Even in baseball's earliest days, the goal of the game was the same as it is now. Hitters try to hit the ball as hard as they can, and pitchers try to prevent hitters from hitting the ball hard. It is a simple theorem that spans eras and is familiar to anyone who has swung and felt the immense satisfaction of a ball meeting a bat's sweet spot. In that moment, all is well with the world.
It is understandable that some fans of baseball are turned off by analytics -- by the complicating deluge of numbers, the brand names assigned to things that just were, the quantifying of things like that perfect swing. Yet people of all stripes, old and young, mathematically inclined and averse, longtime admirer of baseball and greenhorn, should pay heed. Because this wonderfully universal principle -- hit the ball hard, don't let it get hit hard -- is playing out in amazing fashion right now. There is a hitter who hits the ball harder than anyone. There is a pitcher who allows fewer hard-hit balls than anyone.
And that hitter and that pitcher are the same person.
The magic of Shohei Ohtani reveals itself anew seemingly every day, because when a man is 6-foot-4 and 210 pounds, when he strikes down upon balls with great vengeance and furious anger and prevents others from doing the same to him, the possibilities feel endless, the imagination almost an impediment. Because no one ever would have dreamed a modern player could hit and pitch at the same time, let alone do both at such an elite level.
Because there's a tendency for the Luddites to get caught up in the nomenclature of modern baseball rather than focus on the substance of what these buzzwords say, I'm not going to use any of the MLB-branded terms that illustrate what makes Ohtani so different. Let's start here instead: Balls hit on the so-called sweet spot tend to act a particular way: They move very fast. Ones that leave the bat traveling at least 98 mph and up in the air, in fact, are incredibly productive. That perfect contact happens on a little more than 1% of pitches, and over the past five years, those swings have yielded a .798 batting average and 2.744 slugging percentage.
Ohtani the hitter has 27 of those swings this season. Nobody in baseball has more. Hitters have mustered only three of them against Ohtani the pitcher this season. Nobody with at least 30 innings pitched has allowed fewer.
What Ohtani is doing for the woebegone Los Angeles Angels -- and what he did in May, his second consecutive month of highly effective dual-role play -- cannot be overstated. His bat work is unimpeachable. His pitching is impressive in traditional ways (2.72 ERA), advanced measures (the only starters with more strikeouts per nine than his 12.39: Jacob deGrom, Corbin Burnes, Freddy Peralta, Shane Bieber, Blake Snell, Carlos Rodon, Jose Quintana, Michael Kopech and Tyler Glasnow) and sweet-spot swings. He's not just low because of his relatively limited innings, either. The rate of those perfect swings against Ohtani is only 4%, the fourth best of 141 qualified pitchers.
"I don't think a man can pitch in his regular turn, and play every other game at some other position, and keep that pace year after year," a man once said. His name was Babe Ruth, and before Ohtani, he was the last person to try -- and succeed -- at playing both ways. Maybe he's right. Maybe all of this is a shooting star, an ephemeral marvel, here for us to enjoy in the moment because, as Socrates once said, "Beauty is a short-lived tyranny."
It's a good maxim by which to live and partake of baseball. Amazing things happen every day -- they happened all May, as you'll see in the rest of This Month in Baseball -- and nothing right now is more amazing than Shohei Ohtani.
Actually ...
Fernando Tatis Jr. is pretty close. To the point that it's starting to become not unreasonable to ask: Could the 22-year-old become the first 50-50 player in baseball history?
Since Tatis' return from the COVID-19 injured list, his numbers have been otherworldly. It marked his second lost chunk of time this season, limiting him to 38 of the Padres' 55 games played. In those games, though, Tatis has hit 16 home runs and stolen 12 bases. His per-game average this season: 0.421 home runs per game and 0.315 stolen bases.
Let's assume Tatis plays in 103 of the Padres' remaining 107 games -- give him a few days off for rest. With those averages over 141 games played, Tatis would hit 59 home runs and steal 44 bases. As easy as Tatis is making it look to hit home runs these days, you know if he's that close, he'll be flying on the basepaths every time he gets on, particularly if the Padres have locked up a playoff spot and can stand for him to get thrown out a few times.
As unreal as it seems to be talking about the 50-50 club when the last 40-40 player was Alfonso Soriano 15 years ago and only three others -- Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds and Jose Canseco -- have reached that threshold, that's what someone with the talent of Tatis does: He makes the impossible seem ... almost likely.
Speaking of Juniors
The best player in baseball this season, by FanGraphs' version of wins above replacement, is Toronto first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. He's atop Baseball Prospectus' leaderboard, too. The other major WAR monger, Baseball-Reference, crowns Milwaukee pitcher Brandon Woodruff and doesn't have Guerrero in its top 10. But it does have Guerrero leading the American League in offensive WAR.
