Which players have helped their Hall of Fame cases the most this year? The question comes up in almost every chat of mine, and sometimes in radio spots as well. You’d think I’d be used to this by now, but I rarely have more than an answer or two at the ready unless one of those players has recently been in the headlines for reaching a milestone. But with the end of the 2021 season in sight, and with the COVID-delayed Class of 2020 Hall of Fame Induction Day ceremony just a week away, it’s worth digging deeper for answers.

For this exercise, I’m focused mainly on mid- or late-career players rather than early-career ones. Yes, the five-win seasons of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Juan Soto, and Fernando Tatis Jr. are solid steps towards attaining the ceilings we envision — and likewise for Shohei Ohtani given his singularly remarkable two-way season — but all of those players are at least half a decade away from the point when we can start to get real about their chances. JAWS and seven-year peak WAR gains are the major drivers of my selections in this piece and a companion one for pitchers, but positional standards, traditional milestones, and ordinal rankings are considerations as well. With one exception, all of the players below have surpassed 35.0 JAWS; roughly speaking, that’s the equivalent of seven five-win seasons, a point at which I start to take mid-career position players seriously. All WAR figures here refer to the Baseball Reference version, unless otherwise indicated.

One other thing to note: since my reference point for “old” WAR and JAWS figures dates back to January 2021, some portion of these players’ gains may be due to updates to bWAR itself, particularly via changes to 2019 and ’20 park factors and tweaks to 2017-20 Defensive Runs Saved that were announced in March, but also due to a second update to 2020 park factors that just went live on Tuesday. Read the rest of this entry »

Historically, we have made many data tables available for download in a comma-separated values (CSV) format text file. Most of our data grids are rather straight forward and can be translated easily into a CSV file to be consumed by your data analysis tool of choice. Starting today, we are making RosterResource Excel workbook downloads available for FanGraphs Members. You can find the download button to the right of the page underneath the RosterResource navigation.

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Martín Pérez has a plus changeup, and he relies on it often. The 30-year-old native of Guanare, Venezuela has thrown his “cambio” 24.6% of the time since coming to the Red Sox prior to the 2020 season. A four-seam circle delivered at an average velocity of 84.9 mph, it’s the pitch the southpaw was once told would be his ticket to the big leagues.

Perez discussed the art of the changeup prior to a recent game at Fenway Park.

———

Perez on his changeup: “I started throwing my changeup when I was 14 years old. Before that age, I just threw fastballs. I’d met couple of guys in Venezuela who played — Ramon Garcia, a righty with Houston, and Ernesto Mejia, who signed with Atlanta — and they told me not to throw breaking pitches, to just throw fastballs. As soon as I started my process to sign as a professional baseball player, I started to throw changeups, breaking balls, and fastballs.

“It’s important to have a changeup that will have the same arm speed as the fastball. You throw your fastball, and you throw your changeup, and they’re going to look the same. That’s why it’s so hard to hit. It’s hard for hitters to recognize that pitch, because they both have the same rotation. So, that was my focus.

“After I signed [with the Rangers] in 2007, the guy who was my boss at that time was [Director of Player Development] Scott Servais. In 2008, I played in [short-season] Spokane and it was a good year. I threw my breaking ball, my changeup, and my fastball. I had a big breaking ball. It was 12–6 and really good; I could throw it in any count. But then, in 2009, I went to Hickory, Low-A, and they told me, ‘Martín, you don’t have to throw more breaking balls. We want you to focus on your changeup, because that’s the pitch that’s going to take you to the big leagues.’ Read the rest of this entry »

As Kris Bryant helps the Giants fend off the Dodgers in the NL West division race, his replacement in Chicago seems like a lock to break his old team’s rookie home run record despite being older than Bryant is right now. Patrick Wisdom, who turned 30 on August 27, has swatted 25 home runs so far this season, coming out of nowhere to produce one of baseball’s most fascinating stat lines.

Prior to this season, Wisdom had just 27 games of big league experience, including two with the Cubs in 2020, who re-signed him to a minor league deal in January. Though he posted “ridiculous” numbers at the team’s alternate training site last season, he seemed more likely to provide bench depth for the big league club than be a regular, only to end up playing 83 games split between first base, third base and left field, take 279 plate appearances, and post a .256/.320/.579 slash line.

