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Corey Seager Is Already Beginning Transition from Top Prospect to MLB Star

Not even the best young ballplayers can escape humility forever. For proof, look no further than the wall Corey Seager hit in his first April as a major leaguer.

But Seager must have gotten his fill of humility, because now he’s looking more like the player the Los Angeles Dodgers and everyone else expected him to be.

The Dodgers have only slightly recovered from a rough April in May, as their 11-10 record has them at just 23-23 overall for the season. A major bright side, though, has been the emergence of Seager as one of the best players in their lineup.

After a slow start, the 22-year-old has turned things around like so:

Per ultimate zone rating, Seager has also been playing quality defense at shortstop. Add that to what he’s been doing at the dish, and he rates as the Dodgers’ best position player in May.

Widen the area of focus, and you’ll also see Kyle Seager’s younger brother ranks as one of the top 10 position players in the entire National League over that span. And even though he’s just starting to get going, it’s already arguable that he’s the Senior Circuit’s top rookie.

Based on what’s in the book on Seager, this was probably inevitable. He was a .307 career hitter with an .891 OPS in the minors, and he debuted in the majors to the tune of a .337 average and .986 OPS last September. That helped earn him the top spot in all the major prospect rankings.

Seager getting back on track, however, has required him to live up to the specifics of the book on him.

Upon first glance, it doesn’t look like Seager’s approach has changed for the better. Relative to earlier, he’s recently been walking less (8.3 BB% to 7.0 BB%) and striking out more (14.7 K% to 16.3 K%). Numbers like those won’t do him any favors in the Ben Zobrist Lookalike Sweepstakes.

But there are times when first glances are about as deceiving as a Kenley Jansen cut fastball. This is one of those.

After beginning the year with a slightly wild approach, Seager has become more selective (Swing%) with his swings while cutting down on his expansion of the strike zone (O-Swing%) and making more contact (Contact%): 

The more controlled approach Seager has been using recently is an accurate reflection of his true self. As Keith Law of ESPN.com wrote in February, Seager’s ability to recognize pitches and make frequent adjustments gives him an approach well beyond his years. That’s what he’s been showing off.

As for why it took him a month to get around to hitting, it could be because he was pressing in an attempt to live up to his reputation as The Next Big Thing™. Or, maybe he needed time to find his bearings against tougher competition than he faced in his first exposure to the majors. September is a time of watered-down rosters, after all.

“Corey is learning the league,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said recently, per Jack Baer of MLB.com. “I think that he’s been a little more patient and just getting good pitches to hit. With the strength that he has and the swing that he has, if he gets a strike, he’s going to do some things.”

On that note, let’s now look at an example of the things Seager has been doing when he’s gotten good pitches to hit. Delight your senses with the highlights of his first career two-homer game:

Here, the lefty swinger is illustrating the platonic ideal of power hitting: an outside pitch driven out to left and an inside pitch pulled out to right.

After Seager put on that display, even St. Louis Cardinals skipper Mike Matheny admitted he was taken aback, per Mark Saxon of ESPN.com: 

This leads us to the other defining aspect of Seager’s turnaround. According to Baseball Savant, he’s gone from struggling with his exit velocity to making all sorts of loud noises when his bat finds the ball:

  • First 25 games: 88.4 mph
  • Next 19 games: 93.3 mph

Seager hasn’t quite been the hardest hitter in the league since he started wielding a fiery bat. He’s up there, though, and the list of names behind him includes batted-ball luminaries like Josh Donaldson, Miguel Cabrera, Manny Machado, Carlos Correa and Yoenis Cespedes.

Because no obvious mechanical adjustments stick out on video, this may simply be owed to good health. Nobody official has said as much, but it’s possible Seager wasn’t fully recovered from a left knee sprain he suffered in spring training when the season opened. Once again having a strong back leg in the box would lead to more pop.

Whatever the case, the power Seager is displaying should not be written off as a fluke.

Though he wasn’t known for his power in the minors, Seager’s 6’4″, 215-pound frame makes him bigger and stronger than most shortstops. Between that and an uppercut swing that allows him to get under the ball, it would have been a bigger surprise if he didn’t start crushing eventually.

I am (or might as well be) contractually obligated to note Seager’s trendline won’t continue upward forever. Just because he’s found his footing doesn’t mean he’s never going to slip again. There’s always another slick floor just around the corner in the baseball world.

Nonetheless, Seager’s play in recent weeks makes it that much easier to understand why many were so excited about him coming into 2016. After offering a sneak peek at his star potential in 2015, they all said it was likely just a matter of time before he realized his star potential in 2016.

They can be wrong about such things, but this time, they were right.

 

Stats are updated through games played on May 22 and are courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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Matt Cain’s Resurgence Yet Another Weapon for Streaking Giants

The San Francisco Giants were coming up short for a while there. After going into 2016 amid loads of hype, they were under .500 as recently as May 10.

But all of a sudden, the Giants are making it look suspiciously like an even year.

It took a confrontation with reigning Cy Young winner/freak of nature Jake Arrieta and the Chicago Cubs Friday at AT&T Park to snap the Giants’ eight-game win streak. But they got right back in the proverbial driver’s seat Saturday, beating the Cubs 5-3 to run their record to 26-19. 

That’s one bit of good news for the Giants. The other bit of good news is that an old standby is beginning to resemble his old self for the first time in a long time.

Matt Cain was the Giants’ biggest contributor in Saturday’s win, clubbing a two-run double and stifling the Cubs’ high-powered offense with six one-run innings. That’s now three strong starts in a row for the veteran right-hander, as he allowed only three runs across 15 innings in his previous two. 

Like that, an ERA that was a problematic 7.84 is now down to a considerably less problematic 5.37. And quite possibly even falling further.

