FanGraphs Members can download any of our stats over any time frame. One of my favorite ways to use the download feature is to compare information over unique time frames. For today’s example, I’ll compare the first- and second-half fastball traits of a few Cardinals starting pitchers.
I’m going to show an example comparing two time frames for just one team, but I usually use multiple time frames (e.g. previous two seasons, first half, last month) for hundreds of pitchers. And while this comparison is especially helpful to fantasy players, anyone can use the procedure for their player analysis. One key in analyzing players, especially pitchers, is selecting unique time frames. Most people will compare first- and second-half stats, but I’ve found hidden gems by using three to eight week intervals. No site provides odd intervals in their default time frames, like the first four months to the last two, or the season divided into quarters. These data downloads help facilitate that sort of analysis. Again, the key is to find breakouts that others might not have identified. Read the rest of this entry »
For my money, the best pitcher in the National League right now is Braves right-hander Spencer Strider. The 25-year-old with the Kurt Russell-in-Tombstone mustache struck out 281 batters last year, which is impressive in any context, all the more so because he did it in just 186 2/3 innings, while using two and a half pitches. He’s got an upper-90s four-seamer, an outrageous slider, and a changeup that he uses sparingly against lefties and basically not at all against righties.
Strider’s slider (which is a top-three Shel Silverstein poem) is clearly capable of serving as a secondary arsenal all on its own. That’s because Strider can add or subtract from the pitch at will. Last year, he threw more than 1,000 sliders in the regular season, and those pitches varied in velocity by 10 mph, in spin rate by more than 500 rpm, in gravity-adjusted vertical movement by 16 inches, and in horizontal movement by 10 inches. In short, it’s technically one pitch, but with a lot of room to change speed and shape.
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.
As I mentioned in my intro column on Friday, my main responsibility here at FanGraphs is updating the RosterResource payroll pages, which give a great overview of all 30 teams’ payrolls and where they stand in relation to the luxury tax lines. I like to view payrolls with the understanding that each team is going to have its own normal range; as such, I find it best to look at the 2024 Dodgers relative to the 2023 Dodgers and the 2024 A’s relative to the 2023 A’s. So, with that in mind, I put the teams into five buckets.
All payrolls listed below are the “real payroll” for the teams rather than their luxury tax payroll. Official 2023 payrolls have not yet been reported, so I’ve used the RosterResource payrolls for both 2023 and 2024.
The Big Gainers (at least 10% increase since 2023)
The O’s had nowhere to go but up after running a bare-bones payroll for last year’s 101-win campaign. The big increases came from arbitration raises and trading for Corbin Burnes ($15,637,500).
Owner Ken Kendrick wasn’t kidding when he said he was willing to add payroll to keep the team in World Series contention. The Diamondbacks didn’t lose anyone significant in free agency, and new additions Eugenio Suárez, Eduardo Rodriguez, Joc Pederson, and Jordan Montgomery will combine to earn almost $60 million this season.
The Dodgers reined in spending in 2023 with an eye on having maximum flexibility for this season, and goodness did they flex it. They committed over $1 billion in free agency, 36% of the entire league’s total.
Kansas City’s big move was the mega-extension for Bobby Witt Jr., with free agency expenditures large in quantity (seven MLB free agents) but low in big splashes. (Seth Lugo’s $36 million contract was the largest.) Still, they look markedly improved.
The Rays were pretty quiet in free agency, but their payroll is up quite a bit even after trading away Tyler Glasnow and Manuel Margot. The large collection of arbitration-eligible players accounts for most of the gain here.
This is similar to the Rays’ situation; Aroldis Chapman ($10.5 million) was Pittsburgh’s biggest free agent commitment. David Bednar’s arbitration years and Mitch Keller’s extension could keep the Pirates in the $80M+ range for a while.
In the final year of his contract, Patrick Corbin is earning $11 million more than he did in 2023, and his raise accounts for over half of Washington’s increase.
This year, the Astros almost certainly will pay the luxury tax for the first time under owner Jim Crane. Josh Hader signed the biggest free agent deal for a reliever (by present value), and yet he has just the fifth-highest salary on the team.
Cincinnati had a very Royals-y offseason. Jeimer Candelario’s three-year, $45 million deal was the largest signing the Reds made, but add the $13 million he’ll earn this season with the salaries of newcomers Emilio Pagán, Frankie Montas, and Brent Suter and you get $37.5 million of fresh commitments to four players. That explains the increase in payroll even without Joey Votto on the team anymore.
