Andrew Benintendi presents as a good table-setter option for the White Sox. Signed by Chicago’s American League entry on Friday, the no. 17 player on our 2023 Top 50 Free Agent rankings is a good fit for an underachieving team that could use better on-base percentages near the top of its lineup. While batting average-heavy Tim Anderson will presumably remain the leadoff hitter — this despite a career 3.6% walk rate and .316 OPB — someone who can consistently get on base in front of the thumpers can only help.

Benintendi had a better 2022 season than a lot of people realize. In 521 plate appearances split between the Kansas City Royals and the New York Yankees, the left-handed-hitting outfielder logged a 122 WRC+ — this despite a .399 SLG and only five home runs — which was a mere point lower than his career high. Matching that wRC+, as well as his .373 OBP, would be worth the reported five-year, $75 million deal.

Benintendi will turn 29 next July, so there is a real possibility that his best years are ahead of him. Cecil Cooper presents as a best-case comp. Through age 28, Cooper — a left-handed-hitting first baseman who established himself in Boston before playing two seasons in Milwaukee — had 73 home runs and a 116 wRC+ (Benintendi currently has 73 home runs and a 109 wRC+.) From age 29 through age 33, Cooper put up a 141 wRC+ with 123 home runs. Read the rest of this entry »

Like several other players from the 2018 World Series champion core of the Red Sox, J.D. Martinez has found himself wearing a different uniform in a new city. After finishing out his five-year contract with Boston, he has agreed to a one year, $10 million contract to be the Dodgers’ designated hitter and reunite with his former hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc. That name might not ring a bell to you, but Martinez’s ascent as a hitter came after the work he did with Van Scoyoc before the 2014 season, when he officially broke out as a hitter with a 154 wRC+ with the Tigers. Martinez will also reunite with another teammate, Mookie Betts, whose work with Van Scoyoc led to a bit of a power breakout as well.

For Martinez, the reunion comes at a good time. After a big bounceback season in 2021 where he was hitting the ball consistently hard with a ton of success, his power took a significant step back. His hard-hit rate tailed off by about eight percentage points, his xwOBACON was his lowest in a full season with Boston, and he converted fewer of his fly balls into home runs. That amassed to a home run drop off from 28 to 16 despite only 38 fewer plate appearances. Martinez, being the extremely talented hitter he is, still put together a 119 wRC+, but that loss of thump at age 35 suggests that the downturn is coming. The hope for both him and the Dodgers is that some of that power and forceful impacting of the baseball can be recovered with Van Scoyoc.

The most glaring regression from 2021 to ’22 was in damage done in the heart of the plate. Looking at Martinez’s Statcast’s Swing Take profile, you can zero in on the run values in each area of the strike zone for any given hitter. Typically, hitters of his ilk will crush mistakes in the heart of the zone. In the simplest way possible, that is what it takes to a be a good big league hitter; pitchers will make mistakes, and you need to make them hurt.

What makes you special is if you can do anything in addition to that. Robert Orr of Baseball Prospectus has an informative piece about that exact topic. Basically, both good and great hitters do damage in the heart of the plate, but the difference between the two is that additional skill of crushing bad pitches. Martinez can’t expect to have sustained success if he is producing a -2 run value in the heart of the plate as he did in 2022. He needs to get closer to his +34 runs in 2021.

When breaking it down further between fastballs and breaking balls, we can get a little more insight into exactly what happened in the heart of the plate for Martinez. His swing rates stayed relatively the same on both pitch types, but the damage done on both varied; he was actually better on fastballs in the heart of the plate in 2022 (.442 wOBA) compared to 2021 (.390 wOBA) despite the overall downturn in production. Both those rates were well above the league average in each season.

