Over the four-year period from 2015 to 2018, José Altuve’s 24 wins above replacement ranked third among all position players in baseball behind only Mike Trout and Mookie Betts. His 143 wRC+ ranked 10th in the sport and his 2017 MVP win cemented his status as one of the best players in the game. After a strong start to the 2018 season, Altuve suffered a right knee injury last July that eventually required surgery in October. Although he started this season healthy, he began to slump, then hit the disabled list with a hamstring problem and stayed on the disabled list due to lingering pain in his knee. Based on this second half batting leaderboard, it appears his injury and slump are behind him:

Back in May, Jay Jaffe noted that Altuve’s stint on the injured list coincided with a rare slump for the Astros’ diminutive (obligatory height reference) second baseman. Jaffe discussed how Altuve’s results on batted balls out of the zone were much lower than in previous seasons.

Altuve’s batting average on pitches in the zone is down 57 points relative to last year and 81 points relative to his combined 2015-18 performance; even so, it’s been offset by a higher slugging percentage because of the homers. It’s his contact with pitches outside the zone where the numbers look particularly grim; removing the non-contact plate appearances, he’s 5-for-28 (.179) on such balls this year, all singles, where last year, he was 40-for-119 (.336) with a .437 slugging percentage.

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During my junior year of high school, I took AP Economics. I found the class to be pretty interesting, and I look forward to continue studying the subject further. But this is a baseball website, and you probably don’t want to be hearing about the classes I took while in high school. However, there was an important concept I learned in AP Economics that applies to a baseball situation I recently discovered. That is, the idea of the trade-off. The trade-off is one of the most basic economic principles, something so basic that it’s subconsciously part of all of our decision-making processes, whether we decide to acknowledge it or not.

One person cannot do everything, and every decision made is at the expense of the other options. There is opportunity cost, and when calculating important decisions, one must weigh the benefits of their choice versus the costs associated with giving other choices up. That’s exactly what Yu Darvish has done this season. Read the rest of this entry »

Remember when the Twins were running away with the AL Central? On June 2, they were a major league-best 40-18, a season-high 11 1/2 games ahead of the Indians (29-30). Ten weeks later, after a wild final two innings of Sunday’s game to cap a series in which the Indians took three out of four, the two teams were tied atop the AL Central at 71-47, and after Cleveland’s walk-off win against the Red Sox on Monday night, the idle Twins find themselves a half-game back.

With Cleveland beating Minnesota in the first two games of their series on Thursday night (7-5) and Friday night (6-2), the two teams actually entered Saturday sharing the division lead as well, that for the first time since April 26, when the Indians were 15-10 and the Twins 14-9. With Jake Odorizzi and friends holding Cleveland to one run on Saturday, Minnesota had edged ahead again, but on Sunday, the Indians touched up José Berríos for two first-inning runs, and carried a 3-1 lead into the bottom of the ninth. An Eddie Rosario double and two singles, all off of Indians closer Brad Hand, trimmed the lead to 3-2. With one out, Marwin Gonzalez bashed a ball off the base of the left-center wall. Luis Arraez scored easily from second base to tie the game, but Tyler Naquin made a perfect barehanded grab of the ball after it caromed, then relayed to Francisco Lindor, whose peg to Kevin Plawecki cut down pinch-runner Ehire Adrianza, the potential winning run, at the plate:

The Twins challenged the call on the grounds that Plawecki blocked the plate without the ball, but the call on the field stood; the play was kosher. Carlos Santana’s grand slam off Taylor Rogers in the top of the 10th inning provided the margin of victory in the 7-3 win. It was a Santana homer in the bottom of the ninth that lifted the Indians over the Red Sox on Monday as well. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Tyler Beede, John Gant, and David Hale — on how they learned and developed their changeups.

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Tyler Beede, San Francisco Giants

“Based on how unique of a pitch it’s been for me, I’d say we should go with my changeup. I’m not sure of the numbers, in terms of batting-average-against or anything like that, but I know how effective it’s been for me. That’s from the time I was 13 or 14, when I learned it, to now at 26 [years old].

