Read the rest of this entry »

Shohei Ohtani and Ronald Acuña Jr. have been the MVP frontrunners for quite some time. They lead the majors in WAR, and to make things nice and easy, there’s no need to specify which kind; they’re the top dogs here at FanGraphs, as well as Baseball Reference and Baseball Prospectus. MLB.com has conducted three MVP polls throughout the season, asking over 40 writers and analysts to fill out a ballot. Ohtani and Acuña won all three, and in the latest iteration, released on July 13, they were unanimous choices. The NL Rookie of the Year is just as cut and dry, with Corbin Carroll the hands-down favorite. Meanwhile, Gunnar Henderson is pulling ahead in the AL, and Josh Jung’s fractured thumb likely takes him out of the race.

Thankfully, at least one of the major awards will provide a compelling race down the stretch. There is no clear-cut frontrunner for Cy Young in the AL or the NL, and if the season ended today, five or six pitchers could earn first-place votes in either league. Read the rest of this entry »

As we head into the dog days of August, the playoff picture in the National League continues to be pretty murky. Meanwhile, in the American League, the best teams continue to separate themselves from the chaff.

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.

After going all-in on this season last weekend with their acquisitions of Max Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery, the Rangers swept through last week with six straight wins. That’s given them a little bit of breathing room in the AL West. Unfortunately, their All-Star third baseman Josh Jung fractured his thumb on Sunday, potentially ending his season early. He’ll join Jonah Heim on the IL; suddenly, the best offense in the AL has suddenly sprung a few leaks. Read the rest of this entry »

Cole Hamels retired from baseball on Friday, causing significant consternation to people who read that headline and thought they’d been transported back in time to the winter of 2019. (Buy a house now, while you still can, and be sure to stock up on hand sanitizer.)

It’s been four years since Hamels pitched effectively in the major leagues; before the 2020 season, he signed a one-year deal with the Atlanta Braves, and was limited to just 3 1/3 innings by injuries to his triceps and shoulder. Two further comeback attempts, with the Dodgers and his hometown Padres, came to nothing. Hamels never quite recovered from a 2021 surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff, and was still unable to throw without pain when he decided, at age 39, that he’d finally had enough.

Hamels, the 2008 NLCS and World Series MVP, will probably appear on just one Hall of Fame ballot. But few players’ reputations suffered more by comparison to their immediate surroundings than Hamels’ did; he was one or two breaks from giving a speech in Cooperstown someday, even if nobody realized it at the time. Read the rest of this entry »

Jackson Jobe has added a cutter to the power arsenal that helps make him one of the top pitching prospects in the Detroit Tigers system. Every bit as importantly, he’s returned to full health following a back ailment that landed him on the shelf from early April to mid June. The recently-turned 21-year-old right-hander had incurred an L5 (i.e. bottom left vertebra) stress fracture, an injury he attributed to “rotating fast and throwing hard at a young age when I wasn’t really strong enough to support that.”

The pitch now augmenting his fastball/slider/changeup combination was portended in a conversation I had with him last August. As his second full professional season was concluding, Jobe told me that he wanted to develop something new, “probably a cutter,” and he went on to do just that.

“I added it in the offseason, and on paper it’s a really good pitch,” the third-overall pick in the 2021 draft explained prior to his last start, which came on Friday with the High-A West Michigan Whitecaps. “I dive into all the TrackMan stuff — the vertical movement, horizontal movement, the spin efficiency, the tilt — and use the data in pitch-design. The cutter has performed pretty well.”