The real issue here was only being pedestrian against breaking balls, with a .363 wOBA against them in the heart of the plate was only 15 points higher than the league average of .348. That was unlike Martinez; the path he creates with his swing is made to hit these pitches out of the park, or at least into the gaps. In four full seasons between 2017 and ’21, he hit 29 home runs on breakers in the heart of the plate and had a .502 wOBA; in 2022, though, he went deep just twice, with near-average production. No hitter needs to be excellent against breaking balls overall, but if a pitcher leaves a cookie over the middle of the plate and you can’t hit it, there is some cause for concern.

Will that be what Martinez works on? My guess: When he is in the cage, I think his focus will be on elongating his bat path further in front of the plate to pull breakers from left-center to the left field line, rather than strictly thinking about hitting breakers. There is a slight difference between the two.

Beyond that, it’s fascinating to think about the impact Martinez could have on his teammates. If you haven’t listened to him talk about hitting, then I strongly suggest you do. He is one of a handful of hitters in baseball who not only has an advanced level of understanding of swing mechanics, but can also communicate that understanding to others with words and visual assistance. That skill, while not seen in the box score, can make a huge difference when he has time to break down his video. But perhaps what is even more valuable about it is he can share his thoughts and knowledge with his teammates if they’re open to hearing it. Some that come to mind who might benefit from Martinez’s wisdom are Gavin Lux and Miguel Vargas. The former feels like he is close to a breakout, and the latter is a young, impressionable hitter looking for a shot to make him stick out among the rest of the Dodgers’ depth options.

Martinez’s approach to hitting is all about cleaning up bat path and swing mechanics rather than looking at a micro issue and trying to fix only that. By addressing the swing in general, those other problems should take of themselves. The good thing for him is that he is in the perfect place to do this now: with a team that gets hitting, and with the hitting coach who helped him dominate the AL East.

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Francisco Rodríguez wasn’t the only rookie who played a key part as the Angels won their lone championship in 2002. John Lackey, a 24-year-old former second-round pick, had arrived in late June and spent the rest of the season in the rotation, then pitched credibly in a swingman role in the postseason. After the Angels rallied to overcome a 5-0 deficit and win Game 6 of the World Series, it was Lackey who got the call for Game 7, and he delivered, throwing five strong innings and departing with a 4-1 lead that the bullpen — Brendan Donnelly, Rodríguez, and Troy Percival — held. Lackey was the first rookie to win a Game 7 since the Pirates’ Babe Adams in 1909.

That was the first of three times Lackey started for a World Series winner over the course of his 15 major league seasons, making him just the third pitcher ever to do so. He only made one All-Star team, but as a rotation regular for 10 teams that reached the playoffs, Lackey earned a reputation as a big-game pitcher. His 23 postseason starts are tied for seventh among Wild Card-era pitchers, and tied for fourth since the turn of the millennium; in the latter span, he’s the only pitcher to start and win two World Series clinchers. In 134 postseason innings, he pitched to a 3.29 ERA, 0.63 runs per nine lower than his regular season mark. In the final start of his career, he pitched a gem to help the Cubs clinch the 2017 NL Central title.

Standing 6-foot-6 and 235 pounds, Lackey was an intimidating presence, even with a fastball that topped out in the low 90s. He was a fierce competitor but sometimes a polarizing figure, particularly for his mannerisms on the mound, which were sometimes interpreted as showing up his fielders. “Perhaps no man is more hated in the AL East — or more troubled,” wrote Grantland’s Chris Jones in 2011. That may have been over the top, but “a noted red-ass,” to use the words of ESPN’s Tim Keown? Surely. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and today’s team is the Cleveland Guardians.

Batters

José Ramírez can make up for a lot of sins, but he can’t carry an offensive single-handedly. But luckily for the Guardians, he looks to have more help than in recent years, even with the surprising and quick decline and departure of Franmil Reyes. Andrés Giménez had a dynamite season, and the fact that he was 23 minimizes the chances that it was a fluke. He is projected to “merely” be worth around four wins instead of six, but people tend to be too quick in assuming that a breakout season represents a complete change in a player’s baseline; the past still matters for players who have breakout (or breakdown) seasons. I’d really like to see the Guardians swap Giménez and Rosario in the middle infield; I think the former is the better defensive player and is likely to be a bigger part of the team’s future than the latter. It’s not inappropriate at all to use him at the more crucial position, though I understand if Cleveland takes a “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” approach and avoids making a change. I do hope he serves as the backup option at short, even if it’s just to preserve flexibility with him for after 2023.

