The decision to change the closer is one of the most awkward a manager will face. Any other combination of bullpen arms can be shuffled around without most fans taking notice, but the save statistic and the entrance music make a closer highly conspicuous. Screw around with that guy, and it becomes a news story.

The Braves invested heavily in that position this winter, lavishing $16 million on 34-year-old Kenley Jansen. I’ll go to my grave believing this signing was at least partially about poaching a legendary Dodger the day after L.A. inked Freddie Freeman — you don’t want to go stag to prom when your ex has a date — but closers like Jansen don’t come along every day. The man pitched in three All-Star games and three World Series and entered the season with 350 career saves, more than Rollie Fingers, Robb Nen, or Bruce Sutter. Jansen had encountered some turbulence in the late 2010s and wasn’t putting up ERAs in the 1.00s anymore, but armed with a new sinker and slider, he’s still quite an effective closer.

Or, more accurately, he has been. In his past seven appearances dating back to August 27, Jansen has blown three saves in seven attempts, allowing 12 baserunners and three home runs in just 5.2 innings. On Sunday, the Braves launched a stirring five-run rally in the ninth to pull ahead of the Mariners, perhaps the only other team in all of baseball as hot as Atlanta. Jansen promptly surrendered two home runs and the lead. The second came on a 93-mph sinker right where Eugenio Suárez could 3-iron it into the Seattle bullpen. I had to look up what that pitch was, because the TV view bore little evidence of sink or cut.

MARINERS WALK IT OFF!! pic.twitter.com/ou5VYloSdX

— ROOT SPORTS™ | NW (@ROOTSPORTS_NW) September 11, 2022

Not a great way to lose a game, in short. And now Brian Snitker is getting questions about his star closer. So what should he do? Read the rest of this entry »

The Texas Rangers made meaningful changes this summer when they parted ways with manager Chris Woodward — Tony Beasley is currently serving in an interim capacity — and subsequently replaced Jon Daniels with Chris Young as their top front office decision-maker. But a move that has been every bit as impactful was made 10 months ago. Last November — shortly before Baseball America named him their MLB Coach of the Year — Donnie Ecker was hired away from the San Francisco Giants and given the title of Bench Coach/Offensive Coordinator.

Ecker’s reputation as a tech-and-data-savvy hitting nerd is well-earned. Prior to the two seasons he spent as Gabe Kapler’s hitting coach in San Francisco, the 36-year-old Los Altos, California native built his bona fides as an assistant hitting coach with the Cincinnati Reds, and before that as a minor-league hitting instructor in the St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Angels organizations.

Ecker, who is well-educated in biomechanics and analytics, discussed some of the philosophies and practices he brought with him to Texas when the Rangers visited Fenway Park earlier this month.

———

David Laurila: You spend a lot of time at the ballpark, often arriving by 9 AM for a seven o’clock game. What does your day typically look like?

Donnie Ecker: “It starts with understanding where all of our people are at, zooming in on our hitters first and looking at the things that we find valuable. How is their performance aligning with our North Stars and peripherals? As a department, we want to be on top of that day-to-day. Most times, that’s a process of going deep and bringing up simple and actionable items to the surface. Everything is from the inside out, leading to what we want our conversations and training to look and feel like that day for that player. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the old-and-improved Albert Pujols, Mike Trout’s homer streak, the White Sox winning, Elvis Andrus making the A’s pay, James Karinchak’s inconclusive hair inspection, the Dodgers prematurely celebrating a clinching (and the concept of clinch creep), the puzzle of Cody Bellinger, and the retrospective puzzle of Edwin Díaz’s 2019, plus followups (53:48) on Carlos Correa, bigger bases, and shifting, listener emails (1:02:17) about bigger baseballs and/or bats, and a Past Blast (1:18:53) from 1902.

Audio intro: David Bowie, “Saviour Machine”
Audio outro: Fiona Apple, “Extraordinary Machine”

Link to hitting leaders since 8/10
Link to Stathead on big platoon splits
Link to story on Pujols and 697
Link to Pujols’ rolling wRC+
Link to Reddit thread on Pujols homers
Link to Jay Jaffe on Trout
Link to Trout HR streak story
Link to story on Andrus vs. A’s
Link to team SS wRC+ since 8/17
Link to TLR story
Link to Ben Clemens on Karinchak
Link to Rob Arthur on spin
Link to story on Dodgers mistake
Link to Reddit thread on Dodgers clinch
Link to Poscast episode on clinching
Link to Dan S. on Bellinger
Link to Eric Stephen tweet
Link to 2019 EW episode on Díaz
Link to Petriello’s shifting thread
Link to Rob Arthur on shifting
Link to EW listener emails database
Link to story about old bat sizes
Link to Eno Sarris on bats
Link to 1902 story source
Link to Hoy vs. Taylor SABR story
Link to Hoy’s SABR bio
Link to info on Hoy’s nickname
Link to Taylor’s SABR bio
Link to Jacob Pomrenke’s website
Link to Jacob Pomrenke on Twitter