Juan Soto’s hefty $31 million salary in his walk year explains the Yankees’ payroll jump, as the Marcus Stroman contract and arbitration raises are essentially negated by the salaries of Josh Donaldson, Luis Severino, and Frankie Montas (among others) coming off the books.
The Moderate Gainers (between 5% and 10% increase since 2023)
The World Series champs did their big shopping in the two offseasons before last year, and many of the core contributors from the 2023 roster are still with the team. The largest contract Texas gave out this free agency was Tyler Mahle’s two-year, $22 million deal, leading to a minimal increase in payroll.
After missing out on Shohei Ohtani, the Blue Jays had a low-key offseason. Yariel Rodriguez signed for $32 million but started out in the minors to get stretched out, and rather than making big expenditures the team will instead be relying on improvements from stars like Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Well, at least their relative change is actually qualifying as a moderate increase? By absolute change, this is essentially nothing; their highest paid player is Ross Stripling, who’s earning $12.5 million, but the Giants are covering $3.25 million of that, meaning the A’s themselves aren’t paying a single player eight figures.
Largely Unchanged (Within 5% of their 2023 payroll)
The Redbirds got most of their offseason shopping out of the way early, locking down Sonny Gray, Kyle Gibson, and Lance Lynn before the Winter Meetings. The Gray deal is heavily backloaded, though, keeping things steady.
The Phillies tend to allocate their contracts evenly and will run it back with essentially the same squad that brought them to within one win of their second straight NL pennant.
The Mets’ payroll remains stratospheric, but nearly $70 million is money paid to other teams for James McCann, Justin Verlander, and Max Scherzer. They’re projected to be all the way down to $159 million in commitments for 2025, with no huge arbitration raises set to add to that significantly.
Don’t confuse cheaper with worse. The Tigers should be a much better team this year; they just no longer have Miguel Cabrera’s $32 million on the books.
Boston’s offseason was many things, but full-throttle it wasn’t. Adding injury to insult, the team’s big free-agent addition, Lucas Giolito, will miss all of 2024 after undergoing UCL repair surgery.
Milwaukee traded Corbin Burnes, brought back Brandon Woodruff on a reduced salary, and signed Rhys Hoskins to a backloaded contract that adds only $10 million to the 2024 payroll. Even so, the Brewers are 3–0 to start the season and should still contend for the NL Central title.
Colorado’s payments for Nolan Arenado went down from $21 million last year to $5 million this year, creating almost the entire difference. The team’s only free-agent additions were Jacob Stallings ($2 million) and Dakota Hudson ($1.5 million).
The Angels ducked under the luxury tax threshold by just $30,000 after letting five players go on waivers last August, and they won’t come anywhere close this year. Anthony Rendon and Mike Trout alone combine for nearly 45% of that.
Owner Jim Pohlad said payroll would go down, and it certainly did, even as the Twins look primed to repeat as AL Central champs. Carlos Santana ($5.25 million) was Minnesota’s “big” free agent signing.
The Padres followed through on plans to bring payroll down to a more manageable level to come into compliance with MLB’s debt-servicing rules, and they didn’t replace Juan Soto in any meaningful way, either.
…
To be clear, nothing I’m about to say is a dig on A’s fans. They’ve got what I would say is by far the toughest situation of any fanbase in the league, with their favorite team about to abandon them for three nomadic years in an unknown temporary home (Sacramento, perhaps? Salt Lake City?) before heading to a Las Vegas stadium that has been rendered on paper but entirely unclear in its real-life funding. (Nevada will chip in a hefty $380 million of what will be at least a $1 billion project.) With that all laid out, though, the A’s attendance has been nothing short of incredible, and I don’t mean that positively.
ESPN has a handy tracker for average team attendance, and the gap between the 15th-place A’s and 14th-place Marlins (remember, only 15 MLB parks have games during the opening weekend) is about 12,500 per game, nearly as large as the gap between the Marlins and the no. 10 Mariners. The boycotted Opening Day was actually the best attended of the three games, with over 13,000 tickets sold, though it would appear only a fraction actually went to the game. Instead, they bought tickets to access the parking lot for their protest.
Without protests and boycotts to artificially inflate attendance, the A’s may have a tough time cracking 10,000 fans at any point this season, and the team will exit Oakland with a whimper.
