At a time when they’re already without ace Jacob deGrom and two of their top hitters, and still trying to dig out of a team-wide early-season slump that led to the dismissal of their hitting coaches, the Mets lost two more regulars to the Injured List on Sunday. Facing the Rays in St. Petersburg, both Michael Conforto and Jeff McNeil left after suffering hamstring injuries in the first inning, the kind of calamity that seems as though it could befall only the Mets. The team received no respite, because in Monday’s game, starting pitcher Taijuan Walker departed after three innings due to tightness in his left side, and then Kevin Pillar was hit in the face by a fastball, suffering a bloodied and broken nose and perhaps more. An Injured List that’s already at an even dozen threatens to continue to grow.

McNeil, who had previously departed last Tuesday’s game against the Orioles due to what was termed “body cramps” after trying to stretch a single into a double, legged out an infield single to lead off Sunday’s game, and was erased on an inning-ending double play. As he was the designated hitter, his spot didn’t come up again until the third inning, at which time he was pinch-hit for by Patrick Mazeika. He departed with what the team initially described as “left hamstring tightness.”

That double play ball came off the bat of Conforto, who was visibly limping and grabbing his right hamstring by the time he crossed first base. You can see that in the video, as well as McNeil getting no further than halfway to second by the time Brandon Lowe’s throw reached Ji-Man Choi:

Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox caught us all by surprise by jumping out to an incredible start en route to an early-season lead atop the AL East. As Tony Wolfe wrote, the strong performance was largely thanks to consistent run-scoring and a dominant bullpen. Fast-forward to mid-May, and Boston is still there, first in the division and continuing to climb up various weekly Power Rankings (including our own). As impressive as the Red Sox have been at the plate, though, the rotation seems to have been overshadowed. I get it; there’s not a lot of name brand recognition. Their two best starters from 2019, Chris Sale and Eduardo Rodriguez, pitched a grand total of 0 innings in 2020. But after taking three of four from the Angels over the weekend, the Red Sox lead the American League in FIP (3.29) among starting pitchers.

Leading the charge is Nathan Eovaldi. His most recent start extended his streak without giving up a homer to 50 innings; he is the only qualified starting pitcher who has yet to do so. That helps make up for a modest 4.50 ERA and strikeout-per-nine rate of 8.46; his FIP is 2.15. Since he’s been in Boston, Eovaldi has struggled with home runs, allowing an average of 1.86 per nine over the past two seasons. That makes sense, as he’s always allowed a lot of balls to be put in play with a penchant for giving up the occasional dinger. But so far this season, the expected value in terms of xwOBA on those balls suggests that Eovaldi is eliciting softer contact, which is supported by his peripherals.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cleveland develops pitchers as well as any team in baseball, and that’s good news for Tanner Burns. The second of the club’s two first round picks last summer, Burns has an Auburn University pedigree and a high ceiling. He also has some question marks, as evidenced by Eric Longenhagen — who acknowledged that he’s “a little lighter on Burns than the industry consensus” — having ranked the 22-year-old right-hander conservatively at No. 20 on the team’s 2021 Top Prospects list. Baseball America is somewhat more bullish on Burns, slotting him at No. 15 on their own list.

The Decatur, Alabama native has pitched solidly in his first two appearances of the season. In a pair of starts for the High-A Lake County Captains, Burns has allowed four hits and two runs, with one walk and 13 strikeouts, his fastball sitting 94-95 and topping out at 96. He discussed his approach to pitching, and the influences of Tim Hudson and Casey Mize, following his initial outing.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with an icebreaker I’ve used several times in the past: Do you consider pitching to be more of an art, or more of a science?

Tanner Burns: “I feel it’s more of an art. I try to keep it plain and simple, like straight vanilla. With my release points, I think ‘off my right ear’ to go inside on a righty, ‘off my nose’ for down the middle,’ and ‘off my left ear’ for away to a righty.’ So I kind of take it as an art, delivering my pitches, letting it come off my hand.” Read the rest of this entry »

At some point in your baseball fandom, you’ll end up thinking about Schrödinger’s Baseball Player. The question posed by it is simple: When does a struggling hitter or pitcher stop existing as a superposition of states – either plain unlucky or genuinely worrisome – and become one or the other?

Consider the case of Luis Castillo. Like most, I initially ignored his first few bad starts. But now, about a quarter of the way into the season, the righty’s 7.71 ERA is the worst amongst all qualified starters. Though his peripherals are much better, including a relatively respectable 4.79 FIP, you have to imagine that something is off. Maybe we should open the box and find out what.

There are a couple of things to consider regarding Castillo, but let’s focus on his changeup. Improved command of it led to a breakout season in 2019, which he followed up with an excellent 2020. A pitch with incredible movement and a penchant for missing bats, it’s the foundation of his entire repertoire. In fact, even this season, hitters have only mustered a .254 xwOBA against it, which is obviously great. So what’s the hold up? Well:

Read the rest of this entry »

What’s the most important characteristic of a slider? Let me show you a table:

There are two things that might need explaining in here. The attack zones are Baseball Savant’s way of cutting the strike zone up into granular pieces, and I think they’re neat. They look like so:

Run values are from the batter’s perspective, so that -785 runs in the shadow zone means that batters have been 785 runs below average — what they’ve done on all pitches across the whole year — when they faced sliders in the shadow zone. In other words, sliders on the corners of the plate have been excellent — not really a shock.

