For half of Thursday’s game against Boston, it seemed like the good times had finally stopped rolling for the Tampa Bay Rays. The hitherto unhittable Jeffrey Springs left the game with ulnar neuritis—nerve irritation in his elbow, but it’s scarier when you say it like the name of the chancellor of a minor Star Trek world. Corey Kluber had held Tampa Bay’s vaunted offense to just one run through four innings.

Then the Rays burst out for seven runs as if out of nowhere. The highlight of the inning was probably Manuel Margot’s pinch-hit RBI bunt. Bunting for a hit with two outs and the bases loaded is the kind of thing you do when a mystical hooded figure grants you the power of telekinesis and you want to see if it’s real or you’re being pranked. That’s just how things are going for Tampa Bay right now.

But the biggest hit of the inning, according to WPA, was Brandon Lowe’s seeing-eye single three batters prior, which tied the game with two outs. If the Rays are actually going to continue on as the best team in baseball, Lowe is one of their most important players. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an evaluation of the prospects in the Minnesota Twins farm system who readers should consider “imminent big leaguers,” players who might reasonably be expected to play in the majors at some point this year. This includes all prospects on the 40-man roster as well as those who have already established themselves in the upper levels of the minors but aren’t yet rostered. I tend to be more inclusive with pitchers and players at premium positions since their timelines are usually the ones accelerated by injuries and scarcity. Any Top 100 prospects, regardless of their ETA, are also included on this list. Reports, tool grades, and scouting information for all of the prospects below can also be found on The Board.

This is not a top-to-bottom evaluation of the Twins farm system. I like to include what’s happening in minor league and extended spring training in my reports as much as possible, since scouting high concentrations of players in Arizona and Florida allows me to incorporate real-time, first-person information into the org lists. However, this approach has led to some situations where outdated analysis (or no analysis at all) was all that existed for players who had already debuted in the majors. Skimming the imminent big leaguers off the top of a farm system will allow this time-sensitive information to make its way onto the site more quickly, better preparing readers for the upcoming season, helping fantasy players as they draft, and building site literature on relevant prospects to facilitate transaction analysis in the event that trades or injuries foist these players into major league roles. There will still be a Twins prospect list that includes Emmanuel Rodriguez, Marco Raya and all of the other prospects in the system who appear to be at least another season away. As such, today’s list includes no ordinal rankings. Readers are instead encouraged to focus on the players’ Future Value (FV) grades. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the hot start by Jarred Kelenic and when to believe in a breakout, Jo Adell and the mystery of quadruple-A players, the odds of no Marlin hitting for the cycle until Luis Arraez did it this week, the Rays’ record-tying 13th straight win, new reports about new rules, and more. Then (51:12) they answer listener emails about the best urban, non-ballpark setting for baseball, the MLB player they would most want to be stranded with on a desert island (with a digression on Matt Strahm and ballpark beer sales), a pitcher with one unhittable pitch per game, and a black-box outfield, plus a Past Blast (1:26:19) from 1993.

Audio intro: Dave Armstrong and Mike Murray, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Chicano Batman, “Cycles of Existential Rhyme”

Link to Kelenic homer
Link to Passan tweet
Link to article on Kelenic’s swing
Link to Verducci on Kelenic
Link to article on Adell
Link to Arraez cycle video
Link to cycles since 1993
Link to team cycles since ’93
Link to one-team cycle odds
Link to league-wide cycle odds
Link to Rays streak stats
Link to Springs injury story
Link to Rays rally
Link to FG playoff odds
Link to Baumann on Lodolo
Link to FG violations report
Link to new B-Ref rules report
Link to aircraft-carrier diagram
Link to aircraft-carrier derbies
Link to Mikolas lizard story
Link to AP story on beer sales
Link to Astros beer news
Link to Strahm comments
Link to Manfred on concessions
Link to BA on concessions
Link to Crain’s on concessions
Link to Strahm’s YouTube channel
Link to EW emails database
Link to 1993 Past Blast source
Link to David Lewis’s Twitter
Link to David Lewis’s Substack

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In case you were worried that Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge somehow forgot how to be excellent at baseball since the end of last season, fear not. The 2021 and ’22 American League Most Valuable Players are off to strong starts this season, highlighted by a shared distinction: both have gotten on base in every game thus far, extending lengthy streaks that have carried over from last season.

