The last time we saw Gerrit Cole in an Astros uniform, he wasn’t actually in an Astros uniform. He was, instead, in a Boras Corporation cap, ready to chart his own course through the league after a dominant run in Houston. When he signed with the Yankees, it felt almost preordained — one of the bright stars of baseball, either the best pitcher in the league or a close second, on the most storied franchise in the game. We get it — great players like the Yankees, and the Yankees like great players.

One look at the surface-level statistics will tell you that something hasn’t panned out in 2020. A 3.63 ERA? A 4.69 FIP? Thirteen home runs allowed in only nine starts?! He’s allowed a home run in each start, which is about as disastrous as it sounds. Heck, even his record tells you something is up; he’s 4-3 this year on an underachieving Yankees team, and while wins and losses are silly contextual statistics, Cole went 35-10 the last two years. Something is clearly up.

Far less clear? What that “something” is. There are some easy ways pitchers fail, ones you can see from a mile away. They lose velocity, and their fastballs become newly hittable. That hasn’t happened to Cole, though, at least not really:

Starters can also lose feel for one of their pitches, and change their pitch mix to compensate. That hasn’t happened either:

Uh… maybe he’s the victim of a poor early-count approach. He’s throwing fewer fastballs this year to start batters off, but just as many pitches in the zone. He’s not doing it by throwing more curveballs and sliders in the zone, either:

In other words, Cole is throwing fastballs less often to start, but he’s making up for it by throwing them in the strike zone more often. Sounds dangerous. Are batters suddenly teeing off on him on 0-0? Nope! They’re actually swinging less than ever, and the whole thing is too small-sample to matter anyway. He’s getting to 0-1 54.5% of the time, in line with his dominant 2019. Next! Read the rest of this entry »

Without a true minor league season on which to fixate, I’ve been spending most of my time watching and evaluating young big leaguers who, because of the truncated season, will still be eligible for prospect lists at the end of the year. From a workflow standpoint, it makes sense for me to prioritize and complete my evaluations of these prospects before my time is divided between theoretical fall instructional ball on the pro side and college fall practices and scrimmages, which will have outsized importance this year due to the lack of both meaningful 2020 college stats and summer wood bat league looks because of COVID-19.

I’m starting with the National League East. Players who have appeared in big league games are covered below, as are a few players who have been at the offsite camps all season. The results of changes made to player rankings and evaluations can be found over on The Board, though I try to provide more specific links throughout this post in case readers only care about one team.

Atlanta Braves

In an August post, I talked about how I was moving away from hitters who swing recklessly but failed to mention that I’d slid Drew Waters from the back of the 55 FV tier — around 50th overall — down to 76th overall, near a bunch of the high ceiling/high variance hitters grouped toward the back of the top 100.

I also slid Kyle Wright (now a 40+ FV — I know he has graduated off of other publications’ lists but even after counting his time on the roster I still have him classified as rookie-eligible, though perhaps I’m miscounting?) and Bryse Wilson (45+ FV). Both of them are throwing hard (Wilson up to 96 over the weekend, Wright up to 97 yesterday) but because they’re of the sink/tail variety, their fastballs don’t have margin for error in the strike zone and both of them too often miss in hittable locations. Each has the secondary stuff to start, but neither has seized a rotation spot even though Atlanta desperately needs someone to. Read the rest of this entry »

Joe Block knows the Central. Not only do the Pittsburgh Pirates, the team he serves as a play-by-play announcer for, compete in the National League Central, their inter-league schedule this year is solely comprised of the American League Central. As a result, Block has been getting regular looks at two of the game’s most evenly-matched divisions. Neither had a clear-cut favorite coming into the season, and by and large there haven’t been many surprises.

How would Block rank the teams and players he’s seen this season? That was the crux of a conversation I had with the TV (and sometimes radio) voice of the Pirates prior to Sunday’s game.

———

David Laurila: Which is the best team you’ve seen this year?

