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After last week’s games, we’re around 40% of the way through the season. The halfway mark is quickly approaching, with the All-Star game soon after that. The form of the playoff races is slowly taking shape. And with few exceptions, too many of the teams on the bubble of contention just aren’t making any headway in the standings. There’s still plenty of season left to play, but the trade deadline decision-making point for many of these teams is coming sooner rather than later.

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.

Despite neither team moving at all in the rankings, this tier saw the biggest changes this week. Both the White Sox and the Rays continued to pull away from the rest of the field in the American League, with each team losing just once last week. These two powerhouses are set to play three games in Chicago, which should be a fantastic preview of a potential AL Championship Series.

Chicago and Tampa Bay have scored the exact same number of runs this season but the White Sox have a decided advantage when it comes to their starting rotation. If the season ended today, their starters would have the third lowest park- and league-adjusted ERA of any team since the mound was lowered in 1969. And all this despite some significant struggles on the part of their staff ace, Lucas Giolito. They’ve thrived despite some extremely unfortunate injuries — Nick Madrigal is the latest victim — because they’ve built the best run prevention unit in the American League. Read the rest of this entry »

Here at FanGraphs, we’re always looking for an excuse to paraphrase Tolstoy, so let me introduce you to a principle I’ve recently noticed about sacrifice bunts. Successful sacrifice bunts are all alike (and boring). Every unsuccessful sacrifice bunt is unsuccessful in its own way. Let’s talk about the worst sacrifice bunts of the year and explore the myriad “own ways” you can fail.

First, some ground rules. I’m looking at every bunt through June 9; that’s the last day I pulled data for. (Don’t you worry: I don’t need an excuse to write about future bad bunts later this year.) I’m ranking them based on win probability added. I’m considering the results of the play, not just the decision to call for a bunt in the first place. That might be more theoretically useful, but it’s a lot less fun; we want to watch bunt train wrecks, not debate the finer points of ex-ante strategy. The worst bunting decision of the year is arguable, and dependent on many factors which can be hard to pin down. The worst result? It’s pretty clear, as you’ll see.
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The 2020 Cubs won the NL Central, but they did it in a fairly unusual way, getting minimal contributions from Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, and Javier Báez. In 151 combined games, their trio of stars combined for a mere 1.6 WAR, mostly coming from Rizzo (1.0); back when the Cubs won the World Series in 2016, Bryant alone racked up nearly eight wins. Last season, players like Ian Happ and Willson Contreras were the ones who propelled the team to October baseball, not the old core.

With Báez, Bryant, and Rizzo all set to enter free agency this offseason, the Cubs, as in many a heist movie, hoped to bring back the old crew for one last big score in 2021. But unlike many good yarns about high-stakes thievery, the Cubs largely ignored the supporting cast. The studio had cut the budget, an obvious necessity what with the Cubs playing in a tiny, small-market city, boasting merely the fourth-best attendance in baseball in 2019, and the reality that no owner in baseball history has ever made money. Yu Darvish was off to film a high-budget action movie in San Diego; the only primary member of the 2019 rotation still on the roster in ’21 is Kyle Hendricks.

Without much in the way of new blood, they needed their old core to shine one last time. And luckily for the Cubs, this is largely what has happened. In a similar number of games as the 2020 season, our troika of protagonists has combined for 4.8 WAR, tripling their contribution from the prior season. With the addition of Nolan Arenado, the Cardinals got most of the preseason NL Central ink but the Cubs have been more impressive at the box office. Read the rest of this entry »

No one thought that the Arizona Diamondbacks were going to contend for their division this year. It’s been nearly a decade since any team other than the Dodgers took that title; the buzz factor, the splashy acquisitions, newly belonged to the Padres; and it didn’t take too long before the Giants proved themselves formidable contenders, too. The Rockies were, as expected, back in the rearview mirror, another star bitterly departed, their GM resigned, reports of organizational dysfunction hovering around them. What, then, of the Diamondbacks? To linger — to play spoiler, maybe. To continue onward, even if only because they have to. “#RattleOn” — that’s their hashtag. One imagines the heat, a bone-deep drought, a sound — low to the ground and strange — carrying out into the unfurling darkness until you can hear it no longer. The sound is a warning, or an object of childish entertainment, or a sigh whose meaning remains frustratingly unclear. It persists even after it’s gone.

