Episode 989

This week on the show, we hear great stories from a veteran minor league broadcaster and discuss those darn Yankees, but not before talking about the new FanGraphs app!

• In the first segment, David Laurila welcomes Tim Hagerty, broadcaster for the Triple-A El Paso Chihuahuas. We learn about a number of interesting Padres prospects playing for El Paso, including Jay Groome, Luis Campusano, and Ryan Weathers, before hearing about Tim’s upcoming book, Tales from the Dugout: 1,001 Humorous, Inspirational & Wild Anecdotes from Minor League Baseball. Tim tells us about the PA announcer who got tossed by an umpire, the minor league team that spent a night in jail, the team that set its field on fire on purpose, the pitcher who got locked in a bathroom, and many more fun tales from his research. [6:50]
• After that, Ben Clemens and Jay Jaffe get together to talk about the New York Yankees, who dominated the first half of the season but have found themselves in a skid since the trade deadline. Jordan Montgomery has been superlative since his trade to the Cardinals, while Frankie Montas has been inconsistent with New York, and the combination isn’t helping the mood among Yankees fans. The duo discuss those deals as well as the Yankees having their eye on October, how hard it is to catch a home run on video at the ballpark, and how it seems like everyone in the Yankees lineup (apart from Aaron Judge) has struggled. [28:59]

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Audio after the jump. (Approximate 59 minute play time.)

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the approving responses to Ben’s blistering (by Ben’s standards) Yankee Stadium review, Christian Walker’s scale-breaking defense at first base, “defended” vs. “defensed,” the Dodgers’ historic run of regular-season success, and the battle between teammates Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt for NL MVP frontrunner status, followed by Stat Blasts (49:13) on the Yankees and slumping prospective playoff teams, teams whose players led their league in each type of hit, the biggest differentials in pitcher Game Score from one start to the next (against different teams and the same team), Lucas Giolito and the longest strings of starts with different numbers of earned runs allowed, and the most non-hit RBI to start a career, plus a Past Blast (1:11:56) from 1894.

Audio intro: Super Furry Animals, “Run! Christian, Run!”
Audio outro: Atomic Rooster, “Never to Lose”

Link to first base OAA leaders
Link to Petriello’s tweet
Link to Mark Simon on Walker
Link to Scoop leaders
Link to Petriello on the Dodgers
Link to Ben on the Dodgers in 2015
Link to Dan Szymborski on Bellinger
Link to Angels lineup with Ford
Link to info on MLB co-MVPs
Link to Tyler Kepner on the Yankees
Link to Jay Jaffe on the Yankees
Link to Jay on playoff-team season ends
Link to MLB.com on playoff-team season ends
Link to Stathead
Link to Ryan Nelson on Twitter
Link to hottest team starts
Link to playoff-team slumps
Link to league hit leaders data
Link to worst 2022 Game Scores
Link to worst pre-2022 Game Scores
Link to biggest Game Score swings
Link to listener emails database
Link to Richard Hershberger’s Strike Four
Link to 1894 story source

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After having arguably the best season of his professional career in 2021, Carlos Rodón signed a rather modest two-year, $44 million contract with the San Francisco Giants. For a large part of the 2021 season, it looked like he was headed toward a much more headline-grabbing dollar amount. After years of missed time, first due to shoulder problems and then a Tommy John surgery, Rodón shocked the baseball world by returning with a much hotter fastball than he’d previously ever had. Never reaching the heights the White Sox expected when they took him with the third overall pick of the 2014 draft, he was bordering on bust status before suddenly re-emerging as an All-Star. Literally — he made his first All-Star team in 2021.

But a few nasty surprises kept Rodón from getting the payday aces typically get. Given his injury record — he’d only been healthy enough to qualify for an ERA title once — there were inevitable concerns about his durability, an important consideration when you’re doling out nine-figure contracts. Those fears were realized in the second half of the season, as Rodón missed time due to shoulder fatigue and soreness. It wasn’t that he struggled; most teams would have been overjoyed with his 3.26 second-half FIP. What was highly concerning was the dramatic velocity loss he experienced, an extremely inauspicious sign for a pitcher: Read the rest of this entry »

As the Mets have battled to maintain their spot atop the National League East, Francisco Lindor has led the way. After inaugurating his time in New York with a career-worst season with the bat last year, the 28-year-old shortstop has kicked off the start of his 10-year, $341 million contract with a campaign worthy of a spot in MVP discussions.

