Last week, in his update on pitch mix, my colleague Davy Andrews told a tale as old as time (or at least 2008, when the pitch-tracking era began): fastball usage is on the decline, largely to the benefit of sliders (and sweepers). But this year, there’s a new wrinkle: cutter usage is on the rise, too.

Per Statcast, pitchers are turning to cutters more than they have in any season since 2008. That usage is still at just 7.6%, but the year-over-year jump of 0.7% is the second highest on record. Plus, as Davy and the folks over at Prospects Live put it, a lot of the cutter’s value lies purely in its mere existence; it doesn’t have to be used a ton to be a worthwhile offering. That’s because, out of a pitcher’s hand, the cutter bears resemblance to both a fastball and a slider. When pitchers are struggling to tunnel their heater and slide-piece, the problem might be that there’s simply too large a movement and/or velocity gap between the two offerings — one that a cutter can bridge. As long as the hitter has to think not only about the dissimilar fastball and slider, but also a cutter, it can make a big difference, even if the cutter doesn’t show up all that often.

Along those lines, horizontal movement gaps between fastballs and sliders have only grown in the age of the sweeper. The new “riding slider” also tends to have larger platoon splits than other similar breakers, which is where the cutter can come in handy yet again due to its relative platoon neutrality. Read the rest of this entry »

Intending no disrespect to the Minnesota Twins, a lovely team with plenty of commendable players, but the AL Central is a bit of a joke this year. I guess that’s not too surprising — the Central champion has either had or shared the lowest win total among the American League division winners every year since 2017. But as of this writing, the Twins are just one game over .500, a record that would put them in a battle for fourth place (at best) in four of the five other divisions in baseball; nevertheless Minnesota is securely in first place.

Maybe 30 Rock was right, everything is easier in the Midwest. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Ben’s voice, the arrival of Elly De La Cruz, the similarities between the up-and-coming Reds and Pirates, whether we need a “super-error,” Aaron Judge’s ball- and wall-smashing abilities, the plights of Alek Manoah and Stephen Strasburg, the wonder of Luis Arraez, whether this year’s trade deadline will be dead, follow-ups on the Angels’ catchers, Ben Joyce’s fastball, and Albert Pujols’s employment, how the pitch clock could affect players’ stamina in the second half, and more, plus a Past Blast from 2016 (1:34:00) and a few updates (1:38:25), including thoughts on Jacob deGrom’s diagnosis.

Audio intro: Harold Walker, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Alex Eichler, “Wild Shift”

Link to MLBTR on Elly
Link to Rosenthal/Judge interview
Link to Red Sox/Rays play
Link to Sox errors montage
Link to FARTSLAM post
Link to Knoblauch FARTSLAM
Link to Stark on Judge
Link to story on Judge and the wall
Link to McCray catch video
Link to Judge dachshund video
Link to Judge/Rizzo doxie article
Link to Judge/Rizzo doxie shirt tweet
Link to Judge/Rizzo doxie shirt photo
Link to Manoah gamer
Link to MLBTR on Manoah
Link to Dan S. on Manoah
Link to Halladay’s rebuild
Link to Strasburg article
Link to Baumann on Arraez
Link to B-Ref baserunning page
Link to xWOBA overperformers
Link to xBA overperformers
Link to Arraez’s 2019-22 BA-xBA
Link to Arraez fun fact 1
Link to Arraez fun fact 2
Link to Arraez fun fact 3
Link to Arraez fun fact 4
Link to Young on the deadline
Link to MLB.com on the deadline
Link to team catcher offense
Link to highest-FA% pitchers
Link to BP on Joyce
Link to MLBTR on Pujols
Link to Blum on Pujols
Link to 2016 Past Blast source
Link to MLB committee report
Link to early-2016 Ben article
Link to mid-2016 Ben article
Link to baseball drag values
Link to De La Cruz gamer
Link to Clemens on HFA
Link to Judge fence article
Link to MLBTR on deGrom
Link to deGrom interview video

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Last week at Baseball Prospectus, Rob Mains did some digging into home field advantage and found a very curious effect: home teams did worse in extra inning games than in regular-season games. More specifically, he found that home teams won roughly 54% of games overall but only roughly 52% of extra inning games. There are no two ways about it: that’s strange.

Mains looked into many potential explanations for this discrepancy: team quality, pitcher quality, games that were tied going into the ninth, and various ways of looking at how teams have adapted to the zombie runner era. Today, I thought I’d throw my hat into the ring with a slightly different way of thinking about why home teams are less successful in extras than they are overall.

