Being an avid lover of both baseball and video games, I naturally like to participate in both from time to time, at the same time. In fact, San Diego Studio’s MLB THE SHOW 17 is quite possibly my favorite game at the moment considering how many hours I put into it. Anyways, the reason I bring this up is that the topic of this post (the under-the-radar talent that is Travis Shaw) was brought to my attention while watching a live-stream of my favorite MLB THE SHOW YouTuber. After hearing of the inevitable rise to power that Shaw should see within the next few weeks, I decided to look more into his stats and see just how plausible this claim was.

I assume that unless you are a Brewers fan, Shaw’s ability and stats could possibly be low on your radar, especially since he didn’t crack the National League’s All-Star lineup for 2017. But after taking a close look at his stats, maybe he should have. At the time of writing this article, Shaw is hitting .296 with 18 dingers and 61 RBI. This is impressive when you compare his stats to the rest of the N.L. All-Star starting lineup that collectively averaged a .320 average, 16 home runs (2 fewer than Shaw) and 55 RBI (5 fewer than Shaw). Then, we can take it a step further and compare him directly to the lineup’s starting third baseman (Shaw’s position), Nolan Arenado, who is hitting .298 with 15 homers and 63 RBI.

At first sight, it seems as if these two are on par with one another, with a slight advantage given to Arenado in the average and RBI department. This, however, is not the case when taking into consideration the advanced stats. Shaw pulls away from Arenado in ISO, weighted On Base Average (wOBA), and weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+), averaging .268, .386, and 135 in each stat, respectively. These stats are known to tell more of the “story” of the player, giving more details as to what is going on. Shaw is hitting for more power, creating more runs, and overall is a bigger asset to his team than many other players in their respective situations that were graced with All-Star status.

I, of course, am not saying that Arenado or any other player should not have been awarded All-Star status because they are all amazing ball players with enormous talent. Really, the only point that I am trying to get across is that, based on stats, Shaw should have most definitely been a part of the current National League All-Star group. And as for the rest of the season, the future is very bright for Shaw, especially considering that he is now a sleeper candidate for National League’s Most Valuable Player, according to ESPN.

*Side note* This is my first post in the FanGraphs community! And while I am very excited, I at the same time want to be sure to improve with each and every post and write about things that people want to hear. If you, the readers, do not have anything to say about the content of the articles but do have some constructive criticisms please feel free to leave a comment! Have a good one!

If you follow baseball, you’ve heard of Joey Gallo. However, he’s on track to be a member of a list of players that includes Rob Deer, Ivan DeJesus, and Tom Tresh.

Who are these guys? My point exactly.

That list is of qualified players who have hit under .200 for a season in the last 50 years. It’s quite an exclusive club. Over the course of half a century, only 13 players have managed to accomplish such a feat. In fact, there are more players who have hit above .368 for a full season than under .200.

Still, Gallo provides above-average, albeit inconsistent, value. He boasts an above-average wRC+ of 108, which is extremely impressive considering his .194 batting average. His wOBA, at .342, is more than barely above average and he is among the league leaders in home runs — certainly a primary source of his value.

Of course, followers of the game know his tendencies and understand that he’s pretty much a strikeout-or-homer kind of guy. Although there is a growing camp of believers who trust he could actually develop into a great player if given the time, I’ll leave that discussion for another day and probably for another person.

Still, it is worth examining just how far outside the standard bell curve Gallo’s performance has placed him. One only has to look at his Brooks Baseball landing page to see the kind of player the young Ranger has become. Against every type of pitch, Gallo’s result is “a disastrously high likelihood to swing and miss.” Again, this is no surprise; we know what kind of player he is at the moment, but this shows just how absurd it is that he actually provides decent value.

This graph is one representation of Gallo’s performance (the glowing dot). Despite placing in the bottom three in batting average, he is well above the 50th percentile in wRC+. This really is incredible. No other player with an average within 20 points of Gallo’s has a wRC+ above 77. That’s 30+ runs below the power hitter.

As a previous article noted, Gallo made his way to the majors via the three true outcomes — walking, striking out, and hitting home runs.

Surprisingly, Gallo walks at a well-above-average rate. And he has for his entire, although short, career.

Aside from the HRs, this is a clear source of his value. However, his strikeout rate is more than 3x his walk percentage.

This is another graphic that is just absurd. Gallo strikes out more than any other player, but still manages to accrue statistics that show his positive value. Imagine if he lowered his K% and hit a few more doubles, or even singles for that matter. His value would skyrocket.

The last of the true outcomes is the HR. We know Gallo can hit, but here is a graphic that connects a few of the factors already discussed.

As you might have guessed, Gallo is the player leading the league in whiffs. This graphic details the relationship between whiffs and HRs with overlaid colors showing batting average. I expected there would be more darker blue dots (lower averages) around Gallo and toward the right half of this graphic. For the most part, however, the dots around Gallo are red, or at least grey. It’s a nice image that confirms what we already suspected: Joey Gallo essentially whiffs or hits a HR.

Some might look at his sub-.200 average and write him off, while others could look to the future with hope for a player who has produced solid value, going yard with the best of them and walking at a solid rate. Joey Gallo is a player with a tremendous ceiling, but for now, we know exactly what kind of player he is. To use any other word but strange to describe the value he provides would be inaccurate. He certainly has a certain value, even now at 23, that no other player in the game has replicated. And the Rangers will take it.

On May 5th, the Cardinals called up Tommy Pham after both Dexter Folwer and Stephen Piscotty suffered from various injuries. Since then, Pham has been arguably the strongest driving force for the club – more so than in any of his other major-league stints. He’s been between AAA and MLB since 2015, so many Cardinals fans are wondering “what’s different this time?” This is something I set out to get an understanding on.

In the case of outlier performance, generally the first thing I try to understand is how much this can be ascribed to luck. The most common proxy for luck in baseball is BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play), so I tried to get a sense of how this season stacks up to Pham’s prior major-league experiences:

According to FanGraphs, BABIP can be the result of a few things: varying defense, luck, and talent – FanGraphs goes on to to say that the talent is related to how hard a player is hitting balls. Being that we’re looking at full year stats (and 2017 through 79 games, 50 he’s appeared in), varying defensive skills ought to be normalized out. There doesn’t seem to be any significant outliers as far as how hard he’s hitting balls compared to prior years, so it’s very possible that this is slightly biased by luck, thus should be framed under that presupposition.

