On Thursday, the University of Alabama abruptly fired head baseball coach Brad Bohannon for his involvement in a pair of suspicious bets involving the Crimson Tide’s game against LSU last Friday. That night, a bettor at the sportsbook at Great American Ball Park — home of the Reds — placed two suspiciously large bets on LSU to win, large enough to draw the attention of U.S. Integrity, the company retained by the Ohio Casino Control Commission and the Southeastern Conference to monitor sports wagering in the state’s casinos.

On Monday, the OCCC instructed Ohio bookmakers to take Crimson Tide games off the board. Regulators in other states followed suit, as have several major online sportsbooks. And in the wake of Bohannon’s firing three days later, ESPN reporter David Purdum revealed that surveillance cameras within the sportsbook had recorded the suspicious bettor communicating with Bohannon at the time he was placing the bets in question. Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Chapman has long been a sabermetric darling, but it was largely on the basis of combining elite defense at the hot corner with merely above-average offense. While he’s always hit the ball hard, his rather low BABIPs and middling contact skills have been a ceiling on his production at the plate. With his glove in decline and entering his age-30 season, it was an open question as to how lucrative he would find free agency at the end of the season. But Chapman’s 2023 season has been an offensive tour de force, with a seasonal line of .364/.449/.636, a 202 wRC+ and 2.0 WAR as of Thursday morning. The Blue Jays have gotten better than a .700 OPS at only three positions this season (first base, third base, shortstop), and Chapman’s sterling performance is one of the main reasons the offense has still been able to rank sixth in the American League in runs scored.

Just to get it out of the way: Chapman’s not going to hit .364 for the 2023 season. Looking at the zBABIP that ZiPS calculates for him, it thinks his BABIP should be more like .300 based on how he’s hit, not the current .461 figure. But what does look like it’s here to stay is the level of power he’s displayed; if he were a computer program, David Lightman would have skipped Global Thermonuclear War and played Matt Chapman instead. An average exit velocity of 95.6 mph and a hard-hit rate of 66.7% are in ultra-elite territory, and small sample sizes for data like these are relatively meaningful. Chapman’s barrel percentage so far has approached a ludicrous 30%, a number nobody’s been able to touch in a full season (Aaron Judge at 26.2% in 2022 is the only player so far to beat 25%). Read the rest of this entry »

Happy Cinco de Mayo, and welcome to another edition of five things I liked or didn’t like in baseball this week. As I’ll surely note until the heat death of the universe, I got the idea for this column from Zach Lowe, who writes my favorite basketball column with the same conceit. This week’s edition has a little bit of everything.

1. Tampa Bay’s Perpetual Green Light

I’m going to show you the start of a play:

Now, here’s the deal: without the benefit of an error, the runner on third scored on this play. The runner on first advanced safely to second. How? The power of aggression and a heaping helping of Randy Arozarena realizing no one is covering second base, that’s how:

Poor Lucas Giolito saw it all, but like Cassandra, no one listened to him. The last-second point towards home plate is heartbreakingly pointless. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about more examples of players whose names describe what they do (like Colin Holderman), the return of Justin Verlander, Juan Soto’s overdue hot streak, Keynan Middleton calling out Carlos Correa, the difference between Craig Kimbrel’s leverage and results, and how success lowers the boo threshold, then (16:22) react to excerpts from Ben’s conversation with an MLB exec about rules changes and strikeouts. After that (37:38), they bring on top-tier Patreon supporter Mack Mashburn to discuss his background as a podcaster listener and baseball fan and answer listener emails about the pitch clock and suspense, the next step for home run celebrations, narrowing fair territory at high elevations, the competitive advantage of cloud seeding, whether relievers all long to be starters, whether Baseball Zen isn’t zen enough, MLB Gameday’s recent redesign, why lefties tend to throw slower than righties, the causes of increasing injury rates, the effects of improved pitching machines, a wizard who makes players shorter every time they get hits or strikeouts, and Aristides Aquino’s DRS, plus a Past Blast from 2003 (1:58:40) and follow-ups (2:01:56).

