MLB: Early Season Trends We Do and Don't Want to See Continue
Ray Carlin-USA TODAY Sports
We'll begin with the caveat that is necessary for every article this early in the season: Yes, it is only a week into the 2017 MLB season. Yes, these are all overreactions. Yes, this article may age worse than Mickey Rourke.
That's half the fun, though. Fans tend to pay more attention to the first week of the MLB season than any other non-postseason time of the year. There's a reason we remember the name Chris Shelton: His magical start to the 2006 season caught all of our attention. If that same streak had happened in the dog days of August it might have gone relatively unnoticed.
It's human nature to engage any sort of entertainment more thoroughly after we have missed it for five months than when we have been staring at it each and every day for twenty weeks. It's also a lot easier to create narratives when literally all we have is a seven-day sample, instead of randomly pulling a seven-day sample out of thin air in the middle of June.
Call to the Pen's Anthony Sosa looked the other day at early-season trends he is either buying or selling. It was a good article, and one I suggest you read. This article is a bit different. Instead of determining whether or not a certain trend is going to stick around, we'll be determining whether it would be fun if that trend stuck around. With half of these trends (if not more) are likely to dissipate by the end of April even, we might as well celebrate the storylines we love and denigrate the ones we're already sick of. On to the slides.
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Good: Cincinnati Reds' young pitchers succeeding
The good people of Cincinnati haven't had much joy in the field of baseball over the past few seasons. After hoisting a contending team to the top of the NL Central in 2012, it's been a rapid decline, as their win totals dropped from 97 to 90 to 79 to 64 from 2012-2015 before a similarly paltry 68-win campaign in 2016.
The last two seasons have basically consisted of: Joey Votto is fun, but we're going to sell any player of value that surrounds him on this team.
Well all that selling is starting to pay off at the major league level, and the Reds are 3-2 with an better than average ERA (3.68) in the first week. The most notable performance from the Reds pitching staff has come from Brandon Finnegan, the 23-year-old ace of the staff (sorry Scott Feldman), who went seven innings of one-hit, one-walk, nine-strikeout ball against the Phillies in the second game of the season. Finnegan's gem was the best pitcher game score of the season so far and a tantalizing look at what the lefty is capable of.
The next best start came from Amir Garrett, a consensus top-80 prospect before the season who was able to make the MLB roster out of spring training, and thanks to an auspicious debut, looks like he's here to stay for the time being. Garrett went six shutout innings, allowing just two hits and two walks while striking out four in the Reds 1-0 win over the Cardinals on Friday.
It isn't just the two starters, though. Raisel Iglesias has picked up right where he left off, dominating in the bullpen and giving Reds skipper Bryan Price the flexibility to handle late innings however he wants. Iglesias has thrown four shutout innings so far this season, with six strikeouts compared to just one hit. Michael Lorenzen has been another awesome story, as he has become a bit of a reverse-Christian Bethancourt. Lorenzen is a lights-out reliever by day (4 IP, 0 R, 5 K in 2017), but a pinch-hit home run specialist by night. He already went yard once this season, and if it weren't for Madison Bumgarner, he'd be the pitcher other pitchers fear most. Plus, he's got an awesome back story.
For a season in which there was supposed to be Votto and a whole lot of nothing in Cincinnati, the first week has been pretty fun.
Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
Bad: Byron Buxton as lost as ever at the plate
As a low-key Twins fan, this one is especially painful to watch. Despite the strong start in Minnesota to begin the season, Twins fans still have reason to be in woe-is-me mode (the default setting for Twins fans). Byron Buxton, the team's prized prospect and former number one overall pick, is slashing just .091/.130/.136 to start the season, with a swinging bunt off Chris Young being his only hit before a double on Saturday.
This may be more than just a fluke five-game sample size to start the season, too. Buxton has struck out 13 times in those first five games, an outrageous K rate of 56.5 percent. In fact, Buxton has consistently seen his K rate go up each stint in the big leagues, a troubling sign for a young player who should begin adjusting to MLB pitching instead of the other way around. Pitchers are beginning to realize that he simply cannot lay off the low-and-away slider, and his 46 percent swing rate on pitches outside of the zone is in the bottom ten around baseball this young season.
