The Twins are in first place. I’m not talking about the standings, though it’s true that they’ve got a substantial lead over the Guardians in the AL Central. The Twins are in first place where it counts: on the strikeout leaderboards. Minnesota’s pitchers are striking out 25.7% of the batters they face, and Minnesota’s batters are striking out 27.2% of the time. Both of those numbers are the highest in baseball this season, and the latter is just a tenth of a percentage point off the all-time record set by the 2020 Tigers. In all, the Twins are on pace to be involved in 3,211 strikeouts, the most of all-time.

In a way, the Twins are on the cutting edge. We are living in the strikeout era, the golden age of the golden sombrero. If you sort every team offense in AL/NL history by strikeout rate, 299 of the top 300 played in this century (congratulations and apologies to the 1998 Diamondbacks). Relative to the rest of the league, the Twins aren’t close to making history; they’re just the team in first place. Their offense’s 118 K%+ pales in comparison to the 163 put up by the 1927 Yankees, to pick a notable example.

The game has been trending toward more strikeouts for as long as it’s been around, and if the Twins do end up setting an all-time record, it likely won’t last all that long. Still, we’d be remiss if we didn’t honor them for racing out ahead of the pack and playing winning baseball in the crushing maw of the strikeout apocalypse. Read the rest of this entry »

The Marlins began this season on an historic pace in one-run games. They won every single one of their first 12 such contests, besting a record that had stood for 51 years. Since then, they’ve played to a more modest 15-11 mark in those bouts, but their .711 winning percentage in such games on the whole would still tie them for the fifth-best in a single season since the Live Ball Era began in 1920 (min. 20 one-run games).

Last Thursday, my colleague Michael Baumann wrote a piece that got me thinking. Specifically, he found that of the three teams outperforming their Pythagorean (run differential-based) record by at least five games at the time, two — the Orioles and Brewers — had outstanding bullpens in one form or another. This idea isn’t new — it’s been hashed, and re-hashed, and re-hashed again. The Tigers, which have since joined that group of five-game overperformers, have also had a remarkably clutch relief corps. But the Marlins, outperforming their expected wins by six games, have a middling ‘pen by any measure. Marlins position players have come through in big moments more than expected, but they also haven’t wowed in those situations to the same extent that the Orioles’ crop of hitters have. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone loves a beginning — the christening of a new battleship, the birth of a new zoo giraffe, the major league debut of a top pitching prospect. On Tuesday night in Philadelphia, San Francisco Giants lefty Kyle Harrison emerged from his pupal stage. It went… pretty well: 3 1/3 innings, two earned runs, five hits, one walk, five strikeouts, one hit batter.

In a short start, Harrison pared his repertoire down to — with very few exceptions — just his fastball and slider. He gave up lots of hard contact, including a home run, but also, said manager Gabe Kapler, Harrison “missed a lot of bats. He missed bats in the zone. His fastball was carrying.”

Harrison entered the night as the no. 17 overall prospect on The Board, and the no. 5 overall pitching prospect. Every team in the playoff hunt could use a fresh, talented starter, the Giants more so than just about anyone. San Francisco is running a rotation out of the mid-20th century: Two very good starting pitchers and then a lot of improvisation. Webb, Cobb, and pray for fog. Or something like that. If you can do better than a slant rhyme, I’m all ears. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Ben’s week away, Julio Rodríguez’s hot streak and the Mariners’ surge, and the White Sox firing Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn, plus a grab bag of topics that caught Ben’s attention while he was in Sweden: the Dodgers signing Kolten Wong; a Cubs adult-diaper ad; an oddly ricocheting Luke Raley home run; errors and official scoring, another incident that made Miles Mikolas mad; Riley Greene, Spencer Torkelson, and the Tigers’ rebuild; Bobby Witt Jr.’s sophomore breakout; Nationals extensions, CJ Abrams, and Joey Meneses; the similar seasons of J.D. Martinez and Justin Turner; the potential for good teams to miss the playoffs, and radical realignment; Jon Singleton returning to the Astros; Dallas Keuchel continuing to pitch; a nifty Brewers trade revisited (and Christian Yelich’s bounceback); the sale of Fogo de Chão; John Angelos’s latest groaners; preseason prediction philosophies, and more, plus a Future Blast (1:32:04) from 2049 and a few follow-ups (1:33:37).

