Baseball

OAKLAND -- When it involves getting outcomes and sustaining composure on the mound, J.P. France has impressed by offering each in ample provide for the Astros halfway by way of his rookie season. France pitched into the eighth inning for the primary time within the large leagues because the Astros provided simply sufficient offense to beat the A's, 3-1, to open their four-game set on the Coliseum on Thursday night time. Houston improved to 7-0 in opposition to Oakland in 2023, thanks to a different robust displaying from the crew's resident highway warrior. Tossing seven-plus innings of one-run ball, France lowered his MLB-best highway ERA to 2.05 (minimal 40 innings). The 28-year-old right-hander scattered six hits and a stroll whereas hanging out 5 batters. Home or away, France's presenc...

Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports The full midseason run of the ZiPS projections have been accomplished, and whereas the standings updates are at all times quite a lot of enjoyable, they have a tendency to maneuver in an analogous course to our FanGraphs standings, so that they’re normally not essentially the most stunning. What I discover essentially the most attention-grabbing are the participant projections — not even the numbers for the remainder of the season (the in-season mannequin is less complicated, however enhancements within the full mannequin are naturally going to be incremental), however the ones that look towards 2024 and past. After trying on the hitter gainers and decliners, at this time, we’re onto the pitchers with the biggest will increase in projected 2024 WAR sin...

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Colton Cowser hit a sacrifice fly within the Tenth inning, and the AL East-leading Baltimore Orioles beat the Tampa Bay Rays 4-3 on Thursday night time within the opener of a four-game sequence between the American League’s prime groups. ...

Just earlier than the All-Star break, we explored which pitchers had been dominant on particular pitch sorts this season. As such, it’s solely pure to dive into the identical phenomenon, in reverse. Which hitters have been most profitable when going up in opposition to sure pitch sorts to date? To reply this, we’ll as soon as once more focus totally on Statcast’s Run Value metric. Feel free to look at this web page for a extra detailed definition, however to summarize, the premise of Run Value is that it accounts for the affect of every particular person pitch primarily based on the runners on base, outs, and ball and strike depend. This is necessary as a result of many different present superior metrics solely account for sure subsets of pitches -- e.g., whiff price solely contains pitche...

Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports If you bear in mind my writing earlier this season about Brent Honeywell Jr.’s changeup-screwball combo or Hurston Waldrep’s splitter, you may in all probability think about how a lot I like a weird-ass changeup-like factor. So a lot so I’m beginning to surprise if it is perhaps price it to ask Meg for a “Weird-Ass Changeup World Tour” tag within the CMS. Until then, contemplate Logan Allen. No, the opposite Logan Allen. The one who got here again up from the minors to exchange Shane Bieber in Cleveland’s rotation and utterly barbecued the Pirates on Tuesday night time. Seriously: Five innings, no runs, one hit, one stroll, eight strikeouts. That’s some heavy stuff. The key to Allen’s entire shtick is his changeup, which is not like another pitch in b...

SEATTLE — Jarred Kelenic’s emotional outburst after a troublesome at-bat resulted in a broken water cooler, a damaged bone in his left foot and an apology by the Seattle Mariners younger left fielder. ...

George Kirby strikes out 10 in Mariners' finale vs. Twins n","providerName":"Twitter","providerUrl":"https://twitter.com","type":"oembed","width":550,"contentType":"rich"},"__typename":"Markdown","content":"“The confidence has been lots higher,” Kirby stated of the splitter. “It's such a hard pitch to feel consistent on because I've got to get it off a certain seam off my finger to kind of feel. It's almost like I have to hear it when I get that good movement."nnKirby has also been toying with a cutter and even joked that he has a knuckleball in his back pocket.nnKirby received and needed just two runs of support, both of them from Teoscar Hernández, who ripped an RBI single in the first inning, when Seattle loaded the bases w...

Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports A double-whammy of accidents and underperformance has hampered the Angels of their bid to make the playoffs earlier than Shohei Ohtani hits free company, however one shiny spot has been the play of Mickey Moniak. The former primary decide of the 2016 draft appeared like a bust when the Phillies included him as one among two outfielders in final yr’s deadline acquisition of Noah Syndergaard, and his late-season cup of espresso in Anaheim didn’t precisely dispel that notion. But since his promotion in mid-May, he’s been one of many majors’ best hitters, producing a 170 wRC+ in 165 plate appearances. Moniak despatched the struggling Yankees reeling with a giant night time on Tuesday in Anaheim. In the primary inning, he clubbed a two-run homer off Domi...

CINCINNATI -- As Reds rookie left-hander Andrew Abbott was strolling off the sector Thursday afternoon following his seventh shutout inning vs. the Giants and 96 pitches, the house followers at Great American Ball Park despatched him out with a loud, appreciative ovation. Alas, Abbott wasn't fairly executed but. He completed with eight scoreless innings and one hit allowed because the Reds cruised to a 5-1 victory over San Francisco. Back-to-back wins earned them a four-game collection break up. “They come up to you and say, ‘Hey, you got one more in you?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m good to go.’ It’s hot out there and the bullpen has been pretty taxed," said Abbott, who walked two and struck out six. "I just wanted to use all of my bullets. I get only one start every five days so just go out there...

Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports Tim Anderson’s recreation has all the time been a high-wire act. He by no means walks, he chases consistently, he’s fully BABIP-dependent and allergic to hitting the ball within the air, and his protection at shortstop has by no means fairly been nice sufficient to cowl for a down yr on the plate. Over the final 4 seasons, as projection methods crunched the underlying numbers and predicted that he’d plummet to the earth, Anderson refused to look down, placing up a 123 wRC+ and 13.6 WAR. Factoring within the time he misplaced to accidents and a world pandemic, that’s a 4.1-win tempo per 500 PAs, or a 5.9-win tempo per 162 video games. Despite on a regular basis he missed, Anderson was the Twenty seventh-most worthwhile place participant in baseball over tha...