This coming Tuesday, July 20, a game between the Tampa Bay Rays and Baltimore Orioles will feature MLB’s first broadcast crew composed entirely of women. The talent running the show includes: Melanie Newman, the Orioles’ radio play-by-play announcer, and the first woman to serve in that role for the club; Sarah Langs, a writer for MLB.com, who will provide the analysis; Alanna Rizzo, formerly a member of the Dodgers’ broadcast team, who will handle on-field reporting during the game; and Heidi Watney and Lauren Gardner, established reporters for MLB Network, hosting pre- and post-game shows.

MLB is not the first league to have a broadcast crew staffed entirely by women. The NBA saw its first all-woman crew take the helm in March of 2021 for a Toronto Raptors-Denver Nuggets game, featuring Meghan McPeak on play-by-play, Kia Nurse providing analysis, Kayla Grey doing sideline reporting, and Kate Beirness and Amy Audibert handling pre- and post-game reporting. The NHL, meanwhile, had its first all-female team back in 2008, when French network RDS had Claudine Douville and Daniele Sauvageau call a game between the New Jersey Devils and the Tampa Bay Lightning. Then there’s the NFL, which might be the furthest ahead in terms of women-led broadcasts, with the duo of Hannah Storm and Andrea Kremer working a full season together on Amazon Prime’s Thursday Night Football broadcasts.

But while other sports may have done these broadcasts sooner, it’s still good to see MLB taking these steps in a more diverse and progressive direction — of women accepted and represented in more roles within baseball. We got further down that road when the Miami Marlins hired Kim Ng to be the franchise’s general manager, making her the first woman to be the GM of a major league team (and the first woman to be the GM of a men’s professional franchise in any of the major North American sports). Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Brendan Gawlowski, who will be chipping in on Daily Prospect Notes once a week. Read previous installments of the DPN here.

Today, we have a few notes from a series between Tri-Cities and Everett, the High-A affiliates of the Los Angeles Angels and Seattle Mariners, respectively.

Jordyn Adams, CF, Los Angeles Angels
Level & Affiliate: High-A Tri-Cities Age: 22 Org Rank: 2 FV: 50
Line: 2-5, two infield singles, 3 SO

Adams is having a bad season. After a lower-leg injury sidelined for more than a month, the 22-year-old has been ice cold since returning to the lineup. Now more than 100 PAs into his season, he’s hitting .174/.260/.261 with a 35% strikeout rate, good for a 49 wRC+.

At the plate, he looks lost. He’s struggling to identify breaking pitches out of the hand, taking strikes on balls that bend into the zone and flailing early on pitches spinning down and away from him. He also swung and missed at several low-90s fastballs in the zone. When he does make contact, everything’s on the ground, much of it hit weakly the other way. Mechanically, he’s inconsistent as well, alternately lunging at low breaking balls or pulling off the plate on swings against the heat.

He’s also raw in the field: Two nights ago, he fielded a short fly with runners on first and second and despite no intent from the lead runner to advance, Adams came up firing and launched the ball well over the third baseman’s head. His 80-grade speed is also playing down at the moment. At the plate, he’s not quick out of the box, and on one occasion he posted a 4.3 DTL on a grounder to short. There’s more speed in the tank than that, and it’s possible that the leg injury is still bugging him, but at present he’s not consistently impacting the game with his wheels. Read the rest of this entry »

On the strength of his monster home run and an additional RBI groundout, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. took home MVP honors from the All-Star Game at Coors Field on Tuesday night. In doing so, the 22-year-old slugger — who also nearly decapitated National League starter Max Scherzer with his hardest-hit ball of the evening — became the youngest player ever to win that award. The performance was just the latest chapter of Guerrero’s breakout, as he lives up to the high expectations set by his pedigree and his precocious development.

