congratulations

Twins open up division lead to season-high six games over Guardians

By BETSY HELFAND | bhelfand@pioneerpress.com | St. Paul Pioneer Press

August 20, 2023 at 5:26 p.m.

Come Tuesday, the Twins will embark on a critical stretch of their schedule that sees them playing two games against the first-place Milwaukee Brewers and seven against the first-place Texas Rangers.

Interspersed, they’ll also play their remaining six games against the second-place Cleveland Guardians, making the upcoming weeks pivotal ones for the Twins, who are trying to hang on and win the division for the first time since 2020.

When they begin that stretch of play, they’ll do so with a six-game lead in the division, the largest lead they’ve had all season. The Twins, who beat the Pirates 2-0 on Sunday afternoon at Target Field, entered the day with more than a 90% chance to win the division, per FanGraphs.

“The most we can stretch that over second (place), it’s awesome,” infielder Donovan Solano said. “We’re trying to continue to play well to get more games up, but it’s pretty good right now.”

Their closest competitor, the Guardians, are actually much closer to getting passed by the third-place Tigers (1 1/2 games ahead of Detroit) than they are to passing the Twins. The Guardians are currently seven games under .500.

While the Twins are about to endure what appears to be the toughest remaining part of their schedule, Cleveland doesn’t have it any easier. In addition to six games against the Twins, it’ll play the Los Angeles Dodgers, Toronto Blue Jays and Tampa Bay Rays — all teams currently positioned to make the playoffs — in that period of time.

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Rays Designate Francisco Mejía For Assignment

Well so much for his future stardom.

Are robot umpires ready for their MLB debut? Not so fast.
Jayson Stark
Aug 25, 2023

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Robot Umps. You ask about them every time another inexplicable ball/strike call flashes across your 77-inch flat screen. So you should know they’re still the technology of the future. But are they ready for today? Not so fast.

If you’d asked the powers that be at Major League Baseball that question a year ago, we’d guess that many of them would have said: Yes. Absolutely. See you on Opening Day 2024. But now, the league has noticeably steered clear of establishing any timelines. And several baseball sources tell The Athletic that a 2024 debut of any type of electronic ball-strike technology seems increasingly unlikely.

So what happened this year that slowed up that parade of the robots? It’s complicated.

The holdup lies in a series of questions that have grown out of a season-long trial of robot-ump technology – or, as it’s more formally known, “ABS” (Automated Ball-Strike System) – across baseball’s two Triple-A leagues this season.

That trial has also added to the complications by experimenting with two different variations of ABS. Half the games (Tuesday-Thursday) have been played with computerized umps calling every pitch, although a human umpire still stations himself behind the catcher to make calls on plays at the plate.

But then the Friday-to-Sunday games arrive. In those games, human umps go back to calling pitches, but teams have the right to challenge a limited number of calls per game. And those two systems feel so different that the split format has led to even more questions.

Some of those questions have to do with the readiness of the technology to get these calls right, obviously. But believe it or not, those are the questions that might be the easiest to address.

In truth, the bigger issues have very little to do with the once-fundamental question of whether it’s even possible to produce a world in which every strike is a strike, every ball is a ball and 100 percent of all pitches are called correctly. Instead, the biggest holdup is this:

Now that hundreds of minor-league players, managers and coaches have spent a season living on Planet Robo-Ump… they’ve decided that they don’t want to live on that planet.

Oh, they still want The Big Calls to be 100 percent correct. They definitely don’t want games decided on calls like this.

But do they want every pitch to be called by non-humans, strictly by the rulebook strike zone, in, say, a 17-2 game? Or when it’s the eighth inning and ominous dark clouds are gathering? No, they do not! They almost unanimously prefer a challenge system, in which (theoretically) only The Big Mistakes are addressed with technology.

We know this because we’ve been asking minor leaguers about ABS/robot umps for weeks – and that’s what they’ve told us. We can only imagine what they’ve told the folks at Major League Baseball, who actually have some say over where this goes from here.

So all these months later, the sport finds itself in a very different place from where it was last year this time, when it was fully geared up to roll out its massive rule-change package for 2023: pitch clocks, shift limits and larger bases. Those changes seemed seismic from afar. Turns out they’re a breeze compared to the ball-strike scene.

Those robot umps are still lurking. But there’s a lot to sort out before that show arrives. So let’s sift through the issues.
How we got here

Not sure if you’ve ever noticed this, but for the last 100 years, home-plate umpires haven’t been quite as beloved figures in America as, say, Labrador retrievers. For the first 95 years of that period, those umpire “mistakes” were addressed by good old-fashioned yelling, screaming and tantrum-izing. But perhaps there was a better way.

So in recent years, as technology advanced and strike-zone boxes began to appear on TV screens everywhere, Major League Baseball started testing electronic ball-strike systems. They first appeared in the independent Atlantic League in 2019, then were gradually introduced in the affiliated minor leagues. This year’s experimentation, across Triple A, is the most extensive yet.

In the beginning, what MLB hoped to find was merely some sort of system that was technologically capable of getting every call right. Now that it’s using the Hawk-eye technology also used in tennis, that system is within reach, if it’s not here already.

We should probably mention that according to Statcast, big-league umpires are already getting more than 94 percent of ball/strike calls right already. Not that that has deterred anyone from exploring whether it was possible to do better. Now, Hawk-eye has shown us that’s totally possible.

But those players, managers and coaches who have been living inside this little video-game lab experiment all year do not sound like they’ve achieved ball-strike nirvana.

So let’s hear their questions and complaints.
Is the strike zone the same from park to park?

Our first question comes from Guardians prospect/first baseman Kyle Manzardo (who was actually a Rays prospect when we spoke in July, at the Futures Game).

“I feel like the zone is a little different every place that I’ve gone,” said Manzardo. “… It could just be the way I’m seeing it that week, or whatever. But sometimes I’ll take a pitch that I think is off the plate and it’s called a ball in this place. Then I go back home, and I feel like that same pitch isn’t called anymore. It’s just little weird things like that. But I don’t know. I might just be making that up in my head.”

So is he making that up? If he is, he isn’t the only one. But people in the sport who have worked with Hawk-eye say that the technology is installed the same in every park, and it’s certified by Hawk-eye to be accurate to virtually flawless levels. So that sounds convincing.

Nevertheless, minor-league executives who have brought those same concerns to MLB have been told that none of them will be dismissed without a thorough check. Which is reassuring – but think about how important this is. If the same pitch in the same spot isn’t a strike in every park, every day, isn’t it fair to ask: Why are we even doing this?
Is the strike zone the same for tall guys as it is for short guys?

