The Twins can't seem to pull out a close win, and the Brewers offense is...good?
Plus, we grade the newbies' starts for both teams and a look at the nastiest pitches from the last week in GIF form
Happy Monday.
Baseball season is definitely here, and if it hadn’t fully arrived entering the weekend, hooooooo boy did these last four days seal the deal. Why’s that, you say?
Because Major League Baseball successfully managed the end of two different ballgames, handing the winning run to teams that most definitely did not deserve it.
First, there was this:
Then, this:
Look, calls are missed all the time. It’s part of sports. But when they’re missed due to institutional idiocy, it’s a problem—and I think both of these calls are just that. On one, the batter clearly leaned into a pitch in the strike zone and it, somehow, wasn’t reviewable. Then, in the Braves-Phillies bout, it is reviewable but a national, primetime audience is told that their eyes are, in fact, wrong.
There were also a couple of institutional idiocy calls in big moments in Brewers games last week.
The first was a ball that appeared to be fair off the bat of Travis Shaw that would have snuck into the corner to give Milwaukee a 2-0 lead late against the Cubs on Wednesday. Of course, it was deemed to be foul, but since it bounced in front of the base, it wasn’t reviewable. For some reason.
Then, during a late Cardinals rally attempt on Saturday, a batted ball struck a base runner, who was ruled out; the only problem is he was in foul territory, so it should have just been a foul ball. Was the play reviewable?
I’ll let you take a wild guess.
Let’s converse.
Check out our Extravaganza
In case you missed it, we released our Opening Day Extravaganza a little over one week ago. It’s a one-of-a-kind season preview the likes of which you won’t find anywhere else.
You can download or read it here.
On the extra innings rule
~Tom
As a Certified Baseball Nut, I know I’m supposed to hate Major League Baseball’s extra-innings rules.
And after the Minnesota Twins’ recent luck (or lack thereof) in the 10th inning, I know as a Twins fan I’m definitely supposed to hate the rules.
But … I don’t. I still don’t.
If you’re new here, MLB implemented new rules for the 10th inning and beyond in that weird, quirky, frustrating 60-game campaign we called the 2020 season. The rule: If two teams are tied after nine innings of baseball, there’s an automatic runner (for the record, I’d prefer a Ghost Runner) on second base -- the player who was responsible for the last out of the ninth inning.
Due to the lack of communication from MLB offices, many fans were unsure if those rules would follow us into 2021, or if they would be chalked up as another weird 2020 trend like cutting your bangs or wearing pants to work.
That question was answered on Opening Day when Travis Shaw tied a game between Milwaukee and Minnesota in the ninth inning, and as we know, the Brewers won it 6-5 in the 10th.
Since that memorable day at American Family Field, the Twins have gone to extra innings twice and lost both times -- 4-3 to Detroit on Tuesday and 4-3 to Seattle on Saturday.
Three tries in 10 innings, three losses.
Just for fun (this will not be fun), let’s run through all 10 at-bats for your Twins in those three 10th inning frames:
1. Willians Astudillo strikes out swinging.
2. Luis Arraez strikes out swinging.
3. Jake Cave strikes out swinging.
4. Nelson Cruz singles (!!!), moving Jorge Polanco to third base.
5. Max Kepler strikes out swinging.
6. Byron Buxton grounds out in a fielder’s choice (Polanco thrown out at home).
7. Andrelton Simmons strikes out swinging.
8. Willians Astudillo fouls out to first base.
9. Jake Cave pops out to shortstop.
10. Byron Buxton grounds out to shortstop.
Ten at-bats, five strikeouts and just one baseball hit past the infield. No wonder fans are frustrated.
But let’s not allow the Twins’ struggles get in the way of appreciating the beauty of these rules. Without the runner at second base, extra-inning games are exciting for the 10th and 11th frames. But then, the game starts to drag when it reaches the 12th inning. Thirteenth. Fourteenth. Fifteenth. Fans fall asleep in the bleachers, which is great for social media screenshots but not for their REM cycles.
The game typically doesn’t become fun again until the 16th inning, when the only reason we keep squinting at our screens with our crusty contact lenses is to witness just how long this insane game of baseball will last. Eventually, one team eventually squeaks in a run. They celebrate and we finally allow ourselves to go to sleep, and teams are forced to make three moves in their bullpen to compensate for the extra baseball.
The runner-on-second rule -- which is only applicable in the regular season -- allows excitement in every inning. And as we’ve seen, chances are the game ends in 10 frames. That’s good for fans and better for bullpens.