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Back in April, 23 of our writers and contributors made predictions about the 2022 season. When guessing who would be the AL Rookie of the Year, nine different players were named, with Bobby Witt Jr. and Julio Rodríguez leading the pack. Not found among those nine names was the starting shortstop for the Astros, a rookie faced with the difficult task of replacing incumbent Carlos Correa, who had gone to the Twins. Jeremy Peña wasn’t pegged as a ROY frontrunner, but for much of the early season, he looked like a sudden superstar. However, he’s struggled offensively in recent months, raising some questions about whether the real Peña is the player with the .878 OPS through mid-May, the one with a .586 OPS since the All-Star Game, or somewhere in the middle.

Back in May, Witt, the preseason favorite, wasn’t even in the top 15; Rodríguez only put up a .544 OPS over April; and Adley Rutschman was days away from even debuting in the majors. While Peña wasn’t making Astros fans actually forget about Correa, he certainly did his best to alleviate any lingering worries about their former franchise building block heading to the AL Central. But since May 17, he has seen his control over the AL leaderboard disappear:

That’s not to say that Peña hasn’t continued to be a solid overall player, but his largest contributions in recent months have been with leather rather than wood. With his range measured at five runs above average at shortstop by Statcast’s RAA and a total of nine runs over all facets of defense by our estimate, he hasn’t disappointed defensively, which has enabled him to remain a legitimate starter even with his offense dropping to disappointing levels. But he’s a far more exciting player with his spring offense, so what went wrong there? Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Friday night, umpire Ted Barrett got up close and personal with James Karinchak:

No, Barrett wasn’t looking for hair care tips, or acting out an Herbal Essences commercial. He was checking for foreign substances at the behest of Twins manager Rocco Baldelli. Though he ruffled around to the best of his ability, Barrett didn’t find anything definitive. Karinchak made it back to the dugout with a narrow lead and his pitching eligibility intact, though his dignity may have been affected.

Baldelli’s accusation wasn’t some off-the-cuff act of pettiness. Karinchak has been at the sticky center of controversy ever since the league cracked down on pine tar, Spider Tack, sunscreen/rosin blends, and whatever other tacky options players were using to increase spin. Stricter enforcement of existing rules started at the beginning of June last year; take a look at Karinchak’s spin-velocity ratio and raw fastball spin rate and you can clearly see when things changed:

Not coincidentally, Karinchak’s results slipped at the same time. He’d been an unhittable, fire-breathing, back-of-the-bullpen monster since reaching the majors. From June 1, 2021 onwards, however, he posted a 5.40 ERA and a 5.41 FIP, and got demoted to the minors at the end of August. The fall from grace was swift, and seemed obviously related to the change in foreign substance enforcement. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a strange season for Mike Trout, one that’s featured a hot start, an epic slump that accompanied the worst losing streak in franchise history, and a diagnosis of a long-term back injury followed by an absence of 30 games. The good news is that since returning to activity on August 19, he’s gradually recovered his form, and this past week he set a career best by homering in six straight games.

Trout began his streak on September 4 with an eighth-inning homer off the Astros’ Brandon Bielak — the only run the Angel scored in a 9-1 loss — but his next three came against the Tigers (Tyler Alexander, Eduardo Rodriguez, and Will Vest), all in wins. He continued the streak with a homer off the Astros’ Lance McCullers Jr. in a loss on Friday night, but his three-run second-inning shot off José Urquidy on Saturday helped power the Halos to a victory.

In the annals of Halos history, that last home run lifted Trout past Bobby Bonds, who homered in five straight games for the Angels from August 2–7, 1977. The streak additionally pushed Trout past the Rangers’ Corey Seager (July 8-12) for the longest of this year. Trout had already surpassed his personal best of homers in four straight games, set in 2017 (May 12–15) and matched in ’19 (April 4–7). Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, we at FanGraphs came up with a fun idea: we simulated Aaron Judge’s remaining games a million times to figure out if and when he’s likely to hit some milestone home runs: numbers 60, 61, and 62. At the time, the takeaway was clear: Judge was most likely to hit each of those milestone home runs during the Yankees’ series in Toronto on September 26–28.

Since that article was published, Judge has played six games and hit only one home run. That changed the odds significantly. More specifically, per my simulation, here are his odds of reaching at least 60, 61, or 62 homers, both now and six games ago:

Read the rest of this entry »

After more than a century of a deistic laissez-faire attitude toward the sport, Major League Baseball made a remarkable announcement on Friday: Next year, for the first time, baseball will have a clock. The introduction of a pitch clock at the highest level of the game is merely one gourd in a cornucopia of rule changes approved late last week by the league’s competition committee, but it could revolutionize the sport. You can find the full list here, but rather than delve into the minutiae, I want to give a brief précis of the most important highlights and deliver a remarkable conclusion. Read the rest of this entry »