Miguel Cabrera had to wait a couple of extra days to make history, thanks to a hitless afternoon capped by a controversial managerial decision and then a rainout. Nonetheless, on Saturday afternoon he collected his 3,000th career hit with a single off the Rockies’ Antonio Senzatela. In doing so, he joined some elite company as not only the 33rd player to reach 3,000 hits, but also the seventh to do so as a member of the 500-homer club and the third to reach both of those round numbers with a career batting average of .300 or better. The other two? Hank Aaron and Willie Mays. You may have heard of them, and even if you don’t put much stock in batting average, you have to admit that’s about as cool as company gets.

What’s more, Cabrera actually owns the highest batting average and on-base percentage of the seven players who have both milestones, with a wRC+ that trails only Mays and Aaron:

For all of his struggles over the past half-decade, Cabrera would still have to go 0-for-352 to drop his batting average to .299. Even with those struggles and his lack of defensive value (he’s 102 runs below average in terms of Defensive Runs Saved, inlcluding 11 below in just 847.1 innings at first base since 2018), he ranks 11th in JAWS among first basemen (68.8/44.8/56.8), in no danger of slipping below Palmeiro (13th at 71.9/38.9/55.4) or Murray (16th at 68.7/39.2/53.9). And while he may be the last to reach 3,000 hits for some time given the dearth of candidates (Dan Szymborski put Jose Altuve, who has 1,783 hits, at 34% and Freddie Freeman, who has 1,723 hits, at 28% last September), he’s hardly the least. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and once again we’re hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features a pair of Pittsburgh Pirates on their quality curveballs; Chris Stratton is one of the club’s back-end relievers, and prospect Mike Burrows is rated by Baseball America as having the best breaker in the system.

———

Michael Burrows, Pittsburgh Pirates

“My dad said I couldn’t even try to throw a curveball until I had hair under my armpits; that was the saying for him. But yeah, I really started as soon as I could, maybe at 13 or 14, and then just developed feel for it. As I got older — as I continued to progress — I had to change the shape of it, because as hitters got better I couldn’t have a curveball that was popping out. So it’s really been an evolution of a curveball that was in the low-to-mid 70s and has creeped up into the low 80s. It’s sharper now.

“I would say it [improved the most] over COVID, and then as I got into the 2021 season. That spring training, I really started working on building intent and throwing it harder. Metrically, when you look at a curveball that’s over 80 mph, it’s significantly harder to hit — hitters’ numbers go down — and I think that was the biggest turning point for me. Throwing it harder, there’s not a huge decrease in break, but a better shape to where it tunnels my fastball better.

“[Prior to 2020], I didn’t have Rapsodo, TrackMan, or anything like that. Right before COVID hit, about a month until that spring training, I went out and got a Rapsodo. I started diving into the metrics of pitches — why some are better than others, what spin direction was going to do for me. That’s when I really started developing my curveball. I was also throwing with a guy from the Dodgers, Nolan Long — he’s since signed with Athletics — and they have endless amounts of information over there. Another thing I did was take the Rapsodo course, so I could better understand all of the numbers.

“In terms of adjustments, it wasn’t really mechanics; it was more so thinking about that last five percent, rather than the entire motion. It’s about keeping my body under control, and then in that explosion, when I’m really throwing the baseball, is when the effort happens. It’s like a karate-chop motion, where your hand is staying neutral through the throw. It’s that last bit, where the hand is coming through and it rolls over top.

“The curveball was always there for me. It’s not like it had bad spin or anything like that. Everything was there. All I needed was to find a better shape that was going to tunnel my fastball. I still want that 12–6; I still want that vertical break to it. Again, I want to be able to tunnel it, not have it pop out.” Read the rest of this entry »

Peter Gammons didn’t invent the Sunday notes column, but few would dispute that he perfected it. The 77-year-old sportswriter-turned-TV-analyst did so at The Boston Globe, where he began a career that has seen him become the world’s most-influential baseball columnist. To say that Gammons has been an influence on the column you are currently reading would be an understatement.

I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Gammons for years, yet had never asked him about the genesis of his own Sunday column. Chatting with him at Fenway Park earlier this week, I decided to change that.

“I loved the notion of the notes column, and how Dick Young used it,” Gammons said of the late New York-based sportswriter. “I always thought there should be one for every sport. Bob Ryan and I talked about it when we were both interns, in 1968. I’ve always loved the minor leagues, and in 1970 — 1969 was my first full year with the Globe —I asked, ‘Can I write a notes column on the minor leagues?’ The Globe people said fine. This was for the Sunday paper.”