Lindor had the chance to play the hero on Tuesday night in the Bronx. For as well as Frankie Montas and Clarke Schmidt pitched in the Subway Series finale, the game could have easily swung the other direction at the end. Trailing 4-2 and down to their final out, the Mets loaded the bases against Schmidt, who had already completed three strong innings of relief. Up came Lindor, who over his previous eight games had collected 13 hits (a 263-hit pace!) but on this night had merely walked twice (on a total of 15 pitches) in four plate appearances. Read the rest of this entry »

Max Muncy has been doing lot of experimenting this season. That shouldn’t come as a surprise. Drafted 25th overall last year by the Oakland Athletics out of Thousand Oaks High School in California, Muncy came into the current campaign with all of 11 professional games under his belt. At the tender age of 20 — today is his birthday — it’s understandable that he’s still trying to forge an identity at the plate.

Power could end up being his calling card. A 6-foot-1, 185-pound shortstop who projects to fill out further, Muncy has 19 home runs on the season, 16 at Low-A Stockton and three at High-A Lansing. Making contact has been an issue. Facing pitchers who are almost exclusively older than him, he has fanned 146 times in 483 plate appearances while putting up a .229/.338/.441 slash line and a 104 wRC+.

Muncy — No. 12 on our updated Athletics Top Prospects list — discussed his early career development last week.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with a question I sometimes ask young players: Give me a self-scouting report.

Max Muncy: “That’s probably different for me, just because I kind of know what’s in the making. But the power is showing up a lot this year. I think I’ll hit for average, for sure, but what I’m going through right now is a learning curve.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the inflation of flames for fast pitches on baseball broadcasts, Oneil Cruz’s record-setting hard hit and the limitations of tools, Ben’s review of a trip to Yankee Stadium and Red Sox pitcher Josh Winckowski’s review of Wrigley Field compared to Fenway Park, the potential impact of a forthcoming Angels franchise sale, the latest Tony La Russa shenanigans, the importance of Johnny Cueto, updates on the streaking Cardinals and Albert Pujols, Jordan Montgomery, and Yadier Molina, Fernando Tatis Jr.’s shoulder surgery, the new, more balanced MLB schedule coming in 2023, the return of Alex Bregman’s bat, and the historic exploits of NPB phenoms Munetaka Murakami and Roki Sasaki, plus a Past Blast from 1893 and a few followups.

Audio intro: The Super Friendz, “Down in Flames”
Audio outro: Nils Lofgren, “Yankee Stadium”

Link to Sam on the flames
Link to percentage of 95+ pitches
Link to percentage of 95+ fastballs
Link to percentage of 95+ 4-seamers
Link to percentage of 96+ 4-seamers
Link to story on Cruz hit
Link to Jay Jaffe on the Yankees
Link to Winckowski comments
Link to “bean counter” etymology
Link to Angels sale announcement
Link to The Athletic on the Angels sale
Link to MLBTR on the ballpark sale
Link to La Russa quote
Link to article on Kopech
Link to other post on Kopech
Link to MLBTR on the Cueto signing
Link to article about players of the week
Link to Jay on Pujols
Link to Jeremy Frank tweet about Pujols
Link to Ben Clemens on Montgomery
Link to Foolish tweet about Montgomery
Link to article on Molina’s absence
Link to article on Tatis’s surgery
Link to article on the 2023 schedule
Link to Clemens on Bregman
Link to David Laurila on Bregman
Link to June episode about Bregman
Link to DeltaGraphs
Link to Ben on DeltaGraphs
Link to CBS Sports on Murakami
Link to The Sporting News on Murakami
Link to The Japan Times on Murakami
Link to Kyodo News on Murakami
Link to article on Murakami’s streak
Link to video of Murakami’s streak
Link to Richard Hershberger’s Strike Four
Link to 1893 story source
Link to Goldeyes EW episode
Link to Wade/Ward EW wiki page
Link to high Offense, negative WPA sheet
Link to 1978 Orioles cap

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NEW YORK — More than three weeks after the Yankees made him their top trade deadline acquisition — and a night after the pitcher he replaced, Jordan Montgomery, spun a one-hit shutout to further an impressive opening run with the Cardinals — Frankie Montas was able to show the Bronx a representative version of his capabilities. Facing the Mets in front of a Yankee Stadium season high of 49,217 boisterous fans, the 29-year-old righty survived a rocky first inning, got strong support on both sides of the ball (save for one glitch), and moved Pete Alonso to bat-breaking frustration in what turned out to be a 4-2 Yankees win, giving the team its first series victory in August and salvaging a split of the season’s four-game Subway Series.

Montas allowed two runs in 5.2 innings, scattering six hits and a walk while striking out six — his highest total since his seven-strikeout effort at Yankee Stadium on June 28 while pitching for the A’s. His 15 called strikes was his highest total since that outing, and his 27% CSW (which included 10 swinging strikes) matched his season rate, heralding a return to form following a rough stretch of nearly eight weeks, during which shoulder inflammation, the trade, a trip to the bereavement list and poor performance limited him to a 5.90 ERA and 5.08 FIP in seven starts totaling just 29 innings.