Audio intro: Xavier LeBlanc, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial: Beatwriter, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Justin Peters, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Holderman immaculate inning
Link to Wynn headline 1
Link to Wynn headline 2
Link to Wynn headline 3
Link to Webb comments
Link to Verlander gamer
Link to Middleton comments
Link to low-WPA relievers
Link to high-leverage relievers
Link to Muncy walk-off
Link to Cardinals booing
Link to Ben on rules and strikeouts
Link to baseball drag measurements
Link to Sam on the pitch clock
Link to Sheehan on the pitch clock
Link to Emma on HR celebrations
Link to info on NPB HR celebrations
Link to Grant on “beast mode”
Link to Franco’s ball toss
Link to Sam on unwritten rules
Link to foul lines article
Link to more foul lines info
Link to foul lines column
Link to foul lines verdict
Link to Tal’s Hill story
Link to cloud seeding wiki
Link to McClellan EW interview
Link to “failed starters” Stat Blast
Link to Baumann on Fulmer
Link to Baseball Zen videos
Link to Baseball Zen article
Link to Gameday redesign info
Link to Ben on lefty velo
Link to FG on lefty velo
Link to average LHP velo
Link to average RHP velo
Link to Ben on pitching machines
Link to leg-lengthening story
Link to more on leg lengthening
Link to listener emails database
Link to It’s Christmastown
Link to 2022 RF DRS leaders
Link to Aquino catch 1
Link to Aquino catch 2
Link to Aquino catch 3
Link to Aquino catch 4
Link to 2003 Past Blast source
Link to David Lewis’s Twitter
Link to David Lewis’s Substack
Link to Peacock broadcast info
Link to announced attendance article
Link to pitch counts Stat Blast
Link to Turner’s quote
Link to Speier tweet
Link to Zimmer’s velo column
Link to Rickey’s ’51 Williams report
Link to 1886 “velo” use
Link to ESPN on Alabama betting
Link to The Athletic on Alabama betting
Link to Baumann on Alabama betting

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The Cubs signed Cody Bellinger to a one-year deal in December, hoping that the combination of improved health and a change of scenery could help the slugger rebound from a pair of dismal seasons in the wake of injuries to both his left leg and right shoulder. Though the 27-year-old center fielder started the season slowly, he’s since heated up and just completed his most productive calendar month since his MVP-winning 2019 season. He may not beall the way back to his award-winning form, but he’s in a much better place that he was in his final years with the Dodgers.

Though he went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts in Wednesday’s 2–1 loss to the Nationals, Bellinger is hitting .291/.364/.573 with seven homers and a 149 wRC+. He finished April with a 158 wRC+, his highest for any month in the past five seasons:

You’ll note the token representation of months from the 2020–22 seasons there (to be fair there were only two from 2020 due to the pandemic); I went to 11 on the list above just to include the last of those, as they’re the only ones in which Bellinger even hit at a league average clip. On the flipside, within the same span he had five months with at least 59 PA and a 72 wRC+ or worse, and three ranging from 83–94 in terms of wRC+. At his worst, he hit an unfathomable .118/.186/.215 for an 11 wRC+ in 102 PA in July 2021. Read the rest of this entry »

Things aren’t going well in Oakland at the moment. Ownership, after years of quiet quitting, is up and moving the team. (Or maybe not, if owner John Fisher and his confederates turn out to be worse at lobbying than they are at pest control.) That leaves a last-place club to play out the string in front of “SELL THE TEAM” banners, probably for multiple years to come. The most obvious simile for this situation would be something along the lines of “like the waning days of a loveless marriage,” but that would be an insult to loveless marriages.

Still, a few dozen unfortunates are obliged to put on the storied green and gold colors of the Athletics and perform baseball six days a week. And they’re trying, albeit not too successfully, to win. It could happen! All the time we see a team made up mostly of youngsters, or with a payroll out of the mid-90s, get hit by lightning and make a run at the playoffs. Frequently that has even been the A’s in recent years.

Unfortunately, this year’s Athletics probably needed five or six different lightning strikes to turn their 100-loss roster into a contender. One break the A’s needed — following on the team’s biggest offseason move — involved outfielder Esteury Ruiz. Read the rest of this entry »

The Rays’ success has not exactly flown under the radar, what with a record-tying 13-game win streak to begin the season, the franchise’s longest winning streak in its 26-year history. Over the course of April, they rattled off another six-game winning streak and extended their opening home win streak to a modern major league-record 14. After taking the first two games of a home series against the unexpectedly dangerous Pirates, Tampa has found itself four games ahead of baseball’s next-best team at 25–6 — an incredible .806 winning percentage — along with far and away the league’s best run differential at +113, good for a margin of +3.6 runs per game. And the Rays are playing with the playful swagger of a team that knows just how good it is.

For a little context on what the Rays have achieved so far: their 23 wins through April were two more than any other team in the Modern Era (since 1901) before May — an accolade helped by modern scheduling, but impressive nonetheless. On a percentage basis, their .793 clip was the highest pre-May winning percentage since the 2001 Mariners went 20–5 (.800) to kick off their record-setting 116-win campaign. In the Modern Era, just five teams have managed higher winning percentages in March and April in at least 20 games. Read the rest of this entry »

In the beginning, there was nothing. Wait, no, that’s not right — in the beginning, there was Tommy Pham. Yeah, now we’re talking. In the beginning there was Tommy Pham. Then John Mozeliak said, “Let there be a trade,” and Pham decamped for Tampa Bay, San Diego, Cincinnati, Boston, and eventually New York. In exchange, the Cardinals got a sampler platter of minor prospects: Justin Williams, Roel Ramírez, and Génesis Cabrera.

Williams and Ramírez are long gone from the St. Louis organization, but Cabrera is still going strong. That might have oversold it coming into the year — in 157.1 innings across 142 games, Cabrera had compiled a 3.95 ERA, 4.32 FIP, and 0.4 fWAR. That’s hardly an imposing line, but the Cardinals hardly had an imposing bullpen, so he fit solidly into the middle of that group heading into 2023.

He’s only pitched 11 times in 2023, but those 11 times have been revelatory. Nineteen of the 45 opponents he’s faced have struck out. Only three have walked. That’s no fluke, either; he’s so deceptive and so hard to square up that he’s recorded more called or swinging strikes than he has balls this year, by a count of 68 to 60.

That’s a huge divergence from Cabrera’s earlier career, when he struggled with both his command and with missing bats. From 2019 to 2022, he racked up 260 more called balls than called and swinging strikes. You can think of that gap as a crude measure of how much a pitcher can attack the zone or entice hitters to leave the zone without giving up too much contact. If you simply pound the strike zone with so-so stuff, you won’t get many called or swinging strikes. If you nibble ineffectually, you’ll run up a huge tally of called balls.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about players being paid for on-field, in-game interviews, pitcher injuries and pitcher call-ups, how low Oakland’s attendance could go (and whether the team might bungle its move to Las Vegas), the NL West race, the AL East’s strength compared to the AL Central’s, which team invented the in-dugout home run ritual, whether the Angels should sign Gary Sánchez, Bryce Harper’s return, the Marlins’ record in one-run games, Colin Holderman and nominative determinism, and more, plus a Past Blast (1:18:13) from 2002.

Audio intro: Ian Phillips, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: The Shirey Brothers, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to report about player payments
Link to Emma on in-game interviews
Link to Ben on in-game interviews
Link to article on Rockies trying
Link to FG’s prospect rankings
Link to Millers game
Link to lowest 2023 attendance
Link to lowest 2022 attendance
Link to lowest 1990-2019 attendance
Link to ’97 White Sox game story
Link to Passan’s A’s tweet
Link to 2014 Dodgers bubbles story
Link to 2013 A’s tunnel story
Link to 2023 HR celebrations
Link to Twins HR celebration
Link to Sam on WS dogpiles
Link to Sam on walk-off celebrations
Link to Mariners trident story
Link to article on AL East strength
Link to depth charts standings
Link to playoff odds
Link to Jay Jaffe on the Yankees
Link to Yankees IL tweet
Link to combined WAR leaderboard
Link to MLBTR on Sánchez
Link to catcher depth charts
Link to Sánchez’s Savant page
Link to article on Sánchez’s defense
Link to Angels coaches tweet
Link to Ben C. on Harper
Link to BaseRuns records
Link to Holderman’s game log
Link to 2002 Past Blast source
Link to 2002 source, cont’d.
Link to David Lewis’s Twitter
Link to David Lewis’s Substack

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Alex Verdugo has been one of the hottest hitters in baseball. Over his last four games, the Boston Red Sox outfielder is 8-for-19 with four doubles and a pair of home runs, and two of his hits have been of the walk-off variety. Moreover, he’s swung a productive bat all season. Verdugo’s left-handed stroke has produced a .317/.381/.524 slash line and five long balls in 139 plate appearances. His wRC+ is a healthy 148.

The 26-year-old Tucson native has slashed .290/.346/.433 in his three-plus years wearing a Red Sox uniform, and to say that his performance has attracted a fair amount of scrutiny would be an understatement. That’s understandable. In February 2020, Boston acquired Verdugo, along with Connor Wong and Jeter Downs, in exchange for Mookie Betts and David Price.

Verdugo discussed his evolution as a hitter, which has included the realization that trying to hammer home runs is detrimental to his success, prior to Tuesday’s game at Fenway Park.

———

David Laurila: This is your 10th professional season. Comparing now to then, how similar or different are you as a hitter?

Alex Verdugo: “I think I have the same mindset of what I’m trying to do. I’ve always been a guy that likes to hit the fastball to left and then pull the offspeed pitches. What’s changed throughout the years is how I deviate from my game plan. Back in the minors, back in the first couple of years, and even last year… I know my strengths, but I would be like, ‘You know what? I’m going to try to hit for power. I’m going to try to lift this. I’m going to try to pull a heater.’ Read the rest of this entry »