This is Matthew’s first post as a FanGraphs contributor. Matthew is a staff writer and podcast host at Lookout Landing, where he ponders great existential questions like, “Why would anyone be a Seattle Mariners fan?” and, “What dark curse did the Mariners conjure to make Mark Canha such an annoyance in their life?” He has written about the lack of Black players in Major League Baseball, recorded parody songs about the Astros’ banging scheme, and interviewed several minor leaguers. In addition to his current role at Lookout Landing, Matthew was previously a writer for Baseball Prospectus and a marginally successful open mic comedian. After a public school and Subaru childhood, Matthew attended the University of San Diego before bravely becoming the first FanGraphs writer to ever live in Seattle.

The first full week of the 2021 season is upon us. To avoid getting trampled in the avalanche of games, let’s focus in on the ones with the juiciest matchups, funniest storylines, and richest histories of batter vs. pitcher ownage. Here are the best pitching matchups in the week’s early going.

Monday, April 5, 7 PM ET: Jacob deGrom vs. Matt Moore

A team’s first game of the season almost always pairs their best starter versus the top of the other team’s rotation. But with a COVID-19 postponement pushing the Mets’ opener back, they get to unleash Jacob deGrom’s fury against a Philadelphia reclamation project. This NL East showdown sets the game’s most dominant pitcher against a guy who hasn’t pitched stateside in two years.

Unable to convince an MLB team to give him a job after knee surgery ended his 2019 renaissance, Matt Moore signed in Japan with the Fukuoka Soft Bank Hawks. He’s back after posting a 2.65 ERA in Nippon Professional Baseball. That’s certainly impressive, but Moore’s ERA in NPB was still not as good as the 2.38 deGrom ran last season (his 2.26 FIP was somehow better), or his 2.43 before that, and especially not the 1.70 from the year before that. Monday’s tilt is a classic story of an established, hegemonic force meeting a redemptive arc on its final curve. Read the rest of this entry »

I come here not to bury MLB, and not really to praise it, but to wonder what else it could have done. On Friday, the league announced that it would be pulling this summer’s All-Star Game from Atlanta in the wake of Georgia’s Republican-controlled legislature passing a law that would, among other things, impose burdensome new ID requirements on voters, limit absentee voting, and give the legislature wide latitude to intervene on state and county election boards. It was a move both correct and frustratingly limited, a multi-billion-dollar enterprise both doing the least and also the most it realistically could in the moment.

Argue if you’d like that MLB’s decision is as much about optics as doing the right thing. (You’d be correct.) Feel free to think that, regardless of the reasoning, a good decision remains a good decision. (You’d once again be right.) MLB had no choice here; holding a marquee, vote-driven event in a state where voting itself is under attack would be tone deaf and wrong. Nor should a league set to celebrate the life and career of Henry Aaron at the Midsummer Classic do so in a state whose new voter law disproportionately affects Black voters. That’s how you look both stupid and wrong, and for as much as MLB has been both in the past, stepping in this particular mess was a mistake easily avoided.

The Braves, meanwhile, put out a statement saying they were “deeply disappointed” in MLB’s decision, claiming that by moving the game, it was robbing the team of a chance to “use this event as a platform to enhance the discussion.” Before we examine the league’s actions further, it’s perhaps worth digging into that particular nugget of PR babble for a second. How exactly does an All-Star Game lead to a “discussion” about voter suppression? What is there even to discuss? Were the Braves planning on turning the home run derby into a TED talk about whether it’s bad when a state decides to make it harder for people of color to exercise their rights? The whole thing reads rather callously coming from a team that abandoned a perfectly functional stadium in a majority-Black city for a brand-new one, built at great expense to local taxpayers in one of Atlanta’s white suburbs, and yet claims that Atlanta is “our city.” It’s worth mentioning that the Braves didn’t make a statement about SB 202, as this Jim Crow-aping bill is called, when it was conceived, debated or passed. It all suggests that fans in Atlanta and Georgia can count on their baseball team speaking out only when it is directly impacted. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

In January, we at FanGraphs put out a call for radio broadcast ratings. Over the past few days, we’ve released a compilation of those rankings, as well as selected commentary from each team’s responses. This is the last installment of that compilation.

As a refresher, our survey asked for scores in four areas. If you’d like a thorough explanation of them, you can read the introductory article, but I’ll also recap them briefly here. If you’d like to see the rest of our results, those can be found here and here.