…
It appears as if Joey Bart will be on the move shortly, with his expected-all-spring jettisoning from the Giants’ roster finally coming with a DFA on Sunday. Bart hit well in spring training, with a .414/.526/.448 line in 38 plate appearances. He made the Opening Day roster as San Francisco’s third catcher, but he was never going to overtake Patrick Bailey and Tom Murphy on the depth chart so long as they stayed healthy.
Bart hit just .219/.288/.335 in 502 plate appearances with the Giants, and his -6 defensive runs saved in 156 games behind the plate don’t give any value back on the other side of the ball. That said, he was still the 2nd overall pick in 2018, and I don’t see him clearing waivers. Teams who could look to upgrade their backup catcher spot include the A’s, Diamondbacks, Braves, and Pirates.
Enrique Bradfield Jr. has good wheels, and he can also hit a bit. Drafted 17th overall last year by the Baltimore Orioles out of Vanderbilt University, the 22-year-old outfielder not only slashed .311/.426/.447 over three collegiate seasons, his table-setter batting style translated smoothly to pro ball. In 110 plate appearances versus A-ball pitching, Bradfield batted .291 with a Bonds-esque .473 OBP.
The chances of Bradfield’s ever being comped to Barry Bonds are basically nonexistent. At 6-foot-1 and 170 pounds, the erstwhile Commodore is, in the words of our prospect co-analysts Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin, “a contact-oriented speedster who will also play plus defense.” Power isn’t a meaningful part of his game. Bradfield went deep just 15 times at Vandy, and not at all after inking a contract with the O’s.
He doesn’t expect that to change. When I asked him during spring training if he’s ever tried to tap into more power, Bradfield said that has never been a focus, adding that he’d “be going in the wrong direction if it was.” That seems a shrewd self-assessment. A line-drive hitter who swings from the left side, Bradfield will ultimately reach Baltimore by continuing to propel balls from foul pole to foul pole. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Opening Day naps, a Bryce Harper pandering update, Nelson Cruz’s Mariners retirement and the one-day-contract tradition, and Yusei Kikuchi’s latest intriguing revelation, then (21:16) share some highlights and lowlights of Opening Day action, report the results of listener voting on the preseason predictions game, analyze Will Smith’s extension, marvel at this season’s compressed projections, and (1:05:27) conduct the fourth annual Team Fun Draft, in which they draft all 30 teams in order of how fun they are to follow in 2024.
Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto walk into the Dodgers clubhouse in 2032, where… they’re greeted by Will Smith. There’s no punchline to this setup because it’s not joke, as the All-Star receiver has joined those other three Dodgers in inking a deal that’s at least a decade long. On Wednesday, the day before his 29th birthday, Smith agreed to a 10-year, $140 million extension.
Smith has already helped the Dodgers win a World Series and established himself as one of the game’s preeminent catchers. He’s second in WAR among catchers since 2019, the year he debuted, with his 15.8 WAR trailing only the 19.8 WAR of J.T. Realmuto, who took nearly 500 more plate appearances over that same stretch. He’s tops among all catchers for the 2021–23 stretch with 12.9 WAR, a span over which he and Realmuto (who had 12.6 WAR) had nearly identical PA totals. Though he still had one more year after this one before becoming eligible for free agency, he and the Dodgers had wanted to hammer out a long-term deal for a while, so much so that according to MLB.com’s Juan Toribo, the two sides had engaged in extension discussions “each of the last few seasons.”
Smith is coming off an admittedly uneven season. Though his 119 wRC+ was the lowest mark of his five-year career, he posted his second-highest WAR (4.4). He hit .261/.359/.438 with 19 homers in 554 plate appearances, but tailed off after a hot start:
Will Smith 2023 Splits
Split
PA
HR
BB
SO
Barrel%
AVG
OBP
SLG
wRC+
1st Half
288
13
44
39
8.0%
.279
.396
.494
144
2nd Half
266
6
19
50
5.3%
.242
.320
.381
91
Smith made his first All-Star team (!) on the strength of that first half, but even then, all wasn’t quite well. On April 12, he suffered a concussion when a foul ball hit his mask and missed two weeks of action. Three days after returning, on April 30, he was hit by a Jake Woodford sinker. He suffered a broken rib and an oblique strain but played through them, and doing so created some bad habits with regards to his mechanics. From a September 22 piece by Jack Harris in the Los Angeles Times:
Instead of his typically smooth, compact inside-out swing, Smith said his bat path has been too “out to in” lately, leading to more whiffs and mis-hits on pitches he used to crush.
