With two months of the season in the books, the various tiers of teams have mostly sorted themselves out. Anything can happen over these next four months, but it does seem like the best teams have separated themselves from the pack.

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.

The Yankees are back on top after winning six straight last week, sweeping the Angels and Tigers at home. Aaron Judge has continued to mash baseballs on a nearly daily basis, adding three more home runs to his league leading total last week; the big bet he placed on himself when he turned down the Yankees’ preseason extension offer seems to have paid off. New York also welcomed Giancarlo Stanton and Josh Donaldson back from the Injured List last week, bringing their lineup back to full strength. The pitching staff has been even more impressive. Over their last 11 games, the Yanks have allowed a total of 16 runs, and they held the Angels and Tigers to just seven runs in those six victories.

Don’t look now, but the Astros have opened up a huge 8.5-game lead in the AL West. Some of that is due to the Angels’ free fall, but Houston has also played some excellent baseball since the calendar turned over to May; they’ve gone 24–9 since then, tied for the best mark in baseball with the Yankees. They also signed their slugging superstar Yordan Alvarez to a huge six-year extension last week.

A week after reclaiming the top spot in these rankings, the Dodgers had another week to forget and tumbled to the back of this tier, getting swept at home for the first time since August 2018 by the scrappy Pirates and then splitting a four-game series against the Mets over the weekend. The continuing struggles of Walker Buehler are a concern, as he couldn’t get out of the third inning in his last start against the Mets on Saturday. Luckily, Tyler Anderson has picked up a lot of the slack, and Los Angeles should be getting Clayton Kershaw back from the IL this week. Read the rest of this entry »

Owen White opened a lot of eyes last year, and he did so by consistently shutting down the opposition. Pitching primarily with the Low-A Down East Wood Ducks, the 22-year-old right-hander punched out 56 batters in 35.1 innings and posted a 3.06 ERA. He then put the finishing touches on a stellar first professional season by dominating the Arizona Fall League, winning all five of his decisions, logging a 1.91 ERA, and again fanning over a batter per inning. Buoyed by those performances, the 2018 second-round pick — Tommy John surgery and the pandemic delayed the start of his career — came into the current campaign No.84 on our 2022 Top 100 Prospects list.

His second professional season has been more of the up-and-down variety. In nine starts with the High-A Hickory Crawdads, the hard-throwing China Grove, North Carolina native has a middling 4.73 ERA, albeit with 61 strikeouts in 45.2 innings. Displaying plus stuff as he develops, White continues to miss bats.

White, who was ranked No. 5 on our newly released Texas Rangers Top Prospects list, discussed his repertoire and approach to pitching at the tail end of the Arizona Fall League season.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with who you are as a pitcher. Give me a self scouting report.

Owen White: “I think what separates me right now is the difference between my four- and my two-seam. I’ve gotten a lot more ground balls here in the Fall League. I’m able to elevate the four-seam, then follow that with a two-seam to produce ground balls and double plays. In the long run, that saves me pitches. Those two pitches have definitely benefited me the most.”

Laurila: How long have you been throwing both a two- and a four-seam?

White: “When I got drafted, I was mainly two-seam. After I had TJ [in 2019], I started throwing only four-seams. Then this year I started working on a sinker. It really kicked in this summer.”

Laurila: Your sinker is a two-seam. Read the rest of this entry »

I have something of an annual tradition here at FanGraphs. Once a year, give or take, I write about how Yordan Alvarez is underrated. I can’t help it; he continues to be one of the very few best hitters in baseball, and he continues to get less credit than he deserves. Now, though, he doesn’t need credit, because he has cash — $115 million worth, to be precise — as he and the Astros agreed to a contract extension that will keep him in Houston through 2028:

Slugger Yordan Álvarez and the Houston Astros are in agreement on a six-year, $115 million contract extension, sources familiar with the deal tell ESPN. Contract kicks in next season. Biggest contract ever for a DH and $26M/year for 3 FA years. And Astros lock up a great hitter.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) June 3, 2022

Even though I just mentioned what an excellent hitter Alvarez is, it bears repeating. This year, he’s hitting a scorching .295/.391/.624, good for a 192 wRC+, second in baseball. He’s doing it without a ludicrous BABIP; in fact, his .280 mark looks likely to increase as the season goes on. That makes his offensive production all the more remarkable; it’s easy to post a hot batting line if you’re BABIP’ing .400, but Alvarez does it the old-fashioned way, with walks and extra-base hits.

How does Alvarez get to that massive production? By obliterating the baseball consistently. He’s barreled up a whopping 19.1% of his batted balls this year. That’s Stantonian power, or even a bit better; Stanton checks in at 17.2% since the start of the 2015 season, for example. Since Alvarez came up in 2019, he’s sixth in baseball in barrel rate (among hitters with at least one season qualifying for the batting title), and the guys in front of him are a who’s who of enormous power hitters:

This list does a good job of explaining the possible highs and lows of Alvarez’s production, but it leaves something out. One way to rack up barrels is to be powerful and almost exclusively hit fly balls. Sanó, Gallo, and Sánchez get to theirs that way. So, too, does Trout. He’s become increasingly fly ball-heavy in recent years in an attempt to tap into his power.
Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re a major league pitcher right now, there’s a good chance life is pretty smooth. You’ve realized that you can throw more and more sliders without repercussions; it might even be an ideal strategy. You’ve also learned that by using a two-seam grip, you can upgrade a regular slider into a “sweeper,” which is shockingly effective for a pitch that’s so easy to learn. You’ve probably gained a much better understanding of how and why certain pitches do or don’t move. Knowledge is power, especially in baseball, and the modern pitcher is possibly the most educated athlete around.