There's obviously still plenty of time to go in 2017, and Buxton should be given plenty of chances this season given the fact that his glove still makes him valueable even when he can't hit worth a lick. That being said, even the best fielders of all time can't hold on to MLB roster spots if they can't reach the Mendoza line.
As noted, Buxton did get his first extra base hit of the season in his most recent game, and he does have that beastly September, 2016 to point to in regards to what he can do if he ever figures things out (or more cynically: if he ever gets to face the bloated rosters of September again…), but it would be great to see some real progress by the end of April.
Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports
Good: Nomar Mazara
The "good" written above is meant in the sense that Nomar Mazara has been a "good" trend to the early season, but it could just as well read that Mazara is just plain good. The 21-year-old showed flashes last year in his rookie season (.266/.320/.419), but he was still a slightly below-average hitter, per wRC+ (94). This year Mazara has been, well, very above-average. Given his wRC+ of 296, that's probably the understatement of the year. In five games, Mazara has two home runs, five runs, and nine – count em, nine – RBI. That aforementioned wRC+ is the highest of any hitter who has played five games already, and he's already been worth half a win, according to the Fangraphs model of WAR.
Mazara is already the owner of one of the coolest nicknames in baseball right now ("The Big Chill"), and there are not a lot of players more fun to root for in today's game than the 6'4" smooth-swinging lefty. He is the modern baseball equivalent of Teddy Roosevelt. He talks small, but carries a big stick. In 2017, that big stick has clearly been doing some big work, too. Here's a little fun with small sample sizes. In his 21 plate appearances this season, Mazara has just a 5.9 percent soft hit contact rate compared to a 52.9 percent hard hit contact rate. The dude is just obliterating the ball right now, and the scary part is, we don't know what he's fully capable of just yet. He's been able to drink legally for less than a full year, and he still hasn't even reached 600 career plate appearances.
We may well be witnessing the birth of another one of MLB's burgeoning class of hyper-talented, tell-your-grandkid-you-saw-them-play youngsters who are seemingly taking over the league. What a time to be alive.
Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports
Bad: Mariners bats seem to have been lost in the mail
Fresh off a 2016 campaign in which the club surprised a lot of folks with just how powerful their lineup could be (wRC+ of 107, second in all of baseball), the Mariners bats have officially gone ice cold to start 2017. Through six games, the Mariners are sporting a team-wide wRC+ of 47. Basically they've been less than half of themselves in the first week of the season. The slow start has played a big role in the club's 1-5 start to what was a hopeful season.
The blame can't just be placed on one or two guys, either. Basically Mitch Haniger is hitting home runs (.500 SLG), Jean Segura is getting on base (.333 BA), and no one else is doing anything. Kyle Seager is hitting just .150; Robinson Cano is slugging just .250; and Nelson Cruz, oh boy, he's 2-for-22 with 11 strikeouts this season.
This is probably the biggest small sample size issue of all the storylines so far. Cruz, Cano, and Seager are multiple-time All-Stars who combined to hit 112 home runs just last season. That being said, it's natural to ask some questions. Is Cruz finally starting to show some decline in his age-36 season? What if Cano produces more like 2015 than 2016 this season? Is Kyle Seager secretly drinking as much Mountain Dew as his brother?
In all likelihood, all three hitters will have wRC+'s over 100 by the end of the month, and if Haniger and Segura keep up their strong starts, this lineup begins to look pretty fierce. However, they have their 1-5 start already in the books, and in what should be a closely-contested AL West, each game seems eminently important, even this early in the season.
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Good: The Chicago Cubs might just be human
Listen, I'm not a Cubs hater. I loved that they broke their curse last year, and I think they have one of the most fun teams to watch in all of baseball.
It's just that they looked almost too good heading into 2017. Even though the projection systems didn't all agree on just where to place the Cubbies heading into this season, the general consensus if you asked any human with eyes (and even the ones with just ears for that matter) was that the Cubs were the best team in baseball, and it wasn't even particularly close. (Of course baseball writers not wanting to be sheep, felt the need to go elsewhere for the majority of the World Series picks, meaning the Cubs were actually under-represented as preseason title winners.)
