Welcome to another installment of my weekly look at five things that caught my interest in baseball. As always, I’m indebted to Zach Lowe of ESPN for the idea – his basketball column is a must-read, and his observant eye always inspires me to look a little closer at what I’m watching. This week’s edition features one of the best players in the game, a fourth outfielder, an old ace reinventing himself, a current ace who I’ve unreasonably projected my own mannerisms onto, and a switch-hitter who might not be switch-hitting anymore. Let’s get to it.

1. Ronald Acuña Jr., All-Everything Again
Baseball lost one of its most exciting young stars when Ronald Acuña Jr. tore his ACL in 2021. He was in the middle of breaking out – if you can truly break out from the elevated perch he already occupied – when it all just stopped. He didn’t play again for nearly a year, and 2022 Acuña wasn’t the same when he did return. He just didn’t have that extra gear that made him such a delight to watch when he debuted.

This year, it’s safe to say he’s back. His prodigious bat speed was already starting to reemerge in the second half of last season, but it’s on full display again in 2023. He’s back to being one of the fastest players in baseball, to boot; his 11 homers and 17 steals have me doing downright irresponsible 40/40 math on a nightly basis. He’s first in baseball in Wins Above Replacement among position players, which seems like a pretty good indication that he’s up to his old tricks. Read the rest of this entry »

Bryce Miller has come a long way in a short time. A fourth-round pick by the Seattle Mariners out of Texas A&M just two summers ago, the 24-year-old right-hander came into the current campaign ranked no. 83 on our Top 100 and made his major league debut earlier this month. Moreover, his three starts have been nothing less than stellar. Over 19 innings, Miller has fanned 18 batters while allowing just one run on seven hits and a single walk. His ERA is a minuscule 0.47.

Seattle’s pitching development acumen has played a big role in his success. Miller’s 96-mph four-seam fastball is in the 99th percentile for spin, but it wasn’t until he got to pro ball that he began utilizing it in an optimal manner. He has also advanced the quality of his secondaries and is attacking hitters with a more varied arsenal than he did as an Aggie.

“In college, we had Rapsodo and TrackMan, but I never really dove into that or really even knew what it meant numbers-wise,” explained Miller. “But with Seattle being pretty deep into analytics, that changed when I got here. They really opened my eyes on how my stuff plays and where I need to throw it.” Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve made another small series of updates to the Top 100 Prospects list, which you can find on The Board. For the first time this season, I’ve reshuffled some of the names in the top 15 to 20 spots. Mostly, I’ve done some incremental reordering near the top based on health and current level of play. For example, Mets catcher Francisco Álvarez, who has kept his head above water after being thrust into the primary catching role in Flushing, has hopped over Jordan Walker, who’s struggling to get comfortable on both offense and defense down in Memphis. Neither player’s evaluation has had an overhaul — this is just a better representation of how things line up right now.

The biggest mover in the 60 FV tier is Diamondbacks center fielder Druw Jones, who falls toward the back of that group due to his quad strain and early-season strikeout issues. It could make sense for Jones to rehab in extended spring training or during the early part of the Complex League schedule and hit his way back to Visalia. It sounds like he will be back sooner than Phillies righty Andrew Painter, who remains at the very back of the 60 FV tier while he continues to rehab from a UCL injury.

Changes to the top of the 55 FV tier buoy the hitters who are performing toward the top of that group. The players from no. 14 to 18 overall (Marcelo Mayer, Brooks Lee, Endy Rodríguez, Brett Baty, Josh Jung) now stack ahead of Jordan Lawlar and Diego Cartaya, who are both striking out a lot at Double-A. The other changes within the 55 FV tier come toward the back of that group. Red Sox outfielder Miguel Bleis and Pirates infielder Termarr Johnson slide about 20 spots (the two of them were stacked at no. 19 and 20 overall), while Rays infielder Junior Caminero (who had been floating among the high-variance hitters in the back third of the 50 FV tier for about a year now) moves up from 110 overall. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the sesame-seer Cardinals using a cheeseburger phone to predict home buns (er, runs) by hitters who are dialed in, the varying fortunes of three offseason big spenders (the Mets, Padres, and Rangers) and the stakes of their success, Kumar Rocker’s Tommy John surgery, Dustin May’s flexor strain, the proliferation of ranked prospects, Jackson Holliday, the Orioles’ infield future, and what it takes for tanking to be justified, the need for a Lab League to test the pre-tacked ball, José Abreu’s power outage, Zac Gallen’s bird omen, and more, plus a Past Blast (1:38:22) from 2008 and a few follow-ups.

Audio intro: Liz Panella, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Harold Walker, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Wainwright interview
Link to burger image
Link to burger GIF
Link to home run rituals
Link to Mets celebration article
Link to Mets comeback homers
Link to Machado injury info
Link to FG post on Heim
Link to Rocker Pipeline thread
Link to SAL leaderboard
Link to article on pre-tacked ball
Link to Bird Bath Splash Zone info
Link to Gallen bird video
Link to asterisk-ball display
Link to 2008 Past Blast source
Link to MLB replay wiki
Link to article on David’s catch
Link to David Lewis’s Twitter
Link to David Lewis’s Substack
Link to competitions/drafts sheet
Link to Episode 201 draft
Link to Modesto game box score
Link to Modesto game thread

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Win Probability Added isn’t a great measure of true talent – it’s influenced by too many factors outside a player’s control – but ultimately, the best players tend to have the highest WPAs. Last season, AL MVP Aaron Judge led all position players in WPA, while NL MVP Paul Goldschmidt finished on top in the Senior Circuit. The year before, it was AL MVP Shohei Ohtani who finished first overall and NL MVP Bryce Harper who paced the National League. Even in the early days of the 2023 season, the WPA leaderboard is a veritable who’s who of superstars and MVP contenders. Yordan Alvarez leads all position players with 2.42 WPA, while Ronald Acuña Jr. leads the NL with 2.18. Following closely behind in the AL is Vladimir Guerrero Jr., with 2.12 WPA to his name.

