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 »

Before the season started, I made a series of bold-ish predictions about what would happen in baseball this year. I focused on things that were unlikely but possible, unexpected playoff teams or players that you’ve heard of but didn’t expect to be great. You can find those eight predictions here and here.

Today, I’m grading myself on these predictions. The season is still going, but we’re close to the end, and reading about pre-season speculation will soon take a deserved back seat to actual playoff baseball. I’m assigning each of the predictions a grade of a win, a push, or a loss. Fair warning: I’m grading myself on a curve. Coming close on a high-percentage prediction is clearly a loss. Getting something half right when it was a 40-to-1 shot? I’ll claim half credit whether I deserve it or not. That’s simply how this goes — doing your own grading comes with advantages. Let’s get to the predictions. Read the rest of this entry »

Brandon Belt has had his fair share of freak injuries throughout his career; Monday evening brought news of yet another, as an X-ray on his thumb revealed a fracture that occurred Sunday afternoon when he was hit on the hand when squaring around to bunt against Rockies reliever Lucas Gilbreath. Some may question why Belt was bunting in the first place, but he sadly has a history of being on the wrong end of poorly thrown baseballs. Also, bunting has long been a tactic he’s successfully used as a heavily shifted upon hitter.

When it comes to Belt, you don’t often have to search for analogous injuries from around the league to get a sense of a timeline, because a similar injury has probably already happened to Belt himself. In fact, this exact same scenario is a repeat: In 2014, he was hit by a pitch and missed eight weeks with a fracture in his thumb. Recovery time from this latest injury is officially unknown, and a timetable will come out soon, but it’s possible if not likely that the Giants will be without Belt for the rest of the year.

That would be a huge loss for San Francisco. Not only has Belt been the team’s best hitter since the start of last season, but he’s also been one of the best in all of baseball over that span:

Throughout his prime, Belt was always a great hitter (a 136 wRC+ from 2013 to ’16), but his lack of homers and his injury history made him a rather contentious figure among Giants fans. When his production wavered from 2017 to ’19 (107 wRC+), like most of the team’s core, it seemed that the best was behind him. But as you saw in that chart, he has reached unforeseen heights thanks to a new diet of home runs that has his isolated slugging (ISO) at a career-high .323, up alongside the game’s best sluggers.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is the fourth installment of this year’s Team Entropy series, my recurring look not only at the races for the remaining playoff spots but the potential for end-of-season chaos in the form of down-to-the-wire suspense and even tiebreakers. Ideally, we want more ties than the men’s department at Macy’s. If you’re new to this, please read the introduction here.

We’re down to the final six days of the 2021 regular season, and while the National League picture has cleared up somewhat thanks in part to the Cardinals’ 16-game winning streak — the Padres and Mets have finally been put out of their misery — the America League Wild Card picture is still rather dizzying, as Dan Szymborski can attest. The good news is that we’ve still got a substantial chance at bonus baseball, which is what this series is all about. Let’s dive in.

NL West and NL East

While the Brewers have officially clinched the NL Central, the Senior Circuit’s other two divisions remain in play. In the NL West, the Dodgers (100-56) suffered a stunning loss to the Diamondbacks on Saturday while the Giants (102-54) beat the Rockies, restoring San Francisco’s division lead to two games. In this unbelievable race, San Francisco has gone 37-15 since the start of August, allowing Los Angeles (37-13) to gain just one game in the standings.

Even with Brandon Belt now out due to a broken thumb, the Playoff Odds give the Giants an 83.4% chance of bringing this one home, because they not only have the lead but the easier schedule the rest of the way, as they finish by playing host to the Diamondbacks and Padres while the Dodgers host the Padres and Brewers. If the Dodgers do make up the ground and tie but don’t overtake the Giants, the tiebreaker game — which has a 13.9% chance of being necessary according to our Playoff Odds Tiebreaker page — would be played in San Francisco on the basis of their 10-9 season series edge. The winner of that game would be crowned division champion and get the NL’s top seed, while the loser would host the Wild Card Game, with whoever wins that turning around to play the NL West champion in the Division Series. Read the rest of this entry »

With just under a week to go in the regular season, the Giants are still in prime position to capture the National League West. Hitting the century win-total mark on Friday, San Francisco’s meteoric rise from unlikely postseason contender to best team in the sport has been well-documented across baseball’s corner of the internet. The combination of the unlikely resurgence of seemingly past-their-prime franchise mainstays, near-100th-percentile outcomes from additions like Darin Ruf and LaMonte Wade Jr., and some successful tinkering with players’ tendencies to help them maximize their potential has all added up to one of the more remarkable surprise contender stories in recent memory.