Here’s Tigers /Toledo Mud Hens infield/outfield prospect Justyn-Henry Malloy with our next question: How precise is ABS at computing an accurate strike zone for big dudes? (Hey, Aaron Judge: Pay attention!)

“So you take a Spencer Jones, who I played with at Vanderbilt,” Malloy said. “He’s 6-foot-7. But say he’s 6-foot-7, but in his stance, he’s crouched down, so he’s really like 6-foot-1. So what’s his strike zone? Does the machine, does ABS, know that? There’s no way, right?”

Turns out that answer is … right. At least in the current Triple-A version of Robo-ump Theater. All players were measured in spring training. Then hitters of each height were assigned an “average” strike zone. So does it account for crouching? People familiar with Hawk-eye say no — at the moment.

But if this system gets deployed in the big leagues, that’s expected to change. With lasers and wearable technology, the zone could be tailored to every size, shape and stance – and incorporate crouching. So theoretically, we shouldn’t be hearing these same questions in Texas that we’re hearing in Toledo.

Except here’s a secret you probably never knew: Aaron Judge and Jose Altuve don’t really have the same strike zone now!

Yes, really. There are ball/strike studies that tell us human umpires don’t adjust their zones to compensate for hitters who are extra short or extra huge. So Judge’s actual zone is smaller than it should be – and Altuve’s is larger.

Humans! They need more help than they let on.
Among the many questions remaining to be answered before the automated system comes to MLB: Will big-league umpires get fully on board? ( Omar Rawlings / Getty Images)
Whatever happened to the high strike?

Now let’s hear from a minor-league tourist named Joseph Votto. You may know him as “Joey.”

Normally, he hangs out in beautiful downtown Cincinnati. But he got 97 plate appearances earlier this season for the Triple-A Louisville Bats as he recovered from shoulder surgery. And being the strike-zone expert he is, he immediately caught onto a phenomenon mentioned by every Triple-A hitter and pitcher we spoke with.

“The strike zone there feels much smaller, especially on the top portion of the zone,” he said, on his recent appearance on the Starkville edition of The “Athletic Baseball Show.”

Votto said he often talks to himself as pitches head for home plate. If he thinks the pitch is a ball, he’ll say: No. When he thinks it’s a strike, he’ll say: Yes. But in Louisville, he discovered his normally precise yes/no system was all out of whack.

“So sometimes when I would take a pitch, I’d be like, ‘Yes,’ and it feels like it’s right down the middle,” he said. “And then it would be a ball. And then I would say to myself: Uh-oh, this is not good. This is going to be a handful for pitchers.”

The big question, then, is this: Was Votto imagining this different, lower strike zone? Nope! He was 100 percent correct – but here’s the most important part: MLB told everyone in Triple A, before it ever sent the robo-umps out into their world, that it was doing this on purpose.

The top of the zone is actually lower, by about two inches. And why? Because it’s part of a secondary experiment by the league – to see if lowering the top of the zone could help reduce the strikeout rate. Here’s how that’s worked out:

TRIPLE-A STRIKEOUT RATE
2022: 9.19 K/9 IP
2023: 9.02 K/9 IP

That rate is a tick lower (8.9 K/9 IP) in games played with ABS calling every pitch. But is that enough to justify redefining the strike zone when the robots arrive in the big leagues? Stay tuned. That’s one of many questions nobody appears ready to answer yet.

We’ve just raised three gigantic issues that revolve mostly around ABS technology. And no one denies that they all need to be addressed before any robo-umps show up in Yankee Stadium. But let’s say this again: People well versed in Hawk-eye seem remarkably confident the techno-issues are fairly easily solvable.

You know what’s not so easy? The feedback that suggests we all might be better off if state-of-the-art technology is not used to get every single call right. Does that seem like a weird thing to contemplate? It should. So let’s take a look at why that is.
It might bring back the 3 1/2 hour game

Who out there misses the 3-hour, 52-minute, 2-1 game? Anybody? Well, the good news is, the pitch clock has killed it. We’ve seen just five nine-inning games all season that lasted three and a half hours or longer. At this point last season, there had been 199!

But there’s real fear, in Triple A, that if MLB broke out the robo-umps on every pitch, it would take a regrettable toll on pace of game. Take it from the Blue Jays’ Triple A manager, Buffalo’s Casey Candaele:

“The issue is when you use the full ABS system. The games become like three and a half hours long, just because it’s so precise. … The walk rate has skyrocketed.”

So is he right? Well, he’s right about one thing: The Triple-A walk rate has skyrocketed.

TRIPLE-A WALK RATIO
2022: 4.07 BB/9 IP
2023: 4.87 BB/9 IP

But is he right about the part where full-time ABS is to blame for those walks – and for more marathons? Guess what? Not so clearcut.
Avg. time

2:42

2:43
Pitches/game

313.6

307.2
Called strike %

15.3%

15.4%
BB/9 IP

5.2

4.6

So there have been more walks when robo-umps run the game. But three-and-a-half-hour games? More pitches called balls? More pitches, period? That’s turned out to be more perception than reality.
All strikes should not be created equal

Who knew that robot umps would actually cause people to gain a greater appreciation for human umps? That might come as a shock to the Joe West Fan Club. But it’s happened.

When Hawk-eye technology arrived in tennis, it began with a challenge system. Soon, in most tournaments, it had replaced linespeople totally. Did that become a raging talk-show controversy? If it did, we missed it.

But if the same thing happened in baseball, as in Hawk-eye > home-plate umpires, do you honestly think no one would notice or care? We would all notice, and all care, because plate umps have an enormous presence in this sport. And you know who would notice most? Players!

Turns out they much prefer human umpires’ feel for the sport, the situation and the moment than any technological gizmo’s soul-less lack of feel for anything but what it’s programmed to do. Listen to Rangers pitching prospect Owen White, on pitches he has thrown that even he thinks shouldn’t be a strike.

“Like, backed up sliders, where the catcher sets up on the outer third (of the plate) and then he catches them on the inner third? I mean, there are just pitches that shouldn’t be rewarded or called strikes because of the (automated) zone,” he said. “To me, whenever you make the catcher look bad, those really shouldn’t be a guaranteed strike. But the ABS calls them strikes.”

Which is just another way of saying …
Those robo-umps need to read the room!