There’s certainly no ignoring that Cain’s recent travels have been fraught with peril. He was terrific (and literally perfect one time) in posting a 2.93 ERA between 2009 and 2012, but he managed just a 4.37 ERA and struggled with injuries between 2013 and 2015. After having surgery on his arm during spring training and then getting off to a slow start, it seemed like 2016 was going to bring more of the same.

Things seem different now. Asked to explain what Cain has found in his last couple of outings, Giants skipper Bruce Bochy theorized the big change has been a mental one.

“His bullpens have been fine, and his pregame warm-ups,” Bochy said after Cain silenced the Arizona Diamondbacks on May 15, per Andrew Baggarly of the Bay Area News Group. “In the game, it just wasn’t going well for him. I think he’s realizing, ‘Hey, I’m fine, and my stuff is great. I’m healthy.’ It’s all about the confidence now that he’s settled in with.”

The most noticeable difference is in how aggressively Cain is going right at hitters. He was throwing first-pitch strikes 62.1 percent of the time in his first six outings. He upped that to 70.7 in his next two and kept it going with first-pitch strikes to 18 of the 25 Cubs (72 percent) he faced Saturday.

That’s one way to snap out of a slump, but it never hurts to also have better stuff. Though data for Saturday’s outing isn’t available yet, Baseball Savant reveals that Cain’s average spin rates this season break down like so:

  • First 6 GS: 2,437 rpm
  • Next 2 GS: 2,526 rpm

It’s going to take more than just three starts for a definitive conclusion to form, but Cain’s resurgence doesn’t appear to be well-timed good luck playing a trick on the Giants. He’s pitching like a guy who wants to be a weapon again.

And at the thought of that, you can almost hear the rest of the National League letting out a groan.

For the competition, the thought of the Giants having another weapon in their starting rotation alone is distressing enough. This is, after all, one of only two rotations in the league that features three qualified starters with ERAs 2.70 or under.

That’s the trio of Madison Bumgarner, Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija. The Giants knew what they were going to get from Bumgarner this year, and they’ve gotten even more than they bargained $220 million for out of Cueto and Samardzija. They’ve been worth every penny and then some.

“They’re definitely the catalyst,” right fielder Hunter Pence said this week of the club’s star-studded rotation, per John Shea of the San Francisco Chronicle. “It makes you look really good when your starting pitching is doing that kind of exceptional work. It’s not to be taken lightly but enjoyed.”

The Giants lineup isn’t too shabby in its own right. All the key figures from an offense that finished fourth in the National League in OPS in 2015 are back. And though the 2016 offense has been guilty of starting and stopping, it could soon get going for good. Pence and Brandon Belt are having terrific seasons, and Brandon Crawford and Denard Span are showing signs of life.

So is Buster Posey. After narrowly missing a home run Friday, he definitely didn’t miss against Jon Lester in Saturday’s game:

Where things aren’t all happiness and sunshine is in the Giants bullpen. Following yet another home run served up by Santiago Casilla, it now has a 4.01 ERA that ranks in the bottom half of the league.

It’s a bit soon to say the sky is falling, though.

The Giants bullpen’s collective ERA is skewed by some especially bad performances by Vin Mazzaro, Chris Heston and Mike Broadway. With a 2.04 ERA and 21 strikeouts in 17.2 innings, even Casilla is doing well despite the home runs. And with Chris Haft of MLB.com reporting right-hander Sergio Romo is close to returning from a strained flexor tendon, the Giants bullpen is about to get a key piece back.

That is to say, the Giants may not be far from pretty much having it all. Cain’s return to effectiveness means their rotation is about more than just its three best guys. The starters are backed by an offense with plenty of potential and a bullpen that could soon be stabilized. 

As it is, the coming-together process the Giants are undertaking has already been good enough to put them atop the NL West. Coming into the year, that’s where they expected to be sooner or later.

And from the looks of things, they mean to stay there.

 

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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Yu Darvish’s Comeback Could Be Deciding Factor in Mariners-Rangers Race

The race in the American League West is just tight enough to possibly be decided by one man.

Yu Darvish, come on down.

The Texas Rangers trail the Seattle Mariners by only a game-and-a-half, but they could use some help. They were just swept in a three-game series by the Oakland Athletics, dropping their record to 8-9 in May. Among the things not helping is their starting rotation hitting the skids in the past two weeks.

This is where Darvish comes in. Or, where he will be coming in.

Sidelined since March 2015 to recover from Tommy John surgery, Darvish is now on a comeback trail with few miles left on it. The 29-year-old right-hander has yet to hit a snag in four minor league rehab starts (via MiLB.com):

For what it’s worth, that’s a 1.29 ERA and more than a strikeout per inning, as well as an opponents’ batting average of just .125. The “for what it’s worth” part bears repeating, but that’s still good!

Hence the simple goal the Japan native expressed for the rest of his rehab. As he put it through an interpreter after his last start, per the Associated Press (via ESPN.com): “I feel pretty confident right now, so just keep going.”

Darvish‘s next rehab outing is scheduled for Sunday. If that also goes well, he may be able to fulfill the kinda-sorta-official expectation that he’ll rejoin the Rangers rotation before the end of the month.

The Rangers’ hope, meanwhile, is surely that Darvish will to return to his pre-surgery form as one of the best pitchers in baseball.

Though Darvish only surpassed 30 starts in 2013, he was good enough to post a 3.27 ERA in the 545.1 innings in which he was healthy between 2012 and 2014. He was an All-Star three times and a top-10 American League Cy Young finisher twice. He also was rated as one of baseball’s top 11 pitchers by Baseball-Reference.com‘s version of wins above replacement.