Gammons recalled writing about Bob Montgomery, who came up through the Boston system before catching for them for 10 big-league seasons. (Later a TV analyst on Red Sox games, Montgomery has the distinction of being the last player for any team to come to the plate without a batting helmet.)

In typical Gammons fashion, the other player he mentioned having covered in his nascent notes days was equal parts obscure and interesting. Calling him “a minor league legend as a hitter,” and citing his .300 big-league batting average, Gammons name-checked Chris Coletta. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the reaction to and tactical underpinnings of the Yankees’ controversial decision to walk Miguel Cabrera, the balance between win expectancy and entertainment, and whether analytically-driven changes have hurt baseball as a spectator experience more so than other sports, then (15:19) meet major leaguers Simón Muzziotti of the Phillies and Gosuke Katoh of the Blue Jays, Stat Blast (30:31) about whether increased time between pitches or rising pitch counts has contributed more to longer game times, and answer listener emails about critiquing umpires’ grammar, tool grades for big leaguers, whether the pitch clock could kill the zombie runner, whether young hitters (such as Julio Rodríguez) have ball/strike calls go against them more often, whether surpassing Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak could propel a player into the Hall of Fame, why free agents tend to take the most lucrative contract offers, wearing the jersey of a player who’s switched teams, the Marlins rostering every major leaguer named Jesús, team games with no outfield outs, and the most unassisted putouts by a player in a game.

Audio intro: Snowgoose, “Counting Time”
Audio outro: The Glands, “Welcome to New Jersey”

Link to MLB.com article about IBB
Link to Ben Clemens on the Cabrera IBB
Link to Joe Posnanski on the Cabrera IBB
Link to article about Muzziotti’s lost 2021
Link to article about Muzziotti’s promotion
Link to article about Katoh’s promotion
Link to spring training article about Katoh
Link to Katoh’s Kawasaki tweet
Link to Kawasaki’s interview
Link to Katoh’s Players’ Tribune article
Link to Chris Mitchell on Katoh in 2014
Link to first KATOH article
Link to Chris’s tweet about Katoh
Link to Axios post about game time
Link to Céspedes Family BBQ game-time tweet
Link to Stat Blast data
Link to Stathead
Link to Travis Sawchik on foul balls
Link to Travis on fouls again
Link to Ben on pitches per PA
Link to Justin Choi on Rodríguez’s zone
Link to study on veteran bias for hitters
Link to study on veteran bias for pitchers
Link to Jeff Sullivan on veteran bias
Link to study on MLB status bias
Link to article about all-star strike-zone bias
Link to “Jersey Assurance” policy
Link to PCU scene about band shirts
Link to list of team games with no OF outs
Link to Jeremy Frank tweet about no OF outs
Link to Rob Mains on pitcher usage and payrolls
Link to article about Sasaki’s next start
Link to listener email database

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As you may already know, I’m something of an intentional walk connoisseur here at FanGraphs. When questionable ones occur, particularly in the playoffs, I like to delve into the specifics to figure out which ones are good decisions, which ones are close calls, and which ones are just plain silly.

Earlier this week, I wrote about Joe Maddon’s bases-loaded intentional walk, which was about as far on the silly end of the spectrum as you can get. Today, I’m going to cover the other notable intentional walk of the week: the Yankees giving Miguel Cabrera a free pass on Thursday. Then, as a bonus, I want to talk about Cardinals manager Oli Marmol and a clever thing he did that might escape notice if you aren’t watching closely.
Read the rest of this entry »

2:00	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to my Friday chat — my first solo chat of the 2022 regular season!

2:01	Jay Jaffe: First, some housekeeping: i’ve got a big piece today about this week’s rash of no-hit bids and their connection to the MLB-wide drop in offense. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/welcome-to-hitless-baseball/

2:02	Jay Jaffe: Second, the Hall of Fame dropped big news about another Era Committee reorganization right as I was filing that. Ryan Fagan @ryanfagan The Hall of Fame has restructured its Era Committees again. Here’s the new structure … 22 Apr 2022

2:03	Jay Jaffe: I will cover this early next week, but for the moment it’s worth sharing that I confirmed with the Hall that yes, the four candidates who aged off this year’s ballot — Bonds, Clemens, Schilling, and Sosa — will be eligible for the 2023 Contemporary Players ballot.