Last week, the Diamondbacks lost seven games in a row. Six of those games were on the road. The Diamondbacks have, in fact, lost 19 consecutive road games. The record for most consecutive road losses is 22 — a mark achieved once by the Philadelphia Athletics in 1943, and later by none other than the New York Mets in 1963. No team has ever lost exactly 21 road games in a row — an entirely different Philadelphia Athletics team lost 20 straight in 1916. And there, the next name down the list: the 2021 Arizona Diamondbacks, winners of just under a third of the games they’ve played.

The Diamondbacks lost in Oakland. Ketel Marte crashed into the Coliseum, making an incredible catch — and then the ball disappeared from his glove when his back was turned. The final score was 4-0, anyway. They were unable to scratch a run across against Sean Manaea, just as they’d only managed two in seven innings off Chris Bassitt the day before. Before that, they lost in Milwaukee — a tie carried into the eighth lost and never recovered; mostly, deficits whose heights couldn’t be scaled, no matter how slight. They were swept in LA by the Dodgers; in Denver, by the lowly Rockies; in Queens by the Mets and in Miami by the Marlins. Their last road win was on April 25. They swept the doubleheader in Atlanta, 5-0 and 7-0. They were, at that point, exactly .500. Read the rest of this entry »

Shohei Ohtani produced another tour de force on Friday night against the Diamondbacks, throwing five strong innings and collecting a pair of doubles — lighting up Statcast along the way — and even making a defensive cameo in the Angels’ 6–5 win, though he departed before the matter was settled in extra innings. None of what the 26-year-old phenom did on Friday was anything we haven’t seen from him before, but that’s part of the point. He’s making this double duty stuff seem routine, combining pitching and hitting responsibilities in a way that hasn’t been pulled off in over a century, performing at a very high level in both roles with specific elements that are elite, and positioning himself as a legitimate MVP candidate.

Othani was facing a downtrodden club that had lost 21 of their previous 23 games, but the Diamondbacks were at least playing at Chase Field rather than threatening to extend their 19-game road losing streak. On the mound, he allowed just two runs over five innings, striking out eight. Both runs came in a messy fifth inning that included hitting Tim Locastro with a pitch, back-to-back balks (the second of which scored Josh Rojas), and a wild pitch on which Eduardo Escobar struck out but reached first safely as Ketel Marte scored from third. Surprisingly, nobody had that particular combination on their Bad Inning Bingo cards.

Shohei Ohtani did not agree with this balk call pic.twitter.com/fRmOS0La5K

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) June 12, 2021

That inning aside, Ohtani was impressive, generating 14 whiffs, just one shy of his season high (which he’s reached three times); seven of those were via his four-seamer and another five with his splitter. The latter has a claim as the most unhittable pitch in baseball. Among offerings that have concluded at least 50 plate appearances, Ohtani’s splitter has held batters to the majors’ lowest wOBA:

Meanwhile, Ohtani’s splitter has also produced the majors’ highest whiffs per swing rate:

I’ve included Ohtani’s majors-leading putaway percentage on the offering (per two-strike pitch ending with a strikeout) and his second-ranked strikeout percentage (per plate appearance ending with the pitch). Glasnow’s curveball is the only pitch that has a higher rate in the latter category.

As for Ohtani’s fastball, which averaged 95.2 mph on Friday — and 95.5 for the season, 1.2 mph lower than his 2018 rookie campaign — he threw one to Asdrúbal Cabrera in the third inning that was clocked at 99.6 mph. That’s his fastest since a 98.8 mph heater on May 5; he hasn’t topped 100.0 since April 4, but both of those round up to 100 if you’re counting that way. Velocity aside, the most distinctive thing about his heater — which batters have hit for a .270 AVG, .444 SLG, and .400 wOBA — is his 30.2% PutAway%, which ranks eighth in the majors.