After those three, only one other hitter has a WPA above 2.00 this year, and his name is rarely listed among the likes of Alvarez, Acuña, and Guerrero. In what will be his first full season, 27-year-old Jake Fraley has already notched 2.10 WPA for the Cincinnati Reds. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 2023 Red Sox, the starting rotation was always going to be about who could stay healthy. They entered the year with seven main rotation contenders in the organization: Chris Sale, Corey Kluber, Nick Pivetta, James Paxton, Garrett Whitlock, Brayan Bello, and Tanner Houck. With Paxton back from the injuries that have kept him out for over two years and Whitlock possibly eyeing a late-May return, the Sox could end up with all seven healthy for the first time by the end of the month. This would be great news for Boston, which has been struggling to find the right permutation of pitchers to make up a consistent starting unit. It wasn’t the best news for Pivetta, whom Alex Cora announced on Wednesday night will be moving to the bullpen. If all are still healthy when Whitlock returns, the Sox could have another tough decision on their hands.

Frankly, in terms of production, starting pitching has been a bit of a mess so far for the Red Sox, and Houck has been among those struggling. Through eight starts, he has a 5.48 ERA despite a 4.10 FIP and 3.96 xFIP; he’s allowed five home runs in 42.2 innings after giving up just eight in 146 career innings before this year. There are some indicators that bad luck is at play: his 13.5% HR/FB rate is nearly twice his rate from last season, and his 59.2% LOB% is far lower than his 75.5% rate in 2022. But since 2021, when he was last regularly starting, he’s fallen from the 85th percentile to the 54th in xwOBA/xERA, the 82nd to the 23rd in average exit velocity, and the 87th to the 38th in strikeout percentage.

Aside from his struggles in the rotation, Houck’s pedigree as a reliever makes him a candidate to be bumped to the bullpen. (The same could be said of Whitlock, but the front office gave him the nod to start over Houck during the offseason.) After his final start of last year on May 8, Houck settled into a relief role quite nicely, first in a multi-inning capacity and then taking over the closer role from mid-June until he was shut down with a back injury late in the summer. In those 25 appearances, he allowed just six earned runs, posting a 1.49 ERA, 3.17 FIP, and 3.39 FIP. This is the run that might tempt Cora and his staff to slot him back into a relief role, despite Houck’s own wishes. Read the rest of this entry »

12:02

Dan Szymborski: ITS A CHAT!

12:04

Dan Szymborski: It’s a bit tricky – I don’t generally like skipping catchers too aggressively, but they can’t play both him and Endy Rodriguez.

12:05

Dan Szymborski: And it’s a little awkward to stick him in a non-catcher position in the majors

12:05

Dan Szymborski: Unless the Pirates have the guts to bench Santana

Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone feel up for a rousing game of “Guess the Player from the Anonymized Stat Line?” I usually don’t like this game; it was a fun way to kill time on Twitter 10 years ago, but it feels kind of hacky anymore. But this one’s a real doozy, a fun enough set of anonymized stat lines that I’m willing to set aside my distaste and dive right in.

Here are three players from the NL West. They are all in the top five in the majors in walk rate among qualified hitters. They play for different teams, and for the most part they play different positions. Nevertheless, all three are within a couple tenths of a run of each other in terms of baserunning and defensive value — the bat is the important thing:

Read the rest of this entry »

Framber Valdez had a bad start on Monday. Over just four innings of work, he allowed four runs, all earned, thanks to a seven-hit barrage and two walks. Hey, that’s pitching. Everyone has bad games – or sometimes the hitters have good games. Eight of the 10 best starters in baseball this year, as measured by WAR, have already had a game where they allowed four or more runs. That’s also true for 17 of the top 20. We’re not that far into the season, but everyone has blowups from time to time.

That’s true… for everyone other than Valdez. He’s a machine. This is only the sixth start he’s made since the beginning of the 2020 season that didn’t last at least five innings, and he’s made 72 starts in that time. He set an all-time single season record with 25 straight quality starts (at least six innings pitched, no more than three earned runs) last year. He doesn’t get roughed up early and depart. He doesn’t allow a pile of runs. He’s on a truly remarkable tear, and I wanted to put some context around it.

To come up with a fair scale, I leaned on game score, a statistic created by Bill James and updated by Tom Tango that tries to distill each start into a single number. Fifty is average. Forty is replacement level. Seventy means a great game, and 90 a truly transcendent one. It’s a blunt tool, but it’s a useful way to explain how consistent Valdez has become. Read the rest of this entry »

Shohei Ohtani had a weird night in Baltimore on Monday, at times spectacular and at times unsettling. As a hitter, he went 4-for-5 with a huge three-run homer and three runs scored in the Angels’ 9-5 win. As a pitcher, he matched a career high by serving up three homers and allowing five runs in seven innings, continuing a string of shaky outings. One can’t blame the guy for having some mixed emotions.

Ohtani the pitcher was not at his best, yielding a two-run homer to Adam Frazier in the second inning, erasing a 1-0 lead. He walked Jorge Mateo to lead off the second inning, then allowed a two-run homer to Anthony Santander, costing him a 3-2 lead. By the time he got around to giving up his third homer of the night, he at least had a 9-4 lead and the bases empty in the fifth inning when Cedric Mullins took him over the wall; he would retire seven of the eight batters he faced after that to end his night on the mound. Read the rest of this entry »