I’ve spent the past 10 days in Busan covering the WBSC U-18 World Cup. You can check out some of my write-ups here, here and here. I was going to write up on several prospects in this post, but I felt like Japanese right-handed pitcher Yasunobu Okugawa, who struck out 18 Canadian hitters in seven innings in his September 5 start, warranted his own article.

Yasunobu Okugawa (Japan), RHP

If I had to choose the best prospect of the tournament, there’s no doubt it would be Okugawa. The 18-year-old righty made headlines earlier this season by leading his high school to the Koshien finals and hitting 95.7 mph. Along with Roki Sasaki, Okugawa was one of the players most sought after by major league scouts on the Japan team. He pitched against Canada on the first day of the Super Rounds on September 5, and he delivered on the hype, and then some.

Okugawa has long legs and a slightly skinny frame that also has an athletic look. He is not maxed out yet, but I don’t see him adding too much to his frame. He has a high, three-quarter arm slot and does an excellent job repeating the same arm action on different pitches. His arm speed is basically identical on his fastballs and offspeed pitches. He has a long stride and keeps his body in line into landing. From leg kick to foot strike, Okugawa does not have much wasted movement – he lines his body well directly to the home plate. Unlike many young pitchers at the tournament, Okugawa was consistent in finding his release point and was not prone to opening his shoulders too early. There’s a bit of effort to his release, but it’s not much of a concern for me. He does not have much of a leg kick when pitching out of the stretch, but the rest of the delivery looked consistent with his usual windup. Read the rest of this entry »

In Steph Curry’s junior season, his Davidson Wildcats played a non-conference game against Loyola Maryland. Curry led the nation in scoring at the time, and as expected, Davidson rolled that night. But Curry himself didn’t score a point. Loyola’s coach, Jimmy Patsos, instructed his players to double-team Curry up and down the court. So, Curry stood in the corner with two Greyhounds next to him as his teammates played 4-on-3 and won by 30.

After the game, Patsos more or less copped to the farce. Defending his tactics, he asked: “Anybody else ever hold him scoreless? I’m a history major. [Are people] going to remember that we held him scoreless or we lost by 30?”

Whether all that makes Patsos infamous, cynical, or pathetic is up to your interpretation. Regardless, he’s right about one thing: you can generate attention in defeat, even humiliating defeat, so long as you lose in notable fashion.

It’s a lesson the Seattle Mariners reinforced over the weekend. On the surface, Sunday’s matchup between Seattle and Houston looked as lopsided on paper as a major league game can. The Astros are perhaps baseball’s best team; the Mariners may lose 100 games. Cy Young contender Gerrit Cole was on the mound for Houston, opposed by former Cy Young winner but current-6.00-ERA-holder Félix Hernández. The Astros had already defeated Seattle 15 times in 16 tries. Vegas handicappers set one of the highest lines I can ever remember seeing for a major league contest.

This being baseball, anything can happen on any given day, and as it turned out, 35,000 Houstonians saw a pretty spectacular version of “anything:” the most lopsided ballgame in recent memory. Read the rest of this entry »

At the All-Star Break, the St. Louis Cardinals were an even 44-44 with an 11% shot at the division and a 21% chance at the playoffs. Since the All-Star Break, the team is an NL-best 37-18, just a half-game back of the Houston Astros during that time. The team has gotten great individual performances from Jack Flaherty, whose 3.0 second-half WAR trails only Justin Verlander among pitchers, and Kolten Wong, whose 2.2 WAR in the second half puts him in the top 20 for position players. The team has enjoyed a very good bullpen all season long, and it ranks fourth in baserunning, but on its face, this Cardinals team doesn’t have the look of a 90-plus win division winner. Sometimes a solid defense gets overlooked.

There are currently 47 players in the big leagues with at least four wins on the season. None play for the Cardinals. And St. Louis doesn’t really make up for a lack of star-power with high-end depth, either. Of the 102 players with at least three wins on the season, the Cardinals have just three (Wong, Flaherty, and Paul DeJong). Individually, they might look like the roughly average team they were at the All-Star Break. Even collectively, the numbers don’t impress. As a team, their 99 wRC+ from non-pitchers ranks 17th. Including their good baserunning numbers only ups their offensive rank to 16th in baseball. On the pitching side, their 9.6 WAR from their starters ranks 14th while their bullpen, with the unknown Giovanny Gallegos as their best pitcher, does better at seventh with 4.6 WAR, though the bullpen fails to make a dent overall; the staff still sits in 14th place.

