This is Leo’s first piece as a FanGraphs contributor. Leo is a Philadelphia sports fan, but he lives in Toronto, meaning he is subjected to the agony of watching Joe Carter’s 1993 World Series-winning walk-off home run replayed on a loop every single time he attends a Phillies game. Nevertheless, his love of the game has persevered. He has written for sites across the web, including Baseball Prospectus, Inside the Phillies, PitcherList, and The Good Phight. He is also a comedy writer and occasionally tries his hand at mixing baseball and humor. Sometimes it goes well; sometimes his work is called “bad satire” and “a waste of time.”

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but Framber Valdez is having a historic season.

Earlier this year, Justin Choi wrote about Valdez and his historic groundball-to-fly ball ratio through the first six weeks of the season. Valdez has always been good at inducing groundballs and limiting fly balls, but his 10.00 GB/FB ratio over his first seven starts was on another level.

Unsurprisingly, Valdez himself was on another level, too. Through May 18, he posted a 2.93 ERA and 3.33 FIP in 40 innings pitched. His journey from middle-relief prospect to top-of-the-rotation starter was complete. Groundballs were always his super power, and fly balls had long been his kryptonite, so it made perfect sense he was thriving after increasing his GB/FB ratio. Since mid-May, however, his GB/FB ratio has slowly been coming back to Earth. It now sits at 4.20, which is still excellent to be sure, but not exactly sky-scraping. Yet Valdez is still having a historic season – just in a different way. Read the rest of this entry »

12:03

Dan Szymborski: ITS A CHAT

12:05

Dan Szymborski: We’re not there yet, but I’m only 8 years older than Scott Harris, so I know the day is coming not just when GMs are my age, but GMs could THEORETICALLY BE MY KID

12:06

Dan Szymborski: Really, it all comes down to how the ownership/Harris relationship goes.

12:09

Dan Szymborski: Looking at his ZiPS, I think that ZiPS would think so

Read the rest of this entry »

Kyle Manzardo was one of the best hitters in the minors this year. Among players with at least 300 plate appearances, only San Francisco Giants prospect Vaun Brown logged a higher wRC+ (175 compared to 173) or wOBA (.464 compared to .450). A 22-year-old first baseman in the Tampa Bay Rays system, Manzardo put up his numbers over 397 PA, a hamstring injury having kept him out of action from mid-April until mid-May. Playing with High-A Bowling Green and Double-A Montgomery, he slashed a combined .327/.426/.617 with 22 home runs.

Manzardo began honing his hitting skills in a state that has produced just 32 major leaguers. Born and raised in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, the 6-foot-1, 205-pound left-handed hitter went on to play college ball at Washington State University, where he did what he does best: square up baseballs. In three years with the Cougars, Manzardo batted .330 with an OPS north of 1.000. That he lasted until the back end of the second round of last year’s draft was both positionally predictable and unexpected.

“I was a little surprised that it was the Rays,” admitted Manzardo, who went 63rd overall. “I hadn’t had a ton of contact with them, although I did do a Zoom meeting right before the draft. I was kind of expecting to go towards the end of the third round. That’s kind of what I’d been hearing.” Read the rest of this entry »

This is Kyle’s first piece as a FanGraphs contributor. Kyle is a lifelong baseball fan who has always been enamored with the numbers and analytics behind the game. He has written for PitcherList on the pitcher GIFs team and for his own personal blog, covering topics from player analysis to the draft, mostly focused on the Angels. Kyle is a senior at the University of California, living in the Bay Area and studying education and math. As an aspiring teacher, he wants to think and write about the game of baseball from the perspective of an educator.

From 2017-20, Jakob Junis was a below-average starter for the Royals, posting a 4.78 ERA and 4.77 FIP. After a poor 2021 that saw him pitch out of the bullpen, he was non-tendered by Kansas City and signed with the Giants. Fresh off a 107-win season that was bolstered by career resurgences from hurlers like Johnny Cueto, Anthony DeSclafani, and Alex Wood, San Francisco clearly saw a path to improvement for Junis. Mostly serving as a member of the starting rotation, Junis has done just that – his FIP has improved by about a full run (3.83). While he hasn’t thrown harder, landed more strikes, or added movement to his pitches (his sweeping slider has actually lost about an inch of break), he’s made one important change, and it’s one that is emblematic of pitching philosophy in the modern age.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is Chris’ first piece as a FanGraphs contributor. Chris is a data journalist based in Boston. He started his career working in baseball, first as a media relations intern with the 2014 Cubs and then with the Red Sox media relations department from 2015 to ’19. In addition to thinking about baseball, he reports on data topics ranging from education to climate to COVID-19 for U.S. News and World Report. Chris has long used FanGraphs to describe what data journalism is to confused friends and family.