What’s the most important characteristic of a slider, then? Well, allow me to show you a different table:

Read the rest of this entry »

The Angels made a minor move to bolster their relief corps over the weekend, acquiring veteran reliever Hunter Strickland from the Rays. Strickland has been effective over the first six weeks of the season, with a 1.62 ERA and a 2.83 FIP in 16 innings for Tampa Bay. In return for his services, Los Angeles will give up either cash considerations or a player to be named later.

The Rays love reclamation projects, and Strickland was one of their latest, signing a minor-league deal with the team just before the start of spring training. It wasn’t Strickland’s first time. Once a rotation prospect with the Pirates — he was a Red Sox draftee picked up in the Adam LaRoche trade — he missed the 2011 season due to rotator cuff surgery and was waived by Pittsburgh after a disappointing 2012 season. The Giants moved him to the bullpen, and the big righty with big fastball looked like a future closer candidate. He also came equipped with a big temper, resulting in such incidents and playing the cavalry general for a bullpen charge into the Yasiel Puig–Madison Bumgarner incident, yelling at Salvador Perez after an Omar Infante homer in the 2014 World Series, and intentionally hitting Bryce Harper in 2017.

When someone says there's free food in the breakroom pic.twitter.com/IiPyD1ZbXJ

— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) September 20, 2016

That hot-headedness led to a broken hand that caused him to miss two months in 2018, the unsurprising result of punching a door after blowing a save, and the Giants non-tendered Strickland after that season.

Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Wander Franco, SS, Tampa Bay Rays
Level & Affiliate: Triple-A Durham   Age: 20   Org Rank: 1 (1st overall)   FV: 80
Line: 4-for-5, 2B
Notes
Franco is now hitting .348/.404/.652 on the year and he’s doing it as a 20-year-old at Triple-A while playing flashy defense all over the infield (his bicep soreness, which caused him to leave winter ball, seems fine). This is a guy who hasn’t had so much as a dry spell as a player, no multi-week slump that needed to be busted in a superstitious, charitable, or ethically dubious way. He’s indomitable and so far is meeting the unprecedented expectations put upon him.

The “when will Wander Franco debut?” questions have already begun, as have the chat/social media queries about Vidal Bruján. Willy Adames is struggling (though he’s shown signs of life lately), but as I wrote on the Rays list, I think Taylor Walls is a better role replacement for Adames if Willy were to pull a hammy or something. Part of Adames’ roster fit is because of his excellent defense, which is one of Walls’ carrying tools. Franco is a cleaner fit in the role Joey Wendle plays. Bruján isn’t a polished defender anywhere and needs more reps in the outfield. Who of those three top 100 prospect debuts first and when likely depends more on the kind of situation the Rays find themselves in rather than the prospects themselves. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s always a strange thing to see an all-time great donning an unfamiliar uniform at the tail end of his career. Even if the sights of Willie Mays in Mets pinstripes or Hank Aaron wearing a Brewers pullover — to say nothing of Babe Ruth as a Brave — predate your time as a viewer, they probably produce a double-take. Examples such as Ken Griffey Jr. in White Sox garb, Mike Piazza in A’s green and gold (or Padres blue and sand), or Randy Johnson in Giants black and orange might be more recent, but those sights are no less alien. Which brings us to Albert Pujols of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The 41-year-old Pujols, a future Hall of Famer who is one of four players to attain the dual milestones of 3,000 hits and 600 home runs, was designated for assignment by the Angels last week. Not surprisingly, given that he was hitting just .198/.250/.372 while still due the bulk of this year’s $30 million salary, he cleared waivers, thus sticking the Angels for the lion’s share of that amount. After clearing waivers, he reportedly drew interest from three or four teams, but while it was easy to spitball a few possible destinations — the Cardinals given his status as franchise icon, the Reds because they’d just lost Joey Votto to a broken thumb, the White Sox because they’re managed by Tony La Russa, the Marlins because they could use an attendance bump — nobody saw the Dodgers as contenders for his services. Yet on Saturday afternoon, the Los Angeles Times‘ Jorge Castillo reported that the defending champions had signed Pujols to a major league deal for the remainder of the season. They’ll pay him the minimum salary while the Angels pick up the rest of the tab.

In a vacuum, the move was something of a head scratcher, but the Dodgers are amid an incessant wave of injuries that on the offensive side had already claimed center fielder Cody Bellinger, superutilityman Zach McKinstry, and infielder Edwin Ríos, and kept growing over the weekend. On Friday, left fielder AJ Pollock reaggravated a left hamstring injury that had limited him to three plate appearances in a week, and on Saturday, just hours after the Pujols news broke, so too did the fifth metacarpal in Corey Seager’s right hand, via a pitch from the Marlins’ Ross Detwiler. Given all the moving parts among the Dodgers’ multiposition players, the injury opens up a lane for Pujols to get some playing time, but whether he can improve upon his meager production to date is another story. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re now a quarter of the way through the season and the biggest storyline has been the remarkable parity throughout baseball. A few pre-season favorites have continued to disappoint and some early season surprises have proven they’re for real, but with the standings so bunched up, anything could still happen. No team is on pace to win more than 100 games right now, and there are a gaggle of teams sitting just below or just above .500. With more teams sitting on the bubble between holding fast and selling, it should make for a dramatic summer.

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 two teams barely budged in the rankings this week. The White Sox crushed the Twins in a three-game series and then split a four-game set with the Royals that ended with a wild, walk-off win on Sunday. They now possess the best record in baseball backed by the best run differential in baseball. The concerns about how their offense and defense will perform without Luis Robert are still present — Billy Hamilton has been nearly as good in the field though definitely not with the bat. They’ll need to lean on their fantastic pitching staff even more to carry them through the season. Read the rest of this entry »