The Cardinals have a thoroughly average offense and an average staff, but are currently projected to win 90 games and only need to go 9-10 the rest of the way to do so. We might chalk some of this up to luck, but their Pythagorean record based on run-differential equals their actual record, and their BaseRuns record is only two games behind their wins in the standings. That means that of the roughly 10 wins that would need to turn to losses to make the Cardinals a .500 team, only a couple have to do with sequencing and getting better results with runners on base than when the bases are empty. 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 — Chance Adams, Domingo German, and Nick Pivetta — on how they learned and developed their curveballs.

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Chance Adams, New York Yankees

“When I was in college my pitching coach was Wes Johnson, who is now with the Twins. He taught me my curve. For awhile it was kind of slurve-slider, then it went to a curveball, and now it’s kind of slurvy again. But it’s interesting, because when I got [to Dallas Baptist University] it was, ‘OK, I throw it like this,’ and he was like, ‘Well, have you tried spiking it?’ My curve was moving, but it wasn’t sharp, and I was like, ‘No, not really.’ Spiking it was uncomfortable at first, but after I got used to it, it was pretty interesting. It started moving better.

“My pointer finger is off the seam, with just a little pressure on the ball. Wes said to try spiking it and see what feels good, so I worked on it with this much spike, that much spike. Even now, the spike kind of varies for me; I’ll move it back or forward for comfortability, but also movement-wise. Sometimes it’s sharper when it’s more spiked. It kind of depends on the day, and if I’m controlling it or not. Read the rest of this entry »

At the end of August, the Philadelphia Inquirer suggested that Mets rookie sensation Pete Alonso and Phillies first baseman Rhys Hoskins could be the next generation’s greatest player rivalry in the NL East. At that point, Alonso was slugging a hundred points higher than Hoskins and had almost 20 more home runs on the season. Unlike Alonso, Hoskins regularly slips away from the Phillies lineup, disappearing for weeks at a time: There’s streaky, there’s bad luck, and then there’s hitting under .230 in the clean-up spot for three months.

Meanwhile, Alonso broke the Mets’ single-season home run record on the first pitch he saw against Yu Darvish on August 27. If all Alonso had done was break the record, the only history we’d have to mention is from the recent past: Carlos Beltran and Todd Hundley held the previous Mets record, 41, having set it in 2006 and 1996, respectively. But because of Alonso’s rookie status, his accomplishment is made even more distinct.

You only get one season to set rookie records — or set records as a rookie — and through that slim window, Alonso has slipped his 6-foot-3, 245-pound frame. This is due in part to his classification by baseball scientists as a “pure hitter.” Determining what is meant by this term usually leads to a loudly shouted or frantically typed mention of historic figures like Ted Williams or Joe DiMaggio. The eyes of baseball puritans light up when talk begins of Alonso “pure-hitting” like sluggers did back in the good old days, when pure-hitting was America’s pastime, along with losing everything on the stock market and the rampant abuse of benzedrine.

Anyone who has swung a bat can tell you what a pure hit feels like: when timing, mechanics, and strength align to allow the barrel of the bat to connect with the sweet spot of the ball. But being a pure hitter means doing all that more than once. To make the impression of a Pete Alonso, you’ve got to keep doing it within the span of one season — your first season facing big-league pitching. Alonso is doing just that, and you have to go back pretty far to the find the last guy who did: Johnny Rizzo, in 1938 for the Pirates — a man who gives us a historical post to which we can tie Alonso’s accomplishments, while also viewing them through the filter of… well, being on the Mets. Read the rest of this entry »

After frittering away what was once an 11 1/2-game lead over the Indians, the Twins have reestablished firm control of the AL Central race, but this weekend, their hopes to play deep into October took a hit when Michael Pineda was suspended for 60 games for violating MLB’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. Pineda tested positive for hydrochlorothiazide, a diuretic on the league’s banned substances list, and while his suspension was reduced from the standard 80 games upon appeal, he won’t be available for the playoffs, making this one of the most impactful recent Joint Drug suspensions.

Pineda’s suspension was announced amid a three-game series between the division rivals. On Friday night, he held the Indians to one run over six innings while striking out a season-high 10; he left the game carrying a 2-1 lead, but the Indians tied the game in the eighth and won 6-2 in 11 innings. The next day, MLB announced the suspension, and while a fired-up Twins team rallied late to win 5-3 and cut the team’s magic number to clinch the division to 14, they lost the rubber match on Sunday, 5-2.

In a statement released by the Major League Baseball Players Association, 30-year-old Pineda said in part:

“I mistakenly took a medication that was given to me by a close acquaintance, who obtained it over-the-counter and assured me it would safely help me manage my weight. I ingested a few of these pills without the consent of the Twins’ training staff. Testing revealed trace elements of a substance called Hydrochlorothiazide, which is a banned diuretic under baseball’s testing program.”