Pham has always had severe eye problems, so much so that he was once legally blind in his left eye, but his performance this year seems to indicate that he’s seeing the ball much better.

If we look at his swing rate at pitches outside of the zone, it affirms this notion. He’s improved yearly, but this year significantly so. It’s reasonable after this to ask the converse – how is he swinging at balls in the zone?

Perhaps my naïve expectation was that he would swing at more balls in the zone – but that doesn’t seem to be true. He’s swinging less in the zone as well. In fact, if we look at his swing rate in general:

It appears he’s just swinging at fewer pitches in general. This is what I think Pham has corrected – he’s become a more patient hitter, and it’s paying off. It’s important to understand how increased patience at the plate would help his offense.

Here I’ve plotted how his swinging inside and outside the zone correlates with his batting average each year. The .290 BA is this year, .226 was 2016, and .268 was 2015. It’s interesting to notice that his best batting average of his professional career is associated with both a low swing rate outside and inside the zone. Patience pays off.

The point for 2015 is also interesting because he swung less in the zone, swung slightly more outside, and yet still improved his average. This emphasizes just how important it is for Tommy to see a few pitches before he swings away.

If he’s waiting for better pitches, it’s not a jump to assume that he should get better hits off those pitches:

Looking at slugging percentage, however, it seems as though he’s hitting about the same in 2015. It’s worthwhile to note that in 2015 he was swinging in the zone at a fairly similar rate, which makes sense – for quality contact, you need a pitch in the zone.

The last thing I wanted to look at was if his increased patience led to more walks.

The answer here was a bit surprising. Logically, I would expect more patience would yield more walks, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. He’s walking at about the rate he was in 2016, and only 0.1% better than in his rookie year.

So far, Pham’s newfound patience is working out for him, but I think it’s possible pitchers are still expecting the 2015 and 2016 Tommy Pham, who is more willing to swing out of the zone. It should be interesting to see how this evolves as the season continues and pitchers adjust to his new approach.

Plots made in python using the seaborn package.

Note: stats are as of morning June 27th.

Generally speaking, a slash line (ERA/FIP/xFIP/SIERA) of 5.58/4.28/4.77/4.80 isn’t very encouraging. These are the numbers that Pirates starter Chad Kuhl has put up to date this season through 69.1 innings. Last year, he threw 70.2 MLB innings, so we have comparable sample sizes. Yet, he seemingly hasn’t improved upon last year’s numbers. Yes, the strikeouts are up, from a 17.6% K-rate to a 19% this year. However, the walk rate is also up (6.6% to 9%), the ground balls are down (44.3% to 41.8%), and the home-run rate has risen accordingly (0.89 HR/9 to 1.04). What, you may be wondering, do I see in this guy?

Check out his plate discipline stats.

Improvements across the board. His chase rate has gone up while his in-zone swing rate has gone down. Hitters are making far less contact on pitches out of the zone, and even a bit less on pitches within the zone. This explains the increase in strikeouts. The walks shouldn’t be increasing, unless hitters are really going much deeper into counts, since they are making less contact. Nonetheless, this should change if Kuhl keeps things the same, because he’s throwing in the zone more often and getting more swings outside of the zone. Of the 118 pitchers who have thrown at least 60 innings this year, Kuhl’s chase rate ranks 43rd, his in-zone swing rate is tied for 48th lowest, his Z-Swing minus O-Swing ranks 37th, and most impressive, his swinging-strike rate is tied for 26th. In fact, his swinging-strike rate is the same as Yu Darvish — he even has a higher chase rate than him (30.5% and 29.3%), and Darvish has a superb 26.9% strikeout rate. The underlying statistics are optimistic, so if Kuhl keeps pitching this way, the strikeouts will increase and the walks will decrease. The bigger question is, what is the driving force behind these improvements?

According to PITCHf/x data on FanGraphs, Kuhl’s average four-seam fastball velocity has jumped from 93 last year to 95.5 this year, touching 99. Contrary to what his name might suggest, Chad Kuhl is throwing heat. In fact, all of his pitches have seen an increase in velocity (and he’s added a curveball, but he’s only thrown 38 of them and they have been largely ineffective):

The velocity increase has given Kuhl more confidence in his four-seamer, and his usage of the pitch has risen to 29% this year, up from a mere 10% last year. This explains part of why the ground-ball rate is dropping — the uptick in four-seamer usage has caused a drop in sinker usage (down from 57% last year to 37% this year).

In addition, while his sinker has seen an increase in arm-side run (1.6 inches more), the ground-ball rate is also dropping because the sinker has seen a decrease in drop (1.1 inches less). While the drop on his sinker has decreased, the rise on his four-seamer has increased. It is now above average, ranking 52nd out of the 118 pitchers who have thrown at least 60 innings as of morning June 27th. This is in part due to a slight change in vertical release point:

This year, Kuhl is throwing more over the top with all of his pitches. This graph shows that, for his sinker, he is on average releasing the ball about two inches higher. Now, Pitch Info (which powers this graph) says that Kuhl doesn’t throw a four-seamer at all, only sinkers, as opposed to PITCHf/x. Either way, at this point, Kuhl’s “sinkers” don’t sink very much. Using Pitch Info’s data, Kuhl’s sinker has the eighth-worst drop among the 87 starters who have thrown at least 200 sinkers this year. In that same group, the ground-ball rate on Kuhl’s sinker is also eighth-worst. Coincidence? I think not. His overall ground-ball rate of 41.8% this year is below average, ranking 78th-lowest of the 118 pitchers who have thrown at least 60 innings this year.

