The end of Wednesday’s A’s-Twins game was, fittingly for an up-and-down Oakland team, absolutely wild. After the A’s tied the game in the bottom of the ninth, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli pulled Josh Donaldson, who was set to be the runner on second base in the 10th, in favor of rookie infielder Travis Blankenhorn. That speed upgrade proved inconsequential when Byron Buxton hit a towering home run to score Blankenhorn, but Baldelli’s move ultimately proved unintentionally costly.

In the bottom of the inning, Twins closer Alex Colomé got two quick outs, then walked the next two batters to load the bases. A weakly-hit ground ball to second should have ended things, but Blankenhorn, now at the keystone after pinch-running, bobbled it to allow one run to score and bring the A’s within one. Ramón Laureano followed that up with a hard-hit grounder to third, where Luis Arraez had taken over for Donaldson after playing the previous nine innings at second. He fielded the ball cleanly but overthrew first base for a game-ending two-run error. The A’s won without collecting a single hit in the inning.

It’s not unfair to chalk that win up to luck. But winning 11 games in a row takes a lot more than luck, and that’s just what the A’s have done — an especially impressive feat, considering the team’s historically horrendous start. Losers of six straight to open the year, they’re now tied with the Mariners for first in the AL West. How exactly have the A’s been able to turn their season around in such dramatic fashion?

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The NL West is a two-team division these days, but that wasn’t always so certain. In 2019, the Diamondbacks burst onto the scene as a potential playoff team — not the equal of the Dodgers, but a thorn in their side nonetheless. The Snakes didn’t boast the same top end as their Hollywood rivals, unless you had a wildly optimistic opinion of Ketel Marte, but they did have depth, personified by Carson Kelly, the highlight of their return for trading Paul Goldschmidt.

That 2019 season showed Kelly’s promise. In 365 plate appearances of platoon work, he compiled 1.8 WAR, combining competent work behind the plate with a 107 wRC+. That batting line was buoyed by a 13.2% walk rate and a juicy .232 ISO, neither of which seemed particularly convincing, but his central skills — good plate discipline, the ability to draw a walk, enough power to be respectable — all pointed to continued offensive competence.

The 2020 season wasn’t so kind. A .221/.265/.385 line was good for a 70 wRC+, and those flashes of light from the previous year — his walk rate and power on contact — both dipped. It was only 129 plate appearances, and it came with a .250 BABIP, so it was hardly a season he couldn’t recover from, but his swoon mirrored Arizona’s: 25–35, last in the NL West. After the Padres went nuclear this offseason and with the Giants continuing to hit on interesting players, it was easy to move on from the Diamondbacks and their bushelful of interesting but flawed players, Kelly included.

Secretly, though, Kelly’s 2020 was actually encouraging. Not the top-line numbers, mind you; those were terrible, like we talked about above. But consider: Kelly’s ISO (extra bases per at bat, if you’re unused to seeing that; it’s a measure of power) dropped from .232 to .164, and he totally deserved that. His barrel rate halved, his hard-hit rate declined precipitously, and he traded line drives and fly balls for grounders. Bad power central!
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This recent tweet from Daren Willman caught my eye:

#Rangers Kohei Arihara threw 7! different pitches in the first inning. pic.twitter.com/X86J6NpvFH

— Daren Willman (@darenw) April 20, 2021

Partially it was because I was already intrigued by Kohei Arihara, but the pure absurdity of this fact stands out, too. He threw seven different kinds of pitches in his most recent start against the Angels. Seven! In one inning! The only other player to accomplish this feat in 2020 was Arihara’s countryman Yu Darvish, who coincidently did so in seven different innings last season. Since 2008 (the first season with public PITCHf/x data), there have been 909 instances of a pitcher throwing at least seven different pitch types in a single inning. When you think about how many innings of regular season baseball have been played since 2008, you can appreciate how rare this type of occurrence is.