The baseball fan’s proposition is a delicate balance. We’re asked to tune in for 162 games that are of relatively little individual importance to the team’s World Series chances, an act of faith anchored somewhat in the premise that “anything can happen” in the postseason. If your team is able to survive the regular season grind, the game assures you, they have a shot to bring home the ultimate reward.

But with less than three weeks to play, the 2022 regular season is looking a little flat from a competitive standpoint. The playoff field, with its new three Wild Card structure, is looking relatively set, and this year’s regular season is shaping up to have been, well, mild when it comes to non-home run chase drama. Read the rest of this entry »

Instead of accepting a long-term extension with the Yankees before the season, Aaron Judge made a gigantic bet on himself. A seven-year, $213.5 million deal that starts at age 31 is no small bid for any player, and it was more than the projections — at least ZiPS — predicted at the time. But Judge clearly felt that his chances of doing significantly better outweighed the risks involved in playing out his final year of team control. Well, short of discovering he can throw 102 mph and pair it with a wicked slider, it’s hard to imagine a better season in terms of increasing the value of his next contract than Judge’s 2022. To my mind, he will almost certainly win the American League MVP — not because what Shohei Ohtani has done isn’t magical, but because the Yankees outfielder has put up one of the rare offensive seasons in MLB history that can match such an extreme level of two-way excellence. So just how high might Judge’s contract realistically go this offseason?

First off, let me stress that some appear to be underrating Judge’s season. In some quarters of the tired AL MVP debates on social media, you’ll see it described as just an ordinarily great offensive season rather than one that belongs in the history books besides those of Barry Bonds. By our reckoning, there have only been 55 position players seasons in history that notched double-digit WAR, and not all of those were driven primarily by hitting, but rather fielding (Cal Ripken Jr.), a healthy dose of transcendent baserunning (Rickey Henderson), or an incredibly weak league (Fred Dunlap). The vast majority of years like this are put up by Hall of Famers, so Judge is in rarefied air. There’s no question that he is having a special season.

The problem is that Judge isn’t likely to be paid directly for his special 2022 season, only the increased expectations resulting from such a high-level performance. Even if the Yankees were inclined to give a franchise player a bonus for an MVP season that was played in their uniform but was cost-controlled, no other team is likely to be as generous in rewarding a performance from which they didn’t benefit. When trying to gauge what Judge is likely to get, a few factors work against him, factors over which he has very little control. The biggest is that, again, the first year of his new contract will fall in his age-31 season, which means that no matter how high you think Judge’s baseline expectation is, he’s going to be expected to decline quite significantly throughout the course of the contract and relatively quickly. It’s not a coincidence that, with the nearly sole exception of Joey Votto, the mega-contracts that work out from the perspective of teams are those that start off at a very young age. Read the rest of this entry »

The Brewers are in a bad way; three games under .500 since the start of August, they’ve fallen out of playoff position despite their primary competition — the Padres and Phillies — not exactly lighting the world on fire themselves. It might, therefore, seem an odd time to praise Willy Adames, only there’s never really a bad time to praise Willy Adames, and hardly anybody ever seems to do it.

Adames is red-hot at the moment, with a 148 wRC+ in September, and has been pretty good at the plate this year overall. He ranks second among shortstops in home runs with 30, and is tied for third in slugging percentage behind Trea Turner and Bo Bichette. When the Rays went to the World Series two years ago, Adames was an afterthought. He didn’t hit much that postseason, and all the attention (deservedly) went to Randy Arozarena and the Rays’ bullpen arm clock.

