Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley announce the availability of new Effectively Wild T-shirts, then follow up on the latest, Mike Trout-related developments in the Tommy Pham–Joc Pederson fantasy-football/slap story as well as Josh Donaldson’s comments about his teammates not supporting him. After that, they banter about a home-run robbery that wasn’t, the homer hitting of Aaron Judge, a successful use of the “KK play” to deke a runner into leaving third base early, the return of MVP-caliber Mookie Betts, the Kevin Gausman vs. Robbie Ray debate revisited, unlikely contenders for the pitcher WAR lead (including Martín Pérez), and whether the Phillies are hopeless this season and long term, followed by the latest edition of Today’s Episode Number in Baseball History (plus a postscript).

Audio intro: The Skygreen Leopards, “Selling T-shirts”
Audio outro: The Lemonheads, “It’s a Shame About Ray”

Link to FG post about t-shirts
Link to t-shirts
Link to C. Trent on Trout
Link to Andy McCullough on Trout
Link to MLB.com on Trout
Link to Donaldson comments
Link to tweet about Ohtani’s rescheduling
Link to Ohtani game story
Link to Ohtani non-robbery video
Link to Ben on homer robberies
Link to Dan Szymborski on Judge
Link to “ordinary effort” definition
Link to story about the “KK play”
Link to video of the “KK play”
Link to Ben on mid-PA pitching changes
Link to story about Ray and vaccination
Link to Shapiro’s comments
Link to Levi Weaver on Pérez
Link to Sports-Reference newsletter
Link to changes in playoff odds
Link to Girardi on his job
Link to Ken Rosenthal on Girardi’s job
Link to The Ringer’s preseason predictions
Link to RosterResource payroll page
Link to 1857 convention story
Link to Richard Hershberger’s Strike Four
Link to 1857 story source 1
Link to 1857 story source 2
Link to 1857 story source 3
Link to Shanghaiing wiki
Link to sticky wicket wiki
Link to story on crank/fan
Link to “good hair day” clip
Link to overheard Hallion clip
Link to Hallion hot-mic clip
Link to “ass in the jackpot” video

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Noah Syndergaard’s return to New York on Tuesday night did not go well. In his first start in the Big Apple since signing with the Angels last November, the 29-year-old righty gave up five runs and didn’t make it out of the third inning as his team extended its losing streak to six games via a 9–1 thrashing at the hands of the Yankees. After missing nearly all of the past two seasons due to Tommy John surgery, a pitcher who was the game’s hardest-throwing starter is in the process of reinventing himself, but the results have been rather uneven.

Syndergaard agreed to a one-year, $21 million deal with the Angels last November, a day before the deadline for him to accept or reject the $18.4 million qualifying offer he received from the Mets. He missed all of the 2020 season after tearing his UCL in March and then made just two one-inning starts last year following setbacks in his rehab — first a bout of inflammation in his right elbow in late May, then a positive COVID-19 test in late August — so it would not have been a surprise for him to stay in Queens on a one-year deal and rebuild his value. And while Syndergaard had interest from multiple suitors, some of them willing to sign him to a multi-year deal despite his long absence, he told reporters that he was intrigued by the Angels’ plan to keep him healthy. Via MLBcom’s Rhett Bollinger:

“It was a no-brainer once I had that sitdown meeting with Perry,” Syndergaard said Friday. “He had a really in-depth plan of attack to get me back to where I was in 2015, ’16 and ’18. Not pitching for two years, he had a great game plan that I’m 100% confident in that’s gonna keep me healthy and allow me to flourish and blossom to my true potential.”

The idea of pitching in a six-man rotation appealed to Syndergaard, as it’ll help keep his innings total at a manageable level in his first full season back from his elbow surgery. The Angels utilize the six-man rotation to make room for two-way star Shohei Ohtani, who stayed mostly healthy throughout the 2021 season while making 23 starts and throwing 130 1/3 innings.

Syndergaard said his innings total will be limited next season, but he didn’t have a total in mind just yet.