All of his pitches are generating more whiffs, looking at both Pitch Info and PITCHf/x. This is probably due to the improved velocity. Using Pitch Info’s data, his slider ranks 15th in whiffs per swing out of the 87 starters who have thrown 100 sliders this year (not to mention, it ranks 10th in average velocity), and his sinker ranks 17th out of the 87 starters who have thrown 200 sinkers this year. However, his changeup still gets whiffs at a below-average rate: it ranks 71st out of the 92 starters who have thrown 100 changeups this year. Although the changeup has gotten more run this year, it too has lost vertical drop and the velocity gap between it and the fastball has closed a bit. Generally, changeups are used to sit down batters of the opposite handedness, because they have arm-side run. Kuhl, a righty, has struggled against lefties this year, as they have a .445 wOBA against him, while righties have a mere .286 wOBA. At the same time though, he has gotten more strikeouts against lefties (30) than righties (29), despite having faced fewer lefties (147) than righties (163). Also, I’m not too worried that Kuhl will have struggles against lefties in the long run because his sinker has great arm-side run.

The fact that Kuhl has a diminished ability to get ground balls doesn’t bode well for his old skill set, where he relied on his control and inducing weak contact, but with an increased penchant for strikeouts, backed by improving velocity, it shouldn’t matter that much. I would still take a flyer on him; the strikeouts, walks, and platoon splits should improve, along with his ERA.

Data from FanGraphs, Brooks Baseball, and Baseball Prospectus. Picture from MLB.com. Thanks for reading!

On April 17, David Laurila posted the transcript of an excellent Q&A with Tampa Bay Rays first baseman Logan Morrison. At that point, the season was exactly two weeks old, and Morrison, then sporting a 136 wRC+ and .302/.348/.535 slash line, had been a pleasant surprise for the Rays. Prior to 2017, most thought of Morrison as a talented but inconsistent hitter; strong 2010 and 2011 campaigns were followed up by a number of uninspiring and injury-plagued seasons, and while Morrison was bound for an occasional hot streak (May 2016 jumps to mind most quickly), he’d been unable to establish himself as much more than a replacement-level first baseman. His rolling wOBA reflects this inconsistency, as the following chart demonstrates some significant oscillation over the last few years:

For that reason, it’s been an even more pleasant surprise for the Rays that their first baseman has been able to sustain his success so thoroughly over the first three months of 2017. In fact, he’s been one of the best power hitters in the league, and unexpectedly so; The Ringer’s Michael Baumann recently ranked him as the third-most shocking name on the home run leaderboards, trailing only Yonder Alonso and Justin Smoak. Through June 24, Morrison’s 22 home runs and .332 ISO are bested only by MVP frontrunner Aaron Judge, and he currently sports the third-highest WAR among all first basemen in the majors. Morrison’s also been barreling up the ball at a far higher rate in 2017; even with over a hundred fewer plate appearances this year than in 2016, LoMo’s already had seven more barrels than last year, and his barrel percentage per batted-ball event has more than doubled, from 7.5% to 15.1%.

Interestingly, Morrison’s average exit velocity has actually seen a moderate decline, from 90.3 to 89.2 miles per hour, but his raised launch angle is enough to warrant a significant increase in expected wOBA, which has risen to .382 from .340. Morrison discussed this aspect of his game with Laurila, saying that he’s benefited from valuing “launch angle and all that stuff,” and that his new approach, at its core, consists of trying to hit fly balls “up the middle.”

He’s stuck to that approach pretty rigidly during the first few months of 2017; as shown below, he’s been able to eliminate almost all of his batted balls with launch angles of below 10°, instead shifting the majority of his contact to somewhere between 15° and 40°:Further, look at how much his spray chart has shifted towards the middle of the field:

Overall, Morrison’s average launch angle has increased from 12° to nearly 17° — placing him in the same neighborhood as Miguel Sano and Justin Upton — and his fly-ball rate has skyrocketed. Morrison’s fly-ball rate of 48.1% is miles above last year’s 34.7%, and is just two percent behind that of fellow fly-ball devotee (and reigning Most Shocking Home Run Leader) Yonder Alonso.

So, we know that Morrison’s been living by at least one of the concepts he discussed with Laurila, but I believe we can also attribute LoMo’s 2017 success to another item he mentioned. In Morrison’s words, “A lot of [hitting] is just getting the best pitch you can to hit … If [the pitcher] is a guy who can do everything, I’m just trying to get a fastball middle until two strikes.”

Through June, Morrison’s done an exceptional job of putting these words into action. Compare his swing heat maps over the past two years’:

Last season, Morrison’s swings were concentrated around two zones – one in the middle-in section of the strike zone, and one on the outside corner. This year, though, he’s been splitting the difference, looking instead for pitches almost exactly between his two favorite areas of 2016. We can see that so far, Morrison’s avoided chasing pitches on that outside corner, thus sticking to his philosophy of focusing solely on the best pitches to hit. And when we dilute the sample to swings in non-two strike counts, we can see a similarly stark contrast:

Just as Morrison said back in April, he’s been swinging almost exclusively at pitches in the middle of the zone with less than two strikes. From the above heatmap, it’s pretty evident that this wasn’t the case in 2016, as his swings comprised a far greater area of the strike zone, and even a section outside of it. According to FanGraphs, Morrison’s O-Swing% has fallen 29.3% to 25.9%, reflecting his increased patience. I should note that PitchFX, on the other hand, actually marks his O-Swing% as slightly higher this season. In conjunction, though, I’m interpreting these contradictory statistics as an indicator that Morrison’s laid off of the borderline pitches, presumably on the outside corner, about which the two pitch trackers disagree.

This approach, combined with his increase in launch angle, has notably improved the first baseman’s quality of contact early in the count. In pre-two strike situations, Morrison’s xwOBA has risen from .396 last year to .498 in 2017, which, to provide context, is roughly equal to Alonso (.499), Justin Bour (.498), Edwin Encarnacion (.498), and Carlos Correa (.495).

With such an inconsistent track record, we shouldn’t necessarily expect Morrison to continue hitting at such a high clip. However, while Morrison’s never run a particularly high average on balls in play — his BABIP hasn’t exceeded .290 since 2010 — in this case, it’d be fair to expect some positive regression on his .248 BABIP, especially considering Morrison’s altered batted-ball profile. And true, his 25.3% HR/FB rate is much higher than it’s been for any full season in his career, but it’s not unreasonably high for a top power hitter, especially one with a newly-increased launch angle. It’s not like his 22 home runs have been flukes, either — among all 104 batters with at least ten home runs, the average distance of Morrison’s shots has been an estimated 403 feet, which ranks almost exactly in the middle of the pack. Plotted against a backdrop of Tropicana Field, Morrison’s home park (and whose park factor for left-handed home runs was recently scored as perfectly average), it’s evident that the vast majority of Morrison’s four-baggers have cleared the fence by a comfortable margin.