In 47.1 innings (4.1 shy of his rookie total), Ohtani has posted a 2.85 ERA, 3.41 FIP, and 3.61 xERA. Those numbers won’t thrust him into the AL Cy Young race, particularly give his workload constraints; he’s on pace to throw 118 innings after two years of almost nothing. Still, they’re significantly better than average — his ERA- is 69, his FIP- is 82 — and they testify to a convincing recovery after so much time lost to blisters, a UCL sprain that resulted in Tommy John surgery, and a flexor pronator sprain that shut him down after two brutal appearances last year.

Among AL pitchers with at least 40 innings, Ohtani’s 34% strikeout rate ranks fifth and his 0.76 homers per nine 11th. While his 14% walk rate is the league’s second-highest, he’s gotten the situation under control; after walking 19 batters in his first four starts (18.2 IP), he’s walked just nine over his last five (28.2 IP), with just one start with more than two. On a per-plate appearance basis, his walk rate has dropped from 22.6% over those first four starts to 7.6% over the last five. That’ll do.

As for Ohtani’s hitting, he went 2-for-4 with a pair of doubles. The first one, off Merrill Kelly, came in the third inning after he fouled an 0–2 cutter off his right knee, producing a scary moment (think Christian Yelich suffering a season-ending kneecap fracture in 2019). Uncomfortable but undaunted, Ohtani arose and, four pitches later, ripped a sinker into the right-center field gap, driving in Justin Upton; the drive’s 114.9-mph exit velocity was the game’s highest.

Moments later, Ohtani came around to score on an Anthony Rendon single. That hit was sandwiched around a pair of groundouts, but in the seventh inning, after moving from the mound to right field, he doubled off Taylor Clarke to send Upton to third, who later scored on a wild pitch to break a 4–4 tie, though Ohtani was stranded at third. He departed the game after the inning, with Taylor Ward moving from center to right and Juan Lagares taking over in center.

This was the third time this season that Ohtani has moved from the mound to the outfield in the same game, and the first in a contest the Angels won; they lost 5–1 to Houston on May 11 despite his season-high seven-inning, one-run effort, and 3–2 to Cleveland on May 19, when he pitched just 4.2 innings and allowed two runs. He’s played the outfield on two other occasions — once after shifting from designated hitter, once after pinch-hitting — and while he’s yet to record a putout or assist in 6.1 total innings in the pasture, he’s now gone 2-for-4 in those extra plate appearances.

Including his pinch-hitting appearances on Saturday and Sunday, Ohtani is hitting .269/.353/.608 and ranks second in the AL in slugging percentage and homers (17) behind only Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (.688 SLG, 21 HR). Ohtani’s 159 wRC+, meanwhile, is third behind Guerrero (204) and Matt Olson (169). Again, it’s a convincing turnaround given last year’s dismal .190/.291/.366 (82 wRC+) line. The offseason work he did to strengthen his lower body and rebuild his swing is paying off; he’s absolutely crushing the ball. Through Saturday, his 23.8% barrel rate leads the majors; his .418 xwOBA places him in the 97th percentile; and his 55.2% barrel rate and 93.5 mph average exit velocity are both in the 96th percentile. All of those are career highs, and his 34 barrels are just three short of his career high, set in 2018, albeit on 72 fewer batted ball events (143 to 225).

Owning the major’s top barrel rate as well as its most unhittable pitch (or one of them, at least) is incredibly cool, but one of Ohtani’s most impressive stats is perhaps his most basic one: He’s played in 60 of the team’s 65 games, starting 55 times and pinch-hitting in five. He’s made his two-way play routine to an extent that he wasn’t allowed to do in 2018, when the Angels generally kept him out of the lineup both the day before and the day after his starts and didn’t let him hit on the days he pitched, lest they lose the DH upon his departure. Even given the caveat that he’s not playing the field, this is a huge deal — the closest analogue we’ve seen to Babe Ruth’s 1918 and ’19 seasons. In ’18, Ruth, still a member of the Red Sox, made 19 starts plus one relief appearance, totaling 166.1 innings, and added another 57 starts in the outfield (including 11 in center!) and 13 at first base, plus five pinch-hitting appearances. His 11 homers and .555 slugging percentage led the AL and his 2.22 ERA ranked ninth, and his 6.7 combined WAR ranked second in the majors. In ’19, Ruth made 15 starts plus two relief appearances, tossing 133.1 innings, and 106 starts in the outfield plus another five at first base, as well as one pinch-hitting appearance. He set a single-season home run record that year with 29 and ran away with the major league leads in OBP (.456), SLG (657) and combined WAR (9.8).

