Jonny Venters was in the news this week after becoming the first pitcher to appear in a big-league game after undergoing three Tommy John surgeries. The 33-year-old veteran worked one-third-of-an-inning for the Tampa Bay Rays after having last pitched for the Atlanta Braves in the 2012 postseason. It’s a great story, worthy of the attention it’s garnered (and will continue to garner; colleague Jay Jaffe will have more on Venters in the coming days).

On Friday, I approached Venters to discuss a tangentially-related subject: the worm-killing sinker that made him an effective setup man before his elbow became stubbornly uncooperative. Since the stat began being tabulated, no pitcher with at least 125 career innings under his belt has had a higher ground-ball rate than the 68.4% mark put up by the come-backing left-hander.

Venters transitioned to a sinker-ball pitcher in 2009 when he was a starter with the Double-A Mississippi Braves. He’d been primarily a four-seam guy, but the organization asked him to put that pitch in his back pocket and begin prioritizing his two-seam. Helped initially by the tutelage of pitching coach Marty Reed, it eventually became his go-to.

Success wasn’t instantaneous. Read the rest of this entry »

Each week, we publish in the neighborhood of 75 articles across our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan follow up on previous talk of triples, popups, and foul balls, then discuss Ronald Acuña’s big second game, the intriguing Oakland A’s, the new and maybe-improved Joey Gallo, the transformations of Didi Gregorius and Andrelton Simmons, the post-injury return of Jonny Venters, Clayton Kershaw vs. Trevor Richards and the biggest baseball upsets, Jarrod Dyson’s bases-loaded bunt, the Diamondbacks’ season-starting series winning streak, the Yankees’ ongoing dominance of the Twins, and more.

Audio intro: The Decemberists, "Make You Better"
Audio outro: Spoon, "The Underdog"

Link to thread with research about triples and homers
Link to Ben’s article on Didi and Andrelton
Link to Jeff’s Gallo post
Link to Jeff’s post about Dyson’s bunt

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The Yankees’ biggest splash at the trade deadline last season was the acquisition of Sonny Gray. The Bronx Bombers thought they had acquired a frontline starting pitcher to pair with homegrown ace Luis Severino and Splitter Aficionado Masahiro Tanaka.

But Sonny Gray, after the trade in 2017, posted a 101 xFIP- and 107 FIP- — this after having produced a 75 xFIP- and also 75 FIP- with Oakland before the deal.

Sonny Gray, since the beginning of 2018, has a 132 xFIP- and 115 FIP-. Sonny Gray, on Wednesday night, gave up three earned runs, a home run, and walked five in 4.2 innings, recording a 6.67 xFIP in the process. Sonny Gray, the Yankees version, has been bad.

One, of course, is curious as to why he’s been bad. What happened to the guy who, at the time of the deal, could boast a 3.25 FIP, 8.7 K/9, 1.175 WHIP, and 3.13 K/BB ratio, numbers that were much more in line with his 2013-15 run with the A’s? On the surface, it appears Gray joined the Yankees and reverted to his troubled 2016 self. After all, after the trade, Gray’s home-runs allowed spiked, from 0.7 per nine to 1.5 per nine. Perhaps as a result of wariness, his walks spiked from 2.8 per nine to 3.7 per nine, as well.

It’s a plausible theory, but it’s also insufficient.

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Kevin Kiermaier has come a long way since I first talked to him in the spring of 2014. At the time, his big-league experience consisted of two games — two very important games — as a defensive replacement with the Tampa Bay Rays. Already considered elite with the glove, he was seen as the club’s centerfielder of the future — assuming he could hold his own with the bat.

A little over a year later, in May 2015, I followed up with the uber-athletic former 31st-round draft pick. As he was coming off a rookie season where he’d slashed a better-than-many-expected .263/.315/.450, the resulting Q&A was titled “Kevin Kiermaier on Turning a Corner”.

