Bobby Miller was pitching in High-A when I first interviewed him for FanGraphs in June 2021. Drafted 29th overall the previous summer by the Los Angeles Dodgers out of the University of Louisville, the right-hander possessed both a high-octane heater and a lofty ceiling. Since making his MLB debut this past May, he’s met those expectations, going 9–3 with a 3.80 ERA and a 3.67 FIP over 17 starts. The 24-year-old is also coming off of his most impressive outing. Facing the powerhouse Atlanta Braves on September 3, he allowed just three hits and one run in a career-high seven innings.

Miller discussed his continuing evolution as a pitcher and his efforts to find consistency with his slider when the Dodgers visited Fenway Park in late August.

———

David Laurila: We talked two years ago when you were pitching for the Great Lakes Loons. What has changed and what has stayed the same since that time?

Bobby Miller: “A lot of stuff is the same. At the end of the day, it’s still the same game. But the competition is obviously a lot higher. The hitters are lot more disciplined and experienced. Most of them have seen the game’s best arms, so when you’re out there, you’ve got to know that they’ve faced guys just as good or better than you are.

“Game-planning comes in a lot more at this level. I feel like game-planning is super important to learn in the minor leagues, studying hitters and all that, and I wish I’d have learned more before I came up here. While I had somewhat of an idea, I still have a lot of room to improve on that. I think that’s the biggest thing for me: how much time I spend looking at the upcoming lineups I’m going to face.”

Laurila: Basically, what hitters’ hot and cold zones are, and what they hit and don’t hit in certain counts.

Miller: “Yeah. What to avoid in certain counts. When they’re aggressive and when they’re not aggressive. How aggressive they are with runners in scoring position. At some point, I could get better at learning the baserunners, too. But at the end of the day, the most important thing is getting the batter out of the box. It’s about getting outs for your team.” Read the rest of this entry »

When the Phillies signed Trea Turner to an 11-year, $300 million contract over the winter, the second-largest contract in franchise history, they were probably prepared for Year 11 to be a bit underwhelming, not so much Year One. Turner got off to an excellent start in Philadelphia, beginning the season with 12 hits in the first seven games with two triples. Once his seven-game hitting streak was snapped, the next four months turned into an unbelievable slog: .225/.282/.354 with 10 homers. On the morning of August 5, his OPS hit a season-low .656. But over the last month, Turner has been one of the hottest hitters in baseball.

During the hottest months of the summer, one of the most common questions I got was some variant of “is Trea Turner broken?” My usual answer was that he’d probably be fine, even if expectations had to be lowered a bit, but it felt a little less convincing. The zStats I ran for hitters in early August as part of the “full-fat” ZiPS saw Turner as having a better season than was reflected in his overall numbers, with a .728 zOPS compared to that .656 mark. That wasn’t enough to make the leaderboard, headed by Spencer Torkelson (with a .975 OPS since then), but it was still a significant gap. And I doubt the Phillies or the fans would have felt much relief even with the .264/.309/.419 line that zStats gave him.

Back then, I re-ran Turner’s long-term projections to see what kind of bounceback ZiPS was expecting. While the computer saw a pretty good recovery in 2024, it was well off his preseason numbers. There was also a lot more risk in the mix, significantly pushing his numbers in future years down. Read the rest of this entry »

We haven’t seen much of Royce Lewis at the major league level yet, thanks in large part to a twice-torn anterior cruciate ligament. But what we have seen of the first pick of the 2017 draft has been impressive and, lately, otherworldly. On Monday against the Guardians, the Twins’ third baseman clubbed his third grand slam in an eight-game span, part of a longer hot streak that includes seven homers in his past 14 games.

