The St. Louis Cardinals have scuffled in the early going. Even after a win against the Mariners on Sunday, their record stands at a paltry 9-13. Through the weekend, their 2.2-win dip in projected win total has been the sixth-largest decrease since the season began, and among serious contenders, their performance looks even worse: the Cards’ 22.2% decrease in divisional odds has been the league’s largest, bypassing the second-place Yankees (-19.3%), who’ve had to deal with the Rays’ historic start. Further, the Cardinals’ 18.6% drop in playoff odds is second only to the White Sox (-20.1%), who’ve played even worse at 7-15. But what’s plaguing the Redbirds?

We knew that their starting pitching was a weakness coming into the season, and it’s been even worse than advertised. We pegged their starting staff as the 20th-best during our positional power rankings, and they’re 26th in both ERA and WAR, and aren’t much better by FIP (24th), even after a stellar Sunday performance from Jack Flaherty. Though we anticipated his absence at the time, perhaps we underestimated the impact that Adam Wainwright’s early-season injury recovery would have on the staff as a whole. Nevertheless, the Cards’ pitching woes have been within our margin for error. On the other hand, their lack of outfield production has been more surprising.

Going from left to right field, we ranked the Cards 15th, eighth, and ninth in our positional power rankings. Their outfield bats have been solid if unspectacular thus far, with their 104 wRC+ tying for 13th in the league. Yet, their defense has dragged them down: by OAA, UZR, and DRS, they tie for 25th, have sole possession of 26th, and are in a four-way tie for 23rd, respectively. That all adds up to a WAR figure of just 0.3, good (or bad) for 21st in the league. Read the rest of this entry »

Pete Alonso is a specialist. He’s not one of those boring types, though: defensive replacement, pinch-runner, long reliever, LOOGY, the list goes on and on. He’s the kind of specialist that every team would take more of: a home run specialist. You might not notice it, because every star hitter is seemingly also a slugger these days, but Alonso isn’t like the rest of them. He’s out there for the home runs, and everything else about his game simply works in support of that.

That’s a vague statement, but I really think it’s true. To me, there’s no player in baseball today who is a more pure home run hitter. Given that we play in one of the homer-happiest eras in baseball history, and that players today train harder than at any point in the past, he might be the best home run hitter of all time.

Let’s start with a simple fact: since Alonso debuted in 2019, no one has hit more home runs. He’s 13 homers clear of Aaron Judge in second place, with a whopping 156. This isn’t a case of a pile of extra-base hits with some going over the wall, either. Of the top 15 homer hitters in that span, only Judge has a higher proportion of home runs as a share of all extra-base hits. Alonso isn’t up there spraying balls into the gap; he’s up there trying to give fans souvenirs:

Read the rest of this entry »

It was a week of highs and lows as the Rays continued to dominate early this season while the A’s took their first of many steps out of Oakland. Just a reminder that because we’re still so early in the season, we’ll see some pretty wild swings in the rankings below as teams continue to sort themselves out.

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.

The Rays continued their hot start to the season, winning five of their six games last week; they still haven’t lost a game at home this year. The amount of depth on their roster means that even when their fantastic middle infield duo, Wander Franco and Brandon Lowe, starts to struggle — they collected just six hits between them last week — there’s someone like Harold Ramírez hitting instead (nine hits, two home runs). They’ll face a tough challenge in a surging Astros ballclub this week.

The Rangers vaulted themselves into this top tier by beating up on the Royals and A’s last week. So far, they’ve weathered the loss of Corey Seager to a hamstring injury behind the hot bats of Marcus Semien, Adolis García, and Jonah Heim. They’re also getting plenty of help from their pitching staff. Their rotation is fully healthy; Jacob deGrom had an injury scare on Monday after leaving his start after just four innings with a wrist issue but looked dominant against the A’s. But the biggest surprise has been their bullpen, which has the third-lowest ERA in the majors.

