The White Sox have been so consistently the class of their division this year that it’s easy to lump their individual performances together. The offense? Scintillating. The starters? Carlos Rodón and Dylan Cease have been pleasant surprises that turned the rotation from good to one of the best in baseball. The bullpen? It’s been great, and almost forgettable in its greatness, with a top-10 ERA, a top-five FIP, and piles of strikeouts, grounders, and pop-ups.

You probably know that Liam Hendriks is the ringleader. He was a key offseason addition, coming off of a superb 2020 for Oakland. But you might not have noticed how good his three-year run has been. He has been one of the best handful of relievers in the game — again. He’s done it while throwing a ton of innings — again. Put it all together, and this recent run of excellence gives him a strong claim as one of the best relievers of the 21st century.

One way you could try to contextualize Hendriks’ string of excellence is by looking at three-season stretches by relievers. The king of this metric is, naturally enough, Eric Gagne. From 2002 to ’04, he was a machine, throwing 82.1 innings each year and delivering an aggregate 1.79 ERA, 1.57 FIP, and a whopping 11.7 WAR. That number hardly sounds like a reliever, but most relievers don’t deliver seasons like Gagne’s. He’s head and shoulders above the rest of the list:

Hendriks places a solid 23rd in all three-season totals this century. It’s hard to crack this list, though. For one thing, plenty of relievers double up by having two excellent seasons sandwiched by two okay seasons. Gagne isn’t the only name on there more than once; there are plenty of Kimbrels, Riveras, Chapmans, and the like in the top 25.
Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s shaping up to be a dramatic finish to the season, with surprise contenders and potential tie breaking scenarios still very much alive. With just two weeks left in the season, three teams in the National League have already punched their postseason tickets, and though nothing is official yet, the three division races in the American League have largely been decided as well. That leaves the NL East and West (the Central is all but sewn up) and the two Wild Card races still to be determined.

A quick refresher: my approach takes the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), and their starting rotation and bullpen (50%/50% FIP- and RA9-) — and combines them to create an overall team quality metric. I add in a factor for “luck” — adjusting based on a team’s expected win-loss record — to produce a power ranking.

These six teams have either already clinched a playoff berth or should clinch sometime this week. They’re also the favorites to make deep postseason runs; the Dodgers lead the pack with 20.8% odds to win the World Series. It’s a little weird to see Max Scherzer hit a major career milestone in a Dodger uniform, but he finally reached 3,000 career strikeouts last week. Since joining Los Angeles on July 30, he’s posted an absurd 0.78 ERA across nine starts with a 79-to-7 strikeout-to-walk ratio. His performance, and Walker Buehler’s season-long excellence, give the Dodgers an embarrassment of riches when it comes to who should start the NL Wild Card game should the Dodgers fail to catch up to the Giants in the West. Read the rest of this entry »

The Orioles are a very bad baseball team. In fact, by the available evidence, they’re the majors’ worst, owners of the lowest winning percentage by a narrow margin and the lowest run differential by a country mile. Yet when the book is finally closed on the 2021 season, they will have left a sizable footprint on the American League playoff picture. For as dreadful as they’ve been, they’ve played quite the spoilers — and could continue to do so.

The O’s have already lost more than 100 games for the third time in the past four seasons; obviously, they couldn’t pull that off during last year’s pandemic-shortened campaign, though had it been played to completion, they might have given the century mark a run for its money, as their their record prorated to 68-94. At 47-102 (.315) this year, they’re one game worse than the Diamondbacks (48-101, .322), and on pace to lose 111 games, second only to their 2018 team’s 115 losses in terms of the franchise’s run in Baltimore. Because they’ve surrendered a ghastly 6.00 runs per game, they’ve been outscored by 276 runs, and could become the fifth team of the post-1960 expansion era to be outscored by at least 300 runs.

The Orioles have been even worse within their division (18-52, .257) than outside it (29-50, .367), but while they lost 18 out of 19 games to the Rays — becoming the third team of the division play era to do that, after the 2019 Tigers (1-18 versus Cleveland) and Mariners (1-18 versus the Astros) — they went 8-11 versus the Yankees. Without that difference, the AL East race would be a four-team pileup:

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Louie Varland has been one of the best pitchers in the Minnesota Twins system this season. In 20 appearances — 10 with Low-A Fort Myers and 10 with High-A Cedar Rapids — the 23-year-old right-hander is 10-4 with a 2.10 ERA and a 2.81 FIP. Moreover, he has 142 strikeouts to go with just 30 walks in 103 innings.

In some respects, Varland has come out of nowhere. A 15th-round pick in 2019 who took the mound at a Division II school, he entered the current campaign well under the radar. His name was nowhere to be found on top-prospect rankings.

The relative obscurity doesn’t include the Twin Cities’ baseball community. The St. Paul native played close to home at Concordia University, as did his older brother, Gus Varland, who was drafted by the Oakland A’s in 2018.

The emerging Twins prospect has upped both his velocity and his pitching acumen since he toed the slab with the Golden Bears. Low-90s as a collegian, he’s now sitting 94 and topping out at 98. Varland shared that his four-seam fastball spins between 2,300 and 2,500 RPM and gets 17 inches of rise. Calling the pitch his “greatest gift right now,” he added that its effectiveness is due in part to “vertical approach angle, the riding illusion that hitters see.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the potential benefits of a 15-second pitch clock and the massive winning-percentage mismatch between the NL’s impending wild card winners, then answer listener emails about intentionally swinging at a wild pitch to reach base, the obsolescence of ERA, whether Statcast should be used instead of video to make fair-foul calls, and whether DJ LeMahieu is good, then meet major leaguers Kaleb Ort and Sammy Long and do Stat Blasts about whether relievers are really all failed starters and the Pirates’ historic failure to complete sweeps (plus a postscript about Austin Adams’ record-breaking HBP).