This team boasts the reigning NL MVP, a 24-year-old who has ascended into the conversation of best non-Mike Trout player in baseball, and whose eyes could launch 1,000 ships. The team is fresh off a season in which their defense was so incredibly valuable that some writers were only half-joking when they suggested the Cubs were somehow moving their players around with lasers that couldn't be seen by the opposition. Their rotation goes: 2016 Cy Young runner-up; 2015 Cy Young winner; kind of pudgy guy with a weird voice, but who also seems to get better in his late 30s; 2016 Cy Young second runner-up.
There really aren't any weaknesses to find on this roster, and yet before Saturday's 11-run explosion, were averaging just 3.0 runs a game in a 2-2 start.
Now Saturday's 11-6 win already showed what the lineup is capable of, and before we know it the Cubs will probably have a 16-game winning streak going. But for the first four days of the season, the Cubs looked slightly beatable. And that's good to see.
Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports
Bad: Trea Turner's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad start to 2017
This is on us. We were all way too hyped on the Nationals youngster heading into this season. Obviously fantasy baseball isn't real life, but it is very telling that after just 100 career games, the baseball public was so hot for Trea Turner that he was being drafted in the first round of fantasy drafts, ahead of names like Max Scherzer and Miguel Cabrera.
Now we are less than a week into the season, and people are jumping off the Turner boat like a deleted scene from the first Pirates of the Caribbean film.
Turner has gone 3-for-19 to start the season, with just one extra base hit, and more worryingly, seven strikeouts to zero walks. To make matters worse, he left Saturday's game with hamstring tightness.
We should all take a deep breath. Most of the readers who frequent Call to the Pen are probably of the level-headed variety, and so they aren't as likely to freak out over this first week from Turner. That's good. He's not even 24 years old yet, and it's less than a week into the season. Even still, it's never fun to see a fun, young player struggle at any point, and it's awful to see them pick up injuries.
Hopefully (and almost certainly) Turner will be back to lighting up the basepaths and smacking extra-base hits around the diamond sooner than later, and we can all forget about this little bump in the road for Turner.
Robert Hanashiro-USA TODAY Sports
Good/Bad: MLB is becoming even more of a Three True Outcomes League
This is one week-long trend that I feel confident saying will continue. Before Sunday's games, the league is walking at a 9.2 percent clip; striking out at a 22.1 percent clip; and homering at a 2.9 percent clip. Those first two figures are up from 2016, when the league had 8.2/22.1/3.0 walk/strikeout/home run rates, and minor drop in home run rate can be explained by the colder weather to start the season.
In all likelihood, we are moving closer and closer to a league in which more than a third of plate appearances end in either a walk, strikeout, or home run, aka the three actions that involve the fewest players on the field.
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This is good and bad.
It is good in that baseball, as a sport, is becoming more efficient than ever. Players are realizing that the penalty for strikeouts aren't as severe as we once thought, and the outdated "walks are for sissies" mindset is fading faster than Marty McFly in the family photo from Back to the Future.
It's bad because, well, the Three True Outcomes, should probably be renamed the Three Boring Outcomes. Sure home runs are cool, but watching hitters just walk or strikeout a combined third of the game is dreadful. Those plate appearances take longer than the rest, and the guys who fit the Three True Outcome model are usually the slowest, biggest brutes in the game. If these trends continue, we'll miss out on guys like Mallex Smith and Brett Gardner who just slap-and-run their way into our hearts.
It is similar to the NBA where teams are getting smarter and smarter, shooting more threes and layups than ever. But the move to more efficiency takes away from the viewing experience of the fan. If the NBA becomes a league of just three-point shooters, where's the fun in that? If MLB becomes a league of Three True Outcome hitters, is that any good? Variety is the spice of life, and baseball needs it as much as any other industry.
It's great to see teams and managers and players being smarter about the sport than ever before, but hopefully the next wave of baseball intelligence can create a little more variety in the game.