Lewis’ latest slam came at the expense of Lucas Giolito, who was making his debut for the Guardians after being claimed off waivers from the Angels on September 1. Already down 2–0 in the second inning, Giolito was one strike away from a 1-2-3 inning when he lost the plot, issuing three walks, throwing a wild pitch, and allowing a single. That left the bases loaded for Lewis, who had already singled in the first inning. Giolito fell behind 2–0, then left Lewis a 92-mph belt-high fastball on the inner third of the plate. He hit a towering shot to left field; its 107.6-mph exit velocity was garden variety, but that 41-degree launch angle was majestic:

The slam broke the game open. Lewis would later add a two-run single off David Fry — the Guardians’ utilityman threw four innings of thankless relief — in what turned out to be a 20–6 romp. Those six RBIs gave Lewis 10 in a two-game span, as he went 3-for-5 with a three-run homer (off Jon Gray) and four runs driven in in the Twins’ 6–5 loss to the Rangers on Sunday. Only one player, the Orioles’ Ryan Mountcastle, has collected more RBIs in a two-game span this season (11 on April 10–11).

Lewis’ previous grand slams came at the expense of the Rangers’ Chris Stratton on August 27 and the Guardians’ Xzavion Curry on August 28:

The trio of salamis ties Lewis for this year’s lead alongside the Dodgers’ Max Muncy, the Astros’ Alex Bregman, and the Rangers’ Adolis García. Via the Elias Bureau and MLB.com’s Sarah Langs, he’s the first rookie with three grand slams in a span of eight games or fewer, and just the fourth player to bunch three such hits so closely, joining the Yankees’ Lou Gehrig (five games in 1931), the Tigers’ Jim Northrup (four games in 1968), and the Rangers’ Larry Parrish (eight games in 1982).

Including homers on August 23 (off the Brewers’ Corbin Burnes), August 24 (also off Stratton), and August 29 (off the Guardians’ Hunter Gaddis), Lewis is hitting .321/.400/.736 with seven homers and 22 RBI in 60 plate appearances over his last 14 games, all against the Brewers, Guardians, and Rangers. It’s a remarkable surge even from a player who has wielded a potent bat when available… but has unfortunately been rather scarce in recent years.

Recall that after reaching Double-A in 2019 and spending the following season at the Twins’ alternate training site, Lewis first tore his right ACL in February ’21 and missed the entire season. He was ready to go for the start of 2022 and bounced up and down between Triple-A St. Paul and the majors for the season’s first two months, making his major league debut on May 6 but playing just 11 games before returning to Triple-A. After another 10 games down on the farm, he returned to the majors on May 29, but three innings into what was his first major league appearance in center field, he re-tore his ACL — partially this time, not fully as in the first time — making a leaping catch at the wall and missed the rest of the season. For his time with the Twins, he hit a tantalizing .300/.317/.550 in 41 PA.

Lewis made his 2023 debut with Double-A Wichita on May 11 and, after two games, returned to St. Paul. After homering four times in eight games, he was back in Minnesota. Exactly one year after his last ACL tear, and one week before his 24th birthday, he homered off the Astros’ J.P. France in his second plate appearance, then added a game-tying single in the ninth. He played regularly at third base throughout June but strained an oblique on July 1, which sidelined him until August 15. He was hitting well before the injury, and he’s hit even better since coming back:

As you can see from those improved strikeout and walk rates, Lewis has taken a more disciplined approach since returning. He’s lowered his chase rate from 38.6% to 32.2% and his swing rate from 50.8% to 46.2%; meanwhile, his swinging-strike rate has dropped from 13.3% to 9.7%. He’s done a much better job upon reaching two strikes than before, improving from .220/.264/.280 (51 wRC+) with a 52.8% strikeout rate to .231/.333/.333 (91 wRC+) with a 33.3% strikeout rate. In late June, he spoke of adjusting his two-strike approach to a more aggressive, contact-oriented one. Via The Athletic’s Dan Hayes:

“It’s who I am,” Lewis said. “It’s just me being able to put the bat on the ball and make contact and make people do things. You’ve just got to play the game and when you strike out, no one is doing anything except for the pitcher. Honestly, I get frustrated after a while and I just go back to being like — what I said to (hitting coach David Popkins) is, ‘I’m going to turn into (Luis) Arraez today, just touch the ball. There’s a lot of grass out there.’”