By actualizing on the topics he discussed with David Laurila, LoMo’s been able to emerge as one of the season’s most unexpected members of the league leaderboards, and has been instrumental in keeping the 40-37 Rays in the AL Wild Card picture. There’s no guarantee that he’ll be able to sustain this performance through 2017 and beyond, but if Morrison can continue with the adjustments that have made the first half of the season such a success, there are genuine reasons to believe that his spot on the leaderboards might last longer than most saw coming. If the second half of Morrison’s 2017 is as productive as the first, he’ll be finding himself much closer to #20 than #1 on next year’s edition of the Most Shocking Home Run Hitters list.

Considering that you’re reading an amateur post on a website dedicated to in-depth baseball analysis, I probably need not remind you that the Brewers are exceeding expectations this year. Thanks to offensive contributions from Erics Thames and Sogard, as well as improved pitching from the likes of Jimmy Nelson, Chase Anderson, and Corey Knebel, Milwaukee is riding a modest +6 run differential to an even more modest half-game lead over the second place Cubs in the NL Central. One Brewer that seems to be slightly less talked-about than those listed above is third baseman Travis Shaw.

Shaw joined the Brewers last offseason as the main piece in a trade that sent reliever Tyler Thornburg to the Red Sox, and through 66 games this year he is outpacing his career 162-game WAR average by almost a win and a half (3.7 WAR/162 vs. 2.3), due mostly to increases in all three slash stats (.288/.343/.535 vs. a career .250/.313/.441), and a subsequent rise in wRC+. Now, those numbers aren’t exactly eye-popping, and Shaw has shown that he can be productive over 60ish-game spans in the past, but as someone interested in marginal-to-average players, I wanted to believe that he was making some sort of leap offensively. Unfortunately, when taking a closer look at his plate-discipline stats, I noticed something that might hint at a coming regression.

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Shaw’s F-Strike%, or First Pitch Strike Percentage currently sits at 47.7% (league average is 60.3%), which is good for the lowest rate among all qualified hitters and about two percentage points below second-lowest. This could be the result of luck, facing particularly wild pitchers, or the reputation he carries as the Mayor of Ding Dong City. Two things that certainly help keep his rate in check are career lows in both O-Swing% (percentage of pitches a batter swings at outside the strike zone) and Swing% (percentage of swings on all pitches), shown below.

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Regardless of the cause, it is of course beneficial to start at-bats 1-0 rather than 0-1 (although apparently not as crucial as what happens after 1-1 counts). What’s interesting about Shaw in this case is that he’s hitting like Aaron Judge (.463 wOBA) through 1-0 counts and like JJ Hardy (.245 wOBA) through 0-1 counts. Also of note, his walk rate after receiving a first-pitch strike plummets from a below-average 7.4% down to 0.8%, which is the 6th-worst rate among 131 hitters. These splits are based on relatively small samples (148 PA and 118 PA for 1-0 and 0-1, respectively), but I think the difference is stark enough to warrant some doubt for him sustaining his current output. Below is a table showing the league leaders in differential between Through-1-0-Count wOBA and Through-0-1-Count wOBA.

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Shaw ranks sixth. This to me indicates that pitchers have a lot to gain from attacking him early; but that’s obvious. In the vast majority of cases, pitchers have no desire to start at-bats 1-0. What I’m saying is that once Shaw’s F-Strike% starts to creep towards league average and his JJ Hardy-ish at bats become more common, we might start seeing results that resemble his career averages. In other words, the Mayor of Ding Dong City’s third term has gotten off to a promising start, but a dip in approval ratings may be in his future

The Mets are the talk of the town…for all the wrong reasons. They currently sit at a 31-41 record and are 12 games behind the Washington Nationals in the NL East, which as of now seems to be theirs for the taking. The Mets boast one of the worst bullpens in the majors and have been plagued by injuries as well as underperformance from the bulk of their lineup. With the results of this season, many are beginning to wonder if it’s time to turn the page on this current pack of Mets players, many of whom were on the 2015 team that lost to the feisty Kansas City Royals in the World Series. I will attempt to go group by group in an effort to determine whether or not the Mets should begin a new rebuilding process, the most dreaded phrase in sports.

Starting with the outfield, Yoenis Cespedes is locked in for three more years in his current contract. It’s understandable why the Mets were looking to sign him in the offseason based on his performance in 2015 and 2016. However, injuries and poor performance have contributed to the current record that the Mets have. Cespedes still won’t lose his spot in left. Curtis Granderson, due to his age, will most likely not be re-signed, as well as Jay Bruce who, if he is not traded before the deadline, will most certainly test free agency. Juan Lagares has been injury-prone the last couple years but the one piece of good news is that Michael Conforto has seen a resurgence since coming back from Triple-A Las Vegas. Also, one of their top prospects, Brandon Nimmo, should receive regular playing time in the outfield, if not this season, then definitely in 2018.

Next, we have the infield, which has been decimated by injuries. Neil Walker and Asdrubal Cabrera have struggled through injuries (and who knows if/when David Wright will ever step on a baseball field again). Jose Reyes and Lucas Duda have mightily underperformed. The good news for the Mets is that Cabrera, Walker, and Reyes will be gone after the season, which means that the infield can get much younger. Top prospects Dominic Smith and Amed Rosario will be September call-ups and, if all goes well, can be regulars in the lineup next year. T.J. Rivera and Wilmer Flores have proven to be reliable pieces in the lineup. Despite some injuries from Flores, he has made up for it with his versatility in both the field and in the lineup, giving manager Terry Collins options to choose from. While Flores and Rivera may not be long-term solutions, they are the best options that the Mets have at the moment. As far as catching is concerned, Travis d’Arnaud is probably the Mets’ best option right now, although he has severely underperformed since being traded to them. The Mets should try to get another catcher in free agency.

