12:02

Dan Szymborski: The final Szymchat has arrived.

12:02

Dan Szymborski: of the REGULAR SEASON.

12:02

Dan Szymborski: The madness will continue.

12:03

Dan Szymborski: No doubt the last two months have been cruel. Like there’s a vengeful god who punishes the unsuccessful at the trade deadline.

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Uh, header?

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Kris Bubic leans heavily on his changeup. The 24-year-old Kansas City Royals left-hander has gone to his signature pitch 30.9% of the time this year, the fourth highest percentage among hurlers with at least 120 innings. Low velocity and low spin are two of its attributes. Bubic — a Stanford product whom the Royals drafted 40th overall in 2018 — throws his change-of-pace 80 mph on average, with a 1,602 rpm spin rate.

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Kris Bubic: “At the end of Little League, around 13 [years old], I had a club coach — his name was Erick Raich — and I tried to throw a changeup. At that point you’re not really developed enough to throw a breaking ball, at least not in my opinion. Your hand speed isn’t there, and the ball is bigger than your hand, so it’s tough to hold it and whatnot. Even a changeup. But the changeup was the first off-speed pitch I learned, and he showed me a standard circle grip. I threw a four-seam fastball, and [the changeup] was just a four-seam circle. It was pretty simple.

“As I developed it, I would play catch with it constantly, at 90 feet, at 120 feet, just to get the feel for it. I’d feel myself releasing it out front to get that good extension. But I think the separator for me… there are two things, actually. One is the velocity difference I’m able to create off my fastball. Two is that it essentially spins the same. There is variability with changeups — some have sidespin, some guys have split grips and whatnot — but mine essentially spins the same as my fastball. The axis is a little tilted toward more sidespin, but not enough that you can really tell from the eye. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the time of year when folks doubt the playoff odds. With the St. Louis Cardinals going from 71-69 long-shots to postseason clinchers, and the rollercoaster that is the American League Wild Card race, you’ve probably heard the skeptics’ refrains. “You had the Jays at 5%, and now you have them at 50%. Why did you hate them so much?” Or, hey, this tongue-in-cheek interview response that mainly makes me happy Adam Wainwright reads our site:

Adam Wainwright: “FanGraphs had us at like a negative 400 percent chance to make the playoffs, and we just proved everyone wrong. We're going to try to and keep doing that.”

— Zach Silver (@zachsilver) September 29, 2021

In that generic statement’s defense, it really does feel that way. In your head, 5% rounds to impossible. When the odds say “impossible” and then the season progresses to a point where outcomes are far less certain, what other impression can you take away than “these odds were wrong”?

I feel the same way from time to time. Just this year, the Cardinals and Blue Jays have been written off and then exploded back into contention. St. Louis bottomed out at 1.3% odds to make the playoffs – in August! It’s not quite negative 400 percent, but it sure feels that way. Can it really be that those odds were accurate, and that we just witnessed a one-in-100 event?

To investigate this question, I did what I often do when I don’t know where to turn: I bothered Sean Dolinar. More specifically, I got a copy of our playoff odds on every day since 2014, the first year when we calculated them using our current method. I left out 2021, as we don’t have a full season of data to use yet, but that still left me with a robust (some would say too robust) amount of data. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about what Shohei Ohtani might mean for the Mariners’ slight playoff chances and Riley O’Brien’s recent debut, before Ben shares some (good) personal news. Then (17:33) they bring on Will Leitch to discuss the St. Louis Cardinals. Will shares what it has been like to root for the team during its win streak, when he realized they were playoff bound, what has gone into this incredible run, and which Cardinals are candidates for some postseason devil magic. Plus, Will makes the case for this year’s version of the team actually being fun before predicting just how deep into October the Cardinals might play. Read the rest of this entry »

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As we enter the final few days of the regular season, our collective attention is fixed on the push for the few remaining playoffs spots, including the race for the American League Wild Card. Three East division clubs — the Yankees, Red Sox and Blue Jays — are competing for a shot at playing in the coin flip game, with the Mariners still clinging to a puncher’s chance that seems to grow by the day. All of the focus is on those teams’ games and the standings, as it should be, but as the Yankees take the field, something is quietly happening in the record books as well.