In reality, he was at least a top-11 pitcher. FanGraphs‘ WAR placed Darvish within baseball’s top nine pitchers for those three seasons. The biggest reason for that was his strikeout rate. Darvish cut down 11.2 batters per nine innings, the highest rate of any qualified pitcher.

How he did that is fodder for an extended lesson in Pitchology, a recently (as in, literally just now) devised study of pitches. Brooks Baseball has tracked at least eight different pitches thrown by Darvish in his major league career. Five of those went into one of the best GIFs in the history of ever.

But like virtually every other pitcher not named R.A. Dickey or Steven Wright, Darvish works off the fastball. He used a four-seamer and sinker that sat in the 92-93 mph range and got as high as the mid-90s. According to the man himself, that velocity hasn’t gone anywhere.

“I was nice and easy and throwing 94-95,” Darvish said after his third rehab start, according to T.R. Sullivan of MLB.com. “I’m going to show them 97-98, but most of the time you’re going to see 94-95.”

The word is also good concerning Darvish‘s most reliable moneymaker: his slider. As Double-A Frisco manager Joe Mikulik told Will Korn of MLB.com, it was “very sharp” in his most recent start.

If Darvish‘s slider is indeed at full strength, baseball is about to reclaim one of its deadliest weapons. That slider held hitters to a .156 average and a .235 slugging percentage between 2012 and 2014, and it tended to be the star of the show whenever he had a great outing. Like so:

What Darvish may not have upon his return is a good idea of where the ball is going.

With a career rate of 3.6 walks per nine innings, his control wasn’t great to begin with. And now, his total of five walks in 14.0 innings against minor league hitters isn’t encouraging. He’s a candidate to add his name to a list of Tommy John survivors—one that even includes Adam Wainwrightwho have struggled to find their control again.

Whether Darvish could get away with shoddy control would come down to his margin for error. He had a big one when he was striking out more than 11 batters per nine innings. Walks are going to be more likely to hurt him if he comes back and falls well short of that level of bat-missing mastery. Under those circumstances, he wouldn’t be much of a shot in the arm to the Rangers rotation.

However, the positive buzz around Darvish‘s key pitches bodes well. So do the projections for his return at FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus. The former projects him to strike out roughly 10 batters per nine innings. The latter puts the number closer to 11. 

A pitcher like that would be helpful for any starting staff, but there aren’t many that could use one more than the Rangers rotation. Though it boasts a solid 3.61 ERA, its collective rate of 6.7 strikeouts per nine innings is one of the worst in the majors. Outside of Cole Hamels, the Rangers don’t have another starter who specializes in strikeouts.

Darvish returning and living up to expectations would therefore be exactly the shot in the arm the rotation needs. Getting 100 or so innings out of him could easily be worth a couple of extra wins. 

Maybe that doesn’t sound like much. But to win the AL West, it could be good enough.

Comparing Seattle’s plus-38 run differential to Texas’ minus-one mark highlights the former as the better team, but the Mariners have their cracks. An offense that has to hit at Safeco Field may not be able to sustain such an impressive power performance. And if Felix Hernandez crumbles under the weight of his diminished stuff, the Mariners rotation won’t have a one-two punch as good as Hamels and Darvish.

It’s reasonably certain that neither the Rangers nor the Mariners will run away with the AL West. If it does indeed stay close, all eyes, and all of the pressure, will be on Darvish.

 

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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Tim Lincecum and the Angels Are an Ideal Match of Need, Opportunity

On today’s episode of “Things That Were Meant to Be,” we have the Los Angeles Angels and Tim Lincecum.

A deal between the Angels and the two-time Cy Young Award winner had been in the air for a few days and is now complete. As reported by MLB Network’s Jon Heyman, Lincecum is heading to Anaheim on a modest contract:

That’s the prorated calculation of Lincecum’s salary. With the 2016 season about a quarter of the way done, his real pay is more like $2 million plus whatever incentives he makes.

At any rate, the attraction is obvious. For Lincecum, this deal is a lifeline to an extended major league career. For the Angels, it’s a roll of the dice they had every reason to make.

When the 31-year-old right-hander held a showcase for teams in early May, Jesse Sanchez of MLB.com reported there were representatives for more than 20 teams in attendance. Any one of them could have signed the former San Francisco Giant, who’s coming off season-ending hip surgery. That includes the Giants themselves, whose starting rotation has been weighed down by Jake Peavy and Matt Cain.

But nobody really needed to take a flier on Lincecum like the Angels did. As Jeff Sullivan put it at FanGraphs: “The Angels are obvious because they’re out west, because their rotation sucks, and because they’re somewhere around the fringes of the race.”

Pretty much. The Angels’ 18-22 record puts them in fourth place in the AL West, but only five games out of first and four games away from a wild-card spot. Their rotation has a 4.61 ERA that’s not good, but which almost manages to sound pleasant in light of other circumstances.

Namely, injuries. Garrett Richards and Andrew Heaney might be done for the year. C.J. Wilson is still working his way back from a bad shoulder. Tyler Skaggs is on the comeback trail from Tommy John surgery, but it’s turned into a bumpy ride.

If the Angels are really lucky, Lincecum will step in and regain the form that made him one of baseball’s top pitchers between 2008 and 2011. Their best hope, though, is not getting the Lincecum who was one of baseball’s worst pitchers between 2012 and 2015.

All the Angels have to go off of for now is what Lincecum demonstrated in his showcase. And from that, there’s only so much to take away.

It’s no secret that velocity was at the heart of Lincecum’s downfall. After sitting in the low to mid-90s in his four-year stretch of dominance, his fastball velocity tumbled like so:

  • 2012: 90.4 mph
  • 2013: 90.2 mph
  • 2014: 89.6 mph
  • 2015: 87.2 mph

The effectiveness of Lincecum’s fastball suffered accordingly. According to Baseball Savant, hitters hit .262 with a .379 slugging percentage against his heat between 2008 and 2011. They hit .284 with a .442 slugging percentage against it between 2012 and 2015.

