The San Diego Padres don't get a lot of virtual ink spilled about them in national outlets, a neglect they've earned through prolonged losing. The Padres are putting the finishing touches on their eighth consecutive losing season. In none of those campaigns will San Diego have finished within 15 games of first place in the National League West.
That's not to be too harsh on where the Padres are as an organization today. I think they are on the right track in terms of accumulating talent, and they have demonstrated a willingness to invest in established players to surround that talent when it matures. Those investments (talking here about Eric Hosmer and Wil Myers) don't look great through the prism of this season, but it's early in terms of the commitments to both players. Perhaps as the talent around them rises, their performance will rebound to hoped-for levels as well.
Anyway, if you're part of the general unawareness about what has transpired in San Diego, you might have missed the amazing rookie season of one Franmil Reyes. Reyes, who turned 23 in July, is an outfielder with a body more fitting for an NFL tight end than a baseball player. He's listed at 6-foot-5, 275 pounds, and he's got the demonstrated power at the plate that you'd expect from someone of those dimensions. According to Statcast data, only 15 qualifiers have a higher average exit velocity than Reyes' 92.3 mph.
He's put that elite exit velo to good use, at times. In less than a half-season's playing time, Reyes has hit 16 home runs. Only seven Padres rookies have ever hit more, and only one of those -- Benito Santiago in 1987 -- was in his age-22 season or younger.
Fine. That's a nice anecdote. But none of this is why I've suddenly taken an interest in Reyes. It's not the size, the age, the rockets off the bat -- nor the home run total. It's because despite all of those things, Reyes has driven in only 27 runs.
This strikes me as exceedingly hard to do. I remember growing up, looking at the averages they'd post in the daily paper, and thinking that any RBI count that wasn't at least three times the home run count did not look right. But fewer than two RBIs per home run for a player with 16 homers? How can this be?
The obvious and correct answer is solo home runs. Reyes has hit 12 of his 16 homers with no one on base, accounting for nearly half his RBIs. Reyes also has three two-run homers and a three-run shot. That's another nine RBIs. That means in the 228 plate appearances in which Reyes has not homered, he's driven in a total of six runs.
If the season ended today, Reyes would own the record for fewest RBIs for a player with 16 or more homers, breaking the "record" of 36 set by Adolfo Phillips in 1966. At this point, whatever homer and RBI count Reyes ends up with will likely be some kind of record in that vein. Everyone who has ever hit at least 16 homers in a season finished with a ratio of at least 1.7 RBIs for each home run. Reyes would be the first to dip below that threshold.
If you raise the threshold to 2 RBIs for every home run, and lower the homer threshold to 10, you end up with 36 occurrences in modern baseball history, according to Baseball-Reference.com. That's 36 instances when a player has cracked double digits in home runs but ended up with an RBI total less than twice the homer total. Twenty-six of those occurrences have come since the year 2000. And 11 of them have come within the past five years.
There's been a lot written about the convergence of hit and strikeout totals at the league level, for good reason. When we had more strikeouts than hits in April, it was the first month in history in which that had happened. Hits made a mild comeback after that, but it still looks like we're going to finish the season with more strikeouts than hits. Through Wednesday's play, strikeouts (38,549) had outnumbered hits (38,453) by nearly 100.
That historical inversion manifests itself throughout the statistical record. The big league batting average (.248) is the lowest of the designated hitter era. The average on balls in play (.295) is down five points over the past two seasons. The rate of strikeouts (8.45 per team per game) will break the record for the 11th straight season.
Home runs are doing fine, even though they're down from last season. With 1.15 dingers per team per game, balls are flying out at the fourth-highest rate in history. Yet the average of runs per team per game (4.44) is far from historical. Since 1901, there have been 56 seasons in which more runs have been scored per game.
This is the landscape that made a season like Reyes' not only possible, but inevitable. Bill James first noted this trend years ago in the "Historical Baseball Abstract," but it has continued on a trajectory that even he could not have foreseen. Homers are at an all-time high, or very near it, but no one is on base when all of those home runs are being hit.
At the big league level, the ratio of RBIs to homers this season is 3.7, which is actually slightly improved from last season's 3.5. In 2016, the ratio was also 3.7, though it was fractionally higher than this season. Every other season in big league history has had a ratio of 4 or higher.