Asking the analytically-minded hurler about the metrics on his cutter elicited a response that was preceded by a pregnant pause. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Robin Ventura truthers defending Ventura on the 30th anniversary of his brawl with Nolan Ryan, Shohei Ohtani‘s 2023 WAR matching his full-season 2021 WAR and whether this Ohtani season would’ve won him an MVP award in 2022, the Yankees’ handling of Anthony Rizzo’s belatedly diagnosed post-concussion syndrome, whether this year’s shift restrictions are leading to more pitchers being hit by baseballs, and what winning or losing the trade deadline is actually worth, then (52:44) Stat Blast about players with the highest and lowest percentages of pulled homers (and the longest streaks of pulled homers), players who bat righty and throw lefty, the most matching pitch counts and speeds in one game, a record date for MLB birthdays, and the players traded the most times at the trade deadline, followed by (1:11:54) a conversation with former major leaguer J.A. Happ (and FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen) about what it’s like to be dealt at the deadline, Happ’s extensive trade history, the retirement of Cole Hamels, and more, plus (1:51:26) a Future Blast from 2042.

Audio intro: Andy Ellison, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Xavier LeBlanc, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Ventura/Ryan video
Link to Ventura/Ryan story
Link to Drellich’s Ventura tweet
Link to Langs on Ohtani’s game
Link to FG WAR leaderboard
Link to B-Ref WAR leaderboard
Link to Fletcher’s EW interview
Link to Ben on Ohtani and Judge
Link to The Athletic on Rizzo
Link to Rosenthal on Rizzo
Link to Lindsey on Germán
Link to Jay on Rizzo and Germán
Link to Rizzo fatigue quote
Link to other Rizzo quote
Link to MLB.com story on Rizzo
Link to SIS comebackers tweet
Link to Pudge cheek story 1
Link to Pudge cheek story 2
Link to Down on the Farm post
Link to Dan S. on the 2023 deadline
Link to Dan S. on the 2022 deadline
Link to Dan S. on the 2021 deadline
Link to career pulled HR rates
Link to pulled HR streaks
Link to Russell Carleton’s Twitter
Link to weird-ass starter record
Link to weird-ass starter record (no P)
Link to weird-ass player record
Link to weird-ass player record (no P)
Link to all AL/NL weird-ass hitters
Link to pitch speed/count sheet
Link to Lucas Apostoleris’s Twitter
Link to MLB birthdays bar chart
Link to MLB birthdays heat map
Link to MLB relative age effect
Link to relative age effect wiki
Link to listener emails database
Link to trades on deadline day
Link to trades within 3 days
Link to trades within 1 week
Link to trades within 2 weeks
Link to Ryan Nelson’s Twitter
Link to Happ’s wiki
Link to “J Day” story
Link to Happ’s transactions
Link to Hamels retirement info
Link to IronPigs wiki
Link to Rick Wilber’s website
Link to Future Blast wiki

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It’s been a rough week for the Yankees, full of bad luck and questionable decisions that highlighted a season that had already begun to spin out of control. With the team above .500 but stuck in the basement of a very competitive AL East, general manager Brian Cashman did very little to fortify the roster before the August 1 trade deadline despite its significant holes, including two left by position players who had landed on the 60-day injured list in the past two weeks. Then, in the span of 24 hours, the Yankees lost Domingo Germán and Anthony Rizzo, both for alarming and unsettling reasons.

Prior to Wednesday night’s game, the Yankees announced that Germán would be placed on the restricted list, a move that ended his season. On Thursday, the team placed Rizzo on the 10-day injured list due to post-concussion symptoms traceable to his May 28 collision with the Padres’ Fernando Tatis Jr., a situation that helps to account for the first baseman’s prolonged slump, the impact of which was magnified during Aaron Judge’s eight-week absence for a torn ligament in his right big toe.

Both matters have come to light in the wake of Cashman’s puzzling approach to the trade deadline. With catcher Jose Trevino out for the remainder of the season due to a torn ligament in his right wrist, third baseman Josh Donaldson possibly out for the remainder due to a Grade 2-plus right calf strain, and with the team’s production in left field and within the rotation both ongoing problems, the Yankees emerged having acquired only relievers Keynan Middleton (from the White Sox) and Spencer Howard (from the Rangers), with the latter assigned to Triple-A. While Aaron Boone’s management of the bullpen has sometimes been questionable, the unit owns the majors’ lowest ERA by nearly half a run (3.07) and the fifth-lowest FIP (3.91). Every contender could use more relief help, but for the Yankees an extra middle-innings arm could hardly have been the top priority. Read the rest of this entry »

Slade Cecconi must have been nervous. Staring down the first batter of his big league career, the 24-year-old couldn’t quite get on top of a 2-2 curveball. The looping pitch floated harmlessly past LaMonte Wade Jr., well above the strike zone for ball three. Wade called time out, and Cecconi used the respite to take a few calming breaths before returning to the rubber.

