. Shout out to Zach Lowe of ESPN as always for the column idea, and one programming note: Five Things will be off next Friday. Let’s get to the baseball!
1. Anthony Volpe’s Disruptive Speed
Another year, another below-average season with the bat for the Yankees shortstop. That’s turning him into a lightning rod for controversy, because he’s a type of player who often gets overlooked (defense and speed) playing for a team where players often get overrated. The combination of the two leads to some confusing opinions. “He’s a good player who will make fewer All-Star teams than you think because defensive value is consistently underappreciated” isn’t exactly a strong argument if you’re talking to an acquaintance at a sports bar.
One thing that everyone can agree on, though: After he reaches base, Anthony Volpe is a problem. I tuned into Monday’s Nationals-Yankees game to see Dylan Crews in the majors and to watch Aaron Judge and Juan Soto, but I ended up just marveling at Volpe for a lot of the afternoon. He got on base three times (that’s the hard part for him, to be clear) and tilted the entire defense each time. He wasn’t even going on this play, and his vault lead still dragged Ildemaro Vargas out of position:
I’m not quite sure how to assign value for that play. The ball found a hole there, but DJ LeMahieu could just as easily have hit the ball straight to Vargas. I’m not saying that we need an advanced statistical reckoning about the value of a runner bluffing a fielder into motion, but that doesn’t change how cool it is to watch Volpe spook good veteran infielders just by standing around and bouncing.
Some of his baserunning value is of the straightforward, look-at-this-fast-human-being variety. You don’t need to hit the ball very deep to drive him home from third:
Some of the value is effort-based. Volpe’s always thinking about an extra base. Even when he hits a clean single, he’s got eyes on the play. An innocuous outfield bobble? He’ll take the base, thank you very much:
Of course, if you show someone taking a bouncing lead in the first GIF, you have to show them stealing a base in the fourth: Call it Volpe’s Run. That double led to a pitching change, and after two looks at Joe La Sorsa’s delivery, Volpe helped himself to third base:
Not every game is like this, but most of his times on base are. He’s never content to go station to station. His instincts are finely tuned, his speed blazing. I’m rooting for Volpe to improve at the plate, and it’s for selfish reasons: I love to watch great baserunning, and I want to see him get more chances to do it.
2. Whatever the Opposite of That Is
Oh Washington. The Nats are near the top of my watch list right now. Their assortment of young offensive standouts makes for fun games, and now that Crews has debuted, the top of their lineup looks legitimately excellent. You can see the future of the team even before they’re ready to contend, and that’s just cool. They might even be good already – they won the series against the Yankees this week, with Crews hitting his first big league homer in the deciding game. But uh, they’re not quite ready for prime time yet. Take a look at this laser beam double:
Boy, it sure looks fun to pour on the runs when you’re already winning. Wait, I misspoke. Take a look at this long fielder’s choice:
Somehow, Joey Gallo didn’t score on a jog on that one. He slammed on the brakes at third base and realized he couldn’t make it home. Then he got hung out to dry because everyone else in the play kept running like it was a clear double (it was). What a goof! That meant the only question was whether he’d be able to hold the rundown long enough to let everyone advance a base. The answer was a resounding yes – to everyone other than Juan Yepez:
I think his brain just short circuited there. He was standing on third with Gallo completely caught in a rundown. All you have to do to finish the play is stand still. But for whatever reason, he started side-shuffling in retreat toward second, another base currently occupied by a runner (!). While Jazz Chisholm Jr. tagged Gallo out, Yepez was busy hanging José Tena out to dry. Famously, you can’t have two runners on the same base. The rest of the play was academic:
I feel bad hanging Yepez out to dry, because some clearer communication would have made this play a run-scoring double. First, Gallo was overly cautious tagging up on the deep drive to center. Then, he got bamboozled. Watch the base coach hold Yepez, only for Gallo to see the sign and think it was intended for him:
Just a disaster all around. I can’t get enough of the Gameday description: “José Tena singles on a sharp line drive to center fielder Aaron Judge. Juan Yepez to 3rd. José Tena lines into a double play, center fielder Aaron Judge to shortstop Anthony Volpe to catcher Austin Wells to first baseman DJ LeMahieu to catcher Austin Wells to third baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. to second baseman Gleyber Torres. Joey Gallo out at home. Juan Yepez to 3rd. José Tena out at 2nd. Two Outs.”
