Some pitchers not quite as nasty anymore, very interesting trends with less spider tack!
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The Indians have placed ace Shane Bieber on the 10-day injured list due to a right shoulder subscapularis muscle strain, per a club announcement. Young lefty Kyle Nelson is up from Triple-A Columbus to take Bieber’s spot on the active roster. Manager Terry Francona tells reporters that Bieber won’t throw for the next two weeks (Twitter link via Camryn Justice of ABC News 5 in Cleveland).
Even a short-term absence for Bieber is a brutal blow for the Indians, who are six games over .500 but also five and a half games back of the White Sox for the division lead. The Indians are also currently without righty Zach Plesac due to a fractured thumb, leaving Aaron Civale as the most established option in their ailing rotation.
Cleveland has also given looks to youngsters Triston McKenzie, Cal Quantrill, Logan Allen, Sam Hentges and Jean Carlos Mejia so far in 2021. No one from that grouping has proven himself to be a reliable option just yet, but the Indians will nevertheless need to tap further into that depth with Bieber on the shelf.
It’s been another strong season for Bieber, albeit one that’s not quite on par with last year’s utter dominance in a Cy Young-winning effort. Bieber leads the Major Leagues with 90 2/3 innings pitched, and he’s worked to a 3.28 ERA with a 33.9 percent strikeout rate that ranks seventh in the Majors.Comment -
Hard for me to watch the past few weeks. Padres offense is pathetic.Comment -
Glasnow out for the season, UCL isn't usually a 10 day DL.
Hope I'm wrong but he's done. Bad news.
Colossal blow to TBComment -
Jays crap bullpen is killing their season.Comment -
Big rally by the Giants capped off by a Yaz moonshot into the Bay. I know the Diamondbacks are laughably bad but these are the teams you got to beat if you want to get to the postseason.Comment -
DBacks were leading 7-0.Comment -
When Trevor Bauer signed a three-year, $102MM deal with the Dodgers back in February, he ensured flexibility by securing opt-outs after the first and second years. However, the details suggest the contract was designed to keep Bauer in Los Angeles for the first two seasons.
Bauer received a $10MM signing bonus, $5MM of which was paid in March. The other $5MM will be paid next month. Beyond that, his 2021 salary is $28MM, but with the quirk that it’s all payable on November 1st of this year. Here’s what happens if he opts out after the 2021 season, according to Cot’s:
Bauer may opt out of the contract after the 2021 season, receiving a $2M buyout, with Dodgers deferring $20M of 2021 salary without interest, paid in $2M installments each Dec. 1, 2031-40
In other words, if Bauer opts out after this season, he walks away with $12MM in hand, and then has to wait a decade until the Dodgers pay him again. And even then, it’s $2MM per year for ten years, with no interest. Your estimates may vary, but that deferred $20MM is worth a lot less than being paid now – most likely half as much.
Opting out after the 2022 season involves none of that deferred money stuff, and throws in a $15MM buyout. Bauer would have earned $85MM for two seasons, foregoing a mere $17MM for ’23. Barring injury, jumping out of the contract at this point seems like an easy choice. As the best pitcher on the free agent market, Bauer landed a very flexible contract. The Dodgers took on all the downside risk, which is the nature of opt-out clauses.
Bauer started this season strong enough to at least give another look to the possibility of opting out after ’21. After an outing at San Francisco on May 21st, Bauer’s ERA sat at 1.98 through 12 starts, with a 36.2 K%. If you had asked me at that point, I’d have said it’d make sense for Bauer to opt out after ’21, even if just to land the same three-year deal all over again. But on the horizon was a hallmark date with a potentially large effect on Bauer and many other pitchers. On June 3rd, Bob Nightengale wrote, “Major League Baseball informed owners Thursday that it is engaged in the next phase of league-directed enforcement banning the use of foreign substances by pitchers — which would include 10-day suspensions — two persons with direct knowledge of the meeting told USA TODAY Sports.” Today, MLB announced its new enforcement plan, which starts Monday.
Through May 31st, Bauer averaged 2840 RPM and 93.8 miles per hour on his four-seam fastball. In the two starts since, those numbers are 2630 RPM and 94.1 mph. There are players who have lost more RPM on their four-seamers since the impending crackdown became known, without much velocity change, such as the Indians’ James Karinchak. But Bauer’s 210 RPM loss on the four-seamer is significant, especially for a guy who throws the pitch 44% of the time.
All we can say definitively is that the average spin rate on Bauer’s four-seam fastball in two starts after June 3rd was 210 RPM lower than the average RPM in a dozen starts before that date. That the RPM drop was caused by Bauer stopping the usage of foreign substances on the ball or changing what he uses is the implication, but not a fact. It’d take a further leap to say that Bauer’s mediocre results in those two starts were caused by the RPM drop. It should be noted that 2630 RPM still ranks sixth in baseball from June 3rd onward, and there’s nothing too meaningful about allowing seven earned runs in 12 1/3 innings. It’s also worth pointing out that Bauer’s ERA was probably not going to stay around 2.00 even without a foreign substance crackdown. Bauer certainly has not shied away from MLB’s sticky stuff drama, as he “demonstrated to reporters on the field before Tuesday’s game that a combination of sweat and rosin was sufficient to allow him to stick a baseball to his hand, palm down,” according to Bill Plunkett of the OC Register. He showed this on Twitter, while also diving into Tyler Glasnow’s comments.Comment -
Padres lose again, absolutely brutal stretch.Comment -
When is Trout coming back?Comment -
Tatis Jr, and Mondesi Jr. both homer within 20 minutes of each other.