He said his front side is opening up too much, causing him to cut across the ball instead of driving it with his easy pop.
… Added [manager Dave] Roberts: “There was probably a little bit of guarding [the injury] initially after. And then when you’re talking about the rib, the oblique, that sort of dovetails into some changed mechanics.”
Particularly with the Dodgers’ awareness of his slump, the team probably should have dialed Smith’s workload back a bit more than it did; he matched his 2022 total of 106 starts behind the plate but DHed only 14 times, compared to 25 the year before. He had enough success in ironing out his mechanics that he went 5-for-12 with a double and a triple in the Dodgers’ three-and-out Division Series loss to the Diamondbacks, and he’s off to a 6-for-14 start this year, so there’s no reason to think he’s permanently broken.
As for the contract, it’s the longest ever for a catcher, surpassing the eight-year extensions of Joe Mauer, Buster Posey, and Keibert Ruiz, who came up in the Dodgers’ system, generally a level behind Smith, before being traded to the Nationals in the Max Scherzer blockbuster in 2021. Smith’s deal isn’t nearly as lucrative as either the Mauer or Posey ones for $184 million and $167 million — and that’s without adjusting for inflation, as both of those were signed more than a decade ago. In terms of unadjusted average annual value, Smith’s $14 million a year ranks just 12th among catchers historically and fourth currently, according to Cot’s Contracts. On an annual basis, that $14 million average comes to only about 60% of the $23.1 million that Realmuto, the game’s highest-paid catcher, is making.
That AAV requires adjustment, however, because as with the Ohtani and Betts deals — and those of Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernández, so long as we’re on the subject of the Dodgers — a significant amount of the money is deferred. In his case, it’s $50 million, with the team paying out $5 million a year from 2034–43. That reduces the AAV of Smith’s deal to $12.24 million for Competitive Balance Tax purposes, about 53% of what Realmuto (who himself deferred half of his $20 million 2021 salary) is making.
Structure-wise, according to MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand, Smith will receive a $30 million signing bonus — half payable on November 15, the other half on January 15 — and be paid $13.55 million this year (replacing the one-year, $8.55 million contract he signed in January), then $13 million a year for 2025–27, $9.5 million for ’28-32, and $9.95 million for ’33. That’s a cool breeze running through Guggenheim Baseball Management’s bank account; in 2028, Betts will be taking home more than three times as much ($30 million), and Yamamoto nearly that ($26 million). While he doesn’t have explicit no-trade protection, he’ll reach 10-and-5 status in mid-2028, and his contract has one other provision that protects him: If he’s traded, the deferred money becomes payable in season, meaning that the acquiring team will take a larger CBT hit unless the two sides agree to a similar arrangement.
Even given the length of the deal, ZiPS is surprisingly optimistic about Smith. Via Dan Szymborski:
ZiPS Projection – Will Smith
Year
Age
BA
OBP
SLG
AB
R
H
HR
RBI
BB
SO
SB
OPS+
DR
WAR
2024
29
.259
.355
.452
471
74
122
21
78
61
94
2
118
5
4.2
2025
30
.252
.349
.436
472
72
119
20
76
61
95
2
112
4
3.8
2026
31
.251
.347
.430
467
70
117
19
72
60
96
2
110
3
3.6
2027
32
.243
.339
.407
457
65
111
17
68
58
95
2
102
2
2.9
2028
33
.240
.337
.401
441
62
106
16
62
55
94
2
100
1
2.6
2029
34
.233
.328
.383
420
56
98
14
57
51
92
1
93
1
1.9
2030
35
.232
.328
.375
392
51
91
12
52
48
87
1
91
0
1.7
2031
36
.231
.327
.372
363
47
84
11
46
44
81
1
90
-1
1.4
2032
37
.227
.321
.360
361
44
82
10
45
42
81
1
85
-2
1.1
2033
38
.224
.317
.349
312
37
70
8
37
36
71
1
82
-3
0.7
That’s 23.9 WAR over the life of the contract, with 17.1 WAR in the first half of the deal, a very strong return. In fact, the ZiPS suggested contract for this projection is $164 million over 10 years, but once the deferred money is accounted for, the Dodgers are paying him the equivalent of about 75% of that in present value. This is a very good deal for them, and if it seems like Smith is getting the short end here, it’s just that the two sides have figured out a mutually advantageous way of structuring the payments. To these eyes, the way it makes the most sense is to think of that signing bonus and the higher salaries of the first four years as one deal that without deferrals averages out to $20.6 million a year over the next four years (which would be the second-highest AAV for a catcher, surpassing Salvador Perez’s $20.5 million), and then about $9.6 million per year for the last six, a little less than the $10.15 million James McCann is making as a well-compensated backup.