My immediate thought when I heard this problem was something Ben Lindbergh mentioned on Effectively Wild: home field advantage accrues slowly, and extra innings have fewer innings than regulation. The minimum scoring increment in baseball is one run, naturally. Home field advantage is clearly less than a run per inning; it’s less than a run per game. I like to think of home field advantage as fractionally more plays going the home team’s way. A called strike here, a ball that lands in the gap instead of being caught there, and eventually one of those plays might put an extra run on the board. Read the rest of this entry »

2:01	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to my first chat of June and my last one before embarking upon the annual family trip to Cape Cod

2:02	Jay Jaffe: I am battling my way through back spasms that began when I was warming up my daughter for her last Little League game (of the season for sure, of her “career” possibly)

2:03	Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I took a look at Fernando Tatis Jr’s return from his injuries and suspension https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fernando-tatis-jr-s-uneven-return-from-a-l…

2:03	Jay Jaffe: Tomorrow I’ll have a tribute to Roger Craig, whose greatest contribution to baseball was in teaching the split-fingered fastball to a generation of pitchers, to such an extent that it became “The Pitch of the ’80s”

2:05	Jay Jaffe: he’s got minor league options, time to shuffle off to Buffalo.

Read the rest of this entry »

Joey Votto is nearing the end of a career that should land him in the Hall of Fame. Three months shy of his 40th birthday, the Toronto native has played 16 seasons, all with the Cincinnati Reds, and has a career .297/.412/.513 slash line to go with a 146 wRC+. A six-time All-Star and former NL MVP, he has led the senior circuit in OBP seven times, and in walks six times. Moreover — this amid criticism from the segment of the Cincinnati fanbase who feels he is too passive at the plate — his left-handed stroke has produced 2,093 hits, including 453 doubles and 342 home runs.

Currently on a rehab assignment with Triple-A Louisville, Votto is recovering from rotator cuff and biceps surgery and has yet to play in a big league game this year. He sat down to talk hitting when the Reds visited Fenway Park last week.

———

David Laurila: Is hitting easy, or is it hard?

Joey Votto: “Well, it’s the only thing I’ve done, so I don’t have much to compare it to. I failed my math exam. High school math may be more difficult than major league hitting.” Read the rest of this entry »

We are excited to introduce Quick Leaderboards – an intuitive, mobile-friendly interface for accessing our major league leaderboards. With this new addition, you can now easily explore and find leaders for various statistics through a list-based interface. Our goal is to provide a seamless experience that closely reflects the web version’s robust leaderboards within our app. Our future plans are to further develop leaderboards in the app to closely match the functionality of the web version.

To access the app and enjoy these new features, simply download it here:

Read the rest of this entry »

The Texas Rangers, as you might have heard, are in first place. And that doesn’t even tell the whole story; the Rangers are currently on a 106-win pace, and believe it or not, they’re underperforming their Pythagorean record by four games. And they’ve done a lot of it without the best pitcher in the world.

Jacob deGrom, foremost among the numerous high-profile free agent arms Texas has invested in over recent years, has spent the past month on the IL with elbow inflammation. A slow recovery led the Rangers to move the two-time Cy Young winner to the 60-day IL on Monday. That precludes deGrom from returning to action before the end of June — which may or may not have been in the cards anyway.

But the Rangers have coped just fine without deGrom throughout May thanks in no small part to Dane Dunning, who started the year as a reliever but has matched deGrom’s results. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Washington Nationals. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the third year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but I use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

As far as ballplayers go, Chris Sale and Cal Quantrill don’t have a whole lot in common. Sale is an established star, with the resume and salary to prove it; Quantrill only recently completed his first full season as a starting pitcher. At his peak, Sale was the preeminent strikeout artist in baseball and arguably the best of all time; Quantrill has the lowest K-rate among qualified pitchers this season. Both have gone under the knife for Tommy John surgery, but while Quantrill has been the picture of health ever since, Sale has yet to return to his former glory.

This past Friday, these two dissimilar pitchers found themselves in the same boat when they landed on the injured list with shoulder inflammation, just days before their respective clubs were due to face off in a three-game set. Shoulder inflammation is a vague descriptor, and the prognosis for it can vary widely. Sometimes a pitcher will only miss a couple of starts to let the pain subside, but in a worst-case scenario, shoulder problems can lead to season-ending surgery. There is no reason to believe, as of yet, that either Sale or Quantrill will need to go the surgical route, but it also seems unlikely that either will return as soon as the minimum 15 days are up. Sale will undergo further testing and might not have a proper diagnosis until this weekend. Quantrill, meanwhile, has stopped throwing altogether. Read the rest of this entry »