As you may recall, just as the season was getting underway, Aaron Judge, who is set to become a free agent after the 2022 season, rejected a contract extension proffered by the Yankees; the deal would have been worth $230.5 million over eight years (seven years at $30.5 million per year, plus $17 million for this year), keeping Judge in pinstripes for most of the rest of his career. Instead, Judge decided to play out his final season under team control and then hit the free agent market with as much leverage as he is ever likely to have. Judge gambled on himself, and while two-thirds of the season remains, the early returns are pointing in his direction.

In a year that has seen offense largely disappear — just as a number of power hitters have seen their performance evaporate — Judge has bucked the trend. After his home run in Sunday’s loss to the Rays, he’s already up to 18 on the season, nearly half of his total (39) from his impressive 2021 campaign. That number even outstrips the pace of his 2017 season, during which he hit 52 round-trippers in an offensive environment far more conducive to crushing pitchers’ dreams. Judge might not have the big contract he’s looking for yet, but he’s done about as much to improve his standing as anyone could in two months.

Judge’s season line stands at a spicy .303/.371/.657, numbers that would count as superlative even in Coors Field during the era’s highest-offense seasons. In 1968: The Next Generation, that’s enough for a 192 wRC+ and 2.8 WAR; spicy may actually undersell just how dangerous he’s been. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Nick Castellanos’s uncanny tater timing, and then (4:43) Ben attempts to explain the Joc Pederson–Tommy Pham fantasy-football dispute (and resulting slap) to Meg. After that (44:42), they discuss the Reds’ resurgence, an umpire’s hot mic, updates on defensive-positioning restrictions and the forthcoming pitch clock, and whether the standings will present enough suspense this summer. Finally (1:19:42), they debut a new history segment about an event that took place in the year of the episode number and Stat Blast (1:24:00) about multiple starting pitchers debuting in the same game, an odd pinch-hitting appearance by Darin Ruf, and the most consecutive pitcher innings with the same pitch count (plus a postscript with a few followups).

Audio intro: The Scruffs, “Revenge”
Audio outro: Basic Plumbing, “Fantasy”

Link to Castellanos clip
Link to Ben on the Castellanos meme
Link to video of the slap
Link to first Pederson video
Link to second Pederson video
Link to Mercury News on the slap
Link to ESPN on the slap
Link to Cincinnati.com on the slap
Link to the NYT on the slap
Link to CBS sports on the fantasy dispute
Link to Gaslamp Ball post
Link to Oakley-Hill dispute story
Link to Pham stabbing story
Link to Pham vs. fans story
Link to Pham vs. Voit story
Link to Pham on the pandemic delay
Link to story on Pham’s slow start
Link to SI Pham profile
Link to Tampa Bay Times Pham profile
Link to Strickland vs. Harper story
Link to Mets rat vs. raccoon story
Link to hot-mic tweet
Link to Stark on rules changes
Link to FG Playoff Odds
Link to Joe Posnanski on the standings
Link to Marc Normandin on the standings
Link to New York Clipper, 8/9/1856
Link to New York Clipper box score
Link to Richard Hershberger’s Strike Four
Link to Stathead
Link to Stathead query about two-SP debuts
Link to Stathead query about Ruf’s PH Ks
Link to Cangelosi Stat Blast text
Link to Stat Blast pitch-count data
Link to Pérez’s record game
Link to Trout commissioner story
Link to 1985 Raines story
Link to other 1985 Raines story
Link to Raines bio excerpt
Link to glass delusion wiki
Link to Boswell on big innings
Link to James vs. Boswell story

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On Sunday afternoon, Juan Soto stepped up to the plate in the top of the first inning with a runner on first base. Soto, as he is wont to do, took the first pitch. He took the second pitch, too, as Kyle Freeland struggled with his command. Freeland relented and threw a slider over the heart of the plate, middle-away, hoping to sneak back into the count. Soto hit it 400 feet for a home run, putting the Nationals up 2-0.