It could be better, though. The perfect rule change would be to play a normal 10th inning and then place a runner at second base in the 11th inning and beyond. I also get the argument that important September regular season games shouldn’t be decided by a runner at second base. Solution? Play these extra-innings rules until the All-Star break, and then be back to normal, bullpen-crushing 17-inning games in the second half of the regular season.
Problem solved.
All that’s left is to ask Rob Manfred if he can go the NHL route and give the Twins a point in the standings for each extra-innings loss.
Curt has thoughts.
~Curt, duh
I have been watching lots of baseball this past week, much of it involving the Brewers. Here are some thoughts.
Fun times with Freddy
Thus far, you couldn’t have asked for much more of a Freddy Peralta Experience than the experience Freddy Peralta has given us. He’s started one game and relieved in another, totaling seven innings, with 14 strikeouts, only three hits but seven walks and no runs. He has been electrifying.
Much has been made of Freddy Peralta’s slider, which he has thrown 41.7% of the time according to FanGraphs after coming up as a fastball-dominant player and showcasing just that the past three seasons. In his scoreless five-inning start against the Cubs last Tuesday, Peralta threw the pitch (which Statcast labels as a curveball; if you ask me I think his offerings are more ambiguous than are being discussed) 42 times and his fastball 43.
But what stood out to me wasn’t just that he was throwing tons of sliders. It was how well he was locating the pitch. To put it simply, he kept chucking the thing up there because he was putting it wherever he wanted. The fastball control, meanwhile, wasn’t there for much of the night, going for 22 balls and 21 strikes. Sure, the Cubs weren’t squaring it up when they swung, but it’s games like this one where innings would slip away from Peralta because he couldn’t locate his fastball.
I still worry about the three-run homer with Peralta as walks continue to be his bugaboo, but he continues to be elite at missing bats. As long as he is commanding one of his two primary pitches, that should continue to be the case.
Hello, Yeli
Does Christian Yelich’s start to the season remind anyone else of his first couple weeks in 2018?
After a 1-for-2 ballgame Sunday (before exiting with lower back tightness, which is v relatable), Yelich is hitting .333/.459/.367, good for a 141 wRC+. He has walked in 16.2% of his plate appearances and is seemingly lining singles to center and right whenever he wants.
What’s missing, though, is the power we have grown accustomed to, as Yelich has just one extra base hit and no homers. The 2018 season tells us to worry not, however.
Through his first 10 games in 2018, Yelich was batting .342/.444/.526. Sure, he was hitting for a bit more power in that start, but his trips to the plate were mostly defined by patience and spraying line drives everywhere.
Yelich has started to look very comfortable at the dish. You’ve got to wonder if those line drives will start getting elevated and fly over the fence soon.
In the ‘pen
This isn’t exactly groundbreaking insight, but the value of relievers who can miss bats has been on full display for me early in the year.
Guys like Eric Yardley, Randy Dobnak and Alex Colome haven’t exactly gotten constantly lit up, but they have struggled to be effective while pitching to contact. It becomes a dangerous game in the late innings when your hopes are largely pinned on the ball being hit to a defender.
I think back to Opening Day, when the Brewers sent out Josh Hader to strike out Willians Astudillo and Luis Arraez, two dudes who almost never strike out, while Dobnak gave up a humpback liner and an infield chopper and the game was over.
The Anderson Day lineup
A lot of people were wondering why Keston Hiura wasn’t in the lineup on Sunday, one day after hitting four balls over 100 mph, including a big three-run jack. It was likely that manager Craig Counsell wanted to get Daniel Vogelbach a start, which made plenty of sense. But he could have utilized Hiura at second base, instead opting for the light-hitting Jace Peterson.
The answer almost certainly came down to defense. With Brett Anderson, who gets ground balls almost exclusively, it was a good day to give Hiura a rest. And while Peterson didn’t exactly make waves with his bat, he quietly made a couple of nice plays where an error could have potentially opened the floodgates.
A uniform take
I have an opinion. Please do not hurt me for it.
See this hat below?
It’s an elite Major League Baseball hat.
/ducks/
Grades for the newbies
~Jake
We’re about a dozen games into the season and, though this is definitely considered small sample season at the moment, our brains are crystallizing. Our first impressions of a guy’s 2021 season are beginning to set in. Let’s be real: it’s Omar Narvaez’s Silver Slugger to lose.
A number of these first impressions are our initial glances at new Twins and Brewers, too. Two-week opinions for guys like that can have truly long-lasting effects. I, a Twins fan, still think Lance Lynn is terrible, for example. He just threw a shutout and has been a top-five pitcher in baseball since his ill-fated few months in Minnesota, but I’m convinced the last three years have just been a hot streak.
That’s just how this works.
Let’s give out some grades for these newcomers and, at least in many instances, hope that things improve.