Particularly in the wake of the Ohtani contract, I’ve seen complaints that the Dodgers’ penchant for using deferred money is somehow a subversion of the Competitive Balance Tax system — as if that were sacrosanct — and therefore bad for baseball. I don’t find this notion particularly convincing. The league and the owners knew exactly what they were doing when they designed this system; as former MLBPA executive subcommittee member Collin McHughtoldThe Athletic recently, “They’re better at finding loopholes in the system because that is their job, to maximize profit” for the 30 owners. Does anyone out there actually think that even the most miserly of the multimillionaires and billionaires who own teams got filthy rich without understanding the time value of money and the advantages, tax-related and otherwise, of spreading out large payments? The concept permeates our society; not all of us are fortunate enough to have socked away money for retirement, but at some point, most of us have been encouraged to participate in a pension plan, 401k, or IRA that provides tax advantages and spreads out our income to compensate for lesser earnings down the road.
As for the players and owners, in December the Wall Street Journal’s Linsdey Adler and Richard Rubin reported that the owners have proposed limits on the amount of salary that can be deferred, with one 2021 proposal including a full ban, but the MLB Players Association rejected the idea. Understandably, they have no incentive to give up that right without receiving major concessions in return. Maybe they’d agree to forgo deferrals if the owners were to allow players to reach eligibility for arbitration and/or free agency more quickly, but we all know that’s not happening anytime soon.
Anyway, it’s not like the Dodgers, who now have $915.5 million worth of deferrals on their books for the salaries of Betts, Freeman, Hernández, Ohtani, and Smith, are doing this while avoiding paying the CBT. They’re well past the fourth-tier threshold of $297 million, and figure to be paying taxes annually for the foreseeable future, with increasingly steeper penalties and the risk of an inflexible roster; it’s hardly inconceivable that some of these contracts could go south and cause the Dodgers headaches down the road. As for Smith, he’s now got a handsome deal that rewards him for his place as part of the team’s foundation, with protection from the cumulative impact of so many innings behind the plate. Good for him, and good for the Dodgers.
A popup is an automatic out. In 2023, popups had a batting average of just .014, so if we round up, we can say honestly that 99% of them were completely worthless. If you see the ball leave the bat headed straight up in the air, the outcome is essentially predetermined. No other batted ball carries less intrigue. Groundballs may be pariahs in the era of the launch angle revolution, but their .261 batting average meant they were 18 times more likely than popups to end up as hits. Knowing all that, you could be excused for thinking that the popup is the most boring possible way for the ball to be put in play. But I’m going to let you in on something: The popup is secretly the most exciting play in baseball.
You see, what popups lack in suspense, they make up for in drama. That’s because the popup is the play most likely to end up with any and all of the players on the field screaming. Now, in most contexts, screaming isn’t necessarily something you look forward to. Personally, my day-to-day life contains exactly zero screaming, and I prefer to keep it that way. In any given situation, I tend to think of somebody yelling at me as the absolute worst-case scenario. However, the screaming that happens during a popup is fun. No one is screaming to hurt anyone else. Players may scream out of anger, but they also scream in order to be helpful and to keep their teammates safe. When the ball has been popped up, screaming is cooperation. Screaming is friendship. Screaming is love.
As we embark on the 2024 season, it’s best to think of popups like tragic operas. Everyone walks into the theater knowing that things will end badly for the protagonist. They’re not there to find out what will happen, they’re there to be moved by how it happens. Although the end is sad, there is great beauty to be found in the death and shrieking. With that, let’s review the different reasons that players might end up screaming their heads off when the ball gets lifted into the air. I watched every single televised popup that happened during spring training, and then I made supercuts so that we could break them down together. I also included a few choice screams from recent seasons.
