Depending on how you weigh the contributions of those last three, that’s something like nine new players. It didn’t make the Rangers overnight playoff contenders – we gave them a 75-win projection and an 8% chance of reaching the playoffs before the season started – but it felt like the opening salvo of a new contender. Sign your free agents when you can get them, supplement them with a burgeoning farm system headlined by top prospect Josh Jung, and pretty soon, you’ve got a stew going.
A lot can change in a few months. This week, the Rangers ownership group, led by majority owner Ray Davis, delivered a clear sign that they aren’t happy with the way things are going. On Monday, they relieved manager Chris Woodward of his duties. Woodward had overseen some down years in Texas after taking over before the 2019 season. He’d shepherded this team adequately, at least as far as wins and losses go; we’re currently projecting the Rangers for 72.5 wins, basically the same as their preseason expectation, and it’s not like we were outliers in that projection; pretty much everyone around pegged them in the 70-75 win range. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley follow up on Tony La Russa’s suspicious pinch-runner call, banter about Joey Gallo on the Dodgers and Andrew Benintendi on the Yankees, the utility of booing, and the parochial concept of being unable to play in New York, the curious timing of the Rangers’ firing of long-tenured executive Jon Daniels, the Athletics’ curious release of Elvis Andrus, the Braves extending Michael Harris II and the domino theory of extensions, and Joey Votto’s season-ending injury, then answer listener emails about which ownership group they would most want to compel to open its books and an MLB vs. NPB/KBO All-Star Game, plus (1:06:38) a Past Blast from 1891 and a bonus question about recursive caps.
Alex Binelas has big-time power. The extent to which he can get to it will go a long way toward determining his future. The 22-year-old corner infielder has gone deep 23 times this season between High-A Greenville and Double-A Portland, but he’s also fanned 126 times in 418 plate appearances. As Eric Longenhagen wrote this spring, “Binelas’ calling card is plus-plus raw power… but it comes with plenty of swing-and-miss.” His left-handed stroke has produced a 104 wRC+ this season and a .206/.318/.445 slash line.
The potential for Binelas to do far more than he’s shown since being drafted 86th overall last year out of the University of Louisville is real. The Red Sox certainly think so. Enamored by his exit velocities and ability to hit moonshots, Boston acquired the Oak Creek, Wisconsin native from the Milwaukee Brewers last winter as part of the Hunter Renfroe deal.
Binelas discussed his do-damage approach and the in-progress mechanical adjustment he’s hoping will help him turn the corner prior to a recent game at Portland’s Hadlock Field.
———
David Laurila: How would you describe yourself as a hitter?
Alex Binelas: “I go up to the plate looking to impact the ball. I obviously want to put together quality at bats — I want to swing at the right pitches — but my ultimate goal is putting the ball in play as hard as I can. I’m not trying to hit a home run every time, but when you try to impact ball hard with quality swings and are attacking the right pitches, you put yourself in a good position to do damage.”
Speculating about the playoffs in August always feels strange. The regular season isn’t over. It isn’t nearly over, either – the 45 or so games remaining on each team’s schedule will change how we think about them. The best two records in baseball belong to the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Houston Astros right now, but some team could go 35-10 and wrest that title away from them.
Still, today I’m going to speculate about the playoffs. Whether the Dodgers and Astros hold onto their top spots or not, they’re both playoff locks – our Playoff Odds give them both 100% odds of reaching the postseason. In the past week, they’ve also each gotten rotten injury news that will affect their playoff rosters. So suspend your inherent skepticism of articles in August that talk about October as we consider the playoff impact of losing Walker Buehler and Michael Brantley. Read the rest of this entry »
The delayed start to the 2022 season due to the lockout has had a lot of small consequences for the structure of the season, ranging from expanded rosters to my least favorite thing, the continued use of zombie runners in extra innings. The last (we hope) of these changes is a slight alteration to the playoff schedule, which the league sees as a necessity in order to keep the postseason from straying too far into November. On Monday, MLB announced that the three-game Wild Card Series will be played without any off-days, while an off-day will be trimmed from the Divisional Series (between Games 4 and 5); teams in the ALDS get one additional off-day, without travel, between Games 1 and 2. The Championship Series will lose an off-day between Games 5 and 6). The World Series is business as usual.
