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The Mets are not the fastest team in baseball. Wait, let’s be more specific. With an average sprint speed of 26.9 feet per second, the Mets are the second-slowest team in baseball. When their baserunning makes the news, it’s rarely for a good reason. Maybe they’re costing themselves hits and extra bases by failing to hustle out of the box, or maybe they’re running the bases in the wrong direction altogether. Either way, you could be forgiven for thinking that baserunning is costing the Mets runs after seeing something like this:

In fact, the Mets have been the 10th-best baserunning team in baseball according to our baserunning metrics, seventh best according to Statcast, and 11th best according to Baseball Prospectus. What makes this contrast even more fun is that in addition to being slow, they haven’t been amazing at taking the extra base either. BP ranks them 15th on that front, while Statcast has them all the way down at 26th. They go for the extra base as often as you expect them to, but they succeed at a below-average rate. For all the sabermetric angst about how being a valuable baserunner is more than simply piling up stolen bases, the Mets are, in fact, accruing all their baserunning value by stealing bases. But they’re still not stealing all that many bases.

The Mets’ 72 stolen base attempts are tied for the 17th most in baseball, and their 62 steals put them in a three-way tie for 11th. I’m sure you see where I’m going here. All this value is coming from efficiency; the Mets are converting 86.1% of their stolen base attempts — the highest rate in baseball this season, and the eighth highest ever recorded. That’s right: The second-slowest team in the league is running the eighth-highest stole base rate of all time.

I don’t mean to be too dramatic here. I know the Mets are on an all-time top-10 list, but that’s to be expected. The league recently introduced rules that made basestealing much easier. They’re only one spot above the Cubs, who have been way more prolific on the bases, and fully half the teams in the top 10 are from the past three seasons. Still, I want to note a couple things about this list. The Cubs are the sixth-fastest team in baseball this year. Pete Crow-Armstrong, a top-15 player in terms of average sprint speed, has stolen more than a quarter of their bases. It’s not shocking that they’re up there. Further, the Mets appear on this list twice. In 2023, they were safe 88.7% of the time, the second-highest mark ever. The 2024 Mets rank 27th. Over the past three seasons, the Mets lead baseball with an 85.9% success rate, 2.5 points above the Phillies in second place. There really is something going on in Queens, and clearly, it’s not particularly dependent on speed.

Just to be sure about that last part, I ran some numbers. Like all teams, the Mets have their faster baserunners doing more stealing than their slower baserunners. I considered the possibility that they’re just only letting their faster players try to steal, but that’s not it. If you prorate team speed by the stolen base attempts of each player, their sprint speed moves up to 27.7 feet per second, which moves them from 29th all the way up to 25th. The Mets are just great at stealing bases.

I would really love to believe all of this is related to the team’s baserunning mantra, “Let’s Boogie,” coined by first base coach and run game coordinator Antoan Richardson. The Mets have been singing his praises over the past two seasons, but that is not particularly surprising. Light coaching hagiography is a staple of spring training coverage. Still, in this case, I am at least slightly inclined to believe the hype. “He’s one of the best I’ve ever been around,” said Juan Soto in April. “He’s really good at that – checking on pitchers, what they do and how we can jump at it, when we can be more relaxed. I’ve trusted him twice and got it twice. So I feel like he knows what he’s talking about.” Soto is on pace for a career-high of 18 steals despite being the third-slowest outfielder in baseball (minimum 10 competitive runs).

It’s not just that Soto has increased his stolen base total so dramatically. It’s what I saw when I watched all of his steals this season. I recommend you keep the sound on, but even if you don’t, it is very easy to see what’s happening here.

The common thread is Soto got enormous jumps. The catcher didn’t bother to throw the ball in half of these clips. The only time it seemed like there might actually be a play was when he ran on the Blue Jays battery of Yariel Rodríguez and Alejandro Kirk. Rodríguez grades out as above average at controlling the running game, and Kirk is one of the best catchers in the game at that particular skill. Soto is slow enough that he needed every bit of his big jump. There’s no universe in which he runs here unless he is certain he has something on Rodríguez.

The same thing goes for Francisco Lindor, who is currently on pace for 26 steals even though his sprint speed ranks slightly below the league average for the first time in his career.

Just like Soto, Lindor is getting enormous jumps. He has the pitcher’s timing down cold. Sometimes he takes off before the broadcast even cuts to the pitcher! The Mets are stealing bases in all the right spots, and you can see it in the numbers. Baseball Savant keeps detailed measurements of both primary and secondary leads, and most of the time, the Mets are among the most conservative teams in baseball. At just 11.2 feet, their primary leads rank 28th. Their secondary leads rank 17th, but when you combine them with the extremely short primary leads, by the time the pitcher has released the ball, they’ve traveled an average of 14.8 feet, the fourth-lowest mark in the game. But those are just the overall numbers.