Whenever the ball is popped up, it is the solemn duty of every ballplayer to shout “Up!” as loud as humanly possible. This is the law, and it was hammered into me so hard when I was in high school that it became an involuntary response. I’m now 40 years old. I play recreational softball. And still, I cannot help screaming every time someone pops the ball up. No one else does this. It is embarrassing and I am unable to stop. It is less embarrassing when big leaguers do it.
In theory, the goal of this particular scream is to help the catcher. The catcher is busy trying not just to catch the pitch, but to frame it while also managing all of the other responsibilities that come with the position. Unlike everyone else on the field, a ball popped straight up immediately leaves the catcher’s line of sight. Screaming, “Up!” lets them know the location of the ball and warns them that they might have to make a play on it. Occasionally, you can see that catchers really do need the help. They’re capable of looking very confused indeed.
For that reason, and also because they are themselves forbidden from catching popups, pitchers have also been trained to point to the ball when it’s popped up. It is not helpful, but it is, once again, the law. It must be extraordinarily infantilizing for the pitcher, normally the source of all the action, to be reduced to a helpless citizen of Metropolis, shouting, “Look, up in the sky!” I imagine it also feels quite futile, since, throughout the entire history of baseball, exactly zero popups have ever been caught because the pitcher’s index finger helped a fielder locate the ball.
Once it has been established that the ball is, in fact, up, it’s time to decide who will have the honor of catching it. This is determined by way of the democratic process of — you guessed it — even more screaming, just as the founding fathers intended. In theory, there are certain places where one fielder has the right of way, but in practice, the rules are simple: Whoever screams the loudest and the latest gets the ball. The generally accepted parlance is, “I got it.” As Junior Caminero makes clear in the first clip below, “Mía, mía, mía” works just as well for Spanish speakers.
It really is important for the fielders to declare whether or not they’ve got it. To you, it may just sound like grown men shouting at each other, but in baseball, that’s known as communication. If your team fails to communicate, then something like this could happen.
But that’s still not the worst-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is an outfield collision, and it happens all too frequently. Usually, there’s nothing funny about ballfield collisions, but they can have their moments. For example, the legendary band Yo La Tengo got their name from center fielder Richie Ashburn’s futile attempt to avoid outfield collisions with shortstop Elio Chacon when the two played together for the Mets in the early ’60s. Seamus Kerney tells the story in Ashburn’s SABR bio:
The story revolved around the antics of the Spanish-speaking shortstop for the Mets, Elio Chacon, and his penchant for frequent near-collisions with outfielders. This was especially true with Ashburn on short fly balls to center field. Ashburn realized that Chacon did not understand the English warning: “I have it,” so he went to a bilingual Mets player and was told that Chacon would understand the warning in Spanish, yo la tengo; that it meant the fly ball was the center fielder’s to catch. Soon enough a short fly ball was hit and a back-pedaling Chacon veered off, following Ashburn’s admonition in Spanish. What was unexpected was that onrushing, English-only left fielder Frank Thomas completely flattened Ashburn. After pulling his center fielder from the ground, Thomas asked him “What’s a Yellow Tango?”
Sometimes the issue is not who will get the ball, but whether the fielder can get to it safely. If the ball is being buffeted by the wind and your head is craned skyward to track it into foul territory, it can be hard to mind your surroundings. That’s where your teammates can come in, telling you whether or not you have the space to safely make the catch without running into the wall. The preferred verbiage is “Got room! Got room!” Strangely, nobody yells much of anything when you don’t have room. It doesn’t make a ton of sense, as that’s the situation when you’d really need help to keep from crashing into the wall. In theory, nobody should need to be told that they’ve got room. They should just keep going after the ball until they hear a teammate say, “Stop running or you’ll die!”
There’s one more player who can get in on the screaming action, and that’s the batter. In this case, there is no altruistic reason for screaming. It’s just pure catharsis, a way to vent the rage from your body before you explode. Let it out, Jason Heyward. Let it out.
Of course, the players aren’t the only ones who can scream. I have a friend who is physically incapable of going to concert without shouting something at the band between songs. Maybe it’s a joke, or maybe it’s just a big, loud Woooo! There is something inside of him that simply cannot survive those few seconds of silence. For baseball fans with the same condition, the odd interstice when everyone in the stadium is waiting for the ball to finally remember that it’s earthbound is the perfect moment to grab some attention. Usually, they’ll shout that it is in fact they who have got it, but it’s also a time to shine for people blessed with great whistles or anyone who simply loves screaming. In my favorite of the clips that follow, someone who is presumably not familiar with the terminology of the game very clearly tells the fielder, “You’re gonna fumble it.”
In addition to the joy of screaming, popups give you a chance to enjoy the choreography of a baseball game. Because it’s never immediately clear where the ball will land and who will end up with it, the broadcast cuts to the widest shot they have, way up behind home plate. In this rare glimpse of the entire field, you can see all of the infielders, and sometimes all nine fielders, as they move together. There’s beauty in it, and it truly lets you see the way in which defense requires all nine players.
One of my favorite moments comes in the instant before they cut to that camera. It’s vanishingly brief, and it can only take place if a right-handed batter fouls a pitch from a right-handed pitcher down the first base line. When that happens, the pitcher, catcher, and hitter will all move together, following the ball toward first base. First their heads snap up, and then their bodies follow in sort of a synchronized drift. It’s like they’re zombies who suddenly catch the scent of brains wafting over from the south.
That’s the last supercut I’ve got, but before I leave you, I’d like to share with you my dream of the perfect popup. It’s the popup where everyone in the stadium screams: players, fans, umpires, announcers, ushers, even the possums (assuming the game is being played in Oakland). I crunched a lot of tape looking for the perfect popup. I never found it, but I know that it’s out there somewhere.
The perfect popup starts with a pitcher unleashing both the baseball and a max effort grunt. With a mighty cut, the batter sends the ball straight up into the stratosphere, and the catcher, pitcher, and infielders instantly scream the word, “Up!” in perfect unison. The batter barks the F-word in fury, smashing the bat over a beefy thigh. The umpires shout, “Infield fly, batter’s out!” Thunderclouds boom. A swirling thermal pushes the ball hither and yon in the sky, and as it passes over each fielder in turn, each one shouts, “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” At first the fans shout gaily that they’ve got it too, but as the ball travels ever skyward in open defiance of gravity, their playful shouts turn into panicked screams. They rend their garments. The batter, no longer jogging half-heartedly toward first, furiously churns around the bases. The ball keeps rising. “Cold beer here,” screams a vendor, completely oblivious to the apocalypse unfolding around him. “Yes, oh God yes,” howls the play-by-play announcer. And then, just like that, the ball decides to start falling. The thunderclouds dissipate. The fans meekly put back on the clothes they’d ripped from their bodies in terror. The third baseman drifts toward the dugout, and after reassurances that he’s got room, he settles under the ball, says once more that he’s got it, and secures it safely in his glove. The batter dives headfirst into home. God weeps.
It was the dawn of a new era in Baltimore, as the new owners made their first real impression on their new adoring public. Michael Arougheti bought a round at the bar. David Rubenstein visited the MASN booth and held forth on the Magna Carta with Ben McDonald; the conversation had to drift that far afield because Rubenstein’s two-inning television appearance was extended when Patrick Sandoval simply could not get out of the inning. Before Rubenstein left, he asked (I’m choosing to interpret this as a sick burn rather than a genuine point of inquiry) if MLB had a mercy rule.
The Orioles won 11-3. Every Baltimore starting position player reached base and either scored or drove in a run; eight of the nine recorded at least one hit. And only three of the 10 hits went for extra bases. This was one of those methodical conga line outings in which the Orioles won not so much by knockout as by submission. Had the norms of the game allowed the Angels to tap out without shame, they might’ve done so. Read the rest of this entry »
Happy Friday, and welcome to Top of the Order, FanGraphs’ new triweekly column! Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
To those who aren’t familiar with my work, a little background: I’ve been at FanGraphs since the beginning of the 2021 season. My work here has been largely behind the scenes, with my main responsibility being updating the RosterResource payroll pages (which are pretty great, if I do say so myself). I’ve worked with Jason Martinez and RosterResource as far back as 2012, when it was MLB Depth Charts, before it was in FanGraphs’ awesome interface and even before it was stored in Google Sheets (it was just text on a page!).
That transaction and payroll lens has dominated how I think about baseball over the last decade or so; it’s informed how I watch baseball, and it will certainly influence the topics I choose to discuss in these columns. I’m not watching for the long view of players’ Hall of Fame careers like Jay Jaffe does; I don’t have an incredible projection system like Dan Szymborski; I don’t have an innate feel for the game’s aesthetics and trends like Ben Clemens. I’m watching and following for information. Read the rest of this entry »
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