While I expected this configuration for the Wild Card round (it was already accounted for in the generalized ZiPS projections for postseason performance), there are some slight tweaks that need to be made to account for the changes to the Division and Championship Series with respect to pitching. When projecting the roster strength of a team for the purposes of postseason probabilities, ZiPS weighs pitchers at the top of the rotation more heavily. That’s because historically they have gotten a larger percentage of starter innings in the playoffs than during the regular season. But losing an extra day of rest could result in teams using the pitchers after their No. 3 starters more heavily, as well as more dilemmas involving bringing back a top starter on three days rest. There are also possible consequences for the bullpens. In other words, teams will need to be slightly deeper than normal this playoff season.
So, how do we account for that? To get a rough estimate — I’m not sure there’s a methodology that will let us do any better than that — of the potential effects of the compressed schedule, I went back into the ZiPS game-by-game postseason simulations and put together a new, quick simulation for starting pitcher usage. I used projections as of Tuesday morning. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter a bit more about whether Dottie dropped the ball on purpose in the movie version of A League of Their Own, then discuss an Angels defensive meltdown, a vomiting Oakland Athletic, a Javier Báez bad-ball batted ball, Tony La Russa (and Bill Veeck) taking suggestions from the stands, the Mets’ promotion of Brett Baty, Francisco Lindor, Andrés Giménez, and the Lindor trade revisited, Walker Buehler’s Tommy John surgery, Fernando Tatis Jr.’s suspension, and the Rangers firing Chris Woodward and the dubious utility of one-run records in evaluating managers, then Stat Blast (51:34) about Drew Rasmussen and almost-perfect games versus nine-inning no-hitters and a Max Scherzer/Bryson Stott fun fact, share a Past Blast (1:04:01) from 1890, and talk (1:10:02) to Dr. Justine Siegal, trailblazing baseball coach, founder of Baseball For All, and Baseball Coordinator for the A League of Their Own TV reboot, about her work on the baseball scenes in the series and the progress of women in baseball.
With less than a third of the season remaining, it’s crunch time for a number of teams on the playoff bubble. There are still division titles up for grabs in both Central divisions, and both Wild Card races are shaping up to remain exciting down to the last day.
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, August 14.
Tier 1 – The 💯 Club
Team
Record
“Luck”
wRC+
SP-
RP-
RAA
Team Quality
Playoff Odds
Dodgers
79-34
-2
122
79
81
0
179
100.0%
Astros
75-41
1
114
86
80
21
189
100.0%
Yankees
72-43
-6
119
87
80
11
182
100.0%
Mets
75-40
3
113
88
93
7
164
100.0%
The Dodgers had a 12-game win streak — which included sweeps of the Giants, Padres, and Twins — snapped on Sunday. They’ve lost just four times since the All-Star break and have asserted themselves as the best team in baseball as the summer rolls on. This hot streak comes despite plenty of uncertainty surrounding their starting rotation; Clayton Kershaw hit the injured list last week with a lower back strain, and the team announced yesterday that Walker Buehler would undergo elbow surgery, ending his season. They’ll be glad to welcome back Dustin May from his Tommy John rehab this weekend. Read the rest of this entry »
Jameson Taillon was 20 years old when he was first featured here at FanGraphs in September 2012. Drafted second overall by the Pittsburgh Pirates out of Woodland (Texas) High School just two years earlier, he’d only recently been promoted to Double-A when he sat down for an interview. The subjects at hand were his repertoire and his early-career development as a professional pitcher.
A decade later, Taillon is now pitching for the New York Yankees. Acquired from Pittsburgh prior to last season — this after missing most of 2019 and all of the shortened 2020 season while recovering from Tommy John surgery — the 30-year-old right-hander is having a solid campaign. In 23 starts comprising 127.2 innings, he is 11–3 with a 3.95 ERA and a 4.02 FIP.
Taillon discussed his decade-long evolution on the mound when the Yankees visited Fenway Park this past weekend.
———
David Laurila: You were in the minors when we first spoke 10 years ago. How would you describe your progression as a pitcher since that time?
Jameson Taillon: “One of the interesting things about pitching is that you’re in constant pursuit of trying to get better. The trends change, the hitters change, the scouting reports change. But I feel like I’ve kept a lot of my strengths the same. My curveball is still a pretty decent pitch for me, I throw a four- and a two-seam, just like I did 10 years ago.
“I’ve added a slider. I’ve probably used the changeup a little bit more in the big leagues than I did at the beginning of my career. But yeah, for a while there I was heavy sinkers and ground balls. Last year I went heavy four-seam. Now I’m kind of finding that sweet mix, that balance.”
Dan Szymborski: And we are live!
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