Karl Kauffmann is flying under the radar. Drafted 77th overall by Colorado out of the University of Michigan in 2019, the 23-year-old right-hander is ranked an anything-but-eye-catching No. 23 on our Rockies Top Prospects list. Recent opportunities to impress have been scant. Thanks to the pandemic, Kauffmann’s last game-action came two summers ago when he helped lead the Wolverines to the finals of the College World Series.

But he may not be under the radar much longer. Kauffmann has big plans for the forthcoming season, and they include a new pitch. With Corbin Burnes in mind, the Bloomfield Hills, Michigan native spent the winter months working on a cutter. Kauffman discussed its development, as well as the rest of his repertoire and what he’s learned from Chris Fetter, prior to the start of minor-league spring training.

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David Laurila: Your prospect profile at FanGraphs describes you as “a one-seam sinker/changeup righty with a pretty firm, inconsistent mid-80s slider.” How accurate is that?

Karl Kauffmann: “I think it paints part of the picture. There’s more to the story, stuff-wise — what I was trying to accomplish at Michigan, and how the stuff plays into that. I left high school a four-seam, 12-6, big-breaker, hard-fastball type of pitcher. I didn’t pitch much my freshman year, then went out to the Cape Cod League. That was in 2017. The coach there — I was with Scott Pickler for two years, with [Yarmouth-Dennis] — told me I’d never pitch if I didn’t learn a sinker/slider. That summer, I basically taught myself, working with some of the coaches, how to throw that one-seam. It was a way to get easy groundballs, and I picked it up pretty quickly.”

Laurila: Chris Fetter was your pitching coach at Michigan. What was his role in you making that change? Read the rest of this entry »

The idea has long been a refrain for both proponents and critics of extra-innings baseball, though often voiced with tongue in cheek: instead of drawing out contests to 10 or 12 or 17 wearying innings, or starting each extra frame with a runner on second base, why not just settle the matter via a home run derby? This year, as the affiliated minor and independent leagues implement a variety of experimental rules, the Pioneer League will do just that. The “Knock Out” rule, as the league is calling it, is just one change from among a slate that should garner the league some attention — though that doesn’t mean it’s coming to major league ballparks anytime soon.

The idea of ending games that go beyond nine innings with some kind of home run contest has been in the ether for awhile, to say the least, and it’s even been implemented in some places:

Camseco care 9. No extra innings home run derby settles ties

— Jose Canseco (@JoseCanseco) September 26, 2013

Game 5 is Monday. Bartolo Colon and Roberto Hernandez will decide extra innings with a home run derby.

— Matt Gelb (@MattGelb) June 1, 2014

Instead of extra innings, the @EasternLeague All-Star Game was decided with a Home Run Derby: http://t.co/UHogXJKROT pic.twitter.com/zDqBgIZtcI

— Cut4 (@Cut4) July 16, 2015

I'd take a Home Run Derby to settle extra innings over starting with a runner on second. That's how bad it is.

— Dan Szymborski (@DSzymborski) March 14, 2018

Thing I just learned: Extra-innings games in the Futures Collegiate League of New England are determined by a home run derby.

— Josh Norris ? (@jnorris427) January 31, 2019

If were going to do the whole runner on second base thing in extra innings a “swing off” home run derby would have made for better TV lol.

— Alex Wood (@Awood45) June 24, 2020

As best I can tell, the Futures Collegiate Baseball League, an amateur summer league akin to the Cape Cod League, has taken a variant of this rule for the longest spin. Introduced for the 2017 season, and applicable only after the 10th inning, the FCBL reported that 10 of its 238 games that year were decided via a derby, and the format proved popular enough to retain. With the exception of the aforementioned use in the Eastern League All-Star Game in 2015, it doesn’t appear to have received a trial in the professional ranks. Read the rest of this entry »

This is Owen’s first piece as a FanGraphs contributor. Owen is a recent college graduate who is passionate about all things baseball, data, and baseball data. As a native of Northern California, he has been a firsthand witness to historic baseball events such as Sean Doolittle, hitting prospect; Aaron Judge, football player; and Cliff Pennington. Among other things, he hopes to provide insight into machine learning and advanced analytics.

Aaron Judge has always been a fascinating case study; anyone with such an extreme profile helps to build our understanding of both what is possible and what is relevant to our understanding of which players are good. We know that even in the face of a high strikeout rate and below-average contact rates, Judge is an elite player, due in no small part to his 99th percentile power; he owns a career wRC+ of 151 despite having a 31% strikeout rate. But for many, there is a nagging sense of “what if.” What kind of hitter could he be if his plate discipline were better?

