Reid Detmers, right?

On Wednesday evening, the Angels’ 24-year-old lefty had arguably his worst start of the season so far: 5 1/3 innings against the Rays, with seven hits and two runs (one earned) allowed, and only four strikeouts. Worst start of the season so far. One earned run.

After Wednesday night’s action, Detmers led all qualified major league starters in FIP, at 1.61, and shared the lead in pitching WAR. His 1.19 ERA was seventh in the majors. And his success has come against reasonable competition; in four starts, all Angels wins, he’s faced the Rays, the Red Sox (twice), and the Orioles. That first start in Baltimore came in Game 3 of the Angels’ season; in Games 1 and 2, Baltimore had smeared Patrick Sandoval and Griffin Canning all over the park like mosquito viscera on a truck driver’s windshield. Detmers held the Orioles hatchlings to a single run over five innings. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things, where I highlight some strange and amusing happenings from the last week. We’re getting into the rhythm of the season now; 20 games in, you start to get a feel for how watching your team will feel this year. Are they going to be exasperating? Do they look like a fun group? Have a few new players completely changed the vibe from last year? Are they hitting so many homers that they had to make a new dong bong homer hose?

That’s part of the fun of watching baseball, in my opinion. Playoff odds are one thing, but how you feel watching your guys get from point A to point B matters a lot more in the long run. If you’re reading this article, I’m willing to bet that you’re watching dozens of hours of baseball throughout the year – perhaps even hundreds. The playoffs for your team might last 15 hours of game time. The little things are the point, and there were some great little things this week. As always, I’d like to thank Zach Lowe, whose basketball column inspired this one in both name and content. Let’s get going.
Read the rest of this entry »

Three out of every four FanGraphs and RotoGraphs staff members picked the Twins to make the playoffs, with 18 of us predicting them to win the AL Central. (Yes, I was one of them.) And who could blame us? Sure, Minnesota lost Sonny Gray and Kenta Maeda from last year’s division-winning team, but the Twins would also get a full season of Chris Paddack, a revamped and improved bullpen, and — hopefully — a full year of Byron Buxton, Carlos Correa, and Royce Lewis anchoring what looked like a strong lineup.

So, naturally, those plans went awry almost right away. The bullpen has been ravaged by injuries, Lewis hurt himself on Opening Day and will be out for yet another extended stretch, and Correa, who was off to a strong start after recovering from his plantar fasciitis that bugged him all of last year, is now on the IL with a strained oblique. Not helping matters is that Buxton isn’t hitting, striking out 36.1% of the time with an anemic wRC+ of 51. The injuries to Lewis and Correa (not to mention Max Kepler, though his stay looks like it’ll be for the minimum 10 days) have eroded Minnesota’s depth, and Buxton’s poor performance is emblematic of the lack of production from the rest of the lineup.

Entering Thursday, the 6-11 Twins had the league’s third-worst wRC+, at 80, and that’s with Correa’s 165 wRC+ in 44 plate appearances. Young lefties Edouard Julien (99 wRC+) and Alex Kirilloff (151 wRC+) are doing their part, which may make you think (as I did when I started researching this column) that the Twins are awfully exposed against left-handed pitching. But they’re actually doing fine (95 wRC+) against southpaws, with both of those lefties beating up on same-handed pitching, albeit in small samples. Additionally, Buxton’s struggles have not carried over to his 13 plate appearances against lefties, and Ryan Jeffers and Manuel Margot are also hammering them.

You probably know where this is heading, then. The Twins are horrible against righties (76 wRC+). In fact, the bumbling White Sox (73 wRC+) are the only team that has been worse against righties than Minnesota. Buxton has a 31 wRC+ across 48 plate appearances vs. righties, and Willi Castro’s 50 wRC+ against righties would look good only in comparison to the marks of some of his teammates and because it is significantly better than his -24 wRC+ vs. lefties. Meanwhile, Margot, Christian Vázquez, and Kepler have all been essentially useless against righty pitching, with wRC+ numbers below zero.

