Daily Briefing: A milestone home run

The FanGraphs Newsletter, May 21, 2021 [READ IN BROWSER]( By Jeffrey Bellone - May 21, 2021 🟢 A MILESTONE HOME RUN Hitting 250 career home runs is worth celebrating under any circumstances, but when a player reaches that milestone the way J.D. Martinez did last night, it becomes extra meaningful. The 33-year-old designated hitter turned a ninth-inning slider from Rafael Dolis into a two-run, go-ahead home run to lead the Red Sox to a come-from-behind victory over the Blue Jays on Thursday. The veteran slugger, who batted an anemic .213/.291/.389 (77 wRC+) during the pandemic-shortened season, has re-found his stroke at the plate. His 175 wRC+ ranks fourth in baseball, and his 12 home runs are tied for third most. When searching for reasons to explain how the Red Sox have catapulted to first place in the AL East, look no further than the production they are getting from Martinez. ⚫️ WHAT ELSE HAPPENED? ▫️ Albert Pujols hit his first home run as a Dodger — an opposite field, two-run shot (his 668th of his career) to give Los Angeles an early lead in an eventual 3-2 win over the Diamondbacks. Pujols was signed on the same day that Corey Seager broke his hand, an injury that forced the Dodgers to get creative with their lineups, giving the future Hall-of-Famer an opportunity to gain regular at-bats at first by pushing Max Muncy to second base. ▫️ Look out for the San Francisco Giants! Given a [0.1% chance to win the division]( by our playoff odds on April 1, they find themselves in first place in the NL West with an impressive 28–16 record after sweeping a four-game set against the Reds this past week. Yesterday, they scored 19 runs (most in the majors by any team this season) to put an exclamation point on the series. The Giants travel to Los Angeles to take on the Dodgers in a classic showdown this weekend. This newsletter is made possible due to the generous support of our members. If you are reading this email or use FanGraphs in your daily baseball routine, please consider supporting us. [BECOME A FANGRAPHS MEMBER]( YESTERDAY'S MOST PIVOTAL PLAY Since we talked about it above, let's show you the video. No play yesterday came close to matching the win probability added from J.D. Martinez's ninth inning home run that put the Red Sox ahead 8-7. SCORES (HOME TEAMS IN CAPS) Red Sox 8 BLUE JAYS 7 ANGELS 7 Twins 1 (DH/7) Twins 6 ANGELS 3 (DH/7) Pirates 6 BRAVES 4 (10) CUBS 5 Nationals 2 Rays 10 ORIOLES 1 Giants 19 REDS 4 Astros 8 ATHLETICS 4 DODGERS 3 D-Backs 2 Yankees 2 RANGERS 0 Marlins 6 Phillies 0 Track every game using our [LIVE SCOREBOARD](. [Yadier Molina's Strong Start Seems Meaningful]( by Justin Choi This isn’t the first time Molina has gone on an offensive tear. Looking at 25-game stretches of wOBA dating back to 2018 ... there are three clear maxima. The first occurred in July 2018, the second in September 2019, and the most relevant one falls in between April and May of this year. So what’s different about Molina’s current rendition? To find out, I looked at his Statcast data from rough one-month windows corresponding to those peaks. Here they are organized in a table: A common trait is the prevalence of hard-hit rate. Hitting the ball hard is good! We here at FanGraphs embrace it. What is a newfound skill of Molina’s, however, is his Barrel rate – for the first time in a long while, he’s not only striking balls hard but also elevating them. When I [wrote about teammate]( [Matt Carpenter]( back in April, I noted that a majority of hitters tended to preserve some of their early-season Barrel rates. Though the danger of a small samples always looms, this might be a positive sign for Molina. [READ MORE ]( 📝 RECENTLY PUBLISHED [Unpacking the Impact of Foul Balls on Strikeouts]( by Devan Fink [Searching For The Best Reliever Release Point]( by Lucas Kelly [Daily Prospect Notes: May 20]( by Eric Longenhagen [A Thursday Scouting Notebook: 5/20/21]( by Eric Longenhagen and Kevin Goldstein [Orioles 2020 First-Rounder Jordan Westburg Talks Hitting]( by David Laurila [Another Unique and Wondrous No-Hitter, Just Like Yesterday]( by Ben Clemens [Roto Riteup: May 21, 2021]( by Justin Mason [Bullpen Report: May 21, 2021]( by Jason Martinez 🎧 FANGRAPHS PODCASTS [CHIN MUSIC, EPISODE 14: The Importance of Finding a Carwash Membership]( It’s Friday, so it’s Chin Music