Boston Red Sox headline six of the biggest surprises in MLB thus far
The Boston Red Sox have surprised many with their offensive prowess, but that’s not the only unexpected thing to happen so far across the major leagues.
Almost a third of the way through the season there have been quite a few incredibly fun surprises, with Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees rivalry heating up once again. No baseball season is without its unexpected results. Teams jump from rebuild to contender faster than expected. Hitters we all assumed were toast flare back to life. A collection of players clicks in a way no one saw coming leaving us with an example of the idiom.
“The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” Baseball is perhaps the best suited of the major American sports to generate surprising outcomes.
So with that, here are six of the biggest in the young season, leading to the Boston Red Sox and the biggest surprise of them all.
The Atlanta Braves have the best record in the National League.
If you are waking up from a coma that started in February, yes you read that right. The Atlanta Braves currently have the best record in the National League at 28-17. Now, that’s built on the backs of their two young future studs Ozzie Albies and Ronald Acuna. Both were expected to be great players, though probably not right out of the gate.
Acuna is performing exactly as advertised, flashing all five tools in his first 23 games. He has speed, power, a great glove, and arm, and he’s hitting for contact pretty well for a rookie. The 2017 minor league player of the year still has plenty of room to grow.
But it seems that the prolonged struggles that plague so many young players as they break into the majors won’t be a concern for the superstar in waiting.
Ozzie Albies, on the other hand, has been a revelation. The speed isn’t a surprise, but the power sure is. Fangraphs had his eventual hit tool at 70 along with that speed. But his raw power was supposedly maxed out at 40. He currently has 13 HR, good for 5th in the majors.
He’s in front of names like Gary Sanchez, Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Charlie Blackmon and Justin Upton. He’s tied with Bryce Harper and Khris Davis. Now, there is some regression likely coming. His expected SLG is .517 as opposed to a .579 actual SLG. And his expected wOBA is 23 points lower than his actual wOBA. But he’s established that he has much more power than expected.
And don’t forget about Freddie Freeman doing his usual thing, Nick Markakis is having a revival, Kurt Suzuki continues to be a consistently above average hitter, and the fact that they have 11 hitters total performing at league average or above.
That pitching though…
The Atlanta Braves are just 12th in pitching staff WAR according to Fangraphs. That said, they have the 6th best ERA to date, and that figure is consistent across the rotation and the bullpen. For results, the rotation has seen excellent performances from Sean Newcomb, Anibal Sanchez, and Mike Foltynewicz. And each likely has some regression on the horizon.
Rookie Mike Soroka, on the other hand, looked like he might be even better than his 3.68 ERA before hitting the DL with a shoulder strain. Hopefully, he isn’t on the shelf for long as he could be a big part of offsetting the eventual return to Earth by one or more of their current top three starters.
The bullpen has had some unexpected but very encouraging results as well. Shane Carle, Dan Winkler, Sam Freeman, A.J. Minter, Arodys Vizcaino, and Luiz Gohara have all looked great. A strong bullpen can be a crucial component in over performing Pythagorean wins which the Braves actually haven’t done yet. So there may be some room for improvement on their luck coming.
In short, the Atlanta Braves look like one of the best teams in baseball right now, and it may not be a fluke. Don’t be surprised if they are in the race for the division as the season winds down.
The Philadelphia Phillies are already a contender.
Speaking of the NL East, the Philadelphia Phillies are sitting right behind the Braves at 26-18. They have the second fewest losses in the National League. Like the Braves they have seen some unexpected success out of their pitching staff.
Aaron Nola, Nick Pivetta , nd Zach Eflin are all looking excellent, and Jake Arrieta is fighting off father time for the time being. Arrieta has a much higher FIP and xFIP when compared to his ERA, so there may be a correction coming, but if the other three continue to pitch this well and Vincent Velazquez goes on the kind of run we know he’s capable of, it might not matter.
The Phillies bullpen hasn’t been quite so good despite great starts to the season by Victor Arano, Edubray Ramos, and Seranthony Dominguez. While their starters rank 6th for ERA, the pen drops to 10th, buoyed mostly by those three. This bullpen may not be enough for the team to win the East or make a deep playoff run but that is correctable at the deadline or in the off season.
And then there are the bats.
Like the Braves, there are some unexpectedly positive results in the lineup. Odubel Herrera leads the way with a 162 wRC+ with Pedro Florimon at 134. Rhys Hoskins had a great start to the season. But he is trying to adjust to a shift in approach by pitchers that have been more successful in getting him out.