For that stretch that Syndergaard mentioned, he was one of the top pitchers in baseball… when he was available. From 2015 to ’18, only Clayton Kershaw outdid Syndergaard’s 2.66 FIP; only Kershaw, teammate Jacob deGrom, and Max Scherzer beat his 2.93 ERA; and only eight pitchers had a higher strikeout-walk differential than his 21.6% (27.1% strikeout rate, 5.5% walk rate). Syndergaard’s 14.4 WAR for that period ranked “only” 15th because he threw just 518.1 innings in that span, the majors’ 71st-highest total. A strained latissimus dorsi limited him to just seven starts and 30.1 innings in 2017 (who can forget his refusal to take an MRI for shoulder and biceps discomfort, followed by a 1.1-inning start and then a nearly five-month absence?), and then he missed nearly seven weeks in 2018 due to a strained ligament in his right index finger. Read the rest of this entry »

12:02

Dan Szymborski: Welcome to the start of the Dan Szymborski Birthday season.

12:03

Dan Szymborski: I’d personally avoid unless the next option is really poor – Coors is still Coors.

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Possible, but I’m still optimistic on some of those guys turning it around

12:06

Dan Szymborski: What’s kinda awkward is that Profar and Hosmer have been steadily fading but the guys struggling aren’t really bouncing back

Read the rest of this entry »

Broadcasters see a lot of games, and as a result, they see a lot of great pitching performances. Which of them would qualify as “the best” is, of course, subjective. For instance, a no-hitter is always going to stand out, but a two-hitter with a huge strikeout total is arguably even more impressive. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. With that in mind, I recently posed this question to a cross section of big league broadcasters: What is the best pitching performance you’ve seen?

———

Robert Ford, Houston Astros

“It would have to be Gerrit Cole throwing a one-hit shutout in 2018 with 16 strikeouts. I’ve been fortunate to call three no-hitters. Two of them were individual no-hitters. There was Justin Verlander’s last one, and the other was Mike Fiers. The Verlander one would be second on my list. The Cole performance was even more impressive.

“Cole was just dominant. He had everything working. I can’t remember who got the hit off of him, but looking back, it’s amazing that anybody did. Honestly, if he were to have that same performance, nine times out of 10 it would have been a no-hitter. This was the exception — the one that wasn’t. I think he had a perfect game-score.” Read the rest of this entry »

We’re pleased to announced that we’ve launched a whole bunch of new FanGraphs and Effectively Wild merchandise in partnership with BreakingT.

There are three new Effectively Wild shirts, all designed by Luke Hooper. These include a new take on the Effectively Wild logo, a Stat Blast shirt (complete with song lyrics on the back), and the much requested “How Can You Not Be Pedantic About Baseball?” shirt. Read the rest of this entry »

At its core, hitting is about hitting fastballs. I’m not sure that’s a good thing – pitchers don’t throw as many fastballs as they used to, because they know that hitters are hunting fastballs. Look at the aggregate data, though, and it’s clear. So far this year, batters are 93 runs above average against fastballs, and naturally enough, 93 runs below average against all other pitches. Last year, they were 344 runs above average against fastballs. It’s a consistent pattern throughout baseball history. Ask a hitter, and they’ll probably tell you the same thing. You make your paycheck on fastballs, and you hope not to spend it all on everything else.

That’s not to say that it applies to all hitters equally. Mike Trout is a good secondary pitch hitter – he’s a great hitter overall. Rafael Devers might be a better secondary pitch hitter than he is a fastball hitter. The archetype exists, because, well, good hitters are good.

The opposite is true as well. Max Muncy has done almost all of his damage against fastballs throughout his career. So has Joey Votto, surprisingly enough – from 2018 to now, he’s been five runs below average against sliders, curveballs, changeups, and splitters combined. There’s no one way to be a great hitter – you can tattoo fastballs and live with the damage from everything else, hunt everything else and survive against fastballs, or find some happy medium.