Hydrochlorothiazide is a medication used to treat high blood pressure and fluid retention (edema) by producing more urine, which helps the body get rid of excess sodium and water. It’s on the list of banned substances because it is often abused as a masking agent, which helps to to conceal the use of anabolic steroids by reducing their concentration in urine due to the increase in volume. Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox parting ways with Dave Dombrowski — last night’s announcement came at the bewitching hour — is somewhat surprising. Then again, it really isn’t. Questions about his future have been circulating for a few months, and while a death knell has yet to sound on Boston’s season, any hopes of a postseason berth are now on life support. Last October is but a memory, and as the saying goes, “What have you done for me lately?”

To say it’s been a disappointing season for the defending World Series champions would be an understatement. But that’s only part of the reason Dombrowski, the team’s president of baseball operations since August 2015, was let go. What matters is the future, and much as when Ben Cherington was jettisoned four years ago, the time had come for new leadership. For now, assistant GMs Brian O’Halloran, Eddie Romero Jr., and Zack Scott, along with Senior Vice President Raquel Ferreira, are expected to fill that role on an interim basis.

The extent to which Dombrowski and Red Sox ownership were no longer on the same page is unknown as of this moment. More may be learned when the involved parties address the media (though the team has elected not to hold a press conference regarding the decision), but even then questions will remain unanswered. In all likelihood, we’ll be left to speculate as to whether loggerheads had been reached with the important near-term personnel decisions that will shape the team’s future. Based on his track record, Dombrowski would presumably be averse to anything resembling a rebuild, while his two predecessors — Cherington and Theo Epstein — placed a high premium on player development and building from within. That divergence is reflected in Boston’s farm system rankings; the Red Sox system is currently dead last. Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Jay Jaffe: Hello and good afternoon! Welcome to my first chat in this new time slot — real life events (mainly my daughter starting preschool) have necessitated changing from my Thursday slot, and thankfully, Dan Szymborski was able to accommodate. You’ll still get the same artisanal blend of sense and nonsense as I usually dish out.

12:02

Jay Jaffe: I’ve got a thing in the pipeline today about Michael Pineda’s suspension and its impact on the Twins. And now, onto the questions…

12:03

Jay Jaffe: That is a particularly weak move as it leaves Alex Cora and the players to answer questions without knowing all that went into the decision or what the future holds

12:04

Jay Jaffe: Well, I suspect that J.D. Martinez will opt out and that the Sox might decide that their chances of re-signing Betts are better if they haven’t committed $100M+ to him. Beyond that… they’re going to have to get creative and hope that some of their young players pan out.

Read the rest of this entry »

“I don’t do anything with my life except romanticize and decay with indecision.” – Allen Ginsberg

There’s no team harder for me to get a read on than the Kansas City Royals. The afterglow of the 2015 World Series has long faded, and attendance is falling back towards levels you might expect for a baseball team playing in Florida. Given the team’s inconsistent statements concerning the organization’s present — and the accompanying moves in harmony with that theme — I’m not sure whether Kansas City is incompetently rebuilding, incompetently retooling, or incompetently competing. Short of a sudden change in organizational focus, the Royals’ main task is to mark the time between the end of one Pat Mahomes season and the start of the next one.

The Setup

After two years of treading water post-championship, 2018 was the year that everything came crashing down. That that season was going to be a dreadful one was largely preordained, prophesied by the team’s contract situations. After winning 80 games in 2017, players worth more than half of the team’s WAR (13.0 wins out of 24.7 total) hit free agency, and there was little hope of one of the league’s weakest farm systems or a fat ownership wallet making good on those losses. Mike Moustakas returned to Kansas City after receiving scant interest in free agency and Alcides Escobar was re-signed for no fathomable reason, but there was little reason to believe that these moves were enough to keep the team wild card pretenders into August.

The 2018 Royals finished with 104 losses and it seemed as if they were finally ready to embrace a full-blown rebuilding process. After all, the Royals spent the summer trading most of their veterans who could fetch some kind of player in return; Moustakas, Kelvin Herrera, Jon Jay, Lucas Duda, and Drew Butera were all dealt. A rebuilding team hardly needs a dedicated pinch-runner and Terrance Gore was traded to the Cubs. Even Escobar started to have his playing time curtailed in just his third consecutive year of near replacement-level production. Sure, players like Alex Gordon and Ian Kennedy stayed put, but they were largely immovable anyway. Read the rest of this entry »