Here ya go JP
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fun to watchComment -
Boy I hope so but I think they need to make a couple of impact moves at the deadline to win the whole thing. The bullpen makes me nervous and it seems the offense is very dependent on the home run ball. Still though this is a team that keeps finding ways to win ball games so maybe they can make it happen like they did in 2010 when they kind of came out of nowhere to win the whole thing.Comment -
Giants are looking really good, crazy with all these no name guys on offense.Comment -
Most of the guys having good years are the veteran guys who happened to play for their championship teams. Guys like Posey, Belt and Crawford are having good years and it's helped the Giants offense to have veterans like those guys who have championship experience leading the way. Just seems a little weird that they're having such good years at advanced ages but they are and it's helped the Giants get off to such a good start.Comment -
10:29 pm: A more specific timeline for Bregman’s return will become clearer tomorrow, but it seems he’s looking at an injured list stint. Manager Dusty Baker told reporters (including Berman) the expectation is Bregman will be out “for a while.”
7:53 pm: Bregman departed due to a left quad strain, relays Brent Zwerneman of the Houston Chronicle.
7:37 pm: Astros star Alex Bregman left this evening’s game against the Rangers in the first inning. Bregman appeared to suffer a lower body injury while trying to beat out a ground ball (video provided by Mark Berman of Fox 26). Robel García replaced him at third base.
Bregman is amidst another very strong season, albeit not at his 2018-19 MVP-caliber level. The 27-year-old is hitting .275/.359/.428 (121 wRC+) with seven homers over his first 262 plate appearances. At 38-28, Houston sits three games back of the Athletics in the AL West, so a significant injury to Bregman would be a devastating blow. Of course, there’s no indication at this point he’s facing any sort of long-term absence.
If Bregman were to miss time, García and Abraham Toro would seem the likeliest options to pick up the slack at the hot corner. Primary utilityman Aledmys Díaz is out until at least late July due to a hand fracture.Comment -
I've quickly lost interest in the season...hard to watch Padre games the past few weeksComment -
Wow, Padres got sweptComment -
Gausman was electric again.
If it wasn't for that deGrom fella he'd be your Cy Young.
And nobody should be really surprised, he came on like a freight train all last year too.Comment -
Under the radar as usual,Kyle Hendricks wins his 7th straight start shutting down the Mets. The guy is a stud every year and can’t throw over 90… Big Padres win tonight over the Brew Crew and Cardinals almost got no hit. Great night of baseball!!!Comment -
Jesse Winkler caught my eye last season with that sweet lefty swing of his.
He showed power than, but man, didn't expect this out of him so far.
17 ding dongs in 60 games, 41 RBI 49 R .340/.420/.626 slash line .
And he hits at the top of the order (leadoff or 2nd)
Those are MVP type numbers in most years but that Vlad character is having a slightly better year.Comment -
Gausman has been awesome this year. My only regret is that out of all my fantasy leagues I only wound up with him on one of my teams. He was the one good thing about the Giants team coming into this season and resigning him went under the radar to the baseball world but not to us Giants fans.Comment -
Last night was the kind of win that possibly turns things around
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One month to the day after Mike Trout suffered a right calf strain, his injury rehab is “going good, I feel great,” the star outfielder said as part of an in-game interview during tonight’s Tigers/Angels game (hat tip to Brent Maguire). Trout is looking to “hopefully start some baseball activity in the next few days and go from there,” though he stressed that he is waiting to get the green light from doctors before going ahead with any sort of running drills.
Trout’s injury carried a rough timeline of 6-8 weeks, so if Trout is indeed almost on the verge of starting baseball activities after a month, that is a good sign that he might be back on the low end of that estimated absence.
Obviously the sooner Trout is able to return the better for the Angels, who took a 33-35 record into tonight’s contest with Detroit. A recent six-game winning streak gave the Halos a winning record for the first time since May 1, though three consecutive losses has brought them back under the .500 mark. Nine games back of the division lead and seven games back of the second AL wild card spot, Anaheim needs to make up at least some of that ground by the time Trout returns to have any chance at the postseason. If not, the Angels could be deadline sellers and staring at their seven consecutive season without any playoff baseball.
2021 was on pace to be perhaps Trout’s best season yet, considering that his 194 wRC+/OPS+ at the time of his injury represented a new career best. (In baseball history, the list of players with full seasons better than 194 wRC+ is not a long one.) Trout was hitting .333/.466/.624 with eight home runs over his first 146 plate appearances, and it’s fair to guess that the Angels would be a bigger factor in the AL West race if he had been healthy over the last month, though the Halos have been a respectable 15-13 since Trout hit the injured list.Comment -
Mariners comeback in bottom of the ninth burned me last nightComment