Things are completely different when the Mets are stealing. They’re very nearly the most brazen team in the league. Both their primary and secondary leads rank second in baseball. They end up 25.9 feet off the bag by the time the pitcher releases the ball, trailing the first-place Padres by just under two inches. No team has a bigger gap between their average lead and their we’re-about-to-steal lead than the Mets. In fact, the difference is 11.1 inches, and no team is within even a foot of that mark.

Because the Mets aren’t getting picked off or caught stealing, we can see they’re making great decisions about when to steal. And because they’re getting huger leads and even huger jumps, we can see they’re extraordinarily confident in those decisions. To be clear, not every player on the team is getting monster jumps. Luisangel Acuña has elite speed, and he’s relied on it to go 11-for-12 in stolen base attempts even without enormous jumps. Still, the Mets really do seem to know when to go, and that comes down to coaching and preparation. Before you boogie, you’ve got to study.

You’re probably familiar with the saying, “Happiness equals reality minus expectations.” Maybe because your Aunt Debbie shared a post from her favorite social media influencer. Maybe because you passed the time during a layover at the airport perusing the self-help books in the Hudson News near your gate. Like most self-help tropes, whether or not it hits for you depends a little on your life circumstances and a little on how you choose to apply it. When it comes to sports fandom, emotional hedging can be a useful tool to avoid disappointment, or maybe you prefer projecting confidence to manifest a desired outcome. And if you’re a Phillies fan, you’ve perfected the art of oscillating wildly between the two over the course of a single game. You even have a handy meme with a meter that only ever points to one extreme or the other:

(Please excuse the mismatched needle sizes and logo alignment. These images are precious internet relics that have been downloaded, clumsily edited, re-uploaded, compressed, and decompressed hundreds, if not thousands, of times. The pixelation is earned like callouses on the hands of a skilled laborer.)

But the formula seems to assume that expectations are set and controlled by the person in search of a happy existence. The entire notion is upended when mathematical models based on historical outcomes become the source for baseline expectations. In this scenario, if your team is outperforming expectations, then you can enjoy the banked wins, but you do so in fear of the rainier days that surely lie somewhere in the team’s future forecast. Whereas if your team is underperforming expectations, things might feel dire, but there’s reason to believe sunnier days lie ahead. Read the rest of this entry »

11:59

Dan Szymborski: It’s chat time!

12:02

Dan Szymborski: This is something the Astros are really good at, though. And really, most of the rotation is just averageish, which is sustainable. Brown and Valdez being good really carries the group and there’s no reason to be suspicious

12:04

Dan Szymborski: I’d expect Buxton, if actually tradeable, would fetch a good price. Correa’s been kind of meh, so I don’t think the Twins would get a nice return if they’re not eating money

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Like most people with an MLB.tv account and no serious responsibilities, I spent a large portion of Wednesday afternoon watching the Pirates-Brewers game. This midweek businesspersons’ special featured one of the most hotly anticipated starting pitching matchups of the season so far: Paul Skenes vs. Jacob Misiorowski.

Skenes, as you know, possesses such electrifying talent it became possible for a Pittsburgh Pirate to become one of the most famous ballplayers in the league. Misiorowski is just three starts into his big league career, but already his prodigious fastball velocity has made him a hipster favorite in baseball circles. Skenesian mainstream celebrity is sure to follow. Read the rest of this entry »

The path Shane Baz took to Tampa Bay’s starting rotation was anything but uneventful. He was drafted 12th overall in 2017 by the Pirates out of Concordia Lutheran High School in Tomball, Texas, where Ke’Bryan Hayes, Glenn Otto, and Adam Oller also played. The following summer, he was dealt to the Rays in a trade Pirates fans are loathe to remember. The Bucs acquired Chris Archer, while the Rays received Baz, Tyler Glasnow, and Austin Meadows.

Baz went on to make his major league debut in September 2021, and six months later he topped our 2022 Tampa Bay Top Prospects list. Then his elbow began barking. The right-hander subsequently underwent Tommy John surgery, and didn’t toe the rubber for the Rays between July 2022 and July of last year. He’s been solid since returning from his two-year recovery. Over 162 innings — including 82 2/3 this season — Baz has an 11-6 record to go with a 3.94 ERA.

What did Baz’s scouting report look like when he ranked third on our 2018 Pittsburgh Pirates Top Prospects list, which was published the previous December? Moreover, what does he think about it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what Eric Longenhagen wrote and asked Baz to respond to it.

