“Dr. Neal ElAttrache” is up there on the list of three-word phrases you don’t want to see near a pitcher’s name. Not quite as bad as “Federal grand jury,” “Devoured by wolverines,” or “Drafted by Colorado,” but up there. Tampa Bay Rays ace Shane McClanahanvisited the estimable orthopedic surgeon on Monday to get a tight left forearm checked out, and the results were not to his liking. ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported Tuesday afternoon that McClanahan is “highly unlikely” to return this season, in the words of Rays manager Kevin Cash.
Over Tampa Bay’s most recent run of success, the Rays have set great store by their pitching, and more recently by their rotation, which ranks third in the majors in WAR. But that success has come amidst a sweeps-week Grey’s Anatomy special in the medical department. McClanahan will be the biggest loss yet, as he leads Rays starters in innings and was one of the team’s All-Star representatives last month. The question, as always, is whether Tampa Bay can hang on, and what “hanging on” looks like for a club that’s already headed backwards. Read the rest of this entry »
“There’s something about his swing that looks odd and unnatural, but DeLauter otherwise looks like a middle-of-the-order bat from a tools perspective.”
Eric Longenhagen shared that scouting perspective when describing Chase DeLauter back in January. Ranking him No. 9 on our Cleveland Guardians Top Prospects list as a 45 FV prospect, our lead prospect analyst also opined that the 2022 first rounder was “a fascinating draft case,” in part because he played just 66 games over three seasons at James Madison University. Moreover, the broken foot that prematurely ended his final collegiate season delayed DeLauter’s professional debut until this past June. Initially assigned to the Arizona Complex League, the 21-year-old outfielder has slashed .356/.373/.548 with one home run in 75 plate appearances since being promoted to the High-A Lake County Captains.
DeLauter discussed his swing, and the approach that goes with it, prior to a recent game. Read the rest of this entry »
Things didn’t look so hot for Triston Casas in the first few months of the season. From the beginning of the year through the end of May, he had a 95 wRC+ and a .195/.326/.376 slash line. He wasn’t doing enough damage in the heart of the zone and had a suboptimal launch angle distribution. That’s a fancy way of saying he wasn’t consistently making pitchers’ mistakes hurt because his batted balls were all over the place. His promising future as a masher had a bit of a cloud over it, but after an explosive July, there is good reason to be more confident in him.
Casas’ turnaround has multiple layers to it. Along with a slight mechanical tweak, he has taken on a more aggressive approach while focusing on contact towards the middle of the field. With a solid combination of power and natural lift, he is able to play with the big parts of Fenway Park. He isn’t utilizing the approach we’ve seen many lefty Red Sox hitters adopt over the years of peppering line drives and fly balls off the Green Monster. In fact, he’s 134th out of 143 qualified hitters in Oppo%. Instead, he sticks to where his bat path plays – the middle of the field. Well, that was his approach in July, anyway. Below is a table showing Casas’ horizontal and vertical batted ball profile by month this season:
Triston Casas Directional Rates
Month
wRC+
GB%
Pull%
Straight%
Oppo%
April
60
32.7
30.6
42.9
26.5
May
106
42.9
53.1
30.6
16.3
June
132
41.3
53.4
31.7
15.9
July
218
27.7
34.0
51.1
14.9
August
73
41.7
41.7
41.7
8.3
He had a good June, but in terms of his batted ball profile, it didn’t look like his breakout July. In July, he stayed off the ground at an extreme rate while hitting half of his batted balls up the middle. There are only three qualified hitters in baseball with a groundball rate below 30% for the entire year: Jack Suwinski (26.1%), Nolan Gorman (27.8%), and Mookie Betts (28.0%). This isn’t in the table, but Casas’ July HR/FB ratio was 29.2%, which would put him behind only Shohei Ohtani if he were to sustain it over the full season. To see Casas hit at rates similar to elite guys like Betts and Ohtani is both good and bad. He doesn’t have the raw power or hit tool to live in outlier territory on a consistent basis, but that doesn’t necessarily invalidate his success. Rather, it shows us what Casas needs to do to be a consistent power hitter. If his swing tweak and new approach enable him to more consistently hit the ball in the air, we should have greater confidence in his ability to sustain success, even as his stats become less extreme.