…“It’s a mindset,” Lewis said. “Not waiting for a pitch you can drive because these guys are going to execute. If they dot one up on the outer third, that’s 0-1. Then they do it again, 0-2. ‘OK, great, now you’re 0-2.’ Now you’re battling and you’re looking for a pitch to drive at the same time, that doesn’t work. I looked at where some of our plans were going and how the pitchers were pitching us and they weren’t attacking us with our plan of getting a mistake. I was like, ‘Why don’t I just start being aggressive, putting the ball in play? I know I can at least touch it and go to right field.’”

Since returning, Lewis is hitting the ball in the air far more often, and harder in general:

Note that Lewis is also pulling the ball more frequently and, as that last column illustrates, has more than doubled the frequency with which he hits fly balls in the air. Five of his 11 homers have come via pulled flies, one before the injury and four since returning.

For all of that, it’s worth noting that Lewis is riding a .368 BABIP, which is higher than any batting title qualifier save for Freddie Freeman (.375). That said, 15 other players with between 150–425 PA (around enough to qualify) have higher marks, including three of Lewis’ teammates and another former number one pick whom I checked in on about six weeks ago:

When I wrote about Moniak, who’s in the midst of a breakout year with the Angels (despite a 2.8% walk rate and 34.8% strikeout rate), he had a .427 BABIP through 165 PA. Since then, through his next 151 PA, he’s produced a .365 BABIP — still incredibly high, just a bit behind Lewis, yet 72 points lower than that first stretch. That said, Julien, Solano, and Jeffers all have higher BABIPs than Lewis in at least 96 more PA, with Solano having more than twice as many PA.

It’s rare but not unheard of for so many teammates to sustain such numbers. Four other expansion-era teams have had four players with at least a .360 BABIP in 150 PA; in fact, the Twins entry in that group sustained those BABIPs through at least 350 PA for all four:

Moving beyond BABIP, Lewis is actually further ahead of his Statcast expected numbers than just about any player at the 150 PA cutoff:

Lewis has the highest wOBA-xwOBA differential by a seven-point margin, the third-largest differential in batting average, and the fourth-largest in slugging percentage. Note that the top six players in that table are all short of qualifying for the batting title; those gaps tend to shrink as the sample sizes increase.

While it’s tempting to chalk up some of the differentials to Lewis’ 76th-percentile speed, his eight hits on grounders and line drives that have stayed in the infield don’t move the needle that much, and none of his five doubles are the result of hustling to stretch singles. On the contrary, a 398-footer that he hit off the Rangers’ Andrew Heaney at Target Field on August 24 would have been a home run in 24 of the other 29 ballparks.

Even if his production is a bit beyond the bounds of sustainability, Lewis’ return has helped to shore up the Twins’ third base situation. The team made the Replacement Level Killers list ahead of the trade deadline, with Jose Miranda, Kyle Farmer, Willi Castro, and Solano combining with Lewis’ first stint to hit a meek .247/.317/.353 for a 90 wRC+ and 0.5 WAR. With Lewis making 14 of the team’s last 18 starts at third (plus four more at DH) and Jorge Polanco, Castro, and Farmer seeing time in the period between that article’s publication and Lewis’ return, the group is up to .260/.333/.388 (101 wRC+) with 1.8 WAR. The Twins have widened their AL Central lead from three games to seven since that list ran and from 4.5 games to seven since Lewis’ return. He’s just been part of the parade, as the Twins as a team have hit .275/.362/.489 since August 15, good for a 134 wRC+ (fourth in the majors) and 6.42 runs per game (third).

On a team whose biggest stars, namely Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton, have disappointed, Lewis has helped pick up the slack, and if what he’s done isn’t as sustainable as it is flashy, his in-season evolution is certainly encouraging. After three mostly lost seasons, the Twins can’t ask for much more than that.