Knowing this, it would have been great to see him light up the radar gun at his showcase. Instead, Sanchez reported that Lincecum sat 90-91 in his first throwing session and 89-90 in the second.

Either velocity range is an improvement over where Lincecum was last season, but that would be more encouraging if 2015 were the only bad year he was trying to put behind him. The Angels must therefore hope against hope that the velocity he showcased was only a starting point. With more reps, perhaps it can climb to where it was in his heyday.

What’s more likely is that Lincecum will once again be forced to try to downplay his diminished velocity with good command. It so happens that’s where the man himself was really encouraged by his showcase.

“I’m happy. I was able to throw strikes on my pitches, stay within myself. I commanded all of my pitches,” Lincecum said. “I only had a couple misses, and they weren’t [over the] middle of the plate, so that’s encouraging for me.”

Good command could cure as many of Lincecum’s ills as good fastball velocity. At worst, it could prevent him from walking nearly four batters per nine innings like he did between 2012 and 2015. At best, it could erase the many mistake pitches that contributed to him averaging a home run per game in that span.

But for now, this is not something to be taken for granted. Lincecum didn’t specialize in pounding the strike zone between 2012 and 2015. He specialized even less in hitting spots. It’ll take more than a showcase for him to prove that he’s ready to change these ways.

To make a long story short, “Who knows?” is the best answer for what Lincecum might do for the Angels. There’s a chance they’ll get a veteran pitcher who’s found some velocity and learned to throw strikes. It’s more likely, though, that they’ll get something similar to his 2012-2015 self. 

What’s true regardless, however, is that the man himself could have chosen much worse teams and much worse places to silence all of the smarmy skeptics [winks] out there. Breaking into the Angels rotation will not require a long, uphill climb. And once Lincecum gets there, he’ll have two distinct advantages.

Angel Stadium of Anaheim is one of the most pitcher-friendly ballparks in the American League, if not the friendliest. Though it’s still somewhat early to be looking at such things, the Angels defense began Thursday ranked fourth in defensive runs saved. And as scary as it may sound that Lincecum is about to take on American League lineups, AL offenses aren’t actually performing better than NL offenses.

If Lincecum can make the most of his comeback attempt, he’ll be a wanted man on the winter free-agent market. Considering that said market is perilously short on talented arms, he could even be a very wanted man.

He has a lot to prove before he gets to that point. But for now, he’s at least taken care of the first step of getting a chance to do so.

 

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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Dodgers Shouldn’t Mess with Phenom Pitcher Julio Urias

The Los Angeles Dodgers definitely have problems in their bullpen, and they definitely need to seek out solutions.

What’s not so definite is that Julio Urias is the one they’re looking for.

The Dodgers haven’t yet called on Urias, their No. 1 prospect and the top left-handed pitching prospect in the sport, to join their relief corps. But it wasn’t even two weeks ago that the idea was in the air.

“Where we’re at right now, Urias is leading the discussions,” Dodgers skipper Dave Roberts said in early May, per Ken Gurnick of MLB.com. “He can get lefties and rightes out. It’s a nice luxury if we decide to go that way.”

Urias hasn’t gotten any less appealing in the days since. Though he’s still only 19—hence his Twitter handlethe Mexico native is with Triple-A Oklahoma City and making older hitters look like chumps. In seven appearances, he’s racked up a 1.25 ERA with 39 strikeouts and eight walks in 36 innings. Presently, he’s working on a 22-inning scoreless streak.

“In my report tonight, I commented that I wasn’t sure if there’s much more for him to prove,” Oklahoma City pitching coach Matt Herges said after Urias‘ latest effort, per Michael Avallone of MiLB.com. “He’s showing he’s big league-ready now, in my opinion.”

In the meantime, the Dodgers bullpen continues to make Roberts reach for the aspirin. Kenley Jansen is still a stabilizing force in the ninth inning, but the bridge to him is as sturdy as a rope bridge in an Indiana Jones movie. The Dodgers bullpen has a 3.74 ERA, but the ERA of non-Jansen relievers is 4.30.

It’s not hard to imagine Urias as the setup man the Dodgers are looking for. He has a lively fastball that, as MLB.com notes, he’s pushed as high as 97 mph in the past. His changeup and breaking ball are also above-average offerings that could play up in a relief role.

Urias is a starter by trade, sure, but he’s not yet ready to play that role in the majors. As J.J. Cooper wrote at Baseball America, the southpaw is still working on attaining the durability to match his talent, and he is therefore “not necessarily ready to take a regular turn in a big league rotation.”

And as Phil Rogers of MLB.com observed, working out of the bullpen before transitioning into the rotation could result in Urias walking the Chris Sale path to stardom:

But if we’re going to get on with the debunking process, this is a good place to start.

Sale was also a hot left-handed prospect back in the day, but that’s the extent of the similarities between him then and Urias now. Sale was already 21 years old when the Chicago White Sox took him with the No. 13 pick in the 2010 draft. He was also in the middle of a junior season at Florida Gulf Coast University that resulted in over 100 innings pitched (h/t the Baseball Cube).

And when the White Sox promptly put Sale in their bullpen, they were placing him in a role that he was arguably best suited for. As Keith Law of ESPN.com wrote at the time, Sale’s funky delivery and arm action made it “reasonably likely” that he would spend his career as a reliever.

Sale therefore had the experience and the workload, but not necessarily the projection of a starting pitcher. The White Sox’s decision to throw him into a relief role killed two birds with one stone: It filled an immediate need, and it gave them a chance to evaluate Sale up close before deciding on his future.

