If Masahiro Tanaka has a signature pitch, it’s his slider. When he first came over from Japan in 2014, nearly half of his strikeouts came on the splitter despite throwing it only a quarter of the time. In his first three seasons in the majors, Tanaka threw his splitter more often than any other pitch and batters put up a feeble 37 wRC+ against it, while whiffing on the pitch 19% of the time. But in 2017, Tanaka used his slider more often than the splitter. In 2018, that trend continued; he got better results from his slider than he did with the splitter. This season the disparity in usage and effectiveness grew. Tanaka struggled with his splitter due to changes in the baseball, but even after re-configuring the splitter in July, his slider has remained his best pitch.

Against the Astros in Game 1 of the ALCS, Tanaka got eight swings and misses. Every single whiff came on the slider. Here’s how Tanaka’s usage of his slider has compared to that of his splitter this season:

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In a postseason full of headline-grabbing stories (the ball is de-juiced! Gerrit Cole is a cyborg! The Nationals win in the playoffs now!), a quiet bulletin came out on Wednesday. Bloomberg’s Scott Soshnick reported that Major League Baseball will now allow investment funds to take minority stakes in teams.

The news cycle moved on. The Yankees-Astros game was postponed! What will A.J. Hinch and Aaron Boone do with their rotation flexibility? Did you know Juan Soto isn’t yet 21? There are big baseball things happening right now! Investment mumbo-jumbo has a way of fading to the background.

I’m here to tell you that it matters. Not in an urgent, baseball-ends-today way, but in a way that could change the nature of the sport long-term. This story might not be on everyone’s radar right now, but it’s important to consider the ramifications and conflicts of interest that can arise from a small change.

To understand what this decision means, we’ll need a little background. First, let’s talk about what an investment fund is. It’s a broad term by design, one that encompasses many different ways of pooling together money. Without further comment from MLB, we can’t know the exact specifications of what they’ll allow, but we can make some educated guessed. A college endowment? Definitely. A special purpose fund raising money from 100 rich people to invest in teams? Certainly — one has already been started, and it plans to raise $500 million to purchase minority stakes.

What about a pension fund? Pension funds’ preferred tax status mirrors that of college endowments, and the two invest in very similar ways. A hedge fund? Baseball will have to spell out the rules, but that doesn’t seem so different from letting endowments or pensions own minority shares, and it’s certainly not much different than a special purpose vehicle. Heck, hedge funds are largely specialized investment pools already, and endowments and pensions make up a sizable portion of hedge fund assets under management. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller discuss the Nationals’ sweep of the Cardinals, why the Nationals are good and fun, Stephen Strasburg and the history of no. 1 draft pick pitchers, Gerrit Cole’s performance in ALCS Game 3, how Wednesday’s rainout affects the Yankees and Astros, and the Angels’ opioid problem and hiring of Joe Maddon as manager. Then (36:22) they talk to writer and researcher Rob Arthur about the de-juiced postseason ball, how we can tell that the ball is behaving differently, how much balls vary from pitch to pitch and game to game, how the ball affects pitches, why the ball change reflects poorly on MLB, whether the change was intentional or unintentional, and what offense might look like in 2020.

Audio intro: Guided By Voices, "Calling Up Washington"
Audio interstitial: Gillian Welch, "Wrecking Ball"
Audio outro: Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, "Rumors"

Link to ESPN report on Skaggs and the Angels
Link to The Athletic report about MLB opioid testing
Link to Rob’s recent research on the ball
Link to Ben on the ball
Link to Jeff Passan on the ball
Link to Michael Baumann on the ball in 2020
Link to Rob on the ball and pitch movement
Link to Gerald Schifman on shadows
Link to Ben on MLB marketing
Link to order The MVP Machine

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In 2017, The Ringer called Anthony Rendon baseball’s “unknown superstar.” A year later, at the conclusion of the 2018 season, Beyond the Box Score described Rendon as “constantly overlooked.” I’m pretty sure there’s a law somewhere that says that when you write about Rendon, you have to describe him using the word “underrated” or one like it. But rules were made to be broken, and this one has run its course. Rendon is too good to be underrated any more. He has a strong case as being the best third baseman in baseball — which is an incredibly deep field — and an even better case as one of the top 10 players in the game overall.

Let’s start with the top-line figures and then get into the mechanics. Here are baseball’s WAR leaders since 2013, when Rendon made his debut for the Nationals:

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The Yankees and Astros both won over 100 games in the regular season but nobody beats Mother Nature. When a rainstorm causes cool terms like “bomb cyclone” or “explosive cyclogenesis” to be bandied about, you know you’re not expecting a light drizzle. Yankee Stadium is currently dry, but with a system the size of the mid-Atlantic barreling up the coast, it didn’t make sense for MLB to pretend that tonight’s ALCS Game 4 was going to take place. Just look at the radar, courtesy of the National Weather Service:

Yikes. The rain provides the Yankees and Astros with an extra off-day now at the expense of losing an off-day between a possible Game 5 and Game 6. This isn’t a big deal for the hitters, but it will result in some revised pitching plans. In a five-game divisional series, teams can generally muddle through with a three-man rotation. Due to the 2-2-1 format, no team plays on three consecutive days, and while the Game 1 starter would have to pitch Game 4 on short rest, the Game 2 starter can pitch in a possible rubber match on normal rest. This extra rest gives teams the flexibility to either stretch their best three starters or, as the Nationals demonstrated, use starting pitchers in relief more aggressively.