Admittedly, on-base streaks aren’t as sexy as hitting streaks. Nobody rhapsodizes about them or scrutinizes their mathematical unlikelihood the way they do Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak from 1941. Comparatively few people — professionals as well as fans — could tell you who holds the record for consecutive games getting on base. The answer is Ted Williams in 84 straight games from July 1 through September 27 in 1949, which makes perfect sense given that the Splendid Splinter is the career on-base percentage leader (.482). DiMaggio is a distant second at 74 games, with his more famous streak occupying games 2–57 of the longer one. Williams also owns the third-longest streak at 72 games bridging 1941 (the year he hit .406) and ’42, but as for the fourth-longest one — and the longest of the post-1960 expansion era — it belongs to Orlando Cabrera, he of the career .317 OBP and 83 wRC+. Cabrera reached base in 63 straight games from April 25 through July 6 in 2006. Go figure. Read the rest of this entry »

With the pitch clock and a slew of other rule changes now in effect in the majors, we’ve added a section to the leaderboards dedicated to tracking all manner of rule violations and their run values.

Some important notes:

– The violations include Pitcher Pitch Timer Violations, Catcher Pitch Timer Violations, Disengagement Violations, Defensive Shift Violations, Batter Pitch Timer Violations, and Batter Timeout Violations. Read the rest of this entry »

If there’s one thing I remember the Cubs of recent vintage for, it’s winning the curse-breaking World Series in 2016. What, you were expecting something else? But if there are *two* things I remember the Cubs of recent vintage for, the second one is failing to sign their marquee players to contract extensions. Kris Bryant, Javier Báez, Willson Contreras, Anthony Rizzo: all four felt like candidates for a contract extension that made them a lifetime Cub, with a jersey retirement ceremony and fawning coverage from national media for their sparkling career.

Each of those four plays for another team now. The Cubs never turned that dynamic core into a second championship, or even a second World Series appearance. For a team that had dynastic aspirations, it’s a strange look. To the Cubs’ credit, it’s also a look they seem intent on changing. After signing Nico Hoerner to a three-year extension, they took care of another core player, agreeing to a three-year extension with Ian Happ worth $61 million, as Bleacher Nation’s Michael Cerami first reported.

Happ represents a bridge between the 2016 squad that has now mostly departed and the modern-day Cubs team. He debuted in 2017, and while he spent most of ’19 in the minors, he’s otherwise been a fixture in the Chicago lineup ever since. He’s also been a fixture in the field, though not always in the same place. In 2022, however, he settled into an everyday left field role and put up his best season as a professional.

A quick look at Happ’s statline might leave you wanting. He doesn’t hit a ton of home runs or get on base at an unbelievable clip. He doesn’t have a shockingly low strikeout rate for modern baseball. He simply does everything well, with no real holes in his game other than a slightly elevated strikeout rate, and that adds up to solid overall performance even without anything that will blow you away. Here, take a look at it in percentile form, as compared to all qualified hitters:

The funny thing about those numbers is that Happ’s game doesn’t feel middle-of-the-road at all. He’s capable of enormous top-end power but until 2022 had paired that intermittent thump with plenty of empty swings. His career swinging-strike rate is roughly 14%; he shaved that to 11.8%, and the hits flowed like wine. That’s how you can post your lowest career ISO and beat your career batting line anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Dan Szymborski: It’s a chat!