The “Analysis” score covers the frequency and quality of a broadcast team’s discussion of baseball. This isn’t limited to statistical analysis, and many of the booths that scored best excelled at explaining technical details of playing. This score represents how much listeners feel they learn about baseball by listening.

“Charisma” covers the amount of enjoyment voters derive from listening to the broadcasters fill space, which takes on many forms. The booths that scored best on charisma varied wildly, from former players recounting stories of their glory days to unintentional comedy and playful banter between long-term broadcast partners. Read the rest of this entry »

For fans of dominant pitching, Saturday evening’s Twins-Brewers contest set a high bar for the season. At American Family Field (ugh), Minnesota’s José Berríos and Milwaukee’s Corbin Burnes both turned in electrifying performances, each pitching six complete innings of no-hit ball and reaching double digits in strikeouts. At one point, the pair combined to strike out 10 batters in a row. Burnes carried his no-hit bid deeper into the game, getting one out in the seventh before serving up a solo homer to Byron Buxton and departing. Berríos, meanwhile, became the latest pitcher to be removed with his no-hitter intact. Twins reliever Tyler Duffey finally gave up a hit to Omar Narváez in the eighth, but Minnesota held on to win 2-0.

The two 26-year-old righties offered contrasting styles for their dominance. Berríos, the more established of the pair, averaged 95.3 mph with his four-seam fastball and went as high as 96.9 mph, but racked up strikeouts largely by getting hitters to chase low curveballs. Burnes, the harder thrower and the better hurler last year — his 2.4 WAR tied for sixth among all starters — overpowered hitters with a befuddling cutter that averaged 96.3 mph (3.2 mph faster than last season, when only Dustin May outdid him) and reached 97.9 mph. He paired that with a sinker that averaged 98.0 mph and maxed out at 98.8.

The tone for the matchup was set on the first batter of the game. Burnes, whose 36.7% strikeout rate last year was the majors’ fourth-highest among pitchers with at least 50 innings, struck out Twins leadoff hitter Luis Arraez swinging at a 97.6 mph cutter in the middle of the zone — no small matter given how tough he is to punch out. Last year, Arraez had the majors’ fourth-lowest swinging-strike rate among batters with at least 100 PA last year (3.5%) and the third-lowest strikeout rate (9.1%).

That was the only batter Burnes struck out in a 10-pitch first. Berríos notched his first strikeout by getting Christian Yelich to chase a low curveball to close the first inning, which started the two pitchers’ streak. Burnes returned to strike out Max Kepler, Miguel Sanó, and Jake Cave in the second, with Berríos doing the same to Keston Hiura, Jackie Bradley Jr., and Lorenzo Cain. Then Burnes mowed down Ryan Jeffers, Andrelton Simmons, and Berríos himself, batting under National League rules. The stretch of 10 straight strikeouts finally came to an end when Narváez, who would do double duty in his spoiler role, grounded to third base to start the third inning.

Berríos went on to strike out the side (Kolten Wong, Travis Shaw, and Yelich again) in the fourth. No batter reached base for either side until the fifth inning, when Burnes hit Cave and Berríos hit Hiura in their respective halves. Still, neither team had a hit (or a walk) through six innings, with a 103-mph third-inning flyout by Orlando Arcia to the deepest part of center field the only batted ball with an expected batting average higher than .240 (it was .790). Here’s the highlight reel from the first six innings:

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

This is Ashley’s first post as a FanGraphs contributor. Ashley has spent the last several years writing for various SB Nation sites, including Bless You Boys, DRaysBay, and Bleed Cubbie Blue. Her bylines have appeared here at FanGraphs, The Hardball Times, Baseball Prospectus and more. She hosts a baseball YouTube channel called 90 Feet From Home and co-hosts the baseball podcast Who’s On Worst.

There is no magic quite like that of Opening Day. It’s hard to explain the sensation of being part of a crowd of like-minded baseball fans, brimming with enthusiasm over the return of the game after a long, cold winter. It will make otherwise rational people gather en masse in 20-degree weather in the hopes of seeing their beloved team get the first win of the long 162-game season.

It’s a unique level of fervor, one that draws us like moths to the porch light that is the ballpark.

