Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports Aaron Bummer is one of the best pitchers in baseball at reaching two-strike counts. He has reached two-strike counts against an impressive 67.8% of opposing batters, which ranks seventh among pitchers who have faced 50 or more batters this year. Bummer’s effective sinker helps him get ahead in the count, but…
(Photo by Mark Brown/Getty Images) The Miami Marlins are off to an awful start and have scored the 29th-most runs in the league en route to a 21-39 record, and after 60 games it is time for the team to start shaking things up. The team made a decision today to part with one…
When we last checked in on Aaron Judge on April 24, the big slugger was scuffling, hitting just .180/.315/.348 through the Yankees’ first 24 games. He had homered just three times, and was approximating league-average production thanks mainly to his 15.7% walk rate. A smattering of fans had booed him on his own bobblehead day…
(Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images) The Milwaukee Brewers, leaders of the NL Central division, faced the NL East-leading Philadelphia Phillies at Citizens Bank Park on Monday. It was a duel of heavyweights, and the home club ended up notching the 3-1 victory. In the top of the seventh inning, with the score 3-0 in favor…
On Tuesday morning, Major League Baseball announced the suspension of five players for violating Rule 21, the prohibition on betting on baseball. Minor leaguers Jay Groome of the Padres, José Rodríguez of the Phillies, Michael Kelly of the Athletics, and Andrew Saalfrank of the Diamondbacks were all suspended for one season. But the headline figure…
(Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images) The baseball world was shook in late-March when it was revealed that Ippei Mizuhara, the longtime friend and interpreter of Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, reportedly performed massive theft with Ohtani’s money to fund illegal gambling activities. For weeks, some people thought he potentially had placed some bets on…
(Photo by Greg Fiume/Getty Images) In 2021, the Baltimore Orioles were arguably the worst team in baseball with a 52-110 record. In reality, they had been one of the league’s worst since 2017. But their revival started in 2022, with the decision to call up uber-prospect Adley Rutschman in May. They were 83-79 that year….
Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated…
(Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images) When the Atlanta Braves traded for starting pitcher Chris Sale, they were risking part of their future. It was always a worthwhile risk, though: Vaughn Grissom, who was traded away, is an infielder, and there are multiple talented, even All-Star-caliber infielders in Atlanta. There aren’t many pitchers like Sale,…
On Saturday afternoon, I watched the Greenville Regional elimination game between East Carolina and Wake Forest, which featured two top pitching prospects in the draft class: Wake’s Chase Burns and ECU’s Trey Yesavage. The game was reminiscent of last year’s College World Series semifinal between Wake and LSU, which was one of the best baseball…
