On Tuesday evening, Zac Gallen will take the mound in Arlington with zeroes on his mind and history at his fingertips. You see, South Jersey’s second-best ballplayer is on a bit of a heater: 28 consecutive scoreless innings pitched, including zero runs allowed in his past four starts.
Now, I can tell some of you are already scrolling back up to the top of this page to check the date on the post. It’s the same feeling you get when you lose track of where you were on your backlog of DVR’d Law & Order reruns. “I feel like I’ve seen this one already. Did I actually watch it or did I doze off on the couch? Is that Lance Reddick?”
Run a show for 20-plus seasons and you’ll recycle a plot point or two. No, you’re not losing your mind: Zac Gallen is on a second extended scoreless innings streak in a matter of just nine months. Last fall, he strung together 44.1 scoreless innings, and now he’s at it again. Read the rest of this entry »
“What poor sucker is going to have to pitch in those games?” That’s what Meg Rowley asked last year on an episode of Effectively Wild after MLB announced a two-game series between the Giants and Padres in Mexico City. Those games happened over the weekend, and they lived up to those lofty expectations. Played at an elevation of 7,349 feet — more than 2,000 feet higher than Coors Field, in case you hadn’t been told several times already — they featured 15 home runs, including 11 in Saturday night’s 16–11 offensive explosion. Although Sunday’s game started with yet another home run, this time courtesy of LaMonte Wade Jr., the wind was blowing in, accounting for the paltry total of five homers. So far in the 2023 season, the average game has featured 2.26 home runs. By my calculations, that’s a whole lot less than 7.5 home runs per game. It was so wild that Nelson Cruz hit a triple yesterday. Let me rephrase that: The very nearly 43-year-old Nelson Cruz hit a stand-up triple yesterday. This was not baseball as usual.
All the same, it was extremely fun baseball. Robert Orr of Baseball Prospectus put it best, tweeting, “The game is being played on the surface of the moon.” The ball moved differently out of the pitcher’s hand, off the bat, and coming off the turf. In this article, I’ll be relying on Statcast data, so I should note up front that the stadium was working with a temporary TrackMan setup, rather than the permanent Hawkeye systems installed in all 30 MLB parks. It’s reasonable to expect that the numbers are not quite as reliable as they normally would be, but they’re still plenty convincing. Read the rest of this entry »
When the Rangers shocked the baseball world by signing Jacob deGrom to a five-year, $185 million contract in December, it was with the hope that the 34-year-old righty could steer clear of the type of injuries that limited him to a total of 26 starts in the 2021 and ’22 seasons. But since the opening of camps in February, it’s been a bumpy ride, and that’s carried over into the regular season. On Friday night, for the second time in three starts, deGrom took an early exit due to an arm issue; this time, he’s headed to the injured list, with a diagnosis of elbow inflammation. To call upon an oft-used metaphor: this fancy, expensive, high-performance sports car is once again in the shop.
Facing a Yankees lineup weakened by injuries — no Aaron Judge, no Giancarlo Stanton, no Josh Donaldson — on Friday night, deGrom cruised through the first three innings, retiring all nine hitters on a total of 28 pitches, striking out two and never reaching a three-ball count. He began to labor in the fourth, however. After a six-pitch groundout by DJ LeMahieu, he issued a five-pitch walk to Anthony Rizzo, then went to a full count against Gleyber Torres before getting him to fly out, and finally allowed a two-strike single to Willie Calhoun. Notably, deGrom’s last two pitches to Calhoun — a 96.6 mph fastball taken for a ball and then the 89.4 mph slider that he hit, both of which were several inches outside — were down about three miles per hour relative to their previous offerings of that type.
That sudden drop cued pitching coach Mike Maddux and the team trainer to visit the mound; Maddux soon tag-teamed with manager Bruce Bochy, who did little more than pat a dejected-looking deGrom on the shoulder and send him on his way.
After the Rangers finished off their 5–2 win, the team announced that deGrom had departed due to forearm tightness; the pitcher himself described it as “just some discomfort.” According to general manager Chris Young, an MRI taken the next day showed inflammation, but notably, he made no mention of structural damage, suggesting that whatever the team saw with regards to deGrom’s ulnar collateral ligament, flexor, and whatever else was, if not in mint condition, not a concern at this time. The Rangers elected to put him on the 15-day injured list, though Young downplayed the situation, saying, “[H]e came in today and felt OK, which was a positive, but given how important he is to us and our season, we’re going to play this very cautiously and see how he responds over the next several days to treatment. And then after seven to 10 days, we’ll have a pretty good idea of what the next steps are.” Read the rest of this entry »
We’re a month into the season and have seen some pretty big swings in the power rankings with plenty of surprises. Here’s how everything stands as we head into the second month of the season.