Ah, yes, just your typical 8-6-2-3-2-5-4 double play. The Nationals are a lot of fun to watch – even when it’s at their expense.
3. We Get It, Rays
The whole never-trade-with-Tampa-Bay bit is overdone. The Rays lose plenty of trades. They win their fair share too, of course, but they are high volume operators in a business full of uncertainty. Sometimes, you get Isaac Paredes for almost nothing. Sometimes, you get Jonny DeLuca. When you churn your roster to the extent that they do, you can’t win them all, and that’s fine. But the Cardinals? Yeah, they should definitely not trade with the Rays.
First, in 2018, they sent Tommy Pham to Tampa Bay in exchange for some depth prospects, and Pham racked up 8 WAR in the next year and a half with the Rays. Then, before the 2020 season, the Cardinals swapped Randy Arozarena for Matthew Liberatore; Randy became the face of the postseason, and Libby turned into a long reliever. The most recent deal might not be the most damaging, but it’s an apt capper to a transaction trilogy.
Dylan Carlson was supposed to be the next big thing in St. Louis, but that ship had sailed long before the Cardinals jettisoned him at the deadline this year. His offensive game just broke down out of nowhere over the last two years, and he played himself out of St. Louis even as the team floundered for outfield depth this year. He had a 50 wRC+ in a part-time role when the team decided it was time to move on.
That’s fine, guys need changes of scenery all the time. But trading him to the Rays, of all teams, felt a little on the nose. The reliever they got back, Shawn Armstrong, is a perfectly good bullpen option. He made 11 appearances for the Redbirds and compiled a 2.84 ERA (2.78 FIP), a solid month’s work. But I’m using the past tense because they designated him for assignment earlier this week, hoping another team would pick up the balance of his contract and save them $350,000 or so. They’ve made a similar move with Pham, whom they also acquired at the deadline, since then. In Armstrong’s case, they also did it because he’d pitched two days in a row and they needed another fresh arm on the active roster; it was a messy situation all around.
We have their postseason odds at 1.1% after a desultory August, and they likely aren’t losing much of that value by moving on from Armstrong. It’s the signaling of it all, though: They traded for the guy, got exactly what they wanted from him, and still couldn’t keep him around for two months. Meanwhile, Carlson looks like a reasonable major leaguer again. He hasn’t been a world beater by any means, but he’s hitting the ball hard more frequently in a semi-platoon role that takes advantage of his ability to hit lefties. He already has three homers as a Ray after none all year as a Cardinal.
Carlson had to go, because something wasn’t working in St. Louis. Armstrong was a perfectly reasonable return, and he did exactly what the team hoped for when the Cardinals acquired him. The optics, though! They traded yet another pretty good outfielder who didn’t fit into the puzzle in St. Louis. Tampa Bay has two years to get the most out of him. As is customary, none of the players the Rays sent back to Missouri moved the needle. For appearances’ sake, if nothing else, the Cardinals can’t keep making these trades.
4. Outrageous Robberies
It feels weird that Jackson Chourio, a five-tool superstar with blazing footspeed, doesn’t play center. It seems like a knock on him, almost. Sure, this guy’s a prodigy, but he can’t handle the tough defensive position that you might expect him to play given his talent. Except, that’s not quite right. Why would you play him in center field when you currently have Spider-Man patrolling the grass? I mean…
Oh my goodness. I don’t even want to hear about catch probability on this one, because the difficulty of this play is the part where he gets over the wall in deep center. This isn’t one of those “robberies” where the fielder grazes the wall with his back and everyone celebrates. Blake Perkins can do those just fine – he has four robberies this year, and they weren’t all this hard – but he can also go the extra mile. He went all the way up and over to get this one:
That’s an 8-foot wall, so he probably got to the ball 9 or so feet in the air. He had to cover a ton of ground before getting there; 101 feet from his initial position, to be precise. He took a great route, which gave him time to decelerate and time the jump, but the ball kept carrying. In the end, he had to parkour up the wall a little bit to get enough height:
What more can I say? You can’t do it any better than that. Perkins reacted like he was shocked by his own play:
So no sweat, Jackson. You’re a pretty good outfielder too; you just can’t climb walls quite so nimbly. There’s no shame in second place when first place looks like that.