Audio intro: Daniel Leckie, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Daniel Leckie, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Jay on Julio
Link to mlb.com on Julio
Link to Stark on Julio
Link to info on latest M’s win
Link to “Here Come the Warm Jets”
Link to MLBTR on White Sox firings
Link to The Athletic on Sox firings
Link to article on Sox relocation
Link to tweet about Cubs ad
Link to Reddit thread on Cubs ad
Link to Raley HR video
Link to Defector on Raley’s homer
Link to Kevin Cash quote
Link to ballpark homogenization info
Link to Stat Blast on official scoring
Link to The Athletic on official scoring
Link to Russell on official scoring
Link to story on Mikolas/Alonso/Winn
Link to more on Alonso/Winn
Link to FG post on Witt
Link to FG post on Abrams
Link to MLBTR on Greene moving
Link to MLBTR on Nats extensions
Link to FG post on Yelich
Link to Keuchel article
Link to other Keuchel article
Link to Singleton dingers
Link to Bain buying Fogo
Link to article on Escobar and Fogo
Link to Angelos interview
Link to Rob Mains on Angelos
Link to Rick Wilber’s website
Link to Future Blast wiki

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Because I was raised on Saturday morning cartoons of a certain vintage — some of which I’ve recently shared with my going-on-seven-year-old daughter — I have Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner zooming through my brain with alarming frequency. In nearly every episode, there’s a moment when the coyote runs off a cliff and then, improbably, hangs in midair for several seconds before plummeting several hundred feet to the desert ground. Welcome to the 2023 Giants.

At 65-60, the Giants entered Tuesday occupying the NL’s third Wild Card spot, half a game behind the Cubs (65-59) for the second spot, and half a game ahead of the Diamondbacks (65-61), a game ahead of the Reds (64-61), and a game and a half ahead of the Marlins (64-62). Somehow, they’ve hung on this long despite playing sub-.500 ball for nearly the last two months with an offense so comically inept you’d think it came out of an ACME crate.

Dial back to June 10, when the Giants were a middling 32-32, seven games out of first place in the NL West and a game and a half back in the Wild Card race, with an offense that had hit for a 101 wRC+ (.246/.321/.413) while averaging 4.52 runs per game to that point. Two days and two wins later, they moved into a tie for the third Wild Card spot with the Brewers, and save for a brief span from July 6–8, they’ve remained in the playoff picture ever since; as recently as August 8, they were 62-52 and had a claim on the top NL Wild Card spot. Read the rest of this entry »

2:02	Jay Jaffe: Hey folks, welcome to my Tuesday chat. I’m back from California and will dive in here in a few minutes after I add a brief addition to today’s forthcoming piece about the Giants’ offensive struggles. Stand by for a few…

2:05	Jay Jaffe: OK, that’s done. Had to stop the presses on a piece about the Giants’ offense falling off a cliff because of this earth-shaking news https://twitter.com/extrabaggs/status/1694045181362753778?s=20

2:05	Jay Jaffe: that piece will be out shortly.

2:09

Jay Jaffe: With the caveat that listed heights don’t always match up with reality, there have been three seasons in which a player 5’9″ (Mookie’s listed height) or shorter have hit 40 homers, none of them recent: Mel Ott 42 in 1929, Hack Wilson (who was 5’6″ but barrel-chested) 56 in 1930, and Campanella 41 in 1953.

2:09	Jay Jaffe: José Ramírez, listed at 5’9″ and considerably more Mookie-shaped, hit 39 in 2018

Read the rest of this entry »

In the 1991 comedy King Ralph, an American lounge singer becomes the King of England when the entire royal family is electrocuted in a freak photography accident. Despite its Academy Award-winning screenwriter and a cast of well-respected actors, the film fell flat, making it an apt comparison for the 2023 Mets, although that’s not why I bring it up today. After a series of unfortunate and unexpected injuries, Aaron Civale finds himself a key cog with the Rays and, therefore, in the race for the AL East crown. Tampa Bay’s rotation doesn’t have much in common with the British monarchy (there’s far too much turnover and not nearly enough silly hats), but just like Ralph Jones, Civale wouldn’t be in this position if so many others in front of him hadn’t bit the dust.

The Rays entered the season with one of the best rotations in the American League: Shane McClanahan, Tyler Glasnow, Drew Rasmussen, Jeffrey Springs, and Zach Eflin. No other team could boast a projected ERA and FIP under 3.80 for all five of its primary starting pitchers. On top of that, no. 37 overall prospect Taj Bradley was nearing his big league debut, and Josh Fleming, Yonny Chirinos, and Luis Patiño were around to provide depth. Our positional power rankings had the Rays rotation third in the AL and eighth overall.