Solo homers have accounted for 59.6 percent of all homers this season, the third-highest rate since 1925, which is as far back as the Baseball-Reference.com data goes. Tops on the list was 2013 (60.3 percent), and No. 2 is 1968, the year of the pitcher, at 59.8 percent. Nos. 4 and 5 on that list were 2017 and 2016, respectively.
For all of the focus on shifting, I have a hard time assigning these issues entirely to that trend. To be sure, shifts have depressed the averages on balls in play to an extent, which in turn tamps down overall batting average, which in turn takes a chunk out of the collective on-base percentage. But this effect works in tandem with the strikeouts to lead us into this era of solo home runs, and it's the strikeouts that have been rising much more persistently.
It doesn't have to be this way, and it seems to me that teams can push back against these trends by going back to the original, and mistaken, takeaway many people had from the seminal book "Moneyball," which was that on-base percentage is everything.
That time was not really about on-base percentage, though many at the time thought it was. It was about exploiting market inefficiencies, and Oakland discovered back then that on-base ability was an overlooked trait in the marketplace. I think we mostly understand that now. However, with where we're at in 2018, I wonder if we've circled back to the beginning.
Maybe, once again, on-base percentage has become the new market inefficiency, and the rash of solo homers is a symptom of that. Or, more troubling, on-base percentage hasn't been overlooked, but is, in fact, exceedingly hard to find. Either way, this is the dilemma that today's general managers face.
The top offense in baseball this season belongs to the Boston Red Sox. Boston leads the majors in runs, batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage. That's a pretty good combination. The Red Sox lead in doubles, are second in stolen bases and are fourth in BABIP. The team batting average (.267) is historically unimpressive. It might lead the majors, but there have been many seasons in which the league batting average was at least that high. Still, the Red Sox feature an attack that wouldn't look out of place in, say, 1978.
The Red Sox offense has been anchored by MVP-level seasons from Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez, along with All-Star-level seasons from Andrew Benintendi and Xander Bogaerts. All four rank in the top 16 in the American League by on-base percentage, and in the top 17 in batting average. (Betts and Martinez rank 1-2 in average.) However, none of the other Red Sox regulars rate as better than league average in on-base percentage.
In other words, four dynamic (by 2018 standards) hitters have been enough in this landscape to field a dynamic offense. Still, Boston is part of a lesson that other teams can take from the premier offenses of the past couple of years -- the attacks of the Red Sox, Cubs and Astros. In an environment in which everybody can hit the ball out of the park and everybody strikes out, the differentiating players are the ones who contribute more than those things. That's what Boston, Chicago and Houston all have in greater numbers than other teams.
My biggest concern about all of this is one of supply. That is, maybe the Franmil Reyes-type player is more typical of what the minors are producing than atypical. The scouting focus has turned to bat speed and launch angle, and the contact guys are weeded out. I don't know for sure that this has happened, it's just what I fear based on the kinds of players who seem to be arriving in the majors.
Well, if I'm a team looking to exploit a market inefficiency, that's my map. I'm looking for guys with bat-to-ball skills and on-base ability, and I'm focusing their development along those lines. Not that I'm surrendering the power game, but what I want is an offense that, when homers are hit, there are guys on base. I want consistency and complementary skill sets, which was the goal the Brewers had this offseason when they added Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain. I want those multiskilled players in the draft and in the international pool, and I want them in free agency. I want them, really, more than the pedestrian home-run hitters, who are already arriving in the majors by the horde.
I don't know that the current player population could yield this, but an offense similar to the great offenses of the 1930s would be my ideal. You have two or three primary power threats and a bunch of guys who defend, rack up base hits and get on base. During the highest-scoring seasons in big league history, only around 40 percent of homers were solo shots.
There are guys around, even in the 2018 majors, who can help build that style of offense. Guys like Nick Markakis, Whit Merrifield, Ben Zobrist, Jean Segura and Michael Brantley. Tampa Bay has a few: Joey Wendle, Matt Duffy, Mallex Smith and Daniel Robertson. The Angels' Andrelton Simmons is batting .297/.341/.422 and has struck out just 38 times in 570 plate appearances.
When players of that ilk hit free agency, go after them. This, it seems to me, is the best way to combat these offensive trends. Value skill sets that counteract the trends toward all-or-nothing. I know the armies of hard-throwing relievers descending on the majors play into this, but that's a different conversation. There are still guys who can get wood on the ball, even in this context, who have a full arsenal in their offensive tool bags. Those traits still exist. It can be done.