And as enjoyable as it is to see someone with Guerrero's svelter-but-still-thick body type doing the splits at first base, it's not his defense or baserunning that brings us to the party. Vlad Jr.'s bat in 2021 looks like what scouts were raving about when he arrived with the Blue Jays in 2019. It's not as if Guerrero was bad his first two seasons in the big leagues, either. Both years his OPS was above average. This year it's above everyone.
It's easy to see why. Guerrero is hitting the ball hard with regularity -- second in baseball in 95-mph-plus batted balls, behind only Kansas City's Salvador Perez. And perhaps he's doing that more because he's being less like his dad.
Now, it's not a bad thing to be like Vladimir Guerrero, who is only a Hall of Famer. But what the elder Vladdy was famous for -- pummeling pitches no other hitter would dare swing at -- is not necessarily the forte of Vlad Jr. The most significant change in Guerrero's swing metrics this season -- beyond the rate of sweet-spot swings that has nearly doubled -- is that he's swinging at far fewer pitches outside the strike zone and making contact with them at far and away the lowest rate of his career.
As much as swinging and missing is a bad thing, in Guerrero's case it prevents him from the weak contact that pitches outside the zone tend to induce. Guerrero is so good at hitting the ball hard that the more judicious he has gotten, the more like an MVP he looks. His May numbers back that up. Here are his MLB ranks for last month among 154 qualified hitters entering Monday's games:
Batting average: .317 (20th)
On-base percentage: .395 (22nd)
Slugging percentage: .644 (7th)
Home runs: 9 (T-2nd)
RBIs: 21 (T-8th)
Now ... the bad
It is a truism of baseball that when somebody is off to a bad start, the wisest retort is: Get back to me at the end of May.
Well, it's the end of May. And Francisco Lindor is still a complete mess.
This is not to call Lindor a bust or to say that the 10-year, $341 million contract the New York Mets gave him on the eve of the season is a complete disaster. The deal is 3.3% complete. It comprises 60 months of play, and Lindor is done with two of those 60. But those two. Oh boy. Those two have been some kind of awful.
ESPN's Paul Hembekides looked at the first two months after a position player signed a contract for $150 million or more -- the threshold for a megadeal. The list runs 31 deep. Here is where Lindor stands in that group heading into Monday's game.
Batting average: .191 (31st)
Home runs: 4 (T24th)
RBIs: 11 (30th)
wRC+: 72 (30th)
WAR: 0.3 (29th)
So: Lindor has the worst batting average, his home run numbers are meh, he's ahead of only George Springer (who has spent all but four games on the injured list) in RBIs, his adjusted weighted runs created beats just Jason Heyward (whose deal was for about half of Lindor's), and his WAR is above only Albert Pujols and Springer.
On this list, there are plenty of success stories -- and plenty of bad deals, too. Those to whom Lindor compares the best are players with good bats and whose all-around game was their hallmark and perhaps made up for an above-average-but-not-elite offensive profile. Lindor's closest analogue might be Manny Machado. Their career numbers when they signed their deals:
Machado: .282/.335/.487, 175 HRs, 121 OPS+
Lindor: .285/.346/.488, 138 HRs, 117 OPS+
There certainly was precedent for a player of Lindor's offensive acumen to receive $300 million-plus. But his deal kicks in next year, when he's 28, compared with Machado signing at 26. And Machado's offense was ascendant in his walk year -- and reasonably good in his first campaign with the Padres -- whereas Lindor had posted career-worst numbers in all the triple-slash categories last season.
This, though? No. Never in Lindor's career has he posted a batting average below .200 over a 44-game stretch. Or a slugging percentage below .300. This is bad, and while it might be premature to label him a bust, Lindor is earning the boos he's receiving at home.
The best Mays since Willie
The Tampa Bay Rays: On May 1, they were 13-15 and in last place in the American League East. Today, they're 35-20 and own the best record in baseball. They have one player in the top 25 of AL position-player WAR leaders (infielder Joey Wendle) and one pitcher among the top 50 (starter Tyler Glasnow). If the All-Star team were chosen today, it's absolutely possible -- and probably likely -- that Glasnow would be the only one selected. And here they are because baseball teams can win with depth, and the Rays do depth better than anyone. How deep are they? While other contenders spend the next two months searching the trade market for upgrades, the Rays might simply look within. The best prospect in the minor leagues, shortstop Wander Franco, is big-league-ready at 20 years old and will arrive at some point when he's added to the 40-man roster. Infielder Vidal Brujan already is on the 40-man and will help, too. Want to know how good the Rays are? They traded their starting shortstop, Willy Adames, for two relief pitchers and sent the more talented of the two, Drew Rasmussen, to Triple-A. He'll be back and should be a big part of a team that wants to not just go to the World Series like last year but to win it.