It’s shocking to see three NL Central clubs in this tier but not the Cardinals. The hot starts of the Brewers, Cubs, and Pirates are backed up by the underlying data: All three teams are hitting well, pitching well, and possess a run differential of at least +25. Cody Bellinger exacted some revenge against his former team, blasting two home runs off Dodgers pitching over the weekend, and Drew Smyly came within six outs of throwing a perfect game against Los Angeles on Friday.

While the Cubs and Brewers have looked impressive, the Pirates are turning heads. They swept the Rockies in Colorado and the Reds at home, allowing no more than three runs in any of their seven games last week, and now sit atop the division. Led by David Bednar, their bullpen has been lights out, while their rotation has gotten breakout performances from Mitch Keller and Johan Oviedo. They’ve got a tough schedule ahead with dates against the Dodgers, Rays, and Blue Jays over the next two weeks. We’ll see if they’re up to the challenge.

The Astros seem to have broken out of their funk, winning two of three from the Blue Jays and sweeping the Braves in Atlanta last week. They’re still missing Jose Altuve, Michael Brantley, and Lance McCullers Jr., and José Abreu isn’t hitting for power, but they’ve had unexpected contributions up and down their lineup, like Mauricio Dubón, who is filling in for Altuve at second base admirably with a 108 wRC+ and solid defense. Houston’s next task: slow down the Rays this week.

The Mets just wrapped up a 7–3 West Coast road trip, sweeping the A’s, winning two of three from the Dodgers, and splitting four games with the Giants. Despite that successful California swing, they couldn’t avoid stepping on their own toes. Max Scherzer was ejected from his start on Thursday after violating the sticky stuff prohibitions and accepted his 10-game suspension despite maintaining his innocence, but his absence puts New York in a bit of a precarious position. The rotation is already missing Justin Verlander, Carlos Carrasco, and José Quintana; the team will need to call up someone to take Scherzer’s place for the next two weeks.

There was a fleeting glimpse of what the Angels could be on Sunday afternoon. Losing to the Royals 2–1 entering the sixth inning, Taylor Ward, Mike Trout, and Shohei Ohtani launched back-to-back-to-back home runs to put Los Angeles ahead for good. There’s been very little of that kind of offense for the Angels this year; Trout is crushing the ball like usual, but Ohtani has been much better on the mound than at the plate, and Ward had been mired in a slump. Hunter Renfroe has been very good too, but the rest of the lineup just hasn’t carried its weight, and now it’ll be without Logan O’Hoppe for multiple months after he injured his shoulder.

The Twins locked up the most impressive member of their major league-best starting rotation last Monday, signing Pablo López to a four-year deal. Alongside hot starts from Sonny Gray and Joe Ryan, they have enjoyed some phenomenal performances from their starters. Unfortunately, their offense has yet to start clicking despite a bounce back from Joey Gallo. Carlos Correa is off to a particularly slow start, and Byron Buxton hasn’t tapped into the prodigious power he displayed last year. They did just activate Jorge Polanco off the IL and Alex Kirilloff shouldn’t be far behind. Perhaps those two will provide the spark to build some distance in the AL Central standings.

After allowing seven runs in three innings, ballooning his ERA up to 10.26, the Diamondbacks designated Madison Bumgarner for assignment on Thursday. They’re eating the remaining $34 million owed to him over the next two years, but his deteriorating performance was too harmful to a team that’s looking to turn a corner this year. Arizona was leading the NL West for most of last week until losing three of four to the Padres over the weekend. Zac Gallen, though, is putting together another long scoreless streak, running it to 21.2 innings after his start on Friday night, and the D-Backs have got a number of young pitching prospects in the high minors they could call on to replace Bumgarner.

The Giants have struggled through a rough start to the season despite a decent run differential. A pair of walk-off losses in Detroit were unfortunate, and they’ve only won a single series this year. But they’re getting good performances from players like LaMonte Wade Jr. and Thairo Estrada, and Mitch Haniger, one of their key offseason acquisitions, is close to making his season debut. They also signed Logan Webb to a five-year extension last Friday, a significant vote of confidence in his ability to lead the pitching staff.