If you are not familiar with Arihara yet, let me fill you in. The right-hander came over from NPB after playing six years for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters. He was posted going into his age-28 season and signed a two-year deal with the Rangers for a total of $7.44 million, $1.24 million of which was the posting fee awarded to his now-former club. At the time of signing, this seemed to be a very good deal for Texas. Arihara lacks the explosive fastball and mind-bending breaking pitches frontline starters in MLB today; his strikeout rate his final season in Japan was 19.4%. But his repertoire was deep. Eric Longenhagen wrote up a scouting report back in December outlining his pitch mix and fastball velocity, comparing him to other high-profile players from NPB. Eric concluded that Arihara profiled as a back-of-the-rotation type, placing a 40 FV on him. Getting a guy who can fill the back of a rotation for about $3.7 million per year (when accounting for the posting fee) seems like a solid deal to me. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Padres stockpiled starting pitching and mapped out their season, they probably didn’t count on Ryan Weathers playing the stopper. Yet in a rotation with a former Cy Young winner, a four-time All-Star, and the author of the season’s first no-hitter, it was the 21-year-old southpaw — the majors’ youngest starting pitcher — who helped the Pad Squad turn the page on a 2-7 slide, a three-game losing streak, and some sobering injury news with 5.2 innings of one-hit shutout ball against the Dodgers at Chavez Ravine on Thursday night, part of a 3-2 win.

Making just the second start of his career, and matched up against Walker Buehler for the second time in six days, Weathers kept the Dodgers off balance with an effectively wild four-seam fastball/slider combo, mixing in the occasional sinker and changeup. While his low-spin four-seamer averaged a comparatively modest 93.7 mph and topped out at 95.9 mph, its exceptional horizontal movement helped him rack up 15 called strikes and four whiffs for a 41% CSW on that pitch, and an overall 33% CSW for the night.

Weathers threw 39 pitches in the first two innings, walking leadoff hitter Mookie Betts and plunking Max Muncy to start the second, but striking out Corey Seager, Sheldon Neuse, and Luke Raley along the way. The lone hit he gave up a sharp single to Buehler to start the third inning, but he got his pitch count in order by using just eight pitches to retire Betts, Seager, and Turner to begin his second time through the order, kicking off a run of 11 straight Dodgers he retired before departing in the sixth with a 2-0 lead. Read the rest of this entry »

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The quality of Dustin May’s raw stuff is undeniable. He throws his sinker with the highest average velocity of any starter in the majors and it’s ridiculous tailing action makes it one of the most GIF-able pitches in baseball. During each of his starts, Twitter is flooded with GIFs like this one.

Dustin May, Filthy Two Seamers.

Get out of my head, Joe Davis! (but, yeah, you're right ?) ? pic.twitter.com/gw5ZV2bxGk

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) April 15, 2021

It’s not just May’s sinker that stands out. His entire arsenal is composed of pitches with elite characteristics. Here’s a look at May’s repertoire and each pitch’s percentile ranks when compared with their respective pitch types:

May’s velocity on each of his pitches obviously stands out; he’s among the league leaders in average velocity on all four of his pitches. On three of his offerings, he has elite movement in one direction or the other. It’s a truly impressive arsenal without peer in the majors. Read the rest of this entry »

Last weekend’s series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres did not disappoint. It had all the energy and elements of a postseason series in April. Fernando Tatis Jr. returned from the IL to launch a home run off of Walker Buehler. Mookie Betts ended the second game in dramatic fashion with an incredible diving catch. Tempers flared in the opening game when Jorge Mateo was hit by a Dennis Santana pitch in the 10th inning. There was a little bit of everything. In so many ways, it was like a playoff series. Players and coaches on both sides held nothing back.

In the series finale, with the game tied and the Dodgers going for the sweep, something odd happened. Santana took the mound in a high-leverage situation even though Corey Knebel and Kenley Jansen were both available and had not pitched the day before. With the score tied at two, one runner aboard, and just one out, he was responsible for keeping the Padres off the board. Santana, an inexperienced middle reliever who barely made the roster, could not live up to the pressure of the moment. The Padres would go on to score three runs in the inning and win the game 5-2. The point here is not to tear down Santana. It’s that despite the intensity of a series between two teams battling for the division, sound early-season bullpen management overruled using the most proven late-inning relief options.