When Soto batted to lead off the bottom of the fifth inning, Freeland was still pitching. Again, Soto got ahead 2-0. This time, Freeland was far more careful. He clipped the top of the zone with a fastball for a called strike one, then attempted to paint the corner low and away on his next pitch. He missed, and down 3-1, he threw another pitch low for ball four. Soto took his base, but the Nats couldn’t drive him home.

Why did Freeland challenge Soto in the first? Why did he change his approach in the fifth? I can’t read minds, but the decision seems fairly straightforward to me. In the first, Freeland didn’t have the luxury of pitching around Soto; a walk would put a runner in scoring position. In the fifth, the situation wasn’t quite so bad; a walk put a runner on base, which isn’t ideal, but there’s something primally scary about walking a runner to second.

That’s the theory, at least. It’s how I’ve understood baseball as long as I’ve watched it. Good hitter, base open, advantageous count? That hitter might as well send his bat back to the dugout, because he’ll rarely get a pitch to hit. Put that runner on first base, and the equation changes completely – now a walk hurts too much, and pitchers will take their chances in the strike zone.
Read the rest of this entry »

By now, you know how the Tampa Bay Rays operate: Due to their small budget, their success hinges on whether they can replace formerly cost-controlled and talented players with currently cost-controlled and talented players. The process works (even as we wish they would flex their financial muscle more often), and the Rays have been to every postseason since 2019.

But inevitably, the Rays’ way results in a few bumps in the road. Sometimes, prospects or trade acquisitions don’t pan out as hoped. This season in particular, their rotation has suffered a spate of injuries. Shane Baz is injured. Luis Patiño is injured. Tyler Glasnow might miss the entire season. As for internal options, Josh Fleming failed to impress as a starter and was recently optioned to Triple-A Durham. Fortunately, the Rays always seem to materialize at least one good player out of thin air each season. Their latest trick? Making a starter out of Jeffrey Springs.

What’s surprising is that unlike Fleming, Springs had virtually zero prior experience starting in the big leagues, save for two opportunities in his rookie year. Nonetheless, his workload has begun to increase. He tossed 4.2 innings against the Blue Jays on May 15, followed by 5.2 innings against the Orioles on May 21. And in his latest start, Springs pitched a full six innings, striking out six Yankees while giving up just two runs. But it was their B-squad! I know, yankeesfan0567. But what matters to the Rays is that Springs passed with flying colors, his spot in the rotation now all but entrenched. Read the rest of this entry »

The White Sox have spent the first two months of the season meandering around .500 due to injuries and underperformance. Over the long holiday weekend, they offered reminders of both issues, first designating struggling starter Dallas Keuchel for assignment and then losing Tim Anderson to a groin strain. With Lance Lynn likely to return from a knee injury within the next couple of weeks, the rotation should remain a source of strength for the defending AL Central winners, but Anderson’s absence looms large in a lineup that’s missing several other key players and struggling to score runs.

The 34-year-old Keuchel had pitched poorly this season, with a 7.88 ERA and 6.20 FIP. He’s averaged just four innings per start, walked hitters at the same rate as which he struck them out (12.2%), and served up a career-high 1.69 homers per nine despite being one of the game’s top groundballers. He appeared to be righting the ship with a pair of solid starts against Red Sox and Yankees earlier this month, allowing two runs in 11 innings against the pair on May 8 and May 14, respectively, but both teams pummeled him upon getting a second look, with damage totaling 12 runs in six innings on May 21 (Yankees) and May 26 (Red Sox).