The vibes are rough on the South Side of Chicago. The White Sox haven’t won a series this year and were just swept by the Rays over the weekend, including two ugly walk-off losses. Things aren’t going to get any easier either with a trip to Toronto this week before another series against the Rays and then the Twins after that. With Tim Anderson and Yoán Moncada still on the IL, the offense has had trouble getting started, but Chicago’s biggest problem has been a pitching staff that’s allowed the second most runs in the American League.

It feels cruel to continue to highlight the woes of the Athletics in this space, but they’ve played historically bad baseball. To make matters even worse, their ownership group announced that it had signed a binding agreement to purchase land in Las Vegas for a new stadium. There’s still so much up in the air before the franchise packs its bags for the desert, but this is the first concrete step that owner John Fisher and president Dave Kaval have made toward moving the team away from Oakland. It’s a dark time to be an A’s fan.

…

On Sunday afternoon, a friend of mine was straight up not having a good time watching his favorite baseball team. The Phillies, defending NL champions and consensus favorites to return to the playoffs this year, were losing to the Rockies. They’d already done that once this weekend and are heading into the last week of April under .500. So he came up with an interesting theory: With so many players leaving Phillies camp to play in the World Baseball Classic, perhaps the interruption in spring training had a deleterious effect on the team’s preparation and/or chemistry.

Then he asked me if I knew of anyone who’d studied the issue. I said no and almost let the matter drop right there. Looking at the statistical leaderboards, playing in the WBC didn’t throw Shohei Ohtani off his schwerve. (Or Ronald Acuña Jr., or Randy Arozarena, or Xander Bogaerts)

Most of all, there are more direct explanations for the Phillies’ slow start: Bryce Harper is hurt, they’re down to something like their fourth-string first baseman, and there’s a specific Phillies fan who’s done something to anger the baseball gods and call down their wrath. His name is Nick, he lives in Christiana, Delaware, and the baseball gods will not relent until he is found and sacrificed upon a stone altar. Hurry, there’s no time to lose. Read the rest of this entry »

Mark Gubicza was a good starting pitcher. Making all but two of his 384 big-league appearances with the Kansas City Royals, the big right-hander logged 132 wins to go with a 3.96 ERA, 42 complete games, and 16 shutouts. His best season came in 1988 when he went 20-8 with a 2.70 ERA and finished third in A.L. Cy Young balloting.

Gubicza also had two saves, both of them in 1993. That was the year he gained a true appreciation for how challenging it is to protect a late-inning lead for a teammate. How he came work out of the bullpen — something he did sparingly outside of that one season — was a matter of circumstance.

“We didn’t have a bridge to get from our starters to Jeff Montgomery,” explained Gubicza, who now serves as a TV analyst for the Angels. “The year before, my shoulder was a little sketchy, so [manager] Hal McRae asked me if I could be the bridge. At first I was hesitant, because I liked starting. But I was building back my arm strength, so I said, ‘You know what? I’ll do whatever it takes to win games. I’ll be that bridge to get to Jeff Montgomery.”

The transition was initially bumpy. Gubicza’s heart would start racing when the bullpen phone rang, and once he began warming, he would be throwing as hard as he could. Moreover, while adrenaline was telling him that he was ready, his stuff wasn’t ready. Much for those reasons, he took his lumps before figuring out what worked for him in the unfamiliar role. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the podcast’s semi-official new nickname for Yandy Díaz, what Mookie Betts playing shortstop says about the Dodgers, and Andrew McCutchen’s hot start, then (15:29) answer emails about the Reds’ many mascots, why we stop at “Quadruple-A,” how good today’s 26th men would be if they traveled back in time, sticky stuff on a tacky ball, and whether MLB would ever privatize publicly accessible Statcast data, followed (47:48) by a Stat Blast about Ross Stripling and the ultimate swingmen, the longest identical sequences of team wins and losses, and whether working the count to get pitchers out of games is still all it’s cracked up to be, plus a recap (1:23:03) of the first time the A’s played MLB games in Las Vegas and a Past Blast (1:30:27) from 1997.