The question is: Are there enough of those guys? Right now, there probably aren't. So I go after them where they exist and then set out to make more. Somehow or another, the all-or-nothing game has become the path by which young players seek to gain their riches. Change that paradigm, and we might see some of these trends ebb without some kind of extreme rules intervention.
What the numbers say
Rays onto something
The post-trade-deadline showing of the Tampa Bay Rays has been one of the great stories of the 2018 season. Since last season, the Rays have weeded out most of the veterans on their roster, adding younger players with controllable years remaining and opening up spots for organizational products. You might not have heard of these guys, but they put on a show.
Entering their game Thursday, the Rays had won 23 of their previous 28 games. They still trailed Oakland by 5½ games in the AL wild-card chase, and time is running out on the season. The odds for the Rays to sneak into the playoffs are very long -- only 2.7 percent in my latest run of simulations. If Tampa Bay keeps winning at its recent rate, which would give the Rays nine more wins on the season, they'd finish with 94 victories, playoff appearance or not. That would be the second-most wins by a team that missed the postseason during the wild-card era, and the most since the two-wild-card format was adopted in 2012.
The Rays' innovative "opener" strategy has garnered most of the headlines generated by one of baseball's most anonymous teams. That strategy was essentially born May 19, when Sergio Romo began a road game against the Angels, then did it again the next day. Let's look at some numbers from the Rays' staff since that time.
OVERALL ERA
Season: 3.59 (fourth in MLB)
Before 5/19: 4.39 (22nd)
Since 5/19: 3.26 (second)
STARTERS' ERA
Season: 3.58 (sixth)
Before 5/19: 4.30 (16th)
Since 5/19: 3.15 (second)
RELIEVERS' ERA
Season: 3.61 (10th)
Before 5/19: 4.57 (26th)
Since 5/19: 3.34 (fifth)
Clearly, the Rays' staff made a massive improvement that at the very least coincided with the birth of the opener scheme. Still, when you look at the dual improvement by pitchers used in both starter (traditional and opener) and relief roles, the simple fact is that the pitchers have just been a lot better. Maybe the biggest benefit of the strategy isn't so much about how you're approaching the first time through the order as it is simply giving innings to better pitchers.
As for that first time through the order:
FIRST PA OPS ALLOWED
Season: .634 (second)
Before 5/19: .690 (12th)
Since 5/19: .613 (first)
So that's worked out. That .613 OPS allowed since May 19 on first plate appearances more or less laps the field. Second during that time frame is Houston at .634.
Does that mean the opener is going to become the dominant model for pitching staffs going forward? Egad, I hope not. But I also think it's way, way too soon to think anything like that might happen. The biggest example of why I feel this way is right there on that Tampa Bay pitching staff.
RAYS ERA LEADERS SINCE 5/19
Blake Snell, 1.39 in 110 IP
Vidal Nuno, 1.45 in 31 IP
Wilmer Font, 1.67 in 27 IP
Jose Alvarado, 1.67 in 43 IP
Ryne Stanek, 2.50 in 57 IP
Sergio Romo, 2.72 in 46 IP
If you take Snell out of the equation, the Rays' ERA since May 19 is 3.46, which would still rank third in the majors. But when you've got a starter of Snell's ability, the opener is unnecessary, even foolhardy.
RAYS, OPS ALLOWED, FIRST PA
Blake Snell, .486
Vidal Nuno, .490
Chih-Wei Hu, .493
Jose Alvarado, .493
Diego Castillo, .513
Wilmer Font, .550
I've suggested this before, but the opener design isn't going to replace the traditional models of pitching-staff configurations. But it's also unlikely to go anywhere. If teams can replace end-of-the-rotation talents with higher-quality relief arms, and they have the numbers to do it, the logic is strong. The Rays have those reliever numbers this season, and they've gotten the most they could from those guys.
Since you asked
Awards Index update
Since I rolled out my Awards Index, it's been fun to watch this year's close races fluctuate with each night's action. I'm kind of addicted to it. With just more than a week to go in the regular season, I'm going to list an update here, without much in the way of commentary. That will come next Friday, when I will present the numbers once again and offer my would-be ballot for each award. Spoiler alert: They will largely follow the Index ratings, but there will be deviations.