The White Sox signed Keuchel to a three-year, $55.5 million deal in December 2019, and he pitched well enough the following season (1.99 ERA, 3.08 FIP, 1.8 WAR) to place fifth in the AL Cy Young voting. But last year, even while the team ran away in the division race, he was little more than an innings-eater, pitching to a 5.28 ERA and 5.23 FIP in 162 innings and being left off the Division Series roster. Last year’s Statcast expected numbers (xAVG, xSLG, xwOBA, xERA) were actually worse than this year’s numbers:

Looking back, Keuchel’s 2020 expected numbers contained some warnings that his season wasn’t nearly as good as his ERA or even his FIP suggested. His results on his cutter, in particular, were way out of line with his expected results:

Note that those odd 2020 expected results, which no doubt owe something to the small sample, bore much closer resemblance to his xBA and xSLG for the following year than to his actual AVG and SLG from ’20. Long story short, Keuchel came out smelling like roses when his overall wOBA allowed was 58 points below his xwOBA, but when his barrel rate more than doubled and his wOBA rose 62 points above his xwOBA in 2022, he was out of a job. Read the rest of this entry »

An eventful long weekend of baseball led to some changes at the top of the power rankings, with the teams toward the middle of the pack continuing to jostle for position.

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’s games.

The Dodgers have come roaring back into the top spot of these rankings with 13 wins in their last 16 games. Mookie Betts has blasted nine home runs in his last 17 games, and Trea Turner is in the midst of a 22-game hitting streak. If there’s something to be concerned about, it’s their team defense. A misplayed grounder cost them a game against the Phillies a couple of weeks ago, and it happened again last night against the Pirates.

Even though the Astros just lost a three-game series to the Mariners in which they were outscored 13–3, they’re still high up in these rankings and in the standings. The Angels’ recent struggles give them a bit of breathing room in the AL West, and Houston’s schedule lightens up over the next couple of weeks, with trips to Oakland and Kansas City before home series against Seattle and Miami.

The Yankees are really beat up. They’ve lost Giancarlo Stanton, Josh Donaldson, Aroldis Chapman, Chad Green, and Jonathan Loáisiga to the Injured List all within the last two weeks. They even had to call on Matt Carpenter to help fill the gaps in their lineup. A trio of high-leverage relievers going down at the same time would normally give teams nightmares. Luckily, New York already has two excellent replacements ready to step into late-inning roles: the king of sinkers, Clay Holmes, and fireman Michael King.

After losing an epic, back-and-forth contest against the Giants on Tuesday, the Mets went out and swept the Phillies in three games over the weekend, then dropped 13 runs on the Nationals on Monday night. They’ve barely missed a beat after Max Scherzer hit the IL and are currently running away with the NL East. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and we’re once again hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features a young Seattle Mariners right-hander, Logan Gilbert, and a sneaky-good San Diego Padres reliever, Nabil Crismatt, on their changeups.

———

Logan Gilbert, Seattle Mariners

“I changed the grip this offseason. I’d been throwing it a little more off my ring finger, and now it’s more of a traditional circle change. I’m also trying to throw it more like my fastball, which has helped the consistency. I obviously wanted to keep good action on it, but also be able to locate it in the zone; I wasn’t commanding the old one very well. More than anything, I was looking for something that I felt comfortable with. Read the rest of this entry »

The Los Angeles Angels can’t count clubhouse chemistry as the primary reason they entered Memorial Day weekend with the third most wins in the American League. Marquee players such as Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, and Anthony Rendon — not to mention Patrick Sandoval and Taylor Ward — bear a far larger responsibility for the club’s success. Which doesn’t mean that intangibles haven’t mattered. In the opinion of Angels GM Perry Minasian, they’ve actually mattered a lot.

Asked about his approach for building a winning team, Minasian responded with a rhetorical: “Do we have enough time for this?” The 42-year-old baseball lifer then proceeded to champion the value of non-quantifiable characteristics.

“Philosophically, we’re not only trying to get talented players,” Minasian told me when the Angels visited Fenway Park earlier this month. “We’re trying to get the right DNA, the right mix of guys from a makeup standpoint. That’s really important to me. Growing up around the game — I’ve been fortunate to spend a lot of time in big-league clubhouses — I really believe in mix and fit. It’s hard to quantify, but I think it has a huge impact. The room makes a big difference.”

