Ronald Acuña Jr. unlocked a new offensive gear this year. He already had speed and power — he was only three stolen bases short of a 40/40 season in 2019, his first full season in the majors. That wasn’t an option this year, what with a 60-game slate, but what he did do is even more impressive: he started walking.

Acuña’s 18.8% walk rate was the fourth-highest in the major leagues. He drew walks at a higher rate than Carlos Santana, Joey Votto, and Mike Trout. This wasn’t some intentional walk mirage, either; it’s not often a great idea to walk the man batting in front of Freddie Freeman, and Acuña drew only two freebies all year. Instead, he came by it the regular way: he’s such a fearsome hitter that pitchers avoided the strike zone, and he started laying off more pitches that missed their mark.

That’s easier said than done — otherwise every hitter would be doing it. Acuña managed it, though. He didn’t do it magically; rather, he cut back on his swing rate everywhere. He swung less at pitches over the heart of the plate, and thinking “swing less often” let him cut back in every other region:

This newfound equilibrium presented a conundrum for opposing pitchers. Stay out of the zone, and you’re liable to put a stolen base threat on with Freeman batting next. Get too familiar, and you might get acquainted with Acuña’s 99th percentile hard hit rate. It’s a puzzle with no good answers.

Last year, Acuña had another wrinkle to his plate discipline game: he swung more than anyone else on 3-0. It was just another thing to think about: think of 3-0 as an automatic strike with the batter taking, and you were throwing batting practice to one of the best hitters in the game. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever wanted to watch a baseball game with the FanGraphs crew? Well, while we won’t be holding any in-person meetups this year, we would like to welcome you to the next-best thing.

Tonight as you settle in to watch the Tampa Bay Rays take on the Houston Astros in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series, so, too, will Ben Clemens and Eric Longenhagen. The duo will be watching along from their respective abodes, chatting with each other and you about the game while sharing analysis and discussing article ideas, all live on our Twitch channel.

There are no tickets, fees, or asterisks, just us watching the baseball game together via the World Wide Web and inviting you, our readers, to join us. Tune in to the game tonight and then find us on the FanGraphs homepage or over on our Twitch page directly. We hope to see you then.

The ALCS between the Rays and Astros and the NLCS between the Dodgers and Braves have both produced tight, dramatic contests thus far, full of home runs and low scoring. As such, it’s a good time to check in on some of the trends that defined the brief 2020 season, and how they compare to what we’ve seen in the postseason, and how this October compares to recent regular and postseasons.

For starters, well, there are the starters. As I noted just two weeks into the abbreviated regular season, the length of the average start had fallen below five innings, and while it rose slightly over the remainder of the 2020 campaign, it still finished below five. Updating the table I included with that piece:

The year-to-year drop in innings per start was the largest we’ve seen in this span, and indeed the largest we’ve seen in the Wild Card era, if not longer. Granted, it was a short season, with a short ramp-up, expanded rosters, as well as a ton of seven-inning doubleheaders, something we’ve never seen at the major league level before, but that wasn’t really factor when I checked in on the first two weeks; I used data through August 5, at which point only one seven-inning doubleheader had been played.

Anyway, through this year’s Wild Card and Division Series, starting pitcher workloads decreased even further:

Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday afternoon, the Tampa Bay Rays moved to within two wins of advancing to their second World Series in franchise history with a 4-2 victory over the Houston Astros. The scoring was relatively sparse, with five of the game’s six runs coming on three home runs.

Sadly, the game itself was at times overshadowed by the passing of legendary second baseman (and former Colt .45 and Astro) Joe Morgan at 77. Morgan was perhaps more famous for his part on the Big Red Machine, but he was also a key contributor during Houston’s early years. Astros manager Dusty Baker, the only manager in baseball to play against Morgan at his peak (Bud Black and Terry Francona, among others, faced him late in his career) and a friend, said a few words about the Hall of Famer before the game.

“He meant a lot to us, a lot to me, a lot to baseball, a lot to African Americans around the country. A lot to players that were considered undersized. He was one of the first examples of speed and power for a guy they said was too small to play.”

But baseball grinds on despite grief, and after Game 2 was done, Charlie Morton had earned his sixth career postseason win, improving his October line to 6-2 with a 3.16 ERA in 11 starts. While it will go down in the history books as a five-inning shutout, and the ninth consecutive playoff start in which he allowed two runs or fewer, Morton’s start wasn’t anywhere near as neat as you might expect if you only read the box score. The Astros frequently made solid contact but, thanks to the Rays’ defense and a bit of bad luck, failed to cash in on any of their opportunities. Houston left seven runners waiting futilely on the bags through five, only going down 1-2-3 once (in the fifth). Read the rest of this entry »

For much of Monday night’s Braves-Dodgers clash, the Dodgers seemed to be on the defensive. When the ninth inning began, the score was knotted at one (spoilers!). It was tied not because both teams were equal in the scorebook, but rather because the Braves had failed repeatedly to cash in on their chances.

Through eight innings, Atlanta left 10 runners on base to Los Angeles’ five. In the fourth, they put two aboard with consecutive one-out walks against Walker Buehler, who struggled with his control all night. Two on, one out: these are the situations that can make or break a start, and Buehler skated out of trouble by retiring Nick Markakis and Austin Riley.