2:05

Jay Jaffe: Finally, I’m going to go see some baseball nerd friends who are in a band — including Mike Petriello and Michael Clair — play a show in Brooklyn tonight. if you’re local, check it out The Subway Ghosts @TheSubwayGhosts Bummed to say that KOALA T won’t be able to play tomorrow night’s show, but have no fear! Surf rock band THE ENDLESS BUMMER are stepping in. Come on out to @FreddysBar1 at 10 pm tomorrow night for the low, low price of FREE!!! 21 Apr 2022

2:05	Jay Jaffe: Ok, on with the show

Read the rest of this entry »

By his own definition, Max Scherzer had a shot at a no-hitter. In the nightcap of Tuesday’s doubleheader against the Giants at Citi Field, in his first home start since signing with the Mets, he held San Francisco hitless for 5.2 innings before Darin Ruf lined a single to left field, ending the 37-year-old righty’s quest for his third career no-no. “My rule of thumb is when you get one time through the order, you got something going. You get two times through the order, you got a shot,” said Scherzer afterwards. He had turned the lineup over for the second time earlier in that inning; Ruf was the 21st batter he faced.

Scherzer wasn’t the only pitcher to make a run at a no-hitter this week. In the span of just over 24 hours on Tuesday and Wednesday, five starters made it through at least five innings without yielding a hit. Just hours after Scherzer’s effort, the Braves’ Max Fried retired the first 15 hitters he faced at Dodger Stadium before Hanser Alberto lined a single to right field. The next day, the Brewers’ Brandon Woodruff, the Dodgers’ Tony Gonsolin, and the Angels’ Shohei Ohtani all found the holes in opponents’ bats. While none of them made it as far as the nail-biting time in the eighth or ninth innings, the conditions appear primed for the 2022 season to pick up where last year — a season that featured a record nine no-hitters — left off.

Through the first two weeks of the season, starters have taken no-hitters into the sixth inning 10 times:

Even before the controversy involving Kershaw — who became just the second pitcher pulled from a perfect game in the seventh inning or later — and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, Padres manager Bob Melvin pulled starters with no-hitters in progress in back-to-back games. What’s more, they were his first two regular-season contests with his new team! Like Roberts, Melvin made his moves in light of the fact that his starters hadn’t fully built up their pitch counts after shorter-than-normal spring trainings, and like Kershaw, both Darvish and Manaea publicly supported their manager’s decision. Read the rest of this entry »

When the 2022 season opened to fanfare and excitement, one of the main talking points was the record-setting arrival of top prospects. After countless rebuilds, a global pandemic, and a prolonged lockout, fans deserved to watch budding superstars duke it out in games that matter. Some of them, like Seiya Suzuki and Jeremy Peña, have been thriving right out of the gate; both rank among the top ten in batter WAR as of Thursday’s games. Others like Spencer Torkelson might have fallen a bit off the radar but have still been successful per wRC+ or batted ball metrics.

Much to our annoyance, though, there’s always a flip side we’d like to ignore. Enter Julio Rodríguez, whose triple slash of .136/.208/.159 is terrible not just amongst fellow rookies, but also all of major league baseball. This isn’t to say we should be concerned; Rodríguez remains one of the most talented rookies around, and in the grand scheme of things, 12 games and counting mean next to nothing. Don’t smash that emergency glass just yet!

But in his opportunities to prove himself, Rodríguez hasn’t been offered fair terms. One of the most fundamental and effective traits a hitter can possess is plate discipline, which is partly the ability to ignore unfavorable pitches. It’s something Rodríguez has demonstrated several times in a limited number of plate appearances, with confidence to boot, but that bravado hasn’t quite translated into results:

This is a chart showing all eight (!) called third strikes outside the zone against Rodríguez, a league-leading total. The plotted strike zone is adjusted for his height, by the way, so there’s no ambiguity here. It gets even worse when you actually look at some of these pitches, which the umpires gift-wrapped for pitchers who made objective mistakes. For example, here’s a Sonny Gray sinker that is rarely, if ever, called a strike, especially in a two-strike situation:

Uh-huh. Sure, that’s totally a decision befitting a stadium named Target Field.