Meanwhile, there are formerly innovative approaches that you don’t think twice about nowadays – they’ve become the norm. A great example is the high fastball. Back in the days of yore, a perfect fastball meant one located at the knees, down and away. But as pitch data became widely available, teams started to realize that throwing the fastball up would maximize swings and misses and minimize damage on contact. Regular high cheese also served to counteract the so-called fly ball revolution; an uppercut swing made golfing pitches at the bottom of the zone easier but left a hole at the top. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Texas Rangers. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the second year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the numbered prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Mike Yastrzemski trying the “KK play,” the distinctive smell of rat urine, Buck Showalter making a mid-PA pitching change, Dave Roberts running afoul of a position-player-pitcher rule, the wording of the zombie-runner rule, Nick Pivetta’s near-miraculous mechanical adjustment, and Mike Trout’s slump, plus a baseball-history fact from 1859. Then (38:54) they talk to former Phillies front-office executive Lewie Pollis about how working for an MLB team became his dream job and why, several years after fulfilling that dream, he decided to walk away from it by changing careers—a choice with wide-ranging lessons to offer about work-life balance in baseball and beyond (plus a postscript).

Audio intro: The Walkmen, “This Job is Killing Me”
Audio interstitial: Ramones, “The Job That Ate My Brain”
Audio outro: Dan Bern, “Burned Out Case”

Link to Yaz play video
Link to play in full game highlights
Link to story about the “KK play”
Link to video of the “KK play”
Link to posts about unwritten rules of deking
Link to “rat urine” report
Link to Ben on mid-PA pitching changes
Link to Showalter pitching-change video
Link to article about the pitching change
Link to Mookie quote
Link to article on Girardi’s “Strategy”
Link to 2020 zombie-runner rule
Link to article about Roberts’ confusion
Link to 4/17 story on Pivetta’s mechanics
Link to 4/20 story on Pivetta’s mechanics
Link to other 4/20 story on Pivetta
Link to story on Pivetta’s turnaround
Link to EW episode about Trout going hitless
Link to story about the Angels’ losing streak
Link to Richard Hershberger’s Strike Four
Link to 1859 story source
Link to Lewie’s 2014 story on front-office pay
Link to Lewie’s Baseball Prospectus archive
Link to Lewie’s newsletter
Link to Lewie on leaving his dream job
Link to Lewie on the response to his essay
Link to “Great Resignation” wiki
Link to R.J. Anderson on MLB brain drain

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Ryan Fuller taught high school English in Higganum, Connecticut for four years before becoming the hitting coach of the Baltimore Orioles. An infielder at the University of Connecticut before spending a year in the Arizona Diamondbacks system, the 32-year-old Fuller went on to earn a Master’s degree in Education from the University of New Haven. Books, and the lessons they provide, remain a big part of his life.

Asked about his favorites to teach, Fuller began with Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

“That was a big one for me in 10th-grade honors,” said Fuller, who has tutored hitters at different levels for over a decade. “From a morality standpoint, there are so many things that I connect with. Kids love reading the book and being able to tie it in with what it means to be a good person. They think about other people — about walking in their shoes, as Atticus put it —and the values and morals are still the same today.”

Fuller cited Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” and Stephen Crane’s “The Red Badge of Courage” as other books he’s seen impact specific age groups in particular ways. The lessons are analogous to his current job.

“It’s kind of the same thing we’re doing with our hitters,” explained Fuller, who is well-schooled in hitting analytics. “We’re taking sometimes complex, abstract things that maybe the hitters aren’t really grasping, and turning them into something tangible. They’ll say, ‘Oh, man, that makes sense.” That’s what I enjoy most about being a teacher.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Joe Girardi’s firing and where the Phillies go from here, the Astros’ Yordan Alvarez extension, the dip in DH offense, and the trade deadline, then answer listener emails about MLB.TV highlights, the upside of ignoring playoff odds, getting plunked on a full count, things that haven’t happened in an MLB game, players being coached by their romantic partners, and what would happen if no one wanted to play catcher, plus a history tidbit from 1858 and a few followups.