If for some reason you haven’t seen his highlights from Tuesday night, here’s Guerrero’s first-inning plate appearance, where his 111.1 mph rocket back through the box produced such a close call that Guerrero felt obliged to apologize to Scherzer, who remarked after the game, “I’m alive… that’s the success story… I’m just grateful I still have a blue eye and a brown eye”:

Vlad Guerrero Jr. almost takes Max Scherzer’s head off and then apologizes ? pic.twitter.com/oTv06MiY5o

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) July 14, 2021

And here’s Guerrero’s third-inning homer off Corbin Burnes:

The 468-footer was the longest All-Star Game homer of the Statcast era, surpassing Kris Bryant’s 2016 shot by a good 58 feet. With it, Guerrero became the second-youngest player to go yard in an All-Star Game, after Johnny Bench did so in 1969 at the age of 21 years and 228 days. In winning MVP honors, Guerrero, at 22 years and 119 days, surpassed Ken Griffey Jr., who was 117 days older when he won in 1992. Meanwhile, Guerrero and dad Vlad joined the Griffeys and Bobby and Barry Bonds as the only father/son combinations to homer in the All-Star Game.

With the single-game spotlight and honors behind him, Guerrero is now angling to become the youngest position player to win a regular season MVP award; he won’t surpass pitcher Vida Blue, who was 22 years and 64 days old on the final day of the 1971 season, but would surpass Bench, who was 22 years and 298 days on the final day of the ’70 season. He and his father, the AL MVP in 2004, would be the first pair to win the award. Of course, the competition for Guerrero to win is daunting given the ongoing tour de force of Shohei Ohtani. A month ago, Guerrero led the AL in all three Triple Crown categories and WAR, kindling a debate over the merits of that combination relative to Ohtani’s pitching. At that point, Dan Szymborski estimated Vladito’s chances of winning the Triple Crown at 19.1%, but the five-homer lead he held over Ohtani has become a five-homer lead for Ohtani (33-28) thanks to the Angels’ superstar’s recent flurry. Guerrero’s .332 batting average and 73 RBI both still leads the AL, as does his .439 on-base percentage, 189 wRC+, and 4.6 position player WAR, though Ohtani has taken over the combined WAR lead at 5.5, and has a slugging percentage 40 points higher than Guerrero’s .658.

Regardless of whether he’s first or second in any category, Guerrero has taken a massive leap forward from his performances in 2019 and ’20, which were solid enough for a 20- or 21-year-old, but hardly All-Star caliber. After batting .272/.339/.433 (105 wRC+) in 2019, he showed more power last year, hitting .262/.329/.462 (112 wRC+); his ISO jumped by 37 points, and his home run rate rose from 2.9% to 3.7%, a gain of about 28%.

Guerrero is showing even greater in-game power this year — his display in the 2019 Home Run Derby provided more evidence of raw power than anyone this side of Iggy and the Stooges — as you can see from the basic numbers, but before discussing that, it’s worth acknowledging his improved plate discipline. He’s cut his rate of swinging at pitches outside the strike zone from 31.6% as a rookie to 27.4% last year and then 25.3% this year; among qualifiers, he’s climbed from the 46th percentile to the 70th and now the 83rd. As a result, he’s posted the majors’ fifth-largest gain in walk rate from 2020 to ’21, jumping 5.7 percentage points to 13.9%; only Starling Marte (+7.9%,), Joey Gallo (+7.7%), Carlos Correa (5.9%), and Andrew McCutchen (+5.8%) have gained more. While Guerrero is striking out more as well (up two points to 17.6%), he’s still in the 70th percentile in that category.

The biggest difference in his performance relative to 2020, though, is how much harder he’s hitting the ball:

Guerrero’s exit velocity already ranked in the 93rd percentile last year, but he was hitting grounders about twice as often as fly balls. He still hits more grounders than flies, but his 9.8 percentage point drop in groundball rate is the majors’ fourth-largest behind Jonathan Villar (-14.0%), Kyle Schwarber (-10.6%), and Kevin Pillar (-9.9%). He’s nearly doubled his average launch angle (from 4.6 degrees to 8.4), and with it, has nearly doubled his barrel rate while increasing his already-high hard-hit rate. A picture is worth a thousand words:

Guerrero has improved in every Statcast-tracked category here — even the ones that pertain to his speed and defense, the evidence of the better conditioning and work he’s put into learning a new(ish) position — except for maximum exit velocity, where he already ranked in the 99th percentile. In case you were worried that he was stagnating, he has actually shown improvement there nonetheless, from last year’s 116.1 mph to 117.4 (for what it’s worth, he topped both with a 118.9 mph single in 2019). Fittingly, where last year’s hardest-hit ball was a lineout to second base, this year’s was a home run off the Rays’ Ryan Yarbrough, the first of the two he hit on May 24 at the team’s temporary Dunedin home:

That first one had a projected distance of 461 feet, four short of his regular season career long, set just eight days earlier off the Phillies’ Brandon Kintzler, also in Dunedin:

Guerrero’s All-Star Game homer topped that, albeit with an assist from Coors Field’s altitude (which added 32 feet, according to Weather Applied Metrics’ Ken Arneson) if not the wind (which took away 10).

