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MLB 2022 regular season thread

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Cubs Option Alfonso Rivas, DFA Cory Abbott, Greg Deichmann

The Cubs made a number of roster moves this afternoon, in part to make room for Mark Leiter Jr., whose …
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Cubs just DFA'D two guys who were in their top prospects list in 20/21 in RHP Cory Abbot and 1B/3B/Corner OF Greg Deichmann...

They have options left and Abbot sounds like someone the Guardians have a lot of luck with...
 
Hunter Greene threw 39 pitches at 100mph (or more) last night for the reds in 5.1 innings - most since the stat has been tracked - 2nd now degrom last June at 33
 
Posted this in the Guardians regular season thread, but could also be used here as well:


For those that don't have ESPN+ to read the article, I'll highlight some key points without completely copy and pasting the article:
  • Scoring this year IS down. This year's batting average (.234) is identical to last year's through 10 team games. On-base percentage is up .001. But the leaguewide slugging percentage is down from .392 each of the past two years to .380 this season. Accordingly, runs per game have dipped from 4.44 last season to 4.22 this year -- nearly a 5% decrease.

  • So what's going on here? Easy.. home runs are WAAAAY down. And Passan indicates that sure, rates go higher as the weather gets warmer, even when it does, they aren't projecting it to "fix" this problem.

  • Percentage of plate appearances ending in a HR:

    Year First 10 All 162

    2015     3.80% 4.20%

    2016 4.43% 4.86%

    2017 4.79% 5.26%

    2018 4.22% 4.81%

    2019 5.56% 5.85%

    2020 4.87% 5.27%

    2021 4.79% 4.89%

    2022 3.93%

  • So why aren't guys hitting HRs? Looking at the data... the lowest exit velocity on a home run this season has been 93 mph. The launch angle on a ball can vary greatly. This season's trajectory ranges from 15 to 45 degrees. The sweet spot is somewhere between 20 and 35 degrees. More than 90% of home runs hit this season have left the bat at that angle. The percentage of balls hit 93 mph-plus with 20 to 35 degrees of launch have gone for home runs 29.8% of the time -- the lowest mark over the first 10 team games played since Statcast came to be and down from last year's 34.17%.

  • But there's one specific area where the change is really happening... It's on balls hit between 100 and 102 mph at those same launch angles. Only 16.42% of such batted balls are going for home runs. Over the past seven years, that number has been 33.1%. That is not just an outlier. It means something is happening.

  • Passan said the likeliest culprit is the ball itself. For the first time this season, all 30 teams are using humidors to store their balls. Humidors don't necessarily dampen the flight of balls; their benefit comes more from making the ball as uniform as possible.

  • But what about pitchers? Is it possible the change is because of something they're doing differently? Well, actually, yes.
    Fastballs will no longer constitute a majority of pitches thrown. Of the more than 40,000 pitches thrown this season, only 48.3% have been fastballs -- down from 50.5% last season. Instead, the fastball has been replaced by its tilty, spinny cousin, the slider. Since 2015 -- a year in which fastballs made up a massive 56.8% of pitches thrown -- slider usage has jumped from 14.5% of pitches to 21.7% this year.

  • Part of the explosion in the use of the slider is also reliever-driven. This season, bullpen arms are throwing it 26.1% of the time, compared to 17.3% from starters. The one-inning, max-out culture of modern baseball practically invites it -- and the jump among relievers from 21.9% slider usage in teams' first 10 games last season is no accident. Sliders have generated whiffs on 36.3% of swings, higher than the fastball (19.3%), cutter (26.5%), curveball (31.4%) and changeup (33.3%). Only the splitter, thrown by about 40 of the nearly 500 big leaguers who have pitched this season, has a higher whiff rate than the slider (39.8%).

  • The average start thus far this season has lasted 4.53 innings. Barely half a game. There still hasn't been a complete game this year (the record for longest wait into the season is 20 days, set in 2019). Passan does find it important to note that the lockout-shortened spring training is partly to blame for this. But.. not so fast. He points out that the ramp-up period before the COVID-shortened 2020 season was even briefer and starters over their teams' first 10 games averaged 4.61 innings per contest. By the end of the season, that number jumped to 4.78 innings -- not a particularly meaningful leap but at least something. Last season, with a full spring training, starters in the first 10 games averaged 5.03 innings ... and finished the season at 5.02.

  • The numbers thus far support teams' increasing use of relievers. The average starter's ERA: 4.27. Reliever's: 3.53 -- nearly three-quarters of a run better. Batters against starters are slashing .245/.319/.399 compared to .221/.307/.358 for relievers.

So, there you have it...
 
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