For the last three years, Anthony Rizzo has been one of the most consistent hitters in baseball. His wRC+ from 2014-2016: 155, 145, 145. His wOBA: .397, .384, .391. He consistently draws a walk in about 11% of his plate appearances and strikes out in less than 20% of his plate appearances. So far this year? It has been a much slower start, as he’s slashing .231/.371/.448. Though the OBP and SLG aren’t bad, the batting average is tougher to stomach. He’s been just above average with a wRC+ of 114, hardly the numbers the Cubs were expecting from their perennial All-Star. Still, there’s some explanation for all this. For comparison’s sake, we will only be looking at 2016 and 2017. Here’s some charts from Brooks Baseball:

There isn’t an obvious change in approach. He’s swinging at about the same amount of pitches and really is staying inside the zone. In 2017 it seems like he’s swinging more at the low and in pitches but otherwise, same approach. The stats from Baseball Info Solutions and PITCHf/x back this up. He’s in line with his career swing% by both metrics; the difference is in the contact he’s making. By Baseball Info, his O-Contact% is 71.1% up from 68.1%. PITCHf/x also has him at 71.1% up from 66.1%.

This makes me think the quality of the contact is the issue. Here are two videos showing at bats in 2017 and 2016. The focus here is what Rizzo is doing with outside pitches. First 2016, then 2017:

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/videos?video_id=730449083

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/videos?video_id=1383639883

In 2016, Rizzo lets that outside pitch get deep to poke it to left field. The 2017 version is early and rolls it over into a shift. Baseball Savant has limited video for 2017 but I’ve seen the same thing and the numbers back it up. Here are two charts showing his exit velocities, 2016 is on the bottom, 2017 is on the top.

It would be easy to say Rizzo needs to do a better job going the other way with the outside pitch, but that’s the main difference I’m seeing this year. Overall, Rizzo’s hard contact is down to 30.4% from last year’s 34.3%, and from his career rate. His pull rate is also the highest in his career, at 53%, vs. 43.9%. Rizzo has been pulling a decent amount of grounders, specifically at a rate of 68.1% with about 78.2% being characterized as soft or medium contact, higher than in 2016. Rizzo faces a shift quite a bit, so pulling grounders isn’t going to help him. He’s hitting line drives at the lowest rate since he was first called up, and down to 15% from his career 20% rate. Take a look at the spray charts below. The first chart is 2017 and the second is 2016. It’s the classic small sample vs. large sample but you can definitely see that Rizzo is not using all fields like he has in the past.

This what confounds me. Despite all this, he still is producing better than average, because his walk rate and strikeout rate are the best rates of his career. So just imagine if his BABIP currently wasn’t .212? I don’t want to say that’s going to raise for sure, but I believe it will get closer to his career rate of .285. This is probably a long-winded way of saying small sample size, so here’s one last thing. This has happened with Rizzo before. In 2016 he had a similar start in March through May, but turned it on for the rest of the year.

Still, this isn’t a simple “It’s been 50 games and he’s been unlucky” that would imply that he’s the same player doing the same things but getting different results. The concern I have is that Rizzo’s doing things differently this year. He’s not using all fields, and he’s hurting his performance by trying to pull pitches and generating weaker contact (his EV is down this year). Using all fields might lead to more line drives and would drive his batting average up to his career norms. Maybe he’s putting pressure on himself after last year’s championship? He’s had success before and I believe he can get back to where he was.

The Chicago Cubs have been immensely disappointing in 2017, not quite living up to the dynastic expectations that were forced upon them. Kyle Schwarber is struggling (if you haven’t heard that, I don’t know where you have been). Addison Russell is struggling. The pitching rotation is struggling. Star third baseman Kris Bryant, however, has managed to avoid being dragged down with the rest of the team.

In his MVP season last year, Bryant put up a .402 wOBA and a 149 wRC+, ranking 8th and 9th in the league, respectively. Through 50 games in 2017, he has posted a .402 wOBA and a 147 wRC+. The results are almost identical, but the two ways they have been achieved are not quite as similar.

