Kyle Freeland and the Rockies were set for a tense arbitration session. He had asked for $7.8 million; they countered with $6.425 million. That was the fourth-largest gap between team and player across all of baseball. But good news for people who don’t like contentious negotiations: That’s all in the past, because both parties agreed to a five-year extension that supersedes the arbitration dispute and should keep Freeland in Denver for the foreseeable future.

The deal, which buys out three seasons of free agency, has all kinds of bells and whistles. At its core, it’s a five-year, $64.5 million contract, which will pay him $7 million, $10.5 million, $15 million, $16 million, and $16 million for the next five years. If Freeland pitches 170 innings in ‘26, he’ll trigger a player option for the 2027 season, which would pay him $17 million. But wait, there’s more! If Freeland finishes in the top five in Cy Young voting in either 2022 or ’23, he can opt out after ’24; if he’s showing Cy Young form, he’d presumably do so.

This deal is somehow the largest contract the Rockies have given to a pitcher since Darryl Kile and simultaneously not one of the top five deals signed by starting pitchers since the end of last season. As befits a deal that is simultaneously large and small, I’m of two minds about it. Read the rest of this entry »

As we accumulate enough scouting notes to fill an article, we’ll publish dispatches from our in-person looks. Below are some of those observations from our most recent excursions. Past In-Person Looks can be found here.

Eric’s Notes
I began my Saturday morning at a Giants/Rockies extended spring training game and ran into two of last year’s notable Rockies DSL pitchers, Alberto Pacheco and Angel Chivilli. Pacheco, who was an Honorable Mention prospect on this year’s Rockies list, was up to 95 mph, sitting 91-94, and had a better breaking ball than our reports from 2021 indicated, a two-plane slurve in the 82-85 mph range. He had better feel for landing it as an in-zone strike than he did for burying it as a finishing pitch. His changeup was in the 84-87 mph range, consistent with reports from last year. There are ways you could frame it (teenage lefty up to 95!) to justify a re-evaluation and a move up the Colorado pref list, and Pacheco is certainly a pitcher in their system to know, but let’s see how the velo trends this summer. Pacheco has three pitches in the 45/50-grade area and is still several years away from the big leagues, so he probably still belongs in the Others of Note area.

Chivilli came in in relief and worked a couple of innings sitting 95-98 mph. He is super loose and projectable and might still throw harder, but his secondary stuff (a mid-80s slider and changeup) is currently below average. There’s one obvious impact pitch here in the fastball, and Chivilli only needs to develop one other offering to project in relief. Because he signed in 2018, the 2022 season is technically his 40-man evaluation year. He’s a developmental prospect at this stage, likely too far from the big leagues to be added to the 40-man after the season, and also too raw to be taken (and stick) via the Rule 5 Draft. We’re looking at a two-to-three year timeline for Chivilli to work towards a 40-man spot, probably still in relief. Read the rest of this entry »

4/23 Update: It has come to our attention that in the switch to Statcast Fielding Runs Prevented (RAA), outfield positional adjustments were being improperly applied. This has now been corrected by zeroing out RAA for each individual position, on a seasonal basis, specifically for use in WAR. The tables below have been updated to include this correction.

Since we launched FanGraphs WAR in 2008, we have used various components of Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) such as Range, Outfield Arm, and Double Play Conversion to evaluate position player fielding. Today, we’re changing one of those components. Retroactive to the 2016 season, we have swapped out the Range component of UZR for the Statcast metric Fielding Runs Prevented, which is Outs Above Average (OAA) converted to runs above average. The UZR Outfield Arm and Double Play Conversion components of WAR remain unchanged.

We believe the additional data points available in Statcast, such as a fielder’s starting location, help to improve the measurement of a player’s range, especially in situations where players are shifted.

The vast majority of players’ new WAR calculations fall within a +/-1 WAR range of their previous WAR figures. Since 2016, there are 49 individual seasons that have changed by more than one win, and 14 players whose WAR has changed by more than three wins for the entire six year span starting in 2016. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Angels signed Michael Lorenzen this offseason, it was hard to say what to expect from him. A longtime member of the Reds’ bullpen for nearly his entire major league career, he entered his first time through free agency looking for an opportunity to start again; making that jump to the rotation came with all sorts of uncertainty. But after just two starts for his hometown team, the early returns have been promising.