But the thing the Rays did better that year than anyone else was play the matchups. It seemed like a player for each position at each matchup, and sometimes they’d pull an NHL-style line change mid-game if the circumstances dictated it. Adames was the one exception. He was the shortstop when the Rays were leading or trailing, early and late, against left-handed and right-handed batters. Apart from the last three innings of Game 1 of the World Series, Adames played every minute of that Tampa Bay postseason run. (Only Arozarena, who was lifted for defense for a half-inning in four distinct games, played more.) Read the rest of this entry »

Clarke Schmidt has added an important weapon to his arsenal since he was first featured here at FanGraphs in January 2021. Given the organization he plays for, it isn’t much of a surprise that that addition is a sweeping slider — or, in New York Yankees vernacular, a “whirly.” The 26-year-old right-hander is throwing his version of the pitch 37.2% of the time this season, and with great success: Opposing hitters are batting just .148 against the offering, with a .164 SLG and a .186 wOBA.

His overall numbers are likewise impressive. The 2017 first-round pick has made 23 appearances this year — all but three out the bullpen — and boasts a 2.82 ERA and a 3.17 FIP. He’s allowed 41 hits and fanned 51 batters in the same number of innings.

Schmidt discussed his “baby whirly” when the Yankees visited Fenway Park earlier this month.

——

David Laurila: We talked pitching prior to last season. What’s changed since that time?

Clarke Schmidt: “When we spoke, I wouldn’t have been throwing a slider. That’s the main thing I’ve added, and it’s probably been my biggest pitch this year. My usage has been high, and I’ve had some really good results with it. Beyond that, I’ve cleaned up some things — some arm path stuff — and there has probably been more maturity in my pitch selection. But I’d say that the slider has been the number one change.”

Laurila: I recall you saying in January 2021 that some people considered your curveball more of a slider.

Schmidt: “For sure. I’ve always had a big breaking ball, but it’s hard — it’s 84-85 [mph] — so even though people are throwing harder curveballs now, it does get considered a slider sometimes. But now that I’m throwing both, there are distinct differences. I have two different shapes. Read the rest of this entry »

I think we could all use a little more positive reinforcement in our lives. Imagine typing away at your desk job (c’mon, it’s not that much of a stretch to guess that you’re reading this at work) when your boss sends you a message. “Hey there,” they say. “You just set a record! You contributed positively to 13 meetings in a row. I’d like to take the webcam you were using for those meetings and put it in the Hall of Fame.”

Wouldn’t that feel great? Sure, it’s kind of meaningless, but let’s assume your job is important enough that people actually go to this Hall of Fame. It would be awesome! Look, the suspenders that a manager wore while suggesting casual Fridays for the first time. Behold the napkins left behind from the first successful working lunch. I’d enjoy getting credit for random records once in a while. It feels good to do something no one else has ever done.

Setting a record, any record, is inherently cool. But setting a record for something that everyone who does your job is always trying to do? That’s an entirely different level. An example: J.P. Feyereisen is out for the remainder of the year, which means that he’ll set a modern record at the conclusion of the season. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 993

On this episode of the podcast, we sit down with a veteran major league manager before considering the latest Triple Crown chase.

• To kick things off, David Laurila welcomes A.J. Hinch, former catcher and current manager of the Detroit Tigers. Hinch recently passed Rogers Hornsby on the all-time managerial wins list, and he isn’t upset to hear the comparison. We learn what it is like to work with pitching coach Chris Fetter and vice president of player development Ryan Garko as they lead this group of young Tigers and try to prepare the team’s next competitive core. We also get insight into Spencer Torkelson, Riley Greene, Alex Faedo, Beau Brieske, Joey Wentz, Matt Manning, and more. And although this segment was recorded just before the Tigers announced their new president of baseball operations, we hear why Hinch wasn’t interested in the role and instead has his focus on the field. Hinch also shares his thoughts on how important it is for pitchers to get strikeouts, the fences moving at Comerica Park and elsewhere, bench coach George Lombard’s potential future in managing, and the rule changes that will limit defensive shifting starting in 2023. [4:40]
• In the second half, Ben Clemens is joined by Dan Szymborski to banter about the latest baseball happenings, highlighted by the possibility of a Triple Crown-winning hitter. Aaron Judge is within reach of the goal, and while Paul Goldschmidt is unlikely to nab it in the National League, he does find himself in an MVP race with teammate Nolan Arenado. Ben and Dan discuss the top-heavy Yankees and Cardinals, the rebuilding and still-intriguing Detroit Tigers, J.P. Feyreisen’s under-the-radar achievement, and why it is really difficult to believe reports out of front offices. Finally, Dan shares why he enjoys (playfully) misleading his friends and family, and why he has ended up with more snacks than he needs. [34:42]

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