So, what exactly can the Twins do? It’s an uninspiring answer, but not much. Correa and Lewis won’t be back anytime soon. Buxton is going to be given every chance to swing his way out of his slump, and as long as he stays healthy, the Twins should be cautiously optimistic that he’ll turn things around. Aside from that, their best hope is that Kepler will be much more productive when he returns from his knee contusion, which may well have affected his hitting. Matt Wallner was optioned to Triple-A after starting his season terribly (2-for-25 with 17 strikeouts), and surely there’s hope that he’ll come back looking more like the guy who had a 144 wRC+ in 254 plate appearances last year. Otherwise, there won’t really be any saviors rising up from within. Austin Martin is already up in the majors, and Brooks Lee hurt his back and has yet to play a minor league game this year. The Twins will have to make due with what they have until guys get healthy or they find a way to swing a trade or two sometime this summer. In the meantime, it’s not looking great.

Meet the Mets’ Breakout Reliever

Early season leaderboards are always fun, and in just about all cases they shouldn’t be viewed as indicative of what’s to come for the remaining 90% of the season. But that doesn’t mean we can’t take note of surprising players at or near the top of them. So, who leads all relievers in strikeout percentage? The resurgent Craig Kimbrel? The hellacious Mason Miller? Nope, atop the list is Reed Garrett, who didn’t even make the Mets’ Opening Day roster. He wasn’t even one of the last cuts; he was optioned on March 15, a full two weeks before the season started. But since getting the call on April 1 he’s been nearly unhittable, with a ridiculously low wOBA allowed of .177.

Garrett, 31, put up a 7.11 ERA in 44.1 MLB innings before this year, and there wasn’t really anything that we were publicly aware of that made anyone think a breakout was coming. But it’s not hard to see where Garrett’s success has come now that we’ve got the data. He’s deemphasizing his two fastballs, throwing his four-seamer and sinker a combined 26% of the time, with his sweeper, splitter, and slider giving hitters fits.

The splitter — which he’s nearly tripled in usage since 2022 — has been especially lethal, with two-thirds of swings against the pitch coming up empty. The radically different pitch mix makes for changes that look sticky and should allow Garrett to continue his rapid ascent up the bullpen hierarchy. Once viewed as an up-and-down pitcher by virtue of having an option remaining, he looks here to stay.

Leiter Gets Lit Up in Poor Debut

Well, not every MLB debut can go swimmingly. Jack Leiter’s first game as a Ranger started off well enough, with two strikeouts in a scoreless first. But the wheels came off soon after; he allowed four runs in the second and three more in the third and his day ended after just 11 outs.

To my eye, the stuff looked just fine, with his fastball up to 98 mph and averaging 96, but he just didn’t have feel for his offspeed pitches. Hitters really weren’t fooled overall. His 28% CSW rate was right at league average, but it was only 21% on his curveball, slider, and changeup, which made up 47 of his 85 pitches.

Whether Leiter sticks around in the rotation remains to be seen. The Rangers already have six healthy starters as it is, and Cody Bradford’s IL stay should be a short one. And let’s not forget that Tyler Mahle, Max Scherzer, and Jacob deGrom are all lurking for returns later in the season as well.

There are a couple records I love so much that I don’t actually listen to them very often. I know that sounds weird, but I’m afraid of losing what makes them special. I’ve gotten sick of records before, listened to them so often that they’ve completely lost their ability to surprise me and started feeling flat. Some music is too important to risk it. I don’t ever want to live in a world where I’m not completely dumbstruck by the opening chords of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. That would be an unimaginable loss. So I only listen to it a couple times a year. I’m not a hoarder in other aspects my life, but this particular calculus seems worthwhile to me.