Steven Kwan also has regression toward the mean in the projection — a slightly more serious one than Giménez’s, given that he didn’t start off as high. I don’t actually think ZiPS is wrong on this on, given that it certainly didn’t hate Kwan going into 2022, projecting him at .287/.343/.426 before the season (and I wager most people would have taken the under on that line). As a left fielder without a lot of power, there’s simply only just so much WAR upside at the position. Like Adam Frazier, he is going to susceptible to a huge dropoff on a poor BABIP season, though I think he’s clearly a superior offensive player. Read the rest of this entry »

During the offseason, teams largely split into three groups. The first are the big spenders, teams that are aware of the holes on their roster and make aggressive efforts to patch them. Next are the more thrifty clubs, ones who dedicate themselves to marginal upgrades – signing a reliever here, a fourth outfielder there, often single-handedly dictating the market for the middle tier of free agents and below. Last are the window shoppers, who for some reason whiff on every single free agent despite having “tried their best.” That’s generally ownership-speak for “I don’t really wanna spend,” but I digress. The point is, teams are somewhat predictable, and the moves they make are indicative of their internal situation.

This offseason, the Red Sox have defied such categorization. As a big market team, it seemed they would focus on retaining their star shortstop (or at least replacing him with a similarly talented infielder) and bolstering their rotation. One month later, Xander Bogaerts is a San Diego Padre, and Boston has yet to add a starting pitcher; Nathan Eovaldi, who rejected a qualifying offer, remains in free agency limbo. These aren’t omissions typical of a team of their stature, which calls into question the Red Sox’s goals for next season and beyond.

Are they planning on tearing it down? That doesn’t seem likely, given that they signed Chris Martin and Kenley Jansen to two-year contracts. So are they a thrifty spender, intent on being neither a contender nor an intentionally terrible mess? Probably not, because they signed Masataka Yoshida to a deal that blew even the most optimistic projections out of the water. It’s confusing indeed. If I had to place the Red Sox into an offseason bucket, it’d be the throw-anything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks group. Population: one. Read the rest of this entry »

They say murderers always return to the scene of the crime. Joseph Nicholas Gallo, murderer of baseballs, is the latest. Gallo’s one-year, $11 million deal with the Minnesota Twins brings the longtime Rangers slugger back to Target Field, site of the event that brought him to national baseball consciousness.

The weekend of the 2014 Futures Game, with the national scouting and media glitterati in attendance, Gallo put on a positively pyrotechnic batting practice display. For a good time, try Googling “Joey Gallo Truck Futures Game.” Gallo hit 15 home runs in BP that afternoon, the most of all the prospects on show. Six of those dingers went to the upper deck in right center field, and the gigantic 20-year-old put another through the windshield of a pickup truck Chevrolet had parked on the right field concourse as part of a marketing display.

Then he backed it up in the game, taking Astros prospect Michael Feliz deep — at least 419 feet — for the eventual game-winning home run. Gallo took home MVP honors for himself.

Read the rest of this entry »

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: the Detroit Tigers signed a veteran starting pitcher with (a) experience as a reliever and (b) a troubling injury history to a single-year deal worth (up to) $10 million. Two weeks after signing 31-year-old Matthew Boyd to such a contract, the Tigers came to terms with soon-to-be 31-year-old Michael Lorenzen on a similar deal. Lorenzen will make $8.5 million guaranteed, with the chance to earn an additional $1.5 million in performance incentives.