time. The co-host chair returns to New York yet again, as the always entertaining [Andy Mccullough]( senior writer for The Athletic, joins me for two hours of mostly baseball. We start with the news of the day and talk about the rash of no-hitters, the rash of injuries, the rash of good teams in the American League East, and how we’re perfectly fine with the Dodgers signing [Albert Pujols](. We’re then joined by special guest [Herb Lawerence]( Chicago radio veteran and host of the [Locked on Sox podcast]( to discuss a very good White Sox team and the constant distractions created by Tony La Russa. Herb has some thoughts, and he doesn’t hold back. Then it’s emails about trade partners, the CBA, umpires, and Tommy Lee Jones, before getting into a Moment of Culture, catching up with Andy, and then departing. 🎧 [Beat the Shift Podcast]( NL Central Episode w/ Sara Sanchez 🎧 [FanGraphs Audio]( Cole Irvin and Colin McKee Chat Pitching 🔝 TOP PERFORMERS Some additional performances not noted above. 🔺 SANDY ALCANTARA (SP/MIA): 6 IP, 9 SO (15 swinging strikes), 3 BB, 2 H and 0 ER. 🔺 DOMINGO GERMAN (SP/NYY): 7 IP, 5 SO (16 swinging strikes), 0 BB, 6 H and 0 ER. 🔺 JOEY WENDLE (SS/TBR): 4-6 (2 HR, 2 R, 2 RBI) 🔺 IAN HAPP (CF/CHC): 2-4 (2 HR, 2 R, 3 RBI) Check out our [Live Daily Leaderboards]( to track each day's top performers in real-time. ⚾️ ROSTER REPORT ACTIVATED FROM INJURED LIST - Angels SP Alex Cobb and Giants RP José Álvarez were activated from the 10-Day IL. Cardinals SP Miles Mikolas, Orioles OF Anthony Santander, Cardinals SP Carlos Martínez, Nationals SP Stephen Strasburg are all expected to be activated from the 10-Day IL. PLACED ON INJURED LIST - Cubs OF Jason Heyward, Reds INF Mike Moustakas, Yankees OF Ryan LaMarre, Giants SP Logan Webb were all placed on the 10-Day IL. TRANSACTIONS - Former Brewers C/1B Jacob Nottingham was claimed off waivers by the Mariners. - D-Backs RP Yoan López, Mariners 1B/OF José Marmolejos, Mariners RP Brady Lail were all designated for assignment. For the latest roster information, please visit our [RosterResource]( pages. 📚 [The Historic No-Hitter Pace is Bad for Fans. But it May be Just What MLB Needs]( by Ben Lindbergh, The Ringer How many no-hitters would it take for you to stop going out of your way to watch the final few outs of a pitcher’s pursuit of history? It’s only mid-May, but I’ve already reached my quota. On April 9, I tuned in to see San Diego–area native Joe Musgrove complete the first no-no in Padres franchise history. On April 14, I watched White Sox pitcher Carlos Rodón no-hit Cleveland. On May 5, I looked over the shoulder of Orioles ace John Means as he allowed a lone Seattle runner on a dropped third strike. And on May 7, I changed games to watch Wade Miley finish off Cleveland. That was when I hit my limit. As Miley celebrated, Oakland’s Sean Manaea was working on a no-hitter himself. But I didn’t switch feeds to see Manaea’s bid broken up in the eighth. My answer to the quota question, I discovered, was one more than Mr. Owl’s when asked how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop: four. 📚 [No Game for Old Men?]( by Carlos Marcano, Pitcher List We will all succumb under the weight of Father Time (except for Nelson Cruz, of course). Every player will experience a decrement in their output, whatever the way we measure it, as his age increments; that’s known as the aging curve. There have been lots of studies and research around how the aging curve shape represents that behavior and most of them agree that peak performance is achieved [around the age 26 to 29 seasons, and the decrement starts at around 30]( getting steeper by the age 31-32 seasons. Just for the sake of an example, I took a random sample of ten batters that were able to connect at least 2700 hits during their career and graphed the hits versus age scatter plot and the corresponding trend curve for all of them. 📚 MORE READS: [New Dead Ball Era Hurts the Game]( by Payton Ellison, Here's the Pitch: the IBWAA Newsletter [Math behind no-hitters]( by Tom Tango, MLB [Around baseball, players raise concerns about pitchers’ use of foreign substances]( by Ken Rosenthal and Brittany Ghiroli, The Athletic ($) [@fangraphs]( [FanGraphs]( [FanGraphs]( [RSS]( [FORWARD]( [SUBSCRIBE]( Copyright © 2021 FanGraphs Inc, All rights reserved. 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