Adolis Garcia, CF, Texas: El Bombi is a 28-year-old rookie who went from Cuba to Japan to the St. Louis Cardinals, who designated him for assignment and sent him to the Rangers for $100,000 in 2019. Texas DFA'd Garcia in February, too, but he went unclaimed. Today he leads MLB with 16 home runs, with 11 of them coming in May, and even better, he's playing among the best center fields in baseball. There's really no modern comparison for Garcia if he really is what he's been these first two months: a center fielder with elite defense and game-changing power. Carlos Beltran? Andruw Jones? Jim Edmonds? It's an incredible profile and another painful hit for St. Louis in the wake of Luke Voit and Randy Arozarena, though the Cardinals at least got Giovanny Gallegos in the Voit deal and Matthew Liberatore for Arozarena.
Marcus Semien, 2B, Toronto: Semien bet on himself with a one-year deal, and it looks as if it's going to pay off handsomely. He looks even better than the 2019 version of himself, and that season he finished third in AL MVP voting. His hard-hit profile is through the roof; he's embracing his pull side (54.9% of batted balls go that way, 10% higher than his career average); and in a lineup for mashers, he's got the second-best slugging percentage behind Vlad Jr.
Kevin Gausman, RHP, San Francisco: With apologies to Rich Hill, Brandon Woodruff, Max Fried, Trevor Bauer and Zack Wheeler, 30-year-old Gausman was the best pitcher in baseball during May and is positioning himself for a massive payday this winter. All the potential and promise that prompted his selection with the No. 4 pick in 2012 is showcasing itself now, as Gausman's fastball-splitter duet is making beautiful music and confounding hitters. His May numbers: 37 innings, 22 hits, 6 walks, 49 strikeouts, 1 home run, 0.73 ERA, 5-0 record. Special shoutout to Wheeler, who is more than living up to his $118 million deal with the Phillies and has turned into the ideal modern pitcher: big strikeouts, low walks, lots of ground balls and the third-hardest fastball among all starters.
The National League West: The Padres dominated all month, going 19-8. The Giants nearly kept pace with an 18-10 record. And the Dodgers, after some stumbles, were 16-11. And all of them actually underplayed their run differentials. The preseason hype surrounding the West was not just warranted; it actually undersold how good the top of the division really is. The best part: After a nearly two-month break, the Padres and Dodgers will play again, in their third series of the year, June 21-23 at Petco Park. If there is a must-see series in baseball today, that's it.
May superlatives
Best play: Javier Baez duping the Pirates into being the Pirates. It's the play that prompted a multi-octave jump by Tim Kurkjian during our full breakdown of the shenanigans on Baseball Tonight Extra.
Best defensive play: As great as Mike Tauchman's game-saving home run theft on Albert Pujols was, what Atlanta reliever Tyler Matzek did on May 9 was too unique not to reward. Not only did Matzek field a ground ball with his back to the batter's box but he proceeded to seamlessly transfer it from glove to hand and start a double play. The entire thing looks like sleight of hand.
Best yelling at a cloud: White Sox manager Tony La Russa single-handedly rekindled a debate almost everybody around baseball considered dead and buried by not only calling Yermin Mercedes "clueless" for swinging on a 3-0 pitch thrown by a backup catcher at 47 mph in a blowout game but then doubling down on it. Mercedes just shrugged his shoulders and said Yermin gonna Yermin, and his teammates backed him through social media, and the whole thing blew over eventually because it was incredibly stupid to begin with. And that, really, was the lesson that the White Sox should hope La Russa learned: Talking down to a player about an issue that was adjudicated during his decade away from managing is a waste of time. There's one way, and only one way, La Russa should be concerned about his White Sox playing: the winning way. Nothing shows more respect for the game than that.
Best supporting actor: Joe West, bless his heart, loves little more than to insert himself into the middle of things, and even if in this case it is technically an umpire's job to patrol uniforms for foreign substances, his confiscating the hat of Gallegos felt like a breach, seeing as there are gunk-stained hats in literally every game played every day and now, of all times, West saw fit to enforce the rule. At the same time, this was a harbinger. There will be a significant amount of discussion over the next year about the use of foreign substances and their effect on pitches. MLB presumably will try to crack down on them before the 2022 season. And the goo that has helped perpetuate the immense spins pitchers generate today could go by the wayside and theoretically allow for far more hittable pitches in a game that could use those.