One year and $8.5 to $10 million is just what you’d expect for Lorenzen, who was worth 1.0 WAR last season and projects to be worth another 1.0 WAR (per Steamer) in 2023. When he was on the mound, he was a league-average starter in 2022, with a 4.24 ERA and a 4.31 FIP. Unfortunately, a shoulder strain kept him out for two months in the middle of the year. He has yet to prove he can last a full season in a starting role.

Lorenzen was a closer in college, but the Cincinnati Reds saw his potential as a starter and stretched him out as such. Then he struggled in the role in his rookie season, and after an elbow injury kept him out for much of his sophomore campaign, he returned to the bullpen. Not one to be easily discouraged, Lorenzen advertised his services as a starting pitcher when he reached free agency last winter. The Angels took him up on his offer and invited him to join their six-man rotation for the 2022 season. It was a good landing spot for a pitcher who had barely worked as a starter since 2015:

The Angels did not, however, take Lorenzen up on his other offer: in addition to starting ballgames, he wanted regular plate appearances and reps in the outfield. He had not been a two-way player since 2019, when he played 89 innings in the outfield and hit .208/.283/.313. One might have thought the Angels were the perfect team to give him that opportunity, but in hindsight, it was a bit of a pipe dream. The Angels entered the season with a strong outfield alignment of Mike Trout, Taylor Ward, and Brandon Marsh, and they certainly didn’t have any at-bats to spare at DH. By the time Trout was injured and Marsh was traded, Lorenzen was wasting away on the injured list.

As it turns out, focusing on one aspect of his game was the smartest choice for Lorenzen, and the man himself seems to agree. “Now that I am a starter, I’m pretty happy about that,” he told the Orange County Register in April. “Of course, if they want me to hit, I’m willing to do it, but it’s not something that I’m fighting for.”

After years spent mainly in the bullpen, Lorenzen made 18 starts in 2022 and looked more than capable while doing so. By WAR, it was the second-best season of his career. Any time he might have spent training at the plate would only have taken away from time spent refining his pitch repertoire.

To that point, Lorenzen clearly put a great deal of work into his pitches this season. Back in April, Jake Mailhot wrote about Lorenzen’s return to the starting rotation and how he was adjusting his repertoire to find success. Yet Lorenzen wasn’t done making changes – not even close. His pitch mix morphed as the season continued, and many of the adjustments Jake wrote about completely disappeared. The sinker, Lorenzen’s most-thrown pitch in April, became less and less of a factor. By the end of the year, he was using it only 8% of the time. His slider, meanwhile, lost about four inches of horizontal movement from April to September. The first clip here is from April 18, while the second is from September 9:

Lorenzen’s primary pitches also changed throughout the year. From April to June, his go-to offering against left-handed batters was the four-seam fastball, but his changeup earned a bigger role as the year progressed. By September, he was throwing the change to lefties nearly half the time:

Similarly, his sinker was his primary pitch against righties early on, but his slider overtook it by season’s end:

Lorenzen also vastly reduced his cutter usage and adding in a curveball. Until September, he had thrown just five curveballs all year. Over his final five starts, he threw 30. As for his individual pitches, Lorenzen added spin to every one of his offerings throughout the season, and he also started throwing a noticeably slower changeup. All this to say, late-season Lorenzen was a vastly different pitcher than his early-season counterpart. He changed his approach, and he had better outings as a result:

Lorenzen did well to concentrate on his pitching in 2022. He saw especially positive results in September, and he’ll look to build upon that success in a healthy 2023 season. It’s probably best if he continues to resist the call of the bat – even if he has a much better chance of cracking the lineup with his new team. Lorenzen’s career OPS (small sample size warning) is higher than the Steamer projections for half of Detroit’s starting lineup:

It’s funny that I find myself advocating against Lorenzen, the two-way player. I promise I’m not anti-fun! In fact, I was inspired to write about him in the first place precisely because of his experience on both sides of the ball. A little part of me was hoping to find an argument that might compel him to pick up the bat once again. However, the more I learned about his 2022 season, the more invested I became in Lorenzen, the one-way player. He spent the year altering his approach and refining his individual pitches, and the season ended before we could tell if he found a pitch mix to stick with.

