Josh Bell has only been a Diamondback for a little over a week, but in that short time, he’s made his presence felt. Acquired just ahead of the trade deadline in a deal with the Marlins, Bell stepped in for the injured Christian Walker and homered twice in his debut against the Pirates on August 2. On Wednesday he did it again, bashing two homers in the nightcap of a doubleheader against the Guardians in Cleveland. The Diamondbacks swept the pair of games, moving them into a tie for the National League Wild Card lead and into second in the rapidly tightening NL West race.

Indeed, the Padres aren’t the only NL West team that has gained traction in both races lately. With the sweep, the Diamondbacks have now won 18 of their last 23 games, a run that has rocketed them from two games below .500 to 11 games above while nearly tripling their odds of making the playoffs:

That 18-5 record is the majors’ best in that span, 2.5 games better than the Padres (14-6). The Diamondbacks have done it against a mix of good teams (the Braves, Guardians and Royals occupy playoff positions at this writing, and the Pirates have been right around .500) and not-so-good ones (the Blue Jays, Cubs, and Nationals). Not only are the Diamondbacks now tied with the Padres for the Wild Card lead, they’ve trimmed the Dodgers’ division lead to three games — as close as they’ve been since April 24 — which has really goosed their Playoff Odds. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in February, I wrote (and sang) about the electric debut of Edouard Julien, which featured excellent plate discipline and extreme platoon splits. The rookie second baseman ran a 136 wRC+ and put up 2.8 WAR in just 109 games, then hit even better in the postseason. Facing a steady diet of righties, Julien balanced out a precipitously high strikeout rate with an even better walk rate. He also balanced out roughly average raw power by hitting the ball hard consistently. This season, however, his strikeout rate has gone from high to untenable and his contact quality has taken a significant step back. Julien was sent down to Triple-A St. Paul to figure things out in June. Let’s take a look at what’s going on and how he might be able to fix it.

We should start by making it clear that Julien’s season, while disappointing, has not been disastrous by any means. He has a 93 wRC+, including a much improved 98 wRC+ against left-handed pitching (though once again it’s an extremely small sample size). He’s also improved his defense, and as a result, he’s put up 0.8 WAR over his 63 games with Minnesota. Prorated out over a full 162-game season, he’s right around league average at 2.1 WAR. Read the rest of this entry »

12:02

Dan Szymborski: Good afternoon gang!

12:02

Dan Szymborski: Well, not an organized gang

12:05

Dan Szymborski: He’s a decent contact hitter, but his pitch selection has always been rather dysfunctional; he’s not a Javy Baez-esque flailer, but he hits a lot of rather mediocre pitches and lets a lot of good ones go by

12:05

Dan Szymborski: Add in taht he has power upside and the swings in fortune can be pretty intense

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a little insight into my writing process. When I turn on my computer in the morning, my mind completely devoid of ideas apart from the knowledge that Meg is going to message me in a couple hours asking if I plan on working today, the first thing I do is look at our leaderboards. Maybe just seeing a name will jog something loose, or maybe I’ll learn about someone doing something exceptionally good or bad.

It’s fun to write about the extremities of baseball, and fun to read about them. It’s why we fight over who gets to write about Aaron Judge, or Paul Skenes, or the White Sox. We aim to please.

But I also have a soft spot in my heart for the unremarkable. My very first week on this job, I wrote an ode to Cal Quantrill, declaring him “the averagest pitcher north of the Rio Grande.” Well I’ve been noodling on averageness. Who’s the anti-Judge or anti-Skenes? The anti-Jose Altuve? Who is the least remarkable player in baseball? Read the rest of this entry »

I’m sorry, assorted old people and grumps of the world. Michael Baumann got you all riled up yesterday by looking into whether clutch exists. It does! It’s inarguably a real thing. It’s also not very predictive, and even maybe not predictive at all. I know! It’s shocking (note: it’s not shocking). After reading that, I had no choice but to look into that other baseball truism: momentum.

There have been plenty of studies about it. The findings are consistently uninteresting. It’s basically this: Momentum probably has some effect, but it’s minimal. You can slice it a ton of different ways and get some version of that conclusion, whether you’re talking about a big win helping the next day or a string of important games begetting more.

I thought I’d add to the literature with a different study. I can’t remember which game in particular, but I was watching some ball last week when a team tied the game in the bottom of the fifth or sixth. One announcer mentioned offhandedly that they were heading in the right direction and had the opposition right where they wanted them. This isn’t rare. If you watch baseball, you’ve heard some version of it for sure. I tuned out before the end of the game, so I can’t tell you whether they were right, but I made a note to look at it later.

That particular definition of momentum – rallying to tie the game in the bottom half of the inning – felt ripe for study. I grabbed game logs from every game played since 2000 to take a crack at finding this effect. I went through the score after every half inning and noted a few things. First, I noted the score differential. Next, I noted the change in differential since the last half inning. Finally, I checked who won the game in the end. That let me find whatever subset I wanted and study the difference between games that were tied when the half-inning began and the ones where the home team tied it up during that half-inning.
Read the rest of this entry »

The other week, I was talking to a friend as she fretted over her lack of productivity. Her struggle wasn’t with laziness or a lack of motivation, but rather a severe case of burnout, following her around the way No-Face follows Chihiro in Spirited Away. In the moment, I could see her desperately reaching for more energy to get through the day, like when the chip bag is nearly empty, so you bring it to your mouth and tilt your head back to suck down whatever salty goodness remains.

But instead of encouraging her to power through, I went a different way.

“Y’know, it’s okay to take a break.”

She laughed and said, “That’s what my therapist keeps telling me.”

If you’ve ever described yourself as a perfectionist or a people pleaser, or tied your self-worth to your measurable output, you know taking breaks can be hard.

