Last week, I dug up an old concept: expected home run rate. The idea is deceptively simple: assign some probability of a home run to each ball a batter hits in the air, then add them up. It tells you some obvious things — Fernando Tatis Jr. hits a lot of baseballs very hard — and some less obvious things — before getting injured, Aaron Judge had lost some pop.

One question that many readers raised — reasonably so! — is whether this expected home run rate actually means anything. The list of over-performing hitters was full of sluggers. How good is this statistic if it tells you that good home run hitters are, in fact, not as good as their home runs? Sounds like a bunch of nonsense to me.

In search of truth — and, let’s be honest, article topics — I decided to do a little digging. Specifically, I wanted to test three things. First, how stable is expected home run rate? In other words, if a player has a high expected home run rate in a given sample, should we expect them to keep doing it? If the statistic isn’t stable, what’s the point?

Second, how does it do at predicting future home runs? In other words, does an expected home run rate in, say, July predict what will happen the rest of the year? It’s also useful here to see if expected home run rate (from here on in, I’ll be calling this xHR% for brevity) outperforms actual home run rate as a predictor. If xHR% doesn’t do a better job of explaining future home runs than actual home runs, what use is it? Read the rest of this entry »

Dylan Cease has a simple calling card: a four-seam fastball that he throws in the upper 90s. Every prospect evaluation of Cease centered on the heater, a bludgeon he would use, the theory went, to leave hitters with no good choices. He backed it up with a curveball and a developing changeup, but those were the backup dancers; the fastball was the star everyone came to see. There were questions about whether he’d be able to make the whole package work, but if it did, the heater would be the reason why.

Nine starts into his sophomore season, however, things haven’t gone according to plan. Cease’s 15.4% strikeout rate is the fourth-lowest among qualified starters, ahead of only Mike Fiers, Antonio Senzatela, and teammate Dallas Keuchel. The White Sox probably hoped Keuchel would help mentor their pitching staff, but uh… not like this. On the other hand, Cease is running a 3.33 ERA, better than team ace Lucas Giolito. Huh?

In an even stranger development, Cease’s fastball appears to be the culprit behind his poor strikeout rate. Though it hasn’t lost any velocity — his 393 four-seamers this year have averaged 97.4 mph — the pitch simply hasn’t missed any bats. Here are the 12 pitchers with the lowest whiff-per-swing rates on their four-seamers, as well as their average velocity:

That’s not a list of bad pitchers. It is, however, disconcerting to see a fastball-first power pitcher sharing space on a list of contact-heavy fastballs with literally Zack Greinke. Cease has an absolute cannon, but he isn’t missing any bats with it. Read the rest of this entry »

The Oakland A’s are cruising in the standings, but their World Series hopes took a hit over the weekend with the news that their star third baseman, Matt Chapman, would require season-ending hip surgery. After missing games for nearly a week with an initial diagnosis of hip tendinitis, a second opinion led to the decision to shut him down for the rest of 2020 due to a torn labrum.

There’s nothing here that would constitute good news, but the loss of Chapman has a minimal impact on Oakland’s chances of reaching the postseason. The team’s not a mathematical guarantee, but with just 14 games left to play, they’d have to give up seven games in the standings to the Astros and eight to the Mariners. Plus, Oakland has already clinched the tiebreaker over the Astros — they’re 7-3 against Houston and they play no more games — which gives them a tiny bit more breathing room in the event of a historic meltdown.

Chapman’s play in 2020 was distinctly below his MVP-contending 2018 and 2019 standards, but his 1.3 WAR has still been enough juice to lead the team. It’s a testament to his power and defense that a .276 on-base percentage likely would have still resulted in an All-Star appearance, if such a game had been played this year. The year-to-year dropoff in his contact numbers is a bit concerning, but given the state of the 2020 season, I’m far less worried than I would be in a more normal year. Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Lum was good enough to have played parts of 15 big-league seasons. That he was rarely a full-time starter comes with a caveat. From 1967-1981, Lum was typically on teams that featured All-Star quality in front of him. An outfielder and later a first baseman, the left-handed hitting Honolulu native counted numerous Hall of Famers, batting champions, and Gold Glove winners among his teammates. Prior to appearing in 41 games with the Chicago Cubs at the close of his career, Lum played exclusively with the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds.

A long-time hitting coach, and most recently a special assistant for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Lum discussed his playing days over the phone last month.

———

David Laurila: How would you describe your playing career?

Mike Lum: “I was never a star, but I contributed. I played mostly off the bench, and I thought I did a pretty good job. In my younger days I’d play a lot of defense for Rico Carty, who was the left fielder, and then I started pinch-hitting a lot [Lum had 102 career pinch hits, including 10 home runs]. I prided myself in those roles. Yes, it’s to nice to play every day, but there were guys in front of me who were much better. One thing I learned early on is that it takes 25 guys to win, so I just accepted my role.”