On the subject of harnessing his incredible bat speed towards improving his ability to get the ball in the air, in April our own Carmen Ciardiello wrote about the possibility of Guerrero improving what he called his attack angle to better launch the ball. Using an approximation based upon the top 5% of each player’s hardest-hit batted balls, Ciardiello compared Guerrero to the other mighty sluggers with similar maximum exit velocities and estimated his attack angle at 8.71 degrees. Only Giancarlo Stanton (8.74 degrees) had one nearly as flat, while Ronald Acuña Jr. had the highest angle at 17.86 degrees, followed by Trout at 16.94. In my attempt to track this as a potential explanation for Guerrerro’s year-to-year improvement, I calculated that based upon his top 5% of hard-hit balls, his attack angle has actually dipped to an average of 6.69 degrees; five of his 13 hardest-hit balls thus far have negative launch angles, meaning that they were hit on the ground, while only four are double-digit positives, all of them homers. I’ll leave it to Ciardello for further interpretation of those results.

Looking at Guerrero’s year-to-year improvement by pitch type what quickly becomes apparent is that he’s now a serial murderer of four-seam fastballs; he’s gone from a .254 AVG, .465 SLG, and .356 wOBA against them last year to a .386 AVG, .830 SLG, and .538 wOBA. Among players with at least 100 PA ending in four-seamers, only Juan Soto has a higher average, while those other two figures are tops. Guerrero’s 18 runs above average against four-seamers is the highest of any player against any pitch, and represents a full 18-run gain relative to last year as well. His other big improvements are against sliders, where he’s gained eight runs (from +1 to +9) primarily by improving from .576 SLG to .633, and sinkers, where he’s gained six runs (from +3 to +9) primarily by improving from .485 SLG to .614.

Using 200-PA cutoffs for both last year and this one, Guerrero owns the majors’ biggest gains in both slugging percentage and wRC+. Here’s the top 15 for the former:

And here’s the latter:

I should point out that my somewhat arbitrary choice of 200 PA as a cutoff for both seasons — made in part because I wanted batting title qualifiers for 2020, but then 186 PA just looked weird — meant leaving Ohtani off the tables given that he had just 175 PA last year. His 332-point gain in slugging percentage (from .366 to .698) and 98-point gain in wRC+ (from 82 to 180) dwarf the gains of Guerrero and the rest, so if you want to imagine a version of the tables with him on top, you’re free to do so.

So long as we’re talking improvements, it’s worth noting Guerrero’s progress on the defensive side. After a rough introduction to the majors at third base in 2019 (-9.4 UZR, -3 DRS, and -19 OAA in just 824 innings), he split last season between first base (-1.8 UZR, -4 DRS, -2 OAA in 324 innings) and DH. Particularly given his weight and conditioning issues — he showed up to summer camp somewhere in the vicinity of 285 pounds — his future appeared to tilt towards the latter slot, limiting his ceiling. After apologizing to his teammates for showing up out of shape last summer, he lost 42 pounds this past winter and appears to have kept the weight off. His mobility and flexibility have improved and so have his defensive numbers, which are now within hailing distance of average (-0.5 UZR, -2 DRS, and 0 OAA in 576.2 innings).

Vladdy's split stats: Good
Vladdy's splits: Also good ? pic.twitter.com/KzX2N8YFNC

— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) April 14, 2021

Even for a player who was so heavily touted as a prospect — recall that he was the consensus number one heading into 2019 — Guerrero has come a long way in a short time, and what he’s doing at such a young age puts him alongside the likes of Soto and Fernando Tatis Jr., not to mention some of the game’s other recent prodigies:

Right now, Guerrero has the highest slugging percentage and wRC+ of any of the bunch, though preserving that distinction is no small challenge given the amount of season remaining. Our rest-of-season projections forecast him to add another 2.3 WAR, which would tie him with Seager for fifth on the list. At the rate he’s going, it would hardly be a surprise if he climbs higher.