There remain questions of sustainability. Wisdom isn’t a true-talent 136 wRC+ player, but he’s certainly more of a viable big league bat than initially thought. ZiPS projected him for an 82 wRC+ before the season, which was much more bullish than Steamer’s 70 wRC+ prediction, but both are still a far cry from the actual numbers so far. As a result, both systems have seen significant improvement in the underlying talent given the sizable sample of good performance: His rest-of-season ZiPS projection has him up to a 104 wRC+, and Steamer has him at 93. Read the rest of this entry »

Corbin Burnes is laying waste to the National League, putting up numbers that can best be described as comical. A 34.6% strikeout rate? That’s closer territory. A 4.8% walk rate? That’s lower than Kyle Hendricks’ career mark. His 2.27 ERA might undersell how good he’s been; both his xERA (a Statcast ERA estimator) and FIP are in the ones (1.96 and 1.58, respectively).

You know about the cutter he leads with, which he described to David Laurila earlier this year. You know about the slider and sinker, the two pitches that complement his cutter. That trio took the league by storm last year, and he’s doubled down on cutters this year; he now throws the pitch roughly half the time.

Like an annoying hipster, though, I’ve moved on to the next cool Burnes thing that no one is talking about yet. The cutter? It’s fine, I guess (it’s the best cutter in baseball, but I’m doing a bit here, so bear with me). I’m here to talk to you about the curveball, a pitch that he threw less than 10% of the time before making it a staple this season.

If Burnes has one standout skill, it’s his ability to impart spin. Even when he was bad, he threw the highest-spinning four-seamer in the game, and his slider has always jumped out of his hand. It’s hardly a surprise that his curveball is cut from the same cloth. Spin data is fraught this year, what with the foreign substance crackdown and all, but since June 21, he’s thrown his curveball with a whopping 2,840 rpm, the 16th-best mark in the game (21st-best if you consider spin-to-velocity ratio instead).

What does that mean in English? It means that he has the raw stuff to generate eye-popping movement. He also throws the pitch in the low 80s, which means batters don’t have a ton of time to react. Put those two things together, and you can make MVP candidate Buster Posey look like a toddler learning how to walk:

The pitch is an absolute delight, and it’s also phenomenally effective. Batters have come up empty on half of their swings against it, the third-highest mark in the league (and 45% since June 21, so don’t go sticky-stuff-asterisking up this great pitch). As an added bonus, he’s seventh in baseball when it comes to batters not swinging at pitches in the zone. He throws it for a strike 49.3% of the time, which ranks seventh in the majors, and batters take it, doing his work for him. Can’t hit it when they swing at it, often take it when they should swing at it: what’s an opposing hitter to do but complain?
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Ben Lindbergh talks to Defector’s David Roth about the Mets’ freefall in the standings, the extremely Metsy controversy surrounding multiple players giving the thumbs down to fans, and how the franchise still practices Wilpon-era self-sabotage. Then (46:18) Ben “benters” with Ben Clemens from FanGraphs about the post-sticky-stuff collapse of demoted Cleveland closer James Karinchak, the continued success of aged ace Adam Wainwright, and the consistent kind-of-good-ness of the still-contending Cardinals. Lastly (1:27:08), Ben (the first one) Stat Blasts about the most runs scored in a game with no earned runs, the longest streaks of consecutive pinch hitters, and the most outs made with runners in scoring position.

Audio intro: Dinosaur Jr., "Thumb"
Audio interstitial: Semisonic, "Get a Grip"
Audio outro: 2nd Grade, "Sucking the Thumb"

Link to David on the Mets
Link to Ray Ratto on Steve Cohen
Link to Deesha Thosar on the thumbs
Link to NL East playoff odds graph
Link to BP IL Ledger
Link to early Mets thumbs downs
Link to Deesha on the Mets’ apologies
Link to Alderson’s statement
Link to fan stress study
Link to Operation Shutdown retrospective
Link to Defector birthday party
Link to tweet about Bens on podcasts
Link to reliever championship belt article
Link to The Athletic on Karinchak
Link to Defector on Karinchak’s Instagram
Link to biggest in-season K rate drops
Link to Devan Fink on Richards
Link to Ben L. on post-sticky-stuff offense
Link to Karinchak’s 4-seam spin by game
Link to Patrick Dubuque on Miley
Link to Ben Clemens on the Cardinals’ records
Link to Ben Clemens on Wainwright
Link to Nathan Grimm on Wainwright
Link to Mike Petriello on Wainwright
Link to Wainwright on sticky stuff
Link to Cardinals defense by pitcher
Link to Timothy Jackson on RPM losers
Link to Rob Arthur on RPM losers
Link to list of all-unearned-runs games
Link to story on 1987 Petralli game
Link to info on consecutive pinch hitters
Link to article on 1979 Mauch game
Link to story on 2016 Rockies/D-backs game
Link to data on most team outs w/RISP
Link to data on most team LOB

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One of the biggest reasons the Mariners have stuck around the fringes of the AL wild card race despite a -60 run differential has been the collective performance of their bullpen. Kendall Graveman had established himself as a bonafide relief ace before being traded to the Astros in late-July, and Drew Steckenrider has revived his career after falling apart in Miami two years ago. But equally unexpected, and perhaps the biggest reason Seattle felt comfortable dealing Graveman at all, has been the fantastic season put together by its other breakout relief ace: Paul Sewald.