Are we sure that a land where every strike is a strike and every ball is a ball is truly a better place to live? You may walk away from watching Laz Diaz work his plate-ump magic and not understand that question. But not the citizens of Triple A. They have been to that land – and they’d rather live someplace else. Here’s Casey Candaele:

“With the ABS system, it’s either a strike or a ball. There’s no, like: ‘Oh, he’s been hitting the corners all day, so I’m giving him that ball that’s an inch off the plate.’ Not that (human) umpires give guys that pitch purposely. But that guy who could throw the ball where he wants it, he gets more pitches out of the zone. And I think guys just accept that.

“And then – I mean, I hate to say this happens – but when it’s a blowout game and it’s 12-1 and the ABS system is still calling every pitch, that’s tough. There’s no expanding the zone to get the game going.”

So we’ve learned something important. Do players want every called strike three to be a legit strike in the ninth inning of a 4-3 game? Of course. But are there many other times when they become bigger fans of the human umpiring element than the rulebook strike zone? Many! And because that view is so prevalent, they’ve given MLB something powerful to think about.
What do those robots have against catchers?

Catchers are awesome. Nobody cares more about every pitch of every game. Nobody works harder or puts a bigger stamp on any game than those guys who take 72 foul tips off their mask a week. We should love and appreciate that.

But you know who doesn’t? Those cold, impersonal robo-umps. They just want to call their computerized strikes and balls, no matter how beautifully catchers receive the ball. So not surprisingly, the humans are rebelling – and not just catching humans. Take it from Mets pitching prospect Mike Vasil.

“I think the beauty of a catcher being able to steal strikes – that adds value to the game,” he said. “That adds value to the roster. You know, you see so many defensive catchers who are so great because of their (framing) metrics for stealing strikes. You never want to lose that.”

But the reality here couldn’t be more cut and dried. If the sport goes to full-time ball/strike technology, framing will cease to have value. Period. Which means the league would be telling men who have devoted years to that part of their craft: Hey, thanks for your time – but now go find something else to be good at.

Does that seem likely? Not in a sport with a union as strong as this one. So yep, that’s one more thing to think about. And there’s also this …
Isn’t a challenge system just more fun?

Ohbytheway, have we mentioned that baseball is supposed to be an entertainment product? So let’s talk entertainment.

The league obviously cared deeply about that when it pushed for this year’s rule changes.

So now which version of robotized baseball would be more entertaining? Once again, everyone we asked voted for the challenge version.

There’s that whole, second-guessable, fan-energizing element of when to challenge. And for players and managers, you know what gets those endorphins flowing? Challenging – and being right!

Here’s our favorite challenge tale – a story of back-to-back challenges from Justyn-Henry Malloy. He thought he’d walked on a 3-and-1 pitch. No sir. A catcher challenge turned it into a strike. Then he got called out on a 3-2 pitch. But wait. He challenged that pitch – and turned strike three into ball four. Weeks later, he was still celebrating.

“So it was just a whirlwind of events. I thought I walked. Then I was like, ‘No, I didn’t walk.’ And then I thought I punched out – but then I actually ended up walking,” he explained. “That made my whole day. It was sick. It was awesome. I got to first base, and the first-base coach was laughing. He was like, ‘I bet you never thought you’d have an at-bat like that.’ And he was right. Never. Never ever.”

Fun. Let’s factor that in somewhere, OK?
So now what?

We know what you’re thinking. If it’s not going to be Opening Day next year, when should we expect the arrival of Mr. Robot in the big leagues? We would love to tell you. But if there’s someone in baseball who knows, we haven’t found that someone.

We hope we’ve given you a feel for why. But let’s sum it up this way:

This whole thing began as a science project – Operation Get the Calls Right. Somehow, it now feels more like a topic we should spend the semester kicking around in Philosophy 101.

Consider all the complicated questions baseball has to answer:

The goal used to be to get every pitch right. But now, if that’s not the plan – because literally nobody in baseball is in favor of that plan – then what the heck is the goal, anyway?

Should they just try to get “the important calls” right? Great. Then do that. But first, answer this: What’s “important” and what’s “not that important?” Is that call in the ninth inning definitely important – but that dubious strikeout looking in the second inning “not that important?”

So just let the teams define “important” with the challenge system. Perfect. Except how many challenges should a team get? Should there be any limit on when it can challenge? Do we care if a team runs out of challenges and then loses on a game-changing call we know was wrong?

If there’s a challenge system, can they still televise games with a “K zone” on the screen? C’mon, baseball teams would never cheat. They obviously would never watch games and use the “K zone” to let their teammates know when to challenge. But just in case they would, you might need some safeguards against that!

What happens if a run scores but then there’s a challenge? It’s not hard to envision all sorts of tricky stuff umpires would have to deal with if a ball/strike call got overturned on a challenge: Steals. Catchers firing throws into center field. Runner going … slows up after ball four … then a challenge determines it wasn’t ball four. The general rule in the minors is: Everyone goes back to where they started. But is that fair? Just asking.

Would there never be another ejection? “We used to get a lot more upset when we didn’t have a challenge system,” said Casey Candaele. “Now we don’t get upset anymore that an umpire misses a pitch. We just challenge it.” So how about that? There’s a kumbaya world waiting right over the horizon. But is that a more entertaining world? Aaron Boone might have some thoughts.

Will big-league umpires get on board the robot-ump bandwagon? We could easily spin a narrative here about how much better and more serene umpire life would be with any version of electronic ball-strike technology. No more angry, spitting, hat-hurling managers to deal with. A built-in “blame the robots” alibi for every complaint. And a labor deal, with the umpires’ union, that runs through 2024, in which big-league umps have agreed to cooperate in the process that could bring ABS to a major-league ballpark near you.

But does that mean major-league umpires are already fully on board? That would be a no. When we contacted their union, the governing board responded with a statement. It said, in part, that umpires are still “concerned about the unintended consequences of ABS and the integrity of the game we all love.” It also said the union was continuing to monitor “issues with the accuracy, calibration, and visual believability” of ABS.

So would “fully on board” describe where umpires stand? Doesn’t seem like it.

We could keep asking these questions. But they’re hard! They’re a lot harder than: How many seconds should the pitch clock be?

So if the powers that be need more time to answer those questions, who are we to rush them? And if those robots need to spend another summer in Louisville and Albuquerque, we hear they’re beautiful spots this time of year.

The idea, after all, is to get this right. And clearly, the sport is working on that.

What happens if it doesn’t get it right? Ha. Then we’ll just have to challenge it.

