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It’s true – compared to previous seasons, hitters are struggling against pitchers. The league batting average is the lowest it’s been in decades even if you exclude pitchers, the strikeout rate the highest. It’s easy to point fingers at the people tasked with making contact, but really, there’s no simple defense against a triple-digit heater followed by a wipeout slider.

But sometimes, the hitters fight back. They’re world-class athletes after all, and are capable of actions we can only dream of. Hitting a baseball 400 feet for a home run is one such example, but let’s go a step further. What about home runs hit off of seemingly impossible pitches? Today, I wanted to look at the four highest home runs hitters have belted out this season, then determine which one is the most impressive. This unfortunately means I had to leave out Jazz Chisholm’s homer off Jacob deGrom, as the pitch wasn’t high enough, but don’t worry, you can read about it here.

With that introduction out of the way, let’s meet the candidates alongside their home runs. The first batter up is Willians Astudillo:

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There is a lot to dissect when it comes to understanding the increase in strikeouts in baseball. Pitchers at the plate are striking out at a higher clip than ever, but even when filtering out their plate appearances, we’re still seeing yearly increases in strikeout rate. A continued increase in velocity and an improved ability to spot fastballs up in the zone was always going to boost strikeouts, but we are also coming to shifts in pitching approach that are directly attacking long-standing hitter’s comforts, making even hitter’s counts unpredictable.

Since I’ll be going through league-wide pitching trends, it’s useful to take a quick glance at pitch usage for the year.

Fastball usage is holding steady from last year at just over 50%. In addition, the increase in slider usage continues, taking a chunk out of curveball usage. Still, the takeaway is that we’re approaching true 50/50 fastball/non-fastball usage splits over all counts, and it’s probably here to stay. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Texas Rangers. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. As there was no minor league season in 2020, there are some instances where no new information was gleaned about a player. Players whose write-ups have not been meaningfully altered begin by telling you so. As always, I’ve leaned more heavily on sources from outside of a given org than those within for reasons of objectivity. Because outside scouts were not allowed at the alternate sites, I’ve primarily focused on data from there, and the context of that data, in my opinion, reduces how meaningful it is. Lastly, in an effort to more clearly indicate relievers’ anticipated roles, you’ll see two reliever designations, both on my lists and on The Board: MIRP, or multi-inning relief pitcher, and SIRP, or single-inning relief pitcher.

For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed, you can click here. For further explanation of Future Value’s merits and drawbacks, read Future Value.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It can be found here.

Episode 924

This week on FanGraphs Audio, we ask a pair of broadcasters to evaluate the performance of their clubs before welcoming a new contributor to the pod.

• To start things off, David Laurila welcomes Kris Atteberry, broadcaster for the Minnesota Twins, and Jared Sandler, broadcaster for the Texas Rangers. David asks Kris and Jared to judge their teams based on how they’ve done this year, keeping in mind that preseason expectations certainly affect the grading curve. They talk about Franmil Reyes’s batting line vs. Kenta Maeda, Adolis García’s wrestling career in Cuba, and Isiah Kiner-Falefa playing with motivation — and backing it up. They also discuss how easy it is to root for Kyle Gibson before considering the problems created by Willians Astudillo’s incredible contact skills and if it is possible to not strike out enough as a batter. [2:39]
• In the second segment, Ben Clemens is joined by Justin Choi to discuss some of their recent articles at FanGraphs. Ben keeps researching sliders in The Shadow Zone, while Justin has taken a closer look at Bryan Shaw‘s pitch mix. Also, what is fueling Adrian Houser’s success? And what is Hyun Jin Ryu doing differently this year? Finally, Ben and Justin consider the merits of a pitcher having a velocity differential versus a variety of velocities. [36:28]

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It’s a long weekend, folks, so get it started with another episode of Chin Music. The co-host chair stays away from New York, as the always wonderful Ben Clemens joins me from San Francisco to yammer about baseball and other things. We start by talking about the hottest team in baseball (that’s the Rays) and the hottest player in baseball (that’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr.) before delving into HatGate (not the ugly ones, the ones loaded with sticky stuff). We’re then joined by our first listener of the week, a public defender in a major metropolitan area who wishes to remain anonymous and offers some fascinating insight into the legal system. Then it’s emails, and they are good, but one doozy really takes the cake. From there it’s a Moment of Culture, catching up with Ben, and then departing.

As always, we hope you enjoy, and thank you for listening.

Music by the Belgian punk monsters Cocaine Piss.

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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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Javier Báez and Will Craig combining on a baffling blooper, a naked streaker seizing the moment during a rain delay at Nationals Park, Cardinals manager Mike Shildt’s objection to a foreign-substance inspection (and how MLB should respond), an update from New Era about its short-lived “Local Market” caps, and Francisco Lindor’s protracted season-starting slump, then answer listener emails about legalizing sticky stuff for bad teams and whether umps would improve if they didn’t rotate around the field.