While I’m not suggesting that Ohtani is revolutionizing the game the way Ruth did, his 2.1 WAR as a hitter (tied for ninth in the league entering Sunday) and 1.1 WAR as a pitcher combined rank second only to Guerrero’s 3.9, and it projects to 8.0 WAR over the course of the season, about halfway between Ruth’s 1918 and ’19 seasons. With Vladito currently leading all three Triple Crown categories (he has 55 RBI and a .344 batting average to go with his 21 homers), this could be a very interesting MVP race, and any fears that it will boil down to a repeat of the 2012 AL battle between Miguel Cabrera and Mike Trout, with its old school/new school fault lines, ought to be at least somewhat assuaged by Guerrero’s high WAR.

Then again, these days one can’t get much more old school than invoking the Bambino himself. That Ohtani’s performance is inviting that comparison is a wonder to behold.

We’re a month away from the 2021 Draft and it’s time for our first mock draft of the season. We have also posted an updated ranking of the prospects, which is available over on The Board. In a typical year, the Draft, which usually leads into the first or second weekend of June, would be wrapping up and teams would be beginning to prep for next year’s affair by heading to PG National in St. Petersburg to watch many of the top 2022 high schoolers. With the pandemic once again shifting the schedule, the draft is instead still a month out, and only now is substantive information circulating that makes a mock based on more than speculation and educated guessing viable.

Below we have names with teams down to pick 17, where the Reds (who also pick 30th and 35th) select. After that we have a smattering of dope and rumors to pass along, but otherwise still think it’s an exercise in futility to connect specific names with clubs toward the back half of the first round. This mock was compiled with info sourced from team personnel (a couple of general managers, scouts, cross checkers, directors, etc.), agents, and our own experiences at games (scouting the scouts and execs), as well as our own logical conclusions. As we receive feedback from more of our sources, and as teams cease scouting and huddle in the draft room for the next month, the rankings will grow and change, and we will update and lengthen our mock. Read the rest of this entry »

Joe Smith has quietly been a good pitcher for a long time. Now 37 years old and playing for his sixth team, the Houston Astros reliever has a 3.06 ERA over 14 big-league seasons. Moreover, his 804 appearances are the most of any active hurler — and that’s not even the eye-catching part. Smith recently moved ahead of Walter Johnson into 49th place on the all-time list, with another legend in his sights. Next up is Nolan Ryan, who logged 807 career outings.

I asked Smith about his ascent in the pitching-appearances category. Could he have imagined this when he debuted with the New York Mets in 2007?

“When I first got called up, I was just trying to figure out what the heck pitching in the big leagues was, “said Smith, who’d been drafted out of Wright State University the previous year. “That offseason, I wrote out some goals and things I needed to get better at, and I was able to accomplish them. At that point I felt like I could do it for a long time. But there’s so much luck in this game. Your health, right? Pedro Martinez was on the team, and everybody would wish him good luck. He’d be, ‘No, wish me good health. If I’m healthy, I’ll be good.’ That really resonated with me. Being able to answer the call is what it’s about, especially when you’re a reliever. You want to be able to post as many days as you can.”

Right now he’s on the shelf. Smith went on the 10-day IL earlier this week, his return date uncertain. The sidearmer told me that everything is structurally sound, yet his forearm had been “grabbing” him (Astros manager Dusty Baker has reportedly referred to it as “elbow soreness”). Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and The Athletic’s Grant Brisbee discuss Grant’s experience co-hosting a podcast with Hunter Pence and Grant’s hatred of the zombie-runner rule, before attempting to explain how and why the San Francisco Giants have baseball’s best record and what they should do at the trade deadline.

Audio intro: The Baseball Project, "The Giants Win the Pennant"
Audio outro: The New Pornographers, "Need Some Giants"

Link to Baseball Barista
Link to Baggs & Brisbee
Link to Grant’s Pence scouting report
Link to Grant on the zombie-runner rule
Link to The Athletic on the Giants’ offensive improvement
Link to Grant on Oracle Park
Link to Grant on the Giants’ bullpen
Link to Tim Keown on the Giants

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