I thought it would be fun to figure out who most embodies this “baseball is about hitting fastballs” lifestyle. In other words, I’m looking for a hitter who is good overall, but incredibly poor at handling secondary pitches. It won’t do to find someone who’s bad at hitting sliders because they’re just bad at hitting; Billy Hamilton is the worst slider hitter in baseball over the past five years (by run value per pitch seen), but well, he wasn’t in the majors for his hitting. Read the rest of this entry »

This season, Eric and Tess Taruskin will each have a minor league roundup post that runs during the week, with the earlier post recapping some of the weekend’s action. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

Jared Shuster, LHP, Atlanta Braves
Level & Affiliate: Double-A Mississippi Age: 23 Org Rank: TBD FV: 45
Weekend Line: 6 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 8 K

Notes
Shuster’s velocity fluctuated wildly from start to start in 2021, and altogether he averaged just 89-90 mph last year, about three ticks below his typical velo in the lead up to the 2020 draft. It has been more consistent so far in 2022 but had still resided in the 88-91 mph range until Shuster sat 91-93 in his weekend outing. Except for that brief run up to the 2020 draft, Shuster has shown below-average fastball velocity, and while it’s worth continuously monitoring for change (especially because things were up a tad in this most recent start), Shuster’s history as a player points toward this velo band being where he’ll sit for the long haul. His fastball has other characteristics that help enable it to punch above its weight, but it isn’t a plus pitch at its current velocity. Instead, he continues to rely on his plus changeup, of which he has plus command. Shuster locates his cambio down and to his arm side with remarkable consistency, and it is by far his best offering. In part because of how well he hides the ball, Shuster’s slider has some in-zone utility, especially against left-handed hitters, though he struggles to locate it in that enticing, off-the-plate location where most sliders play best. While Shuster doesn’t have a tool for every situation, he is a lefty with a plus changeup whose fastball has sneaky utility despite medium velocity, the skillset of many a No. 4/5 starter. Read the rest of this entry »

When the National League adopted the designated hitter for good as part of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, the Mets figured to be among the Senior Circuit’s top beneficiaries given their stockpile of defensively limited hitters at corner positions. Within that group, Dominic Smith appeared most likely to take advantage of the extra spot in the lineup, whether he was the DH or played the field while someone else did, effectively giving him a do-over after a miserable, injury-marred 2021 season. It hasn’t worked out that way, however, so on Tuesday, the Mets optioned the struggling Smith to Triple-A Syracuse.

The 26-year-old Smith is hitting just .186/.287/.256 (67 wRC+) and has yet to homer through his first 101 plate appearances, a showing that’s a step down even from last year’s limp .244/.304/.363 (86 wRC+) line, which at least featured 10 home runs in 493 PA. That said, where Smith’s dreadful defensive work in left field (-3.8 UZR, -5 DRS, -9 OAA in just 859.2 innings) dragged last year’s WAR down to -1.0, this year he’s been kept out of the outfield, starting 14 games at first base — where he’s more or less an average defender by the metrics — and another eight at DH, leaving him at exactly 0.0 WAR on the year, so there’s that.

In a major league career that’s covered all or part of six seasons, Smith has rarely found middle ground. Chosen as the 11th overall pick out of a Gardena, California high school in 2013, he reached the majors four years later, but in 49 games that year and 56 in ’18, he hit just .210/.259/.406 (78 wRC+) in 332 PA, with 14 home runs but not much else. His conditioning was an issue — the six-foot first baseman reportedly weighed as much as 260 pounds, 21 above his currently-listed weight — and so was sleep apnea. Smith was diagnosed with the condition while at Double-A Binghamton in 2016 but had stopped sleeping with his CPAP mask after a year; he didn’t get enough rest and often struggled with his stamina and concentration.