Fascinating article. Did not consider height and crouching. Would still think it is much more consistent than the current system.

Josh Bell brings all-business attitude to the Marlins and a big bat at the plate

BY GEORGE RICHARDS SPECIAL TO THE MIAMI HERALD UPDATED AUGUST 26, 2023 8:13 PM

It has been almost a month since Josh Bell’s season was turned on its head with a surprising deadline trade to the Miami Marlins.

Bell was in his first season with Cleveland and things were definitely not going well — so poorly, in fact, it seemed unlikely the Guardians would find a trade partner for the struggling slugger.

Only the Marlins had interest in signing Bell during the offseason and had an underperforming free agent of their own in Jean Segura.

Although Cleveland released Segura and paid him the remainder of his salary (approximately $12.5 million through 2024) to move on, Bell has turned things around in Miami.

In his first game with Miami on Aug. 2, he went 2-for-5 with a home run, a pair of RBI and four runs scored in a 9-8 12-inning win over the Phillies.

It was a big day for Bell compared to his previous struggles in Cleveland where he had gone 2-for-20 prior to the trade with a .239/.295/.395 slash in the month of July.

Bell came into Saturday at .288/.360/.588 in August with the Marlins.

“Obviously, this is a new team, a new opportunity and a new task at hand,” Bell said Saturday afternoon before the Marlins played host to the Nationals.

“I feel like in Cleveland that I was leading the league in lineouts. It was a tough go when it felt like every ball hit into the outfield, someone was tracking it down.”

[ That's true. I mentioned it at the time of the trade. From all the condensed games I saw, Bell was hitting the ball hard. Like he said, the balls just weren't dropping ]

When Bell reported to the Marlins the day after the trade, he was one of the first players in the clubhouse to meet with his new teammates and coaching staff.

That trait has not changed, manager Skip Schumaker says, and he has praised both Bell and fellow trade addition Jake Burger for their commitment to coming in early for batting practice and prep work.

“It is not eyewash when someone does that,” Schumaker said. “There are some guys who come in to ‘check a box,’ but he does it trying to ramp up and get ready for a game. It is all business when he gets in here. He is a good guy who checks in with his teammates, don’t get me wrong.

“But he is all business and that sets a tone when you have a guy come in who has been there and done it before. It rubs off on the other guys. We had some guys who already did it. But adding a guy with a veteran presence who is not a box-checker but works to get better every day can only help a clubhouse.’’

Even though Bell had a rough night at the plate in Friday’s 7-4 loss to the Nationals in the opening game of this three-game set, he has been pretty steady throughout August and has seen his numbers rise from what was a disappointing stint in Cleveland.

Coming into Saturday, Bell had hit seven home runs with 12 RBI for Miami in August and his OPS with the Marlins is .947 after being just .701 with the Guardians.

“Look at the underlying numbers [in Cleveland] and he was hitting the ball really hard,” Schumaker said. “He was just having some bad luck and that can happen. In the end, the cream always rises to the top and you are who you are. The numbers will come if you work hard and are healthy.’’

( YEP )

One person Bell was excited to see upon arriving in Miami was batting coach Brant Brown, someone he says he has “trusted from afar for a long time,’’ after meeting Brown during the 2019 All-Star Game.

Bell says he learned a lot from Brown during their short time together at that All-Star Game as members of the National League team in Cleveland, bringing back some of Brown’s advanced hitting metrics like heat maps and “go zones” to Pittsburgh where he was playing at the time.

“Brant and I have been working tirelessly and changed some of the things in the routine,” Bell said last week in San Diego.

“Seeing the results that night really fuels the fire and hopefully there is more to come. He has told me there is a lot more in me that he is trying to get out. I am trusting the process and seeing where it can take me.”

On Saturday, Bell credited working with Brown changed his launch angle “and on balls in the zone I was supposed to hit, now I am hammering, which definitely helps. It’s a perfect storm. Things are coming together.”

This past offseason, Schumaker and the Marlins lured Brown away from the Dodgers where he had spent the past five seasons — including three where he shared the hitting coach responsibilities with Robert Van Scoyoc.

“When you are identifying guys you want to acquire, you try to find out how coachable they are and what kind of character they have,” Schumaker said last week. “Josh Bell is a good player and there was not much to tweak … but he had a small history with Brant and loved his ideas on how to game plan and has bought right in.”

While Bell’s numbers at the plate have gone up during his brief time in Miami, team success has not really followed.

Miami rallied to win its first game with Bell and Burger in the lineup on Aug. 2 but came into Saturday just 8-14 this month.

The Marlins entered the day with losses in five of their past six and seven of nine and were 2 1/2 games out of a wild-card position.

Miami was tied with Milwaukee for a spot in the playoffs on Aug. 2.

With 32 games remaining after Saturday, the Marlins do have plenty of time to get things back on track.

Bell referenced a suddenly-tight AL West race where Seattle has won nine of 10 and the Rangers came into Saturday with eight consecutive losses as evidence that Miami is not done by any stretch.

"The overall outcome has kind of fallen short of what we had hoped, but we’re still in striking distance and we’re right where we want to be. I could not be happier,” Bell said.

“You look across the league and I don’t think Seattle was looking at an eight-game win streak. They were just taking it one game at a time.’‘

MARLINS LOSE TO NATIONALS WITH LATE COLLAPSE

The Marlins continued to struggle as they gave up two runs in the top of the ninth and fell to the visiting Nationals 3-2 on Saturday.

Closer David Robertson, acquired from the Mets at the trade deadline, came on in the top of the ninth holding a 2-1 lead following Jorge Soler’s 34th home run in the eighth.

( Jorge Soler! There's a guy I was hoping the Indians would've signed. Following him before and after he left Cuba. Good ballplayer )

Lane Thomas led off the inning with a triple but was thrown out at home on a beautiful play from second baseman Luis Arraez as he played up on the infield grass, made a diving stop on a grounder from Dominic Smith and fired a strike to catcher Jacob Stallings for the first out.

With two outs and a 3-2 count, Jake Alu grounded one through the middle of the infield to score Jacob Young to tie the score. Michael Chavis raced home from third on a passed ball from Stallings to give the Nationals a 3-2 lead.

Robertson (4-5) took the loss with his fourth blown save since joining Miami.

The Marlins led off their half of the ninth with a single from Bryan De La Cruz, but Jesus Sanchez grounded into a double play before Jon Berti recorded the final out.

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Most of this article is about other teams and how luck works BUT important stuff about Guardians - especially near the end.

