Newsletter Excerpt, April 30, 2025 -- "Here We Go Again"

 

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Maybe not these Rockies, though. They don’t do anything. They’re 28th in batting average, 20th in homers, 28th in steals, 25th in walks. They’re 28th in ERA, 26th in FIP, 26th in fWAR, 30th in strikeout rate, 19th in walk rate. I thought they might build around a strong defense; they’re 21st in Outs Above Average, 29th in Defensive Runs Saved, 30th in Defensive Efficiency. The Rockies have the lowest rate of hard-hit balls in the league, and just four teams have barreled fewer balls. On the flip side, no pitching staff has allowed more hard-hit balls. It’s 29 games, so all caveats about sample size apply, but the Rockies have earned 4-25. 

Newsletter Excerpt, April 28, 2025 -- "Thinking Inside the Box"

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Giants 3, Rangers 2

                     IP  H  R ER BB  K

Birdsong            3.0  3  0  0  0  5

Boy, do I love me a multi-inning relief pitcher. Hayden Birdsong, who lost out in the battle for the Giants’ fifth-starter spot to Landon Roupp, has instead become an absolute weapon out of the pen. He’s made seven relief appearances: three of three innings, three of two innings, just one that went one inning. He’s posted a 1.13 ERA and a 2.93 FIP, and in his last two outings has gone six innings while striking out nine of 23 batters faced. It’s all leverage work, too; in his last two appearances he started the sixth inning with the game ties, and his shutout innings led directly to Giants wins.

Birdsong has ditched his curve in making the move to the pen, picking up a half-tick on his fastball and more than two on his slider. His most effective weapon, though, has been a changeup that he uses to both lefties and righties, and that he’s been going out of the zone with more for whiffs -- a 50% swing-and-miss rate on the pitch. It’s the new hotness, a kick change that, per Eno Sarris, he throws with a rare grip.

We’ve seen Bob Melvin have success doing this with a pitcher before, getting the best work of Yusmeiro Petit’s long career in 2018 and 2019. Petit was 33 in 2018, though, while Birdsong is 23. The catch with a pitcher in this role is that it’s neither fish nor fowl, and as important as it can be to a team, it’s not one from which Birdsong is going to become rich or famous. The Giants haven’t had to go off rotation yet, but whether it’s a Justin Verlander injury, a Jordan Hicks spate of wildness, or Landon Roupp losing effectiveness, they will need a sixth starter, and Birdsong will probably be first up. It’s a shame, because the three-and-free reliever can be a critical player in the era of five-and-fly starters.

As an aside, this was a very good, tight, entertaining series that ended on one of the worst plays you’ll see all season.

 

Newsletter Excerpt, April 25, 2025 -- "Mailbag"

 

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For heavens’ sake, please tell us what the hell is wrong with Julio Rodriguez?

-- Ed Q.

I get the frustration, but this is actually one of the best starts of Rodriguez’s career. A 110 OPS+ is way ahead of where he was in 2022 and 2024 at this point, and not far from where he was in 2023. The process stats are within his normal range, his average exit velocity and max EV are as well. He’s getting murdered on balls in play, a .246 BABIP that’s 90 points off his career level. Per Statcast he’s missing 40 points of BA and 65 points of SLG. so this really looks like a guy hitting into bad luck.

There’s a disconnect between his swing-and-miss rate, which is one of the worst in the game, and his strikeout rate, which has actually gone down slightly. He’s swinging through a lot of strikes, more than ever before. I’m loath to dig too deep into this on April 24, to be honest — it’s just something to keep an eye on. 

--J.

 

 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, April 24, 2025 -- "Potpourri"

 

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The Orioles’ pitching investments this winter were one-year deals for a total of $28 million for Tomoyuki Sagano and Charlie Morton. Morton has the highest ERA of any starter, 10.89; Sugano actually has a 3.54 mark in five starts, but it’s a mirage. He’s struck out nine of 113 batters and comes with a 5.81 FIP. Just one starting pitcher in the last 18 seasons has managed to be worth even one bWAR with a sub-10% strikeout rate: Paul Blackburn in 2017. Set the line at 12%, and you can find some examples starting in 2017 -- Ty Blach in ’17, Martin Perez in ’16, some more in 2015. In 2025, though, it’s just not possible to survive this way.

 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, April 22, 2025 -- "Tottering Twins"

 

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The Twins had a notable late-season collapse, didn’t do anything to improve a .500 team or get the fans invested, and are starting this year injured and playing in football weather. I expect the offense to be better and the team to convert more winnable games into wins. Lopez and Wallner will return, and probably Lewis too for a little while. We’ve seen the Twins promote Luke Keaschall and they have promising hitters behind him in Emmanuel Rodriguez and Walker Jenkins. Homegrown talent isn’t going to be the problem. The schedule presents a gift this week, six home games with the White Sox and Angels that will go a long way to getting the Twins on track.