Enter Joey Gallo, one of the more inimitable talents in the game. There is no question that Gallo is a valuable player. Even with his struggles since being traded to New York at the end of July, his on-base skills and tremendous strength have him on the brink of a four-win season. But his is a profile of extremes. In the world of video games, particularly RPGs or any game in which you build a character with skill or attribute points, there is the concept of min-maxing a character. To min-max is to put all of one’s skill points in a small number of categories while ignoring the others. Gallo is the ultimate min-max character in that all of his offensive skill points have been put into two categories: power and patience. Read the rest of this entry »

Kyle Tucker has evolved into the elite hitter the Astros and scouts believed he could be. The outfielder, who graduated from prospect status in 2019 with a 60 Future Value grade and ranked 10th on our top 100 that preseason, is slashing a robust .290/.355/.548 in 548 plate appearances, good for a 144 wRC+ — tops on the team — and 4.5 WAR. David Adler of MLB.com recently wrote about how good Tucker has been this season, but I want to focus on how he’s being used, and whether the Astros are giving away an advantage with where they’re hitting him.

The Astros are dealing with injuries, as they have all season, with Michael Brantley the latest regular to land on the injured list. As such, the last game in which they had all of their starters in the lineup was on September 11, and it looked like this:

The Astros against Jose Suarez: Altuve 4, Brantley 7, Bregman 5, Alvarez DH, Gurriel 3, Correa 6, Tucker 9, Meyers 8, Maldonado 2

Garcia RHP

— Chandler Rome (@Chandler_Rome) September 11, 2021

Read the rest of this entry »

With five days remaining in the 2021 regular season, it’s abundantly clear that there won’t be much clarity offered in the National League Most Valuable Player race. Yes, Bryce Harper’s Phillies still have a mathematical shot at a postseason spot per our Playoff Odds, unlike Fernando Tatis Jr.’s Padres and Juan Soto’s Nationals, but not everybody is of the belief that an MVP needs to hail from a postseason-bound team or even a contender.

From a practical standpoint, it’s usually the case that an MVP does hail from such a team; in the Wild Card era (1995 onward), 42 of 52 (80.8%) have done so. The tendency shows an upward trend, the degree of which depends upon where one sets the cutoff. For example, three out of 18 MVPs from 1995-2003 missed the postseason, and likewise three of 18 from 2004-12, but four of 16 from 2013 onward; it’s just as accurate to say that from 1995-2004, four of 20 missed the playoffs, dipping to two of 20 from 2005-14 and then four of 12 since. Either way, all-time greats Larry Walker (1997), Barry Bonds (2001 and ’04), Albert Pujols (2008), Alex Rodriguez (2003) and Mike Trout (2016 and ’19) account for the vast majority of those exceptions, with Ryan Howard (2006), Harper (2015), and Giancarlo Stanton (2017) rounding out the group. That Rodriguez, Stanton, and Trout have doubled the all-time total of MVPs who have won while hailing from sub-.500 teams — a list that previously included only Ernie Banks (1958 and ’59), Andre Dawson (1987), and Cal Ripken Jr. (1991) — is perhaps the more notable trend, with Shohei Ohtani likely to increase that count this year. Effectively, that’s a green light for Soto’s late entry into the race, and also worth pointing out with regards to Tatis, as the Padres slipped to 78-79 with Tuesday night’s loss to the Dodgers.

From a practical standpoint, it’s also true that the notion of value is extensively tied to the things that can be measured via Wins Above Replacement. As old friend Eno Sarris noted at The Athletic (in an article on the value of Ohtani’s roster spot that’s well worth a read), in the past 14 years, only two MVP winners were not in their league’s top three by FanGraphs’ WAR, namely Jimmy Rollins in 2007, and Justin Verlander in ’11. Read the rest of this entry »

Ryan Mountcastle has a relatively straightforward approach to hitting. To say that it works for him would be stating the obvious. Since debuting with the Baltimore Orioles in late August of last year, the 24-year-old first baseman/outfielder has gone deep 37 times in 706 plate appearances. There are admittedly swing-and-miss issues — Mountcastle’s 26.1 K% is less than ideal — but his .273/.326/.492 slash line and 118 wRC+ are rock solid for a player with barely more than a full season under his belt. Power is Mountcastle’s calling card. Earlier this month, the former first-round pick set an Orioles rookie record for home runs in a season when he left the yard for the 29th time. He’s since added three more.

Mountcastle talked hitting on a recent visit to Fenway Park.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with one of my favorite ice-breaker questions: Do you view hitting as more of an art, or as more of a science?

Ryan Mountcastle: “Man, that’s tough. I would say more of an art. Everybody’s got their own swing, and everybody’s got their own mindset when it comes to hitting. So I think it’s more of an art for each person, how they picture it in their minds.” Read the rest of this entry »