Those “what ifs” are the result of the improvement we saw Judge make after a 2017 swing change. We’re now years removed from that campaign. Judge’s 1,000-plus plate appearances since then make it likely that his plate discipline skills are what they are at this point. He was a model of consistency from 2017-19: an O-Swing% in the range of 24.6% to 25.9%, a Swing% that ranged from 40.3% to 42.7%, a CSW% that ranged from 28.6% to 31.5%, and a Contact% that ranged from 65.1% to 67.6%. Our coarse understanding of hitters’ plate discipline skills is that they’re largely immutable. After all, if they were more malleable, we’d probably see a lot more players cut their strikeout rates and boost their walk rates. Sometimes a change in how much a hitter is swinging outside the zone will stick out, but it’s often accompanied by a shift in how much they’re swinging overall, suggesting a change in their approach rather than a leap forward in their underlying ball and strike recognition. Read the rest of this entry »

Heading into the season, the Milwaukee Brewers were a popular pick to win the NL Central, with half of the writers here at FanGraphs expecting them to emerge victorious. The strength of the team is its pitching, with a rotation spearheaded by Brandon Woodruff and Corbin Burnes as well as an excellent bullpen anchored by Josh Hader and 2020 NL Rookie of the Year Devin Williams. But there was a good deal of uncertainty about where the offense would come from and how much run support the strong pitching would receive. The shortened season saw Lorenzo Cain opt out and underwhelming performances from perennial MVP candidate Christian Yelich and infielder Keston Hiura. ZiPS (along with many other models) projected bounce-back campaigns for both Yelich and Hiura. These two sluggers’ ability to produce is critical to the Brewers’ success this season.

Yelich has not gotten off to a great start and has already missed 12 games due to back issues, which he’s dealt with previously in his career. But it’s Hiura that I want to put the spotlight on. In his rookie season, Hiura took the National League by storm, slashing .303/.368/.570 while hitting 19 home runs; he was second on the team to Yelich with 140 wRC+. Hiura entered the 2020 season expected to hold down the keystone and contribute as a key power bat in the lineup. Yet as was the case for so many hitters in the pandemic-shortened season, Hiura took a step backwards from his prior year’s performance. He managed a disappointing but still respectable 87 wRC+ and 13 home runs, but he struck out more. He walked less. His hard hit rate plummeted from 47.1% to 39.6%.

Nearly a month into the 2021 season, Hiura’s offensive performance has fallen short of even last season’s paltry marks. Through last weekend’s action, he is slashing .145/.264/.242 with a wOBA of .240 and 50 wRC+. One area that is a complete disaster for Hiura is his contact rate. To truly capture the magnitude of his issues, one must look beyond his strikeout rate (34.7%, which is really bad) to Z-Contact%, which is the percentage of balls a hitter makes contact with when he swings at pitches in the strike zone. So far in the early going, Hiura has the worst Z-Contact% in baseball, lagging behind Javier Báez by about 2.5%. Recently, Brewers hitting instructor Andy Haines mentioned Hiura’s timing is off but that he’s “getting closer every day.” While his coaches may express some optimism, any progress has yet to find its way onto the field. Here’s a sample of some swings and misses against the Cubs’ Kyle Ryan. Read the rest of this entry »

The intentional walk is, in my opinion, the most overused tactic in baseball. If you explained it to someone who had just learned the rules, they’d be confused. “The object of the game is to get runners around all the bases to home plate, right?” they’d ask. “You’re purposefully putting a runner partway around those bases? Does his run somehow not count?”

The run does count, and intentional walks are generally a great way to help your opponent score. Given that “helping your opponent score” is a bad way to win baseball games, intentional walks are mostly bad. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

For decades, managers have intentionally walked dangerous batters. Sometimes it makes sense. Often, it doesn’t. Inevitably, though, the siren call of doing something, doing anything at all, to affect one’s own destiny leads managers astray. It’s an understandable impulse. Who among us, given the choice between doing literally nothing and taking some action to affect the outcome, would pick doing nothing? Since being a manager is largely about purposefully doing nothing when you could instead be doing something, I totally get why over-managing still persists.

Still, not every intentional walk is bad. Not every run is created equal, and there are certainly situations where the tactical advantage of choosing a different batter to face is worth more than the cost of an extra baserunner. Jayce Tingler called for two consecutive intentional walks on Sunday night in a win over the Dodgers, and they actually made sense. That calls for a celebration, as well as an explanation of why these particular walks were sound. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, the Rockies announced that executive vice-president/general manager Jeff Bridich would be leaving his role with the team. Whether or not this amounts to a resignation or a “resignation” allowing a long-time employee to save face, the result is the same: there will be a new face responsible for personnel decisions in Colorado. (For now, that’s team COO Greg Feasel, who will serve as the interim GM, but the team expects to hire a full-time replacement after the end of the season.) This organization generally has had a great deal of loyalty to its general managers over the years: After nearly 30 years of existence, the team has only had three GMs in Bridich, Dan O’Dowd, and Bob Gebhard. But will this be enough to right what’s gone horribly wrong in Denver?

The Nolan Arenado trade this winter may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back for the team’s chances of a longshot wild card run in 2021 and the fanbase’s feelings about the Rockies. Bridich’s relationship with Arenado soured the team’s relationship with its franchise player, but ownership was a key player in making the trade happen.