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.
Tier 1 – The Best of the Best
Team
Record
“Luck”
wRC+
SP-
RP-
RAA
Team Quality
Playoff Odds
Rays
23-6
0
150
72
86
4
181
95.6%
Pirates
20-9
1
114
89
76
-1
158
32.5%
Rangers
17-11
-3
120
80
85
-3
156
50.6%
Braves
18-9
0
111
76
83
-7
143
97.2%
After being shut out in back-to-back games and losing their first series of the year to the Astros early last week, the Rays took out all their frustrations on the hapless White Sox, scoring 38 runs in their four-game series. An ugly seven-run meltdown in the ninth by Tampa Bay’s bullpen on Sunday was the only thing keeping them from a sweep over the weekend. That aside, the Rays are leading the league in nearly every significant offensive category; it’s hard not to when Randy Arozarena is doing everything right and Wander Franco has seemingly made the leap to superstardom. Amazingly enough, Rays position players have produced almost double the WAR as the next highest team: 10.9 to the Rangers’ 5.5.
The Pirates enter May with the best record in the National League, something no one could have predicted a month ago. They started off the week with a series win against the Dodgers, then signed their best player, Bryan Reynolds, to an eight-year extension. For the first time in a while, Pittsburgh is playing competitive baseball, and a lot of the underlying metrics believe in this surprising hot start. The Bucs will face a tough challenge to start the month with a series in Tampa Bay followed by a date with the Blue Jays at home. Read the rest of this entry »
If Matt Strahm wasn’t on your radar before this season, I can’t blame you. The left-hander put up increasingly worse results during his four years with the Padres, culminating in a 2021 season lost to injury. He bounced back the following year as a solid middle reliever for the Red Sox, but even so, he was hardly a free agent to watch this winter. He only made headlines because the two-year, $15 million deal he signed with the Phillies was more lucrative than anyone expected for him; an unnamed executive claimed that the contract “destroyed the market” for left-handed relievers.
A few years back, though, Strahm was a top-100 prospect and the most promising name in the Royals’ system. He earned his first feature here at FanGraphs in August 2016 in a piece that called him “a new relief weapon.” He was marvelous that season, posting a 1.23 ERA and 2.06 FIP across 22 innings for the reigning world champs. A year later, he earned another look from the FanGraphs staff, this time as the headlining return in the Trevor Cahill trade between the Royals and Padres. The summer after that, Strahm was once again the star of a FanGraphs story, this one about his work as an opener. Travis Sawchik looked at Strahm’s success and wondered if “Hader Lite” was an appropriate nickname. That’s high praise, indeed.
All this to say, Strahm isn’t just some guy, no matter how much his new nickname (Pastrami, i.e. “Pa-strahm-i”) makes him sound like the manager of an old-time Brooklyn deli or a kid from The Little Rascals. At the same time, he hasn’t been particularly relevant for several years, and as he entered his age-31 season, you might have thought the former top prospect was done making headlines.
Six games into his Phillies career, Strahm demands attention. He ranks 10th among National League pitchers (min. 20 IP) with a 2.31 ERA and among the top 10 in all the major ERA estimators: FIP, xFIP, xERA, and SIERA. The only other NL pitchers who can say the same are Spencer Strider, Zac Gallen, and Max Fried — arguably the early-season frontrunners for the National League Cy Young. Read the rest of this entry »
The Pirates, you might have heard, are in first place at the end of April. Not only that, they’ve played like a first-place team and then some, outscoring opponents by 48 runs in 29 games. Heading into Sunday, their pitching staff had the second-best ERA and FIP in the National League. Their offense had posted the second-best wRC+ in the NL as well; based on the first month of the season, the only thing fluky about them has been the names on the backs of their jerseys. Maybe they’ll cool off, maybe they won’t, but full credit to them for an exceptional first month of the season.
Heading into the season, Bednar was one of the few Pirates who it was safe to assume would be good. Carlos Santana and Andrew McCutchen are big names, but they’re getting up there in years. Bryan Reynolds would be good, most likely, but perhaps not in Pirates colors. But Bednar is a rock. He was an All-Star last year, for God’s sake. Read the rest of this entry »
Description:
As part of Baseball Systems, the Software Engineer will collaborate with the Player Development team to assist in developing our athletes. This position requires strong software development skills and experience, as well as a demonstrated ability for independent thought and the willingness to work within a team framework.
Core duties for this role include, but are not limited to:
Deliver highly dependable, easy to use software while being part of a fast-moving team.