Brewers newbies
Jackie Bradley Jr. (.111/.143/.222, 1 HR in 27 plate appearances): D+
It’s been some tough sledding for Milwaukee’s big free agent as he’s shared time in the outfield with Lorenzo Cain and Avisail Garcia. He’s played four games in centerfield and a pair in right field. Despite the limited number of games, he’s already somehow accumulated 3 defensive runs saved in centerfield, tied for the league lead with San Diego’s Jake Cronenworth and Kansas City’s Michael A Taylor.
Unfortunately, the bat hasn’t shown up quite yet. He has nine strikeouts in his 27 plate appearances and walked just once, while managing two hits, one of which was a homer. He’s just swinging and missing a lot. His contact percentage is down to 57.4% so far, more than 15% points below his career average.
Luckily for Bradley (but not for the Brewers), Bradley’s main competition in the outfield hasn’t exactly lit the world afire either. Lorenzo Cain had a two-homer outburst against the Cubs the other day but has just one other hit (albeit in four total games) and Avisail Garcia had a slow first couple of series but put together a nice 2-for-4 day against the Cardinals while driving in five runs.
Kolten Wong (.105/.346/.105 in 26 plate appearances): C+
The line looks kinda scary, sitting at a measly .105 with two singles in seven games, and there are few points for optimism and pessimism each. On the plus side, Wong is walking a ton. It would be a pretty decent outcome if Wong is sitting at a .346 on-base percentage at the end of the year. Also noteworthy is his BABIP. Wong has managed just a .154 batting average on balls in play, well below his career average of .294. This will surely turn around. Like Bradley, he has whiffed a bit more, but not nearly so much.
On the not so good side, he hasn’t hit the ball with authority much at all. Wong has never been a hard hit king, but that number has dropped to 23.1% so far. All told, his expected batting average so far is a weak .160. Not awesome.
Ultimately, the Brewers inked Wong for his defensive prowess, though, and the results are mixed so far. Visually, he’s looked quite good. In the opening series against the Twins, he was an omnipresent black hole on the right side of the diamond. Even if he couldn’t complete the play, he got to balls that few second basemen in the bigs could get to. Statistically, though, the story looks different. He ranks in the bottom 5% of players in terms of Outs Above Average (OAA), a metric over at Baseball Savant. That’s a far cry from someone who was in the 86th percentile last year, and the 93rd and 96th percentiles the years before. I’d guess this is small sample tomfoolery.
Brad Boxberger (2.1 innings pitched, one save, 0.00 ERA): B
There isn’t much to say about the journeyman reliever who has just three appearances so far this year. He’s done his job in each, however, posting a shutout inning against the Cubs in his first appearance and recording a one-out save the following day. He also threw a clean inning Sunday. Boxberger’s save came with the bases loaded as JP Feyereisen struggled to stamp out the Cubs with Devin Williams and Josh Hader already in the clubhouse. It’s unlikely Boxberger will get many more save opportunities, but he clearly is ahead of guys like Drew Rasmussen and Eric Yardley.
Travis Shaw (.308/.357/.577, 2 HR in 28 plate appearances): A-
Does Travis Shaw count as a new guy? Let’s say yes, because he’s been fun. He delivered the big opening day game-tying hit and has hit well ever since. He’s played a ton and will likely continue to see those plate appearances now that the team has moved on from Orlando Arcia. There’s no deep dive necessary here; Shaw has been plenty of fun for a relatively stagnant offense so far this season. Long live the Mayor.
Billy McKinney (.500/.500/.833 in 6 plate appearances): B+
McKinney hasn’t factored into the lineup often, but when he has he’s delivered. Two singles and a triple in six plate appearances looks mighty fine to me. As Curt mentioned this offseason, McKinney is in a tough spot related to the roster crunch and the addition of Jacke Bradley Jr. made it all but impossible for him to get guaranteed innings in the outfield. He’s played in six games already, though largely as a pinch hitter. Even there, he’s almost always going to be the second banana to Dan Vogelbach. The former Blue Jay can’t do much better than a 3-for-6 start, though.
Daniel Robertson (.143/.143/.214 in 14 plate appearances): C-
Daniel Robertson hasn’t been very good, but did you expect him to be? He’s a fine late-inning defensive replacement with some positional versatility. He’s basically the anti-Dan Vogelbach--at least in theory...big Dan isn’t exactly lighting the world up with his bat, either. Robertson has a pair of hits (a single and a double that probably should’ve counted as a homer?) in 14 plate appearances while already logging games at second and third.