Urias is a different pitcher on all fronts, most notably in his long-term projection. He may only be 6’0″, but he’s a sturdy 215 pounds. He also has a clean delivery. And as Baseball Prospectus noted, his good stuff comes with a surprisingly advanced feel for pitching. He’s not a reliever masquerading as a starter. He’s a starter all the way.

All Urias needs is experience. He was only 16 when he began his professional career and has yet to top even 90 innings in a season. Some of that is owed to health issues, such as cosmetic surgery on his left eye that sidelined him for a month in 2015. Otherwise, it’s owed to the Dodgers handling him with kid gloves.

Before the season, Dodgers general manager Farhan Zaidi was aware this needed to change. He told Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times: “[Urias‘] innings are clearly going to be trending upwards for the next couple of seasons as we try to build him up to a full workload.”

So far, so good. Urias lasted five innings in each of his first three starts. In his last three, he’s made it to six innings. If he stays on this track, he’ll have no problem blowing away his current single-season high of 87.2 innings.

But if the Dodgers stick him in their bullpen, that’s suddenly in jeopardy. There’s always the possibility that him airing it out in shorter appearances could lead to an injury. And even if he were to stay healthy and give the Dodgers a better bullpen in the short run, it may not be worth it in the long run.

The Dodgers aren’t going to use Urias as a reliever forever, so they’re going to have to get his workload to where it needs to be eventually. If they make him a reliever this year, he’ll begin 2017 in basically the same position he’s in now. That’s a valuable development year wasted.

Rather than the Sale route, it’s the Felix Hernandez route to stardom the Dodgers should have in mind. The Seattle Mariners brought him up for a look-see in his age-19 season in 2005 and put him in their rotation at age 20 the next year. That was the start of a full decade of good pitching, and Hernandez is still going strong today. The Dodgers have a chance to do the same thing with Urias.

Granted, they most certainly need another shutdown reliever to bridge the gap to Jansen. But those are a lot easier to find than young pitchers with ace potential. Teams can trade for the former. With the latter, teams generally have to make their own.

That’s the course the Dodgers are on with Urias. They should stay on it.

 

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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Bleacher Report’s 2016 1st-Quarter MLB Season Awards

For a sport that’s not known for being fast-paced, time really flies in baseball. The 2016 MLB season is already a quarter of the way in the bag.

That means we’re here for an updated look at the major awards races.

We last checked in with the four big honors—Manager of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Cy Young and Most Valuable Player—in the American and National Leagues as the season headed into May. Not all of the races have changed leaders since then, but enough have to make things interesting.

Read on for our pick for each award, complete with one runner-up in every category.

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Clayton Kershaw vs. Mike Trout Is What Makes MLB Interleague Worth It

Many will say interleague play in Major League Baseball has lost its luster, but it still has at least one gift to give every year.

It’s an annual showdown of epic proportions, and the time has come for it to be renewed in 2016: Clayton Kershaw vs. Mike Trout.

Their matchup gets top billing for Tuesday night’s tilt between the Los Angeles Angels and Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium. And on paper, the fourth meeting between Kershaw and Trout is just as worthy of a Mr. Burns “Excellent…” as the first three.

Kershaw is reveling in his usual Kershaw-ian dominance. The three-time Cy Young winner’s 1.74 ERA isn’t the best in the league, but nobody comes close to his 77-4 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Under these circumstances, Vin Scully is forgiven for mistaking the 28-year-old southpaw for Sandy Koufax.

With a .962 OPS and eight home runs, Trout is also abiding by his reputation. Even when Bryce Harper was challenging Trout for the “Best Player in Baseball” crown, Neil Paine of FiveThirtyEight wrote that Trout still ruled. And with teams now basically refusing to let Harper tap into his immense talent, Trout’s position atop the “Best Player in Baseball” throne looks even safer.

There was little doubt Trout was the best when he and Kershaw first met in 2014. Trout was on his way to his first American League MVP after arguably getting robbed in 2012 and 2013, and he added to his legend by singling and doubling in his first two at-bats against Kershaw.

“It’s always fun, going against the best,” Trout said of Kershaw afterward, per Lyle Spencer of MLB.com. “He’s a good person, and he battles out there. He’s a competitor. I love battling guys like that.”

But in their meetings since then, what Trout has had can’t be described as “fun.”

In seven of the last nine regular-season plate appearances Trout has against Kershaw, the 24-year-old center fielder has gone hitless and struck out three times. One of those punch-outs involved Kershaw’s famed Uncle Charlie turning Trout into a statue in their first meeting of 2015:

Modern times being what they are, narratives must flow like spice on the planet Dune. In this case, 2014 brought the “what will happen?!” appeal of the first-ever meeting between the sport’s best pitcher and best player. In 2015, it was the first time two reigning MVPs had ever faced off. Now in 2016, Trout has a score to settle.

How will that pan out? We’ll find out Tuesday night.

In the meantime, the only thing to do is recognize just how darn cool it is that we find ourselves breathing heavy in anticipation once again.

Interleague play’s faults are extensive. It makes scheduling a nightmare. For every cool regional matchupi.e., New York’s Subway Series, Chicago’s Windy City Showdown or, yes, Southern California’s Freeway Series—there are always random matchups that nobody cares about. And now that interleague play is a yearlong presence, having to switch between American League rules and National League rules has gone from cool novelty to frequent frustration.

Kershaw vs. Trout matchups, however, are to interleague play what marshmallows are to a bowl of Lucky Charms: tasty morsels good enough to make the whole thing worth it.

The essential gimmick of interleague play is creating matchups that would otherwise have a hard time coming to fruition. The Kershaw vs. Trout rivalry is a reminder that this is just as true on a player vs. player level as it is on the team vs. team level. Without interleague play, meaningful matchups between them could only happen in the All-Star Game or the World Series.