40.3% of Bryant’s contact was considered hard in 2016, good for 13th in the league. But visit the Statcast exit velocity leaderboard for 2017, and you won’t be seeing Bryant anywhere near the top. Bryant’s Hard% is down all the way to 29.6% in 2017 and his average exit velocity of 86.21 mph this year is actually worse than the MLB Average 87.83 mph. The wOBAs for each season are the same, but the xwOBAs tell a much different story. Bryant was a bit lucky in 2016, as his xwOBA of .383 indicated a performance a little worse than his numbers. But it did not change the fact that Bryant still put up an MVP season, and it doesn’t look as worse if you consider Wrigley Field had a park factor of 90.2 in 2016. This year, Bryant’s .349 xwOBA pales in comparison to the .402 wOBA, especially with Wrigley’s 110.2 park factor this year. Bryant, unlike other Cubs, has managed to dodge the criticism this year with the help of a whole lot of luck.

The 2016 and 2017 launch angles are quite similar, so a change in swing path likely isn’t causing the weaker contact. And with the 2016 Bryant put up, one would hardly expect that he was quick to adjust his swing. The change is strange, but there may be an explanation.

Like with most power guys, Bryant was a heavy pull hitter in 2016, hitting 46.7% of his balls to left field. That number has taken a massive drop to 38.7% this season. Balls in play are likely to find more gaps if they are sprayed all over the field, but that still cannot come close to accounting for the difference in Bryant’s xwOBA and wOBA. Hand in hand with that, his contact rates have gone up. He is connecting on 65.3% of his swings on pitches outside the zone, up from 59.8% last year. His swinging strike rate is down from 13.0% to an impressive 9.7%. Perhaps Bryant, like Giancarlo Stanton also recently did, decided to give up some power for a more balanced plate approach.

The problem, though, is that Bryant hasn’t altered his strikeout rates. His K% is only down to 20.5% this year from 22.0% last year. Bryant is chasing less, though, lowering his O-Swing% from 30.8% to 28.6%. He is chasing less now, and even when he is chasing, he is making more contact. He’s also making a whole lot more contact in general. Those should add up to fewer strikeouts, but, oddly, they aren’t. Again, there may be an explanation. Bryant is still whiffing a whole lot with two strikes, as his swinging strike with two strikes with rate is still at 24.5%, compared to last year’s 26.8% mark. You can’t strike out without two strikes, so even if he is whiffing less with one or zero strikes, he’s not making more contact when there is an actual punch-out opportunity.

If you are going to refine your plate approach and lose some of the aggressive hacks, you need to strike out less, as Stanton did. Guys like (younger) Stanton have to offset lots of misses by doing something with the ball on the times they don’t miss.

But there is one thing that has really confused me. Why is a former MVP giving up the approach that got him the award? Everyone can and should make adjustments to get better, even Mike Trout, but it is odd to see Bryant stray this far from what he did last year.

There is some good news, though. Bryant is posting a 15.5% walk rate, ranking 11th in the league. His Zone% has actually slightly increased from this year to last, so perhaps Bryant’s improved eye is forcing pitchers to attack him in the zone. Or maybe they are catching on to his weak contact.

Overall, this has been a weird season for Bryant and the Cubs. The Cubs are loudly scuffling, while Bryant is quietly putting together a mysterious season. He won the MVP in 2016, but then seemingly decided to make big adjustments to his plate approach. His new approach isn’t working, but his production isn’t falling. I honestly don’t know what to make of this right now, and maybe no conclusions need to be drawn at this time. But one thing that can be taken away is that we should start monitoring Bryant a little more closely.

Since lowering the hands was often a topic the last few months, I wanted to look at what the best hitters actually do. For that purpose I’m looking at the so-called “launch position” around front toe touch, and not the stance, since many batters will start to lower and then load up during the stride (David Ortiz or Josh Donaldson), while a few start higher and then load down (Kris Bryant).