Twins newbies
Alex Colome (5.1 innings pitched, 6.75 ERA, 2 saves, 2 blown saves): D
My thoughts before Sunday’s loss to the Mariners: Part of the reason for this very column was to write about Alex Colome. I was ready to come in and light him up. Alex Colome’s season is a microcosm of this entire thesis, though: small samples will mess with your head. When I think of Colome as a Twin, I think of the errant throw to second base on Opening Day and the blown save. I also think about Saturday’s blown hold (which technically gets labeled as a blown save), when he gave up a single in the 8th inning to Kyle Seager to tie the game. What I forget, however, is that Colome has been nails in his other two games, including a two-inning save against the Tigers when he struck out three. Despite his Opening Day shenanigans, he followed up in game two of the season with an easy save.
Colome has always been a guy who outperforms his FIP. In his four appearances so far, though, he’s been basically as good as the results have shown. His 1.79 FIP is right on par with his 1.80 ERA, though that ERA is helped by the fact that all three Opening Day runs were unearned (because of his own error...baseball is funny).
Two of his four outings haven’t been great, and those have colored my perception. There’s a lot to like here, though. The veteran reliever is clearly someone Rocco Baldelli trusts and it will likely stay that way.
My thoughts after Sunday’s loss to the Mariners: Hey Brewers, do you want a closer for cheap? Will trade for Sophia Minnaert.
Hansel Robles (4.2 innings pitched, 0.00 ERA, 6 strikeouts): B
Robles has looked great so far, despite taking a loss as the extra innings pitcher against the Detroit Tigers. Six strikeouts to just one walk is a great ratio for someone who struggled so mightily with command last year. His fastball has been good and his personality has been fun, too. Strong start for the former Angel.
JA Happ (4 innings pitched, 2.25 ERA): B
In his first start for the Twins, the veteran lefty was everything we could realistically hope for. The Twins weren’t expecting another Kenta Maeda out of the former Yankee; they just need someone who can put up a few scoreless innings every fifth day before handing it over to a big bullpen. He struggled with his command, but still struck out four Tigers and probably could’ve gone another inning if it wasn’t so early in the season. It was a promising start.
Andrelton Simmons (.370/.500/.481 in 33 plate appearances): A
The defensive legend has been every bit as advertised at shortstop but it’s his bat that is making the biggest impression. He’s hit nearly everything thrown his way, highlighted by a 3-for-5 day in the home opener against Seattle, where he doubled twice and scored once. Though this clearly is not sustainable, it’s interesting to note that he has a .337 expected batting average, placing him in the 90th percentile in all of baseball. That’s not nothing. Simmons has long been a very valuable player despite an average bat. If that bat continues to be above average, though, the Twins could have an All Star on their hands.
Kyle Garlick (.375/.412/.500 in 17 plate appearances): B+
The best appetizer on the Twins has already played more than I expected and it’s worked out quite well. True to expectations, he’s hit lefties quite well. What we didn’t expect, though, was his cannon from right field. He notched an assist against the Detroit Tigers last week, cutting down a runner at the plate.
The Twins tend to struggle against left-handed pitchers, and that makes Garlick an automatic start whenever a lefty is on the bump if he continues to hit like this. He already has two barrels and a .687 expected slugging percentage. Those are largely irrelevant numbers aside from one small thing: they show he’s crushing the ball.
Brandon Waddell (1 inning pitched, 0.00 ERA): C+
The former Pirate pitched an uneventful inning against Seattle the other day, walking one while keeping the scoresheet empty. That’s....yeah, that’s all I got.
Matt Shoemaker (4.09 ERA, 11 innings pitched, 12 strikeouts, one walk): B-
This might seem a bit generous for Shoemaker, but he’s been excellent outside of one bad inning. He’s allowed four runs in two starts, all of which came in the sixth inning against the Mariners Sunday via two homers. Outside of that, Shoemaker has located his pitches well and proved to be tough to hit. Entering the fifth inning of Sunday’s game, he was set with a solid A grade. If Rocco goes to the pen a bit earlier, we’re looking at a very happy ranking.
Here, watch some filth.
~Curt
As we embark on this week’s HWSF, keep in mind there is just one rule: make sure to not disrespect veteran players who wear the badge of Protector Of Playing The Game The Right Way.
With that out of the way, let’s roll.
WAIT HOW DID THAT GET IN THERE?
I told myself I wasn’t going to explain why I loved each of these pitches so much, but I can’t help myself on this one. There’s a split-second where the ball kind of disappears in the white batter shadow part of the MLB logo behind home plate. Then, when it emerges, it’s not even remotely where you expect it to be. Absurd.
Ha.
Haha.
Hahaha.
Hahaha.
Hahahaha.
Hahahahaha.
Hahahahahaha.
Hahahahahahaha.
Hahahahahahahaha.
Hahahahahahahahaha.
Hahahahahahahahahaha.