The former 38th overall pick began his career as a member of the Reds’ rotation, making 21 starts during his rookie season back in 2015 but posting a 5.45 ERA and a 5.48 FIP and getting relegated to the bullpen by the end of the year. He enjoyed a bit of success in shorter outings the next year and wound up in that role for the rest of his time in Cincinnati. At various points during his time there, Lorenzen regularly expressed a desire to return to the rotation, but spring injuries often played a role in pushing him back to the bullpen. In 2016, it was a sprained ligament in his elbow; in ‘18, a shoulder injury. He was on track to join the rotation last spring until another shoulder injury derailed that plan again.

The fact that Lorenzen made it through spring training without an injury and actually made a start this season has to be seen as an accomplishment. Not only that, but his first outing against the Marlins was outstanding: two hits over six innings and a single run that scored on a Jesús Sánchez solo home run. He didn’t walk a batter and struck out seven. His next start was a much stiffer challenge against the Astros in Houston, where he lasted into the fourth inning but was done in by a lapse in command, issuing a walk and hit by pitch both with the bases loaded. He wound up allowing four runs on four hits and two walks in 3.1 innings of work, striking out two.

While the start in Houston didn’t go as well as his first, Lorenzen has shown some interesting changes to his pitch arsenal that could indicate some more success on the horizon. In his postgame comments after his Angels debut, he discussed his pitch profile:

“I worked really hard this offseason to get my stuff where it needs to be. It’s a lot more fun in the rotation. I’m able to use everything and set guys up certain ways for the next time through. It’s just more fun to do that instead of being limited. I have too many pitches to be limited in the bullpen, so I was just able to take advantage of my pitch profile.”

Even as a reliever, Lorenzen continued to use a full, six-pitch repertoire. He leaned on his four-seam fastball and cutter for the most part, but also sprinkled in a sinker, changeup, slider, and curveball. Read the rest of this entry »

Less than two weeks into the 2022 season, the Braves and Dodgers crossed paths for the first time, not only rekindling the rivalry between the teams that have met in the last two National League Championship Series en route to World Series wins but also presenting the chance for their recent free agent additions Freddie Freeman and Kenley Jansen to receive some well-deserved fanfare in the presence of their old pals. Freeman figured prominently in Monday night’s game, clubbing a solo homer in his first plate appearance against his old team, furthering a strong start with his new one, while Matt Olson, the Braves’ choice to fill his sizable shoes, collected his fourth three-hit game of the young season and briefly took over the major league lead in WAR and the NL leads in batting average and on-base percentage. His team ended up on the short end of a 7-4 score, and he took an 0-for-4 on Tuesday, though the Braves evened the series in a 3-1 victory closed out by Jansen.

Few players in recent memory have been placed under the microscope as swiftly as the 28-year-old Olson. On March 13, he was still the first baseman for the A’s, though amid the team’s umpteenth teardown, multiple suitors had expressed interest in trading for him. A day later, he was suddenly the new first baseman for the Braves, as the defending champions acquired him in exchange for four players, effectively slamming the door on the Freeman era. The day after that, Olson became a franchise cornerstone himself by agreeing to an eight-year, $168 million extension. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and once again we’ll be hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features a veteran left-hander, Jake Diekman, and a young right-hander, Griffin Jax, on their signature sliders.

———

Jake Diekman, Boston Red Sox

“I learned a slider in my first year of college, or maybe in my senior year of high school. It was my breaking ball. If you’re under 16 years old, you should not throw a curveball or slider. That’s my opinion. You should just develop a heater — maybe a two-seamer — and a changeup.

“When I started [throwing a breaking ball], I threw it from over-the-top. It was curveball/slider-ish. When you’re 18 years old — this was back in 2005 — no one really gave a care if it was… I mean, we just saw it break. It was, ‘Oh yeah, that’s a breaking ball.’ Now they classify [pitches]. And there are sliders that look like curveballs, and sliders that look like cutters.

“My slider two years ago is different from any slider I’ve ever thrown. You just evolve. Sometimes you’ll keep the same slider for three, four years in a row, and then you start throwing it in spring training or in the offseason and you’re like, ‘I don’t know how to throw this thing anymore.’ You have to find a different seam, different thumb placement, a different whatever. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers are scary. I know this because I recently watched an outing by Matt Brash, who, despite his nonexistent command that day, used a scorching heater and two breaking balls to stymie a formidable Astros lineup. He walked six, but those free passes went along with five strikeouts and just two hits allowed. The Mariners won by a score of 7 to 2. So it goes.

