Daily Briefing: Streaking Jays

The FanGraphs Newsletter, September 10, 2021 [READ IN BROWSER]( By Jeffrey Bellone - September 10, 2021 STREAKING: The Toronto Blue Jays started the month 4.5 games back of the second Wild Card spot. Since then, they have won eight in a row — including a four-game sweep of the New York Yankees — to pull within a half game of New York (losers of six in a row) for the right to participate in the American League play-in game. It was the [first time]( the Yankees never had a lead in a series of at least four games since 1924. []( POSITIVE TEST: Boston Red Sox ace Chris Sale will miss his next scheduled start after testing positive for COVID-19. Under MLB protocols, he is required to quarantine for a minimum of 10 days. He is the 10th Red Sox player to test positive for the illness since August 27. []( WALK IT OFF: The Atlanta Braves blew three leads, as they traded barbs with the Washington Nationals on Thursday, before Joc Pederson delivered a walk-off single in the 10th inning to score the winning run in a seesaw 7–6 affair. []( SPOILERS: After Phillies closer Ian Kennedy retired the first two batters in the top of the ninth inning, it looked like Philadelphia was on its way to a 2–1 victory, but the Colorado Rockies rallied to score three runs off back-to-back home runs, including a pinch-hit, two-strike, two-run shot by Ryan McMahon, and held on to win 4–3 at Citizens Bank Park on Thursday. []( 📈 STAT OF THE DAY: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. [became]( the third player in American League history to record at least 40 home runs and 100 RBIs in a season before the age of 23, joining Joe DiMaggio (1937) and Juan Gonzalez (1992). 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]( THE VALUE OF TAKES: You can be good at taking pitches, but that doesn’t guarantee success. Minimizing whiffs, producing loud contact, or some combination of both is much more important. But that still doesn’t explain a couple of important questions. For instance, why are some hitters better at taking pitches than others? And even if it doesn’t explain overall top-line success, are there are other outcomes that are more highly associated with being good at taking pitches than wOBA? 👉 [Using the Value of Taking Pitches to Describe Different Hitter Approaches, by Devan Fink]( TEAM ENTROPY: A decade ago, during the wild 2011 races that resulted in the Rays and Cardinals snatching spots away from the collapsing Red Sox and Braves, respectively, on the season’s final day, I coined the phrase “[Team Entropy]( — taking a page from the [Second Law of Thermodynamics]( which states that all systems tend toward disorder — to describe the phenomenon of rooting for scenarios that produced such mayhem. I’ve returned to the concept annually, tracking the possibilities for end-of-season, multi-team pileups that would require MLB to deviate from its previously scheduled programming. 👉 [Team Entropy 2021: Back to (Somewhat) Normal, by Jay Jaffe]( 📚 RECENTLY PUBLISHED [Daily Prospect Notes: 9/10/21]( by Tess Taruskin [Checking in on Jo Adell’s Much-Improved Strikeout Rate]( by Luke Hooper [Darin Ruf, the Best Hitter on a Playoff Team]( by Devan Fink [The Enpumpkining of Carlos Santana]( by Ben Clemens [The Rays' Unique Ability To Mitigate Risk]( by Kevin Goldstein [Roto Riteup: September 10, 2021]( by Justin Mason [Bullpen Report: September 10, 2021]( by Jon Becker [Starting Pitcher Chart - September 10th, 2021]( by Paul Sporer 🎧 [FanGraphs Audio: Jim Rosenhaus Shares Stories From the Cleveland Booth]( 🎧 [Chin Music, Episode 30: Surely You Know Gritty]( 🎧 [Effectively Wild Episode 1744: The Pretty Good Players Draft]( ⚾️ ROSTER REPORT For the latest roster information, please visit our [RosterResource]( pages. [The Blue Jays Are Reaching Their Potential—and Maybe Even a Playoff Berth]( by Michael Baumann, The Ringer [Is Los Angeles Dodgers righty Max Scherzer the best MLB trade deadline pitching pickup ever?]( by Jeff Passan, ESPN [There’s some nasty stuff — and Stuff+ — brewing in Milwaukee]( by Eno Sarris, The Athletic ($) [How One Padres Reliever Is Plunking His Way to an Unlikely HBP Record]( by Zach Kram, The Ringer Manager Challenges Are A Skill, by Robert Arthur, Baseball Prospectus ($) [@fangraphs]( [FanGraphs]( [FanGraphs]( [RSS]( [FORWARD]( [SUBSCRIBE]( Copyright © 2021 FanGraphs Inc, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you subscribed to the FanGraphs Newsletter. Our mailing address is: FanGraphs Inc 1200 N Hartford St. Apt 312Arlington, Va 22201 [Add us to your address book]( Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](