For the sixth pitch in a row, catcher Jose Herrera set up on the outside corner. For the sixth pitch in a row, Cecconi overthrew it, yanking a four-seamer toward the left-hand batter’s box. Wade had no time to react as it screamed in toward his hands at 94.8 mph. Only after the ball had made contact did he recoil, leaning away so far and so fast that he had to start jogging backward toward first base just to keep from falling over. Then things started to get stuck. Read the rest of this entry »

The Reds are on the verge of their first playoff appearance since 2020 and their first real playoff appearance since 2013, when they lost the loudest baseball game in the history of Pittsburgh. (I go back and forth on whether 2020 counts as a real postseason, depending on what’s expedient for my argument. In this case, I think you have to score at least one run for it to count as a playoff appearance.) And in pursuit of that end, the Reds’ ownership and front office have elected… not to send reinforcements. They traded for Sam Moll at the deadline, but that’s it. The Reds are more relevant than they’ve been in a decade, and this poor team is getting Siege of Jadotville’d. Water is running low, and help is not coming.

So it’s all up to you, Andrew Abbott. Read the rest of this entry »

Was that as fun for you as it was for me? It’s been a busy month, both personally and for baseball. The All-Star game, the draft, the Trade Value Series (okay fine, that one’s just me), the deadline; it’s been a mile a minute since the Fourth of July. Now we’re slipping back into normal baseball rhythms, with a month’s lull before the September playoff chase heats up again. I’m taking advantage of that break to get back to what I love: paying homage to Zach Lowe and talking about five things in baseball that tickled me. Despite the title, I’m casting a slightly wider net than “this week” – we’ve missed a lot!

1. Patty Bailiff
Patrick Bailey got the nickname Patty Barrels for his switch-hitting home run feats in college, but I’m officially revoking that one after he posted a 15 wRC+ for the entire month of July. It’s okay, because he’s not here to hit (though I think his bat is perfectly acceptable and will rebound the rest of the year). He’s here to keep the defense in order and grind opposing running games to a halt.

You think you can run in his courtroom (I’m stretching the analogy here, I know, but I like the sound of it)? He’ll shut you down as quickly as you can say “Rickey Henderson.” Since he debuted, he’s comfortably atop the throwing leaderboard; he’s caught 19 runners stealing, six clear of Shea Langeliers over than span. He has a cannon arm, pinpoint accuracy, and balletic footwork. He’s somehow always in a good throwing position despite also being a superlative receiver. This is what 80-grade catcher defense looks like.

To celebrate being clear of that terrible July, Bailey put on a show Tuesday night against the Diamondbacks. He started the game on the bench for a well-deserved rest, but entered the game as a defensive replacement when the Giants took a slim 4-3 lead into the eighth. He got things going right away by giving Jace Peterson a rude welcome back to the Bay:

That’s outrageous. No time to collect himself, no time to get out of his crouch, no time to even think; he gunned Peterson down remorselessly anyway. That looked like a clean steal when the ball reached home plate despite the failed bunt attempt, but Bailey is just too good:

That right there is a great day for a defensive replacement. How many catchers come in and immediately erase a baserunner? He wasn’t done, though. In the ninth inning, Arizona put another baserunner on, but Bailey wasn’t having any of it:

That’s absolutely incredible. Two innings, two baserunners erased, and one of them a game clincher. Just perfection. Take a look at it from another glorious angle:

I don’t really have anything else to say. Bailey might be the best defender in baseball right now. He’s winning games with his throwing arm, which is what pitchers are supposed to do, not catchers. The Giants wouldn’t be nearly this good without him.