“Packed house in the Bronx, [his] first Subway Series, he went out there and did his thing,” marveled Aaron Judge afterwards. “Working all his pitches, kind of similar to [Domingo] Germán… Backdoor cutter and backdoor slider to some of those lefties early on to kind of steal a strike, and then he got to that sinker-splitter combo. It’s pretty tough to tell the difference between both of those.”

“He showed some bulldog,” added Judge, whose fourth-inning solo homer — number 48 for the season and his second in as many nights — off Taijuan Walker kicked off the scoring. Judge also capped off a go-ahead two-run rally in the seventh by plating the Yankees’ final run via a single off Joely Rodríguez. Read the rest of this entry »

Peter Strzelecki is a success story who also strives to be a role model. Signed by the Milwaukee Brewers as an amateur free agent after being bypassed in the 2018 draft, the right-hander out of the University of South Florida is now thriving as a 27-year-old rookie. Since making his big-league debut on June 2, Strzelecki has come out of the Brewers bullpen 13 times and allowed five earned runs over 16 innings. Quietly effective, he’s surrendered 15 hits, issued seven free passes, and fanned 20 batters.

Strzelecki discussed the repertoire and mindset that got him to Milwaukee, and how his rags-to-riches journey can serve as an inspiration to others, when the Brewers played at Fenway Park in late July.

———

On going from being undrafted to reaching the big leagues:

“It’s mostly just having a lot of confidence in myself and having a lot of good people surrounding me. It started with the scout that signed me, and then there’s my support system — my family, and everyone else.

“I’ve definitely improved. At the same time, I’ve always felt like I had the stuff. It’s been more of how the Brewers have helped me know how to use it. When you get to a level like this… in the big leagues, everybody has good stuff, so it’s a matter of how you can best execute it. Pitch location is part of that.

“Another thing is that I’ve had to prove myself over a long period of time. I’ve had to prove to whomever that my stuff was good enough, that I was good enough, to pitch at this level.” Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe this isn’t charitable, but I picture Alex Bregman as being a lot like me. See, when I play a game – whether a sport or a board game – I’m always thinking about the most efficient way to win, what game actions are the most valuable, and how I can do those things more often. The best games don’t have clear best options at all times, but there’s almost always some strategy you can lean on to get ahead, and I greatly enjoy figuring that strategy out.

Bregman treats baseball like I treat Taverns of Tiefenthal, my favorite board game. He knows what the most valuable things to do in baseball are, and he does them more frequently than everyone else. If you look at his Statcast page, you’ll come away unimpressed. Hard hit rate? He’s in the 42nd percentile across the majors, below average. Think that hard hit rate is misleading? He’s average when it comes to maximum exit velocity (53rd percentile), barrel rate (50th), and even average exit velocity (59th). He’s well below average in sprint speed. It doesn’t sound like he should be an outstanding hitter, at least by the measurables.

Early in Bregman’s career, that would have been a laughable claim. He totaled 16.2 WAR on the back of a 162 wRC+ between 2018 and ’19, staking a claim as one of the best hitters in the game. But in the next two years, both injury-shortened, he fell back to earth. His .261/.353/.431 line was good for a 115 wRC+, a far cry from his earlier form. Was he a creation of the juiced ball? Sign stealing? Did pitchers figure him out? Read the rest of this entry »

Three years ago, everything was coming up Cody Bellinger’s way. The NL Rookie of the Year in 2017, he broke out in a big way in ’19, smashing 47 home runs with an OPS over 1.000 and edging out Christian Yelich for his first (and only) MVP hardware. Bellinger had even taken to playing excellent defense in center field, not something typically on the curriculum vitae for a young first baseman. Entering his age-24 season, everyone expected that he’d be a star for the next decade or so and a building block for the Dodgers as players like Corey Seager were approaching free agency.

The ZiPS projection system, known for being the grumpy devil’s advocate as most such systems are, didn’t see any particular reason for concern, either. If you wanted Los Angeles to sign Bellinger to a lucrative contract extension, guaranteeing he wore Dodger blue for a long time, you had a loyal friend in ZiPS:

In rest-of-career WAR, Bellinger ranked third among position players, behind just Juan Soto and Ronald Acuña Jr.

Now, if this were a comedy movie, this is the point in the trailer at which you hear the record scratch, the narrator describes the humorous change of fortune, and then the music changes to an upbeat pop hit song with clips of how Bellinger gets back everything he lost and learns about the incredible power of friendship. But it’s not. Since that NL MVP season, he has hit .200/.271/.380 in over 1,000 plate appearances, only finishing above replacement level by virtue of the fact that he at least still remembers how to play defense. This is less Pixar and more Darren Aronofsky. Read the rest of this entry »