Pierce Johnson wasn’t the highest-profile addition the Padres made before the 2020 season. Johnson, a right-handed pitcher who began his career in the Cubs minor league system as a starter, transitioned to relieving and then transitioned to Hanshin in the NPB, where he delivered a standout 2019 season. Along with fellow offseason acquisitions Drew Pomeranz and Emilio Pagán, he was part of a reworked bullpen for a newly-aggressive contender.

Johnson’s 2020 went fairly well, aside from the whole global-pandemic-changing-the-entire-world part. He started throwing harder during his sojourn to Japan, and held that new velocity upon his return. His blend of roughly 50/50 fastballs and curves played quite well; he put up a 33.8% strikeout rate en route to 20 innings of 2.70 ERA, 3.14 FIP relief.

In truth, Johnson’s fastball was just a palate cleanser for his devastating curve. He used it early in counts and when he got behind, but threw nearly 75% curveballs in key spots — 1-0, 0-1, and 1-1 counts, as well as when he reached two strikes. It’s easy to see why when you look at the curveball’s merits. Among pitchers who threw at least 150 curves last year, it was one of the best in the game:

That’s excellent company, to state the obvious. It’s not as though the pitch is a wipeout breaker that only excels when he bounces it, either. In obvious strike-throwing counts (2-0, 2-1, 3-0, and 3-1) since returning from Japan, Johnson has hit the strike zone with his curveball 58.6% of the time. That’s higher than his fastball zone rate in the same counts (42.1%) and higher than the overall league zone rate for all pitches in those counts (56.9%).
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Chin Music returns, whether you like it or not. The traveling co-host chair finally leaves New York and arrives in Tempe, Arizona. And with the great Eric Longenhagen becoming the first repeat co-host of the show, most of the discussion revolves around baseball below the big league level. We begin by trying to set realistic expectations for Seattle’s rookie crop before delving into what is becoming a very complicated 2021 amateur draft. Then we are joined by special guest Alex Coffey of The Athletic, who explains what is actually going on with the Oakland Athletics’ ballpark situation, and boy is it complicated. Then it’s emails on TV broadcasts, housing for minor league players, and some cultural moments before we depart. As always, we hope you enjoy, and thank you for listening.

Music by Couch Flambeau.

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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When Robbie Ray walked Freddie Freeman in the first inning of his start on Tuesday evening, it was the first time he had walked a batter since April 18, ending a 20.2-inning stretch without allowing a free pass. That’s quite an accomplishment for someone who has always been known for his elite strikeout abilities and a serious lack of control. Ray’s career walk rate sits at 10.9%, a touch above league average, but over the last four years, it’s ballooned to 12.3% and reached a career worst 17.9% last year. But across six starts this season, his walk rate has fallen to 7.2%, easily a career best.

As you’d expect with such a drastic change in his control, Ray has started pounding the zone this year.

In 2020, he was tied with Shane Bieber for the lowest Zone% among all pitchers with at least 50 innings pitches at 42.6%. This season, he’s among the league leaders in Zone%, at 56.7%. During the pitch tracking era, that’s the largest increase in Zone% from one season to the next by a wide margin.

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“Houser (3-3) picked up the win on Saturday, allowing two runs on five hits over six innings in a 6-2 victory over the Marlins,“ RotoWire News reported. “He struck out ten without walking a batter.”

That’s a straightforward blurb. Nothing really stands out, so I understand if you forgot about it. Adrian Houser himself isn’t a very notable pitcher – his repertoire, which consists primarily of a sinker and an assorted mix of other pitches, doesn’t scream Pitching Ninja material. Against the Marlins a week ago, however, Houser entered uncharted territory in the realm of pitching. Not all outliers are worth mentioning, but this one is:

The graph is messy, but you can still see what happened. Ten strikeouts tied a career-high for Houser, which he reached on August 10, 2019. This time around, though, the journey there was markedly different. For the first time in his career, Houser threw his sinker over 70% of the time. He’d been high-strikeout in some games, high-sinker in others, but the two attributes had never converged so clearly until now. It’s not as if those sinkers were setting up a different pitch, either. Of the 10 strikeouts Houser collected, eight came from the sinker, while the remaining two came from the changeup and the curveball. For the most part, one pitch bookended each plate appearance.

This is remarkable if you know at least a smidgen of pitching. For one, the sinker isn’t a strikeout pitch! Its intended purpose is to induce grounders from hitters, not collect whiffs. Second, unless you’re a reliever, who throws a sinker or any one pitch that often? You’d imagine that hitters would catch on at some point. Yet Houser emerged relatively unscathed. The home run, double, and single that led to two earned runs weren’t even recorded off his sinker. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier today, the Seattle Mariners promoted Logan Gilbert and Jarred Kelenic to their active roster; both are expected to start in tonight’s game against Cleveland. The joint moves are the latest and most decisive steps to date in Seattle’s rebuild, and mark the next phase in the Mariners’ quest to construct a contender around a nucleus of homegrown talent.

This is undoubtedly a big day for the Mariners and their fans. As you probably know, the team owns the longest playoff drought in major American sports, a streak now in its 20th year. In those two decades of fits and starts, aborted tear-downs and calamitous collapses, Seattle has teased fans with young and talented rosters before. But while there’s never any guarantee that bluechip farmhands will live up to their billing, this era has a different feel to it. The current regime’s player development staff already has a few wins under their belt, and Seattle’s farm system is deeper than in previous rebuilding cycles, particularly when it comes to premium position players: In Kelenic and Julio Rodríguez, the Mariners have a pair of prospects with legitimate star potential.