Improve your player development, play the percentages better, enjoy some good fortune — the Giants have done it all. And as we march towards October, they deserve praise for it. But there’s one other thing that has piqued my interest, and though its relative importance may seem small, it’s a strategic decision that has added significant value at the margins: Giants pitchers are throwing a ton of first-pitch strikes. Just as Justin Choi praised the Blue Jays’ offense earlier this season for swinging in early counts, the Giants’ pitching staff deserves kudos for throwing pitches in the zone on the first pitch. They’ve done so more than any other team in baseball, though the other leaders here may surprise you: Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series returned this summer after being on hiatus last year due to the pandemic. Each week, we’re hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features Gerrit Cole on his curveball and Austin Davis on his slider.

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Gerrit Cole, New York Yankees

“A.J. Burnett taught Charlie Morton and me the grip when we were in Pittsburgh. He would take me in the cage and do drills with me that his dad would do with him when he was a kid. The curveball is something he’s basically had since the first time he started playing catch, which is different than me, but similar to Jameson [Taillon]. So I had to learn it. He showed me the grip, showed me the drills, and kind of described what he was feeling and what he was looking for. This was in 2012, in spring training. Then in 2013, in the big leagues, we worked on it a lot.

“I’d been pretty much slider only. I had tried a bigger curveball. I’d tried to make the slider bigger. I’d tried to throw a shorter cutter. But I never really had a true downer breaking ball. At first, I incorporated it in Pittsburgh [and] a lot was changing speeds. It’s kind of developed a little bit beyond just that.

“One of [the drills] was with an L screen. We played catch in the cage a few times. He’d back me up to 50-55 [feet] — just in front of the mound — and I would play catch with the curveball. Then he would slide the L screen over. The objective was to throw the curveball and make it go right over the shorter portion of the L screen. It would get to the correct height at the finish. We practiced that a lot. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Giancarlo Stanton’s awe-inspiring weekend at Fenway, the most aesthetically pleasing home run hitters, what the Cardinals’ 16-game winning streak portends (or doesn’t portend) for their playoff hopes, and the last week in the remaining playoff races. Then (26:32) they bring on Patreon supporter Dylan Buell to talk about his career as a professional sports photographer and answer listener emails about setting a winning-percentage cutoff for admission to the postseason, subtracting a strike for each pitch thrown outside the strike zone, a baseball equivalent of the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year Award, other baseball occupations that should be eligible for the Hall of Fame, how players’ appearances can affect fandom, baseball players sneaking onto Survivor, and the problems with plate-discipline highlights, plus Stat Blasts about precedents for the MVPs in both leagues coming from non-playoff teams, and the Rangers’ possibly unparalleled streak of innings without a lead.

Audio intro: The Glands, "So High"
Audio interstitial: The Pretty Things, "Photographer"
Audio outro: Bill Jr. Jr., "Run Home"

Link to Stanton homer against Chicago
Link to longest Stanton homer against Boston
Link to Ben on a Stanton homer from 2014
Link to video of that Stanton 2014 homer
Link to Strawberry dinger videos
Link to 1986 NLCS G3 homer
Link to 1986 World Series G7 homer
Link to Lindsey’s tweet about Stanton
Link to Lindsey on Stanton and Judge
Link to Glenallen Hill homer
Link to Sam on home run highlights
Link to Jay Jaffe on September records
Link to study on playoff randomness by sport
Link to Dylan Buell’s Instagram
Link to Nav Bhatia article
Link to 2016 article on Blue Jays scarf fan
Link to 2020 article on Blue Jays scarf fan
Link to article about Loretta’s Lounge
Link to article on Pros vs. Joes
Link to video of Jeff Kent on Survivor
Link to Ben on the Soto Shuffle
Link to article on the Rangers’ streak
Link to second article on the Rangers’ streak
Link to leadless streaks data
Link to 1916 Pirates/1932 Sox streaks data
Link to end-of-inning losing streaks data
Link to info on non-playoff MVPs

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