2. The Versatile Reds
Cincinnati is in a pitched battle for the top spot in the NL Central. I’ve written about them frequently this year, largely because they’re so dang fun. It’s not just the sheer youthful exuberance of the Reds that draws me in, though. I also love their avant-garde approach to lineup construction, enabled by an embarrassment of middle infield riches and a few versatile corner types.

Here’s an example off the top of my head. On July 6, they pulled out a narrow victory over the Nationals, 5-4 in 10 innings. That’s not particularly notable; the Nats aren’t what you’d call “good” this season, even though they’re not the complete laughingstock that some feared before the season. No, what I loved about this game was that Cincinnati used multiple players at every defensive position.

Take a look at this delightful chaos:

That’s right: Kevin Newman, of all people, started at first base. He got replaced defensively by Spencer Steer, then Joey Votto, then Steer again after Votto himself got replaced. Newman got pulled from the game because the Reds pinch hit for Luke Maile with TJ Friedl, then left Friedl in the game in center field. That meant they needed a new catcher, and Curt Casali subbed into Newman’s lineup spot. Easy peasy.

Only, they pinch hit for Casali too (with Votto). That meant that DH Tyler Stephenson had to surrender his DH duties and don the tools of ignorance. But that meant the team needed to put a pitcher into the lineup. Sure, no problem; Jonathan India made the last out of the inning where Votto pinch hit, so the team simply pulled him for the pitcher’s spot.

But wait, who plays second base? That would be Matt McLain, who shifted over from shortstop. Naturally, then, Elly De La Cruz moved from third to short, and Steer, who had started the game in left before moving to first base, slid over to third with Votto replacing him.

Following so far? Good, good. Things were pretty much standard from here until the bottom of the 10th, when the Reds brought in their defensive replacements. Steer moved back to first, Nick Senzel moved from right field to third, and Jake Fraley took over in right. Just your standard LF-1B-3B-1B line for Steer.

If you’ve been following along, you’ll realize I left two positions unmentioned. After Friedl pinch hit, he stayed in the game as a center fielder, but the Reds didn’t remove their original center fielder from the game. Senzel merely slid from center to right, which meant Will Benson had to move from right to left, which was the impetus for moving Steer from left field to the infield in the first place. It all makes sense when you follow through on it, but no one is making these kinds of hockey-style bulk substitutions in the universal DH era. No one except the Reds, that is.

3. Miguel Rojas, Savvy to the End
Miguel Rojas was never much of an offensive threat, and he’s been outright awful this year. Honestly, “awful” might be too kind to him. He’s hitting .223/.275/.285. He hit his first homer of the year on Wednesday, and it’s August. That’s not when you’re supposed to hit your first home run. The Dodgers went out and traded for Amed Rosario, and they have to be hoping to ease Rojas out of the lineup sooner rather than later.

That seems like a reasonable plan to me, but I want to give a quick nod to his career before he’s relegated to the dustbin of history. I loved watching Rojas on a series of awful Marlins teams, and it wasn’t because of his uncanny ability to rack up one to two Wins Above Replacement year in and year out. In one specific phase of the game, and one specific phase only, he resembles Mookie Betts. That phase? Self-assuredly smooth actions on defense.

I’m mentioning this not to say that the Dodgers should keep playing him, but rather because a play he made a few weeks ago made all my old memories of Rojas come rushing back. It wasn’t exactly a highlight reel play. You might miss it if you weren’t looking for it. But his footwork and instincts are smooth like creamy peanut butter:

There are a ton of ways to get that play wrong. You could charge the ball; in double play situations, it’s generally a good idea to go and get the ball to save precious fractions of a second. But that wouldn’t work here, because there was no chance of turning two if multiple throws were needed. Charge this one, and you’re looking at one out maximum. You could angle your body wrong; to make this play, you need to catch the ball with your weight carrying you towards first base. You could get the footwork wrong; the timing was so tight that the foot that hits second base needs to be your plant foot for the throw to first.