Design and develop new features to deliver key athletic performance measures for the Player Development department while collaborating with Data Engineering, Tech Operations and Research & Development.
Collaborate with the Pitching, Hitting, and Defense coordinators on tools for evaluating player performance and delivering player feedback.
The ideal candidate will have:
created web apps using HTML, CSS and Javascript frameworks
experience developing APIs in C# or other similar languages
worked with relational databases
familiarity with Git version control software
A love of sports
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field from four-year college or university; and up to 3 years related experience and/or training; or equivalent combination of education and experience.
Our Team:
Baseball Systems is the software backbone of Baseball Operations. We provide data and decision-making tools for analysts, coaches, and front office personnel to help win a World Series.
Our department consists of a team of data engineers and a team of software engineers who work across all different aspects of Baseball Operations providing support and tools relevant to each group.
We work directly with stakeholders in every department of Baseball Operations to ensure every project we work on drives value to the organization and helps us win more games on the field.
We help drive technical innovation to find new ways to solve baseball problems
What will you do each day?
Design and develop new features or maintain existing features in our internal web applications.
Squash bugs quickly.
Collaborate with Baseball Operations staff to plan new features and ensure requirements are met.
Develop walk-throughs for non-technical users to familiarize them with new features.
Watch baseball.
Our Pitch
You come here to make a difference. We are a purpose-led organization, focused on building an inclusive and engaging culture that fosters excellence, collaboration and ingenuity. We strive to be a model employer and cultivator of talent, empowering our teams to drive innovation through the inclusion of diverse thoughts, ideas and perspectives. We operate at the highest standard of excellence, investing in the development of our staff across all levels and embracing differences through a culture of respect and understanding.
We are proud to offer a highly competitive perks and benefits package including:
Exceptional health and dental rates, and fully covered vision package
401(K) match and an additional annual contribution from the Club
Unlimited vacation time
Paid parental leave
Collaborative recognition program and incentives
Leadership development programming
Online educational platform for personal and professional development
Employee Resource Groups
Paid time off for volunteering
Year-round diversity, equity and inclusion training and development
Brewers Home Game tickets, promotional giveaways and other discounts!
For more information about our Crew, other benefits and insight into our Club culture please visit our Careers Page.
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the podcast’s naming conventions, the EW reverse jinx boosting Byron Buxton, the stress of observing Jacob deGrom’s high-wire act, Drew Maggi’s first major league hit (off of Hobie Harris!), high-scoring, high-altitude baseball in Mexico City, MLB editing (and later restoring) an A’s highlight, White Sox fan unrest, Jazz Chisholm Jr. being mic’d up on a broadcast while batting, the standouts toward the top of the combined WAR leaderboard one month into the season, and more, then (1:12:00) Stat Blast about the lowest-career-WAR players ever to lead a team in WAR in one season, the most players ever used in one game at each position, and how the pitch clock has made games not only much shorter, but also much less variable in duration, plus (1:41:32) a Past Blast from 2001 and a few follow-ups and closing thoughts (1:43:39).
Bill Haselman precipitated a memorable brawl on June 6, 1993. Plunked by a Mike Mussina pitch, the Seattle Mariners catcher charged the mound and proceeded to tackle the Baltimore Orioles right-hander. The melee that followed was a doozy. Tussles involving numerous players took place all around the infield, and when all was said and done, seven players were ejected, and at least four were injured — including one who had played in 1,790 consecutive games.
“It was just a weird situation,” recalled Haselman, three decades later. “Chris Bosio was pitching for us — he’d come back from a broken collarbone — and he threw balls behind Mark McLemore and Harold Reynolds. The first one wasn’t on purpose. The one he threw behind Reynolds [in the bottom of the sixth inning] was on purpose. Reynolds had bunted for a hit against him with two strikes, and he’d also always hit Bosio well [14-for-28 lifetime]. Back then, that’s what you did: you hit a guy. The pitch went behind him.
“We come up in the seventh and Mussina punches out Jay Buhner and Mackey Sasser,” continued Haselman, who is now a coach for the Los Angeles Angels. “I’m up next, and I had an idea of what might happen. I never had any thought of charging the mound — I’d never done it in my life — but for some reason, I did. It was ‘Boom!” Then there was a brawl.”
Haselman had homered off of Mussina earlier in the game, but the erstwhile backstop doesn’t believe that had any bearing on the HBP. Rather, it was because Bosio had thrown behind a pair of Birds. Mussina’s pitch didn’t miss, and that fact that it was a shoulder shot contributed heavily to Haselman’s impromptu mound visit. “I didn’t like it being so high, near my head,” he explained. “That’s why I went out there.” Read the rest of this entry »
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