In the third episode of Effectively Wild recorded live at Saber Seminar in Boston, Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley talk to Boston Globe sportswriter Alex Speier, author of the new book Homegrown: How the Red Sox Built a Champion From the Ground Up, about Boston’s championship core, the twists and turns of player development, why clubhouse chemistry is so unpredictable, player development before big data, how scouting and player development machines break, the future importance of player development, what’s next for the Red Sox, and more.

Audio intro: Derek and the Dominoes, "Keep on Growing"
Audio outro: Jason Isbell, "Grown"

Link to Saber Seminar site
Link to Alex’s book
Link to order The MVP Machine

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Bo Bichette fun facts vs. Travis Demeritte fun facts, Javier Báez batting left-handed against a position player and why the shift appears to be exempt from unwritten rules, and umpire perfect games, then (30:46) talk to The Athletic’s New York Yankees beat writer Lindsey Adler about how to explain the team’s injury-riddled yet somehow ultra-successful season.

Audio intro: The Pretenders, "Almost Perfect"
Audio interstitial: James Brown, "I Refuse to Lose"
Audio outro: Bing Crosby, "Out of Nowhere"

Link to Bichette fun facts
Link to story on Báez batting lefty
Link to video of Báez batting lefty
Link to diagram of shift on Báez
Link to Sam on unwritten rules and the shift
Link to Ben on umpire perfect games
Link to story on compassionate umpires
Link to Jay Jaffe on the Yankees
Link to Mike Petriello on the Yankees
Link to order The MVP Machine

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 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
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 Twitter Account
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 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

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Unlike the other five divisions in the majors, the National League Central has spent 2019 in a constant state of upheaval. Four of the five teams have spent multiple days in first place, with none of the quartet being able to hang on to and solidify their lead. The division’s doormat, the rapidly collapsing Pittsburgh Pirates, spent nearly 15% of the season in first or second place. The Cincinnati Reds, the only team that hasn’t led the Central (I’m not counting the tie the morning after Opening Day), have the division’s second-best Pythagorean record.

In this environment, one might have expected to see significant wheeling-and-dealing at the trade deadline. While most of the National League could rightly claim to be in the Wild Card race, the Central teams jockeying for October baseball had the benefit of also being in a tight race for the division. Being able to draw the straight or the flush, the NL Central teams with 2019 postseason aspirations were incentivized to make an aggressive play for a Zack Greinke or a Trevor Bauer.

And the teams’ closeness wasn’t just a creation of the projections, either. On the morning of July 31, the Cubs and Cardinals were tied for first-place; the Brewers were a game back. ZiPS largely agreed that the Cubs had the strongest roster, enough to make the North Siders the favorite, but hardly a prohibitive one:

What ought to have made making significant upgrades more important for the Cardinals and Brewers is that hidden in the projections were signs that the Cubs were more dangerous at the end of July than they had been earlier in the season. Dial back to May 15 and the ZiPS projections only saw the Cubs roster as that of a .531 team, with the Brewers at .525 and the Cardinals at .519. That’s just under a two-game spread from top to bottom over the course of a 162-game season. Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday, Jay Jaffe examined the terrible injury luck the Yankees have suffered through this season. Twenty-five players have been sent to the injured list—with 17 active stints—for a combined 1,748 days lost to injuries. Still, despite being so banged up, the Yankees are a virtual lock to make the playoffs as the American League East champion. A big reason why they’ve posted the best record in baseball is the unexpected contributions from their replacement players. The most impressive breakout has been from Gio Urshela. The 2.4 WAR he’s accumulated this year is the third highest mark on the Yankees. For a player who was seen as a glove-first utility man at one point, it’s been a remarkable transformation.

Yesterday, Urshela launched two home runs against the Blue Jays, his fourth and fifth in his last three games. That gives him nine home runs since the All-Star break, almost tripling his season total. Since the midseason break, few hitters have been as hot as Urshela. He’s posted a .380/.402/.848 slash line in the month since the All-Star game, a 221 wRC+ that ranks second in the majors. This current hot streak surpasses the good run he had to start the year.

Through the end of May, Urshela had posted a .338/.390/.482 slash line and a 131 wRC+, both excellent marks. But he accumulated just 14 extra-base hits in 154 plate appearances during that early season bender. Since the All-Star break, he has 19 extra-base hits in a little more than half the plate appearances. His isolated power has ballooned to a ridiculous .468! In the minors, the highest ISO he had ever posted was .267 in fewer than 100 plate appearances in Double-A back in 2014. He had never hit for much power until this season — and only just recently. Read the rest of this entry »

The other night, I was texting a friend of mine while simultaneously running one of my many queries on Baseball Savant. My “trivia” prompt was pretty simple: “Hitter with the most home runs on pitches outside the zone. Go.” His response was five words. “Javy is the obvious guess.”