Joe Block: “I think it’s a tossup between the three AL Central teams we’ve seen: the White Sox, the Twins, and Cleveland. Cleveland wasn’t hitting when we saw them, although when you look at that lineup they should hit. I don’t know that I can put them lower than anyone else because of their elite pitching. It seems like their bullpen is complete. Their rotation is obviously very good, even with the trade of Mike Clevinger, which happened since we saw them. I’m of the belief that pitching wins in the postseason. You can argue whether it’s relief pitching, or starting pitching like we saw with Washington last year, but I think they have what it takes to go deep in the postseason.

“Minnesota is coming off a great year. They’ve added to their rotation, and they also have a good bullpen, especially the back end. Romo–Rogers is a really nice one-two. They obviously hit, and they’re not a team that’s all-or-nothing. They have some good hitters, just plain ‘hitters’ as opposed to softball-style home run, swing-and-miss-type cats. So they’re very much a big part of the picture in the AL Central. If you look at their numbers, they haven’t hit to the degree they have in the past, but they’re dangerous.

“Then there are the White Sox, who we’ve seen for two games. Lucas Giolito threw a no-hitter, and we also saw Dallas Keuchel. They’ve clearly added to their team. It’s always an en vogue selection when you have a bunch of young players coming up at the same time, and go out and get a few key free agents, and in this case it’s warranted. The only possible flaw is that they’ve got a very right-handed lineup, but other than that they don’t have a lot of weaknesses. They’ve got a lot of good young players who — I’m going to use a cliché here — don’t know how to lose. I kind of buy into that a little bit. They’re new, they’re exciting, they’re good — and the veterans they got make sense for that team. They’re very balanced. Read the rest of this entry »

When telling the story of the 2019 World Series champion Washington Nationals, their lackluster start to the campaign played just as big of a role in the season’s narrative as their playoff woes of yesteryear, Howie Kendrick‘s homer off the foul pole, or Juan Soto’s trademark shuffle. Last season’s Nationals were underdogs not only because they entered October as a Wild Card team, but also because of the 19-31 record they owned in May, a mark that had them sunk to fourth place in the division, 10 games out of first. In 2019, however, 50 games represented just over 30% of the season; over the remaining 112 contests, Washington methodically improved until it had re-established itself as one of baseball’s best teams over that stretch, something it was quick to prove in the postseason.

A year later, the Nationals have struggled out of the gates once again. This time, however, they don’t have the benefit of four months to turn things around. After 40 games — two-thirds of their season — the Nationals are 15-25, dead last in the NL East. Just two NL teams own worse records than the defending champs. While the expanded playoff field extends some help to everyone, and it remains possible for Washington to erase the five-game gap between itself and a Wild Card spot, time is quickly running out for the team to make another turnaround effort.

When the 2019 Nationals slumped out of the gates, the situation was considered dire enough that manager Dave Martinez’s job security was being openly speculated upon. But there were signs of hope, even at 19-31. The team had a number of players miss time with injuries, most of which were minor enough that players were still expected to remain active for most of the year. On the day of the team’s 31st loss, the Nationals also had the largest gap in the majors between their collective ERA (4.94) and FIP (4.23). In fact, their starters were leading the majors in WAR at that time despite ranking just ninth in ERA. The bullpen had a litany of issues (it held highest ERA in baseball by nearly a full run), but as a whole, the pitching staff seemed better than it appeared. A surge back into contention was far from inevitable, but the Nationals were still a team that had promise, even when they were at their worst. Read the rest of this entry »

On August 17, the New York Yankees finished up a 6-3 victory against the Boston Red Sox and extended their win streak to six games. The team was 16-6 on the season and had the best record in baseball. They then commenced a seven-game losing streak on their way to a three week stretch during which the club went 5-14, bringing its season mark to 21-20. In a 162-game season, 19 games is less than 12% of the season, but this year, it represents nearly a third of the season and nearly half of the team’s games played thus far. With just 19 games left to go, another 5-14 stretch would push the Yankees out of the playoffs. While that scenario isn’t likely — our Playoff Odds have the Yankees at 89% odds entering games today — it’s worth exploring what’s gone wrong and whether we can expect it to continue.

