Aroldis Chapman set off some fireworks at Yankee Stadium on July 4, though Mets fans almost certainly enjoyed them more than Yankees fans. For the seventh time in his last 14 outings, Chapman was scored upon, and for the second outing in a row, he served up a game-tying home run that led to a crushing defeat. The 33-year-old fireballer is in the midst of an ill-timed career-worst stretch, one that has dealt the Yankees’ playoff hopes a significant blow.

In the opener of a Subway Series doubleheader necessitated by Friday night’s rainout, Chapman entered in the seventh inning to protect a 5-4 lead. Under normal circumstances, that would have been a no-brainer move, but the decision raised some eyebrows not only given the closer’s recent struggles but the fact that setup man Chad Green had thrown just two pitches to retire Dominic Smith, the only batter he faced, to end the sixth.

Chapman got ahead of Alonso 1-2 via a three-fastball sequence: a 96.7 mph called strike on the outside edge of the plate, a 98.4 mph ball even further outside, and then a 96.9 mph swinging strike above the zone. When he switched to a slider (a pitch that Alonso has feasted upon this year, slugging .681 when he connects) and hung it in the lower middle of the zone (where Alonso has a .796 xSLG), the slugger crushed it, launching it 406 feet into the visitors’ bullpen:

Read the rest of this entry »

“We gave Pham up for Renfroe and a damn slapdick prospect?” Blake Snell bemoaned live on Twitch. He was reacting to a trade between the Rays and the Padres that took place during the 2019-20 offseason. Snell’s annoyance caused a bit of controversy – he ended up reaching out to said prospect, Xavier Edwards, to smooth things over – but it also popularized the term, to the point that it’s now part of our baseball lexicon.

What does it mean exactly, though? Urban Dictionary informs us that a “slapdick” is more or less an incompetent person (to put it nicely), but that doesn’t feel quite right in a baseball context. For me and presumably others, a slapdick hitter is someone who doesn’t hit for power and earns his keep by spraying the ball around – someone like Nick Madrigal. Although the Rays currently do not roster Madrigal, they do have this: As of this writing, their hitters collectively have the highest BABIP (.264) and wRC+ (57) on groundballs. A slapdick hitting team.

If your sabermetric senses are tingling, I understand. Due to the fickle nature of BABIP, continued success on grounders is a tenuous endeavor. It’s entirely possible the Rays have gotten lucky over the past few months. But in the spirit of FanGraphs, I began to wonder if there’s an extra dimension to this. The numbers, in fact, do posit an interesting idea – that the Rays have set themselves up for success on grounders, more so than most teams this season. Read the rest of this entry »

On hiatus since the onset of the COVID pandemic, the Learning and Developing a Pitch series returned last week with three pitchers telling the stories behind their sliders. Today, in the second of this year’s installments, we hear from Jake Brentz, Brooks Kriske, and Hirokazu Sawamura on their changeups and splitters.

——

Jake Brentz, Kansas City Royals

“I never had a changeup in the minor leagues. I was fastball slider/breaking ball, but I always mixed around my breaking ball. I didn’t really find a breaking ball that worked for me until probably a year and a half, two years ago — not until I got to Triple-A.

“Paul Gibson is our pitching coordinator here with the Royals, and last year at the alternate site he told me, ‘Hey, I would like you to develop a changeup; I think it would be a very valuable pitch for you.’ So I really focused on developing one, throwing it as many times as I could during an outing. We were just playing each other — nothing really mattered — so it was just developing and whatnot. I’d throw it back to back to back, and messed around with grips. I found one that really worked for me, and then worked on it more over the offseason. In spring training I wasn’t throwing it a lot at first, but Mike [Matheny] came to me said, ‘I think your changeup can be a devastating pitch, so we’re going to throw that a lot.’ Over time, I’ve continuing to throw it. Read the rest of this entry »

With the first round set to kick off on Sunday, we present our second mock draft. Full scouting reports can be found over on The Board.