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, April 18, 2025 -- "Third Base Stathead"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

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Third-base coaches, more than anyone else on the field at a given moment, have to be statheads. Beasley made his choice to send Higashioka based on the relative positions of the baseball, Trout, and Higashioka. He made his choice the way third-base coaches have long made those choices, considering the outfielder’s arm and the runner’s speed, perhaps with some vague, instinctive notion of game state baked in. That’s not good enough. Every single decision a third-base coach makes absolutely has to be informed by run expectation charts and game state. Beasley, more than any player and even more than Bruce Bochy, has to understand the risk-reward, the actual math, behind his choice. He needs to consider not just the physical aspects, the ball and the fielder and the runner, but take into account who is coming up next. 

 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, April 14, 2025 -- "Cubs Getting Dubs"

 

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A team can carry one guy like this. The Cubs also have Matt Shaw, the well-regarded prospect who is off to a .164/.292/.236 start. Shaw is handling the transition to third base reasonably well; he’s just not doing anything at the plate. With Turner and Workman not playing any better, though, Craig Counsell has to stick with Shaw. To Shaw’s credit, he has drawn ten walks against just 17 strikeouts, and he is pulling the ball in the air (24% of his batted balls, well above the league average), both signs of good process. Despite recent events, I am more confident in Shaw’s next 24 weeks than I am in PCA’s.

 

Newsletter Excerpt, April 9, 2025 -- "Hits"

 

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The sport of baseball is in desperate need of more hits, though. The league is hitting .238 in the early going, and let’s go out on a limb and suggest that while that number will rise with the temperature, it’s in no danger of climbing above .250 no matter how many games the A’s play in Sacramento or what weird bats the Yankees bring to the plate. If so, this would the the fifth straight season in which the league batting average is under .250. (Actually the sixth, but 2020 never counts.) It would be the third time that’s ever happened.

 

Newsletter Excerpt, April 7, 2025 -- "Thinking Inside the Box"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

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Royals 4, Orioles 1

                     IP  H  R ER BB  K

Bubic (W, 2-0)      6.2  5  1  1  1  8

The hardest thing in sports isn’t hitting a round ball with a round bat squarely. The hardest thing in sports is resisting the temptation to do a victory lap on your offseason calls 15 minutes into the new season. 

I loved Kris Bubic, who had Tommy John surgery after three starts in 2023 and looked great out of the pen for the Royals late last year, to make a leap this season. Yesterday, he shut down the Orioles in his second start, pushing his ERA up to 0.71 in the process. He’s whiffed just shy of a third of the batters he’s faced while walking just three of the 49. Batters aren’t squaring him up at all, with just two barrels and an anemic average exit velocity of 85 mph. The change that has always been his out pitch has been untouchable, with a 53% whiff rate, and he’s now using both a sweeper and a true slider, with great results.

The concern with Bubic is just going to be volume. His pro high in innings pitched is 149 1/3, and he threw 16 two years ago, 70 2/3 last year. The Royals have had a lot of success in recent seasons getting maximum volume from pitchers with similar backgrounds such as Seth Lugo and Cole Ragans. Bubic could be their second-best starter behind Ragans, it’s just a question of for how long.

 

Newsletter Excerpt, April 6, 2025 -- "Fun With Numbers: Juiced?"

 

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To the extent that I have a concern about the 2025 season, it’s in that big drop in BABIP (.291 to .281) and the ongoing loss of hits on balls in play. It matches my observation, which is that the ongoing evolution of pitchers into witches, and the more recent trends of teams both optimizing defensive positioning and selecting for fielding skill over batting, are all choking off routes to scoring that aren’t home runs.

So far this year, 42% of runs have been scored on home runs. I can’t chop that down for the first ten days of a season, but I can tell you that figure was 37% last March and April, and 39% in March and April of 2023. I can tell you that there have been just three seasons in history in which that number has gone above 42%, all of which were much higher scoring (2017, 2019, and 2021) than the early days of 2025 are.

 

Newsletter Excerpt, April 4, 2025 -- "Undefeated"

 

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That has not been the case down in San Diego, where the Padres rarely trailed in the first week of play. Their 7-0 start comes with the best run differential and best run prevention in baseball. Five teams have allowed more runs in a game than the Padres have allowed all season (11). (The Brewers have done it twice.) The Cubs’ Justin Steele has allowed more runs than the entire Padres staff has allowed. Michael King and Dylan Cease had rough debuts, but in the last five starts, one turn through the rotation, Pads starters allowed three runs in 29 1/3 innings. The Padres have been behind at the end of just two innings during that run. The leads those starters have handed over have been well-protected. Padres relievers have allowed two runs in 26 2/3 innings, fewest in baseball. They’ve stranded every one of the nine baserunners they’ve inherited. 

 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, April 1, 2025 -- "Catching Up"

 

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

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In my ongoing effort to become rich and famous, here’s a fiery take on the bat: It’s just another step along the way. Given the restrictions in place -- and occasionally going outside of them -- batters have been trying to get the best performance out of bats since the game was called rounders. Bats used to be enormous pieces of wood, without much taper towards the handle. Players experimented with flat-sided bats for bunting, ones eventually banned. The weight of bats has steadily dwindled, as players trade off mass for bat speed. 

 

[...]

 

This isn’t a problem. I’m open to the idea that it could become one, though I doubt anything that helps hitters right now is something we should be attacking. It’s a welcome shift, honestly, to be talking about a way in which hitters might possibly even the field against pitches, these sweepers and deathballs and kick-changes, optimized to within an inch of their lives. Let the hitters fight back a bit.