5. Getting by With a Little Help
Austin Riley is on the IL right now, and 2024 has been a down year for him. That’s largely an offensive issue, though his defense isn’t quite up to previous years’ standards, either. That said, he can still turn an absolute gem out there. Take a look at this beauty from two weeks ago:
That’s the area where he’s improved the most. His arm is below average for third base, so he compensates by getting his feet planted and putting his entire body into the throw. That ball had to travel forever, and to be fair, it two-hopped Matt Olson, but that’s an accurate ball given where he caught it and how quickly he had to let it go. That’s very nice, but watch Jo Adell at the bag. What is he doing?!? That isn’t how you’re supposed to run out a bang-bang play. If he went straight in, he’d beat the throw comfortably. Instead, he curled his way into an out.
In his mind, I’m sure that ball was a double right out of the box. That’s reasonable! Look at where Riley made the play:
Riley’s plant foot ended up all the way into the grass in foul territory. Not many baseballs get fielded there, and Adell hit that one on a line, so when he started out of the box, he was surely considering his options in regards to second base. He came out of the box looking down the line and taking a direct, rather than rounded, route. But as you can see from the high angle replay, he started to bend his path to cut the bag and head for second, right around the same time that Riley rose and fired:
The closeup of Adell is definitely a bad look:
But take another look at those last two shots and you’ll get a better idea of what happened. Adell probably couldn’t see the ball in the corner cleanly. There was a lot of traffic: baserunners, umpires, Riley himself, the pitcher, and so on. About halfway down the baseline, he looked away from the play to pick up first base coach Bo Porter, exactly what you should do when you can’t find the ball on your own. But Porter just plain missed it. He was pinwheeling Adell toward second, imploring him to arc out for extra speed. He clearly thought the ball was in the outfield and that Adell going wide could give him a shot at an extra base.
I’d put more blame on Porter than on Adell in this situation, but there’s blame to go around for both. I’d give credit to Riley, too, of course. Base coaches and baserunners make mistakes sometimes, and they aren’t always punished by outstanding defensive plays like that. But this is an unforgivable mistake given the game situation.
Adell’s run was far less important than the two in front of him. If there was any question at all about his being safe or not, any question about whether Riley had fielded it, the correct play was to book it to first and completely forget about the double. Reaching first safely is worth more than a run: the runner scoring from third plus the first and third situation that would’ve result from it. Teams have scored 0.52 runs after first and third with two outs this year, and 0.59 runs after second and third with two outs. Meaning, if Adell had taken a straight line path, the Angels would’ve scored a run and had that 0.52 on top of it, so making an out at first base cost them an expected 1.52 runs. Advancing to second would have gained them another 0.07 expected runs, but only if that runner on third scored, which didn’t happen because Adell was out at first. They would’ve needed to successfully advance to second 96 times out of 100 to make the math work there. It’s worse than that, though: Going from a one-run lead to a two-run lead is worth astronomically more than stepping up from two to three. Take that into account, and we’re looking at a play where you’d need to be right 98 times out of 100.
The Angels mistook playing hard for playing smart. The winning baseball play there is to ensure the run. It didn’t end up costing them, but it could have. They never scored again, and the Braves put plenty of traffic on the bases the rest of the way. The funny thing is, I’m sure that Adell will get knocked for not hustling on this play, and I don’t think that’s what went wrong. He and Porter just got greedy aiming for a hustle double when the right choice was to nit it up (play extremely conservatively, for the non-poker-players out there). It’s a strange way to make a mistake – but it’s definitely still a mistake.
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.
September roster expansion isn’t nearly as supercharged as it was when teams could have up to 40 players in the dugout. Nowadays, clubs are limited to one extra position player and one extra pitcher, so in conjunction with the universal DH and the ghost runner in extra innings, we’ll forever be deprived of crazy box scores like this one.
With rosters more gently inflated than bloated, next month is likely to see more moves than there were back when teams didn’t have to be quite so discerning; those two extra spots are valuable, and teams will surely cycle through guys to fill them. Let’s take a look at which players could make a difference for their club come September. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about ad proliferation on podcasts and make a sheepish plea for listener support, then discuss the reversal of offensive fortunes for first basemen and shortstops and Oneil Cruz’s move to center field before following up (35:33) on the Mariners’ managerial hiring and the Selig Rule, a Rich Hill record (and dueling Hill fun facts), the effect of equidistant fences, Carlos Santana’s milestone ball, single-organization Futures Games, and broadcaster BSing, and then Stat Blasting (1:11:40) about Félix Hernández and high HR:hit ratios by bad hitters, Ernie Clement and high-pitch homers, mid-plate-appearance big-league debuts, and small-sample, leaguewide scoring fluctuations (and also semi-meeting major leaguers Ryan Zeferjahn, Jeff Criswell, and Brady Feigl).