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“Baz had among the most electric stuff in the 2017 draft. He was up to 98 in the spring, sitting in the mid-90s for most of his starts while also producing the best fastball spin rates in the draft class.”

“That was the big thing at the time,” replied Baz, who has made 15 starts and won seven of 10 decisions — albeit with a 4.79 ERA and 4.83 FIP — in the current campaign. “Everybody was talking about spin rate. I didn’t really know much about it, so I definitely wasn’t worried about it. I was mostly worried about trying to get the ball over the plate. But I do feel like I had good stuff when I got drafted. I was up to 97-98 [mph] and trying to live around 94-96. It was mostly about honing it in.”

“Baz can also spin a power breaking ball and throw a nasty cutter.”

“Yeah, I had a cutter at the time,” the righty recalled. “That’s a pitch I’ve kind of put in the back pocket, but it was a go-to back then, more so than my curveball was. My cutter kind of turned into a bigger slider, and now I’m throwing the curveball more.

“That happened more post-surgery,” Baz added. “I started throwing my curveball so hard that the two pitches were kind of running together. You want the one with more movement, so I stuck with the curveball.”

“Some scouts noted his heater was more hittable than they anticipated given its velocity.”

“At the time, probably,” the righty responded. “I mean, I don’t really remember how I pitched my first year of pro ball. It was awhile ago, so I don’t really know.”

“Baz is a tightly wound, but athletic, 6-foot-3 with a good build and room for more weight as he ages.”

“Yeah, I would say that trying to put on weight was a big thing at the time,” Baz said. “That and get stronger. I feel I’ve done a good job of that. I was probably 180 pounds when I came out of high school, and now I’m around 205 or 210. Another thing I was trying to do was working on making my delivery simple.”

“His head-whacking delivery toes the line between explosive and erratic, and he sometimes struggles to throw strikes.”

“That’s not too far off,” the Houston-born hurler said. “It’s gotten a lot better. Obviously, the more consistent you can make your delivery, the more you’re going to command the ball. So yeah, I would say that was accurate at the time. I did have [a head whack]. Back then, I just wanted to throw as hard as I could. I didn’t care about things like longevity, consistency, or the delivery.”

“That will need to improve for Baz to avoid an eventual move to the bullpen… Even if that’s where Baz ends up, his stuff is such that he’s a likely late-inning arm.”

“I think any way I could have gotten to the big leagues, I would have done it,” Baz said. “I was a catcher as a sophomore. I mean, growing up I was always told to try to help the team win in any way I can. That’s how I’ve always looked at it.”

“Baz also played the infield in high school.”

“I was told that as a position player I could go somewhere around rounds three to five,” recalled Baz, who bypassed a commitment to Texas Christian University to sign with the Pirates. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was going to go to college as a two-way player. I don’t know where I would have ended up playing. I mostly played infield in high school, but with the arm and the speed, I probably would have ended up in the outfield.

“I took the two-way thing seriously. It was back before [Shohei] Ohtani and [Michael] Lorenzen — guys like that who could do both — but I definitely thought about it. But not a lot of teams wanted both, even to try doing both, so I decided to just stick to pitching. Would I do it now? I think that ship has sailed at this point.”

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Previous “Old Scouting Reports Revisited” interviews can be found through these links: Cody Bellinger, Matthew Boyd, Dylan Cease, Matt Chapman, Erick Fedde, Kyle Freeland, Max Fried, Lucas Giolito, Randal Grichuk, Ian Happ, Jeff Hoffman, Tanner Houck, Matthew Liberatore, Sean Newcomb, Bailey Ober, Matt Olson, Austin Riley, Joe Ryan, Max Scherzer, Marcus Semien.

On Tuesday night, Ranger Suárez aced his toughest test of the season. Taking on a red-hot Astros team (they’ve posted a 135 wRC+ over the last 14 days) that demolishes lefties (they’re first in wRC+ vs. left-handed pitchers), Suárez hardly broke a sweat. He tossed 7.1 scoreless innings, allowing just three hits, before Cooper Hummel parked his 99th pitch of the game into the right field seats.

The start may have ended on a sour note, but Tuesday’s performance was the cherry on top of an unbelievably sweet run for the 29-year-old southpaw. In his last nine starts, Suárez has allowed eight earned runs. That’s good for a 1.17 ERA over nearly a third of an entire season.