Javier Báez was indeed the correct answer. The Cubs’ shortstop, who is known for his free-swinging tendency, has left the yard 28 times this season. Seven of those pitches weren’t even in the strike zone. Only seven hitters this season have at least five out-of-zone homers:

The names on this list are pretty interesting, and as you might expect, there are some similarities between them. Since Báez was the “obvious guess,” it made sense to consider whether most of these players were of a similar free-swinging variety. Generally speaking, they are. Six of the seven names on the list have an O-Swing rate above the league-average mark (31.4%), but what’s fascinating about the rest of this group is that Báez still sticks out, even if he’s not an outlier by the mathematical definition: Read the rest of this entry »

There’s an easy complaint that baseball fans the world over lob at analytical, number-driven sorts like me. “Hey nerd,” it starts. “Baseball is played on the field, and your numbers can’t measure heart and smarts.” The nerd part is constant, the things the numbers can’t measure varied. That complaint misses the mark, because no one loves baseball for the numbers without also loving it for the viewing pleasure. Appreciating the statistics doesn’t have to detract from how fun it is to watch a pickle or to see a beautifully executed tag.

While that complaint is mostly off the mark, it does get one thing about statistics right. There are some things that you simply don’t need a big sample size to know. Want to know if a player is adept at hitting the ball the other way with two strikes and runners in scoring position? You’ll need a sample that could blot out the sun. Want to know if a pitcher throws 100 mph? One or two pitches will do. Not everything needs to be regressed to the mean, and not everything needs thousands of data points to be valid.

Here’s merely one example: Emmanuel Clase has thrown 38 pitches in the majors. All of them have been this week. He has one strikeout, one walk, and nine batters faced. We’re nowhere near any of these numbers stabilizing, nowhere near his strikeout rate or walk rate or BABIP being meaningful. Despite all that, I can say this with certainty: Emmanuel Clase has a chance to be one of the best relievers in baseball, and he might be the most uncomfortable at-bat in the majors already.

Why? Well, Clase is a two-pitch reliever — 80% fastballs and 20% sliders. Look at pitch classifications, and the fastball usually turns up as a four-seamer. He averages 99 mph with it and has topped out at around 102 in the minors, which is already special enough, but that’s not even the interesting part. You see, it’s not a four-seam fastball, at least not in the way you think of that pitch. It’s not a fading, rising missile that explodes through the top of the strike zone. No, Clase throws a cutter, a 100-mile-an-hour optical illusion that bores in on the bats of lefties and the very souls of righties. One cutter was all I needed to see to know that I’m going to enjoy watching Clase for as long as he pitches. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Saturday night against the Padres in Los Angeles, five days past his 25th birthday, Walker Buehler authored the most dominant start of his young career. With a fastball that touched 99 mph and a slider and cutter that continually befuddled hitters, the Dodgers righty faced 31 batters, struck out 15 of them, walked none, and yielded just five hits. Only one of those hits was of consequence, namely Manuel Margot’s eighth-inning pinch-homer, which kept Buehler from throwing a complete-game shutout; he and the Dodgers had to settle for a 4-1 win. Even allowing for the fact that the Padres own the majors’ highest strikeout rate (26.0%) and weren’t fielding a modern day Murderer’s Row, Buehler’s performance was a thing to behold.

So, behold!

While the major league strikeout rate is again at an all-time high (22.8%), Buehler’s start was just the sixth of the season in which a pitcher struck out 15 batters. He’s the only pitcher with multiple 15-K games, as he whiffed 16 but allowed two solo homers (from among just three hits) against the Rockies on June 21; he didn’t need more than 111 pitches in either start. Here’s the complete set: Read the rest of this entry »

Before the season started, expectations for Jack Flaherty were pretty high. After posting a 3.86 FIP, a 3.34 ERA, and 2.4 WAR in 151 innings in his first full season in 2018, projections expected Flaherty to be even better with a 3.74 FIP. After a rough start in Seattle on July 2 in which Flaherty failed to make it out of the fifth inning by walking four and giving up four runs including a homer, the season looked to be a step back rather than a step forward. With a 4.82 FIP and 4.90 ERA on the year, Flaherty’s stats represented a half season of below-average numbers.

Since then, he’s been one of the best pitchers in baseball.

As for what happened, here’s a brief comparison of his numbers over the last month versus the first three months of the season.

We can see from the BABIP and LOB% that there’s probably some luck going on here with the sub-1.00 ERA, and even if there’s a little bit of luck on the home run rate, his 2.20 FIP wouldn’t be impacted that much. A decrease in homers might be luck evening out, but a big increase in strikeouts while seeing the walks go down shows that there’s clearly more than chance that’s pushing Flaherty to great results. It’s not the opponents either, as two of his six starts have come against the two best offenses in the game in the Astros and Dodgers, with the Cubs boasting a top-six offense as well. The biggest change is more fully embracing his best pitch, the slider. Read the rest of this entry »