After taking steps to address both issues, Smith was much improved in 2019, hitting a robust .282/.355/.525 (134 wRC+). However, he had two problems: first, 2016 second-round pick Pete Alonso, the team’s top prospect, won the first base job and hit 53 homers en route to All-Star and Rookie of the Year honors; and second, Smith suffered a stress reaction in his left foot and made just one plate appearance after July 27, a walk-off three-run homer against the Braves on September 29. That impressive line spanned just 197 PA; Alonso’s presence led to Smith starting just eight games at first plus 27 in left field while coming off the bench 54 times, 37 of those as a pinch-hitter.

The pandemic-shortened 2020 season brought the DH to the NL on a full-time basis, which opened up a path to everyday play for Smith. Starting 22 times at first base (17 with Alonso DHing), 21 in left field (eep), and five at DH — Robinson Canó made 13 starts there, J.D. Davis 12 — he thrived, hitting .316/.377/.616 with 10 homers. His slugging percentage and 166 wRC+ both placed fourth in the league. Finally, he was living up to his billing. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve watched any baseball highlights recently, you’ve probably seen a familiar face lashing line drives. Paul Goldschmidt has a 22-game hitting streak and 28 extra-base hits on the year, which makes him a regular in game recaps. That frequent loud contact has produced one of those hitting lines that makes it clear that we’re still early in the season: .352/.422/.626 screams “small sample!” as loudly as Dan Szymborski does every April.

Sure, that’s true. I don’t think that Goldschmidt is going to post a .402 BABIP on the season. I don’t think that he’s going to keep hitting homers on 18% of his fly balls while also hitting fly balls more frequently than he ever has, or posting a pristine strikeout rate while chasing more often than league average. But again, he’s hitting .352/.422/.626. He has plenty of space to cool off while still being red hot, so let’s look at how he’s setting himself up to succeed.

Want to hit a home run? Step one is to swing at a good pitch. Goldschmidt has done exactly that this year; the location and type of the pitches he’s hit for home runs look like a hitting textbook:

Hanging sliders, sinkers that don’t sink, and four-seamers all over the place? That’s how they teach it to you in slugger school.

When he makes contact, he’s pulling the ball more than ever. Eight of his 11 home runs have been pulled, with another two going to straightaway center. The lone exception? It was on that four-seam fastball away that you can see up above. Goldschmidt is, after all, still an excellent hitter, with enough power to hit the ball where it’s pitched. He’s simply picking inside and middle pitches and pulling them into the stands. Read the rest of this entry »

Eric Hosmer’s numbers have declined since Jay Jaffe wrote about him in early May. That was inevitable. At the time, the San Diego Padres first baseman was slashing a stupendous and wholly unsustainable .382/.447/.579. As my colleague pointed out, the question at hand was whether Hosmer “can still help a team that was close to unloading him just a month ago.”

His overall numbers remain solid. Even with the inevitable downturn, the 32-year-old Hosmer is slashing .312/.378/.435 on the season, with his .354 wOBA and 132 wRC+ both ranking second-best on the club behind Manny Machado. The Padres would be more than satisfied if Hosmer were to finish the season with those types of numbers.

Hosmer, a career .278/.337/.431 hitter who has incurred more than his fair share of peaks and valleys since breaking into the big leagues with the Kansas City Royals in 2011, talked hitting prior to a May 1 game at PNC Park.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with your formative years. How did you grow up learning to hit?

Eric Hosmer: “I grew up basically wanting to stay inside the ball. You’re kind of taught that approach when you’re a kid, and as you advance, particularly in pro ball, you get the timing involved. You want to be in a ready position while you’re reading the pitch and then pull off a good swing from there.”

Laurila: How many times have you tried to change as a hitter?

Hosmer: “A couple of times. As you get older in your career, you might try to do certain things. The game went heavy to home runs and all that. It went to slugging. So you kind of try to change a little bit. You notice if it works, or doesn’t work, for you. You maybe end up trying to change back to what got you here.”

Laurila: You found that a particular approach doesn’t work for you.

Hosmer: “The trying to lift the ball? No, I don’t think that works too well for me.” Read the rest of this entry »