Athletes learn from the beginning to idolize hard work. Hard work is the salve for every ailment. Wanna get stronger? Work harder. Wanna play better? Work harder. Wanna go pro? Work harder than everyone else. The hardest workers earn their own dedicated titles and recognition, separate from their actual production. Cal Ripken Jr.’s consecutive games played streak earned him the Ironman title. MLB gives out a Heart and Hustle award to whichever player’s heart tells him to hustle the hardest. And every year, we read stories about players and coaches who are the first to arrive to work each morning and the last to leave at night. Read the rest of this entry »

The A’s have been a bummer of a team to follow for a few years now. They’re moving to Vegas. The fans are protesting, but probably fighting a losing battle. They’re going to play in Sacramento, in withering heat, at a (really nice!) minor league stadium. The owner’s a walking punchline. They lost 112 games last year and then made almost no moves over the winter.

Something’s been brewing in the East Bay, though. Not in terms of a surprise playoff contender – they’re 47-68 on the year, and their playoff odds hit 0.0% on June 10. But nonetheless, this is a much better team than last year’s edition, and it’s mostly happened thanks to internal improvements. This version of the A’s looks downright frisky. Last year, playing them was basically a bye series; this year, they’ve almost matched their win total from ’23 and we’re in early August. How’d they do it? In one word, variance. In many words, well, read on and find out.
Read the rest of this entry »

This probably isn’t a problem for most people, but I’m plagued constantly by the memory of frustrating baseball arguments from days past. I probably get into these arguments more than most people, partially because of my (and I hope it doesn’t sound immodest to say this) vast knowledge of the sport, but mostly because I’ve lived most of my life in New Jersey, which his home to the most stubborn, tendentious people you’d ever have the misfortune of meeting.

One such argument took place probably close to 15 years ago, when I ruined what was supposed to be a relaxing Friday evening down the shore by getting into a shouting match over the issue of Alex Rodriguez vs. Derek Jeter. I preferred A-Rod, who would go on to finish his career with a slugging percentage more than 100 points higher than that of his Yankees teammate. I was arguing against someone whose case rested on Jeter being “more clutch.”

If you’re old enough to remember what “analytics bloggers” like me thought about that argument in the 2010s, you can understand my quickness to anger and probably imagine the colors my face turned. When the dust settled, Jeter — who, it turns out, was actually an exceptional hitter all along — did finish with a better career postseason wRC+ than A-Rod. But it was close: 121 to Jeter, 116 for Rodriguez. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Jesús Sánchez and the (perhaps) surprising longest-homer hitters of the Statcast era, the hot hitting of Victor Robles, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Tyler Fitzgerald, the competitive race for the (nonexistent) utility player of the year award, what lessons should be learned from the 2024 Padres’ clutchness correction, whether the Guardians have a clutchness correction coming too, whether we could have seen this White Sox season coming (and the mood of Miguel Vargas), follow-ups on team rivalry trophies and Mike Trout’s durability, and a question about ways to disrupt a Patreon pattern.

Audio intro: Liz Panella, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Dave Armstrong and Mike Murray, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Sánchez homer
Link to Marlins salaries
Link to HR distance leaderboard
Link to Mazara record HR
Link to signature significance article
Link to study on single batted ball
Link to Statcast park factors
Link to BP piece on Robles
Link to wRC+ since 6/5
Link to wRC+ since 6/20
Link to Kikuchi changes article
Link to Rogers O’s tweet
Link to Castro positions tweet
Link to Rafaela positions tweet
Link to Ben on positional versatility
Link to Russell on switching positions
Link to wRC+ since 5/1
Link to wOBA-xWOBA since 6/20
Link to team wRC+ since 7/1
Link to World Series odds
Link to BaseRuns records
Link to Ben on the 2023 Padres
Link to EW on Padres postmortems
Link to Padres postmortem 1
Link to Padres postmortem 2
Link to FG Clutch stat
Link to Russell on one-run records
Link to Rob on one-run records
Link to Rob on one-run records 2
Link to Neil on the Guardians
Link to Vargas clip
Link to preseason win projections
Link to EW Sox team preview
Link to playoff odds changes
Link to Dan S. on the Sox
Link to Lone Star Series wiki
Link to Silver Boot press release
Link to Crosstown Cup Trophy wiki
Link to Pearson Cup wiki
Link to more on Pearson Cup
Link to Bay Bridge Series wiki
Link to MLBTR on Bean
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The Yankees’ acquisition of $750,000 worth of 2024 international bonus pool space at the trade deadline got my gears turning around the seemingly looming Roki Sasaki posting. There has been considerable reporting (such as this Chelsea Janes Washington Post jawn) to suggest that teams expect, or at least are planning for, Sasaki to be posted this offseason, and my sources tend to agree (though not universally). In this piece, I’m going to talk about how Sasaki looks (spoiler: not his best), how his posting will be different than that of most other Japanese players if he indeed comes over this offseason or next, the way teams have been behaving and preparing for his potential posting, and what shenanigans they might get up to as they continue to do so.

For those unfamiliar…

Sasaki has been the LeBron James of Japanese baseball since his junior year, a known generational high school talent who has gone on to deliver on and perhaps exceed expectations at the highest level of Japanese baseball. Sasaki turns 23 in November and his feats of strength are already legendary. He touched 101 in high school and once threw nearly 500 pitches in an eight-day span, including a 12-inning, 194-pitch complete game during which he also hit the game-winning two-run homer. He was the first pick in the 2019 NPB Draft by the Chiba Lotte Marines, had a sub-2.00 ERA in his 2021 rookie season, and then transcended the sport in 2022 when he threw 17 consecutive perfect innings that April. Read the rest of this entry »