Things haven’t quite gone to plan in San Francisco this year. That’s not to say that the Giants have been bad, or even that they’ve been disappointing exactly. At 39–33, they’re squarely in the playoff hunt, and if you go by our odds, they’re more likely to make the postseason today than they were before the season. But after a 107-win 2021, “in the playoff hunt” doesn’t sound nearly as enticing. The same is true for their individual performers. It’s hard to be impressed by a nice season when seemingly everyone on the team had a career year last year.
Here’s an example of what I mean. Logan Webb has been pretty darn good so far this year. In 15 starts, he’s compiled a 3.04 ERA, which nearly matches his 3.03 FIP. That’s roughly a match for his breakout 2021 season, which sounds great, but the resounding roar around the Giants’ unstoppable player development engine over the past two years makes Webb’s success feel almost pedestrian.
It’s not, though. Pitchers with ERAs near 3 don’t grow on trees. Webb is one of the best 30 starters in baseball; that should speak for itself. Since the start of 2021, he’s 12th among pitchers in WAR, 18th in ERA, and fifth in FIP. He’s 32nd in K-BB%, which doesn’t sound quite as impressive until you consider the fact that he gets so many grounders. No starter has allowed fewer home runs per inning, and only human cheat codeFramber Valdez has a higher groundball rate. Read the rest of this entry »
Last Friday, the Mariners placed Ty France on the Injured List with a flexor strain in his left arm, the result of a collision at first base the day before. This was just the latest blow to a Seattle lineup that’s been wracked by injuries, with France joining Mitch Haniger, Kyle Lewis, Tom Murphy, and Evan White on the IL. With very little minor league depth to turn to at first base, the Mariners turned to the trade market to address their sudden need. On Monday morning, they acquired Carlos Santana and cash considerations from the Royals for a pair of pitching prospects, Wyatt Mills and William Fleming.
In the four games since France’s injury, the Mariners used Dylan Moore and Kevin Padlo at first base twice apiece. Neither can replicate France’s critical offensive contributions (a 157 wRC+), and Moore is better suited to fill a super utility role anyway. Enter Santana, who gives the Mariners some insurance in case France’s recovery takes longer than expected. This is actually the second time Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto has acquired Santana; the first was back in 2018, when he was part of the return for Jean Segura along with J.P. Crawford. He was flipped to Cleveland just 10 days later in a three-way trade that included Edwin Encarnación and Yandy Díaz.
The switch-hitting first baseman signed a two-year deal with the Royals last year but has been unable to stop a late-career decline that began in 2020. Over the last three seasons, he’s posted a .211/.331/.343 slash line, good for a 90 wRC+, with his 104 wRC+ this year standing as a high water mark. His excellent plate discipline is still intact — he’s one of nine batters with at least 200 plate appearances this season to have walked more than they’ve struck out — but he’s struggled when putting the ball in play.
Last September, Ben Clemens looked into Santana’s issues on contact and found that a lot of it could be explained by his poor results when swinging at fastballs.
Over the course of Santana’s career, he’s been a fearsome fastball hitter. That’s partially because he does an excellent job making pitchers throw him strikes, but it’s also because he knows what to do with them: swing frequently, rarely whiff, and do damage when he connects. He still saw a good number of heaters, because he does a great job of getting into favorable counts, but pitchers were simply choosing their poison. Better to meet him in the zone and take your chances with a ball in play than miss and give him a walk.
That trend no longer holds. He’s having his worst season against fastballs since 2015, one of his worst pre-decline seasons. What’s gone wrong? Pretty simply, everything. His swinging strike rate on fastballs is the highest of his career (excluding a partial 2010 rookie season). His whiff rate when he does swing is a ghastly 17.5%, even with his 2011 season and worse than any effort since. We only have barrel data since 2015, but his barrels per swing mark is quite poor too: 3.4%, ahead of only his 2018 season and in the bottom third of the league.
Santana started this season with the same problem. In April and May, he posted a .220 wOBA against fastballs and looked like he was on track to finish his time with the Royals at a supreme low point. Something clicked in June, however, and suddenly his bat came alive again. He’s slashed .357/.478/.554 (198 wRC+) this month and looked a lot more like his old self again. And as you’d expect, his performance against hard stuff has been the key. Read the rest of this entry »
George Kirby is off to a solid start in Seattle. Since debuting with the Mariners in early May, the 24-year-old rookie right-hander has a 4.04 ERA and a 4.73 FIP (numbers that were markedly better before last night’s career-worst outing) to go with 49 strikeouts in 53 innings. Lending credence to scouting reports — our Eric Longenhagen lauded not only his high-octane heater, but also his plus-plus control — Kirby has issued just seven free passes.