The years that have followed have been a combination of prosperous and unkind. The now-28-year-old Kiermaier accumulated 11.3 WAR between 2015-2017, in large part because his defense has been nothing short of exemplary. Despite multiple trips to the disabled list, he led MLB with 89 Defensive Runs Saved over that three-year stretch. At the plate, he slashed a credible .262/.320/.426, with a dozen home runs annually.

Staying on the field has obviously been a major issue. Kiermaier has missed chunks of time with hand and hip fractures, and earlier this month he went on the shelf with a torn ligament in his right thumb. Prior to the most-recent injury, I sat down with Kiermaier to discuss his career thus far, with the main focus being his continued development on the offensive side of the ball. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Friday, in the second inning against the Rangers, Robinson Cano went where no man, at least no infielder, had gone before.

Cano, the Mariners’ nominal second baseman in this instance, was situated in an alignment in which he began 221 feet from home plate against Joey Gallo. Read the rest of this entry »

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Fringe Five Scoreboards: 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013.

The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a few years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own fallible intuition to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.

Central to the exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe, a term which possesses different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of the column this year, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion among the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above who (a) was omitted from the preseason prospect lists produced by Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com, John Sickels, and (most importantly) FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel* and also who (b) is currently absent from a major-league roster. Players appearing on any updated, midseason-type list will also be excluded from eligibility.

*Note: I’ve excluded Baseball America’s list this year not due to any complaints with their coverage, but simply because said list is now behind a paywall.

For those interested in learning how Fringe Five players have fared at the major-league level, this recent post offers that kind of information. The short answer: better than a reasonable person would have have expected. In the final analysis, though, the basic idea here is to recognize those prospects who are perhaps receiving less notoriety than their talents or performance might otherwise warrant.

David Fletcher, 2B/SS, Los Angeles AL (Profile)
As noted in last week’s edition of this same column, David Fletcher has only ever once produced an isolated-power figure above .080 in a professional season during which he’s also compiled more than 100 plate appearances. As things currently stand with Triple-A Salt Lake City, however, Fletcher could fail to record an extra-base hit in any of his next 106 at-bats and he’d still post something slightly better than an .080 ISO.*

*As of Thursday afternoon, at least. Fletcher actually added a stupid double and stupid homer last night, meaning his extra-base drought could extend even longer.

Incredibly, Fletcher has produced these unprecedented power numbers while also striking out at a much lower rate than usual. Which, actually, that’s not entirely accurate: Fletcher isn’t just striking out less often, he’s striking out almost never. In 86 plate appearances entering yesterday, he’d recorded just one strikeout, a figure in close proximity to — some would say the closest proximity to — zero strikeouts.

Read the rest of this entry »

In 1961, the American League added two teams. To ensure that the 10 teams played an equal number of games against each other, the league moved from 154 games to 162, while the National League stayed put at 154. The following season, the National League followed suit, expanding both the number of teams and the number of games on the schedule. With the exception of strike seasons, the MLB schedule has remained at 162 games. The current setup has teams play 19 games against teams in their own division, with 66 games of the remaining games coming against the rest of the league, and 20 against interleague opponents. This year, more off days pushed up the start of baseball season. That early start coupled with horrendous weather has caused a large number of postponements, which has led to calls for a 154-game season. While I personally prefer the current schedule, a reduction in games is pretty doable.

First, let’s talk about a reason that shouldn’t be used as a justification to shorten the regular season: this year’s postponements. While postponements are drawing a lot of attention, we are likely dealing with a set of unique circumstances that won’t affect future seasons. The season did start a few days earlier than we’ve typically seen, but the biggest factor in all of these postponements isn’t the early start; it’s the bad weather. The number of postponements and cold weather games this season compared to past seasons suggests that this year’s weather is an anomaly unlikely to cause similar disruptions in future seasons. Cutting eight games from the schedule after more than 50 years because of somewhat unusual weather in one year seems unnecessary. If the goal is to move the season back to early April, a half-dozen Saturday day-night doubleheaders later in the summer would accomplish the same thing.