Drafted as a reliever by the Mets in the 10th round of the 2012 draft, Sewald came with two years of college experience under his belt at the University of San Diego and quickly moved through the farm system. He reached the majors in 2017 and made 125 appearances out of the bullpen through 2020, but outside of a 23.5% strikeout rate that was just a hair above league average, he was mostly forgettable as a Met; across 147.1 innings in New York, he posted a 5.50 ERA. He was non-tendered this past offseason and signed a minor-league contract with the Mariners in January.

Even though Sewald wasn’t able to make the major league roster out of spring training, he has thrived in Seattle. He was called up on May 13, the same day Jarred Kelenic and Logan Gilbert made their debuts, and while his return to the majors was much less heralded than those two top prospects, he’s arguably been more important to the Mariners this season than either. He’s upped his strikeout rate to 40.3% in 2021, the fifth highest rate among all qualified relievers, and all those strikeouts have helped him drop his FIP to just 1.95. In just 45.1 innings, he’s more than doubled his total career WAR.

Michael Ajeto of Lookout Landing was one of the first to write about Sewald’s breakout, but the reasons for his improvement are tough to spot on the surface. He’s simplified his pitch mix a bit, cutting out his rarely thrown changeup and increasing the usage of his slider to make him a two-pitch pitcher:

Both the fastball and slider are returning better-than-ever results, with the latter generating a 38.6% whiff rate and a .270 wOBA against. But as good as his breaking ball has been, the four-seam fastball has been even better. Its whiff rate is up to 35.3%, the 12th-highest mark among all four-seam fastballs thrown at least 100 times this year, and it boasts the 12th-highest CSW% (35.7) in that group.

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The Yankees’ 13-game winning streak came to an end in Oakland on Saturday, as a lineup that had been cranking out nearly seven runs per game for over a week had its bats silenced, and as starting pitcher Nestor Cortes bore the brunt of a questionable call or two, as well as some bad luck. It wasn’t his day, but that doesn’t diminish the job he’s done at the back of a banged-up rotation. Like many far better paid and more heralded players, the 26-year-old lefty has helped save New York’s season from oblivion, and in doing so, “Nasty Nestor” has carved himself a place in the majors while earning cult status.

Currently in his third stint with the Yankees, Cortes cuts an unassuming figure on the mound at 5-foot-11 and 210 pounds, armed a fastball that averages just over 90 mph. Those numbers belie the athleticism and inventiveness of the Cuban-born southpaw, who has taken a page from the playbook of countryman Orlando Hernandez by coming at hitters from a variety of angles, speeds, and arm slots, with the occasional hesitation thrown in for good measure.

Nestor Cortes, Messing with Timing. ? pic.twitter.com/7a0vRyFoB1

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) August 11, 2021

Thanks to his creativity, Cortes has posted a 2.77 ERA, 3.59 FIP, and 25.6% strikeout rate, generating a whole lot of soft contact in his 61.2 innings. In doing so, he’s helped to compensate for injuries to Corey Kluber, Domingo Germán, and Michael King, as well as the prolonged absence of Luis Severino, and to lift the Yankees from their .500-ish nadir into a spot atop the AL wild card race.

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If you’ve been paying close attention to my writing recently, you’ll notice a hidden theme running through my last month or so of work: frequent and bad jokes. But there’s a second theme, too: batters do really well when they swing at pitches over the heart of the plate. Splitting the plate up into the center and the corners does a lot to explain where hitters do best; when you swing at something there, it’s hardly a surprise that the results, on average, are excellent.

Will Smith is a great hitter. He gets my vote as the best catcher in the game, and while I wouldn’t fault you for picking Buster Posey, Smith leads all catchers in WAR and is doing it at a young age. He’s a perfectly acceptable defensive catcher, but he’s valuable because of his hitting, with a .267/.377/.510 line that’s good for a 140 wRC+. Those numbers are great for any hitter, but particularly for one playing the hardest defensive position.

With that in mind, you’d assume Smith is great against pitches in the middle of the plate. That’s how hitters succeed! Well, you’d be wrong. Take a look at his Swing/Take runs, a neat Statcast tool that shows the run value a player has accrued on pitches in each zone:

That’s not how this is supposed to work. What the heck is going on?
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