NL MVP
Max Scherzer, Nationals (4.23 Awards Index)
Paul Goldschmidt, Diamondbacks (4.19)
Jacob deGrom, Mets (4.10)
Christian Yelich, Brewers (4.09)
Aaron Nola, Phillies (3.86)
Freddie Freeman, Braves (3.46)
Javier Baez, Cubs (3.34)
Lorenzo Cain, Brewers (3.29)
Matt Carpenter, Cardinals (3.18)
Kyle Freeland, Rockies (3.04)
Previously, I've presented the MVP boards with the pitchers broken out separately. But I've seen enough chatter about deGrom being in the running that I decided to merge the hitters and pitchers. The thing about deGrom is that he's opened up a big enough lead in Fangraphs WAR that he now has more than a 2-WAR advantage over Yelich, who is the top position player. Some see that as enough of a gap to go with deGrom as the highly nontraditional MVP candidate. However, when you look at how close the Index sees the race, it's still a muddle. Stay tuned.
NL CY YOUNG
Max Scherzer, Nationals (4.23)
Jacob deGrom, Mets (4.10)
Aaron Nola, Phillies (3.86)
Kyle Freeland, Rockies (3.04)
Patrick Corbin, Diamondbacks (2.95)
The Index still sees a three-pitcher race. Is it too late for Nola to change some minds if he has a big finish and the Phillies make a miracle run to the playoffs? From a buzz standpoint, despite these figures, it seems clear that deGrom has emerged as a heavy favorite in this category.
AL MVP
Mookie Betts, Red Sox (5.28)
Alex Bregman, Astros (5.00)
Mike Trout, Angels (4.84)
Jose Ramirez, Indians (4.30)
J.D. Martinez, Red Sox (3.83)
Francisco Lindor, Indians (3.73)
Matt Chapman, Athletics (3.48)
Chris Sale, Red Sox (3.42)
Mitch Haniger, Mariners (3.35)
Blake Treinen, Athletics (3.16)
The Index has never wavered on Betts, though Trout has made up a lot of ground in a hurry. Bregman was threatening but is currently mired in a 1-for-17 stretch.
AL CY YOUNG
Chris Sale, Red Sox (3.42)
Blake Treinen, Athletics (3.16)
Justin Verlander, Astros (3.13)
Trevor Bauer, Indians (2.97)
Blake Snell, Rays (2.88)
Statcast guru Tom Tango pointed this out, and it's amazing: Sale has a decent chance to win the Cy Young as a starting pitcher who doesn't qualify for the ERA title. What that tells me: Given the changes in what starters are asked to do, the minimum for that title needs to be lowered.
NL ROOKIE OF THE YEAR
Ronald Acuna, Braves (2.21)
Juan Soto, Nationals (1.93)
Harrison Bader, Cardinals (1.77)
Brian Anderson, Marlins (1.74)
Walker Buehler, Dodgers (1.69)
Acuna seems to have the edge, but there aren't many seasons where Soto would not be a league's top rookie.
AL ROOKIE OF THE YEAR
Shohei Ohtani, Angels (2.17)
Gleyber Torres, Yankees (1.73)
Joey Wendle, Rays (1.60)
Miguel Andujar, Yankees (1.35)
Brad Keller, Royals (1.13)
To me, this has become clear-cut.
Coming right up
Series of the week
We're in the stretch run, and while there are a few series remaining that could change the clarifying picture of the pennant races, there is one series in particular I'd like to highlight. From Monday to Wednesday, the Milwaukee Brewers will play a three-game series against the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium.
The Brewers have emerged as a heavy favorite to host the NL wild-card game, though they are far from out of the NL Central race. But with the Cardinals fighting to stave off the Colorado Rockies for the last playoff spot, and St. Louis still within three games of Milwaukee in the Central as of Friday, this series, more than any other, carries with it the biggest playoff implications of the week.
If the Brewers can maintain their standing in St. Louis, they'll turn into Cardinals fans. Whereas Milwaukee will be finishing the season at home against the lowly Detroit Tigers, the Redbirds will be paying a season-ending visit to Wrigley Field to face the Cubs. If Milwaukee is going to avoid that coin-flip game, it will need St. Louis' help to do it.
These are the highest-stakes games between the Cardinals and Brewers since they squared off in the 2011 National League Championship Series.