You could maybe argue that Rodríguez, whose two-strike swing rate of 40.3% is the third-lowest among all hitters, needs to up his aggression. The cost of taking a third strike is high, so the math tells us that a batter ought to hack away instead. But Suzuki has a similar two-strike swing rate (42.7%), and he’s yet to be punished for his passivity. Whatever flaws Rodríguez might have right now as a hitter don’t excuse the fact that very few calls have went his way. This is a clear problem, one that has Mariners fans understandably angsty. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 971

On this week’s show, we welcome a club’s president of baseball operations to talk about his team’s inner workings before we react to the exciting first few weeks of the season.

• At the top of the program, David Laurila welcomes Derek Falvey, president of baseball operations for the Minnesota Twins. Falvey gives us insight into the José Berríos trade, how much autonomy they give manager Rocco Baldelli, and whether it is easier or harder to trade with general managers you count as friends (such as former podcast guest Ross Atkins). We also hear about players like Simeon Woods Richardson, Jhoan Duran, Joe Smith, and Dylan Bundy, as well as the team hiring Kevin Goldstein away from FanGraphs. [2:46]
• In the second half, Ben Clemens and Jason Martinez get together to chat about the young baseball season. The pair discuss the recent Luke Voit/Tommy Pham drama, and talk about the sometimes-double-edged sword of playing with a chip on your shoulder. The duo also discuss some disappointing clubs (the D-backs) and some pleasant surprises (the Rockies), as well as the game’s overall lack of offense. Finally, Ben is cautiously intrigued by the Baltimore Orioles’ pitching strategy and its early dividends, highlighted by Keegan Akin. [25:36]

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Audio after the jump. (Approximate 64 minute play time.)

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about exactly how many feral cats have infested the Oakland Coliseum and exactly how few fans have attended A’s games this season, Miguel Cabrera’s impending 3,000th hit and the potentially long time that may elapse before another player joins the 3,000-hit club, the recentism of MLB.TV highlights, the Guardians’ Gabriel Arias starting his career by reaching on error in two consecutive plate appearances (and the nickname of Icehouse Wilson), an uptick in weather-related postponements, MLB’s green initiatives, and how 2023’s more balanced schedule could cause more emissions, Charlie Blackmon becoming the first MLB player to shill for a sportsbook, and Shohei Ohtani’s latest two-way heroics, plus a Stat Blast (1:09:09) about the ascendance of max-effort starting pitching and Ben’s preferred fix for all that ails on-field baseball.

Audio intro: The Velvet Underground, “Cool it Down”
Audio outro: Modest Mouse, “Out of Gas”

Link to story about the cat count
Link to story about feral hogs
Link to feral hogs meme
Link to Field of Schemes on A’s attendance
Link to story about cats at Shea Stadium
Link to 2022 MLB team attendance
Link to RosterResource payroll page
Link to “dead mall” wiki
Link to Dan Szymborski on the 3,000-hit club
Link to 3,000-hit club
Link to story about Cabrera’s bunt single
Link to Icehouse Wilson’s SABR bio
Link to MLB’s Earth Day press release
Link to Hannah Keyser on climate change
Link to story about more balanced schedule
Link to baseball scene from Interstellar
Link to story about Blackmon deal
Link to story about MLB banning Mays/Mantle
Link to Slate on NFL gambling suspensions
Link to story about Rose allegations
Link to story about Ohtani’s two-way game
Link to Ben Clemens on Ohtani
Link to Pitching Ninja on Ohtani
Link to lowest-WAR hitters w/4+ ASG
Link to lowest-WAR hitters w/2+ ASG
Link to lowest-WAR pitchers w/4+ ASG
Link to lowest-WAR pitchers w/2+ ASG
Link to Stat Blast velo data
Link to Stathead
Link to Ben Lindbergh on Ohtani’s velo
Link to Justin Choi on Ohtani’s velo
Link to Russell Carleton on starting/relieving
Link to Justin on the velo surge
Link to Brash clip
Link to Stark’s 10 numbers
Link to Driveline on velo and injuries
Link to fastball torque study
Link to review of Pitching in a Pinch
Link to text of Pitching in a Pinch
Link to Goodreads page for The Teammates
Link to Ben on moving the mound
Link to tweet about Yankees vaccinations
Link to Ben’s Better Call Saul pod
Link to Cabrera’s IBB single
Link to Cabrera’s IBB reaction
Link to video of IBB boos
Link to MLB.com article about IBB

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