Audio intro: Ezra Furman, “Wobbly”
Audio outro: Liz Phair, “Uncle Alvarez”

Link to MLB.com on the Girardi firing
Link to ESPN on the Girardi firing
Link to Andy McCullough on Girardi
Link to wobbly chair/squid is fried explainer
Link to MLB.com on the Alvarez extension
Link to Dan on extension candidates
Link to Dan on more extension candidates
Link to Dan on the trade deadline
Link to Passan on the trade deadline
Link to DH stats by season
Link to Russell Carleton on resting hitters
Link to story about DH and roster decisions
Link to FanGraphs WPA Inquirer
Link to Ben Clemens on Holmes
Link to Smeltzer interview video
Link to Smeltzer story
Link to subsequent Smeltzer story
Link to EW listener emails database
Link to Richard Hershberger’s Strike Four
Link to story about the Mets’ pitching machine
Link to video of the machine
Link to Ben on “perfect” pitching machines
Link to story about the Turner deke
Link to Turner deke video

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2:00	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to another edition of my Friday chat! A bit of housekeeping before I dive in…

2:02	Jay Jaffe: Today I’ve got a piece on Joc Pederson’s non-fantasy football exploits, mainly based upon his pulverizing of baseballs https://blogs.fangraphs.com/joc-pedersons-giant-step-forward

2:03

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I took a look at Noah Syndergaard’s new-look approach https://blogs.fangraphs.com/new-look-syndergaard-struggles-in-return-t… and earlier this week I checked in on Dominic Smith’s demotion https://blogs.fangraphs.com/dominic-smiths-slide-sends-him-back-to-tri… and a rough weekend for the White Sox https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/underachieving-white-sox-drop-keuchel-…

2:03	Jay Jaffe: There will be no chat in this spot next week as it’s the last day of school for my daughter, but the week after that, I’ll be rappin’ at ya from Cape Cod!

2:04	Jay Jaffe: Oh, and I spoke to the great Jayson Stark about the late, great Roger Angell for this week’s FanGraphs Audio podcast! https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-audio-jayson-stark-on-roger-ange…

2:04	Jay Jaffe: And now, on with the show…

Read the rest of this entry »

As far as silly and offbeat sports stories go, it would be hard to top the fantasy football spat between Reds outfielder Tommy Pham and Giants outfielder Joc Pederson. Last week, Pham — who annually leads the league in umbrage taken and who has already made headlines this year by challenging Luke Voit to a fight — drew a fine and a three-game suspension for slapping Pederson in a pre-game confrontation. Not stopping there, earlier this week, he dragged league commissioner Mike Trout into the dispute. It’s all rather comical, but lost in all of this beyond his characteristically bemused response to the whole matter is that Pederson is off to a terrific start with the Giants, putting up some eye-opening numbers.

Before we go further — and then I promise you that we’ll move onto baseball — here’s Joc explaining his side of the football story for those of you whose attention was elsewhere:

Joc shares details of what happened in his fantasy football league that started his altercation with Tommy Pham today pic.twitter.com/d9NBTwPVoG

— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) May 28, 2022

Moving along… After winning a World Series ring for a second year in a row (with the Dodgers in 2020 and then with the Braves last fall), Pederson joined the Giants via a one-year, $6 million deal in mid-March. It was the second year in a row that he had to take a slight pay cut, but then neither of his last two seasons had been up to par. He entered 2020 as a career 119 wRC+ hitter who beyond his cup-of-coffee 2014 season had only once slipped below 116 (100 in an injury-marred 2017), but he hit just .190/.285/.397 (86 wRC+) with -0.2 WAR in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, and then .238/.310/.422 (93 wRC+) with 0.3 WAR last year for the Cubs (who signed him to a one-year, $7 million deal) and Braves (who acquired him in mid-July).

Pederson more than made up for his in-season struggles in both 2020 and ’21 by hitting a combined .282/.341/.474 with five homers in 85 PA in the two postseasons — Joctober is his month — and, improbably, introducing pearl necklaces as a fashion accessory for men. His three-run pinch-hit homer in Game 3 of the Division Series against the Brewers’ Adrian Houser provided all of the runs the Braves needed to close out that take a two-games-to-one lead in that series, and his two-run homer off the Dodgers’ Max Scherzer in Game 2 of the NLCS helped send his former team to defeat. The necklace he sported as a good luck charm became so famous that he donated it to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and the Braves’ gaudy World Series ring even featured a single pearl as a tribute to his iconic display.

In joining the Giants, Pederson figured to see action primarily as part of a left field platoon, with right field and designated hitter possibilities as well, and so far things have gone according to plan. He’s started 22 times in left, eight at DH, and six in right, with all but one of those starts coming against righties. The Giants have used four different players as his platoon-mates in left, a situation necessitated in part by Brandon Belt landing on the injured list twice (once for COVID-19, and currently for knee inflammation) and righty-swinging Darin Ruf getting a share of the work manning first base in Belt’s absence.

So far, few things have gone as right for the Giants this year as the Pederson signing. The 30-year-old slugger has hit .268/.340/.583 with 12 home runs, including three in a wild game against the Mets on May 24, a career first and a first for a Giant at AT&T Park. While his total of 144 plate appearances leaves him 11 short of qualifying for the batting title, his slugging percentage ranks fourth in the National League among players with at least 140 PA, and his 157 wRC+ ranks fifth. Those 12 homers are a team high and tied for sixth in the league; the 13 other players in the NL with at least 10 homers all have at least 189 PA, and 10 of them have at least 200. Read the rest of this entry »