12:02

Dan Szymborski: It IS kinda old school now

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Probably not to *this* level since he’s still getting off to a lot of 0-1 counts, but his plate discipline stats have ticked up so far

Read the rest of this entry »

No one asked me, but given the trends in attendance, the average age of MLB fans, and the fluctuations in ratings over the past few years, along with the dwindling page space and airtime given to baseball by mainstream media outlets relative to their coverage of other sports, it seems undeniable that baseball no longer holds the “America’s Pastime” title, but rather the considerably less catchy moniker: “America’s Third or Maybe Fourth Favorite Sport.” The battle for consumers’ time and attention wages on, and while baseball started in the pole position, it scraped the wall a few times and now sits a lap down.

The entertainment market is oversaturated. Viewers easily scroll through endless options and click away from any selection that doesn’t immediately spark joy. “The only game in town” marketing strategy simply no longer suffices. So again, while no one asked me, I’m here to offer some unsolicited advice to MLB on how to better sell their game and the characters, settings, and themes that make up its stories. In other words, I’d like to improve their drive to survive within a competitive market.

This article is the first of a three-part series. This edition will provide an overview of alternative forms of supplemental content the league might use to entice new viewers and the potential benefits such content yields. Part II will explore the specifics of how to make supplementary content effective, while Part III will shift the perspective to focus on marketing strategies for individual players at all levels of baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Evan Reifert has one of the best sliders in the minors. In the words of our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen, “the pitch is incredible, a low-80s knee-buckler that he throws about as much as his fastball.” Moreover, the numbers are as good as the observations. As Eric noted when profiling the 23-year-old right-hander for our 2023 Tampa Bay Rays Top Prospects list, Reifert’s slider “generated the top whiff rate of any pitch in the 2022 minors at a whopping 70%.”

Overall, the numbers were that of a work-in-progress. Pitching between three levels — the majority of his 31 relief outings came with High-A Bowling Green — Reifert logged a 4.58 ERA and issued 20 free passes over 37.1 innings. He was also overpowering; thanks largely to his signature pitch, the Wilton, Iowa native fanned 62 batters.

Assigned to the Arizona Fall League’s Mesa Solar Sox to build on what had been an injury-interrupted campaign, the erstwhile Milwaukee Brewers prospect — Tampa Bay acquired him in exchange for Mike Brosseau in November 2021 — proceeded to put up eye-popping numbers. In eight AFL appearances comprising 11.1 innings, Reifert registered 25 punchouts and allowed just one hit.

Reifert, who is currently on the injured list at Double-A Montgomery, discussed his wipeout slider during spring training.

———

David Laurila: You have a plus-plus slider. What is the story behind it?

Evan Reifort: “I was pretty young. I was growing up playing travel ball, and I have a great uncle who was a really good pitcher back home in Iowa. His name is Ron Reifert.”

Laurila: Did your great uncle play pro ball?

Reifert: “He did not. Unfortunately, polio kind of got to him — I believe it was polio — so he was unable to go on to play pro ball, but he pitched at the University of Iowa and was really good. That’s kind of where I started learning how to throw a slider, from him. I was probably 10 or 12, and from there it’s morphed into the pitch it is today. I found a grip that I liked and have even modified it since then. It’s definitely gotten harder and sharper over the years. But yeah, all I really do is rip it and let it do its thing.” Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t like using absolutes when talking about sports on the internet. No matter how uncontroversial the take, there’s always someone out there whose whole personality is wrapped up in “No, actually Mike Trout isn’t the best center fielder in baseball” and you get yelled at.

So I’m not going to say that Nick Lodolo has been the best pitcher in baseball thus far this year. And even if I did, it wouldn’t be that momentous a statement, since he’s only made two starts so far and nobody else has made more than three. Still, through those two starts and 12 innings, he’s faced 51 batters, striking out 21 and reducing another nine to popups and softly-hit groundballs. He’s allowed just 10 hits and two runs, and has a strikeout rate over 40%.

Regardless of superlatives, certainly he’s pitched well enough to warrant both praise and examination. Read the rest of this entry »