Before looking at the mechanical tweak, I want to focus on where and when the Red Sox first baseman has been more aggressive. The data below details his swing rates on pitches in the upper and lower third of the zone:
Triston Casas’ Increased Aggression
Month
Upper Third
Lower Third
In-Zone 0-0
April
69.4
50.8
44.2
May
63.0
51.6
48.6
June
73.1
67.5
40.0
July
82.1
71.7
62.5
August
40.0
62.5
30.0
When the calendar flipped to June, Casas got significantly more aggressive at the top and bottom of the zone. As July rolled around, he doubled down on that aggression while adding more early count swings. There is an old school mantra that the best pitch you’ll see in an at-bat is the first one. Pitchers want to get ahead and take advantage of the hitter trying to find their timing. Still, if a pitcher lays in a cookie, the hitter should attack it. It’s always a sound approach to hunt the heart of the zone, and if you’re a struggling rookie, it makes even more sense to simplify things. When Casas implemented that strategy in July, it paid off.
He had success in the first two months of the season on 0-0 pitches in the zone, with a .424 and .681 xwOBA, respectively. In June, he ran a .026 xwOBA on these pitches across 18 total swings, though the results on those swings seem like a small sample blip; 11 of them were foul balls and three were whiffs. Something was off there, but the trend didn’t continue into July. Casas flipped the script and bumped up his swing rate by over 20 percentage points while running a .476 xwOBA. If a pitcher attacked him in the zone to start the at-bat, he put on an A swing. Now that he seems to have a better feel for his swing, he’ll have to strike the right balance of patience and aggression depending on how pitchers approach him.
Let’s look at the adjustment that helped things click mechanically. Here are a few swings from May and June before Casas made the change:
And here are a few during his stellar month:
Every hitter has a different feel for how to turn their barrel over and enter the zone. Some are more handsy, like Marcus Semien, while others aren’t handsy at all, like Casas. My use of two different angles from before his tweak is intentional. One shows his hands relative to his body on a straight angle, and the other shows how far he tucked them behind his ear. There was a good bit of movement that was triggered by his hands. But after his tweak, his barrel was almost perpendicular to the ground, with his hands working according to the movement of his entire upper body load rather than on their own. This brings me to the idea of connection. Before explaining what that means, take a look at this video posted by Alex Speier from a few days ago:
This is a drill that hones the feeling of early connection between your upper body and barrel. By holding the bucket between his arms and chest throughout his swing, Casas establishes where his barrel is in space relative to his arms and torso. The result is his hands being along for the ride, rather than being the driver of the swing. In other words, his barrel placement is the result of how his upper body moves in space. While the swing in this video isn’t what it looks like in game, it helps give Casas the feel he needs to have an efficiently sequenced load and plane of rotation. You’ll notice that his hands are hardly moving during this practice swing. That ties directly to what we saw him change in July. His hands aren’t tipping until his shoulders do, and he’s not letting them guide his swing path. The result is improved barrel control stemming from better feel for where his barrel is in space. The data backs that up too. July was the first month Casas had a SweetSpot% above 37% on the season, and he blew that mark away, with 49% of his batted balls hit between eight and 32 degrees.
Usually, we don’t get a look into drill work like we did here. Connection drills are very common but can look confusing to the casual viewer. Luckily for us, a logical story can be told here. There is a direct line between Casas’ batted ball data and swing tweak, and the connection drill swings. I often talk about players finding their blueprint for success. A lot of the time, a particular drill can help a hitter get back in line with that blueprint. Casas now appears to have a better idea of idea of what that looks like for him, and specific cues for how he can stay there.
All this said, it doesn’t necessarily mean Casas has figured out hitting. Like most hitters, he has holes that can be exposed. As he finds success, pitchers will adjust their mix or location. Since August began, Casas has faced a career-high rate of breaking balls. He hadn’t seen more than 34% breakers in any month, but after 73 pitches this month, that rate is up to 50.7%. It’s working too – his whiff rate on that pitch group is 41.7% and he has yet to barrel a breaking ball. It’s a cat and mouse game that he will have to continuously adjust to while trying to find stability.
How Casas progresses versus his opponents’ changing approach will be crucial to our understanding of where his floor and ceiling will ultimately settle. At the very least, though, we’ve seen what the best version of Casas might look like, even if it hasn’t lasted a full season. A 122 wRC+ in your first full season ain’t too shabby.
Monday night, my wife posed a baseball question I couldn’t immediately answer. As the Angels and Giants went to the eighth inning with the Halos up by a run, she had a simple question: How often does a team that’s losing after seven innings come back and win? I guess I could have gone to our wonderful WPA Inquirer, a fun little tool for hypotheticals. That tells me that the Giants had around a 25% chance to win heading into the eighth. But I took her question as a broader one, concerned not just with that specific game, but with all games. How likely is a comeback?
I didn’t know the answer offhand, and I couldn’t find it on Google either (secret professional writer tip: use Google). So I did what anyone in my situation would do: I said “I don’t know, but now I’m going to write an article about this.” Two days later, here we are.