As a reference, I used the top of the shoulders and the highest finger on the handle. As a marker for the gap, I use barrel diameter, which is about 2 1/2 inch with wood bats.

Standard height I consider top of the shoulder plus/minus one barrel diameter, and low or high is more than one barrel diameter away from that (it is arbitrary but I have to chose some cutoff). I used shoulder high because that is a common teaching by many hitting coaches.

The hitters are the 2016 wRC+ leaders.

Mike Trout

His hands are borderline between standard and high. I have measured a tick more than one barrel diameter so I will group him in the high category. He is like Bryant also, one of the quite passive and early hand load guys and not a big “rubber band guy” like Donaldson who loads the hands very late to create a lot of stretch. That might be biomechanically slightly less efficient due to the stretch shortening cycle, but it is simple and not much can go wrong, plus he is explosive enough to leave a little on the table

David Ortiz

Very different load from Trout, as he lowers his hands and then loads them late as the lower body already opens. His hands even continue to go up as the elbow starts to lower, creating a ton of stretch. That is the modern Donaldson style of load that might be the biomechanically most efficient due to the best use of stretch shortening cycle. In the modern internet hitting coach circles, this is the most popular load right now, made popular by Bobby Tewksbary, who worked with Donaldson and many other pros. Almost all pros who have lowered their hands have some kind of connection to Bobby (Lamb, Pollock…). Overall his hands end up in a standard height at toe touch.

Joey Votto

More conservative load than Ortiz, although there is a little bit of lift during the load from below shoulder height. Overall his toe touch height is standard.

Daniel Murphy

Very quiet and conservative load that ends at a standard height.

JD

Same load style as Ortiz, ends at standard height.

Miggy

Donaldson loading style light. Hands end up on the low side.

Freddie Freeman

Tried to find his “new swing.” Hard to find a good one but he seems to be on the low side.

Altuve

Definitely on the high side

Kris Bryant

Load is a little like Trout; starts high and then drops to about standard.

Cruz

Not much of a load at all, if anything a very slight drop. Still ends up slightly high but not by much.

Rizzo

Starts low but ends up standard.

JD Martinez

Slight upward load to slightly high.

Belt

Small load to about standard height.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5iR2PPjv7E

Cano

Small and early load slightly on the low side.

C. Seager

Classic standard load to standard height.

Carpenter

Hard to find a good shot but might be a little on the low side.

Betts

Slightly on the high side.

EE

Simple load to very slightly high.

Cespedes

One of the few very high guys as his hands start about ear to eye height.

Goldschmidt

Very small drop load to about standard height.

This is the top 20 in wRC+ last season. Seven of the guys were on the high side, 9 were on the standard side and 4 were on the low side below shoulder height. But overall most ended up somewhere around shoulder level at toe touch. It might be an advantage to not go very high as only Cespedes made the top 20 with an ear-level high load, but lower than shoulder high is not common either.

In my opinion, the whole lower-the-hands thing is mostly a pre-stride thing. Even Jake Lamb, who is the poster boy for low hands, starts low but then loads up to around shoulder height. Now there might be a biomechanical advantage to dropping the hands and then loading up late. I know Bobby Tewksbary from many hitting forum discussions when he still posted there, and I also recommend getting his excellent ebook if you are into hitting, but I’m not sure if that whole low-hands thing isn’t a little overblown. The Donaldson style of load with the lowering and the barrel tip is now really en vogue and anyone promotes it on the internet now, but the 2016 MVPs Bryant and Trout both don’t do it. It might very well not be quite 100% perfect what Trout and Bryant do there, and they are definitely both freak athletes, but it works well enough for them. I would definitely have young hitters experiment with the JD style to see if it is for them but it isn’t as much of an absolute as many people now try to sell it.

Some hitters did lower their hands in their stance and it worked for them, but others did not and they still hit very well. In either case, both will still load up to around shoulder height. The hands definitely do not start “on plane;” the hands and bat always will start down before they level out and then go slightly up through contact.