In the many years before interleague play arrived in 1997, that arrangement limited or prevented dream pitcher vs. hitter matchups. Ty Cobb never faced Christy Mathewson. Babe Ruth never faced Dazzy Vance. Ted Williams faced Warren Spahn only five times—all in All-Star Games. Mickey Mantle faced Sandy Koufax only eight times—all in the World Series. Bob Gibson and Carl Yastrzemski butted heads 13 times in 1967 between the All-Star Game and the World Series, but only three more times after that.

Kershaw and Trout have already squared off more than Mantle and Koufax ever did and are going to do battle many more times than Yaz and Gibson in the long run. Without interleague play, the chance of this happening would be somewhere between slim and none.

With Trout’s Angels badly damaged by injuries and one bad contract, it’s unlikely he and Kershaw will be meeting in the World Series anytime soon. And though they’ve already met twice in All-Star Games, the need for All-Star managers to make substitutions about as frequently as Aroldis Chapman fires 100 mph fastballs means that number might not climb much higher.

Of course, you can argue that Trout and Kershaw only meeting in the All-Star Game or the World Series would be appropriate, as those are the only baseball stages with spotlights big enough for the two of them. Instead, being able to count on them facing each other year after year thanks to interleague play arguably diminishes the grandeur of it. Less is more, et cetera.

But if you’ll permit me to yell from my porch at any ungrateful so-and-sos out there, there are exceptions to the ol’ “too much of a good thing” rule. If ever there was an appropriate embodiment of this notion, it’s Kershaw vs. Trout showdowns.

Going back to 2012, Kershaw has been baseball’s best pitcher and Trout has been baseball’s best position player. To this extent, there’s no better matchup of modern-day titans than this one. This is baseball’s answer to Iron Man vs. Captain America.

But really, what’s recent baseball history when compared to all of baseball history? Trout might be the best young player baseball has ever seen. Kershaw is one of the best young pitchers baseball has ever seen.

As such, even calling their rivalry a once-in-a-generation thing feels like selling it short. Theirs is the kind of rivalry that all generations wish for. That today’s generation actually has one is worth celebrating.

Let us not take neither the latest Kershaw vs. Trout showdown nor any more to come for granted. Rather, let us take as much as we can get and ask for more.

For that, interleague play will keep delivering. It’s not good for much, but at least it’s good for that.

 

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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Rougned Odor Landed the Punch, but Jose Bautista Deserves Strong Punishment Too

Jose Bautista and Rougned Odor started a brawl over the weekend, and one of them figures to pay an especially heavy price for it.

But don’t think for a second the other should get off easy.

Before getting into the nitty-gritty, we must first dive into the rivalry history between Bautista‘s Toronto Blue Jays and Odor’s Texas Rangers. It didn’t become a true rivalry until Game 5 of last year’s American League Division Series, which Bautista‘s three-run bomb in the seventh inning effectively ended. He responded to that with the “Bat Flip Heard ‘Round the World,” and the Rangers responded to that with anger.

Fast-forward to Sunday, when the Blue Jays and Rangers turned their rivalry into an all-out blood feud. Texas right-hander Matt Bush beaned Bautista with a hard fastball in the eighth inning, and that led to this:

All told, here’s the full sequence of relevant events:

  • Bautista flips bat, angers Rangers.
  • Months later, Rangers bean Bautista.
  • Moments later, Bautista goes into second base with a late, hard slide.
  • Seconds later, Bautista and Odor go at it.
  • Split seconds later, all hell breaks loose.

This was the real deal as far as baseball brawls go, and there will be consequences. As Jared Diamond of the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, Joe Torre, Major League Baseball’s chief baseball officer, said these consequences could come as soon as Tuesday:

“It certainly wasn’t pretty, and I hate seeing that stuff,” Torre said, per Paul Hagen of MLB.com.

Amen to that. Maybe baseball’s unwritten rules had a good day Sunday, but that doesn’t mean diddly as far as the optics are concerned. From Odor to Bautista to Bush to Josh Donaldson to Kevin Pillar to Russell Martin, virtually none of the Blue Jays or the Rangers looked like professionals. 

There is little question, though, that Odor is the one who’s in for the biggest punishment.

“I know I am going to be suspended for a couple of games, but I am going to keep doing what I’m doing,” the young second baseman said Monday, per T.R. Sullivan of MLB.com.

A couple? Try somewhere in the neighborhood of 10. And that’s if he’s lucky.

The league office isn’t going to be wrong when it concludes Odor was the brawl’s primary instigator. He was the one who made the first shove, and he was certainly the one who threw the first punch.

Jayson Stark of ESPN.com and Jay Jaffe of Sports Illustrated brought up Carlos Quentin’s bulldozing of Zack Greinke in 2013 as relevant precedent for Odor’s actions. That would mean an eight-game suspension. If MLB sees this as more of a Michael Barrett vs. A.J. Pierzynski situation, it’ll be 10 games. If MLB really wants to throw the book at Odor, going longer than 10 games wouldn’t be unreasonable.

For his part, the loose consensus seems to be Bautista could only get a slap on the wrist. But if MLB wants to send a proper message, it’ll be a hard slap.

There’s no condoning the violent reaction it led to, but there’s also no blaming Odor for feeling a jolt of adrenaline when Bautista came sliding into second base in that eighth inning. There are late slides, and then there are late slides.

Bautista‘s slide was in the latter camp. He admitted to Gregor Chisholm of MLB.com that he was trying to “send a message” with it, and the visual evidence leaves little doubt that it was an extreme example of a purpose slide.