Drafted 20th overall in 2019 out of Elon University, Kirby ranked No. 3 on our 2022 Seattle Mariners top prospects list. Kirby discussed his early career development, including what he’s learned from analytics, earlier this month.
———
David Laurila: You’ve had access to a ton of information playing in the Mariners’ system. What are some of the ways you approach pitching differently than you did just a few years ago?
George Kirby: “One thing I’ve really tried to hammer on is being location-based. I look at the analytics for certain pitches. With my slider, for instance, there is my release point and the horizontal movement. There are good tools to see where you’re at and kind of how to manage your off-speed. I’m always looking at that stuff.”
Laurila: By location-based, I assume you’re referring to how your pitches play best in certain zones?
Kirby: “Yes. With the Mariners, we have our ‘green clouds,’ which show the best pitch in that location in certain counts. I try to really focus on that. And one of the biggest numbers is that 94% of the time when you throw a first-pitch strike, you’re either getting the ball back 0–1 or it’s an out. That’s a huge part of pitching — not being scared of the zone and allowing that first pitch to work in your favor.” Read the rest of this entry »
As you might imagine, I watch a lot of baseball for work, and one of the things that stands out to me the most this year is just how dang hard pitchers are throwing. I’m not just talking about that new hotshot reliever your team called up who’s dropping triple digits like peak Aroldis Chapman, though that’s part of it. I’m talking about existing starters, guys I’ve watched for years, adding a little oomph.
Max Fried has topped out over 100 mph this year; his teammate Kyle Wright has never thrown harder. Framber Valdez is up nearly two ticks on average. Carlos Rodón already threw hard, and now he throws even harder. You can’t walk 10 feet without tripping over a pitcher throwing harder than ever – or so it seems to me, a fairly interested observer.
But appearances can be deceiving. I can think of any number of baseball truths that were considered evidently true by observation for years, only to later be disproven. I decided to put my eyes to the test. Have pitchers learned how to throw harder from one year to the next, changing the fundamental truth of how aging works? Let’s find out.
My method is fairly simple. I took every starter who threw at least 10 innings since pitch-level data began in 2008. I took their average four-seam fastball velocity, but only in games they started; I didn’t want to have swingmen who changed roles within or between seasons in my data. From there, I looked at every pitcher to see if he’d thrown in the majors the previous year, and if so, the change in fastball velocity from one year to the next.
In this way, I got a yearly sample of how much every returning pitcher in baseball’s velocity changed, on average, every year. As a quick example, there were 176 pitchers who compiled at least 10 innings as a starter in both 2013 and ’14. On average, they threw 0.21 mph slower in 2014 than they did in ’13. I found those pairs for every year, which gave me a yearly average of velocity changes over time. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s been an eventful two weeks as teams continue to jockey for position heading into midseason.
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.
Tier 1 – The Best of the Best
Team
Record
“Luck”
wRC+
SP-
RP-
RAA
Team Quality
Playoff Odds
Yankees
53-20
0
117
78
77
3
187
100.0%
Dodgers
45-26
-5
115
78
83
-3
168
97.3%
Astros
45-27
1
113
91
81
15
182
99.8%
In a preview of a potential ALCS matchup, the Yankees and Astros played a highly entertaining four-game series this weekend. Houston would have held the advantage if it weren’t for some dramatic come-from-behind wins on Thursday and Sunday. In between those two walk-off wins, the Astros put together 16.1 consecutive hitless innings, including a combined no-hitter on Saturday. The Yankees actually didn’t lead at any point during any of the four games until the final batters on Thursday and Sunday, with Aaron Judge delivering the decisive hit both times. That four-game set against Houston wrapped up a tough stretch of games that saw the Yankees also face the Rays six times and the Blue Jays three; they exit this gauntlet with a 9-4 record against some of the best the American League has to offer. Read the rest of this entry »
Since firing manager Joe Girardi on June 3, the Phillies have made significant strides toward climbing back into the playoff hunt, but on Saturday night, their chances took a significant hit. In the fourth inning of their game with the Padres in San Diego, Bryce Harper was hit by a 97-mph Blake Snell fastball, fracturing his left thumb and knocking him out of the lineup indefinitely.
When Harper was hit, his hands were so near his head that initially it appeared he got hit in the face. Even after it was clear that it had not, it was apparent that his injury was a significant one:
“I kind of wish it would have hit me in the face,” Harper told reporters afterward, conveniently forgetting many a career-altering beaning. “I don’t break bones in my face. I can take 98 to the face, but I can’t take 97 to the thumb.”