The Angels and Braves have both suffered through largely disappointing seasons and through some serious woes in the outfield. In Los Angeles, a calf injury to Mike Trout and Justin Upton’s back issues have kept the two off the field for a significant amount of time. In Atlanta, things are even more dire. Marcell Ozuna dislocated two of his fingers back in May, but a pending domestic violence charge means he likely won’t see the field again this season. Then, on the Saturday before the All-Star break, Ronald Acuña Jr. tore the ACL in his right knee, ending his season.

Both teams are within shouting distance of a playoff spot; the Braves are four games behind the Mets in the NL East, and the Angels are five and a half back in the AL Wild Card. But to have any hope of making noise down the stretch, they needed to bring in reinforcements for their outfield depth. That’s exactly what both teams did during the break. On Wednesday, the Angels signed Adam Eaton after he was released by the White Sox on Monday. On Thursday, the Braves traded for Joc Pederson, sending prospect Bryce Ball back to the Cubs in return. Trying to replace the production of Acuña or Trout is a fool’s errand, but finding someone who’s above replacement level (even if barely in both cases) goes a long way toward filling the holes in these two lineups.

In their final game before the All-Star break, the Braves ran out two converted infielders in the corner outfield spots, playing Ehire Adrianza in right and Orlando Arcia in left. In Pederson, they’re getting a capable outfielder who can play anywhere — he has plenty of experience in center field and covered left regularly in Chicago — and who’s an offensive boost to their lineup. With Guillermo Heredia already in center, Pederson will probably shift over to right, with Atlanta likely to use a rotating cast of players in left for now.

Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 931

On this edition of FanGraphs Audio, we are joined by a pair of broadcasters from the Double-A Northeast league before a discussion about this week’s All-Star festivities.

• To start things off, David Laurila welcomes Emily Messina, broadcast and media manager for the Reading Fightin’ Phils, and Emma Tiedemann, director of broadcasting and voice of the Portland Sea Dogs. The duo share the stories of their respective backgrounds and roads to calling games at the minor league level, as well as what a day in the life looks like for their positions now. Emily and Emma also get a chance to talk about some of the most impressive prospects on their squads, including Triston Casas, Ethan Lindow, and Grant Williams, as well as some of their favorite major league stars. [2:35]
• In the second segment, Jay Jaffe and Dan Szymborski get together to chat about the Home Run Derby and the All-Star Game. Jay recently wrote about the derby, and he and Dan are encouraged by some of the format changes that have turned it into a more entertaining event. The pair also discuss Joey Gallo, who Jay also wrote about recently, and how he could have a big second half ahead of him — as well as a possible trade. [26:51]

Read the rest of this entry »

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In 2017, my friend Marty and I made a bet. A lot of hot young prospects were making their way to the show and Marty is a big Red Sox fan. He was convinced that Andrew Benintendi was the next big thing, while I was adamant that honor belonged to a rookie the Red Sox had traded to the White Sox who hadn’t really gotten quite as good of a look yet: Yoán Moncada. The terms of the bet were simple. I had Moncada, he had Benintendi, and the best player would be determined by whichever player put up the most WAR (FanGraphs WAR, of course) over the next three seasons. The loser owed the winner dinner at the restaurant of their choice. Benintendi’s 5.9 WAR from 2018-20 is nothing to sneeze out, but Moncada’s 9.2 takes the cake. Which reminds me, Marty still owes me dinner.