I tend to think a lot about the lasting power of music. I spent Sunday in a recording studio in New Jersey. To nobody’s surprise, I was the member of the band who was slowing down the mixing process to ask whether we could throw some tremolo on the lead guitar track, or turn down the reverb on the vocals in “Rat Czar.” (Technically, the song is called “Rat Czar Czar,” and it takes the form of a job posting. I wrote it when New York City announced that it was hiring a Rat Czar to eradicate the rats. I figured that the rats must also be hiring a Rat Czar Czar, whose job was to eradicate the Rat Czar.) I understand that no song is going to be perfect, but I just didn’t want to wish I could change it every time I heard it. I love live music, but to me personally, records are just that: the official record of a song. They’re forever. For that reason, I was all over it when Eric Nusbaum tweeted a question: How many times do you think the average Major League Baseball player has heard the song “Centerfield” by John Fogerty? Eric is the editor-in-chief of Seattle Met and the author of the fantastic book Stealing Home. Like a vulture, I immediately swooped in and asked Eric if I could steal his idea. Like a busy editor-in-chief of a magazine, he very graciously let me have it.

“Centerfield” is ubiquitous in baseball, and its digital handclap intro is also a ballpark staple. John Fogerty is a musical legend, the lead singer and songwriter of the iconic Creedence Clearwater Revival. The song is the title track off of his comeback 1985 solo album, and it was an immediate hit. He’s played it in center field at Dodger Stadium, and at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cooperstown (on a baseball-shaped electric guitar that was very definitely plugged into absolutely nothing). I’ve heard it at big league ballparks, and I remember hearing it over the press box speakers during regionals when I was 9 years old. “Centerfield” has been able to stick around for so long because it walks a very fine line. It’s kitschy, but not tiresome. It’s catchy, but it’s not gouge-your-eyes-out-because-that’s-the-only-way-it’ll-ever-leave-your-head catchy. It’s too innocuous to reach the heights of CCR’s best work, but that also makes it very appropriate for a public setting. For the most part, people don’t groan when they hear it; if they notice it at all, they just get nostalgic for the ballpark.

Naturally, there’s no actual way to answer this question precisely. It’s a Fermi problem, which means that the best we can do is make a good estimate. As Caroline Chen wrote in The New York Times Magazine, “The goal here isn’t knowing the exact number but rather being able to estimate the right order of magnitude using nothing but common sense.” Now that I’ve stolen the question from Eric, it’s time to try solving it. As I was finishing this article up yesterday, I circled back with Eric and asked him if he had a guess: he went with 600. JJ Cooper, editor-in-chief of Baseball America, made an extremely thoughtful estimate and came up with 1,000, but that was only for American-born players.

My estimate is made up of a bunch of sub-estimates. I tried to approximate how many games the average player spent at each level of baseball, from little league up to the majors. Then I estimated what percentage of games the song was actually played in. I started with data from our major and minor league leaderboards and pulled in data from various sources along the way. I also consulted with some of my more knowledgeable colleagues in order to come up with estimates for how often the song is played at each level of baseball. What follows are just my best guesses. I encourage you to use the comments section at the bottom to quibble with my estimates, to make your own, or just to get in some savage burns about my musical taste, if that happens to be your thing.

Major Leagues

In 2023, 1,457 players saw time in the majors. According to my rough calculations, they had to that point averaged 4.83 big league seasons. The average team plays 28.13 spring training games, 162 regular season games, and 1.25 playoff games, for a total of 191.38. I’m not knocking off any games to account for the short 2020 season, because this is a theoretical exercise, and because I’m so sick of factoring that into all my non-theoretical research.

“Centerfield” is played before every game in both Seattle and Atlanta. That represents 6.67% of all regular season games, and it’s also the reason Eric thought to ask this question in the first place. He brought his kids to a Mariners game, and the song came on while the Guardians were taking batting practice. Although it’s not an every-game staple in the other 28 parks, it definitely gets played a fair amount of the time, whether during batting practice, between innings, or in other mid-game pauses. I’ll estimate that it’s played at 12% of all big league games.

4.83 seasons x 191.38 games x 12% of games = 110.9

Minor Leagues

I calculated 4.45 seasons in the minors for the average player. The length of the minor league seasons varies by level, but between spring training, the regular season, playoffs, and fall leagues, I estimate 80 games per player each year.

I also estimate that “Centerfield” gets played a lot more often in the minors than it does in the majors. By design, the minor league experience is sillier and kitschier than the major league experience. Eric Longenhagen told me, “There are definitely affiliates in the minors who play that song every night, and their guys hear it 80 times a year. It’s played in every game at Scottsdale Stadium during Fall League.” I’m going with 40% of the time. As Eric said, “All you need is a person of a certain age on the Aux cord.”

4.45 seasons x 85 game x 40% of games = 142.4

College

According to Spotrac’s MLB college tracker, there are 566 active players who attended college, so we’ll call that 39% of all players. Nearly all MLB players who went to college played there for three years, and last year’s College World Series participants averaged 56.5 total games. We’ll bump it up to 70, because MLB-bound players were probably good enough to get invited to play in summer leagues like the Cape Cod League.

I estimate that “Centerfield” is played at 42% of college games, slightly higher than in the minors. I was going to put it at 40%, but Michael Baumann, our resident college baseball expert, thought the number was likely a bit higher. Baumann also had a surprisingly generous opinion of the song. He acknowledged that he’s heard it too many times and that it’s one of Fogerty’s minor works — it ain’t no “Fortunate Son” — but it doesn’t drive him up the wall either. “Which is no small feat for a song about sports,” he said. “Given the choice between spending eternity in a hell in which ‘Centerfield’ is the only music and listening to ‘The Hockey Song’ by Stompin’ Tom Connors even once all the way through, I’d pick the former and not think twice.” I had actually never heard of “The Hockey Song” until Baumann mentioned it, and after I finish writing this sentence, I’m going to look it up on YouTube and give it a try.

And I’m back. Holy God. I made it 12 seconds before I had to stop.

39% of players x 3 seasons x 70 games x 42% of games = 34.4

International Players

From this point on, we’re in the realm of high school and little league ball. That means we need to start drawing a distinction between American-born players and international players. I just can’t imagine that kids in the Dominican Republic or Venezuela are hearing much John Fogerty. For the last several years, MLB.com has published the percentage of international players on opening day rosters. It has stayed right around 28.5%. We’ll assume those international players heard the song twice at some point or another before arriving in the states.

28.5% of players x 2 = 0.6

High School and Travel Ball

First, we’re starting with the 71.5% of American-born players. According to Baseball America’s rankings, the top 50 high school teams averaged 32.74 games in 2023. Presumably, players who were good enough to end up as big leaguers also attended some showcases and played travel or American Legion ball, so we’ll bump it up to 52 games. We’ll also estimate 3.5 varsity seasons. After all, these are future big leaguers; most of them were probably insufferably cool four-year starters in high school.

I’m estimating that “Centerfield” is only played at 10% of high school games. Eric Nusbaum’s high school played it before every game, but most high schools either don’t have a PA at their field, don’t play music at their games, or just specifically choose not to play novelty songs from the 1980s at their games. Some of us didn’t even have a baseball field in high school.

71.5% of players x 3.5 years x 52 games x 10% = 13.0

Little Leagues

For our purposes, little league runs from ages 9 to 15, as it’s unlikely there’s themed music playing during coach-pitch games of 8-year-olds. (Note: This is for all little leagues and not just Little League, because plenty of kids play in Cal Ripken or the various other youth leagues that are not affiliated with Little League International.) For those seven years, we’ll estimate 25 games played. That’s a long little league season, but consider the fact that most future-MLB players probably made it to the all-star tournaments that can extend the season for weeks.

I’m estimating that 8% of little league games featured “Centerfield.” I’m sure that some leagues play music all the time and that “Centerfield” is a staple for them. However, in general, most little league games don’t feature music until you get to those all-star tournaments.

71.5% of players x 7 years x 25 games x 8% = 10

Everywhere Else

There are plenty of other places a player could hear the song. Those who listen to classic rock or country could hear it on the radio somewhat regularly. Besides, among the 1,500 MLB players, hasn’t there got to be just one Fogerty superfan who finds “Centerfield” at the very top of his Spotify Wrapped every season? I say there is, and for facial hair reasons, I’ll go ahead and assume that it’s Andrew Chafin. However, there’s no way there’s more than one MLB player who’s listening to this song that frequently by choice. They just hear it too often at work.

The song has also been in plenty of movies and TV shows. Most recently, it soundtracked a particularly memorable scene in Ted Lasso. I estimate the average player has encountered the song in a non-baseball context 10 times.

Some American-born players probably heard it during practices and events. They certainly heard it when they were growing up and attending professional games as a fan. Combining all of these edge cases, I estimate they’ve heard it 32.9 times.

And that’s all our variables. Here’s one last table that adds up all our estimates.

Well, there’s our answer. According to these estimates, the average major league player has heard “Centerfield” 354.2 times. If we just limit ourselves to American-born players, that number grows to 418.3.

I suspect that number will feel way too low for many people. If you grew up hearing this song at every single little league, high school, or big league game, your guess was probably closer to the 600 or 1,000 that Eric and JJ went with. I’m sure there are some big leaguers who have heard it that many times (not to mention Andrew Chafin, whose number might well be in the millions). But we also need to balance them out with the American-born players who rarely heard it and the international players who might not have heard it at all until they arrived in the United States.

Of course, there’s an even trickier question waiting for us: How many times do you think the average player has actively noticed that they were hearing this song? For those of us who go to the ballpark with any frequency at all, it quickly starts to blend in with the rest of the ballpark noise. For someone who spends their life at the ballpark, that probably happens much faster. I don’t even know how we would go about estimating the answer to that question, so we’re stuck with the first one. Regardless, however you feel about my estimate or about “Centerfield” itself, I’m sure we can agree on one thing: It’s a whole lot better than “The Hockey Song.”

Many thanks to Eric Nusbaum, without whom this article wouldn’t exist, and JJ Cooper, without whom it would be much worse.

Dating back to August 31, 2023, the Padres have the best record in baseball. They have the second-highest run differential in that time, trailing only the Brewers, against whom they just took two out of three on the road. To be clear, these are fun facts for the jumbotron rather than meaningful or predictive metrics. After all, the Padres of late 2023 look quite a bit different from the Padres of early 2024, and their performance from last September is doing most of the heavy lifting. Even so, it’s enough to make you stop and think, “Hey, these Padres are still pretty good!”

That’s not to say the Padres ever looked like a bad team. However, it would have been easy to write them off, at least subconsciously, after last year’s disappointing performance and the offseason that followed. The Padres ranked second in the NL in pitching WAR and third in position player WAR last season, yet they finished just 82-80. And although they were able to secure a winning record on the final day of the regular season, they certainly lost more than they gained over the winter. As their three biggest competitors in the NL West added six of our top nine free agents (and 10 of our top 21), the Padres lost their best hitter (Juan Soto), their closer (Josh Hader), their ace (Blake Snell), and three more capable arms from the rotation (Seth Lugo, Michael Wacha, and Nick Martinez), all while slashing payroll by nearly $90 million. Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Dan Szymborski: TIMEFORADANCHAT AH CN ADAR OF EMIT

12:01

Dan Szymborski: Some stir-fried chicken I made on Tuesday.

12:01

Dan Szymborski: I’m writing on this for tomorrow!

Read the rest of this entry »

I feel pretty confident in saying that I wasn’t alone in my excitement about the Cardinals starting the year with Victor Scott II on the roster. Good center field defense is incredibly fun. Stolen bases are incredibly fun. Scott stole 94 bases in the minors last year and looks like he might be a truly special defender thanks to his blazing footspeed (first in the majors, narrowly ahead of Trea Turner). Sure, he’d only gotten as far as Double-A, but injuries made his call-up at least defensible, and I wanted to see what he could do.

The results are now in: Scott isn’t ready for the majors just yet. The Cardinals have played 19 games, and Scott has appeared in all of them, three times as a defensive replacement, including yesterday. He’s racked up 62 plate appearances. He’s been quite bad in those plate appearances. That’s no knock on Scott, just to be clear. He’s a 23-year-old entering his third professional season. He’s only on the squad in the first place because a number of things went wrong higher up the depth chart. But the way the Cards have managed his playing time is so strange that I feel compelled to look into what’s gone wrong and why nothing has changed.

Scott’s speed has been exactly as advertised — he’s swiped two bags without getting caught — but the rest of his game hasn’t worked. He’s hitting a ghastly .089/.145/.143, good for a -15 wRC+ that’s comfortably last in baseball. He hasn’t made up for it with otherworldly defense; it’s too early for these metrics to stabilize, but every advanced system thinks he’s been below average. Statcast credits it to his below-average reaction time, which makes sense given how fast he is underway. Read the rest of this entry »

In the ninth inning of Monday night’s game against the Phillies, Rockies catcher Elias Díaz doubled off Jeff Hoffman with two outs, nobody on, and the game tied 1-1. That put Rockies manager Bud Black in a bit of a pickle. With a runner on second, a single would score the go-ahead run, and Colorado’s best hitter — Nolan Jones — was at the plate. If a single were ever going to come, it would come now.

Rather, a single would score a normal runner from second. Unfortunately, Díaz is slow. He’s in the first percentile for sprint speed. He’s so slow, when he puts a pork shoulder in the crockpot it’s done cooking by the time he comes back from the pantry with the barbecue sauce.

If Black wanted to get that run in from second with a single, he had one of two options. First, call a cab. Second, call for a pinch-runner. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Colorado Rockies. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fourth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Carlos Correa’s nerdiness, the Pirates pulling phenom Jared Jones after 59 effective pitches, the zombie runner, what Jontay Porter’s lifetime NBA ban portends for MLB, Shohei/Ippei conspiracy theories and Shohei Ohtani’s hitting and tax loophole, Michael Busch and the Dodgers’ outfield offense, the legacy of Whitey Herzog’s “Whiteyball,” and the power and prospects of two-way college star Jac Caglianone, plus follow-ups on MLB Blazes, IMG Academy, and Reynaldo López, then (1:13:48) answer listener emails about unsigned pitchers ramping up for the start of the season, whether all of the A’s could be traded to other teams, pitcher arm injuries in Japan, foul tips with fewer than two strikes, and MLB attendance/finances vs. NFL attendance/finances.

Audio intro: Cory Brent, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Benny and the Jeffs, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Correa on Dune: Part Two
Link to Correa Marvel post
Link to Correa Star Wars post
Link to article on Correa’s dogs
Link to Correa the stathead
Link to Correa wRC+ video
Link to Reylo wiki
Link to BP on Jones
Link to Jones Strike % stat
Link to Mikolas start
Link to Jones game story
Link to Pirates pitching plan
Link to Ben on workloads
Link to velo leaders
Link to Miller injury info
Link to NBA Porter announcement
Link to The Athletic on Porter
Link to Ohtani taxes article
Link to political baseball language
Link to team OF wRC+
Link to FG Dodgers OF post
Link to FG Busch post
Link to NYT Erskine obit
Link to NYT Herzog obit
Link to Whiteyball wiki
Link to Posnanski on Whiteyball
Link to Miklasz on Whiteyball
Link to Cranston MLB promo
Link to Caglianone article
Link to Gators Statcast tweet
Link to top MLB draft prospects
Link to longest MLB homers
Link to Mazara HR
Link to Boras facilities article
Link to Finley/Kuhn article
Link to EW Episode 1621
Link to Japan/U.S. pitchers study
Link to Richard Hershberger’s book
Link to EW Episode 627
Link to listener emails database
Link to IMG Academy wiki
Link to most-streamed 2023 shows
Link to Vulture on Bluey
Link to Slate on Bluey
Link to John/Jack explainer
Link to Caillou explainer
Link to Oops! All Berries explainer
Link to tick-tock explainer
Link to “Am I so out of touch?” meme
Link to Catherine Lowe wiki
Link to Wade/Ward wiki
Link to ballpark meetup forms
Link to meetup organizer form

 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
 Twitter Account
 EW Subreddit
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS