Imagine you’re magically granted the power of time travel and that you use it to visit the days leading up to Opening Day 2016. Suddenly back in a world without daily regular-season baseball, you approach an unsuspecting baseball fan and tell them that you’re a time traveler with this bit of baseball information from mid-June: over the past 30 days, the Nationals have had the best offense in the National League.

The fan, presumably, would begin by chastising you for having wasted the gift of time travel on something so frivolous. Then, after gathering him- or herself, would likely respond with something like, “That Bryce Harper sure can rake, can’t he?” With the trap successfully set, you would then drop this bomb on them: “… and Bryce Harper posted a 77 wRC+ over those 30 days!”

Good job, time traveler. You successfully terrified an innocent person about the future without mentioning the name Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. But we seasoned veterans of the 2016 season are able to accept those facts as true. Over the past 30 days, Bryce Harper (.289 wOBA) and Ben Revere (.287 wOBA) have been equivalently awful for the Nationals and, yet, the team is on an offensive tear. As you might expect, it’s been necessary for a lot of different players to perform well in order to make up for Harper’s lack of production – Wilson Ramos and Daniel Murphy have hit well all season while Danny Espinosa and Jayson Werth have recently turned their early season struggles around – but the biggest contributor for the Nationals at the plate of late has been Anthony Rendon.

Through May 9th, Rendon had hit a dismal .211/.289/.297, a line which amounted to offensive production nearly 40% below league average. Coming off a disappointing and injury-plagued 2015 season, it was natural to start wondering whether the 2014 season which led to him finishing fifth place in MVP voting was a flash in the pan never to be seen again. But then, Rendon started hitting. He entered play last night with a .324/.411/.546 line since the cherry-picked date of May 9th. This offensive outburst has raised his full-season wRC+ to a perfectly respectable 107.

Although the May 9th dividing line is arbitrary, it does come close to splitting his season in half, with 142 of his plate appearance coming before this magical date and 128 coming after. Let’s keep using this convenient dividing line to help us take a look at a key change in Rendon’s approach — one which may help explain his recent offensive outburst.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a funny thing about this line of work. We have access to information, so much information, an increasing amount of information, and it allows us to break down almost every single aspect of player performance. Want to know how a pitcher’s fastball has moved? Easy. Want to know where a batter hits groundballs against sliders? No problem. Interested in where outfielders are positioned with a lefty spray hitter at the plate? That’s becoming possible. So much is possible. An incredible amount is possible. Yet we still don’t know anything about what’s most important. If a player is locked in, he stands a chance. If he’s preoccupied, because, say, he got in an argument, or he thinks he left the oven on, he’s probably going to struggle, for no visible reason. You’re worse at what you do when you’re distracted, or when you’re frustrated. There aren’t any numbers for that.

Michael Conforto is in a slump. It’s a bad one, too, and Conforto feels it, and it happens to be taking place when the Mets are somewhat desperate for offense. That doesn’t help the stress, and maybe stress is the real problem. In baseball terms, he could be pressing. There’s no way for us to analyze that. What we can say for sure: In April, Conforto was the second-most productive hitter in the game. Granted, he was behind only Aledmys Diaz, so, April is weird. But since then, the wRC+ has dropped to 42. He’s struck out almost a third of the time. He’s chasing. The Mets don’t think it’s anything mechanical, and they’re prepared to let Conforto play out of this. I assume, at some point, he will. That doesn’t help the slump today. Conforto still feels the weight of his responsibility.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam banter about a wide range of topics, including Ray Searage and the struggling Pirates pitching staff; the pitcher home run derby; rehabilitating Ben Cherington; the amazing Matt Shoemaker; Clayton Kershaw; crowd chants, and a bad fun fact.

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve taken a look at the 2016 contact management ability of ERA-qualifying starting pitchers in both leagues, utilizing granular batted-ball data. Now it’s the hitters’ turn. Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a position-by-position look at hitters’ contact quality, using exit speed, launch angle, and BIP type frequencies as our tools. Today, let’s look at each team’s primary first basemen and designated hitters.

Read the rest of this entry »

Everything Xander Bogaerts did well in his breakout season last year, he seems to be doing better this year. More power, more patience, more contact, and better defense — he’s basically equaled last year’s full-season WAR figure already, and there’s three-fifths of a season left to go. He’s leading the league right now!

Of course, WAR isn’t your traditional counting stat: Bogaerts could hypothetically put up negative wins going forward, were he to regress in one way or all of them. But since he gave us such a great preview last year, it’s tempting to believe in all of the improvements he’s made. He’s really the same guy, just a little better.

At the center of his improvement has been how hard he hits the ball, the angles (both vertical and horizontal) of those batted balls, and his defensive range. He didn’t think much had changed about those particilar variables when I asked him, though. Just a few minor tweaks.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Just as a recap, here’s some things at which the Cubs have proven to be among the best this year. They’ve been among the best at getting fans to the stadium. They’ve been the best at not pitching to Bryce Harper. They’ve been the best at drawing walks (perhaps that we’ve ever seen), and they’ve been the best base-running team. Basically, they’ve looked like the perfect baseball team. Maybe this seems like overkill, all the Cubs posts already and another one here right now. Or maybe they’re just deserving of all these posts, on account of how dominant and unique they’ve been thus far. I’d argue the latter, but I know that’s not a unanimous opinion.

Either way, here comes another Cubs post! There’s another record they’re pursuing, but it’s not a particularly sexy record, nor is it one that necessarily indicates skill and skill only. Definitely some skill involved, but it’s the kind of record where you’re not too sure how to feel about it, or what, exactly, it means. Even right now, the Cubs are doing this thing, and I’m not totally sure what to make of it. That’s what this post is for!

Read the rest of this entry »