If Marty had asked me to bet on who would win the AL Central this year, I would have put my dinner money on the White Sox. Chicago’s American League team is running away with a weak division, but they aren’t doing it the way I would have predicted. The big story on the South Side of Chicago is the injuries they’ve weathered on their way to a 54-35 record. Hitting phenom Eloy Jiménez tore a pectoral muscle trying to rob a home run in spring training, and hasn’t seen a major league pitch in 2021, though he hit a home run in the first at-bat of his rehab assignment before moving to Triple-A on Tuesday. Luis Robert played all of 25 games before he tore a hip flexor. Contact stalwart Nick Madrigal had season-ending surgery after a severe hamstring tear a month ago. As the clock ticked towards the Midsummer Classic, catcher Yasmani Grandal (who was having quite a strange season at the plate) had surgery on a torn tendon in his knee. Fortunately, that injury is not expected to be season-ending. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ll have a special draft recap episode in the very near future, but today we return to “normality,” as I am joined by special guest host and Brooklyn resident, Jay Jaffe. We discuss All-Star weekend and preview the second half of the season by going through each division and talking about the stories ahead. Then we are joined by our special guest, a listener of the week in the form of Josh The Graffiti guy, who is currently getting his doctorate studying graffiti. We talk about how the heck he pulled that off and exactly what his work entails. From there, it’s your emails, a Hall of Fame update from Jay, and why the Netflix comedy series I Think You Should Leave makes me sad.

As always, we hope you enjoy and thank you for listening.

Music by Izzy True.

Have a question you’d like answered on the show? Ask us anything at chinmusic@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Meg’s airport problems, discuss the All-Star Game (touching on mic’d up and profane players, unsightly uniforms, All-Stars being friendly on the field, and MLB embracing the game’s lack of stakes), lament that the zombie-runner rule may not be (un)dead after all, follow up on more players with high highlight-to-value ratios, reflect on Will Craig seeking solace in the KBO, celebrate David Fletcher’s 24-game hitting streak and unique offensive profile, examine some entertaining pettiness between Aaron Judge and Jose Altuve, and assess the state of the standings, focusing on teams that may make a late-season charge. Then they wrap up with a Stat Blast about the underperforming (but opponent-outscoring) Marlins and note some news about Roy Campanella.

Audio intro: The Byrds, "The Airport Song"
Audio outro: Beady Eye, "Back After the Break"

Link to mic’d up Ohtani and Soto
Link to mic’d up Tatis
Link to mic’d up Hendriks
Link to Ben on mic’d up players
Link to Rovell’s first Derby tweet
Link to Rovell’s second Derby tweet
Link to Manfred’s comments
Link to article about Craig
Link to Fletcher leaderboard
Link to Fletcher’s Baseball Savant page
Link to Fletcher hitting head-high pitch
Link to BP on the Yanks-Astros beef
Link to the Chronicle on the Yanks-Astros beef
Link to the Post on the Yanks-Astros beef
Link to FanGraphs playoff odds
Link to FanGraphs BaseRuns standings
Link to FanGraphs team pitching Clutch scores
Link to B-Ref team pitching high-leverage splits
Link to Craig R. Wright on Campanella

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Matt Wisler has thrown his slider 89.2% of the time this year, the highest percentage of any pitcher in either league. He’s done so over 32-and-two-thirds innings, the last 12-and-a-third of them with the Tampa Bay Rays, who acquired the 28-year-old right-hander from the San Francisco Giants on June 11 in exchange for minor league southpaw Michael Plassmeyer. Since coming to his new club, Wisler has made a dozen appearances and allowed just one earned run.

Wisler told the story behind his signature pitch over the phone earlier this month.

———

Matt Wisler: “I’d say I learned [a slider] in high school. I’d always thrown a curveball growing up — from when I was 11 or 12 — and then around sophomore year I started throwing a slider. It was honestly more like a different variation of a curveball, though. It was just a little bit different spin.

“The slider I have now, I learned in Low-A way. My pitching coach was Willie Blair, and we were trying to get more separation between my curveball and my slider. We went through a bunch of different grips. Finally, the second time I tried his grip, it kind of clicked for me. That was in 2012. I’ve kept that one ever since, and have obviously started throwing it more and more over the last couple of years.

“My original slider was more like a slurve — it was probably high-70s, low-80s — and we were trying to find a pitch that I could get into the low- to mid-80s with a little bit different break. There are still times where it will get a little slurvy and be in the high-70s, and a little bigger and rounder. Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Dan Szymborski: I’ve got bourbon; let’s do this.

12:02

Dan Szymborski: I think you have to shop Morton

12:03

Dan Szymborski: And I’ strongly consider trading Heredia/Almonte if you can get an interesting sorta prospect for either. They’re not young

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Neither should be playing full-time rest of season or Arcia for that matter

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Not sure if there’s Smyly interest, but I’d at least inquire

Read the rest of this entry »