1. Pittsburgh Pirates
Pick: Marcelo Mayer, SS, Eastlake HS (CA)

This pick is still not a lock, though there are people in the industry who feel like it should be based on their opinion of Mayer’s talent. The Pirates themselves have been tight-lipped about their intentions and haven’t begun engaging advisors in an illuminating way, at least not such that we’ve been able to ascertain either by engaging with those reps ourselves or by triangulating information by talking to the teams behind Pittsburgh. Right now Mayer is here in our mock because we think he’s the best player, and teams tend to think Pittsburgh will take a hitter and that Mayer is in that mix. Ben Cherington’s modus operandi in previous positions of power has been to take a college player, but he’s never picked first before. Whoever Pittsburgh takes up here (even Mayer) will sign for less than the slot value ($8.4 million). In Pittsburgh’s mind, is there a gap between Mayer and the rest of the pack? How big is that gap, and is there a player in the second tier of talent willing to take a deal far enough under slot to tempt the Pirates into moving off Mayer? That may only become evident as things crystallize behind Pittsburgh in the next several days.

2. Texas Rangers
Pick: Jack Leiter, RHP, Vanderbilt

If Mayer doesn’t go first, then he’s the favorite to go here and the general sense around baseball is that the other high school shortstops — Jordan Lawlar and Khalil Watson — are likely in the mix, too. Watson doesn’t fit with the org’s recent patterns of acquisition, so we’re skeptical of that one. Scouts with other teams speculated to us that Leiter better fits Texas’ self-perceived competitive timeline, and that they have the bonus pool flex to get a deal done even if Leiter’s camp sees this market as sub-optimal. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about their long weekends, birthday boy (and two-way All-Star) Shohei Ohtani, MLB’s perplexing timing when it comes to announcing awards and All-Star honors and scheduling special events such as the Futures Game and the amateur draft, the Yankees’ continuing troubles, pitchers who’ve struggled since the sticky stuff crackdown began, and Kyle Schwarber falling prey to the hamstring-injury epidemic. Then (35:34) they “Meet a Major Leaguer” up close by bringing on Mickey Jannis, right-handed knuckleball pitcher for the Triple-A Norfolk Tides, who discusses making his major league debut for the Baltimore Orioles last month, his journey from the 44th round to indy ball to the O’s, how he learned the knuckleball, how high-speed video has helped him refine his unusual pitch, being inspected for sticky stuff, the future of the knuckler, and more.

Audio intro: The Decemberists, "Down on the Knuckle"
Audio outro: Hinds, "Finally Floating"

Link to story about all-Star Ohtani
Link to video of Ohtani steal/walkoff
Link to video of Walsh/Ohtani hug
Link to video of Ohtani whiff
Link to story about the Yankees and analytics
Link to Lindsey Adler on Cole and Chapman
Link to video on Cortes
Link to video of Cortes vs. Ohtani
Link to Devan Fink on Richards
Link to BP article on hamstring strains
Link to Derek’s hamstring injury visualization
Link to Ben on Jannis and the knuckleball
Link to Jannis’ Twitter account
Link to Jannis’ first MLB out (and K)
Link to Jannis’ spring training knuckler
Link to Jannis’ knuckler grip
Link to Jannis’ knuckler on high-speed video
Link to story on Jannis’ “perfect” loss
Link to Ben on the Castellanos meme
Link to new Castellanos clip

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Matthew Barefoot initially struggled to get a foothold in pro ball. A sixth-round pick by the Houston Astros in 2019 out of Campbell University, the now-23-year-old outfielder slashed a woeful .155/.241/.159 that summer in the New York-Penn League. On the heels of that abysmal debut, and with no 2020 minor league season in which to redeem himself, Barefoot was an afterthought on our 2021 Astros Top Prospect list.

He’s proceeded to make people stand up and take notice. Fueled by mechanical changes and a relaxed mental approach, Barefoot has been one of the best hitters in the Houston system this season. In 190 plate appearances split between the Low-A Fayetteville Woodpeckers and the High-A Asheville Tourists, the former Campbell Fighting Camel has socked a dozen home runs while slashing .329/.384/.618 with a 167 wRC+. Befitting his plus athleticism, he has 15 steals to boot.

Asked what was behind his his boffo numbers, Barefoot alluded to an age-old baseball adage: You can’t think and hit at the same time.

“This year, I’m able to just go out and play and let the results take care of themselves,” explained Barefoot. That’s been a real key for me. In my first season, I was working on a bunch of swing-mechanics stuff, so I really wasn’t competing how I wanted. I was more or less trying to make swing changes in-game, which made it really hard. Mentally, I wasn’t in a great spot every game.”