All of that was automatic for Rojas. The Orioles broadcast isolated Rojas on a replay that really drives his skill home:

Those choppy steps are all part of the plan. Even the way he fields the ball is deliberate; the footwork means there’s no need for a barehanded stab, but the transfer needs to be immediate, and Rojas dropped down on the throw to accommodate that and also to avoid a sliding Colton Cowser. He did it with no time to spare whatsoever; it was a bang-bang play at both bases. If his internal clock was even slightly off, the Dodgers might have ended up with no outs instead of two. But his clock wasn’t off. It’s never off.

Modern baseball statistics are really good at measuring how valuable Rojas’ defense is, and it’s not valuable enough to offset his anemic offensive skills. But they can’t measure the sheer joy I get out of watching his defense. Even Betts himself just sat there and admired it from a front row seat. I hope we get plenty more plays like this from him before his offense plays him off the field.

4. Manny Being Manny
This probably won’t surprise you given my general taste in baseball players, but I love Manny Machado. I love his defense and his easy power. I love his mannerisms on the field. I loved when he sulked performatively every time the Padres shifted him into shallow right field. I love his 80s-TV-villain demeanor at the plate. As it turns out, I also love watching him take pitches.

When Machado is taking all the way, you’ll know it immediately:

Nope, probably not swinging at that one. He didn’t even keep his hand on the bat! He’d clearly made the decision to take no matter what, and it was a savvy decision; José Berríos had been wild all inning. But there’s no pretense of standing in at all. He’s up there completely uninterested in the pitch – maybe he’s thinking about the weather, or why the money in Canada is all plasticky-feeling.

With that delightful take out of the way, he stood in for the next pitch and at least looked like he was considering taking action:

Berríos looked befuddled on the mound. Was Machado just not going to swing? There’s something about his languid pre-pitch demeanor that makes it feel like he’s barely deigning to pay attention to what’s going on. But that’s just a cover; throw him something he’s interested in, and it’s go time:

That’s a ferocious hack; the barrel of the bat almost made it to the outfield. Imagine how much force he must have been swinging with to shatter the bat so completely and still muscle the ball for a bloop single.

The dichotomy between rest and action is baseball in a nutshell – Willie Mays described the sport as “violence under wraps.” But no one playing today epitomizes that for me quite like Machado. He can shut it down completely for a pitch, then crank it up to max effort to brute force a ball to the outfield, then take it all the way back down for a businesslike acknowledgement of his success:

5. George Kirby’s Alien Precision
As the saying goes, to err is human. Baseball has a great way of reminding us of that. The best hitters make outs 60% of the time. The best pitchers give up the occasional mammoth home run. Sure-handed defenders make errors, contact wizards whiff, and elite baserunners get thrown out. The sport is hard!

Don’t tell George Kirby that, though. He has otherworldly command – he’s running a 2.7% walk rate! – and it was on full display in his start against the Twins on July 20. Check out this sequence against Alex Kirilloff, for example:

I left out two fishing expeditions on 0-2 and 1-2 to make the GIF a reasonable length, but you get the idea: Kirby has the ball on a string. That slider away/slider down combination is ludicrous; they’re both perfectly located. Then he dots the same corner with a fastball, and has a breaker-for-a-strike wrinkle in his bag too? Come on, that’s overkill.

He had a whole bagful of those perfectly-placed pitches that day. Check out this smash cut of four strikeouts:

That fastball goes where Kirby tells it to. If you’re keeping score at home, he’s perfectly capable of dotting both edges with it, and he can move it up and down as appropriate. Oh yeah – he’s regularly hitting 97 mph. Seems pretty good to me!

When Kirby’s as on as he was in this game, it feels like he’s just toying with hitters. As he chugged towards the conclusion of this seven inning, 10 strikeout gem, he eschewed his secondary pitches and painted with his fastball. First to Byron Buxton to get an easy pop out:

Then to Willi Castro for his last strikeout:

Kirby will probably always give up his fair share of home runs, but that’s a small price to pay for his clinical command. There will be no walks. There will be plenty of disbelieving batters. It isn’t how most pitchers succeed, but it’s undeniably fun to watch.