My name is Michael Baumann, and I’m the newest full-time member of the FanGraphs staff. If the name rings a bell, it’s probably because you remember the losing pitcher in the first game of Monday’s Orioles-Blue Jays doubleheader. Unfortunately that’s a different, much taller Mike Baumann. (Though I’ve met Big Mike, and he seems like a nice guy. What a fastball he’s got.)
From 2016 until last week, I was a staff writer at The Ringer, where for six years I hosted The Ringer MLB Show. Before that, I worked at D1Baseball, Baseball Prospectus, and Grantland. Over that time I’ve appeared periodically on both FanGraphs Audio and Effectively Wild; if you remember some joker with a Philly accent explaining to Ben how hockey works or ranting at Meg about the lockout, that was probably me. I’m an Aries, and in my free time I enjoy cooking, watching TikToks about seals, and reading nonfiction books about people doing ludicrously dangerous thingsin the early 20th century. Read the rest of this entry »
Aaron Judge is doing something that most baseball fans, myself included, haven’t seen in their lifetime: He’s making a run at the American League home run record. Even if you don’t do some steroid-related asterisking of Barry Bonds et al., passing Babe Ruth and Roger Maris is a heck of an accomplishment; if you want to stick your fingers in your ears and ignore the late 1990s and early 2000s, it only makes Judge’s chase more consequential. Truly, this is an exciting time to follow baseball.
Normally, I’m the writer who pours cold water on everyone’s fun during chases like this. “Sure, he’s doing well now,” I’d say, “but if you look at his career numbers, he’s on pace to fall short.” Well for once, that’s not true! If you look at our Depth Charts projections, our median expectation for Judge gives him a 62-homer season.
That’s a boring and dry number, but in baseball statistics nerd land, it’s rare and exceptional. Projecting someone to break a record is obviously rare – records usually get broken by phenomenal performances, not by median outcomes. In celebration of that, I thought I’d layer on a bit more analytical rigor and give people an idea of not just if, but when Judge might hit home runs number 60, 61, or 62.
I wanted an easy-to-understand process, so I kept it simple. I took the Yankees’ remaining schedule, then noted each remaining team’s HR/9+ (from our suite of Plus Stats), the venue’s righty home run park factor (from Statcast’s new park factors), and whether I think Judge will play that day. I also used our projections to get what we consider to be Judge’s current true home-run-per-plate-appearance level (it’s 7.14%, for those of you keeping score at home). Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a baseball (and softball) toilet flapper, discuss (13:32) the continued excellence of Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani (and the benefits of celebrating both instead of elevating one over the other), follow up on the Angels’ shutouts, Mike Trout’s post-injury rebound, the MLBPA’s effort to unionize minor leaguers (38:09), players whose homer totals matched their uniform numbers (46:25), César Hernández’s homers (47:38), Dallas Keuchel’s disastrous denouement (51:14), the Frontier League’s record-setting Empire State Greys (57:38), the variability of check-swing strike call rates (1:00:27), Yankee Stadium’s noise level (1:04:16), and a playoff-seeding quirk’s potential for tanking (1:13:05), followed by additional discussion on Zac Gallen’s scoreless streak (1:22:01) and Joe Maddon’s thoughts on analytics and managing (1:26:35), plus a Past Blast from 1899 (1:46:42) and a few closing thoughts (1:50:30).
The Arizona Diamondbacks don’t generate a lot of national headlines these days, but the team’s ace, Zac Gallen, is trying his best to change that. Since a Luke Maile double knocked him out of a game against the Guardians on August 2, Gallen has racked up six consecutive scoreless games, covering 41 1/3 innings. Gallen’s run has gone on long enough to have historical significance: He currently ranks 17th in baseball history, at least the history during which usable game logs exist (since around the start of the 20th century). He’s two outs from catching Brandon Webb’s 2007 streak to set a new Diamondbacks franchise record, and another 3 2/3 innings will slot him into the top 10, tying his with the streaks of Cy Young, Sal Maglie, and Doc White.
Naturally, most streaks of this nature involve a player playing well above their established level of ability, and Gallen is no exception. But every pitcher with a scoreless innings streak this long was at least solid, with nary an incompetent journeyman in sight. Gallen is again no exception and was having a solid season even before the streak started. Entering play on August 2, he had an ERA of 3.24 and a FIP of 3.69 in 19 starts, above-average numbers, though not good enough to force his way into the Cy Young conversation. (Earlier today, Baseball Prospectus‘ Michael Ajeto published a deeper examination of some of the changes Gallen has made during the scoreless streak that is worth a read.) Read the rest of this entry »
With only a month left in the season, the tiers in these power rankings have mostly solidified. There are plenty of interesting storylines to follow as the season winds down, though, with plenty of playoff positions still up in the air.
