Wherever you sit along the spectrum of baseball observers, from newcomer through casual fan, diehard, junkie, nerd and professional, you are by no means obligated to care about Statcast. Publicly available numbers quantifying three-dimensional coordinates, velocity, spin rate, and more are now attached to everything this side of how often the third baseman adjusts his cup between pitches, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessary for you even to acknowledge their existence in order to enjoy what you’re watching. Nevertheless, some of us do get a kick out of the occasional peek at those numbers, not for their own sake but because they increase our understanding of the game — and of ourselves.

Somewhere along the way — in fact, even before Statcast itself arrived — I realized that I have a particular appreciation for what I have termed “launch angle porn.”

I’ll allow you that nervous giggle before you get your mind out of the gutter. This is, after all, a family site, and while others have gone down the road of documenting bodily functions within the national pastime, that’s not where I’m heading. The trajectories to which I refer concern the flight of baseballs, and more specifically, the visceral thrill of watching the beginning of a towering home run even amid the unending barrage of such hits and their resultant highlights. In that instant of contact between ball and bat, particularly when viewed on a two-dimensional screen of whatever size, we have no idea of the final distance that struck sphere will travel, and we can only infer its exit velocity in the roughest sense. After the sight and sound of contact — and particularly, the mellifluous melody of a ball hitting the sweet spot of a wooden bat — launch angle is the first feedback we get, quickly followed by a very excited play-by-play announcer and a slugger admiring his own handiwork. Consider these three examples, classics from the late 20th century by three of the most prolific home run hitters ever.

Here’s Reggie Jackson at the 1971 All-Star Game, hitting one off the Tiger Stadium transformer on the roof:

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12:02

Dan Szymborski: It is time. A time for chats.

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Absolutely.

12:04

Dan Szymborski: Let’s not forget that offense is up more than a half-run a game since 2015

12:04

Dan Szymborski: And Arizona is still tougher than Dodger stadium

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As the Twins closed in on a division title and their second playoff berth in three years, each of their games took on greater importance. On September 17, that intensity created a truly ridiculous 10 minutes of baseball. Sergio Romo came into a tie game in the eighth inning, and after a one-out bunt single by Yolmer Sánchez… Well, I’ll let this tweet do the talking:

Yikes. To make matters worse, there was that mound visit, and Romo also stepped off to regroup after one particularly strenuous pickoff throw. Overall, it took exactly 10 minutes to throw the final 11 pitches of the inning. Somewhere, Rob Manfred woke up from a nightmare about pace of play.

No one remembered this half-inning at the end of the day. It was a wild game, capped with a 12th-inning walk-off hit by pitch that was so close it had to be reviewed. Romo had an excuse — he landed awkwardly on his knee on his first pitch to Zack Collins and some of the pickoff throws were clearly half-hearted. He wanted to stay in a tight game with playoff implications, and the Twins let him.

But it was still absurd. Eleven pickoff attempts, 11 actual pitches. To make matters worse, it wasn’t Billy Hamilton over on first base or anything; Sánchez has five stolen bases and has been caught four times this year, and he’s not even particularly fast. One or two of the attempts were at least theoretically close, but most of them looked like this:

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“If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.” – Yogi Berra

In 2017 and ’18, for the first time in franchise history, the Colorado Rockies made the playoffs in consecutive seasons. The team didn’t play deep into October in either season, but for an organization that hadn’t even had back-to-back winning seasons since the mid-90s, it was a wonderful result. Problem is, the team gave little thought as to how they got there or the weaknesses that could prevent them from doing so again in the future. The strengths Colorado rode in 2017 and 2018 were absent in 2019, and left the team high-and-dry with no real Plan B.

The Setup

The Rockies clearly believed that 2019 would be another year of contendership. But I’m not sure they realized how dependent they had been on the production of a few stars every season. 91 wins are nothing to scoff at, but to get to the point of barely making the playoffs, the Rockies had to have two legitimate MVP contenders and two legitimate Cy Young candidates. All told, Colorado received 19 WAR from their top four players in 2018, an identical sum as in 2017. In both years, that figure represented more than half the team’s value, a ratio far worse than every other postseason team from 2017, 2018, and now 2019.

In 2017, the Rockies made the playoffs despite an offense that ranked 26th in the league in wRC+. To fix this lack of run-scoring — the team ranked third in baseball in runs scored, but a good offense in Colorado should be crushing the league in runs, even given the most generous application of the Coors Field Hangover — the Rockies did, well, not much. They signed a 35-year-old catcher and given the opportunity to upgrade from fading veteran Carlos González, he of an 85 wRC+ and 0 WAR, decided to upgrade to…Carlos González. Read the rest of this entry »

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No team in baseball has been hotter in September than the Brewers. They’ve lost just four games this month and that hot streak has them on the verge of clinching a playoff berth. That they’ve continued to win so many games without their superstar, MVP candidate Christian Yelich, makes their success all the more impressive. But while their offense has managed to find ways to score enough runs without Yelich in the lineup, their pitching staff has been simply dominant.