So too does on-field talent. Identifying it — ditto projecting it — will always be an integral part of a general manager’s job. Minasian knows that as well as anyone. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley answer listener emails about why we don’t see more hidden-ball tricks in MLB, why big leaguers practice fielding grounders between innings, comparing the careers of Paul Goldschmidt and Freddie Freeman, how baseball broadcasts should discuss domestic-violence suspensions, whether Rickey Henderson would still have stolen bases if he’d been inflicted with Glass Ass Syndrome, and whether teams could get more favorable calls by riding umpires even harder than they already do, then (58:01) field “How can you not be pedantic about baseball?” questions about hometown discounts for players who aren’t native to a town, who qualifies as a “phenom,” and pitches “on the corner,” followed by (1:08:53) Stat Blasts about pitchers who’ve lost to every current franchise and how patterns of starter wins and losses have changed, how often game times exactly match game start times, and whether Roger Angell was right about a bet in 1975.

Audio intro: Jim White, “Smart-Ass Reply”
Audio outro: Beams, “Break Glass”

Link to Double-A hidden-ball trick
Link to Retrosheet list of hidden-ball tricks
Link to MLB.com on Barrett
Link to Finding the Hidden-Ball Trick
Link to story on Goldschmidt’s 2013 nickname
Link to SI on Rickey’s SB technique
Link to first study on taking close pitches
Link to second study on taking close pitches
Link to pitcher leaderboard of teams lost to
Link to SP decision rates by year
Link to data on SP W/L correlations
Link to game times matching start times
Link to shortest game with matching times
Link to longest game with matching times
Link to list of longest regular-season games
Link to FG Roger Angell reading recs post
Link to Jay’s tribute to Angell
Link to “Agincourt and After”
Link to passage from “Agincourt and After”
Link to historical data on the Angell bet
Link to Ryan Nelson’s Twitter
Link to Stathead
Link to EW listener emails database
Link to TOOTBLAN glossary entry
Link to FARTSLAM introduction
Link to FARTSLAM discussion
Link to FARTSLAM montage

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An old friend returned to the big leagues yesterday in a relatively unexpected place. After 11 seasons in the majors, all with the Cardinals, Matt Carpenter found himself searching for a new team this winter; in the end, he only managed to snag a minor league deal with the Rangers. Now, though, he’s found himself in New York with the Yankees, signing a major league deal with them that was announced on Thursday and hitting eighth in the starting lineup for their game against the Rays that same day. Does Carpenter have a second wind, or has too much time passed since he was an effective contributor?

That Carpenter found little interest in his services this winter was hardly surprising. Some players age gracefully, but he fell off a cliff after the 2018 season, dropping from a wRC+ of 140 to 96. If that had been the extent of his collapse, he’d still have a role in the majors; he still managed to collect 1.7 WAR in 492 plate appearances in 2019, thanks to not being awful at second or third base. But after hitting .176/.313/.291 combined over 2020 and ’21, even that saving grace didn’t provide quite enough grace. What rope remained after the COVID-shortened 2020 rapidly ran out of slack the following year, and his role was reduced to the extent that only 11 of his 53 games after the All-Star break were as a starter.

It strikes me as likely that Carpenter only survived on the roster because of his long history with the franchise; infielders who can’t hit are a dime a dozen, and he didn’t have an exploitable platoon split advantage the way a steeply declining Albert Pujols did. And while much has been made of Carpenter’s struggles against the shift, and while he’s been worse throughout his career relative to a traditional infield configuration, it’s not sufficient to explain the collapse. He hit just fine overall as the approach against him shifted (no pun intended) yearly toward all-shift after 2015; by the time 2018 rolled around, when he was still a dangerous offensive player, he was almost exclusively hitting against a stacked right side of the infield. Read the rest of this entry »