Audio intro: Benny and the Jeffs, “Effectively Wild”
Audio outro: Jacket Thor, “My Patron Saint”

Link to FG post on Mookie
Link to Mookie’s play at short
Link to Eric Stephen on Mookie
Link to Smyly/Gomes play
Link to MLB mascots wiki
Link to Reds mascots page
Link to Ben on Triple-A strength
Link to Clay D. on league strength
Link to Ben on caliber of play
Link to MLBTR on pre-tacked balls
Link to Topps NOW cards
Link to Seinfeld clip
Link to Stripling on EW
Link to MLBTR on Stripling
Link to Slusser tweet about Stripling
Link to swingmen GS/GR ratio
Link to Ryan Nelson on Twitter
Link to travelling salesman problem
Link to Graham’s tweet
Link to Turner’s quotes
Link to Tango on 3-2 counts
Link to article on pitch counts/TTOP
Link to WP when SP doesn’t go 5
Link to 2018 opener article
Link to 1996 articles on A’s in Vegas
Link to Cashman Field wiki
Link to 1997 Past Blast source
Link to NYT on radical realignment
Link to Tribune on radical realignment
Link to Grant on radical realignment
Link to B-Ref on radical realignment
Link to Hendriks announcement

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Depending on your perspective, it’s a very fun time to be a catcher. Admittedly, I may be imparting some personal bias here since my favorite part of catching was always when a runner took off for second base. It’s the one time in a game when the catcher is in the spotlight. Most of your time as a backstop consists of serving your pitcher in whatever way they need, but with the increase in stolen base attempts this year, catchers have consistently found themselves with golden opportunities to show off their throwing skills. Because of this, arm strength and pop time are as important as they’ve been in the last few decades, and some catchers have been early standouts when it comes to controlling the running game.

The importance of throwing out runners, or even limiting attempts, has made a comeback. As we progress through the next few months, we’ll gain a more precise understanding of just how valuable this skill can be in this stolen base environment, but the early season trends indicate that if you can throw out runners at a good rate, you’ll be one of the most valuable defensive players in the league. And there are a few catchers who have stood apart from the rest of the field when it comes to this being a significant part of their overall value so far. I’m going to highlight two of them in this piece. The first is Gabriel Moreno.

Through the first few weeks of play, no player has produced more defensive value than the young catcher in Arizona and much of that is due to his success throwing out runners. In Moreno’s 2022 prospect report, Eric Longenhagen reported that the catcher sat in the 1.95-1.98 pop time range while in the Arizona Fall League. That would have been slightly above the big league average. However, so far this season, he has been excellent, averaging 1.90 seconds according to Baseball Savant. The combination of his pop time and five caught stealing in eight attempts (63%) has provided the D-backs with plenty of fun, but also with the reassurance that their catcher can still provide value despite struggling offensively (he has posted a meager 62 wRC+ in 52 plate appearances). Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not often that a 33-year old player still owed $34 million over two years is designated for assignment, but after a three-inning, seven run performance against the Cardinals on Wednesday that ballooned his ERA to 10.26, the Diamondbacks decided to cut bait on Madison Bumgarner. Things certainly didn’t go the way the D-Backs anticipated after inking him to a five-year, $85 million deal, as he closed out his Arizona tenure with a 5.23 ERA, 5.18 FIP, and 1 WAR in 363 innings.

As a Diamondback, Bumgarner seemed like a shell of his former self, the former Giants ace who was the hero of three separate playoff runs. His numbers went from good to terrible almost overnight, but the writing was on the wall long before he signed with Arizona. After a successful 2016 campaign that ended in his second top-five Cy Young finish, he missed about half of ’17 and ’18 with injuries, one of which was sustained in a dirt bike crash. While his surface-level results in those two seasons held steady with his career norms, his FIP climbed by nearly a full run as he lost much of the strikeout potency that made him so dominant in years past. His fastball, which once sat around 93 mph, lost two ticks and much of its whiff capabilities. The slider/cutter hybrid that he threw with near-equal frequency to the heater also started getting hit harder; batters had an xSLG nearing .500 versus both offerings in his final season as a Giant.