We’ve added a new tool that allows you to see who is projected to win the Cy Young Award.

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Along with current season stats (featuring FIP, WAR, and RA9-WAR), you can also use the top nav bar to toggle over to any of the in-season projection systems we carry to show a player’s projected end-of-season stats.

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In Tuesday’s missive on league-wide bunt tendencies, I ran out of time and space before I could single out some of this season’s standout individual bunters for special attention. As in every collection of ballplayers, there are a few outliers who skew the sample. To continue the metaphor that a bunt is baseball’s mid-range jump shot, these are your LaMarcus Aldridges. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a Statcast-standout throw by Brenton Doyle, a Statcast-standout homer by Ronald Acuña Jr., and how closely Statcast data matches the eye test in various aspects of performance, the surges or resurgences of Cole Ragans, Blake Snell, and Trea Turner, a Julio Rodríguez fun fact, Royce Lewis’s grand slam streak, David Fry’s ironman position-player-pitching appearance, Kodai Senga’s strong season and Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s free agency, the second arrest (and possible second suspension) of Julio Urías (55:43), updates on Jake Diekman and Kolten Wong (1:06:06), a name for Gunnar Henderson’s non-cycle, the end of a Terrance Gore era, a study on the decreasing durability of pitchers, and more, plus (1:27:05) a Future Blast from 2055.

Audio intro: Benny and a Million Shetland Ponies, “Effectively Wild Theme (Pedantic Version)”
Audio outro: Tom Rhoads, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to story on Doyle’s throw
Link to García throw
Link to story on Acuña’s homer
Link to FG post on Ragans
Link to MLB Network video on Ragans
Link to best pitchers since 7/15
Link to Eno on Ragans
Link to best pitchers since 5/25
Link to Joe Sheehan on Snell
Link to highest single-season LOB%
Link to best hitters since 8/5
Link to pitch-type performance since 8/5
Link to BP on Turner’s fan reception
Link to ESPN on Turner’s leave
Link to story on 25-25 Julio
Link to BP on Lewis’s slams
Link to MLB.com on Lewis’s slams
Link to Lewis fun fact 1
Link to Lewis fun fact 2
Link to Lewis fun fact 3
Link to story on Fry’s outing
Link to FG post on the rookie class
Link to rookie pitcher WAR leaders
Link to MLBTR on Urías
Link to story on Wong’s changes
Link to Wong’s Triple-A homer
Link to Wong’s MLB homer
Link to Gore’s EW interview
Link to Rays signing Hamilton
Link to BJOL closing announcement
Link to Bill James pitching study
Link to FG post on Hendricks
Link to Rick Wilber’s website
Link to Future Blast wiki

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2:01	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon folks, and welcome to my first chat of this sweltering (in Brooklyn where it’s 92 degrees) September!

2:03

Jay Jaffe: Hope you all had nice long weekends. Just before the weekend I did this about Tony Gonsolin’s Tommy John surgery, a now-outdated snapshot of the Dodgers’ rotation (ugh) and a look at TJS trends in general https://blogs.fangraphs.com/tony-gonsolin-and-recent-tommy-john-surger… I’m working on something on Royce Lewis for tomorrow.

2:04	Jay Jaffe: Baddoo is a name that seems seems straight out of Phantom Menace, though I’d also believe that Quantrill flew alongside Luke Skywalker in A New Hope and/or Empire Strikes Back.

2:06

Jay Jaffe: I’d say more likely to be applied to postseason play BUT I very, very much doubt that will happen. The move to do so in regular season just makes life simpler for teams (and players), and they tend to like it because it gets them home earlier, but I don’t see anybody hungering to have a playoff game decided that way.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last season’s rookie class introduced us to some instant stars. Julio Rodríguez and Adley Rutschman became the first pair of rookies to reach 5.0 WAR in the same season since Albert Pujols and Ichiro Suzuki in 2001. Teammates Michael Harris II and Spencer Strider were just shy of 5.0 WAR themselves, with the latter’s 4.9 the highest total by a rookie pitcher since Hideo Nomo in 1995. Rodriguez, Rutschman, and Harris were all top-25 position players in baseball by WAR, with Steven Kwan not far behind at 30th, and Strider finished eighth among pitchers despite spending the first two months of the season in the bullpen.