In the sixth, the Braves knocked again. Travis d’Arnaud and Ozzie Albies led off the inning with singles, chasing Buehler from the game. Brusdar Graterol came in with no one out and precious little margin for error. When he escaped without damage — in six overpowering pitches, no less — he and Buehler exulted in it:

Read the rest of this entry »

8:02	Dan Szymborski: Greetings chatters and chat-readers

8:03	Dan Szymborski: Because not ALL OF YOU are actually chatting. Some are reading the chats.

8:03	Dan Szymborski: But does being a chatter require participation? Or is passive chatting allowed? That’s a philosophical question.

8:05	Dan Szymborski: I’m sure they’re not pleased as punch, but they can spend somewhat inefficiently and survive. And how many teams are better at getting use out of limited, underperforming players than the Dodgers?

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the Honda Fit being discontinued, then discuss Game 5 of the Yankees-Rays ALDS, why this postseason’s strikeout-centric, home-run-reliant brand of baseball may be entertaining to hardcore fans but a turnoff to non-fans, the ALCS and NLCS matchups, the incredible depth of the Rays and Dodgers, whether (and why) offensive strikeout rate is a strong predictor of team postseason success, how Dodgers architect Andrew Friedman has put his stamp on every championship series, Friedman’s case as the baseball executive of the century so far, and the deaths of Hall of Famers Joe Morgan and Whitey Ford.

Audio intro: Hinds, "Riding Solo"
Audio outro: Parliament, "Deep"

Link to article about Honda Fit
Link to Ben on the Yankees’ ALDS loss
Link to Joe Sheehan’s newsletter
Link to Ben on contact hitters versus velocity
Link to Eno Sarris on predicting postseason success
Link to Ben on moving the mound back
Link to Pages From Baseball’s Past
Link to Craig Wright on Whitey Ford
Link to Jay Jaffe on Whitey Ford
Link to FanGraphs playoff coverage

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He was born in Manhattan and raised in Queens, but it was in the Bronx where Edward Charles Ford made his name — “Whitey,” just one of several colorful nicknames — as the most successful pitcher in Yankees history. Amid the team’s longest run of American League dominance, the street-wise, fair-haired southpaw set several franchise records during his 1950-67 run, and carved a spot among the league’s elite, making 10 All-Star teams, leading the American League in pitching triple crown categories five times, and winning a Cy Young award. A near-ubiquitous presence in October, he also set numerous World Series records that still stand and are probably unbreakable given the expansion of the postseason field; he pitched in 11 World Series, six on the winning side, and his count would have been even higher if not for a two-year military stint. In 1974, he was elected to the Hall of Fame alongside teammate and longtime friend Mickey Mantle.

Ford died on October 8 at his home in Long Island. He was 91 years old, and had been suffering the effect of Alzheimer’s disease in recent years. He was the second-oldest surviving Hall of Famer at the time of his death, with Tommy Lasorda the oldest. He’s the fifth Hall of Famer to pass away in 2020, after Al Kaline, Tom Seaver, Lou Brock, and Bob Gibson, and as I write this, news of the death of a sixth, Joe Morgan, has just been reported. It’s been a very tough year for baseball legends.

Standing just 5-foot-10 and 180 pounds, Ford measures up physically as the shortest of the post-World War II pitchers elected to the Hall, but what he lacked in brawn, he made up for in brains. The prototypical crafty lefty, Ford “delivered his assortment of breaking stuff (including a devastating spitball, enemy batters claimed) and inside fastballs with commanding intelligence,” wrote Roger Angell in a 1989 New Yorker piece. “He was brusque and imperturbable on the mound — the Chairman of the Board — and light-hearted in the clubhouse. Say ‘Whitey Ford‘ to a fan over forty-five and east of Altoona, and the sun will come out.”

“He never throws a pitch without a purpose,” said pitching coach Johnny Sain in 1961, Ford’s Cy Young-winning season and his biggest one statistically. “He’s always bearing down, never careless.”

“Whitey, you never saw him in a bad mood,” said former teammate Roy White on the occasion of Ford’s 90th birthday. “He always had a smile on his face. Good at a joke, a funny guy.”

Read the rest of this entry »

With the 2020 MLB season delayed thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) received more attention in the United States than usual. While discerning fans — you! — were already aware of the quality of baseball in South Korea, others got their first extended exposure to the league this spring. And one of the players who might have stood out is the Kiwoom Heroes’ current home run leader, Ha-seong Kim 김하성. Kim, who is hitting .304/.396/.521 while splitting time between shortstop and third base, is in his sixth season as a full-time starter in the KBO, and has never had an OPS lower than his 2018 .832 mark despite debuting as a teenager. With the news that Kiwoom will be posting Kim this offseason, it’s quite likely that he’ll be bringing his talents to MLB.

Star shortstops don’t actually hit free agency in their primes all that often. If you’re strict and only count players who their new teams are signing to play the position — Manny Machado was brought in to man third base for the Padres and Hanley Ramirez never played a game at the position for Boston — the last free agent shortstops to sign for at least $20 million guaranteed were José Reyes and Jimmy Rollins after the 2011 season. This year, there’s a very good possibility that at least three — Andrelton Simmons, Marcus Semien, and Didi Gregorius — pass that threshold. Kim could be the fourth. Read the rest of this entry »