Audio intro: Passenger, "The Wrong Direction"
Audio outro: Teenage Fanclub, "I Need Direction"

Link to video of Báez/Craig play
Link to GIF breakdown of Báez/Craig play
Link to Yakety Sax version of video
Link to 2012 Astros play
Link to Sam’s single-play breakdown
Link to video of streaker
Link to another video of streaker
Link to still image of streaker
Link to Shaker Samman on the streaker
Link to story about banning fans
Link to story about Shildt
Link to video of Shildt ejection
Link to video of Shildt’s comments
Link to The Athletic on foreign substances
Link to Ben on foreign substances
Link to Tony Adams Bauer video
Link to Patrick Dubuque on breaking the rules
Link to EW episode on foreign substances
Link to WaPo on the New Era caps
Link to Lindor’s Baseball Savant page
Link to Lindor’s worst 44-game stretches
Link to Deesha Thosar on Lindor
Link to Russell Carleton on changing positions

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These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

With the college baseball postseason underway, today’s notes will be a mix of observations from conference tournament play and the minor leagues. We’ll begin…

In the SEC…

Top-10 nationally ranked teams Tennessee and Mississippi State both lost their opening round games; the two will square off in an elimination game today. Alabama’s win over Tennessee moves them closer to an at-large bid, though their chances of doing damage in June are hurt by the absence of lefty Connor Prielipp who will have Tommy John surgery today, as Kendall Rogers reported yesterday. Prielipp is a top 10 talent. The recovery time from TJ puts his 2022 college season in jeopardy, and the date of next year’s draft becomes significant for him as he has a better chance to throw in front of teams if it’s again in July. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s just under 150 miles by road from Vancouver to Seattle — not necessarily an easy round-trip distance, but one that’s covered easily enough over the course of a day, given planning around border waits and traffic. It’s certainly a more reasonable distance to cover than the thousands of miles over mountain and prairie to the only other major league ballpark within Canada’s borders. For most people in western Canada, the most frequent major league ballpark they’ll make a trip to is Seattle’s T-Mobile Park.

I’ve gone to T-Mobile Park via a few different means of transportation. When I was a toddler, my family would sometimes take day trips down in the car when the Blue Jays or Yankees were in town. We weren’t able to go for many years after that, but when we did manage to take trips down in 2016 and ’17, it was a matter of a great deal of planning: making sure the car wouldn’t break down on the way (or renting one, when we didn’t have a car), accounting for the cost of tickets and food and parking. Not to mention, too, the amount of time that would need to be committed. Added up, these trips were luxuries, a single day a year set aside for a baseball pilgrimage.

By far the most frequent way I’ve gotten to T-Mobile Park, though, is the bus. There was the Greyhound, or the Bolt Bus, or one of the other interchangeable bargain travel services that operated cross-border routes. They were frequently late, often unhelpful, and almost always uncomfortable, but they fulfilled their purpose: For someone who didn’t have a car, or couldn’t access a rental, they were a cheap way of getting from Point A to Point B.

The first time I took the bus to a baseball game in Seattle was by chance, a happy accident. My partner and I had taken a weekend trip on the Greyhound down to Olympia to see the final date of a concert tour. But our return trip was delayed: the bus coming up from LA had run into some kind of horrible traffic, and we sat for almost three hours in the stuffy, sometimes unstaffed, exceedingly cramped bus station in Olympia. As a result, we missed our evening transfer in Seattle. By the time we got there, it would be another three hours of waiting for the next bus up to Vancouver at 10 PM. Read the rest of this entry »

The Braves are short one outfielder for at least six weeks, with Marcell Ozuna placed on the IL after injuring two fingers on his left hand while sliding into third against the Red Sox on Tuesday night. It wasn’t immediately obvious whether Ozuna would miss significant time, with manager Brian Snitker telling the press that the two-time All-Star was going back to Atlanta for tests, but with Wednesday came the news that his stay on the shelf would be a long one.

Ozuna has gotten off to a poor start in 2021, hitting .213/.288/.356 in just over 200 plate appearances, for a 79 wRC+ and -0.1 WAR — a major disappointment for a player coming off an OPS of 1.067 last season. It wouldn’t be the first time he had a bit of a letdown year after what seemed to be a breakout campaign, as was the case with his two seasons in St. Louis, but at least he hit for enough batting average then to be a league-average player in a corner outfield position.

Atlanta hasn’t received much production from Ozuna, but there were several reasons to think that his overall lines would recover. His power numbers are down from past seasons, but he’s partially compensated for that with some of the best plate discipline of his career. ZiPS thought his BABIP of .244 should have actually been more like .298 from his contact data, and Statcast saw similar underperformance, with an xBA of .268 and an xSLG of .471, both numbers more in line with his typical showing. A repeat of 2020’s 179 wRC+ was always unreasonable, but even with this early slump, his Depth Chart-projected wRC+ was still at the 123 it was back in March.

Ozuna suffered a similar injury in 2019, breaking the middle and ring fingers on his right hand while sliding during a pickoff attempt. It probably won’t assuage the worries of Braves fans that he went from an .847 OPS before that injury to a .729 OPS after returning, but I wouldn’t worry much about this limited precedent. I haven’t found much underperformance in hitters returning from broken fingers, and month-to-month play is quite volatile without any injury-based explanations involved. Short of significantly worse news, I wouldn’t be especially concerned about Ozuna after he returns, probably at or near the All-Star break. At least he can take it as consolation that he broke his fingers doing actual baseball things, unlike Zach Plesac, who suffered a broken thumb taking off his shirt.

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