This year, an arguably more impressive barrage of talented youngsters has arrived in clubhouses across the league. Corbin Carroll currently ranks eighth in WAR thanks to a .376 wOBA and the most baserunning value in the league at 11.0 runs above average; he’s running away with the NL Rookie of the Year Award. James Outman is helping the Dodgers out with a productive (if streaky) bat and centerfield defense worthy of his name. Gunnar Henderson shook off a slow start at the plate with a productive summer, clearing 3.0 WAR before the calendar turned to September and positioning himself as an award candidate in the AL. Matt McLain (who is battling an oblique injury at the moment) and the Giants’ Patrick Bailey didn’t even arrive until mid-May, but both have reached the 3.0 WAR mark in under 100 games. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve finally made it to the last month of the regular season, and there are still a handful of exciting, drama-filled postseason races to hold our attention until the playoffs begin in earnest.

A reminder for how these rankings are calculated: first, we take the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), their pitching (a 50/50 blend of FIP- and RA9-, weighted by starter and reliever IP share), and their defense (RAA) — and combine them to create an overall team quality metric. I also add in a factor for “luck,” adjusting a team’s win percentage based on expected win-loss record. The result is a power ranking, which is then presented in tiers below.

Note: All stats are through Sunday’s games.

In a potential NLCS preview, the Braves and the Dodgers played four drama-filled games last weekend, with Atlanta prevailing in three of them. That series win all but guarantees the Braves will head into the postseason with the top seed in the National League and likely the best record in baseball should they advance all the way to the World Series. That might be putting the cart before the horse, but that’s the trajectory they’ve been on all season long, and anything less would likely be seen as a disappointment.

Instead of withering under the considerable amount of attrition they’ve suffered this year, the Rays have continued to put pressure on the Orioles in the race for the AL East crown. They’ve gone 17–9 since losing Shane McClanahan to Tommy John surgery in early August and 12–6 since Wander Franco was placed on administrative leave. They did suffer a bit of a stumble against the Guardians last weekend, though, losing their first series since August 8–10, then came up short against the Red Sox on Labor Day.

The Rangers began a huge series against the Astros on Monday with an ugly 13–6 loss. They did pick up a series win against the Mets early last week but just barely avoided a sweep at the hands of the Twins on Sunday with a walk-off win. Their only saving grace during this poor stretch of play has been the concurrent struggles of the Mariners and Astros. Seattle lost its series against the Mets last weekend, which was barely better than the sweep Houston suffered against the Yankees. These three teams are still separated by a single game atop the AL West.

The Phillies have solidified their place at the top of the NL Wild Card race with an excellent August where they went 17–10. The driver of the train? Bryce Harper, who has finally regained his power stroke after offseason elbow surgery and blasted eight home runs in a two-week span to close out last month. Not to be outdone, Trea Turner is in the midst of a 15-game hit streak, compiling 24 hits and 10 home runs during his torrid stretch. Since receiving a standing ovation on August 4, he has hit .364/.398/.764 (206 wRC+).

The Cubs had a big week with back-to-back series against the Brewers and Reds, the two teams directly ahead of and behind them in the NL Central standings. They wound up going 4–3 with a series win against Milwaukee and a series split against Cincinnati that included two heartbreaking walk-off losses. Justin Steele continues to bolster his stealthy Cy Young candidacy, and Kyle Hendricks has regained his pre-pandemic funk, while Cody Bellinger continues to power the offense.