But for some reason, I’m never quite ready to believe. Maybe it’s because his primary fastball sits below 91 mph, or the absence of gaudy strikeout rates, or the lack of a single pitch that grades out as even average by Stuff+ or PitchingBot. Mostly, I think it’s because I perceive Suárez as a fundamentally streaky pitcher. He’s certainly on a run at the moment, and he’s gone on these runs before. During his breakout 2021 campaign, he compiled a 1.24 ERA in his final eight starts of the season. And there were the first three months of 2024: a 1.85 ERA over a 99 inning span. Read the rest of this entry »

Fernando Tatis Jr. was fortunate that the pitch that hit him on the right wrist last week didn’t cause a fracture, but elsewhere in the NL West, Corbin Carroll wasn’t so lucky. On Monday, the Diamondbacks learned that their 24-year-old star has suffered a chip fracture in his left wrist, the result of being hit by a pitch on June 18; he hadn’t played since. Carroll is the second Arizona regular to land on the injured list this week due to a pitch-induced fracture that was only discovered belatedly, after catcher Gabriel Moreno, and he’ll miss significant time. As if the Diamondbacks — who lost ace Corbin Burnes and late-inning relievers Justin Martinez and A.J. Puk to Tommy John surgery earlier this month — needed more bad news, they’ve lost infielder Ildemaro Vargas to a fractured metatarsal, and are crossing their fingers in hopes that both Josh Naylor and Eugenio Suárez can avoid the IL after making early exits from Monday’s blowout win.

In the eighth inning of last Wednesday’s game in Toronto, Carroll was hit on the left hand by a 91-mph sinker from the Blue Jays’ Justin Bruihl. While he stayed in the game to run the bases, he departed at the end of the inning:

Initial X-rays were negative, and both Carroll and the Diamondbacks hoped that the timing of the right fielder’s return would depend mainly on pain tolerance. After missing the team’s next four games in Toronto and Colorado — during which he remained available to pinch-run and play defense, though the call never came — Carroll was reexamined when the team arrived in Chicago to play the White Sox on Monday. MRI results and additional testing revealed that he had suffered a chip fracture on the back of his hand.

A chip fracture, sometimes referred to as an avulsion fracture, occurs when a small piece of bone is pulled away from the larger bone, generally by a ligament or tendon. “That’s still a little bit confusing to all of us,” said manager Torey Lovullo of the diagnosis. “He’s going to continue to get some opinions just to find out what that official diagnosis means and what the time frame will be.” Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, I was writing about Reds rookie Chase Burns, the hard-throwing former Tennessee and Wake Forest ace who was about to make his first major league start. Burns throws really hard — always has — so I dialed up the fastball velocity leaderboard to see how he stacked up against starters at the major league level. (Quite well, it turns out.)

Anyway, the Angels have a couple guys who are pretty high on that list. José Soriano’s four-seamer averages 97.7 mph, which is one-tenth of a mile short of what Burns managed in two Triple-A starts, but up here in the real-world majors, that makes him the hardest-throwing qualified starter apart from Paul Skenes. Tarik Skubal? Jacob deGrom? Dylan Cease? Those guys can go take a hike. Read the rest of this entry »

Will Warren’s best pitch is a sweeper. That’s the case for a lot of pitchers in baseball today, of course, but his rendition is almost the platonic ideal of the pitch: low-80s velocity, very little vertical movement in either direction, and a huge, comic-book-exaggerated horizontal hook. The ball briefly looks possessed on its flight home:

No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you: That’s a really sweep-y sweeper. No one in baseball gets more horizontal movement on his sweeper than Warren, in fact. From his slingy, low-three-quarters arm slot, he generates the sweep the pitch is so known for, working it across the plate to righties or darting it in to steal a front-door strike against lefties. It’s Warren’s signature pitch, the secondary offering he uses most frequently, and he has it on a string. He throws it more frequently when behind in the count than ahead, believe it or not, and floods the zone with unerring precision.

The natural pairing for that sweeping slider? Warren’s excellent sinker, which dives and tails arm side, falling four more inches and tailing two more inches than your average 93-mph sinker. That movement confuses opposing hitters to no end. He’s induced called strikes on around a third of the two-strike sinkers he’s thrown all year, the best mark in the majors. You can see why:

That, in a nutshell, is the promise of Will Warren. Major league pitchers are increasingly adopting a sinker/sweeper approach when they face same-handed opposition, and Warren is one of the best there is at sinking and sweeping. That was the promise that made him a Top 100 prospect – two elite pitches, the ability to mix in a four-seamer, changeup, and curveball to keep batters off of those two premium offerings, and enough command to sew it all together. It’s working. Though he’s suffered from poor sequencing luck (65.2% left-on-base rate, one of the lowest in the majors among starters), his 2.88 FIP, 3.37 SIERA, and 3.58 xERA all point to his effectiveness so far.
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