That being the case, I look forward to watching his development continue into 2023. With the Tigers, Lorenzen should have a low-stress environment to tinker, adjust, and grow as a starting pitcher. If he’s happy with the approach he took in September, I’m interested to see how it plays out over a full season. And if he isn’t done adjusting, I’m excited to keep up with whatever changes he makes next.

Sorry, but this is going to be kind of a bummer. Our topic today is the crushing weight of statistical determinism. In researching this article, I learned something that increased my knowledge but also decreased my sense of the possible, and it made me a little bit sad. I would now like to share my sadness with you. We’re going to be studying the Victor Robles Problem.

You might not remember the days when Victor Robles was a star prospect. After short, impressive stints in 2017 and ’18, he had a breakout season in 2019, putting up a 92 wRC+ and 3.5 WAR, and finishing sixth in NL Rookie of the Year voting. ZiPS projected him for 3.3 WAR in 2020. If he could take the next step offensively, he’d be a star; if his offense remained just a bit below average, he’d still be a very productive center fielder. Instead, he turned in three straight seasons with a wRC+ under 70. Here are the Statcast gearboxes for his rookie season and 2022:

There’s a whole lot of blue in the top two rows. Plate discipline was the concern when Robles was first called up, and that was certainly an issue, but the lack of power stands out much more. Although his max exit velocity indicates that he has the capacity to hit the ball hard, Robles’ average exit velocity has been in the first percentile in each of his big league seasons, and his hard-hit rate has never been better than fifth percentile. The Victor Robles Problem is a question: Can a player who didn’t hit the ball hard as a rookie ever turn into a good hitter? Read the rest of this entry »

Why would you want to add a top-tier shortstop in free agency? I can think of plenty of reasons. Maybe you lost just such a player to free agency this offseason; after all, for every star reaching free agency, there’s a team that employed them in 2022 and now has a hole at the position. Maybe you want to improve a team that’s solid elsewhere but has room to improve at shortstop; the Phillies fit that description exactly and snagged Trea Turner earlier this month. Maybe your plan to promote a top prospect is starting to feel risky; if Aaron Judge had left New York, the Yankees might have replaced some of his production in the form of a slugging shortstop.

Or maybe your team just wants to get better and spend more money to do so. For example:

BREAKING: Cubs and Dansby Swanson have an agreement on a seven-year deal for $177 million, per source. https://t.co/9cmtK9mLzL

— Kiley McDaniel (@kileymcd) December 17, 2022

The Cubs weren’t close to contention in 2022, going 74–88 with underlying numbers that largely agreed with that assessment of their talent. They have interesting players on the major league roster and promising prospects nearing major league debuts, but even if several of those situations worked out, there’s a meaningful gap between 74 wins and the 93 the Cardinals posted to win the division. Heck, there’s a meaningful gap between 74 and 86, the mark the Brewers hit in a down year for them. If Chicago wanted to compete in 2023, it couldn’t sit pat. Read the rest of this entry »

Masataka Yoshida is MLB’s latest NPB import, having been inked to a five-year, $90M contract by the Boston Red Sox earlier this week. A 29-year-old, left-handed-hitting outfielder, Yoshida is coming off of a season where he slashed .335/.447/.561 with 21 home runs for the Orix Buffaloes… and it wasn’t a breakout season. He’s been one of the best hitters in Japan’s top league in each of the last five years.

Who is the best pitcher in NPB? I asked Yoshida that question on Thursday following his introductory press conference at Fenway Park.

“Probably Kodai Senga,” replied Yoshida, citing the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks right-hander who recently signed a 5-year, $75M deal with the New York Mets. “I think he was the best pitcher in Japan.”

Intrigued by that answer, I followed up by asking, via interpreter Keiichiro Wakabayashi, if he feels that Senga is actually better than his former Orix teammate, 24-year-old Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Read the rest of this entry »