The right fielder’s slide was as much of a leap as it was a slide. And when he landed, he was already on the second-base bag:

Odor wasn’t hurt, but he could have been. So at the least, MLB could give Bautista the same two-game suspension it originally hit Chase Utley with for taking out Ruben Tejada in last year’s playoffs.

Or, the league could push the envelope.

Whereas Utley’s takeout slide was technically legal at the time, new rules have changed that. And to that extent, MLB could view Bautista as a repeat offender. He also committed a controversial slide against the Tampa Bay Rays in the first week of the season. As Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports noted, that slide broke both new and old rules.

This makes Bautista a good guy for MLB to make an example of. If the league really wants players to get the gist that it’s serious about getting rid of takeout slides, it won’t stop at two games for his ban.

And that’s just for the slide. Bautista didn’t land the first punch after Odor shoved him. But from the way he was cocking his right fist, he clearly wanted to:

This is not to suggest Bautista‘s hard slide and cocked fist is the same as Odor’s shove and (presumably) very painful punch. The meat of the entire incident was the fight between the two of them, and Odor started it and finished it.

But rather than a measly two-game suspension for the one slide, a punishment more befitting of Bautista‘s actions would be half of whatever Odor is hit with. That figures to be at least four games, but stretching it to five or six games wouldn’t be out of line.

Ultimately, it’s up to Torre and baseball’s head disciplinarian, Joe Garagiola Jr. There’s no question they’re pondering punishments as we speak. The only question is how far they’ll push them.

 

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David Ortiz Building on Clutch Legend, Gunning for Historic Farewell Season

How much will David Ortiz add to the legend in his final season?

Based on the early returns, as much as he can.

The Boston Red Sox‘s longtime designated hitter went into Saturday’s tilt with the Houston Astros at Fenway Park already having a terrific season, and it only got better in a 6-5 win. In fact, it says a lot that Ortiz’s solo home run in the third inning was the least consequential of his three hits.

The second of Big Papi’s three hits was a two-out RBI triple in the ninth inning that knotted the score at 5-5. It looked and sounded like this:

Two innings later, Ortiz sent everyone home happy with an RBI double. Let us also pay homage to this with our eyes and ears:

The dinger Ortiz hit earlier in the game was the 513th of his career, putting him ahead of Ernie Banks and Eddie Mathews on the all-time home run list and in sole possession of the No. 22 spot. And in also getting his 600th career double, he became just the third member of the 500-home run/600-doubles club alongside Barry Bonds and Hank Aaron.

So, Ortiz had an OK day at the office. And as Evan Drellich of the Boston Herald was around to hear, the one parting shot the 40-year-old offered to reporters was all too perfect for a guy who wants to be played by Samuel L. Jackson in a movie:

Spoken like one of the greatest clutch hitters of all time. And wouldn’t you know, Ortiz’s latest walk-off hit was the 20th of his career. According to ESPN Stats & Info, that’s the most of anyone in the last 30 years. 

And that’s only scratching the surface of what he’s done in the clutch.

Ortiz has done about as well in high-leverage situations (baseball-ese for high-pressure moments) as you’d expect. He entered Saturday with a .936 career OPS in such situations, which was already good enough to place him among the top 20 hitters ever with a minimum of 1,000 high-leverage plate appearances. His game-tying triple and game-winning double only pushed him higher.

“What makes David so good in those spots is he never comes out of his approach; his heart rate I don’t think really elevates that much,” said Red Sox manager John Farrell, via Brian McTaggart and Aaron Leibowitz of MLB.com. “He’s hitting in those moments with such clarity, and he’s done it so often that he’s extremely confident in those key spots.”

Of course, this arguably isn’t even a discussion worth having. The correlation between great clutch hitters and great hitters, period, is pretty darn strong. A good poster boy for the idea is Alex Rodriguez. He’s not known as a great clutch hitter, but his .962 career high-leverage OPS trumps even Big Papi’s.

Even still, there’s no denying the shoe fits on Ortiz. If nothing else, at least his reputation in the clutch is in line with his numbers in the clutch. And then there’s the fact that even once you get past all his high-leverage dominance in the regular season, you still have to sort through his postseason highlights.

And the way he’s going this season, Ortiz may get a chance to add to that, too.

Ortiz reiterated to Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports that he’s still planning on going the way of Chipper Jones in 2012, Mariano Rivera in 2013 and Derek Jeter in 2014. But he can expect to keep getting asked that question, as what he’s doing in his farewell tour blows away what they did in theirs.

Through 34 games, Big Papi is hitting .320 with 10 home runs and a 1.101 OPS. This is him flirting with the finest season of his career. And with only Jose Altuve leading him in adjusted offense, Ortiz is having a season almost as good as anyone in 2016.

Jeter, by comparison, was one of baseball’s worst players in 2014. Jones was good in 2012, but not nearly one of baseball’s best hitters. And though Rivera was really good in 2013, he’d done better.

It’s not just those three Ortiz could put to shame in his swan song. He could become one of only four players ever to post an OPS over 1.000 in his final season. Even better, the 48 homers Ortiz is on pace for what would shatter Dave Kingman’s final-season record of 35. 

And at this point, it’s hard to find excuses for why Ortiz can’t do either. He’s basically been as good as ever as he’s gotten older, and the tear he’s on now stretches back to last season. In over 400 plate appearances since the 2015 All-Star break, he’s hitting .323 with a 1.102 OPS.

For now, it’s all in service to a Red Sox offense that, as Owen Watson of FanGraphs noted, is outperforming even the 1927 New York Yankees. That’s helped push Boston to a 23-14 record that has it in line for a return to the postseason. Since we all know what he can do, it’s time to start wondering if Ortiz’s farewell tour could result in something else Jones, Rivera and Jeter couldn’t achieve: going the distance.