After the game, Dave Roberts was asked why he had Santana in the game in a high leverage situation. He responded saying, “obviously every game’s important but the health of our relievers is more important.” Injuries to pitchers are common throughout the season and the risk of injury is even greater in the first month, so Roberts’ concern is warranted and well-informed. Over the course of the three-game series between the Dodgers and Padres, a total of 19 relief pitchers were used (yes, I’m including Jake Cronenworth) accounting for 27 total appearances. Considering the caliber of starting pitching included the likes of Clayton Kershaw, Trevor Bauer, Yu Darvish, and Blake Snell, it’s a bit surprising that so much help was needed to finish off these games. (Okay, maybe not when it comes to Snell.) Read the rest of this entry »

There are two hitters I would like to introduce. The first, Player A, has been described in terms of the classic trio of statistics: average, on-base percentage, and slugging. The second, Player B, has been described in terms of modern metrics like Exit Velocity and Barrel rate. Take a look at their numbers and try to see who’s better:

Player A: .081/.205/.162

Player B: 95.4 mph Exit Velocity, 63.6% Hard-Hit rate, 27.3% Barrel rate

Not much of a competition, right? Without additional context, you probably chose Player B in a heartbeat. Player A’s appalling triple-slash makes him a DFA candidate. Player B, on the other hand, looks like a hitting genius! Those numbers and rates would place him well above the 95th percentile of all major leaguers. The twist, of course, is that these two hitters are in fact the same person: Matt Carpenter, veteran infielder for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Traditional and modern metrics do disagree at times, but the disparity between them is seldom this wide. Through 18 games, Carpenter’s efforts to clobber the ball have not translated into actual results, much to the chagrin of Cardinals fans. There’s having a stretch of bad luck, then there’s hitting below .100. Is there something else we’re missing? Read the rest of this entry »

This week, the co-host chair heads back to New York as Jake Mintz of Cespedes Family BBQ steps away from his obsession with obscure professional cycling to spend an afternoon talking about baseball. We begin by discussing hot teams (that’s Oakland), hot players (that’s Corbin Burnes), bad bullpens (that’s the Phillies — again), and the first baby steps in the CBA talks. Then we are joined by Charles Star, one of my favorite podcasters and the most entertaining legal analyst in the world, who explains baseball’s nearly century old anti-trust exemption. From there, it’s the final segment, where we go through emails, think about cricket, and delve into Jake’s remarkable path in baseball. As always, we hope you enjoy, and thank you for listening.

Music by Event Horizon Jazz Quartet.

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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Episode 919

On this week’s FanGraphs Audio, we welcome a pair of broadcasters before engaging in some good ol’ staff banter.

• At the top of the show, David Laurila is joined by Andy Freed, radio broadcaster of the Tampa Bay Rays, and Dan Hasty, voice of the West Michigan Whitecaps. Dan recently got the opportunity to call his first major league game, leading Andy to share the story of his own call-up. The trio also talks about the logistical challenges of broadcasting baseball games right now, as well as some of the longest games they’ve ever called. David also brings a pack of baseball cards to open live, which leads to anecdotes about players such as Austin Meadows, Buck Farmer, Bronson Arroyo, and more. Finally, Dan shares an encounter he had with an angry goose on a road trip. [2:22]
• In the second half, Ben Clemens and Eric Longenhagen catchup on what’s been going on in baseball and with each other. Ben is still really into Corbin Burnes but less enthused by umpire performance early in the season — although the data seems to suggest it isn’t as bad as you think. Meanwhile, Eric shares video of a questionable RoboZone, and the pair considers the potential of a perfect pitching machine that can throw real sliders before discussing the mythical left-handed catcher. [34:04]

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