Pitchers are scary, and they’re getting scarier, in large part because they’ve developed the ability to throw harder and harder. It probably doesn’t even bear repeating at this point, but because it’s the subject we’re on, let’s refresh ourselves. Back in 2008, the first year with PITCHf/x data, pitchers averaged 91.8 mph on their four-seam fastballs. Last season, they averaged 93.8. That the league as a whole has gained two miles per hour is indicative of substantial change.

It’s 2022 now. It’s early, but so far, pitchers have been averaging 93.9 mph on their fastballs, for an uptick of 0.1 mph. Such a small difference might not seem like much, or something we should focus on right now. But this is merely a cursory glance. We haven’t even separated the starters from the relievers, and it’s the latter group that most people associate with triple-digit wizardry. Are bullpens hiding the fact that rotations aren’t quite stretched out yet due to an abbreviated spring? Let’s find out:

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Angels manager Joe Maddon’s befuddling bases-loaded intentional walk to Corey Seager, NPB phenom Roki Sasaki’s perfect followup to his perfect game, Hunter Greene and velo-induced fear for young starters, injury close calls for Byron Buxton and Mike Trout, the rise of non-fastballs leaguewide and what Andrew Heaney’s sweeper-iffic success says about player development, more stringent pitch clocks reducing game times in the minors, unvaccinated players not making trips to Toronto, Ichiro Suzuki’s speedy ceremonial first pitch, a feral-cat infestation in Oakland, rebounds in MLB’s average salary and per-game attendance, and a reduction in home-run rate and speculation about the behavior of the ball, plus followups about beef boys, replay review signals in Japan, a rules loophole exploited by Jackie Robinson and his contemporaries, and a way to calculate the most expected no-hitters subtracted.

Audio intro: Ben Kweller, “Make it Up”
Audio outro: Marshall Crenshaw, “(We’re Gonna) Shake Up Their Minds”

Link to The Athletic on Maddon’s IBB
Link to the AP on Maddon’s IBB
Link to Nathan Fielder tweet
Link to list of bases-loaded IBB
Link to info on previous bases-loaded IBBs
Link to 2015 Maddon zoo-animals story
Link to images of Maddon’s zoo animals
Link to Ben Clemens on Maddon’s IBB
Link to Ben on Maddon’s IBB again
Link to confused Trout clip
Link to Slate story on Sasaki
Link to Ben on Sasaki on Hang Up and Listen
Link to Sponichi poll about Sasaki
Link to story on Greene’s velo record
Link to video of Buxton injury
Link to video of Trout HBP
Link to BIS MLB pitch types by year
Link to Pitch Info MLB velocity by year
Link to “sweeper” leaderboard
Link to Jay Jaffe on Heaney
Link to Fabian Ardaya on Heaney
Link to Michael Ajeto on Heaney
Link to Eno Sarris on the sweeper
Link to Lindsey Adler on the whirly
Link to before-and-after Heaney videos
Link to Lucas Apostoleris tweet about sweepers
Link to Baseball America on the new pitch clock
Link to Joe Posnanski on the new pitch clock
Link to Jeff Passan on the new pitch clock
Link to Darwinzon Hernandez video
Link to Ben and Rob on pitch-clock exposure
Link to article about Oakland’s COVID outbreak
Link to story about unvaccinated Red Sox
Link to article about Story’s vaccination
Link to Ichiro video (and inaccurate velo)
Link to accurate Ichiro velo
Link to Ben on Ichiro’s power
Link to Oakland ballpark-cats story
Link to MLB average salary news
Link to yearly MLB attendance figures
Link to “pent-up demand” EW episode
Link to Rotowire story about power outage
Link to Jim Albert on balls flying less far
Link to Joe Sheehan on the new ball’s behavior
Link to Derek Carty tweet about HR rates
Link to tweet about humidor and HR rates
Link to Jeremy Frank tweet
Link to story about Angels remote broadcasts
Link to “ground beef” tweet
Link to NPB replay review signal video
Link to EW Stanky draft episode
Link to story about Robinson and rules
Link to other story about Robinson and rules
Link to Don Hoak Wiki
Link to “Kris Bryant rule” story
Link to data on new no-hitters stat

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