Laurila: Do you ever wonder how differently your career might have played out had you not been on teams with so many All-Star quality outfielders? You could have ended up with a thousand more at-bats.

Lum: “No doubt. And a lot of people don’t realize that when you play off the bench, and don’t get consistent at-bats, hitting can be difficult. And it becomes a mind game after that. If you look at my stats, the one year I had over 500 at-bats, I did really well [a 119 wRC+ and 16 home runs]. In my worst year, I had something like 125 at-bats. It’s difficult. That’s why I think guys who can come off the bench like I did can be very valuable to a team.”

Laurila: You mentioned Rico Carty. Other outfielders you played with in Atlanta included Hank Aaron, Felipe Alou, Dusty Baker, and Ralph Garr. Read the rest of this entry »

Like so much else with the year 2020, those of us who root for end-of-season chaos in the form of tiebreaker games have had our hopes crushed by the coronavirus pandemic, or more specifically, Major League Baseball’s combination of health and safety protocols and the expanded playoff format. Not only does the expansion of each league’s playoff field from five teams to eight take some of the do-or-die pressure off plausible contenders on the margins, but the league has decided that the equivalents of Game 163 — whether of the play-in variety or merely to settle which team wins the division and which is the Wild Card — will not be played so as to minimize travel and keep the schedule as compact as possible.

Instead, all seeding — including, potentially, who grabs a spot and who just misses — will be settled in the most exciting manner of all… mathematically! As MLB’s marketing arm knows, that’s the best way to capture kids’ attention these days.

While we won’t get any bonus regular season baseball out of this situation — the added layer of best-of-threes in the postseason is a horse of a different color — the way things shake out could still produce a fair bit of end-of-season scoreboard watching and nail-biting. Like so much else, we’ll do our best at Entropy Central to play the hand that we’ve been dealt while hoping that things return to normalcy in 2021.

To refresh your memory about the format that was announced on Opening Day, each league’s playoff slates will include the division winners (who will be seeded 1-3), the second-place teams (seeded 4-6), and then the two other teams in the league with the best records (seeded 7-8, and deemed the Wild Card teams). A trial balloon regarding the top teams picking their opponents was floated, and it persisted to the point of confusion before being popped. Instead, for the first round teams will be matched up in the familiar bracket format: 1 seed versus 8 seed, 2-7, 3-6, and 4-5, with all three games at the higher-seeded team’s ballpark in an effort to provide them with some kind of advantage. Here it’s worth noting that after so much talk about the dissipation of home-field advantage through the absence of crowds, home teams thus far have a .544 winning percentage this year, higher than it’s been since 2009 (.549); last year, it was .529. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller talk to Justin Hollander, the Seattle Mariners’ vice president and assistant general manager in charge of baseball operations, about how the Mariners have discovered and signed overlooked talents like Austin Nola and Dylan Moore, how much preparation the front office does for minor league free agency, how to blend stats and scouting information, why teams know their own players best, the secrets to signing minor league free agents, how Nola broke out, the ones who got away, monitoring minor league players in 2020, and much more.

Audio intro: Liam Finn, "Don’t Even Know Your Name"
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Link to news about Justin’s promotion
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Link to story about being a minor league free agent
Link to Craig Edwards on Nola
Link to story about Moore’s improvement
Link to Kiley on the Yankees and minor league free agents
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The San Francisco Giants have 23 wins on the season. One week ago today they won for the 20th time, with the decision going to Caleb Baragar. It was the rookie left-hander’s second W in two days, and his fifth on the year to go with one loss. This isn’t 1972 Steve Carlton we’re talking about either. Baragar is a reliever who has pitched all of 17-and-two-thirds big-league innings.

Has a pitcher ever recorded six decisions — moreover five wins — in so few innings to begin a career? I wasn’t able to find an answer in time for this column — a call to the Elias Sports Bureau went for naught — but there is a pretty decent chance that Baragar holds a unique distinction.

The 27-year-old Jenison, Michigan native is taking his newfound habit of gobbling up Ws with a grain of salt.

“It’s a stat — ‘winning pitcher’ — that doesn’t always tell the whole story,” said Baragar, who has received some good-natured ribbing from Giants starters. “It’s not something where I’m walking around saying, ‘Hey, I have five wins in the big leagues.’ For me, they’re important because the team won, and this is a shortened season where every game matters. It’s by no means a personal stat that I’m holding my hat on.”