On the other side of the equation, the Guardians entered the season under no pressure to trade Civale. On Opening Day, their postseason odds sat at 44.7%. Two-thirds of the FanGraphs staff picked them to make the playoffs, myself included. Now, this is the Guardians we’re talking about, so high postseason odds won’t stop them from trading a talented, young player, but Civale was set to make only $2.6 million this season, and he’s arbitration-eligible for two more years. Cleveland had little incentive to trade him unless the offer was too good to refuse. Considering his injury history, his 4.92 ERA last season, and the oblique strain he suffered this April, the chances of such an offer materializing seemed slim. Read the rest of this entry »

CJ Abrams befuddles me. There’s no question that he has plus raw power in his bat. Look at this year’s statistics; he’s sitting in the 81st percentile for maximum exit velocity. But despite that fact, he’s in the 10th percentile for average exit velocity, and the 17th for hard-hit rate. He’s a power hitter! He’s a slap hitter! Both are true.

Likewise, I’m not quite sure what to make of the rest of his game. He has blazing straight line speed, and he uses that to his advantage on the basepaths. We have him down as the third-most valuable baserunner in the majors this year, behind only Esteury Ruiz and Corbin Carroll. But almost all of that value comes on stolen bases – he’s 25th in UBR, which measures non-steal advancement. And on defense, he has tremendous range and an average throwing arm, but grades out somewhere between average (DRS) and poor (OAA) anyway. His profile is a series of contradictions.

The thing is, all of these have been true about Abrams since the Padres drafted him in the first round in 2019. He was a divisive prospect from the start; it was never clear whether he’d end up as a slugging second baseman or a rangy, leadoff-hitting shortstop. Then the pandemic canceled the 2020 minor league season, and he missed most of 2021 with injury even as the Padres aggressively promoted him. Suddenly he was debuting in the big leagues at 21 as an injury replacement for, gulp, Fernando Tatis Jr. Life comes at you fast. Read the rest of this entry »

Troy Melton is fast emerging as one of the top pitching prospects in the Detroit Tigers system. Drafted in the fourth round last year out of San Diego State University, the 22-year-old right-hander has a 2.33 ERA and a 3.21 FIP in 81 innings between Low-A Lakeland and High-A West Michigan. Featuring plus command and a firm fastball that he delivers from a deceptive slot, he’s fanned 84 batters while allowing 21 walks and 66 hits. Over his last three starts, the Anaheim native has allowed just a pair of runs in 17 innings, with 10 strikeouts and nary a free pass.

Assigned a 35+ FV by Eric Longenhagen at the time our Tigers Top Prospects list came out in June, the young right-hander has since moved up to the 40+ FV tier thanks to his “burgeoning upside.” In the opinion of our lead prospect analyst, “his fastball’s impact alone should be enough to make him a good big league reliever even if his secondary stuff doesn’t develop.”

Melton, who has a marketing degree from SDSU’s Fowler College of Business, discussed his development path earlier this month.

———

David Laurila: I was told that you have plus stuff. Would you call yourself a power pitcher?

Troy Melton: “I think I’m a mesh of a power guy and a control guy. Coming up in high school, I really didn’t throw very hard, so I kind of had to learn how to pitch. That definitely helped. There are always things to work on with command — you’re never going to be perfect — but that is something I feel I’m good at. I can throw four pitches for strikes, and kind of quadrant up with them too.” Read the rest of this entry »

It shouldn’t be terribly surprising that Jose Altuve is at it again. The man is running a wRC+ of 160 or better for the third time in his career; in one of those seasons, 2017, he was voted AL MVP. The other was just last year. Rumors of his demise, which circulated throughout a disastrous 2020 season, have long since subsided.

And not a moment too soon, I might add. The Astros, held in check by the Rangers most of the season, are back on their heels after a three-game sweep at the hands of division rival Seattle over the weekend. The pitching staff has taken a step back from its unhittable late-2022 apotheosis. Primary offseason acquisition José Abreu was hitting like a utility infielder before a back injury put him on the shelf. Jeremy Peña’s power stroke has deserted him, as has Cristian Javier’s unique brand of fastball-heavy trickeration.

Houston looks a little wobbly, for the first time since at least 2020; setting aside that season’s unique circumstances (and the Astros made it to Game 7 of the ALCS anyway), the team has not wobbled this much since 2016. But Altuve, hitting .327/.420/.529 since his return from a broken thumb suffered during the World Baseball Classic, has held things together.

If that really is Jose Altuve. Read the rest of this entry »