Whatever the case, it’s already clear Big Papi won’t be going out with a whimper. One way or another, his legend shall end with a bang.

 

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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Are the Phillies Really 2016 Contenders or Just Ahead of Schedule in Rebuild?

The Philadelphia Phillies were supposed to be easy to ignore in 2016. They were supposed to be bad, and that was supposed to be that.

But instead, here we are in the middle of May, wondering if they’re actually this good.

Following a 99-loss season that saw them jettison almost all the stars left over from their 2007-2011 glory days, the 2016 Phillies are off to a 20-15 start. Only three teams in the National League have a better record. If the Phillies hadn’t begun the year with a four-game losing streak, that list might be smaller.

At the least, this is a sign the Phillies are ahead of schedule with their rebuild. When Pat Gillick took over as the club’s interim CEO in 2014, he set 2017 as the earliest target for a return to contention. But rather than a team that’s ahead of schedule, Phillies manager Pete Mackanin sees a team that’s for real.

“Every time we play somebody, I get the same question, but it’s a good question because of course we [are],” the skipper said earlier this month, via Joe Harris of MLB.com.

Mackanin also pointed out that he and his club have “held our own against contenders.” The Phillies are indeed 13-9 against winning clubs, which suggests they’re not getting by on good fortune.

Or are they?

Because we’re in the year 2016, we must make a fuss over the Phillies’ run differential. It stands at minus-27, by far the worst among Major League Baseball’s early winners. If the Chicago Cubs are a winner that deserves better based on their plus-99 run differential, the Phillies are their antithesis.

And it’s not like they’ve drastically turned things around after starting the year 0-4. Their 20-11 record since then comes with a minus-13 run differential.

It’s easy to narrow down why the Phillies are succeeding despite this. They’ve crushed it in one-run games, posting a 12-3 record. And to their credit, this hasn’t happened by accident.

There’s one measure that rates the Phillies pitching staff as one of the 10 best in baseball. Their rotation is led by some awesome arms belonging to Aaron Nola, Vince Velasquez and Jerad Eickhoff. Their bullpen features a trio in Jeanmar Gomez, David Hernandez and Hector Neris that’s combined for a 29.3 strikeout percentage and a 2.29 ERA.

For the sake of competing in as many games as possible, good pitching is a key thing to have. And as the leverage—that’s baseballese for “pressure”has gotten higher, Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) and OPS show that both Phillies pitchers and hitters have been at their best:

Note: These stats are current through play on Wednesday, May 11.

This brings the 2014 San Francisco Giants to mind. As Blake Murphy of FanGraphs highlighted at the time, they got out to a 38-21 start by owning pressure situations. The Phillies are doing the same thing.

But this cool tidbit is also a cautionary tale. Even that Giants team, which went on to win the World Series, was forced back down to earth over the long haul in the regular season. A team with more talent than it could avoid a similar fate. The Phillies are not that team.

As good as the Phillies pitching has been, there are faults to find. Nola, Velasquez and Eickhoff have done a fine job of carrying a rotation that’s thin outside of them, but it’s unfair to expect that to continue all season. Hitters have already adjusted to Eickhoff, who has a 6.65 ERA in his last four starts. And none of the three has pitched a full season before.

The Phillies bullpen doesn’t have many cracks, but it does have a singular big one. In light of its considerable problem with the long ball, all that high-leverage dominance may not have a long shelf life.

If the team’s pitching wavers, the Phillies will need their offense to pick up more slack. At that, all anyone can say is “good luck.”

Said offense has been one of the worst at scoring runs. Outside of budding superstar Odubel Herrera, one of the NL’s best players, the only other regular with any real promise is Maikel Franco. As such, the high-leverage dominance of the Phillies offense is probably on even thinner ice than the pitching staff’s high-leverage dominance.

If the season ended today, the Phillies would be in the playoffs as a wild card. But in the long run, probably not. They began Thursday with a 5.9 percent chance of making the postseason at Baseball Prospectus. At FanGraphs, their odds were just 0.1 percent.

Still, the Phillies don’t need to make the playoffs for 2016 to count as a success. As a stepping stone toward what they hope will be many years of contention, it’s a damn enticing proof of concept.

The Phillies have every reason to be excited about how Nola, Velasquez and Eickhoff are establishing themselves as rotation cornerstones. With good stuff and control, they’ve been instrumental in giving Phillies starters virtually the same strikeout percentage as the Nationals‘ star-studded rotation.

And as a whole, the Phillies rotation may be on to something with its love for the curveball. It’s throwing more curveballs than any starting staff in recorded history, and FanGraphs August Fagerstrom can tell you all about how awesome these curveballs are.

There’s not as much long-term brightness in Philly’s bullpen, but Neris looks like a keeper. In carving out a 1.64 ERA in 20 appearances, the 26-year-old right-hander has showed off a splitter that shouldn’t even be legal. He looks like a future shutdown closer.

And even if it never improves as much as it needs to this season, the Phillies offense could at least get a glimpse of its future beyond this season. From a farm system that Baseball America ranked at No. 8 coming into the season could come shortstop J.P. Crawford, outfielder Nick Williams and catcher Jorge Alfaro before the season is over.

The Phillies farm system could also have some gifts for the pitching staff. Right-handers Jake Thompson and Mark Appel, the former No. 1 pick of the Houston Astros, haven’t been great for Triple-A Lehigh Valley, but that may not get in the way of them getting called up.

There’s always the chance that every prospect the Phillies call up this summer will hit the ground running and help propel the team forward. It’s more fair, however, to expect them to gain the experience that will help them be of use in 2017 and beyond.

That means Gillick‘s target date for contention is looking pretty good. And based on the preview, the show itself should be a good time.

 

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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