The first of his wins came in his big-league debut on August 25. Notably, it came against the best team in baseball. Having no fans in the stands worked to his advantage. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the extraordinary stat lines of Brewers pitcher Corbin Burnes, the role of randomness in baseball, the latest two-team half no-hitter, the Rays’ historic all-lefty lineup, the horrors of Red Sox pitching, the approaching end of the regular season, the states of the standings and playoff odds, the underperforming Reds, deceptive doubleheaders, why writers tend to lose their childhood fandom, the Phillies’ bad bullpen, and more. Then (51:32) they talk to Seattle Mariners souvenir manager Sean Guiney about fetching home run balls in empty ballparks, how MLB’s memorabilia authentication process works, what it’s like to attend an MLB game in 2020, how fake crowd noise sounds in person, and how the cardboard cutouts in the stands are holding up to the barrage of baseballs.

Audio intro: Rilo Kiley, "Smoke Detector"
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Link to Tony Wolfe on Burnes
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Link to FanGraphs playoff odds page
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At the beginning of last season, my colleague Ben Clemens examined Milwaukee Brewers right-hander Corbin Burnes in something of a study into what pitchers can control, and which skills can be demonstrated fastest. Burnes had made just one start at the time, striking out 12 batters against one walk in five innings, while also allowing six hits including three homers. More illustrative than those results, however, were Burnes’ elite spin rates. Spin doesn’t take several outings to stabilize, and it isn’t something a pitcher flukes in and out of. Like velocity or foot speed, it is something one either possesses or doesn’t. Burnes has it. Ben’s a smart guy, so he hypothesized that it was likely those spin rates would help keep Burnes’ strikeout numbers high in future appearances, while his home run rates should taper off. Because really, who has that kind of stuff and still gives up three homers a game?

Well, in Burnes’ next start after that piece ran, he gave up three home runs again. In the start after that, he gave up another three. And in the start after that, he gave up two more. Then he moved to the bullpen, where he was fine for a couple of weeks — until Atlanta hammered three dingers off of him in just two-thirds of an inning. Burnes finished the season with 12.86 strikeouts per nine, and 3.12 homers allowed per nine. When opponents hit fly balls against him, 38.6% left the yard — the highest single-season HR/FB rate on record for anyone with at least 40 innings pitched. When he kept the ball in play, he was also historically unlucky; his opponents’ .414 BABIP was the fourth-highest on record. Burnes can say more about himself with a single pitch than just about anyone else, and yet his entire 2019 season only served as an example of all that can happen that’s outside a pitcher’s control.

Somehow, Burnes is having that kind of season again in 2020 — just in the opposite direction. Last year, he allowed 70 hits and 17 home runs in 49 innings. This year, he’s thrown 45.1 innings, and has allowed 22 hits and one home run. His 2.9% HR/FB rate is the second-lowest of any qualified starter, and his .233 BABIP is seventh-lowest. In a single year, he has transformed from, statistically speaking, possibly the unluckiest pitcher we’ve ever seen into the one of the luckiest of this season. What does that mean for Burnes, and for the way we talk about luck in baseball? Read the rest of this entry »

Not all rebuilds are the same. One approach, taken by teams such as the Houston Astros or Chicago Cubs, is a complete dynamiting of the creaky foundation, accumulating talent over a period of usually several years. Another approach is to take the less invasive route, keeping the best part of the team’s core mostly intact while also adding talent and hopefully returning to relevance more quickly than a team in a full teardown might. There are other approaches (trade for a bunch of veterans, stand around and do nothing, etc), but these are arguably the most popular and successful methods. For the past few years, Texas has mostly taken the second approach, entering a clear rebuilding phase but keeping the players they see as main contributors in the future. Unfortunately for the Rangers, 2020 represents a serious setback to these goals, and I’m increasingly unsure this strategy is viable for the team.

I’ve been referring to the Rangers as undergoing a “skinny rebuild” for some time. I don’t think I coined the term, but the idea is simple: retain your key contributors, seek some value in free agent signings, and look for a major addition if the opportunity arises. Teams rarely bluntly present the master plan with the vigor and certainty of a Bond villain, but I think it’s clear the Rangers, knowing that they were moving into a new park, were hopeful about returning to competitiveness in 2019 or 2020 in this manner (or at least close enough that they could patch the remaining gaps with their healthy revenue stream). You could see a bit of this when they signed three-year deals with Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson before the 2019 and 2020 seasons, respectively.

I don’t think this plan was ill-conceived, and in fact last year it looked like it just might work out. The pitchers the Rangers added more than met the expectations of the franchise, Joey Gallo was in his prime, and the team hadn’t publicly backed off the idea of splashing some major cash when the time was right. Read the rest of this entry »