Players certainly seem like they would be willing to drop down to a 154-game schedule, as getting a few extra days off was an important negotiating point in the last round of collective bargaining with the owners. Removing eight games from the schedule would allow players the same number of days off they just bargained for and allow the league to start the season in early April instead of late March. From a pure feasibility standpoint, there is some merit to it, and it doesn’t seem like it would make a ton of difference to fans. The season would be about as long as it used to be; the handful of extra off days spread out over the course of six months wouldn’t make its presence deeply felt. The feel of a baseball season would hardly be impacted. The impediment, seemingly, would be money.

Over at The Athletic, Jayson Stark did some excellent reporting discussing the potential for a 154-game season. Particularly illuminating to me was the nugget that a vast majority of teams would be happy to drop down to an 154-game schedule. Stark did indicate that the minority of teams who would object to a shorter season would have very loud objections.

Stark estimated that a team like the Yankees might lose more than $10 million in gate and concession revenue. Losing four home dates, assuming a couple are less desirable weekday games in April plus a couple Monday games in the summer probably, might have a slightly smaller affect than that as the number of tickets sold for those games is likely to be somewhat lower than average. I am skeptical that teams could raise prices enough to recoup all of that money lost. I would be surprised if teams aren’t already doing whatever they can to maximize ticket and concession revenue. They may be able to get some of that money back, however, particularly from season ticket holders. They could, for example, provide 5% less inventory by taking away four games, but only drop season ticket prices by 3%, thus getting back some of the lost money while still providing a discount compared to what season ticket holders previously paid.

In his piece, Stark discussed the potential problems that might emerge with teams’ contracts with regional sports networks. Contractually, it is possible teams promised a certain number of games, making a change in the schedule challenging. But in terms of revenue, the money lost would be fairly insignificant. The lost revenue for regional television partners would be pretty minimal as the vast majority of that income derives from cable subscriber fees rather than advertising. Nationally, baseball would have little trouble fulfilling any of their deals, as the number of national games seems unlikely to change.

If the Yankees’ lost revenues are somewhere around $10 million, we might be able to roughly estimate the total losses to be somewhere in the $100 million to $150 million range before considering mitigation through some minor price increases. While MLB owners haven’t ever easily given up that much money, we are probably looking at something in the range of 1% or less of total MLB revenues. There might be talk of the players having to sacrifice pay, but these small decreases in overall revenue shouldn’t significantly alter the player-owner split as it is currently structured, and would be the subject of bargaining. Players get the off days they crave, the season starts in April, and the revenue split for the players and owners would likely remain roughly the same.

Financially, dropping eight games from the schedule is probably a lot more feasible than one might think. Of course, making the situation financially feasible doesn’t necessarily make it a great idea. I realize this makes me a bit of a curmudgeon, but I’m used to records and performances based on a 162-game schedule. And the baseball season is long. That’s a feature, not a bug. While 154 games might not feel that different, as someone who consumes baseball in a near-constant fashion all of the months of the year, I would rather have those 120 meaningful regular season games than not have them. The grind of the season with relatively few of the teams qualifying for the playoffs helps make the regular season more special than that of the other major sports.

These reasons aren’t necessarily compelling enough to keep the schedule the way it is. Perhaps someone else can come up with better ones. But it certainly doesn’t seem like finances should be a major impediment.

I don’t mean to pick on Jose Abreu. Abreu has had a fine start to the season, and he is currently under the weather. But, to this point, Abreu has batted five times with less than two out and a runner on third. In zero of those five chances has the runner been driven home. Twice, Abreu has hit into a double play. Once, he’s popped out. Once, he’s struck out. And once, he’s lined out. He’s better than this, of course, and eventually the RBI will be there, but from a fan perspective, few things are more frustrating than such a wasted opportunity.

Every opportunity that doesn’t work out feels wasted. And in large part I think it’s because people don’t really know what normal is. Of course teams can’t convert every opportunity, but, it’s just moving a runner up 90 feet, right? It sounds like it should be easy. In a way, it’s just like bunting. You feel like everyone should be able to do it, but it’s surprisingly challenging to execute. It’s helpful to look at the league-wide numbers. It’s the only way to establish the proper context.

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