The Brewers have allowed just 66 runs to score this month, an average of three per game. That’s the fewest runs allowed in the majors and includes a 10-0 drubbing by the Cardinals on September 13. Their team ERA has easily been the best in baseball during this stretch. By park- and league-adjusted FIP, they’ve only been the fourth-best team in the majors, but still the best in the National League.

Surprisingly, their starting rotation has been led by Jordan Lyles. In four September starts, he’s allowed a total of six runs — four of them earned — giving him the lowest ERA of the Brewers regular starters (Brandon Woodruff hasn’t allowed a run in his two starts where he acted as the opener). This string of strong outings stretches back to late July when he joined the Brewers in a trade from Pittsburgh. Since being acquired, he’s been their most reliable starter, allowing two or fewer runs in eight of his 10 starts. Read the rest of this entry »

Anthony Rendon and Ketel Marte have both had very good seasons, but all year long they’ve been a few beats behind Christian Yelich and Cody Bellinger. With only a few days left in the regular season, Marte has already been shut down and Rendon would need a historic week to match the two favorites. While Yelich’s season is unfortunately over, his work already done clearly puts him, along with Bellinger, in the top two for the MVP. With the numbers on offense creating a substantial edge for Yelich, who deserves MVP comes down to a question nobody really likes answering: How much better is Cody Bellinger on defense than Christian Yelich?

It’s possible some voters will ding Yelich for his injuries and playing time lost, though it didn’t stop Mookie Betts and Mike Trout from finishing 1-2 in the AL MVP last year, or keep Josh Hamilton from winning in 2010 when he missed almost all of September. Historically, there haven’t been very many MVPs with around 130 games and 600 PAs, though that likely has less to do with voters being unwilling to vote for players who have missed some of the season and more to do with it just being incredibly difficult to be the best player in the league when other candidates have an extra three weeks to compile numbers.

Since 1931, there have only been 22 position player seasons of at least 7.5 WAR and fewer than 600 plate appearances. Of those 22 seasons, only 10 topped the league in WAR. Six of those 10 players won the MVP that season. In 2009, the under-appreciated Ben Zobrist topped the league in WAR, but Joe Mauer, behind by 0.3 WAR, won the trophy. In 1989, Lonnie Smith played in 134 games and tied Will Clark for the league lead in WAR at 8.1, but it was Clark’s teammate Kevin Mitchell and his 49 homers that took home the MVP. In 1985, Pedro Guerrero topped the NL in WAR at 7.8, but Willie McGee’s 7.1 WAR won him the award thanks in no small part to a .353 batting average. Finally, way back in 1954, Ted Williams topped the AL in WAR, but the Yankees’ Yogi Berra won the vote. Yelich’s situation isn’t unprecedented, but it is fairly rare; players in his position have won MVP around half the time. Read the rest of this entry »

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The retooling of the Toronto Blue Jays hasn’t gone quite as planned. While the team won’t say so in such explicit terms, I believe that the original plan was to keep the basic core of the team together just long enough that reinforcements would arrive and save the team from a more painful long-term rebuild. Toronto’s stable of All-Star relatives has started to arrive — possibly the most impressive such group in baseball history — but the MLB roster is in a worse state than I imagine the team had hoped.

The Setup

The 2017 Toronto Blue Jays could point to a run of bad luck as the possible culprit for dropping from 89 to 76 wins, but the 2018 Blue Jays probably ought to have let go of those hopes. The post-2018 offseason didn’t feature much that would change the trajectory of the team, and the transactions were consistent with a plan of trying to simply stay relevant before players like Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, and Cavan Biggio started hitting the major leagues. Moves were made but generally featured the supporting cast. In a perfect world, a healthy Matt Shoemaker and the resurgent Clay Buchholz could fill out the rotation, making up for the losses of J.A. Happ by trade and Marco Estrada by decline and then free agency. The thin bullpen that finished 21st in ERA and 23rd in WAR in 2018 before losing its top two pitchers by WAR, Seunghwan Oh and Tyler Clippard, could hopefully be buttressed with veteran free agents Bud Norris, David Phelps, Daniel Hudson, and John Axford.

As the team attempted to keep a skeleton crew together, the need to simultaneously add minor-league talent was obvious. The Jays traded off some of the players that were perceived to be surplus talent in an attempt to add to the team’s depth. Russell Martin could be replaced by Danny Jansen, Aledmys Diaz didn’t bring much that Lourdes Gurriel Jr. or Richard Urena couldn’t, and Kendrys Morales’s 2018 production could be replicated by Rowdy Tellez.

With just enough luck, the winter pickups would be enough when combined with the existing core (Marcus Stroman, Justin Smoak, Aaron Sanchez, Ken Giles, Teoscar Hernandez, Randal Grichuk) to make the Blue Jays a .500 team, or even a skosh better. Then the fun would start. The Jays later made the public argument that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was not one of the best 25 players in the organization, but I don’t imagine that a single person that heard that either believed it or even thought that Toronto actually believed it. Vladito and Bichette would be the latest on baseball’s list of exciting phenoms starring quickly in the majors (with more on the way!) and help get the Blue Jays to at least the mid-80s in wins. And in a bifurcated American League, with a few great teams and several that looked like spring training B-squads, that might be enough to make a serious playoff run. Read the rest of this entry »