In February, the Rockies bowed to the pressure, trading Arenado and $51 million to the Cardinals for a package that included pitcher Austin Gomber and four mid- to low-level prospects. Monfort was largely the architect of the trade, sources told The Athletic, but blame fell to Bridich. There is enough to go around. Bridich was the one who alienated Arenado; Monfort is the one who allowed it.

“We lack process in so many ways,” one now-former member of Colorado’s front office said. “We lack leadership in most ways. And there’s very, very little accountability.”

So, how did the Rockies get here? Where they sit now, firmly at the bottom of the NL West, is a product of long-term decision-making failures, not just the recent drive to save money or a few poor moves in recent years.

Read the rest of this entry »

Officially recognized or not, one team’s no-hitter is another team’s humiliation, and so the Braves were nearly doubly humbled during Sunday’s twin bill against the Diamondbacks — and at home, no less. In the opener at Truist Park, Zac Gallen held Atlanta to a lone Freddie Freeman single, while in the nightcap, Madison Bumgarner kept them completely hitless while facing the minimum number of batters. Though the Braves rebounded to beat the Cubs on Monday, they’re just 10-12 thus far, tied for third in the NL East and bearing only passing resemblance to the team that has won three straight division titles.

To be fair, until Sunday the Braves’ fortunes had been on the rise. After opening the season by sandwiching two four-game losing streaks around a four-game winning streak, they had gone 5-2 by taking two out of three from the Cubs in Chicago, splitting a two-game set with the Yankees in the Bronx, and then winning the series opener against the Diamondbacks. Even so, the team entered Sunday hitting just .228/.323/.424, and they’ve fallen to .219/.315/.407 (97 wRC+) even with Monday’s 8-7 win. They’ve managed to stretch that discouraging batting line to 4.50 runs per game, good for fifth in the NL, but on the other side of the ball, they’re allowing a league-worst 5.00 runs per game.

Sunday sticks out like a sore thumb, though, so we’ll dig into the offense first. By getting just one hit over two games of any length, the Braves became just the second team in the past 113 years to join a very short list:

Read the rest of this entry »

The recent flurry of matchups between the Dodgers and Padres have been enthralling. That’s what transpires when two teams of similar caliber go head-to-head – both clubs feature impressive lineups, employ the league’s best starters, and have quality bullpens and bench options to maintain the tension in later innings. They also both possess good front offices. The Dodgers have long been at the sabermetric forefront, while the Padres have strengthened their analytics department over the last few years. They share multiple characteristics, and not surprisingly, both teams excel.

However, the intrastate rivals do disagree on one major aspect of the modern game: infield shifts. Since last year, the Dodgers have applied the shift in 58.0% of opportunities, a league-leading rate over that span. In contrast, the Padres have done so just 21.5% of time. Only the Cardinals and Braves, two teams that are notably shift-averse, recorded lower rates.

What’s interesting, though, is that this isn’t because the Padres dislike the shift. Let’s dig a bit deeper. The Dodgers are what you would call equal-opportunity shifters – that is, they don’t discriminate between left- and right-handed hitters. Of their 6,729 shifts during the aforementioned time span, 3,210 (47.7%) of them were against the former. (Here I should clarify that I’m only factoring in Baseball Savant’s shifts, not strategic alignments, to simplify the analysis.)

Ok, now for San Diego. Their total of 2,608 shifts is much lower, but, and I kid you not, 2,524 (96.8%) of them were against left-handed hitters! And no, the Padres didn’t stumble into this. The gap between them and second place, the Rockies, is about 18 percentage points. There’s clear intent here, which looks even more impressive on a graph:

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday Jon Sciambi shared a tweet with a few, seemingly impossible stats:

MLB slash into today 232/310/390…BA would be lowest ever…in 2008 about 42% of swings put balls in play, this year 35.4%. In 08 the swing/miss % was 20% and this year it is 27.3%. Yikes.

— Jon Sciambi (@GoGala__Games) April 26, 2021

Yikes indeed. While all of those numbers are concerning on their own, it’s actually the batting average figure that most struck me. If a .232 league batting average sounds absurdly low to you, you’re not wrong. In fact, it’s the lowest since at least the turn of the twentieth century. The .232 mark is five points worse than the league hit in 1968, when Bob Gibson spun a 1.12 ERA, only one American Leaguer managed to hit .300, and nearly a quarter of the season’s games ended in a shutout. It’s also seven points lower than the worst collective batting average of the Dead Ball Era, a year the league slugged .305. And it’s far, far lower than anything in recent memory:

Say what you will about Three True Outcomes baseball, a batting average this low is a bit of a problem. And while the magnitude of the problem may come as a bit of a shock, the “why” is pretty easy to explain.

Much of it can be attributed to strikeouts, of course. Pitchers are fanning their opponents 24.6% of the time, up from 23.4% in last year’s shortened season. Strikeout rates seemingly only go up each year, but it’s worth noting that this is a pretty dramatic uptick even by that standard, easily the largest year-over-year we’ve seen this century. (Hat tip to Marc Webster for noticing.) Read the rest of this entry »