If you checked the standings on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, you may have noticed something rather novel: The Royals were tied for first place atop the AL Central, depriving the Guardians of sole possession for the first time since April 13. The moment was fleeting, because on Wednesday afternoon Kansas City lost to Cleveland after taking the first three games of the series. Nonetheless, the team has been the AL’s hottest over the past two months, is currently positioned to end its nine-year postseason drought, and has a very real shot at capturing the division title.
The Royals have been above .500 since April 6, and they’ve had just one calendar month with a losing record (12-15 in June). They were 18-13 in March and April, 17-11 in May, 13-10 in July, and are 15-10 in August. A dreadful 4-12 stretch knocked them 10 games behind the Guardians as of June 25, but they’ve gone an AL-best 32-21 (.604) since, half a game ahead of the Astros (32-22). This team is for real.
After allowing 11 runs to the Phillies in back-to-back games over the weekend — the first of which happened after Kansas City pulled within a game of the Guardians in the standings — the Royals rolled into Cleveland and swept a doubleheader on Monday, overcoming early deficits in both games. Down 2-0 in the opener, MJ Melendez’s three-run homer and Bobby Witt Jr.’s solo shot powered the Royals to a 4-3 win, and after Alec Marsh surrendered three first-inning runs (two unearned) in the nightcap, they chipped away, with Salvador Perez breaking a 4-4 tie with a solo home run in the fifth and then hitting a grand slam in the sixth, keying a 9-4 win. On Tuesday night, after starter Michael Lorenzen exited the game in the second inning due to a left hamstring strain, five relievers held the Guardians to a total of two hits and one run over 7 1/3 innings, and trade deadline acquisition Paul DeJong clubbed his fifth homer in 19 games en route to a 6-1 win. Alas, on Wednesday the Royals carried a 5-2 lead into the seventh, but starter Michael Wacha and the bullpen faltered, yielding four runs in what became a 7-5 defeat. Read the rest of this entry »
Nobody throws curveballs anymore. They’re old hat, as Michael Baumann just got done telling you. They don’t fit modern pitch design. Sliders do all the things that curveballs do, and mostly better. Look at the league changing right in front of our eyes:
There’s nothing particularly odd about this change. Sliders, of both the sweeping and tight variety, get better results. Even as they’ve exploded in popularity, even as more and more pitchers have added mediocre sweepers to broaden their arsenals, the numbers speak for themselves. Sliders have been more valuable than the average pitch this year. Curveballs have been less valuable than the average pitch. Sliders seem easier to teach, too, at least anecdotally. You don’t hear about a lot of pitching factories turning guys into Charlie Morton, but seemingly every child in America learns a sweeper these days. Read the rest of this entry »
Garrett Crochet has been overpowering hitters in his first season as a major league starting pitcher. In 27 outings comprising 128 2/3 innings — the woebegone White Sox have been especially cautious with his workload since the All-Star break — the 25-year-old southpaw has a 34.2% strikeout rate to go with a 3.64 ERA and a 2.83 FIP. Relying heavily on a four-seamer/cutter combination that’s augmented by a sweeper and the occasional changeup, Crochet ranks in the 92nd percentile for fastball velocity at 97.1 mph, and in the 93rd percentile for whiff rate at 32.9%.
Crochet sat down to discuss his repertoire and approach prior to a recent game at Chicago’s Guaranteed Rate Field.
———
David Laurila: Most fans are familiar with you as a pitcher. That said, how would you describe yourself?
Garrett Crochet: “I guess I think of myself as a power pitcher. I pretty much rely on two pitches, although I would like to maybe open the floor a little bit more for [additional] usage of the slider and changeup. Some outings call for that more than others, but to be honest, I haven’t gotten many reps with my changeup. It’s been difficult for me to incorporate that pitch very much in a year where I’m relying pretty much solely on efficiency. It’s been about not wanting to waste pitches. That’s why it came down to me using the fastball and the cutter primarily.” Read the rest of this entry »
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