“I learned the pitch from a guy named Lenny Solesky. He was my pitching coach coming up through… right before high school. His big thing was — he never really showed me a specific grip — ‘hold it like an egg.’ That, and ‘keep the same arm speed as your fastball.’

“For me, it’s a light grip. It’s way far out in my fingertips. Having big hands, I’m kind of given more room to keep it out on my fingertips. It’s not a circle change. I don’t choke it, I don’t palm it; I just hold it loose with sort of a two-seam grip. And I’m not touching a seam. With my changeup, I like to feel like I’m throwing the crap out of nothing. Read the rest of this entry »

Before the season started, the National League looked like it would feature one of the most exciting and evenly matched regular seasons in recent memory. While the Dodgers were the clear class of the league, every team except the Marlins and Giants had legitimate playoff hopes. FanGraphs thought the Pirates had the third-lowest chances of making the playoffs, and they came in just above 10%. By contrast, seven teams in the American League had a 5% or less chance of reaching postseason play.

With the benefit of hindsight, even the Giants had their shot at a one-game playoff. They’ve faded now, 3 1/2 games out of the Wild Card race, but even that vastly outstrips what was expected of them before the season. Could this year’s NL be the platonic ideal of baseball, a cellar-less (again, other than the Marlins) league with every team at least somewhat in the running for the playoffs until the last month of the year?

Alas, it wasn’t to be. The Giants have outstripped expectations, but they’ve been replaced at the bottom of the table by another team with marginal hopes of contending this year, the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates don’t look like a team built to play for draft position. They made win-now trades as recently as last year, adding Chris Archer in what now looks like one of the most lopsided deals of all time. They came into the season hoping for breakouts from some of their hitters and got them — Josh Bell started the season mashing, and Bryan Reynolds has been a revelation.

Heck, as recently as the All-Star break, the Pirates looked like contenders. They were 44-45, only 2 1/2 games out of first place in the NL Central race, and one of seven teams within 2 1/2 games of the Wild Card. They’d outperformed their Pythagorean record to get there, sure, but what’s past is past, and the Pirates were a month or two of inspired baseball away from a playoff run. Our playoff odds still didn’t like their chances, giving them a 10.3% shot, but stranger things have happened: the Mets, after all, had only a 4.9% chance of reaching the playoffs on that date. Read the rest of this entry »

Below you’ll find a roundup of notable moves from the past few days, as well as future expected moves and a Minor League Report, which includes a list of recent major league debuts, and top prospect promotions. For this column, any lineup regulars, starting pitchers, or late-inning relievers are considered “notable,” meaning that middle relievers, long relievers, and bench players are excluded. You can always find a full list of updated transactions here.

Lineup Regulars

Cincinnati Reds
8/12/19: INF Freddy Galvis claimed off waivers from Blue Jays.

The acquisition of Galvis, which might or might not be related to Jose Iglesias being out of the lineup for three consecutive games over the weekend due to biceps soreness, gives them another reliable option at shortstop and, at the least, a timeshare with Jose Peraza and Josh VanMeter at second base. The 29-year-old has a $5.5MM club option in 2020, making it very possible that he enters next season as the starting shortstop.

Roster Resource

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Ryan Yarbrough was in Maddux territory. He’d thrown just 89 pitches as he walked to the mound to begin the top of the ninth inning against the Seattle Mariners on Sunday with his Tampa Bay Rays leading 1-0, having allowed just three hits and no walks against eight strikeouts. The 27-year-old southpaw had two lefties waiting to face him, neither of whom had reached base that afternoon.

The inning started about as well as it could have, as Yarbrough took just 10 pitches to induce weak ground balls out of Mallex Smith and J.P. Crawford. He was now at 99 pitches and one out away from just the 18th complete-game shutout thrown in the majors this season. But as soon as Yarbrough got the ball back from the infield after Crawford’s groundout, he turned to see Rays manager Kevin Cash exiting the dugout and walking toward him. He tried to sneak in a word of protest before Cash got to the mound, but it was no use. His day was over.