But short of baseball going to some kind of impractical 2-2-1-1-1 format, that doesn’t quite work in a seven-game series. So unless you’re going to have your entire rotation do it 1930-style, you’ll need to use a fourth starter. That isn’t an ideal situation for either the Yankees or the Astros. From a pure projection standpoint, it’s actually doesn’t move the probabilities. The Astros get an immediate benefit in that they avoid a Bullpen vs. Bullpen Game 4; ZiPS takes bullpen depth into consideration and Yankees enjoy a significant projected edge in any such bullpen game. Before the rainout, ZiPS projected the Yankees to have a 56%-44% edge in a home bullpen duel, so it’s a nice game to delay if you’re Houston.

The problem you run into with this model is that the rainout doesn’t really add an extra day of rest, it simply moves it. Since there are only two days of rest for a Game 4 starter to pitch in Game 7 now, both teams end up repeating the dilemma of either using a fourth starter — particularly problematic for the Astros — or going with a bullpen game. Read the rest of this entry »

This could be the story of a kid with an awkward swing getting cut from his junior college ball team and never playing again, but it isn’t.

This could be the story of a rookie who debuted with the Angels by starting a slick double play, but never learned to hit, got sent back to the minors, and lived out the rest of his baseball days eating peanut butter and jelly and not hearing the phone ring.

But it’s not that either.

This could be the story of a young player who got spread too thin as his team experimented with playing him all over in the infield. “Things happen everyday in baseball,” Howie Kendrick told the L.A. Times in 2006. “One day I might be an outfielder. I’m open to moving anywhere.” And he did. He’s played 190 games in the outfield, so far.

This could be the story of a talented hitter trapped behind a middle infield logjam at the top of the Angels’ farm system. Or buried in their lineup under 700 pounds of struggling sluggers named Albert Pujols, Josh Hamilton, and Mark Trumbo.

Or a debatable starter who became the smiling face on the poster for “Batting Average Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story.” Or a veteran infielder relegated to the corners, sideswiped by strained hamstrings and a sore abdomen.

But it’s not any of things. Not entirely, anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

With their sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals, capped off by a 7-4 win last night, the Washington Nationals are bringing the World Series back to the nation’s capital for the first time since 1933.

No team gets to the World Series without their fair share of luck, and the Nationals certainly have seen things go their way so far this October. But at the end of the day, talent reigns supreme. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that the Nationals were a superior team to the Cardinals. They produced 48.3 WAR this season, more than 10 wins above the Cardinals’ aggregate of 37.9. Washington’s hitters produced a wRC+ eight points higher than St. Louis’; their pitchers produced a FIP- six points lower. The Nationals were simply better across the board. What’s arguably most exciting for fans in Washington is that their top talent has stepped up when things have mattered most.

One of my favorite statistics to follow during the postseason is Championship Win Probability added, or cWPA, housed on the website The Baseball Gauge. It’s very similar to WPA in that it calculates how each plate appearance during every game has changed each team’s odds of winning the World Series. The Ringer’s Ben Lindbergh has covered cWPA in the past, such as in this piece about players who made late-season debuts and contributed to a postseason run, or in this one when analyzing the relative “mundanity” of the 2018 World Series. As you might expect, Nationals players are dominating in cWPA this postseason. Four of the top five individual cWPA leaders don the Nationals’ red, white, and blue: Read the rest of this entry »

The Washington Nationals are World Series bound following Tuesday night’s sweep-completing 7-4 win over the St. Louis Cardinals. They couldn’t be much hotter. Since a September 18 loss to the team they just vanquished, the Dave Martinez-managed Nationals have won 18 of their last 21 games.

How remarkable was their turnaround from the 19-31 start that had Martinez firmly in the crosshairs? The 2005 Houston Astros, the 1973 New York Mets, and the 1914 Boston Braves are the only other teams to have made it to the World Series after being 12 games under .500 at any point during the season.

The Cardinals deserve some credit of their own. The Mike Shildt-skippered squad went 47-27 in the second half, then beat the favored Braves in the NLDS. They simply had the misfortune of running into a pitching-rich Nationals team that has now punched its ticket to the Fall Classic.

Here are perspectives from participants on each side, gathered prior to, and after, Games 3 and 4.

———

Following Game 3, I asked Martinez about team’s confidence level, which is undoubtedly the highest it’s been all season. With the early-season struggles in mind, just how important is confidence to a team’s success? Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »