Checking In On the Humble Changeup
The French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery once said “perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” One can go about interpreting such...
Author: Ben
Contextualizing Velocity and the Absence of Strikeouts
Brusdar Graterol and Dustin May are the subjects of this post. They are of particular interest given the Dodgers’ recent World Series victory, as well as in their own right, being talented pitchers. Primarily...
In-Zone, Out-of-Zone, Hot-Zone, Cold-Zone: Batter Contact Rates
Hitters, it turns out, are pitched to differently based on their strengths and weaknesses. For their part, pitchers can choose what to throw those hitters and in what order, all the while doing their...
Will the Real Joey Gallo Please Stand Up
Joey Gallo, now several seasons into his Major League career and still just 26, has felt like a known commodity for years. He has proved himself to be a capable Major League regular, an...
MLB Debuts, by Season and Franchise
As the truncated 2020 regular season wraps up, it’s a good time to take a look at some of the trends that this unprecedented seasonal format has given way to. Among all these changes...
A Quick Zack Wheeler Update
Late last year, Zack Wheeler got paid. For many, the thought that Wheeler was worth 118 million dollars was a stretch. That’s no knock on the pitcher either: Wheeler had combined for 60 starts...
Launch Angles, Still Rising
The concept of launch angle has successfully embedded itself in the minds and lexicons of baseball players, coaches, and fans over the past decade. Several high-profile players have acted as ambassadors to the so-called...
The Five-Inning Start is On The Rise
This post piggybacks on a really interesting piece from Jay Jaffe of FanGraphs, who, a couple days ago, examined in depth the changing workloads of starting pitchers in 2020. Between a truncated “Summer Camp”,...
Universal DH and The Defensive Spectrum
Among the rule changes implemented for the abbreviated 2020 MLB season, the introduction of a universal DH is a particularly polarizing one. For now, the universal DH will take effect for 2020 alone, but...
Baseball is Getting Younger, but Not Uniformly So
It probably does not come as a great surprise to hear that, on average, MLB players are getting younger. There are a handful of possible reasons for that trend. Significantly, younger players are paid...