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 »

Read the rest of this entry »

It looked as though Gleyber Torres’ number was up. One by one, from late March onward, the Yankees had sent every member of their expected 2019 starting lineup to the injured list at some point except Torres. From Didi Gregorius’ ulnar collateral ligament and Aaron Hicks’ back on March 28, through Miguel Andújar’s labrum, Giancarlo Stanton’s biceps, Gary Sánchez’s calf, Aaron Judge’s oblique, Luke Voit’s abdominal muscle, and Brett Gardner’s knee, injuries caused all of them to drop like flies. Multiple waves of reinforcements, the likes of Troy Tulowitzki, Clint Frazier, Kendrys Morales, Cameron Maybin, and Edwin Encarnación, met similar fates. When Torres left Tuesday night’s game against the Orioles in the middle of the third inning due to what was described as “core pain” — his second early departure in three nights — and returned to New York for testing, an IL stint appeared to be a foregone conclusion.

The Yankees had even gone so far as to summon infielder Thairo Estrada from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to Baltimore while Torres received an MRI, but he wasn’t needed. Via manager Aaron Boone, “[Torres] went through a battery of tests today and everything checked out OK. MRIs, testing again for a sports hernia, any strains, and everything turned out to be negative. Looking at him as day to day. I think he’s upbeat, he feels good, so he’s on his way back now, and he’ll travel with us to Toronto.”

The 22-year-old Torres has built upon a strong 2018 rookie campaign that itself included a 20-day stint on the disabled list for a right hip strain. His numbers — .281/.347/.505 with 23 homers, a 120 wRC+, and 2.3 WAR — are a near carbon copy of last year’s; he’s one homer shy of his total and his wRC+ is identical, while his WAR is already higher in 18 fewer games. He made the AL All-Star team for the second straight season, and even with a modest slump to start the second half, his line conceals slight improvements in his strikeout and walk rates as well as his defense. In the time between Tulowitzki’s calf strain and Gregorious’ return from Tommy John surgery, he more than held his own in a 64-game stint covering shortstop.

Torres has played a team-high 105 of the Yankees’ 114 games. He survived a couple of smaller injury scares, missing four games in May due to a bruised right elbow after being hit by a pitch and a couple in early June due to a sore left shoulder, the origin of which was unclear. He left Sunday night’s win over the Red Sox in the eighth inning due to the onset of this “core issue.” Via Yahoo Sports’ Mike Mazzeo, earlier in the game he had appeared to be running to first base with some amount of discomfort. He went to the hospital for tests, but according to the New York Daily News’ Kristie Ackert, Torres said that doctors had ruled out a sports hernia via ultrasound. He played all nine innings of Monday’s game against the Orioles in Baltimore, but he departed mid-game on Tuesday night, just after striking out in his 11th straight plate appearance without a hit. Read the rest of this entry »

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Hello, sports fans! Welcome to another edition of my Thursday chat. In 24 hours, I’ll be arriving in Boston for this week’s Saberseminar along with several of my colleagues, and if you’re in the area tomorrow night, we’d like you to join us for some snacks, adult beverages, and baseball chatter https://blogs.fangraphs.com/instagraphs/fangraphs-saberseminar-boston-…

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Now, on with the show…

12:04

Jay Jaffe: I don’t think one has to go strictly by a WAR leaderboard to choose an MVP. First off, we have multiple versions of WAR that have different inputs, both with regards to pitching models and defensive metrics, and each of them can help illuminate different aspects of what we’re trying to reward.

12:07

Jay Jaffe: Second, we can certainly bring some other stats and context there. WPA and clutch metrics can be part of the discussion. Absences due to injury (that player may have missed some games but been better on a prorated basis as far as WAR is concerned, or he may have come up big while a key teammate was injured), changes in role, particularly strong performances against a division rival or down the stretch… The bottom line is that we don’t need to be slaves to the decimals. The WAR leader is still gonna be the WAR leader whether or not he gets the hardware.

Read the rest of this entry »