To take a broad view, here are the Yankees’ major-league ranks with the season split between their good and bad stretches:

The offense and relief pitching have fallen off a cliff while the starting pitching has remained middle of the pack. It’s fair to say that the rotation should be better, but it has been about as effective during the free fall as it was when things were going well. Gerrit Cole has had a run of bad starts and James Paxton has been dinged up; Michael King has had one good start and one bad one during this stretch, while Jordan Montgomery has had some clunkers, too. Still, Masahiro Tanaka has pitched well and Deivi García and J.A. Happ have turned in some decent starts. The rotation has underperformed expectations the entire season (Yankees starters ranked first on our preseason Positional Power Rankings), but they’ve been more average than bad pretty consistently. Given that the Yankees have had four doubleheaders in the last three weeks, the rotation has arguably held up pretty well. If Paxton were healthy and Cole was pitching as expected, the rotation would be one of the best in baseball. That they aren’t is hurting the team, but it’s hardly the sole source of New York’s troubles. Read the rest of this entry »

When we last checked in on our Out Of The Park Brewers experiment, the season hung in the balance. We had fallen two games behind the Pirates — that’s bad! — but were mere days away from welcoming Christian Yelich back from the Injured List — that’s good! The sprint to the end of the season figured to be a high-leverage thrill ride.

For about two days, that played out. On August 19, the Brewers hit a season-high 16 games above .500 and pulled within a half game of the Pirates. Yelich was back. Everything was coming together nicely. Then the team lost seven straight games while the Pirates went 5-2. Just like that, it was a 5.5-game deficit in the Central, with the Brewers and Philadelphia Phillies now locked in a dead heat for the second Wild Card.

How does something like that happen? Reasonably easily, to be honest. Not every playoff contender has a seven-game losing streak, but the margins are slim. Two of the games were one-run affairs, while another featured a seven-run meltdown in the ninth inning to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. A 3-4 stretch would have looked extremely different than 0-7.

Things were still fine, though. The Pirates weren’t quite out of reach, and based on the fact that I called it a seven-game losing streak, clearly the team won the next day. Now the Wild Card race was a dead heat, and Yelich was settled in. Surely this would be a turning point. Read the rest of this entry »

Even before they dropped 10 runs on a beleaguered Yankees bullpen on Monday night, the Blue Jays rated as one of the season’s top success stories. Coming off three straight sub-.500 seasons, forced out of their home country and into their Triple-A ballpark amid the coronavirus pandemic, and fielding the majors’ youngest lineup, the temporary inhabitants of Buffalo’s Sahlen Field are nonetheless running second in the American League East at 23-18, 4 1/2 games behind the Rays (28-14) but two games ahead of the banged-up Yankees (21-20). While much of the focus has been on the likes of Bo Bichette, Cavan Biggio, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. given their pedigrees, their best hitter to date has been Teoscar Hernández, but the 27-year-old slugger’s impressive breakout has been interrupted by a left oblique strain and he appears likely to miss “serious time.”

After going hitless in back-to-back starts for the first time this season — an outage which in this case ended his career-high 15-game hitting streak — Hernández went 3-for-5 on Saturday against the Red Sox, with a 442-foot solo homer to center field off Ryan Weber in the second inning:

The homer was his 14th of the season, pulling him into a short-lived tie with Mike Trout and Fernando Tatis Jr. for the major league lead; within the hour, Trout homered against the Astros, the 300th of his career no less, and Tatis homered Sunday, but that’s impressive company nonetheless.

However, Hernández’s day ended on a down note, as he suffered a left oblique strain while striking out in his final plate appearance, against Mike Kickham. An MRI taken on Sunday morning proved inconclusive, and so the Blue Jays planned for him to get a second MRI once the swelling reduced, but the team placed him on the 10-day Injured List on Monday nonetheless. “That’s going to be a big loss if he has to go out a while,” Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo told reporters on Sunday. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: An abridged version of this study appeared at FiveThirtyEight on August 17, 2020 under the title “What Really Gives Left-Handed Pitchers Their Edge?”

Left-handed pitching has long been one of the most prized commodities in professional baseball. Teams strive to obtain lefty pitchers, and those pitchers recognize their competitive edge. Two-sport athlete Tom Glavine explained his career choice this way: “I love both sports, but the deciding factor was, being a left-handed pitcher, I had a huge advantage in baseball because of that, and I didn’t have that type of advantage in hockey.” Even a century ago, Tris Speaker expressed the sport’s reverence for southpaws – if falling short as a trade analyst – when he opined that “taking the best left-handed pitcher in baseball and converting him into a right fielder is one of the dumbest things I ever heard.”

Major league rosters reflect this preference for lefties today. Although just 10% of American men throw with their left hand, fully 28% of innings thrown by major league pitchers come from the left side. And before you blame lefty relief specialists for this disparity, consider that southpaws also make 29% of starts. Any way that you cut the data, lefty pitchers make it to the big leagues about three times as frequently as righties, given their share of the general population. What accounts for this huge surplus of southpaws? Read the rest of this entry »

Tom Grieve had a relatively nondescript playing career. From 1970-1979, the now-72-year-old former outfielder logged 474 hits, 65 of which left the yard, and a 100 wRC+. Those numbers came primarily with the Texas Rangers, who had drafted Grieve out of the University of Michigan while the franchise was still located in Washington DC.

Grieve is a product of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and while he grew up rooting for the New York Yankees, one of his biggest thrills came in his home state’s most-famous sports venue. The date was May 5, 1974, and the event itself was proceeded by a certain amount of trepidation.

“Billy Martin was the manager at the time,” explained Grieve, who is now a TV analyst for the Rangers. “Jim Fregosi and I had been playing against left-handed pitchers, and Mike Hargrove and Jim Spencer had been playing against right-handed pitchers. Anyway, the people of Pittsfield had called the Red Sox and were somehow able to set up ‘Tom Grieve Day’ at Fenway Park between games of a Sunday doubleheader. Usually when there’s a day for someone at a ballpark, it’s for a Hall of Fame player, so I can remember going to Boston knowing that it was going to happen, and being a little bit embarrassed.”

Not to mention wary of what his manager might think. Not only was Grieve a 26-year-old platoon player, Martin had donned pinstripes for much of his own playing career. Moreover, Martin was notoriously as combative as they come. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley follow up on an earlier Clayton Kershaw commercial conversation and banter about Tom Seaver and the benefits of being a late bloomer, then answer listener emails about catchers sharing secrets about their old teams, the value of game-calling, Manny Ramirez signing with the Sydney Blue Sox and the experience of watching old players in lower-level leagues, how stadiums designed for games without fans would be different, whether a pitcher could tattoo his hand to look like a baseball, whether a person from the past could infer the occurrence of a pandemic from MLB’s schedule alone, and what would happen if it were revealed that baseballs are alive, plus Stat Blasts about teams with the most one-run games and batters who always hit in the same spot in the lineup.

Audio intro: Jenny Lewis, "Late Bloomer"
Audio outro: Superchunk, "What a Time to Be Alive"

Link to Kershaw commercial
Link to Benetti and Stone clip
Link to Seaver newsletter
Link to Pages from Baseball’s Past
Link to Ben on catcher intangibles
Link to Ben on Yadi’s game-calling
Link to Harry Pavlidis on game-calling
Link to interview episode with Harry
Link to article on Mathis’s game-calling
Link to Dan Szymborski on the decline of Pujols
Link to story on MLB Network “speed cam”
Link to story about Mariners broadcast innovations
Link to story about Clevinger’s tattoos
Link to Sean Rudman’s Stat Blast Song cover
Link to teams with the most one-run games
Link to spreadsheet on batting in the same spot in the order
Link to Rob Arthur on the baseball’s inconsistency
Link to Star Trek episode of The Ringer MLB Show
Link to Russell Carleton’s update on the shift

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