I’m hardly the first person to do research on comebacks. Russell Carleton has been looking into comebacks for a while. Rob Mains has too. Chet Gutwein investigated comeback wins and blown saves here at FanGraphs in 2021. Everyone loves to write about comebacks. Baseball Reference even keeps a list of the biggest comeback wins. They’re memorable games, and fertile ground for investigation. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Tim Anderson–José Ramírez fight and White Sox clubhouse culture, John Angelos benching Orioles broadcaster Kevin Brown, the Angels’ post-deadline slump (and the Mariners’ rise), the return of Gary Sánchez‘s power bat, updates on the MLB injury rate, the pitch clock, and the zombie runner, Charlie Culberson’s re-reunion with Atlanta, the Rays’ latest unlikely starting pitcher, the Yankees’ ambidextrous catching prospect (and the dream of a left-handed catcher), and more, plus (1:21:55) a Future Blast from 2043.
A quick hitter here: today, MLB released the schedule for the 2023 playoffs. It’s not exactly compelling reading; for the most part, teams play a series of games against each other, mostly every day except for travel, just like you expect. But the new 12-team playoff format is still fresh, so let’s run down the relevant structure of the rounds just as a reminder.
Wild Card Round
This one is the same as before and will likely remain this way for as long as this playoff format exists. The worst division winner and the three wild card teams in each league play (up to) three straight games, at the better seed’s stadium, on three straight days, October 3–5. That means that a lot of teams will be burning their best three starters in this round, but there’s nothing new here, so let’s move on.
Divisional Series
Last year, the two leagues had different schedules, despite the same wild card schedule, to avoid days with no baseball whatsoever. That same general structure is preserved this year. The AL starts with two games on October 7 and 8, then a travel day, then games on the 10th and 11th, another travel day, and a potential Game 5 on the 13th. The NL is staggered differently: they start with a game on the 7th followed by a day off, then have a game on the 9th followed by a travel day, two straight games on the 11th and 12th, and finally a travel day before a potential Game 5.
This is a change from last year, as both leagues have more off-days baked into the schedule. In 2022, teams more or less had to use five starters if they went the distance in the wild card round. The 2022 NL schedule had only one off-day total across the round, and while the AL schedule had two off-days, it closed with three games in three days across two cities. With more time thanks to the lack of a lockout-impacted schedule, the rest days have multiplied. An NL team could use its three best starters in the wild card round, a fourth starter in Game 1, and then its three best starters again in Games 2–4. Amazingly, its ace could come back for Game 5 on regular rest; he’d be pitching on October 3, 9, and 14, hardly a strenuous schedule.
That won’t work quite as well in the AL, but it won’t be much worse. An ace could pitch on October 3, 8, and 13, with four days of rest between each start. Relative to last year, this year places less premium on depth and more on top-end starting pitching. Fifth starters, I’m sorry: your services likely won’t be required.
Championship Series
The ALCS schedule is almost exactly what baseball fans are used to: two games, a travel day, three games, another travel day, and then the last two games. The NL schedule is the same, other than the fact that it starts a day later. That double-travel-day setup means teams will never play more than three games in a row, which means a four-man rotation and shortened bullpen should work just fine. This was not the case last year, when both league schedules provided for five straight games with no travel day, again because of the compressed timeline. The takeaway here is the same: rotation depth is less important than it was in the 2022 postseason.
World Series
No change to the standard World Series format, which mirrors this year’s championship series format: two games, a travel day, three games, another travel day, and then the last two games. It’s the same schedule we’re all used to, with all the same implications for rest.
The broad takeaway: the schedule is returning to the rhythm of the playoffs from before last year (weirdo 2020 season excluded, naturally). Players will be more rested, which I’m sure they’re in favor of. Games are still staggered to minimize days without baseball. That’s about it; may the best team win.
After trading away veteran pieces and restocking the farm system at the deadline, the Mets have pivoted and are now focusing on the future. That being the case, it both was and wasn’t a curious time for the team to option Brett Baty, seemingly their third baseman of the future, to Triple-A Syracuse on Monday. Now is the time to let the kids play and figure things out at the big-league level, but Baty has been struggling so mightily that he might need a change of scenery. He’s running a 77 wRC+ on the season, and since the start of July, he’s at a measly 39. He hasn’t recorded a hit since July 23, a stretch of 25 plate appearances. That’s the second-longest active streak in baseball, behind the also recently demoted Corey Julks with 42. Combine that with poor defense, and Baty certainly sounds like someone who could use a little time away from the spotlight to figure things out.
The Mets have said the same. “We think this is what’s best for Brett, which is what’s best for the Mets, for the time being,” Buck Showalter told reporters. “Just because something’s delayed doesn’t mean it’s denied.” He added, “I’d be surprised if he doesn’t take a little time – two or three days – and then all of a sudden kind of get back to who he is and who he’s capable of being.”