Determining MLB’s luckiest teams of 2023 and what luck actually means in baseball ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA - AUGUST 23: Elly De La Cruz #44 of the Cincinnati Reds hits a three-run home run against the Los Angeles Angels in the fifth inning during game one of a doubleheader at Angel Stadium of Anaheim on August 23, 2023 in Anaheim, California. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
By Eno Sarris
Aug 29, 2023

“Luck” is a dirty word in baseball. Wielded often to downplay a team’s accomplishments or to wish away actual flaws, it’s the third rail of a good baseball conversation. But it’s still worth thinking about — how much a team has benefitted from events in the past that might be unsustainable says something about their true quality and how likely they are to continue being good (or bad!) going forward. Even the act of defining luck tells us a little bit about team construction and how today’s front offices think about year-to-year volatility in the teams they’ve put together.

One way to define luck is to think about the ball in play. Sometimes, a well-struck ball ends up in a glove, sometimes it gets grass. MLB Advanced Media takes the exit velocity, launch angle and, on certain types of batted balls, sprint speed to determine what each event should have produced (xwOBA), and if we look at what teams actually produced (wOBA), we can get our five luckiest teams on balls in play.
Rays

0.336

0.322

0.014
Reds

0.321

0.309

0.012
Diamondbacks

0.322

0.312

0.010
Red Sox

0.332

0.323

0.009
Nationals

0.313

0.306

0.007

Here’s something that’s not in xwOBA: spray angle, or if the ball was pulled or not. In certain parks and situations, that’s huge. Consider the Red Sox, listed here as one of the five luckiest teams on balls in play. They have a big green Monster in left field. They pepper it. Red Sox righties pull the ball more than all but two teams, and Red Sox lefties push the ball more than every team but one. Is that luck? Or is that knowing your home park and fitting your approach accordingly?

The Reds’ lefties pull the ball a ton, ostensibly going for that eight-foot wall 325 feet away down the line. The Nationals’ lefties, maybe because the wall is six feet shorter in left field than right field, push the ball more than two-thirds of the league. You play more games at home than anywhere else, and it’s going to affect your approach even if you don’t think about it consciously. Perhaps there’s a better way the Yankees, Royals, Tigers, Mets and Guardians can play their home parks, or fit their lineup to their park, as they were the five unluckiest teams when it comes to getting the most out of their batted balls.

It’s tempting to follow this train of thought with other measures of luck and to think that teams could strategize their way to good fortune, but it doesn’t always work that way. Here are the teams that have most outproduced their preseason projections.
Orioles

0.480

0.623

0.143
Reds

0.429

0.515

0.086
Braves

0.567

0.651

0.084
Dodgers

0.537

0.620

0.083
Rays

0.538

0.606

0.068

When it comes to the Braves, they’re probably just on this list because of the way projections work. They were projected to be the best team in baseball and are the best team in baseball by win percentage, but projections tend to push the edges back toward the middle. You’d never project a team to win 116 games, for example, because that’s only happened once. There’s not much to see here with them.

But when you look at the Orioles and Reds (and even the Rays) on this list you might think that those are young teams, relying on unproven players that were likely projected to be closer to league average just because of their lack of track record. And projections certainly do take a middle-of-the-road approach for prospects, as well, by factoring in players with similar minor-league track records and what they’ve done before.

Could you be better at picking the right young players and game the projections that way? Possibly. It’s certainly interesting that the Mets, with the oldest position player group in baseball, and the Yankees, with the fourth-oldest, have underperformed against their preseason projections. But the Guardians, Pirates, Angels, Tigers and Royals all surround Baltimore as the youngest lineups in baseball. None of those teams are doing much better than expected this year, and they’d probably tell you it’s pretty hard to “pick the right young guys” and that everyone’s trying to do that anyway.

Having a really good bunch of young players doesn’t quite fit a definition of luck, either, not an intuitive one.

A type of luck that people might be more familiar with is scoring luck. If you consistently score more than you allow, you should be a winning team. The Braves have scored a whopping 219 more runs than their opponents through Sunday. They won’t take the record from the 1884 St. Louis Maroons (plus-458), but they have an outside shot at the plus-300 the Mariners put up that year they won 116, which was itself the third-best run differential in the free agency era. The Braves this season are followed by the Rays (plus-174), Rangers (plus-172) and Dodgers (plus-152). Not a bad team in the bunch.

On the other hand, there are some good teams with iffy run differentials. The Marlins (minus-48), Reds (minus-22), Diamondbacks (minus-3) and Giants (minus-2) are the teams that have negative differentials and are above .500. With these numbers, it’s possible to create an expected win-loss percentage using runs scored and runs allowed — called the Pythagorean formula by Bill James and Clay Davenport and improved to Pythagenpat by David Smyth — and then compare the expected and actual records. Baseball-Reference has done this and called the difference between the two “Luck,” which is pretty on the nose. Here are your Luck leaders this year:
Orioles

81

74-56

7
Brewers

73

67-63

6
Marlins

66

60-71

6
Tigers

59

53-77

6
Diamondbacks

69

65-66

4
Reds

68

64-68

4

The Brewers being here is interesting because they have shown up here before. They have the best record in one-run games in baseball this year and a top-10 bullpen by ERA, and that seems to be part of the plan in Milwaukee. It’s really tempting to say that bullpen strength leads to wins in one-run games, but that’s not exactly what has happened this year (look at the Mariners with a 19-23 record in one-run games and the second-best bullpen in baseball as an example), and there’s no historical link between bullpen strength and one-run records in larger samples, either. As Dan Szymborski shows here, there’s no real connection between bullpen quality and one-run success (and that’s something he found within half-seasons too, so there’s no reason to believe that a team that has been successful in one-run games within a season will continue to do so above and beyond their natural true talent level).

One last type of luck concerns injuries. They’re terribly hard to project, and yet they happen and are devastating. The Angels bought at the deadline, and they are second in baseball in games missed due to injury and are now out of the playoff hunt. The Yankees are third in baseball with injury days missed, and that’s a part of the story of their season. Then again, the Dodgers are the other team with more than 1,500 days missed, and they’ve kept on grooving.

On the lucky side, you have the Orioles and Astros in the bottom three with fewer than 800 days missed and the Diamondbacks and Mariners in the bottom 10 with around 900 days missed. They’ve done OK and health has been part of the picture but the Guardians have once again been the healthiest team in ball and it hasn’t been enough to push their results past their true talent abilities.