A reminder for how these rankings are calculated: first, we take the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), and their starting rotation and bullpen (a 50/50 blend of FIP- and RA9-, weighted by IP share) — and combine them to create an overall team quality metric. New for this year, I’ve opted to include defense as a component, though it’s weighted less heavily than offense and pitching. Some element of team defense is captured by RA9-, but now that FanGraphs has Statcast’s OAA/RAA available on our leaderboards, I’ve chosen to include that as the defensive component for each team. 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.
Note: All stats are through Sunday, September 4.
Tier 1 – The Best of the Best
Team
Record
“Luck”
wRC+
SP-
RP-
RAA
Team Quality
Playoff Odds
Dodgers
92-41
-4
122
80
80
4
180
100.0%
Astros
86-48
0
112
84
80
19
181
100.0%
Last week, the Dodgers lost their first series since dropping two of three to the Nationals in late July. They also lost multiple games in a row — a losing streak of three! — for the first time since that series against Washington. And with their loss to the Giants on Monday night, the Dodgers have now lost four times in a six-game span. It’s not all bad news in Los Angeles; Clayton Kershaw returned from the IL last week, though Tony Gonsolin replaced him on the sidelines with a forearm strain. Still, they’re on pace to break their franchise win record and are within spitting distance of topping the major league record set by the Mariners in 2001.
The Astros don’t need much else to go right for them this year — they’re already comfortably the top seed in the American League and the favorite to make another World Series appearance out of the Junior Circuit — but they got a nice boost anyway from their top pitching prospect, Hunter Brown, who made his major league debut on Monday night and held the Rangers scoreless over six innings. With Justin Verlander still sidelined with a minor calf injury, Brown should get an opportunity to show what he’s made of as the Astros ease into the playoffs. Read the rest of this entry »
With Justin Verlander landing on the injured list due to a mild right calf injury, the AL Cy Young race has taken a turn. On Saturday, Dylan Cease did his best to capitalize on the opportunity. Facing the Twins in Chicago, the 26-year-old White Sox righty came within one out of throwing the season’s fourth no-hitter, losing it only when Luis Arraez singled with two outs in the ninth.
Cease had twice taken no-hit bids into the sixth inning this year, on April 27 against the Royals and June 21 against the Blue Jays, and had made a total of three appearances in which he allowed just one hit and no runs (May 2 against the Angels, the aforementioned June 21 start, and July 17 against the Twins). He was even better than all of those on Saturday, and particularly efficient. He breezed through the first five frames in just 50 pitches, with a leadoff walk to Jake Cave in the third inning not just the only blemish, but also the only time to that point that he even went to a three-ball count. At the same time, he didn’t record his first strikeout until Gio Urshela fanned on a slider to end the fifth.
Cease labored a bit in the sixth, throwing 21 pitches and issuing a two-out walk to Gilberto Celestino, the second and last time he’d go to a three-ball count all night. But he escaped that by catching Arraez looking at a high curveball on a generous call:
Cease needed just 20 pitches to get through the seventh and eighth combined, running his total to 91. He’d done a great job of pitching efficiently and maintaining his velocity:
Before he could take the mound in the ninth, however, Cease had to wait out a six-run rally. The White Sox, already leading 7–0, pounced on position player Nick Gordon via a pair of walks, three singles, and a grand slam by Elvis Andrus to run the score to 13–0. Fortunately, all of that took only about 15 minutes due to Gordon’s limited repertoire (Statcast credits him with throwing 30 fastballs varying in speed from 49.2 mph to 86 mph). Despite the delay, Cease made quick work of the first two Twins, striking out Caleb Hamilton on four pitches and getting Celestino to hit a first-pitch fly out.
Up came Arraez, the AL leader in batting average at that point (.318). After taking a low slider for ball one and fouling off a 97-mph fastball for strike one, he hit a slider in the middle of the zone 100.7 mph into the right-center field gap — no man’s land, a clean single. Cease remained composed enough to strike out Kyle Garlick to complete the one-hit shutout, but it still constituted a tough near-miss.
If not for Arraez’s single, Cease would have joined the Angels’ Reid Detmers, who blanked the Rays on May 10, as the only pitchers to throw complete-game no-hitters this season. Additionally, a quintet of Mets led by Tylor Megill threw a combined no-hitter against the Phillies on April 29, and likewise for a trio of Astros led by Cristian Javier against the Yankees on June 25.