For fans of the Toronto Blue Jays, though, it has been two years of Opening Days without baseball close to home, and the absence of their team north of the border has at times made it difficult to feel connected to the sport they love. To make it worse, blackout restrictions and the elimination of a dedicated Blue Jays radio broadcast (the audio from the television broadcast will be simulcast to radio listeners) have further limited access to the only Canadian major league team. Read the rest of this entry »

Working in a baseball front office is a 365-days-a-year gig, but April is a relatively slow month if your focus is on roster construction. Opening weekend is a chance to take a breath after a very long, very repetitive month and a half of spring training. It’s also an opportunity to see how your squad looks, as barring something unexpected, it’s the team you are stuck with, at least for the next two months or so. There’s much to be done to prepare for the various storms ahead. Here are just some of the tasks teams have in store this month.

How Do We Look?

This is no time to over-react. One game is 0.6% of a club’s season. One three-game series? Less than 2%. Still, one time through the rotation and the bullpen can help answer a lot of questions. How do guys look? Are the changes we saw (or didn’t see) in spring training carrying over now that the games matter? How is a starter’s velocity in full starts? How does that ‘pen arm look in back-to-back outings? And, most importantly, are guys healthy? Whether it’s the result of performance, concerning underlying metrics, or just being a bit banged up, every team has plenty of questions to answer, and how concerned they need to be about the state of their roster becomes much clearer once the real action gets going.

Minor Depth Moves

No team is satisfied with its depth. Not one! There is virtually no trade market this time of year but there are still some second-level big league free agents and a handful of minor league free agents available. And with injuries sometimes forcing roster crunch decisions, teams also eagerly await the daily transaction email to see if a player who can help make them a little bit deeper suddenly appears on the waiver wire. At the same time, teams have to weigh the value of that improvement against the cost of a roster spot. They’re in tweak mode, but those tweaks can pay big dividends later in the season. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley convene an emergency podcast to discuss Shohei Ohtani’s exhilarating, terrifying, and historic Sunday Night Baseball performance against the White Sox (which veered from triumph to near-tragedy), touching on Ohtani’s titanic home run and resounding bat crack, the aesthetics of his stuff, his Statcast superstardom, his narrow escape from injury after a controversial move (or non-move) by Joe Maddon, and more, plus ruminations on Ty Buttrey’s farewell.

Audio intro: Jane’s Addiction, "Superhero"
Audio outro: Of Montreal, "Let’s Do Everything for the First Time Forever"

Link to video of Ohtani game
Link to video of Ohtani homer
Link to Baseball Savant Gamefeed page
Link to Sam on dropped third strikes
Link to video of 2005 Pierzynski play
Link to Fabian Ardaya on Ohtani’s spin rates
Link to Ohtani outing fun facts
Link to MLB.com Ohtani outing game story
Link to ESPN Ohtani outing game story
Link to Alden Gonzalez column
Link to list of pre-Ohtani games with no DH
Link to Gary Ashwill on Negro Leagues games
Link to Ardaya on Walsh
Link to Walsh’s helmet highlight
Link to SI piece about “as so often happens”
Link to story on leading off inning after great play

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Collin McHugh is cerebral both on and away from the diamond, and that attribute was on full display in a recent Zoom call with reporters. The Tampa Bay Rays right-hander fielded questions on multiple topics, most notably his craft and the possibility of MLB’s moving this summer’s All-Star Game from Atlanta to another locale. I asked McHugh how his new team compares to one of his old ones in terms of pitching analytics.

“The behind-the-scenes things are a little different,” responded McHugh, referring to his tenure with the Houston Astros from 2014-2019. “I think they probably have a more well-versed staff over here, in total, of being able to communicate the advanced information to guys. I worked a lot with [Brent Strom] in Houston, and Strommy and I got to know each other really well. He was kind of my guru, or whatever you want to call it. If I had questions, I went to him.

“Here, it feels, at least to this point, like there is a more holistic approach,” continued McHugh. “From [pitching coach] Kyle Snyder — starting with him — and the pitchers, to Stan [Borowski] in the bullpen, all the way through the data-analytics system, then all the way up the ladder. I’ve had conversations with [General Manager] Eric Neander about these things, and have since we were in negotiations. So it feels like a very top-to-bottom system over here.”

McHugh signed a free-agent contract with the Rays in late February. Asked if he was approached about the possibility of tweaking any facet of his game, he said that wasn’t the case at all. Read the rest of this entry »