Five minor leaguers you should know about
Hunter Greene, RHP, Cincinnati: Sitting at 100 mph, topping out a few ticks higher, with a devastating 91 mph slider, the No. 2 pick in the 2017 draft is back from Tommy John surgery, and multiple evaluators are saying the same thing: This is the best pitching prospect in all of baseball.
Francisco Alvarez, C, New York Mets: It didn't take long for Alvarez to convince the Mets he was too advanced for low-A, even at 19 years old. After 15 dominant games, he earned a promotion to high-A, where he's the youngest player at the entire level. Next to Adley Rutschman -- the No. 1 pick in 2019, who is destroying Double-A -- Alvarez might be the best catching prospect in the minor leagues.
Greg Jones, SS, Tampa Bay: Another Rays shortstop? Seriously? Jones is a tooled-up college player who could wind up at short or easily move to center field. What's most eye-catching is that in addition to his speed, he is exhibiting newfound power and impressive plate discipline for the Rays' high-A affiliate.
Jhonkensy Noel, 1B/3B, Cleveland: Sleeper alert. The 19-year-old hasn't played above Rookie ball but is absolutely crushing low-A pitching -- and not just with a .358 batting average. Noel's average exit velocity is 94.2 mph, which would rank fourth in MLB, and he has topped out at 114.1.
Grant Williams, 2B, Boston: Why does a guy whose average ball in play travels 81 mph and maxes out below 100 mph warrant a mention? Because Williams, a 25-year-old taken in the 10th round in 2018 out of Kennesaw State, has not struck out in 70 plate appearances this year. And in a minor league environment in which only seven of 880 qualified players have strikeout rates under 10%, a player at 0.0% is a beautiful, sparkling diamond.
Honorable mention: Jo Adell, OF, Los Angeles Angels; Cade Cavalli, RHP, Washington; Jackson Kowar, RHP, Kansas City; Gunnar Henderson, SS, Baltimore; Noelvi Marte, SS, Seattle; Grayson Rodriguez, RHP, Baltimore.
Five June stories worth watching
1. By the end of the month, 19 major league teams expect to play games in front of full-capacity crowds. Three more will expand to 100% in early July. This will be the closest to normal MLB has been since September 2019.
2. After trading Yu Darvish this winter, the Chicago Cubs are in the mix for NL Central contention. If they keep winning -- they were an NL-best 19-8 in May, riding an amazing bullpen performance to the top of the division -- it's going to be awfully difficult for them to sell, which would be awfully lucrative considering Kris Bryant's MVP-caliber season and Craig Kimbrel's resurgence.
3. Speaking of trades: Will anyone jump the market? There's typically a deal or two in June, but knowing that teams are going to be spending significant time on the draft into mid-July this year when it's typically in June, will they try to beat contenders to the punch and perhaps slightly overpay for cost certainty?
4. Speaking of the draft: Will anyone separate himself at the top? Right now, the Pittsburgh Pirates have plenty of choices. High school shortstop? Jordan Lawlar and Marcelo Mayer are options. College pitcher? Jack Leiter and Vanderbilt teammate Kumar Rocker fit the bill. Louisville catcher Henry Davis is an option, too. And because there are so many potential choices and no one has separated himself (yet), the Pirates could use that leverage for an under-slot deal and take the money they save and put it toward an over-slot type later.
5. The Yankees looked miserable over the weekend, getting swept by Detroit. The most consistent thing about them has been their inconsistency. In a division as strong as the AL East, that can be the sort of thing that dooms a season. This week, with series against Tampa Bay and Boston, will offer some more insight into who these Yankees really are.
246 words about something important
It's long past time that major league teams provide housing for minor leaguers. The Houston Astros started doing it this season. The Baltimore Orioles are doing the same for players in Double-A and below. It's asinine that they don't already, considering how important sleep is and how players for years have crammed into tiny apartments to save money because minor league baseball pays demeaning wages.
Over the weekend, Advocates for Minor Leaguers -- a nonprofit started by Garrett Broshuis, a former pitcher and current lawyer who has filed a class-action lawsuit against MLB for unlawful wages -- said some players with the Class A Myrtle Beach Pelicans had nowhere to sleep because the hotel at which they were staying was sold out and the team wasn't providing housing. Two hours later, the Advocates' Twitter account said the team, a Cubs affiliate, had reversed course.
It's 2021. Housing insecurity, for whatever reason, should not be a part of baseball. And understand: It's not just this one team. Around the country, players -- who are hesitant to comment because they don't want to anger their organization -- are put into positions where their salaries simply do not cover the cost of a reasonable apartment. Not when there's a paucity of short-term leases available.
This doesn't even qualify as a problem, because problems require difficult solutions. There is nothing difficult about this. House every minor leaguer. Treat these players as they deserve to be treated. Do the right thing.