“Obviously, a little angry,” Yarbrough said to reporters after the game, according to MLB.com. “But I think [Cash] would want me to be. I think he would want me to want to finish it. I don’t think I have any ill-will about it or anything.”

In the moment, Yarbrough did little to conceal the way he felt about the decision. Here’s the moment he sees Cash walking his way:

And here he is walking off the mound:

From Cash’s perspective, the move was a well-reasoned one. Tampa Bay was ahead by just one run, and the hitter on deck at the time, Domingo Santana, is plenty capable of doing enough damage to a mistake to make that lead evaporate. With the Rays possessing just a 1 1/2 game lead in the second Wild Card playoff spot, there was little margin for error in the big picture, too. Read the rest of this entry »

While the Twins going home run-crazy in a world of home run-wackiness may have been the most significant early storyline for Minnesota, one of the team’s other early bright spots was the emergence of Martín Pérez. I was extremely skeptical of the decision to bring him in given his history with the Rangers, and thought the Twins ought to have been more aggressive in signing top free agents after clearing Joe Mauer’s salary.

In the early months of the season, my worries about Pérez seemed almost quaint. On May 23, at what I would call his high-water mark, the Twins outslugged the Angels, winning 16-7 and leaving Pérez with a 7-1 record and a 2.95 ERA. He was showing increased velocity. Pérez was never a big fastball pitcher, but his increased velocity from late 2018 — when he had an average velocity of at least 95 mph in four of his September relief appearances — continued in 2019 as a starter. But perhaps the most important factor in his early-season success was the development of his cut-fastball, a pitch he picked up on advice from his agent and with help from teammate Jake Odorizzi.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating and with his fancy new cutter, Pérez feasted on opposing batters in the late spring. Through the literal end of the season (June 20), Pérez threw 435 cutters, making it his most-used pitch, and held batters to a .164 BA and a .250 SLG. Against all other pitches, including his fastball, the league was hitting .301. 42% of his 74 strikeouts were thanks to his cutter. To put how well the cutter was performing in perspective, from 2007 on Mariano Rivera, who knows a bit about this pitch, had batters swing-and-miss on 10% of his cutters. Through mid-June, Pérez was at 15%. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Cardinals traded for Paul Goldschmidt this offseason, they added one of the most consistent and potent hitters in all of baseball to a team sorely in need of a jolt. As players go, Goldschmidt was about as safe a bet as there is. From 2013 to 2018, he had posted a wRC+ between 133 and 163 every season. His wasn’t a story of constant reinvention and tinkering: he was basically the same hitter every year. He walked a lot, struck out a lot, hit for power, and ran a high BABIP through a combination of his surprising speed and consistently above-average line drive rate.

If that’s what the Cardinals thought they were adding to the lineup with Goldschmidt, the early returns were disappointing. Fresh off of signing a five-year extension, Goldschmidt scuffled through the first months of the season. After starting off the season strong with a three-dinger game in his second game in a Cardinals uniform, he put up some alarmingly pedestrian numbers. He ran a 123 wRC+ for March and April, not up to his usual standards, and it went downhill from there. He declined to a 104 wRC+ in May and a shocking 57 wRC+ in June.

Alarmingly, it didn’t look like luck was to blame. Goldschmidt’s .302 BABIP was below his career average, but not concerningly so. His strikeouts were up a hair and his walks were down perhaps two hairs from his Arizona form, but nothing about that screamed regression. No, Goldschmidt’s problems boiled down primarily to one thing: he stopped hitting for power. In his last six seasons with the Diamondbacks, Goldschmidt had posted an ISO in the top 20 in baseball five times. The one year he didn’t, he propped up his value with a whopping 32 steals and career-best plate discipline.

With half of the 2019 season in the books, Goldschmidt’s ISO was below league average, leading to a 97 wRC+. Not just outside the top 20, not just below .200 — it was a puny .159, smack dab between Amed Rosario and Nick Ahmed. As for propping up his value with steals and plate discipline, he had zero steals and the worst K-BB% since his rookie year. Add it all up, and he’d been worth 0.7 WAR, less value than he’d accrued in his average *month* with the Diamondbacks. Read the rest of this entry »