Here is Miggy’s hand path to illustrate that:

His hands do start low, but still his hands and bat start to arc down and then level out and turn up.  Basically the swing is like the sign of a famous shoe company, first arcing down behind the body and then going up through contact.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ehs-H2V6N5o

Injuries are something that pronounce their impact differently on every player in the game. Some guys have freakish bodies and recover faster naturally. Others push themselves to accelerate their return. But recovery from some injuries can’t be sped up. Maladies like inflammation are plainly matters of time.

JA Happ went on the 10-day DL on April 18 for having it in his elbow. He’s finally back on the mound in the Majors after being out for more than a month.

Kendall Graveman just hit the DL for soreness in his throwing shoulder and is “taking anti-inflammatory medication and resting,” per Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle. Manager Bob Melvin says he’s been through this before, that it’ll take longer this time, and that the team is going to “let this thing calm down” before trying to build up his endurance again. The passivity in his words is telling.

And if you have the heart to remember the end of Roy Halladay’s career, you’ll remember inflammation in his throwing shoulder cost him time on the DL amidst his body simply telling him, “please, no more.”

Inflammation is a general response from the body that results from cell agitation. It can occur from normal use — “normal” being a relative word. It intends to clear out damaged cells but the process causes pain, discomfort, and inherently imbalanced levels of certain proteins in our bodies. And the things a ballplayer does every day, the extreme motions they constantly put themselves through for more than half a calendar year, make them prime candidates to become victims of it.

Enter yoga.

There’s no causal relationship between yoga and reduced injuries. But as I researched its impact on ballplayers for a job, I couldn’t help but think of the benefits. And I did find that it has been connected to balancing the proteins that can get whacked out in players’ bodies through the course of a season.

Researchers have studied a particular form called Hatha yoga, which combines poses (asanas), breath control (pranayama) and meditation. They explored its ability to help aid in recovery from the regular wear-and-tear we put our bodies through. “Regular” is another relative term — think of the twist and torque your favorite hitter exhibits on each swing and how that could eventually cause a dreaded oblique strain.

The study’s trippiest finding centers on epinephrine levels in the brain, which are fueled by the adrenal gland and play a large role in maintaining both physical and emotional stress. In focusing on the differences between novices and experts, experts experienced higher levels of epinephrine on a regular basis. That surprised even the researchers.

Common sense might tell us that the more we have of something, the more we get used to it, and then the less impact it has on us. It’s why a person going skydiving for the first time can find it exhilarating while it’s just another day at the office for the instructor they’re attached to. It’s the same when a pitcher isn’t excited about his velocity inching up through the spring. He can expect it because of what he’s thrown in the past.

The study found the opposite with yoga, though. The body adapts to the poses, breathing patterns, and meditation in Hatha yoga, and the person gets better at it; but chemically, they don’t get used to it. It doesn’t become old hat. Instead, the practice becomes invigorating and those who practice it build up what becomes an expandable physiological embankment of wellness.

What’s more is that, based on the study’s parameters, a player could approach expert level at yoga over the course of a single season. A few hours a week could help keep their protein levels balanced through the summer and avoid the fickle complications of inflammation. And beyond even that, it offers a fresh, low impact way to optimize their body that could pay long-term dividends.

It has come to my attention that in the 1880’s and early 1890’s an interesting management phenomenon presented itself around baseball. At this time, managers were not required to submit a lineup card before the start of the day’s game. Due to this, the first time through the batting order could be constructed the way the manager saw fit, based upon situations in the game. That being said, once the lineup went through its progression once, its construction would pervade throughout the rest of play. In lieu of this, an interesting set of strategical questions come into play. How would managers set lineups if this rule existed today? How would this effect run totals for the season for a given team? Would lineup construction change its form or remain largely the same as the way it is done now? This article is not one that analyzes or provides solutions but, instead, provides questions that are interesting and engaging to any baseball connoisseur.

The implications and strategy behind this lineup maneuverability are something that provides tons of differing opportunities for discussion. I think the lead-off hitter, if this rule was applied to the game today, would remain mostly the same. Managers would continue to look for an on-base machine to start off the game in a positive fashion. Along with this, I believe that the seven through nine batters would remain mostly static. Managers would look to place their worst hitters and their pitcher in these spots in order to diminish their number of at-bats in impact situations. With these assumptions established, a world of possibilities open up for the two through six hitters in the lineup. Each manager would approach this construction differently based upon the day’s match-up and the game’s progression. That said, here are a set of interesting scenarios that can provide interesting implications for the progression of a game and for run production in that game.

Let’s assume we’re the Angels and we have their current set of middling players that play alongside a healthy, and studly, Mike Trout. It’s the top of the first inning and the first two outs have already been made, no one’s on base, and we have to choose who will hit. Although there are no runners in scoring position, would you (as the manager) decide to hit Trout in this spot? Or, would you wait and hit Trout to lead off next inning and hope he starts off the inning strong? Or, would you wait to bat Trout sixth and hope that the first two batters in the next inning get on base and Trout can drive them in?

If you choose the latter, the implications of such would be a diminished number of at-bats in the game for Trout. Would it be worth it to wait on an impact situation to have Trout hit for the first time, even if this led to one less at-bat for the rest of the game? I think, personally, in this scenario I would hit Cameron Maybin in the three hole, following Yunel Escobar and Kole Calhoun. I think Maybin has enough pop to hit a home run every once in a while with the bases empty. I also think that if he got on base, I’d hit Trout directly following in the four hole. If it were a single by which Maybin got on, he would go first pitch and try to swipe second. If he got thrown out, it would be fine and I’d have Trout leading off my next inning, followed by Albert Pujols and Luis Valbuena. If he swiped the bag, we would now have a runner in scoring position for our best hitter, which is exactly what we want.

I can see as I’m writing that my ideas are getting harder and harder to follow, but I think this is a direct result of the vast array of possibilities this type of management choice presents. It would be interesting to see major-league managers, much more knowledgeable than myself, go about making these decisions on a daily basis. What do you think would be the best lineup set in this situation? And what other situations would be interesting to discuss as baseball fans?

“Funny things happen in baseball” was what one former major-league GM had to say regarding the Yankees’ unexpected success thus far. 2017 was supposed to be a rebuilding year for this club, but after winning 30 games before the end of May, the Bronx Bombers have established themselves as one of the best teams in baseball. As Henry Druschel writes, the Yankees are not only good, but fun!

Baseball is a team game, so it’s impossible to give credit to one or even a few players. But in a season that was supposed to be focused on the development of prospects — Judge, Bird, and Sanchez — it has become impossible to ignore the surprising production from some of the established veterans on the team. Starlin Castro is having the best season of his career. Jacoby Ellsbury is having more success in a Yankee uniform than ever before. And Matt Holliday is on pace to produce the highest power numbers of his career since he played 81 games a year at hitter-friendly Coors Field.

All of these players deserve credit for the early success of this team. But one player who has not received enough praise, especially after reinventing himself, is Brett Gardner.

For years, Gardner was nothing more than a slap hitter. He would get on base at a decent clip, where he was a real threat, stealing almost 100 bases between 2010 and 2011. He was never, by any stretch of the imagination, a power hitter — in the first five years of his career, his ISO never topped .110. And that was okay. By many accounts, he was a good player. Not great, but good enough to average almost 5 WAR from 2010-2014.

Flash-forward to 2017 and Brett Gardner is a different hitter. Aaron Judge, the heir-apparent to Jeter’s throne in New York, commented on the 33 year-old leadoff hitter’s changed approach: “He’s a little ball of muscle. I’m just glad he’s finally using it now.” He sure is. There are clear trends in Gardner’s “medium” and “hard” contact numbers.

Gardner is hitting with hard speed at a rate of 34.8%, markedly higher than his career average of 23.6%. His medium-speed percentage is 10 points lower than it has been at almost any point in the last three years. And his soft-speed percentage is also below his career average. His approach has changed.

Notably, Gardner is not clenching his teeth and swinging for the fences a la Chris Davis or Chris Carter. His walk rate and strikeout rate are both in line with his career averages. He’s not chasing balls out of the zone, either.

Almost a third of the way through the season, Gardner is more disciplined now than in the past. His O-Swing% is in the top 10 with players like Joey Votto (who has stopped striking out) and Matt Carpenter, who is tied for first in non-intentional walks drawn.

With this new approach, Gardner is hitting for more power than ever before.

As you can see, his average has remained relatively constant. In other words, his slugging percentage didn’t skyrocket because he started to hit a bunch of singles. Gardner really is driving the ball, leading to more extra-base hits. As a result, his isolated power numbers have risen dramatically. Isolated power (ISO) shows how often a player hits for extra bases.

For just the second time in his career, Gardner’s ISO has risen above the league average. And in 2017, his numbers put him in the same ballpark as Kris Bryant and Giancarlo Stanton.

During a period where the Yankees have gone from rebuilding to contending, Brett Gardner has evolved from a slap hitter into someone who drives the ball remarkably well. Aaron Judge is having a tremendous season, and with Trout’s injury he may well be the AL MVP.

But Gardner’s transformation shouldn’t go unnoticed. His ISO won’t stay at .259 all year. In fact, with only 200 plate appearances, this number doesn’t have much predictive value on its own. It’s clear, however, that Gardner has changed his approach. He is no longer the speedy, slap-hitting leadoff guy expected to steal 30 bases. Although Girardi still pencils him in at the top of the lineup, Gardner has reinvented himself to hit for power.

Not much has gone right for the San Francisco Giants in 2017. Everyone knows about the dirt bike accident and the consistent inconsistency that they call a bullpen. However, the 2017 struggles of Matt Moore have largely flown unnoticed, probably because of all the other issues facing the team. To say that Matt Moore has underperformed the Giants’ expectations since they traded Matt Duffy for him last summer feels like an understatement. To this point in the year Moore has amassed an inflated 5.28 ERA with a 1.53 WHIP. He is on one of the statistically worst offenses in the league and is currently getting out-pitched by both Matt Cain and Ty Blach.

Next comes the point of the story where FanGraphs authors write about how the underlying numbers show that Matt Moore is actually closer to Carlos Carrasco than Adam Conley. They entertain you with tales of a .400+ BABIP and a <60% strand rate. They serenade you with increased velocity and changes in spin rate.

Except I can’t do any of that. Moore has pretty much been just as bad as his stats show. He has the highest qualified walk rate and the lowest qualified strikeout rate of his career. His hard-hit rate sits at 40.6%, good for seventh-worst in the league (out of 91 qualified starters). His team currently sits 11 games out of the division lead, doesn’t provide sufficient run support, and could be in complete sell mode by the end of June.

This raises the question, why would anyone want to spend hours researching and writing about such an underwhelming pitcher? Giants fans certainly don’t enjoy the self-inflicted pain that Moore causes each time he pitches. However, there is something interesting when examining the Giants schedule from the start of the season through the end of May.

This is about what you would expect for the Giants. Very heavy against the NL West to start the year, while beginning to adventure outside of the division as they work their way through May. Look at what happens when highlighting the series that Moore has pitched or is scheduled to pitch in (green) vs. the ones that he hasn’t (red).

At first glance, it seems like Moore has pitched against better offenses or hitter-friendly ballparks (ARI, COL, LAD, CHC, WAS) while missing entire series against weaker offenses in pitcher-friendly stadiums (SD, KC). To see if this claim is actually supported, I used wOBA as a proxy for opponent offensive firepower to weigh each of the opponents.

The average wOBA for teams that Moore has faced is .331 while the average wOBA for the teams he has missed is .309. A difference in wOBA of .022 is the exact difference between the wOBA of the 2017 Cubs and 2017 Pirates. The team with the wOBA closest to .331 so far in 2017 is the Dodgers, meaning that on average Moore has faced the Dodgers caliber of offense in each start throughout the season. The team with the wOBA closest to .309 is a mix between the White Sox and the Phillies, two weaker offenses. This doesn’t even take into account that Moore isn’t allowed to face the team with the lowest wOBA due to pitching for them. To obtain some historical context, I compared Moore’s .331 average opponent wOBA against all 2016 starters (min. 10 starts).