Finally, the best pitching staff is a huge question mark, but also a big concern among scouts. Matt Harvey clearly no longer has any interest in remaining with the team and Noah Syndergaard, Zack Wheeler, and Steven Matz are just injuries waiting to happen. Even Jacob deGrom, who has been I believe the best starter this season, has a history of arm injuries that makes Mets front-office personnel nervous. Even Robert Gsellman and Seth Lugo are recovering from injuries sustained during this season. The bullpen has been just as bad. The bullpen so far has logged 257 innings to the tune of a 4.97 ERA. Not to mention they have not had a reliable closer since Jeurys Familia has been both suspended and injured this season, and the rest of the bullpen outside of Addison Reed and Jerry Blevins has been downright horrendous.

Overall, the Mets need to begin the next phase of the rebuilding process. With aging veterans and current players underperforming, it’s clear that the time for a championship has come and gone for this group. The Mets need to get younger and it starts with the old addition-by-subtraction technique. By dumping aging veterans with big contracts, the Mets will be able to allocate their resources and maybe pick up some pieces in free agency while simultaneously giving their top prospects playing time and allowing them to develop. As the great Cosmo Kramer once said on Seinfeld, “I think it’s time that we shut down and re-tool.”

Shy Lonnie – Speak Up

I submitted my last article on Brad Peacock literally 10 hours before Jeff Sullivan published an amazing article on exactly the same topic (using exactly the same GIF of Adrian Beltre looking ridiculous). So just to prove I’m not copying anybody, I decided to write about someone whose shocking appearance on the Statcast leaderboards made me confident this wouldn’t happen again.

In the month of June, Lonnie Chisenhall’s hitting .385 with 4 HR and 15 RBI. By any account, this is a monster three weeks (especially for somebody not named “Cody Bellinger”). Last year, his .328 BABIP (26 points above his career average) cast doubt over his success, however his .374 wOBA and .360 xwOBA (a stat that uses exit velocity and launch angle to predict what “should be” a hit) prove that his success this year is no fluke. There’s something different about this guy that means this inflated BABIP may just be signal and not noise.

Baseball analysts used to believe that BABIP for most hitters regressed to the mean (after you put the ball in play, the rest is just luck) until people started tracking year-to-year differences for players like…Mike Trout, whose BABIPs are high and correlate strongly across years. Now we know that batted-ball data (exit velocity, launch angle, launch spin rate, etc.) hugely influences the results of balls when they get put into play, which means projections have been undervaluing players who consistently make hard contact (Nick Castellanos, Miguel Sano, etc.). Barreling balls isn’t just a fluke; it’s a skill.

Barrels on Barrels on Barrels

The first thing that immediately jumped out at me was how much hard contact this guy makes. Among the league leaders are max effort home-run-or-die-trying type hitters (Khris Davis, Matt Davidson, Joey Gallo), freaks of nature (Aaron Judge and Mike Trout), headline-capturing breakouts (Justin Smoak, Miguel Sano) and…Lonnie Chisenhall. I know FanGraphs readers love player comps, so here y’all go:

Chisenhall closely resembles the batted-ball profile of a Ryan Zimmerman or Giancarlo Stanton when he puts the ball in play. The reason both he and Zimmerman have very similar results in the third column (Barrels/PA) as well is that they have roughly the same batted-ball events per plate appearance (17% K-Rate vs 18% respectively). The major reason for a divergence in the third column with Stanton is his absurd strikeout rate (16.7% K-Rate in 2016 to 25.4% in 2017). The reason I included him is just to give you an idea of the absurd power this guy has. He’s ahead of Paul Goldschmidt, Joey Votto, and Miguel Cabrera in terms of Barrels/PA, mostly because they get walked way more.

What’s more, he’s trending in the right direction. Below is Chisenhall’s distribution of exit velocity over the past two years (red is 2017).

As you can see, his soft contact is slightly more concentrated at about the 70 mph range, with much more hard contact this year in the 95-105 range. Chisenhall has made an adjustment…it’s just a question of what.

The Line Drive Revolution

We’ve already read a million articles on the “air-ball revolution” detailing how hitters are attempting to elevate the ball — even at the expense of overall contact rates — to produce more home runs in total and thus more offensive production.

While it’s lazy analysis too easy to simply say the words “air-ball revolution” and call it a day — although with Daniel Murphy and Yonder Alonso, it might just be the decisive factor — changes in swing plane can drastically affect batted-ball data.

Two things are incredibly important in this debate that most people misunderstand.

First, it’s the “air-ball” revolution, not the fly-ball revolution. Mike Petriello, Statcast analyst at MLB Network, defines an “air-ball” as any ball hit above 10 degrees of launch angle. Fly balls are good, line drives are good, ground balls are less good. Strikeouts are bad.

Second, putting the ball in the air only works in tandem with exit velocity. There’s no sense in Eric Young Jr. trying to elevate everything, which would result in lazy fly balls, mitigating the benefit of his blazing speed. But, in aggregate, hard-hit balls are more productive when hit above 10-degrees launch angle rather than below. We’ve already established that he’s mashing this year. Now lets take a look at where they’re going.

As you can see from the above chart, a good amount of Chisenhall’s batted balls were directly at the 10-to-30 degree mark, while his hits were almost all at the 10-degree mark. Those were solid line drives, but leave very little room for error. Low-EV balls at the 10-degree mark likely result in ground balls or soft line-outs to infielders. Also, there is a decent amounts of batted-ball events directly below that. If your mean launch angle is 10 degrees, it’s very likely that small misses yield more ground balls than you intend.

This year, the vast majority of his batted-ball events are directly at the 20-degree mark. It seems like not only is he hitting more “air balls,” but they’re solid line drives that afford him more room for error. Even when he doesn’t hit frozen ropes, they still have a shot at becoming base hits. Also, there’s a much more apparent difference between air balls and ground balls, with many more hard-hit balls at 30 and 40 degrees.

The graph above confirms this. Especially on breaking balls, more and more are finding the air.

Patience is Key

A lot was written about the importance of plate discipline during the meteoric rise of Eric Thames at the beginning of the year. Petriello details the dramatic difference between swinging at strikes and balls.

“From 2015-16, Major League Baseball hit .292 with an average exit velocity of 89.3 mph on pitches in the zone, and only .168 with an 81.4-mph exit velocity on contact made outside it. Nearly 91 percent of all homers over the past two seasons are on pitches in the strike zone. These are massive differences. Learning plate discipline may be the hardest thing for a batter to do, but it’s also potentially the best thing he can do.”

You might think this is obvious but for major-league hitters geared up to hit a 98mph fastball, laying off of a dirty breaking ball that sweeps through the zone is one of the toughest things to do.

For Chisenhall, this has been one of the more drastic changes in his profile over the past few years. Below is a chart of the change in K-rate over the last six years. The league average has been trending up, starting at 18.5% to about 21.5% at a relatively stable rate (some speculate this increase in K-rate is a result of the move of major-league hitters to elevate more).

As made pretty clear by the above graph, Chisenhall’s strikeout rates have been moving pretty steadily in the opposite direction. A hitter with negatively trending K-rates without sacrificing power is rare. This was the precursor to the Justin Smoak breakout this year.

His walk rate skyrocketed to 9% this year from 5.5%. What’s the culprit?

His O-Swing% is down 10% this year, and his Z-Swing% is down a bit, but nothing crazy. He’s clearly seeing the ball better this year.

Making Adjustments

Here’s a clip of 2016 Chisenhall on a changeup outside. Pay attention to 1) bat plane and 2) where his front foot lands in relation to the edge of the batters box.

In terms of bat plane, he does go down to get this pitch a little bit, but finishes below his shoulder with one hand on the bat. Just a note about letting go of the bat: it’s fine and the majority of major-league hitters do it, but you have to make sure you’re not cutting your swing short as a result.

As for foot placement, it looks like he’s close to square with the pitcher, maybe a little bit closed, and about two feet from the edge of the plate. On this swing, he produces a fly ball at 88mph that ends in the stands.

This is a heatmap for where pitchers located the ball against him in 2016. Notice a pattern?

It seems like pitchers realized that mistakes inside are what make him the vast majority of his money (as will be shown in a zone map slightly later).

Now take a look at this video detailing a swing on a nearly identical (albeit overhanded) pitch from 2017.

This time, he finishes his swing with both hands on the bat above the shoulder, with the bat traveling on a slightly higher angle (though nothing like the transformation we’ve seen from some of the more absurd poster boys of the elevate-and-celebrate craze mentioned above).

I think the most interesting change for this swing, however, is that he strides fairly substantially closed and his foot lands about a foot from the plate. Instead of a lazy fly ball to the stands next to the left-field line, this produces a 103mph line drive to right-center.

In a recent FanGraphs article by Eno Sarris about the importance of changing where the hitter stands in the batters box, Anthony Rendon (one of my personal heroes who I grew up watching at Rice University) says,

“If a righty dives, we sell ourselves short inside, so if I’m getting crowded, and I’m hitting the ball late and deep, let me scoot back, and so on the same swing, instead of hitting here [on the handle] and fouling it off, I’m hitting it closer to the barrel and hitting into right field.”

It looks like Chisenhall’s position in the back of the box with a slight move toward the plate is designed to correct that issue. His hands are so fast that he can consistently make contact with the inside pitch. His best hitting in 2016 happened on pitches off the plate inside. However, it doesn’t matter how good you are at driving inside pitches if no pitcher is ever willing to give you one. Making an adjustment to put solid swings on pitches on the outer third is the right call in this situation.

I would be a little bit worried about this change from the perspective of hitting the inside pitch, but it looks like a concrete adjustment in response to the outside pitch was warranted from the previous season’s heat map. It seems that pitchers have picked up on this adjustment as well. Below is the distribution of pitches for 2017. Pitchers have made a dedicated effort to react to Chisenhall’s changed hitting style and adjust accordingly.

So? Is this adjustment working? Here’s the map of Chisenhall’s batting average in 2016 broken down by zone provided once again by the lovely Brooks Baseball website.

Anything strange? Um…he’s hitting over .900 on low to middle pitches off the plate inside and .160 on pitches middle-middle and middle-up. What?? He was hitting balls outside of the strike zone way better than meatballs down the middle of the plate. I think this is a big reason for the spike in walk rate we’ve been seeing this year. The videos we saw above show that he’s scooted up to the plate a bit more than he used to, meaning the alarming shade of red (indicating that he’s getting hits with regularity) shifted over the plate and now he can simply take those pitches for balls (and eventually, walks).

Yup! That’s exactly what happened. He’s also getting to pitches off the plate outside a bit more to protect the plate in two-strike counts. This could also help limit strikeout rate. Overall, a better approach toward outside pitches combined with adjusting placement within the batters box have served him well.

Final Thoughts

So, lets recap what we’ve seen here. First, Chisenhall hits the ball…hard. Second, walk rate is up, strikeout rate is down. Third, more and more balls are being hit in the air (without overly focusing on hitting fly balls). Lastly, all of these changes seem less like a product of batted-ball luck and more like the result of intentional change in approach at the plate. We can expect this success to continue at a current or similar rate.

Some red flags could signal and end to this dominance, however. First, I would keep my eye out for a change in walk rate. While he stopped swinging so much on inside fastballs off the plate, he’s still aggressively swinging off of the low-outside corner. This shouldn’t be a problem as long as he keeps mashing those pitches (as a result of the new approach), but the further he reaches, the less likely he is to make solid contact. Second, I’m incredibly interested to see how he responds to this shift to the inside corner. His 2016 results seem to suggest that his quick hands are capable of getting to these without getting jammed. However, on a pitch with high velocity and cut, we could see much more weak contact.

You’re going to hear a lot of people simply point to his BABIP numbers and say that’s unsustainable, he’s just getting lucky, and that he will inevitably regress. That’s lazy analysis and untrue. Until we see any of the above physical adjustments, just sit back and enjoy the Lonnie Chisenhall show. It’s going to be a good one.

Brad… What?

Welcome to the Astros rotation, Brad Peacock. In his first six starts (plus 16.1 innings of relief work), he has a 2.82 ERA with a 1.19 WHIP. Wait, I forgot to mention the 66 strikeouts in 44.2 innings. If you’ve ever seen this guy pitch, you’ve no doubt observed his strangely overpowering repertoire and wondered how All-Star hitters can look so ridiculous on a 93mph fastball. For a former top-100 prospect who has spent 10 years playing professional baseball, one might wonder if there was a fundamental change in stuff, if this is just batted-ball luck, destined to disappear as soon as you pick him up on your fantasy team (#thanksJasonVargas), or if the only missing factor was opportunity. Either way, everybody who has seen this Astros team play knows that something special is happening in H-Town. While many believed that the Astros needed at least one new arm to even compete for a playoff spot, the return of Cy-Young, immaculately-bearded Dallas Keuchel and breakout Lance McCullers mean that there was just one missing piece to seriously contend for the World Series. That piece is Brad Peacock.

Devastating Repertoire

Sometimes it’s important to subject pitchers to the eye test, which this guy passes with flying colors (unlike a peacock which, while colorful, cannot fly). For this section, I’ll show you a pitch and then a table showing the league leaders for that pitch type. Because of the problems with pitch values (which I’ll dive into in a bit) it’s important to couple that with other methods of assessing pitch effectiveness, including simply watching the pitcher.

While some of you will no doubt roll your eyes at the next section, I think it’s important to talk about what matters when using film study. The important things to look for when watching a pitcher include:

1. Location (duh). I trust the Astros’ game plan to get the job done on most days. More often than not, the relevant question is if the pitcher can execute that plan.

2. Bite. Is there late movement on the pitch? Arm side tail or cut? This can serve to induce weak contact even on meatballs and serve as a helpful backup in case of missed location.

3. Hitter’s balance. While we now have metrics that calculate the likelihood of each batted ball becoming a hit based off of exit velocity and launch angle, those stats can be misleading as well. Sometimes, a hitter can be completely fooled on a pitch and still get the barrel on the ball. This could change the expected outcome for that batted ball, but not for the same pitch in a slightly different context.

4. Situational pitching. How do they fare in high-pressure situations (3-2, runner on third, battling back from 3-0, etc.)?

OK, sorry for the kiddie stuff. Back to Peacock. Here’s a straight 3-2 fastball that generates a strikeout.

This pitch is indicative of a few things. First, it catches a bit more of the plate than you would like to see, although in a 3-2 count with bases empty and 2 outs, it is more acceptable to challenge the hitter than to give up a two-out walk (as long as it’s not flat and down the middle). Second, note the late arm-side tail. This could be a major factor in his ability to generate swing and misses (as will be explored later).

Before I show you the leaderboards, there’s a major caveat. As with a lot of advanced metrics, pitch-type linear weights are more descriptive than predictive. There’s extremely high variance from year-to-year. On top of that, several variables go into each pitch and it’s extremely hard to differentiate the signal from the noise. The results of certain pitches are not independent from one another, but heavily influenced by the hitter it’s thrown against, the situation it’s thrown in, the pitch it’s following, etc. This all is amplified by the fact that his start of the season in the bullpen has limited his innings total and a good chunk of the results we are seeing are against an Oakland A’s lineup that swings and misses…a LOT.

That being said, if we continue to see major run savings from Peacock as his innings total climbs, the continuation of the trend as more and more context changes, the more we can be confident that this is more a product of skill than anything else.

Here’s how that pitch has fared against the league writ large. Below is a table of the league leaders in weighted pitch value for fastballs. Feel free to peruse the familiar names of his company on the leaderboard.

You might be asking yourselves why I chose to write about Peacock and not Jaime, Walker, Nova, etc. Aside from the amazing name, it’s because this guy has not one, but two All-Star offerings.

Next, his slider (brace yourselves):

Did you see where that pitch starts versus where it ends?? Is he throwing a wiffle ball? The look of frustration on Beltre’s face is not unique to this at bat. That slider has been doing that to hitters all year. Below is the table of weighted pitch value leaders for sliders in the MLB this year.

There’s a good chance that in high-leverage situations, this pitch can generate a swing and miss like it has so many times this season. There’s a reason (which you probably picked up from watching the above gif).

There are five sliders in the entire majors with more break than this pitch.

Overall, while there are problems with looking at pitch values in isolation, we can be slightly more confident that this is the product of solid game plans from the Astros coaching staff, Peacock’s ability to carry it out, and simply a dirty slider.

This Peacock Can Fly

OK, so we know his pitch mix is fairly strong. What does this mean for his results? When I examined the batted-ball data, three things immediately jumped out:

1. When hitters swing at strikes, they miss.

This much is clear from the section above. This guy truly has overpowering stuff without lighting up the radar gun. Z-Contact is cool because for pitchers with low velocity, it serves as a kind of proxy for movement, sequencing (thanks to the coaching staff for that one), and locating pitches on the corners.

If anyone takes issue with Danny Salazar’s inclusion on this list, it’s important to keep in mind what gave him so many problems was not nastiness of pitch mix; it was mostly a combination of walks and bloated HR/FB ratio. He actually inspires confidence in Peacock, as you can think of him as a Salazar without the walks who keeps the ball in the ballpark (as you’ll see… right now).

2. When they do make contact, it’s soft.

Dickey’s appearance on this list should not be a surprise. Because of the low overall velocity of his pitches, the batter must generate the majority of the exit velocity. While Keuchel isn’t a knuckle-baller, his average fastball velocity of 88.7 mph means the same logic applies, although not to the same extent. Peacock’s appearance on this list is particularly impressive because of his average fastball velocity of 92.3. This means that although he is providing more force than the aforementioned players, he is still inducing roughly as much soft contact.

3. Even with hard contact, the ball stays in the park.

This last table is, I think, what makes Peacock a candidate for greatness.

First, generating swing and misses is one thing, because it intrinsically decreases the likelihood of home runs, RBI, etc. But if you tell me this guy limits the pool of potential home runs AND the likelihood of each individual batted-ball event in that pool turning into a home run, we’ve stumbled on something special.