The 29-year-old Harper, the National League’s reigning Most Valuable Player, was already playing through a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow, an injury that was diagnosed in mid-May, after which he received an injection of platelet-rich plasma. The tear is apparently traceable to an April 11 throw from right field that had limited Harper to designated hitter duty since April 17. Last week, he missed three games due to an infected blister at the base of his left index finger.
Despite the elbow injury, Harper has thrived. He’s hitting .318/.385/.599 with 15 homers, with both his slugging percentage and 166 wRC+ ranking second in the NL — the latter mark just four points below last year’s major league-leading figure — and his 2.7 WAR ninth. This month, as the team has gone 18–6 (17–6 since firing Girardi, including wins on Saturday and Sunday over the Padres), Harper hit .359/.455/.641 (201 wRC+), practically carrying the offense. But at this writing, he’s the third of the NL’s top 10 players in WAR to be sidelined by an injury, joining Manny Machado (sprained left ankle) and Mookie Betts (cracked rib) in the virtual infirmary. Read the rest of this entry »
Brendan Donovan knows who he is as a hitter. The St. Louis Cardinals rookie is at his best when he’s hunting line drives, and that approach has been working like a charm. Two months into his big-league career, the 25-year-old is slashing .315/.426/.448 — with 14 doubles and one home run — in 197 plate appearances. Moreover, his 146 wRC+ is tops among qualified first-year players.
A left-handed hitter whom the Cardinals selected in the seventh round of the 2018 draft out of the University of South Alabama, Donovan is coming off a 2021 season that saw him climb from High-A to Triple-A, then excel in the Arizona Fall League. That meteoric rise continued this spring. Donovan earned a promotion to St. Louis in late April, and all he’s done since arriving is spray line drives. It’s what he does.
Donovan discussed his swing and approach when the Cardinals visited Fenway Park earlier this month.
———
David Laurila: How have you developed as a hitter since coming into pro ball?
Brendan Donovan: “We made a change in our hitting department — Jeff Albert, Russ Steinhorn, and those guys came in — and I was someone that made contact, but it wasn’t always quality contact. What we did is put me into a better body posture, better positioning, more tilt over the plate. I learned how to load the back hip a little better and flatten out my path. From there, it’s basically, ‘Let’s just try to get on plane, and see how long we can stay on plane.’ That’s helped me with fastballs up, and given me more adjustability on breaking balls and changeups, because I’m in the zone longer. Read the rest of this entry »
Jordan Lyles plays for a Baltimore Orioles team that stands 34-39 and is currently projected to finish 72-90. For the 31-year-old right-hander, that qualifies as more of the same. Lyles is in his 12th big-league season, and not once has he played a full year with a team that finished above .500. Moreover, he’s been on four clubs that lost 100-plus games. The worst of the worst was the 2013 Houston Astros, who went 51-111, a staggering 45 games out of first place.
The three seasons in which he’s played for multiple teams haven’t been much better. In each of those years, one of the two clubs he took the mound for ended up losing over 90 games. To date, Lyles has never pitched in the postseason.
That he never anticipated such a dearth of winning would be stating the obvious. Selected 38th-overall in 2008 out of a South Carolina high school, Lyles entered pro ball with the same lofty hopes and dreams as his draft-class peers. When you’re young and talented, visions of championship glory come with the territory.
He did reach the big leagues in relatively short order. Seventeen when he signed, Lyles was a precocious 20 years old when he debuted with the Astros in 2011. His first outing was a harbinger of things to come. The fresh-faced youngster allowed just a pair of runs over seven innings, only to see the bullpen blow the lead, depriving him of a win. At season’s end, Lyles was 2-7, the team 56-106. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley answer listener emails about why players in the dugout seem so confident in pitch locations, whether it would ever help to wear two gloves, MLB Big Inning and other baseball equivalents of NFL RedZone, the extreme dimensions of the Polo Grounds, what makes it so impressive that some players perform at the same level for a long time, whether the Cardinals are a fun team, and what it means when we say that a player is “fun to watch,” then (55:45) take pedantic questions about “pedantic” vs. “semantic,” whether every batted ball that hits the ground is a ground ball, “former” first-round draft picks, “number one” draft picks, how best to describe a batter’s small-sample line, the (un)importance of head-to-head team records, clearing the bases and homers that drive in multiple runs, how to refer to ballparks that have since changed their names, and the on-deck circle vs. the “next batter’s box,” followed (1:32:07) by a Past Blast from 1867.
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