We started this looking for the luckiest teams in baseball, and it looks like it’s some combination of the Orioles, Brewers and Reds, perhaps. Maybe their leadership saw some of this and that made them a little bit more conservative at the trade deadline, or maybe not. But it could also be that their past luck is not a huge deal for them and their fans because those wins are banked, and these are (in large part) good, young teams and good, young teams are going to sometimes end up on the right side of projections, stay healthier than you might expect, and win more games than you might expect.

But in fact, the flip side of this thing might be more interesting. The Padres had the worst record in one-run games this season. Relative to their runs scored and allowed, the Padres were the unluckiest team in baseball in terms of wins. Those 10 wins might really have changed the narrative for this season — and for the next. This offseason, they’ll be losing Josh Hader and also want to improve the bullpen, but that’s not the be-all and end-all: The Yankees have the best bullpen ERA in baseball.

And the Guardians and the Yankees may end up being the most interesting teams in this look at luck. The Yankees are old and got hurt a bunch, and it’s easy to blame those factors for their poor season despite strong projections. But the Guardians are young and athletic and have a pretty good bullpen — and still underproduced versus their projections, got unlucky on balls in play, and came up a couple of wins short of their Pythagorean record, too.

Do both of these teams (and the other unlucky teams) need full overhauls, or do they need to do the work of getting better, getting younger where it makes sense, improving the bullpen, and hoping some of these luck indicators flip to the other side next season? See? Discussing luck is not all bad. Sometimes, it can be hopeful.

Josh Bell’s Turnaround Started Before His Trade To Marlins

By Steve Adams | August 29, 2023 at 7:22pm CDT

The deadline swap that saw the Marlins and Guardians exchange Jean Segura and Josh Bell was generally viewed as an exchange of bad contracts. The Marlins were getting the more productive hitter of the two, though that wasn’t saying much. Bell hit .233/.318/.383 as a member of the Guardians after signing a two-year, $33MM deal in the offseason. Segura hit just .219/.277/.279 with Miami after signing his own two-year deal (worth $17MM) and was immediately released by Cleveland. The Guards used the trade to effectively purchase former first-round pick Kahlil Watson from Miami, who sold low on the former top prospect and took on some cash as a means of adding some life to the lineup.

Bell has absolutely exploded in South Florida, however. He turned in below-average offense during his time with Cleveland but has mashed at a .271/.351/.586 pace in a still-small sample of 97 Marlins plate appearances. The eight dingers he’s swatted with the Marlins is already nearly as many as the 11 he totaled in more than quadruple the plate appearances with the Guardians. It’s not as though Bell simply moved to a bandbox either; Miami’s loanDepot Park has been the fourth-worst for home runs over the past three seasons, per Statcast.

The switch-hitting Bell looked wholly unremarkable in more than three months with the Guardians but has not only been one of the National League’s best hitters since the trade — he’s had one of the best months of his entire career. So, what gives? This is perhaps an oversimplification, but the Marlins have succeeded where basically no other club has to date: Bell is finally hitting the ball in the air. A lot. The 45.2% fly-ball rate he’s posted this month is the first month in his entire career that he’s posted a fly-ball rate that high.

The change, however, began well before Bell was traded to Miami. Whether the Marlins keyed in on this or merely jumped at the opportunity to purge Segura’s contract isn’t clear, but the numbers are pretty easy to see. Bell entered the current season with a 50% ground-ball rate in his career and just a 31.9% fly-ball rate — a ridiculous number for a 6’4″, 261-pound first baseman. Bell has never had good speed, and the idea that half of his career batted balls have been beaten into the ground is counterintuitive. He’s far from the only should-be slugger with this type of problem — Eric Hosmer is also a member of this club, for instance — but Bell’s penchant for grounders has regularly undercut his well above-average bat-to-ball skills and what’s clearly above-average or even plus raw power. This is a player who bashed 37 home runs in 2019, after all. Juiced ball or not — that’s a big number.

A look at Bell’s month-to-month splits this year reveals some familiar trends. In April he put a ridiculous 62.3% of his batted balls on the ground, against a 28.6% fly-ball rate. In May, it was 51.6% and 26.6% (with a noted uptick in line drives). If you look in late May, Bell had a stretch of five games where he didn’t hit a single fly-ball. He hit three line drives, and the other 81.8% of his balls in play were grounders. Whether this was a wakeup call or the beginning of Bell trying to make a conscious adjustment, things began to change.

In June, Bell’s fly-ball rate jumped to 37%. In July, it climbed a notch higher, to 38.4%. It’s up to 45.2% in August, and Bell is absolutely mashing. Those might sound like arbitrary numbers, and to some extent they are. However, using that arbitrary 37% cutoff point (his June 2023 fly-ball rate), I scanned back through Bell’s monthly splits for his entire career. He’s only had a monthly fly-ball rate of 37% four times in his career … all coming in 2019, when he hit 37 home runs and posted his career-best .277/.367/.569 batting line.

The results weren’t necessarily there as Bell began elevating the ball more regularly. From May 28 (the first day after that stretch of five games with no fly balls), Bell hit .251/.309/.440. That’s only about seven percent better than league average, by measure of wRC+, but it’s a massive improvement over the .215/.327/.326 slash he produced while pounding an incredible (not in a good way) 59.7% of his batted balls into the ground. At the very least, Bell looked like a hitter on the upswing due to a tangible change in his approach. The Marlins might’ve hoped they were acquiring that somewhat above-average hitter, but Bell has been much, much more than that in Miami. He’s been 50% better than the league-average hitter since being traded.

Of course, it’s an open question whether Bell can sustain this pace. He had four months of fly-ball production in 2019 and then quickly reverted back to the grounder-happy plodder who has often looked on the cusp of stardom but never sustained his pace. It’s encouraging, however, that he’s reeled off three straight months of this fly-ball approach. Even in his career year in 2019, he still posted a 46% grounder rate from July through August. This year, in that same span, he’s at 39.7%. This current stretch is the least grounder-driven span of Bell’s career.

Bell spoke to Craig Mish and Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald about his surge at the plate in Miami, attributing plenty of the success to the manner in which hitting coach Brant Brown preps for games with hitters.

“We watch video together and decide there how the attack plan is going to go and I can work on that in batting practice and it tends to show up in the games,” said Bell, who called Brown’s prep work with Marlins hitters “advanced.” Bell also spoke favorably of loanDepot Park, noting that while the dimensions are pitcher-friendly, the consistency from playing in a stadium with a roof can be advantageous. “With the turf, and with the consistency of the dome, you’ve got the same lighting every inning, every at-bat, and it’s easy to get hits.”