Second (and most important), he’s in danger of being undervalued. It used to be thought that BABIP (batting average on balls in play) was essentially random for every hitter, so the ones with higher batting averages simply put the ball in play more often. Later, sabermetricians discovered that, in fact, some players just had higher BABIPs. Mike Trout hits the ball harder than Replacement-Level Joe, so Mike Trout is more likely to get base hits when he puts the ball in play. The latest version of this logic is playing out in the debate over HR/FB rates. Baseball analysts for years have been developing models that regress the HR/FB rate in the direction of the league mean. The thinking goes: if someone hits a hard fly ball, several factors have a large sway in determining if it leaves the park (park factors, weather patterns, time of day, etc.) outside of the hitter’s control. These days, however, several pitchers are sustaining remarkably high HR/FB ratios (Gerrit Cole – 18.2%, Lance Lynn – 18.8%). If it turns out that this ratio actually has more to do with the pitcher, then these players are being systemically overvalued in projections. The flip side remains true. Projections tend to undervalue players with low HR/FB rates, because it ignores the skill involved in limiting the amount of hard contact that leaves the yard.

What’s Next?

What’s next for this Peacock? We can see clear trends in his pitch usage that suggest this dominance will continue. The below chart from our friends at Brooks Baseball shows what I believe to be the root of his recent success.

Two things to note:

1. He’s throwing the slider much more often as the season progresses. It’s his best pitch and the contact rate hasn’t changed as hitters are seeing it more and more.

2. A sinker is in the works! Several analysts note that to be a major-league starter, you need three effective pitches to keep hitters off balance and be effective the third time through the order. While there are some problems with these studies (because of the preordained conclusion, there are very few two-pitch pitchers in the majors, resulting in self-fulfilling prophecy), it is at the very least comforting to see another pitch in the mix. While Peacock’s curveball generates a high number of whiffs, he has trouble commanding it late in the game relative to his slider, so its usage is limited.

Lastly, for Peacock to be a truly effective starter, he’s going to need to go deeper into games. Strikeout pitchers generally bloat their pitch counts in an attempt to generate swings and misses early on. Since transitioning to a starter, he’s averaging 4 2/3 innings per start. Part of this will be resolved with experience as a starter, but in the meantime this new sinker could mean more ground balls, saving his swing-and-miss stuff for later.

For now, at least, it looks like the sinker is doing just that. In his last start, Oakland slugged .200 against it. With low whiff rate, high ground-ball rate, and low slugging percentage, this could be the tool to get Peacock deeper into games where the curve and hammer of a slider can take the wheel from there. While we’re finally seeing what makes this guy so special, he’s already making the adjustments needed to become an elite starter. This peacock is finally showing his tail feathers, and we haven’t seen anything yet.

In the boom-or-bust era of plate appearances, baserunning value has become less important than it’s been in quite some time, but it’s a fascinating part of the game in which you can literally steal a win here and there. Given that this fourth pillar of the game is a pillar nonetheless, here’s a list of the top six baserunners this year by BsR, with their stolen base and caught stealing totals as well (as of 06/18/2017):

Some of the guys on this list are the burners you would expect to see, and Xander Bogaerts is a pretty athletic, fast guy. Paul Goldschmidt is a freak and has been far and away the best at baserunning among 1B by BsR since 1950 (relative to the smaller number of games he’s played), which is a highly underestimated part of his game.

Other than Goldschmidt, who you should already know is fantastic at everything in baseball, the name that really sticks out is Joey Gallo, the barrel-chested guy with an 80 power rating as a prospect who thumped homers at every level of the minors. He’s also hit some big ones in the majors; we’d be talking about his homers a lot more if Aaron Judge wasn’t doing his own thing in the Bronx. If you Google “Joey Gallo home run” and go to videos, words like “mammoth,” “crushes,” and “monster” pepper the results. Gallo is 6’5” and 235 lbs. In short, he’s not the guy you expect to be atop the BsR leaderboard, earning his team nearly half a win this year with his legs, especially given his low SB total.

So how has Gallo achieved this high level of baserunning despite clearly not passing the baserunning eye test? He is generally athletic, which he recently discussed. The obvious first take is that Gallo strikes out a lot, so he doesn’t have the opportunity to ground into double plays and negatively affect his BsR. This is true, to a certain extent, but doesn’t tell the whole story. Of the three components of BsR (UBR, wSB, and wGDP), UBR is the primary source of value for Gallo. This can generally be perceived as a measure of baserunning skill, as it looks at how often the baserunner takes extra bases in the same situations. This metric may be a little team-dependent, but Gallo ranks seventh in baseball at 3.1 runs added. The value from this metric is derived from both taking extra bases on hits as well as while already on base. However, Gallo only has 24 non-home run hits this year, only 11 of which went for extra bases, leaving him without much room to boost his UBR rating. Therefore, a lot of this value likely comes from his time running the bases while already on them. Gallo has been on the bases 59 times this year (including non-home run hits, walks, HBP, and reaching on an error or fielder’s choice), giving him many more opportunities to make plays on the bases.

Gallo’s overall assessment by BsR as a good baserunner is a result of the other metrics as well. Couple that high UBR rating with a tenth-place ranking in wGDP (1.0 run), the metric that favors Gallo because such a high percentage of his plate appearances result in either strikeouts (37.2%) or medium/hard contact (81.7% of his batted balls). Both of these outcomes reduce the number of double plays he grounds into, leading to a slightly positive contribution to his BsR. In fact, Gallo has only hit into one double play this whole season over 247 PA. Gallo’s wSB (0.7 runs) is respectable as well, if only because he has yet to be caught stealing.

It’s possible that Gallo isn’t on the bases enough to have his BsR statistic stabilize and he’ll regress quite a bit as the season wears on, but that remains to be seen. What we do know is that Gallo is a good baserunner this year because he does a pretty good job taking extra bases, hasn’t been caught stealing, and strikes out/crushes the ball enough to rarely hit into double plays. Does that add up to being an actually good baserunner? Gallo has still been an effective baserunner this season compared to his peers, albeit not by the usual definition of the term, especially considering (and likely assisted by) his profile as a high-strikeout, high-power hitter. That value is derived from a variety of factors, so don’t expect to see him go 30-30 (or even 20-20) anytime soon, but keep an eye out for him when he is on base.