What complicates the issue is Baty’s service time. It’s a tricky situation because, to borrow a phrase, the timing is nothing short of predominant. Between this year and last, Baty has accrued 162 days of major league service time, just short of the 172 that constitute a full year. When the Mets started the season with him at Triple-A Syracuse, it seemed like they might be deliberately gaming the system. He was 23rd overall in our prospect rankings and, along with Mark Vientos, had torn up the Grapefruit League. The Mets did call Baty up in mid-April, early enough that he’d have a chance to accrue a full year of service time, but once he arrived in Flushing, they still seemed to be on the fence about him, even though he had raked in Syracuse and continued raking for his first month in the big leagues. He was kept in a loose platoon with Eduardo Escobar, starting against righties and sitting about half the time against lefties — not necessarily how you handle your third baseman of the future. Read the rest of this entry »
Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to the first post-trade deadline edition of my Tuesday chats. I just published a piece on the Padres’ loss of Joe Musgrove and their missed opportunities during their series with the Dodgers https://blogs.fangraphs.com/padres-lose-musgrove-and-let-slip-a-golden…
Phil: Can you explain this Orioles broadcaster controversy? Don’t they have a PR person to tell them they’re going to be hammered over this? And an HR person to observe that Brown was just literally doing his job? They used to be bad and now they’re good–it’s not like that’s some sort of company secret. I’m not just grumbling (though I am)–I really don’t understand what they expected to happen.
2:05
Jay Jaffe: The Orioles have an idiot man-baby for an owner. Brown was reading a stat from the notes that the team prepared for that day’s broadcast – they didn’t need vetting from a PR person because no sane person would have thought such a tidbit about the team’s improvement would have inflamed even the most idiotic man-baby.
For a team with a losing record, the Padres were aggressive in advance of the August 1 trade deadline, swinging three trades in order to patch holes on the major league roster without fretting about the impact of further increasing their payroll. Yet their first week since upgrading their roster hasn’t gone well. Not only did they lose Joe Musgrove to the injured list on Friday, but they also followed that by losing three of four to the Dodgers this weekend at Petco Park, missing a golden opportunity to get to .500 for the first time in nearly two months and gain ground on the NL West leaders.
The 30-year-old Musgrove was scratched from his start last Wednesday in Colorado due to what was initially termed “minor” shoulder soreness. The thinking at the time was that he would just miss one turn and be able to start against the Mariners in a two-game series starting on Tuesday. But when Musgrove flew home to San Diego to be examined, an MRI revealed that he had inflammation in his right shoulder capsule. Surgery is not yet a consideration, but he’ll be shut down from throwing for at least three weeks, meaning that at best he’ll return sometime in September. The Padres won’t have much clarity until he is examined after his rest period, and then he’ll need at least a couple of weeks to rebuild his pitch count.
The injury caught Musgrove by surprise. “I honestly thought we were going in for a pretty routine checkup… but they went in and found some injury to the capsule,” he told reporters. “Every part of me wants to go out there and throw. But everything’s telling us that we needed to step back and give it some rest.”
The injury caught the Padres by surprise as well. Said general manager A.J. Preller, “At the time of the deadline, we honestly were not looking at Joe as missing a few weeks or extended time or anything like that.” Preller did reinforce the pitching staff by acquiring starter Rich Hill from the Pirates in one deadline-day trade and reliever Scott Barlow from the Royals in another, but they don’t add up to a healthy Musgrove. Read the rest of this entry »
Everyone likes an inspiring story. They don’t call it a Hollywood ending for nothing; people love it when the hero wins before the credits roll. Over innear near-ish the center of American film-making, it looked like the Angels were setting up for another iteration of that classic arc. They were down and out, deciding whether they could stomach trading the best player in the game before losing him forever. The previous best player in the game was out with injury, and the ship was taking on water. Then, a classic mid-story twist: they ripped off an 8-1 run in the latter half of July and decided to go for it one last time.
Yeah, about that. Since trading for Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo López to lean fully into this year, they’ve gone 2-9, slipping back below .500. After their playoff odds reached 22.7% on July 27, the Halos have crashed down to 1.3% in short order. That’s a seasonal low for their chances of making the postseason. Things are decidedly non-magical in the land of Disney these days.
What’s gone wrong for the Angels? Well, one thing’s for sure: it’s not Shohei Ohtani. He’s started at DH for all 11 games of the stretch and has hit a ludicrous .405/.542/.649, even better than his seasonal line. He left his lone start in that span early with hand cramps, but pitched four scoreless innings before departing. To the extent that one player can power a team, Ohtani is doing his best. Read the rest of this entry »
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Jay Jaffe