Organizations often don’t ask newly-drafted players to make meaningful adjustments until they report to instructional league. The initial months are mostly a hands-off acclimation period, allowing a player to simply get his feet wet in pro ball. That wasn’t the case with Barefoot. Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros are good. Whatever you might’ve thought of their depth after losing George Springer, there was still such an overabundance of talent in their lineup as to patch up whatever variance you could imagine with any individual player. Alex Bregman is the only non-catching starter to be trailing his projected wRC+ by 10 or more points, and he’s still holding a 119 wRC+ this year. Maybe as expected, Carlos Correa and Jose Altuve lead the team in WAR, but coming in third is ageless Yuli Gurriel. In his age-37 season, Gurriel is running a career-best 147 wRC+ and is one of only four qualified batters to have more walks than strikeouts (all stats for the rest of the piece are through June 29). It’s such an aesthetically pleasing statistical line, especially in this strikeout era, and is a step forward even for someone like Gurriel who has seldom struck out.

Gains in plate discipline are happening under the hood as well, which is surprising given both the type of hitter Gurriel has been and the fact that this is coming from a 37-year-old. Gurriel has never been one to strikeout or walk too much, so shifts in his plate discipline can certainly fly under the radar, or they had at least to me. But in his sixth year in the majors, we can see rather clear evolutions in his plate discipline that feel more purposeful than pure happenstance. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s pretty evident that Major League Baseball’s crackdown on foreign substances will have wide-ranging effects on the sport. Offense is almost certainly due to increase; that that has yet to happen (at least beyond normal temperature-related effects) may only be a question of time. But with spin rates plummeting and pitchers telling the media that they are “trying to figure out how to pitch again” as a result of the new policies, it seems that we’re bound to see broad changes sooner rather than later.

The hurler who supplied the quote above is none other than right-hander Garrett Richards, an 11-year major league veteran currently pitching for the Red Sox. Boston signed Richards this past February to a one-year, $10 million contract that included a club option for 2022, a deal meant to shore up depth for a rotation that was a weak spot for the team as it entered the 2021 season. And though he has dealt with a collection of arm injuries throughout his career — including a 2018 Tommy John surgery that forced him to miss almost all of 2019 — Richards posted solid peripherals with the Padres last season and was heralded for his league-leading spin rates.

Through Richards’ first 11 starts this season, it seemed like Boston’s gamble had paid off. He wasn’t putting up elite numbers, but a 3.75 ERA, 20.2 K%, 11.6 BB%, and a 4.06 FIP is certainly serviceable. Through his start on June 1, Richards was worth 0.9 WAR, putting him in a virtual tie with Martín Pérez and Eduardo Rodriguez in terms of value. As for Boston’s starting staff as a whole, their combined 6.4 WAR through June 1 ranked fifth in the majors, which represented quite the pleasant surprise given that their rotation ranked 16th in our preseason power rankings. Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday, the Mississippi State Bulldogs defeated the Vanderbilt Commodores to win the 2021 College World Series, bringing home the school’s first title in any team sport in its 126-year history. According to ESPN, an estimated 1% of the entire population of Mississippi made their way to Omaha to cheer on the team in person. Also in attendance at Omaha’s TD Ameritrade Park were MSU alumni Dak Prescott and Rafael Palmeiro, the latter of whom was a member of the 1985 baseball team, which is widely considered one of the greatest college teams not to bring home the World Series title (Will Clark was also on the roster that year; the two were collectively referred to as “Thunder and Lightning”). Before the game started, it seemed likely to be a pitchers’ duel, with MSU’s Will Bednar facing off against Vanderbilt’s Kumar Rocker. But both aces were working on short rest – Bednar on three days, Rocker on four – and the college level is known for its unique anything-can-and-probably-will-happen brand of baseball, so even that prediction was flimsy at best.

Bednar came into the contest riding a wave of confidence stemming from his two previous games. While the draft-eligible sophomore hasn’t generated nearly the same amount of buzz that’s surrounded Rocker all season, once his team had reached Omaha, he wasted no time demonstrating why his name has come up as a potential late-first-round pick. In his first start of the tournament, the righty struck out 15 Texas batters, while walking only one and giving up just one hit in his six innings of work. He struck out seven more Longhorns in his second Omaha start, which ended with a Bulldogs walk-off. It’s not hard to imagine the impact of a hot team on a hot pitcher, coming into what is undoubtedly the most important start of his budding career. Read the rest of this entry »