There’s not much I can tell you about Kelenic that Eric Longenhagen hasn’t covered already. We have him as the game’s fourth-best prospect right now, a player who projects as a plus bat and one who may have muscled his way into plus power as well. Mariners fans will find much to salivate over in Eric’s full remarks, but as a brief teaser: “Kelenic rakes. His feel for contact, strength, and mature approach combine to make him a lethal offensive threat… I expect him to come up in 2021 and be an immediate impact player.” We’ll talk more about all of the learning and developing and maturing he did in his six games down in Tacoma later. For now, suffice to say that his spring and Triple-A appearances did nothing to damage his stock. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a very messy cubby hole in my desk crammed with various pieces of baseball-related paper. It’s filled with things like the roster sheets from the international workouts where I saw Rafael Devers and Marcos Diplán, an Arizona Fall League lineup that included George Springer, Joc Pederson and Nick Castellanos, and various other ephemera. Why I hold on to this stuff is beyond me, but I was looking for something the other day and found an ancient wonder — the starting lineups for the April 29, 2004 Midwest League game between the Yankees’ Battle Creek team and the A’s Kane County club. The game was more than 17 years ago now, but I remember the day very well, as it featured left-hander Steven Bondurant taking a no-hitter into the ninth.

The discovery, and the recent rash of major league no-nos, led to an afternoon spent down an internet rabbit hole as I furiously tried to find a box score from the game (hat tip to Cory Schwartz at MLB for his assistance) and, ultimately, to me tracking down Bondurant himself. As it turns out, he also recalls that day quite well. “I remember it like it was yesterday,” he told me on the phone on Wednesday.

There’s a solid chance you’ve never heard of Bondurant. He never reached the major leagues, and pitched his last professional game in 2007. A 15th-round pick in the 2003 draft out of South Carolina, Bondurant wasn’t the type of pitcher who made a lot of prospect lists, as he was a fifth-year senior sign who rarely cracked the 90s with his fastball. He readily admits that in today’s power-driven game, he might not have even gotten the opportunity to play professional baseball. “I was 85-88 mph in college, if that. The A’s at the time were focused on production,” said Bondurant. “They didn’t go off being 6-foot-4, 230 and throwing 95. I was the Friday night guy at an SEC school, threw strikes and got outs, and I think that went a long way at the time.” Read the rest of this entry »

12:04

Dan Szymborski: THE APPOINTED TIME FOR CHATS HAS ARRIVE

12:04

Dan Szymborski: I dunno. Starlin Castro?

12:04

Dan Szymborski: He’s not good

12:05

Dan Szymborski: Well, not REALLY good

12:05

Dan Szymborski: but he’s acceptable

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Jack Flaherty has a 2.83 ERA through seven starts, which comes out to a 73 ERA-. His park adjusted FIP- of 75 is right in line with that figure; his FIP is 3.03. It would be easy to stop there and say Flaherty has been great; his excellent ERA matches up with his FIP, so he must be doing something right. Dig a little deeper, however, and there are some reasons to be skeptical. His overall line has been buoyed by a 7.5% HR/FB. His strikeout rate is down almost four percentage points compared to his last three seasons combined (25.8% versus 29.7%). Worse, his swinging strike rate is down to a below league-average 11.6%, indicating he has been somewhat fortunate to punch out a little over a quarter of the batters he has faced. On contact, things are not much better. His groundball rate is five percentage points lower than it was over those same three seasons and after allowing a below average rate of hard-hit balls from 2018-20, he is now right at league average.

This is all to say that Flaherty hasn’t quite been his excellent, arguably ace-level self (no, I will not be debating the definition of an ace). Poking around, I found an interesting trend. Flaherty has always leaned on his four-seamer and slider, but in 2021, that reliance has accelerated. He is throwing his fastball and slider as a higher percentage of his total pitches than in any other season up until this point. He is increasingly becoming a two-pitch pitcher:

There are two ways you can look at this. First, you could say that he is using his best offerings more often than ever, which can be construed as a positive development. Or you can say that this is making him more predictable, allowing batters to sit on those two pitches, making him less effective. Given that his peripherals are a bit worse this year, one might say that the latter explanation rings true. But his results are as good as ever, so maybe the former point is viable. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I investigated something that I’ve long wondered about: are relievers particularly prone to wildness on their first batter of the game? I didn’t find much of an effect, and I also got tons of valuable feedback about further avenues for investigation. Do base/out states matter? Does handedness matter? Do intentional walks skew the data?

Aside from the last one (a definite yes), I haven’t explored all of these avenues yet. I did, however, answer another question I was curious about, one that ties into the general theme of reliever walk rates. I’ll tell you upfront that I found a confusing result, and that I’d love to hear anything I’ve missed or avenues for further investigation.

Here’s the question I’m answering: when a reliever walks the first batter he faces, what does that tell us about the rest of his appearance? All of us have seen this in practice, and we probably all know the existential dread it engenders. Great, he doesn’t have his command today. How many walks are coming up? Is the lead safe? Will the team even stay in the game long enough for a new pitcher comes in?

To explore this possibility, I examined every game thrown by a reliever since the beginning of the 2015 season. I split each reliever’s appearances into two subsets: every appearance where they unintentionally walked the first batter they faced on one hand, and every other appearance (except intentional walks, I threw those out) on the other. This gave me a sample of 1,085 relievers across more than 80,000 appearances. Read the rest of this entry »