Out of all starters with 10 starts in 2016 (185 total pitchers), Moore’s current average opponent wOBA would rank as the highest. Even the .005 difference in wOBA between 2017 Moore and 2016 Severino is a significant margin (the exact difference between the 2017 Rockies and 2017 Rays). Let’s look at how the .309 wOBA of the matchups Moore has missed would rank out of the 2016 starters.

Weighing all of the starts that Moore has missed, he would have been tied for the easiest average opponent wOBA of 2016. The difference between the offensive caliber of the teams that Moore has and hasn’t faced on the Giants schedule is not only steep; it’s the difference between the toughest and easiest pitcher schedules of 2016.

To be clear, none of this is suggesting that Matt Moore is or will be a good pitcher this season. In fact, the signs of a good pitcher is one who can toe the rubber against even the toughest teams. However, Moore’s schedule has not provided any favors. Before the Giants and their fans pass judgement on Moore, they should take a close look at who Moore has (and hasn’t) faced. Moore’s next assignment? The Washington Nationals on Monday. (Ed. note: that was Memorial Day)

A lot of talk this offseason was about how HRs became cheap and sluggers are not getting paid. Two teams that adapted to that really quickly were the A’s and Rays. Just a couple years ago, the A’s and Rays both were no-power teams that mostly tried to compete with pitching, and, in the Rays’ case, great defense.

As of today (May 30th) the Rays and A’s are first and fourth in HR in the majors despite playing in not the most hitting-friendly parks.

They are also first (OAK) and ninth (TB) in average team launch angle, so they are probably either trying to acquire or teach launch angle.

They both strike out a ton (Rays are first in K% and A’s are fourth) but overall, offensively, it kind of works for them. The Rays are fifth in wRC+ and the A’s are eighth, which is not bad, given their financial constraints.

Where they are paying is defense. The Rays at least have a good OF compensating for their terrible IF, but they are still just 22nd in the defensive rating at the FanGraphs leaderboard. With the A’s it gets really ugly; they are dead last in defense and basically terrible in almost all of their positions.

For the Rays, it seems to work overall, as they are third in position-player WAR, and they also had some Pythagorean bad luck, but the A’s are just 22nd in position-player WAR, so they might have taken it too far.

Overall, the Rays and A’s still follow the trends and act quickly, but finding a bargain is harder and harder. Teams now have a good concept of value and if you find a bargain somewhere, you usually have to pay a price somewhere else.

Probably, it is still good that they try it. They need to gamble on upside and a balanced team is probably not the way to go. It is hard to say how much they gained, but launch angle and homers probably was a slight market inefficiency and they both went to it quickly.

What I found interesting were the Dodgers. Overall, they are a very good team, but they are not hitting homers and their launch angle is one of the worst in the majors (22nd). I thought as a sabermetrically-inclined team with a former Rays FO, they would try to close that hole, but then again they already were really good and can afford to lose some value. Also, the Dodgers team is much more expensive, so a super fast re-structuring of the team like the A’s and Rays did is not really feasible. An expensive team is not as flexible as a team full of pre-arb and early arbitration players and can’t react to a changed market as quickly.

It will be interesting how they develop in the next years. Will they slowly try to increase LA and power while trying to keep their strengths? Or will they sacrifice some defense and contact like the Rays and A’s did?

It will also be interesting if the Rays and A’s stick with it. Power will probably get slightly more expensive again, but I don’t expect the price to explode because the success of the A’s and Rays has been moderate and now teams mostly go by overall value. What teams certainly want to try is to teach elevating to their young players so they can get power without a big trade-off. Players with power and defense will always be sought after, and not be available as a bargain, so being able to teach LA to defensively good prospects could be a market inefficiency, but that is of course not easy to do.