Instead, Cease became the fourth pitcher to have a no-hitter broken up in the ninth this season, after the Cardinals’ Miles Mikolas (with two outs on June 14 against the Pirates), the Dodgers’ Tyler Anderson (with one out on June 15 against the Angels) and the Rays’ Drew Rasmussen (with no outs against the Orioles on August 14), who actually had a perfect game in progress before his bid ended. Anderson’s effort was retroactively obscured by a reversal of a seventh-inning ruling, where the pitcher fielded a dribbler down the first base line and made a poor throw; initially ruled a two-base error, it was changed to a single and an error. Read the rest of this entry »
The top prospect in the Los Angeles Dodgers system lost one of his baseball “brothers” a month ago. Not literally — Alex De Jesus is alive and well — but rather by dint of a trade-deadline deal. A 20-year-old infielder who’d been playing with the High-A Great Lakes Loons, De Jesus went to the Toronto Blue Jays organization, along with Mitch White, in exchange for Moises Brito and Nick Frasso.
Shortly after the trade, I asked Diego Cartaya what it’s like to have a teammate who is also a close friend leave the organization.
“It’s not easy, but I’m kind of happy for him,” replied Cartaya, who along with being L.A.’s top prospect is No. 31 in our MLB prospect rankings. “He’s going to get a better opportunity with Toronto, so we’re pretty excited for him. But it’s hard. As teammates, we spend more time together than we do with our families. He’s just like my brother.”
Cartaya’s real family is in Venezuela, and it was his father who initially taught him how to hit. The tutoring he’s received since entering pro ball at age 16 has resulted in occasional tweaks, both to his stance and his swing. Cartaya told me that he used to be “more of a big launch-angle guy,” but now has a flatter swing. Upon hearing that, I noted that the home run I’d seen him hit the previous night was more of a line drive than a moonshot. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and listener/Patreon supporter Nathan Valentine banter about Nathan’s dual team fandom, then answer listener emails (9:58) about Aaron Judge’s lead over the next-most-prolific HR hitter, handing out awards for all of MLB rather than each league, Jhoan Duran and defining an “off-speed” pitch, what constitutes actually visiting a stadium, and whether certain players might lose some motivation after signing a long-term extension, plus “How can you not be pedantic about baseball?” questions (54:11) about saying “after the final out,” “playing DH,” and “hitting safely,” Stat Blasts (1:08:20) about David Peterson and pitcher three-true-outcome outings, Ross Stripling and the fewest pitches to get through the first time through the order, Yadier Molina and seasons where a player had a higher age than wRC+, players with the highest matching HR totals and jersey numbers, and two-out-batting records, and a Past Blast (1:26:28) from 1898.
With Tuesday night’s 4–3 win over the Mets at Citi Field, the Dodgers notched their 90th victory of the season, the second time in the last seven years that the team reached 90 wins before the end of August. Even with a subsequent pair of losses on Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon, the Dodgers once again have a shot not just at 100 wins (a plateau they’ve reached four times in six full seasons under manager Dave Roberts) or even 106 (a franchise record set in 2019 and matched last year), but also at the 2001 Mariners’ expansion-era record of 116 wins, though admittedly their odds for that one grew longer this week.
The Dodgers enter Friday with an 18-game lead over the Padres in the NL West and a magic number of 14 (and can quickly shrink the latter with their series in San Diego this weekend). Despite their series loss in New York, they’re still seven games ahead of the Mets (84–48) in the race for the NL’s best record and thus the top seed in the expanded postseason. Our Playoff Odds project them to finish with 109 wins, which would be the majors’ highest total since the aforementioned Mariners. Via our Odds distribution, they have a 62.1% chance of winning at least 109, though after their back-to-back losses, their chances of winning 116 or more games are down to 1.1%.
Earlier this year, it was the Yankees who were on pace to top 116 wins, but their 13–13 July snuffed that dream out, and a 10–18 August has put even a 100-win season in doubt. The Dodgers, who briefly slipped into second place in the NL West on June 17, when they were 39–24, had a lead of just 1.5 games over the Padres as recently as June 29. They’ve gone 45–12 (.789) since that date, with separate winning streaks of seven, eight, and 12 games. Read the rest of this entry »
I, for one, am not a fan of the breakout of the “sweeper” in recent years. It’s not because I don’t enjoy frisbee-ish pitches that seem to pull out a map, ask for directions, and take a sharp turn on their way from the mound to home. A big part of my job is making GIFs of fun pitches, so I obviously love that part. Personally, I just don’t like the annoyance involved in classifying them.
To give you an example, I decided to do some research on sweeping sliders, or whirlies if you’re into weird nomenclature. In fact, that’s what this article is about. On my way to doing so, however, I had to spend some time getting obnoxiously technical. First, I downloaded all the sliders that right-handed pitchers have thrown this year. I separated them by movement profile, then started asking questions.
I asked a few people, “Does this scatter plot look like it separates out sweepers and non-sweepers to you?” It kind of did, and it also kind of didn’t. Are pitches that have 30% more horizontal break than vertical break sweepers? What about 50%? What about pitches that break a foot horizontally but move six inches downward? I sent several variations of that chart trying to nail it down, but nothing felt quite right – I’ll spare you having to look at the mess I ended up with. Read the rest of this entry »
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