Even with the recent struggles, he’s at a 133 wRC+. Cesar Hernandez has been a breath of fresh air at 30% better than league average. And Vincent Velazquez is giving Madison Bumgarner a run for his money when he gets up to bat on his days on the mound.
There are probably some improvements coming from players like Jorge Alfaro, Scott Kingery, J.P. Crawford and offseason acquisition Carlos Santana as well. So while there may be a regression from some of their current hitters, there will likely be a counterbalance on the other end that keeps this team competitive.
They aren’t likely to win the division even with the Mets suffering some bad injury luck (again). The Braves do look legitimate, and the Washington Nationals will get hot eventually. But we are looking at a very talented young team that will be in the mix for the foreseeable future. The Phillies are probably a year ahead of schedule, but they appear to be here to stay.
Matt Kemp is an elite hitter again.
When was the last time we could say that Matt Kemp is one of the best hitters in baseball? 2014 or so? He had a 141 wRC+ that season with 25 HR. So far in 2018 he has managed a 141 wRC+ with 5 HR. That’s an 18 home run pace. This has to be a fluke, right?
Well, not so fast. We don’t have Statcast data to compare to from 2014. But we can look at how he compares to his 2015-2017 seasons to see what kind of improvements he’s made.
Matt Kemp is currently tied for 32nd in the majors in Brls/PA. As we’ve described here in the past, Brls/PA is a measure of extremely high-quality contact resulting in a .500 BA and a 1.500 SLG or better. He ranks right behind Yoan Moncada and is even with Bryce Harper.
He is sitting on a .382 BABIP so we can probably expect him to cool off a bit going forward. But there are some signs that he’s not going to fall off the map any time soon.
His wOBA is .348. However, based on his launch angles and exit velocities, his expected wOBA is .396. So he hasn’t lucked into that BABIP. Or, at least, not all of it. His increase in barrel percentage, going from 8.3% in 2015 to 11.1 in 2016, 9.5 in 2017, to 13.5% this year is built on a 15.0-degree launch angle.
That’s his high water mark since Statcast started tracking it in the 2015 season. He’s also sitting on a 41.7 hard hit percentage, another high in the Statcast era. That has led to another high. His 90.8 average exit velocity is in the top 100 in baseball this year.
How is he doing it?
To start with, Matt Kemp is going to the opposite field more often than he ever has before. His 28 percent opposite field rate is another career high. He’s also gotten back to hitting fly balls at a rate similar to his heyday at 36.4 percent. And that 27.1 percent line drive rate also tops for his career.
That means he’s getting into that highly productive 10-26 degree launch angle range more than ever. He likely doesn’t have the raw power he did when he was blasting home runs with the best of them. But he is making up for it by maximizing the quality of his contact.
There’s no telling just how long he will be able to keep it up. But for now, he seems to have found a recipe for a late-career resurgence. At 33 years old, Matt Kemp is having perhaps his third-best season ever. It’s certainly one of the stories we’ll want to keep checking in on as the season progresses.
Teoscar Hernandez is the next stud hitter to join the Toronto Blue Jays lineup.
Ask 100 people in the baseball world who the next stud hitter the Toronto Blue Jays would add to their lineup would be back in the offseason and the answers would have broken down as follows. 96 for Vlad Guerrero Jr. 4 for Bo Bichette. Not a single person would have said the name, Teoscar Hernandez. And yet here we are.
Teoscar Hernandez is a 25-year-old outfielder that Fangraphs has maxed out with a 50 hit tool and a 45 in-game power. His current ratings are lower, meaning that’s what he’ll grow into, not what he’d be this season. A 122 wRC+ and 7 HR say Fangraphs got it wrong. But maybe it’s a case of a small sample size throwing us off. Let’s dig deeper.
What does Statcast say?
Well, the only two hitters with a higher Brls/PA than Hernandez so far this season are Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez. His average exit velocity of 92.4 MPH is tied for 35th, and he has the 15th highest hard hit percentage in baseball at 52%.
His hardest hit ball of the season is 112.1 MPH. That’s hard enough to say he’s likely an elite hitter for exit velocity. With a launch angle of 15.9 degrees, he’s come down from last year’s number of 19.9. That likely means he’s hitting fewer pop-ups (balls with a launch angle greater than 39 degrees).
In just 27 games last season he posted a 132 wRC+ with 8 HR which most considered a small sample size aberration. While he had hit for some power in the minors, that kind of pace was something he’d never come close to. And while it’s trailed off a bit, his 7 HR so far this year is a 24 HR pace in 110 games.