Bell noted to the Herald that his focus has been simply on hitting line drives, but it seems those efforts have translated more into fly balls than the intended liners. His 12.9% line-drive rate with the Fish is actually lower than it was in Cleveland (19%) by a wide margin. Bell is simply elevating the ball at a strong, albeit not elite rate. His 45.2% fly rate since the trade ranks 35th of 173 hitters (80th percentile). But Bell is a big man with plenty of power; when he elevates the ball, good things happen.

Bell’s surge has been a boon for the Marlins and also creates a fascinating scenario to watch down the stretch. If he can continue putting the ball in the air close to this frequently and continue to produce at well above-average levels, the player option he once looked like a lock to exercise could become a borderline call — or, with a strong enough finish, a relatively easy one to decline. The upcoming free agent class is light on hitters, and Bell is flat out raking thanks to a noticeable change in his batted-ball profile. This version of Bell would fetch far more than $16.5MM in free agency, particularly since he can’t be saddled with a qualifying offer and thus won’t be tied to draft pick compensation.

If Bell does decline his player option, it’d wind up looking like a rather deft swap of contracts for the Marlins; at the time of the swap, Miami was effectively surrendering Watson and paying about $9.25MM ($3.25MM in ’23, $6MM in ’24) to upgrade from Segura to Bell. That sum would drop to just $3.25MM in added salary if Bell opts out — all of it coming in 2023 — and a hefty $10.5MM of savings beyond the current season. The Marlins would be off the hook entirely next year, while the Guards would remain on the hook for Segura’s $8.5MM salary and $2MM buyout on a $10MM club option for 2025. It’s doubtful even Marlins GM Kim Ng and her staff expected Bell to perform this well early on, but their ostensible bet on Bell’s change in approach is already a boost to the team’s playoff hopes and now has the possibility to provide substantial payroll benefit in the future.
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Inside MLB’s waiver whirlwind: ‘Nobody really knew or understood what was going on’
Aug 2, 2023; Cumberland, Georgia, USA; Los Angeles Angels starting pitcher Lucas Giolito (24) leaves the field after being removed fro the game against the Atlanta Braves during the fourth inning at Truist Park. Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports
By Zack Meisel and C. Trent Rosecrans
Sep 1, 2023

55
Save Article

There are no carts at San Francisco Golf Club. Golfers walk the 18 holes. They keep their phones stowed in their bag or their locker. And they try their damnedest to avoid the menacing sand traps. So when Matt Moore spotted a course attendant zipping down the fairway on a golf cart, he knew what it meant.

He needed to pause his round — he wound up shooting a 91, thanks to some generous gimmes from teammate Chad Wallach — and make a call to learn the identity of his new team.

For four former members of the Angels, this week has been part-whirlwind, part-circus. On Thursday, Moore, fellow reliever Reynaldo López and starter Lucas Giolito were claimed by the Cleveland Guardians. Outfielders Hunter Renfroe and Harrison Bader, the latter coming from the Yankees, were scooped up by the Cincinnati Reds.

The whirlwind period really began two days prior on Tuesday, when Moore finished shagging fly balls during batting practice and returned to the clubhouse, where Giolito and Renfroe were waiting for him. They asked if Moore saw the news that a quarter of the roster had been placed on waivers. At first, Moore was waiting for a punchline. Once they filled him in, he assumed they had fallen for a fake social media post.

That sparked a scavenger hunt for information about the waivers process. Could any team claim them? (Yes.) What was the likelihood they would be moved? (Pretty high.) Were they all headed to different teams? (No.) Would they be playoff-eligible? (Yes.) When would they know? (1 p.m. ET on Thursday.)

“I don’t know if anybody had really heard of it, honestly,” Renfroe said. “It’s one of those things where it’s not really talked about. It’s never really out in public as far as waivers stuff goes. Nobody really knew or understood what was going on.”

Neither did most of the baseball world. The waivers process has always been an archaic and difficult-to-navigate jumble of rules, most of which changed before the 2019 season. Adding to the confusion was that the Angels were doing something without precedent under the new system: an attempted salary dump timed ahead of Sept.1 so that the teams acquiring players would have them eligible for the playoffs.

Mike Moustakas, a veteran with 13 seasons of big-league experience, offered his Angels teammates some insight into the process, relaying that one team can claim multiple players.

“It was interesting to learn that side of the game,” López said Friday through Cleveland interpreter Agustín Rivero. “Obviously, we didn’t know much of it.”

The group met with Angels manager Phil Nevin and general manager Perry Minasian for an explanation.

“Perry kind of explained it a little bit better for us,” Renfroe said. “Nevin had no idea about it either. It was kind of a weird scenario.”

In August, when the Angels made a furious all-in push to acquire the requisite talent to make the playoffs for the first time in nine seasons, Angels owner Arte Moreno exceeded the $233 million luxury tax threshold. But when the team endured an 8-19 month, Moreno was no longer willing to incur the penalty.

Now, Giolito, one of the players the Angels acquired at the deadline, is in line to pitch in Anaheim next weekend. This time, however, it’ll be in a Guardians uniform as Cleveland makes an aptly timed West Coast swing. López said he’s looking forward to the four-game series partly so he can collect the rest of his belongings.

Waivers are not supposed to be public, but word leaked on Tuesday about every Angels player on waivers. For the next two days, every one of them stepped into the batter’s box and onto the pitching rubber knowing they were likely bound for another club in a matter of hours. Moore said he tossed and turned at night wondering what his future held.

“I just tried to go about my day like normal,” Moore said, “tried to be fun and lighthearted with everybody just to not make it seem like things are weird.”
Matt Moore. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea / USA TODAY)

“I had to play two games knowing that basically you’re probably going to be gone,” Renfroe said. “Tough scenario.”

The Angels flew to San Francisco from Philadelphia on Wednesday evening. They landed at about 10 p.m. PT and a group of 30 or so enjoyed a late dinner at Brazillian steakhouse Fogo de Chao. On Thursday morning, as Moore headed to the links, Renfroe sat at the team hotel and waited for his phone to ring. His bags were in the lobby. He just needed a destination.

Moore halted his round and called Nevin, who told him a pair of his Angels teammates would be joining him. Moore and López took a red-eye to Cleveland, where they landed Friday morning. Giolito was set to arrive Friday evening. Renfroe had a 2:30 p.m. flight out of San Francisco and got to his hotel in Cincinnati around 1 a.m. Roughly eight hours later, he was in the lineup for the Reds in the first game of a doubleheader against the Cubs, starting in right field and batting cleanup.