Entering Monday, the Diamondbacks, Reds, Marlins, and Giants were all tied for the final position in the NL Wild Card race. Miami was idle, and Arizona and Cincinnati won their games yesterday. Unfortunately, San Francisco dropped its fourth straight to fall behind the pace by a game. The Giants are still reeling from all the injuries that have tested their depth, though they did activate Mitch Haniger, Mike Yastrzemski, and Brandon Crawford off the IL. Even with all those reinforcements, their offense is ice cold; they’ve scored just four total runs during this losing streak and have been shut out in back-to-back games.

With the AL East well out of reach and the Wild Card a distant pipe dream, the Yankees called up a couple of their prospects last weekend to get them some valuable experience in the big leagues this month. Jasson Domínguez, their top ranked prospect, homered in his first major league at-bat against Justin Verlander and added a second dinger on Sunday as the Yankees swept the Astros. The wins are too little, too late, but the standout performances from the youngsters give New York a ray of hope during a lost season.

The Reds and Guardians were the big winners in the wacky waiver wire sweepstakes last week. It was a little surprising to see the Guardians claim three pitchers; they’re so far behind the Twins in the AL Central that their playoff odds are in the single digits. To their credit, they made the claims after winning a three-game set against Minnesota, then went out and won their weekend series against the Rays for good measure. Of course, in Lucas Giolito’s debut with Cleveland on Monday, he allowed nine runs — to the Twins no less! — in an ugly 20–6 defeat to start another critical series against the division leader.

Just a month after trading for a handful of guys in the hopes that they could salvage another disappointing season and make the postseason with both Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout on their roster, the Angels wound up waiving five of those six trade deadline acquisitions in an attempt to get under the luxury tax threshold to improve their draft position when Ohtani inevitably leaves in free agency this offseason. It was a bizarre move with a cynical end goal, made all the more hilarious because apparently they wound up just a hair over the threshold anyway. At least Nolan Schanuel looks pretty interesting, as far as a first base prospect can be.

If you’re looking for a team to channel its inner Wario and create the most chaos for teams in the playoff hunt, look no further than the Mets. Twenty-three of their remaining 25 games are against teams looking to secure a playoff spot, with their two-game series against the Nationals this week the only exception. They played their role as spoiler well last weekend, winning two of three against the Mariners.

On the flip side, the Tigers have just nine games with playoff implications remaining on their schedule, and three of those are against the Guardians during the last week of the season. Detroit’s youngsters will still get valuable development time as they play out the string, but most of the team’s games will matter more for draft position than the playoff aspirations of their opponents.

The Rockies also have a chance to play spoiler down the stretch, with 22 of their remaining 25 games against teams with playoff hopes. They lost series to the Braves and Blue Jays last week and started a series with the Diamondbacks with another loss on Monday. Where the Mets actually have the talent to actually play spoiler, the Rockies seem to be a minor nuisance for those playoff-bound teams.

…

In August, the Phillies hit 59 home runs, which is the highest total for a month in franchise history and tied for the third-highest total in any single month by any team in history. It was a remarkable performance, but perhaps not a particularly surprising one given how this roster was constructed; by design, Rob Thomson’s charges are large, strong, and (of late) increasingly shirtless. They were born to mash.

Last week, I had the good fortune to be present at Citizens Bank Park as five of those 59 home runs took flight in a single evening, off the bats of five different Phillies. This was one of those close, muggy summer nights that define the mid-Atlantic summer; with a pleasant, gentle breeze blowing out to left field, the ball was roaring out of the park. It wasn’t just the Phillies; the Angels dingered three times themselves. Two of those came off the bat of Luis Rengifo, hardly a man whose public stomps and chants are included in the Home Run Derby every year.

But as the Phillies laid 12 runs on their opponents, the play that stuck in my mind was the opposite of a home run. In the sixth inning, the Phillies batted around and scored six runs to turn a 4–2 deficit into an 8–4 lead; one of those came on a squeeze bunt by Johan Rojas. It was a lovely push bunt by a speedy right-handed hitter, the baseball equivalent of spreading room temperature compound butter on a slice of crusty bread. “Man, we should see that more often,” I thought to myself. Read the rest of this entry »