Of course, he’s played in 94% of the team’s game since his call-up, so that works out to 108 games left to play instead of 110 total. Applying that rate to the remaining 108 games, he’s set to play in leaves us with 24 more home runs. Or 31 by season’s end.
He’s here to stay.
Statcast lists his expected SLG at .714 and his expected wOBA at .444. The former international free agent who signed out of the Dominican Republic in 2011 for a bonus so small it’s not even listed, has come out of nowhere. Despite the lack of pedigree, he’s been one of best hitters in the Blue Jays lineup. We wouldn’t bet on him finishing the season quite so strongly. But he has likely carved out a permanent role for himself on the Blue Jays roster going forward.
The New York Yankees have one of the best pitching rotations in all of baseball.
When the season was getting ready to kick off the narrative was that the Yankees were going to bash their way back to the ALCS and maybe to the World Series. If there were questions about this young, dynamic club, they were mostly in the rotation.
The lineup was loaded with power hitting studs, and the bullpen was touted as perhaps the best ever assembled. But C.C. Sabathia’s knee and Masahiro Tanaka’s elbow presented injury concerns. Luis Severino was facing the dreaded sophomore slump. And there was no sure thing for the 5th starter slot. So it seemed that if a fatal flaw existed in the Bronx, it would be the starting pitching.
But if you were to ask Fangraphs who the best starting rotation in baseball is after nearly 30% of the season has been completed, they’ll tell you it’s the… well, they’ll tell you it’s the Houston Astros with 8.9 fWAR accumulated already. The New York Yankees slot at 4th, though, with 5.1 behind the Washington Nationals and the Boston Red Sox. And that’s certainly better than was expected.
There’s more to pitching than starters…
When we expand that to pitching staffs in whole, the Yankees jump up to 2nd. They’re still behind the Astros who have amassed 11 fWAR so far. But the Yankees aren’t far behind with 8.2. The Boston Red Sox creep in behind them at 7.7. No matter how you slice it, however, this Yankees pitching staff has been excellent.
That’s because of a 3rd best in baseball 26.8% strikeout rate which fuels a 4th best 18.7% strikeout minus walk rate. They strike a ton of batters out and don’t walk many. That’s a recipe for success. Ahead of them in K-BB% are, again, the Astros, Nationals and the division rival Red Sox.
Even still, if you were to have polled Yankees fans at the start of the season telling them the starting pitching would be some of the best in the game, then asked them how the season would play out, most would predict a division championship and a deep playoff run. So far, that’s exactly where the boys from the Bronx are headed.
The Boston Red Sox are the best power hitting team in baseball.
And that brings us to perhaps the most surprising thing of all with roughly 30% of the season in the rearview mirror. The Boston Red Sox are the best power hitting team in the sport. That’s right.
I’ll repeat it: The Boston Red Sox are the best power hitting team in the game. The same team that finished the 2017 season with just 168 HR (27th in baseball) and a .407 SLG (26th) is leading the majors in both home runs and doubles.
Yes, the slap and run Red Sox of 2017 have hit one more home run than the Yankees team that some thought would break the all-time single-season team home run record of 264. That record was set by the 1997 Seattle Mariners, and thus far the Bronx Bombers are on pace for 252. They’d finish 5th best, and still have a shot at it.
But with four more games played, the Boston Red Sox have squeezed out a total raw lead and are on pace for 234. That’s an increase of 66 home runs from last year to this!
And it’s not just home runs they are hitting for power. The Red Sox are also leading MLB in doubles. So they’re crushing the ball all over the park right now.
How are they doing it?
Well, it’s mostly on the backs of the two best hitters in the game (at least so far). Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez are tied for the league lead in HR at 15 each. Mike Trout and Manny Machado have 14. Five other hitters follow with 13. None of them are Yankees, by the way. In fact, for all the talk of the vaunted Bash Brothers 2.0, neither Giancarlo Stanton nor Aaron Judge lead the Yankees in home runs.
That honor belongs to Gary Sanchez with 12. Of course, Stanton and Judge are each one behind at 11. And the Yankees are the only team in baseball to with four players reaching double digits in home runs so far.
But the Boston Red Sox have seven hitters with 5 or more thus far. Hanley Ramirez is on pace for a solid season on that front. And Andrew Benintendi is looking to keep a similar pace to 2017.
Next: Betts is on an historic pace
The team has also seen improvements from Mitch Moreland and Xander Bogaerts from their 2017 rates. And everyone has enjoyed Rafael Devers continuing to mash at the major league level. It’s amazing what a change of thinking can do for a lineup.