“It was a crazy week,” López said.

As soon as the Angels’ waiver flooding became common knowledge, the Guardians zeroed in on their three pitching targets. They weren’t alone. The Reds also put in claims on all three Angels pitchers, as well as the outfielders. It would all come down to who held priority in waivers, with the teams with the worst record getting first dibs.

Until a league representative called Guardians officials, following frenzied refreshing of the MLB system, they had no idea whether they would be awarded the claims on any or all three of the pitchers. They thought the Padres might claim someone — they didn’t — and given that the only cost for acquiring a player in this scenario was cash, they couldn’t rule out a surprise team ahead of them in the waiver order joining the action.

Guardians manager Terry Francona arrived at Progressive Field at 12:30 p.m. ET on Thursday.

“They said, ‘We’ll know at 1:00 who, if any (one), we got,’” Francona said. “By five after, they’re like, ‘We got ‘em all.’”

This system has been in place since 2019, when the league eliminated the August waiver trade period. Teams used to be able to place players on revocable waivers. They could negotiate a trade with the claiming team, or retain the player. One executive noted there used to be hundreds of players on waivers every day in August, since doing so required no commitment toward dealing that player.

How this unfolded, though — especially in such public fashion — is unprecedented.

Five weeks ago, the Angels shipped two of their top prospects to the White Sox for Giolito and López. Now, the Guardians will employ both players, plus Moore, for nearly the same length of time, and all it cost the club was about $3 million.

“I never in a million years thought it would be three guys,” Francona said.

[NPB NOTEBOOK] BayStars' Trevor Bauer Sidelined with a Hip Injury

Published 2 days ago on September 2, 2023

By Jim Armstrong

Veteran right-hander Trevor Bauer was having a fine season before leaving the mound on August 30 with discomfort in his right leg. His return is uncertain.

[ INN 107.2, H 71, R 36, ER 31, BB 37, SO 137, ERA 2.69 ]

Bauer threw two games in the same week, a rarity in NPB. On Tuesday, he won 9-3 on seven innings of three-run ball (which ended his shutout streak at 24 innings). Then on Sunday, he was victimized by a lack of run support, taking the loss to the Tigers.

[ The 24 shutout inning streak included a 10 inning shutout performance against Hiroshima. The streak started on July 27, continued on August 3, and ended on August 9.

In his last 3 August starts prior to the injury, Bauer went 8 innings 2 runs, 8 Innings 2 runs, and 8 innings 1 run ]

Trevor Bauer has hit a major roadblock in his first season in Japan.

The Yokohama DeNA BayStars removed Bauer from the active roster on Friday, September 1 after he was diagnosed with damage to the distal portion of his right iliopsoas muscle.

The injury occurred after Bauer fielded a ball in the third inning on Wednesday, August 30 in a game against the Hanshin Tigers. The 32-year-old right-hander left the game in the fourth inning after stating he had some discomfort near the hip joint of his right leg at Koshien Stadium."It seems like something that will take time," Yokohama manager Daisuke Miura told reporters on Thursday. "He went to the hospital yesterday. Whether or not he can return this season remains to be seen."

It's a big setback for both the BayStars (60-55-3 and in third place in the Central League) and Bauer. A return in the regular season seems highly unlikely. But the team is hoping the former MLB starter may be available for the postseason, assuming they make it.

A Solid Season for Trevor Bauer

Much to his credit, Bauer had settled down nicely after a bumpy start to his career in Japan and had won over the admiration of teammates and fans.

He made the Central League All-Star team after he was voted in as part of the league's "plus-one" fan vote.

The 2020 National League Cy Young award winner is 10-4 with 130 strikeouts and a 2.76 ERA in 19 games for DeNA this season.

Bauer arrived in Japan with plenty of baggage but also high expectations.

In May against the Hiroshima Carp, Bauer surrendered seven runs to lose his second straight decision and drop to 1-2.

After the 7-5 loss to the Carp, Bauer had given up 15 runs, 14 earned, over 15 innings in his first three starts for the BayStars.

That prompted Miura to tell reporters: "They are really hitting him well, it's not just about how hard you throw."

Shortly after those losses, the BayStars sent Bauer down to their Eastern League farm team. The move paid off and he came back with more determination to make the difficult transition to Japanese baseball.

On June 14, Bauer struck out 12 batters and pitched a complete game, allowing just three hits, as the BayStars beat the Hokkaido Nipponham Fighters 2-1 in an interleague game at Yokohama Stadium. It was one of his best performances this season.

He improved to 4-2 with that win and just seemed to get stronger and more confident as the season went on.

Off-Field Troubles for BaueR

In July of 2021, MLB placed Bauer on administrative leave while an investigation was opened into sexual assault allegations that had been made against him.

He received a record 324-game suspension from Major League Baseball in April of 2022.

In December of 2022, Bauer's suspension was reduced to 194 games, reinstating him immediately.

Other MLB teams could have signed Bauer, who has a career 83-69 record with a 3.79 ERA, but none did and the BayStars offered him a deal that was announced in March.

I think Bauer stories now belong in the international baseball folder

Nolan Jones went 3-for-5 and clubbed his 17th home run of the season as the Rockies fell to the Padres on Monday evening in San Diego.
The 25-year-old slugger gave the Rockies a 3-2 lead with a run-scoring single off of Michael Wacha in the third inning. He then crushed a 394-foot solo shot off of Nick Hernandez in the sixth, trimming their deficit to seven runs. He also singled in the ninth inning and scored on an RBI double by Elias Diaz. With his three-hit attack, Jones is now slashing a healthy .281/.366/.520 to go with the aforementioned 17 long balls, 54 RBI and 13 stolen bases in just 372 plate appearances.

those numbers are real. and they don't reflect a Coors Field advantage. except in one surprising way'

Home: 284/383/503 .886 OPS
Away: 279/349/535 .884 OPS

Advantage for Home field: 41 strikeouts 24 walks; away from Coors: 72 strikeouts 18 walks.

Will Brito match those numbers? Perhaps, he's a well regarded hitter and has shown power; and is far more hard to strikeout.
He's also an infielder of which we may have many but maybe will learn how to play LF.

To that I might suggest hitting at Coors simply boosted his confidence.

Remember Progressive Field is a pitcher park period.

Add that to the possible reasons why we seem to have more success breeding pitchers over hitters.