Audio intro: Remember Sports, "Clock"
Audio outro: The Scruffs, "I’m a Failure"

Link to Jayson Stark on the pitch clock
Link to Mike Sonne on pitch clocks and injuries
Link to J.J. Cooper on pitch clocks and game times
Link to MLB time of game by year
Link to Grant Brisbee on time between pitches
Link to David Smith on time between pitches
Link to Smith on why games get longer
Link to Rob Arthur on hitters’ time between pitches
Link to Rob on pitchers’ time between pitches
Link to EW episode about wild card game
Link to Travis Sawchik on the wild card round
Link to Griffin strikeout post
Link to Griffin strikeout video
Link to Griffin strikeout newspaper clipping
Link to Fuentes strikeout video
Link to Fuentes strikeout podcast
Link to Sandoval swing video
Link to Sam Miller on the ERA qualifier threshold
Link to J.J. on the ERA qualifier threshold
Link to story on Statcast’s margin of error
Link to story on Hawk-Eye in tennis
Link to Chet Gutwein on LeMahieu’s power outage
Link to Jeff Sullivan on LeMahieu’s power
Link to Kenny Kelly on LeMahieu and park effects
Link to story on Ort’s debut
Link to Oort cloud explainer
Link to Susan Slusser on Sammy Long
Link to story on Long’s debut
Link to Chafin’s “Failed Starter” shirt
Link to relievers Stat Blast data/graph
Link to Stat Blast sweeps data
Link to “Full Nelson” tweet
Link to current “Full Nelson” club
Link to Zach Kram on Adams
Link to Adams’ record HBP

 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 Twitter Account
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

The A’s are nearly on the outside looking in. With about two weeks left in the season, there’s still room for a pair of AL East cold streaks to swing things around, but the odds of Oakland reclaiming a Wild Card spot and making the playoffs for a fourth straight year are slim.

Those odds cratered in the past month; some of that collapse is more succinctly summarized here. Any four-year playoff run is impressive, but the Oakland teams of the past three years, including two 97-win squads, have been devoid of the quality of starting pitching that their record would suggest. This season will be the first the A’s have had in that stretch with any starting pitcher compiling 3-plus WAR, let alone three of them. But while the gains in starting pitching are most certainly helpful, there has been a considerable dip in the quality of Oakland’s relievers.

Read the rest of this entry »

2:02

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to another edition of my Friday chat. I’ve got a piece today about notable second-half slides that have crowded the Wild Card race https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-second-half-slides-that-have-crowd…, and earlier this week, I wrote about Team Entropy (https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/team-entropy-2021-lets-get-wild/), Max Scherzer (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/max-scherzer-chases-perfection-and-collect…), Ryan Braun’s retirement (https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/ryan-brauns-complicated-legacy/)

2:02	Jay Jaffe: And now, on with the show

2:04

Jay Jaffe: I don’t think it’s helped that cause, to say the least, but I think the bigger problem is that the organization just reeks of a dysfunctional culture, and the most prominent person in common to the Wilpon era and the Cohen one is Sandy Alderson, who’s apparently returning despite three notable hiring gaffes that blew up in the team’s face. I don’t see how you’re going to land an Epstein or a Beane if Alderson is still in place.

2:06

Jay Jaffe: I don’t think Harper has come close to guaranteeing first-ballot status but his early start put him on a Hall of Fame path, and the way he’s played over the past two seasons has helped get him back onto it after his progress was slowed. Wrote about him in this context here https://blogs.fangraphs.com/ten-position-players-who-have-most-helped-…

Read the rest of this entry »

On April 14, 2016, Vince Velasquez took the mound for his second start as a member of the Phillies, having come over in an offseason trade with the Astros that sent Ken Giles to Houston. In an afternoon matchup against the Padres, he twirled one of the best-pitched games of the last decade, striking out 16 and walking none in a complete game shutout, allowing just three hits to boot. In the last 10 years, just 11 pitchers have struck out 16 or more in a game, and in these 13 performances (Max Scherzer has done it thrice), just five were complete game shutouts. He started his Phillies career on the highest of notes.

Fast forward more than five years, and Velasquez has now signed with those very Padres on a minor league deal in name only. As San Diego desperately tries to find pitching depth to stay afloat in the NL Wild Card race, Velasquez will start on Friday night in a pivotal series against the Cardinals, though he will not be eligible for postseason play if the Padres do secure a spot in October since he signed after the start of September.

The fact that a starting-caliber arm became available in free agency in the middle of the last month of the season tells you two things, both obvious. For the Padres, it shows just how dire their need for pitching is. But I want to focus on the second obvious reality: To get released at this point in the year is proof that Velasquez hasn’t been particularly good. Indeed, in 81.2 innings, he’s posted a 5.95 ERA and 5.59 FIP, production that has been exactly replacement-level.

Velasquez has shown flashes of productivity, but his time with the Phillies ran thin after continually falling short of expectations. In May, Matt Gelb of The Athletic covered what he referred to as the righty’s last stand in Philadelphia and how he hoped to reinvent himself to increase his effectiveness. One thing stood out: He came into this season wanting to mix his pitches more effectively, reflecting on that April 2016 start to explain his change in mindset for 2021.

“Cool, I had 16 strikeouts,” Velasquez said. “But I fucking threw all fastballs. OK, that’s unique. But it’s not part of pitching. It’s not pitching. It’s not sustainable at all.”

As the Padres look to tinker with Velasquez, it is interesting to consider where they may start. Was his plan of throwing fewer fastballs working? Might he have just been choosing the wrong pitches to put in the four-seamer’s place? What is the way forward here? Read the rest of this entry »