Despite these warning flags, the Diamondbacks still handed him a big contract before the 2020 season, where his performance began to tank. His strikeout rates continued to fall, and the good luck he experienced later in his Giants tenure faded away. It doesn’t help that Bumgarner has been characterized as unwilling to make adjustments even with diminished stuff, instead sticking with his old, clearly ineffective gameplan. In his late-30s, Charlie Morton nearly tripled his curveball usage compared to his early Pittsburgh days and had the best years of his career. Justin Verlander stopped throwing changeups with the Astros and returned to Cy Young form after some middling seasons; his teammate Gerrit Cole started elevating his fastball more, setting strikeout records in the process. Bumgarner, though, stuck with his fastball/cutter diet, despite the fact that in 2022, his four-seamer was the second-worst pitch in baseball, according to Statcast. As hitters adapted to crush his weakened stuff, Bumgarner couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt back, leading to an unceremonious end to his time on the Diamondbacks. Read the rest of this entry »

The Pirates are off to a surprisingly hot 13–7 start, tied for the fifth-best record in the majors, and they have a burgeoning offense to thank. At the close of play on Thursday, after scoring 37 runs over a four-game stretch, they rank second in the National League with 103 runs scored, are tied for fourth in the majors with 27 home runs, and are third with a .446 team slugging percentage and eighth with a .339 wOBA. They’ve managed to limit strikeouts — they’re seventh among major league teams with a 20.6% strikeout rate – and have improved their walk rate by two percentage points since last year. Pirates pitching has handled their side of business well enough — their 12th-ranked 4.03 ERA represents a significant improvement from 2022 but looks a little cleaner than their 17th-ranked ​​4.30 FIP and 22nd-ranked 4.55 xFIP — but the real bright light has been that offense.

We’re already getting to the appropriate time in this piece to repeat FanGraphs’ April refrain: it’s early. But when looking for answers this early in the season, I like to follow a general rule of thumb: the more granular the data, the better. As Russell Carleton wrote in this 2011 piece, “The way to increase reliability of a measure is to have more observations in the data set.” This early in the season, we can often learn more reliably from statistics that are based on every pitch a hitter sees or every swing he takes — something like swing rate or contact rate — than metrics with at-bats or plate appearances in the denominator. This makes plate discipline and pitch selection a good area to explore looking for answers in April.

In the case of the Pirates, improved pitch selection has been a great triumph so far this year — and it’s not that they’re necessarily being more patient, but more that they’re making better decisions. The team is swinging at 45.5% of offerings this year, down just a tenth of a point from last year, but far more of those swings are targeting pitches in the zone. Pittsburgh ranks second in the majors with a 27.9% chase percentage, an improvement from 31.7% last year. After finishing dead last in 2022 in zone swing percentage at 65.3%, the Pirates are all the way up to sixth this season with a 69.3% rate. The improvements have been nearly universal, but even as their depth has been tested with injuries to Oneil Cruz and Ji-Man Choi, a few picky Pirates are leading the way. Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday, the internet dealt with countless cases of “Is that really who I think it is?” as Twitter removed verification checkmarks for unpaid users. Yet when baseball fans did a double-take, it wasn’t because of a spam account that looked suspiciously like Jeff Passan or Ken Rosenthal. Instead, it was because of a shortstop who looked suspiciously like Mookie Betts.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts teased fans earlier this week, revealing that Betts could play shortstop on Wednesday. Instead, it was Luke Williams who took to the field at game time. Fans got their hopes up for Betts the following day, but once again, it was Williams on the lineup card. Indeed, it wasn’t until the seventh inning of yesterday’s ballgame that Roberts finally made good on his word; he pinch-hit for Williams with Betts, and Betts would stay in the game at shortstop. Williams may have earned the nickname Captain America for his performance with the US Olympic baseball team, but Betts was the superhero – or should I say super-utility player – everyone wanted to see. Read the rest of this entry »