Daily Briefing: A majestic home run

The FanGraphs Newsletter, June 9, 2021 [READ IN BROWSER]( By Jeffrey Bellone - June 9, 2021 🟢 A MAJESTIC HOME RUN As a young kid, I grew up reading biographies about baseball's legendary figures, from Babe Ruth to Josh Gibson, players who swung the bat long before cameras caught their every movement. An author writing about Gibson would rely on anecdotes to describe how far one of his home runs traveled, and the exaggerated accounts only added to his mystique. I can't help but think of that after watching Shohei Ohtani's home run last night. Sure, modern technology now tells us the ball exploded off his bat at an amazing 111.7 MPH exit velocity and landed a projected 470 feet away from home plate, but for anyone who was lucky enough to have been watching Ohtani's first inning at-bat on Tuesday, there was no need to look at the numbers to confirm he had done something special. Ohtani's two-run bomb off the Royals Kris Bubic was the longest of his career and the fifth-longest home run by an Angels player since Statcast started projecting distance in 2015. ⚫️ WHAT ELSE HAPPENED? ▫️ Pirates third baseman Ke'Bryan Hayes hit what looked like a first inning home run off Dodgers starter Walker Buehler to give Pittsburgh a 1-0 lead last night. However, when rounding first base, he missed the bag, which the Dodgers noticed and a replay review confirmed, resulting in an [eventual 1-3 putout]( once Buehler tossed to Muncy to close out the play. Bobby Witt Jr. had a similar experience in Double-A last night, losing a home run after he [forgot to step on home plate](. ▫️ Speaking of wild plays, this is one you have to see to believe. Triple-A Omaha pitcher Gabe Speier used quick reflexes, his glove, and a friendly bounce to record one of the strangest putouts you will ever see. This newsletter is made possible due to the generous support of our members. If you are reading this email or use FanGraphs in your daily baseball routine, please consider supporting us. [BECOME A FANGRAPHS MEMBER]( (HOME TEAMS IN CAPS) ANGELS 8 Royals 1 Brewers 5 REDS 1 ORIOLES 10 Mets 3 MARLINS 6 Rockies 2 Astros 7 RED SOX 1 Braves 9 PHILLIES 5 WHITE SOX 6 Blue Jays 1 Dodgers 5 PIRATES 3 TIGERS 5 Mariners 3 Cleveland 10 CARDINALS 1 Yankees 8 TWINS 4 Cubs 7 PADRES 1 ATHLETICS 5 D-Backs 2 RAYS 3 Nationals 1 Giants 9 RANGERS 4 Track every game using our [LIVE SCOREBOARD](. [The Canadian Roots of Modern Baseball]( by Ashley MacLennan I am an absolute sucker for baseball history. Hours upon hours have been lost to deep dives into the SABR Bio Project or the spiraling wormhole that is Wikipedia. It’s amazing what little nuggets of strange-but-true ephemera you can unearth as you sink into over a hundred years of baseball. If you’ve watched Ken Burns: Baseball, you’ll know that even 10 episodes is not enough time to cover the breadth of what the sport is and what it has achieved. Because the game’s history is so rich and expansive, there’s a habit, as with all history, to pick and choose the aspects of the historical record that best fit with the present tone. We may have even been convinced it started with Abner Doubleday, as popular myth has long-contended. But as it turns out not even [Doubleday himself ever made any such claim]( and in digging into the roots of where baseball really began, I found that the answer might fall much further north than previously believed, with a game in Ontario, Canada, that may just be the first game of baseball ever played in North America. [READ MORE ]( 📝 RECENTLY PUBLISHED [Tyler O'Neill, Two-True-Outcome King]( by Ben Clemens [Dodgers 2020 First-Rounder Bobby Miller Talks Pitching]( by David Laurila [Blake Snell Tries To Become Extraordinary Again]( by Jay Jaffe [How To Allow 10 or More Runs in Less Than One Inning]( by RJ McDaniel [Kevin Gausman Is Giving Batters Splitting Headaches]( by Dan Szymborski [Keeping Up With the KBO: May, Part One]( by Justin Choi [Scripting the Reach-Out Calls: National League]( by Kevin Goldstein [Daily Prospect Notes: 6/8/2021]( by Eric Longenhagen 🎧 FANGRAPHS PODCASTS 🎧 [EFFECTIVELY WILD EPISODE 1704: How the Foreign-Substance Crackdown Could Go]( Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter (sans spoilers) about baseball movie A Quiet Place Part II, [Eric Sogard]( sliding over first base, a [Travis Jankowski]( TOOTBLAN, [Miguel Sanó]( repeatedly predicting success, and [Jesse Winker]( raking, then consider whether it’s actually “unfortunate” that the first true two-way player in ages is as good as [Shohei Ohtani]( answer listener emails about the two-way-player Mendoza Line and whether pitcher Ohtani or hitter Ohtani would win a head-to-head matchup, and conclude with an in-depth discussion about what might happen and what we’ll learn if MLB does crack down on foreign-substance usage. 🎧 [THE SLEEPER AND THE BUST EPISODE: 938]( - Key Demotions and More Injuries 🔝 TOP PERFORMERS Some additional performances not noted above. 🔺 WALKER BUEHLER (SP/LAD): 7 IP, 0 ER, 2 SO (9 swinging strikes), 1 BB, 2 H. 🔺 ZACH DAVIES (SP/CHC): 6 IP, 0 ER, 4 SO (10 swinging strikes), 2 BB, 1 H. 🔺 BRANDON CRAWFORD (SS/SFG): 2-3 (2 HR, 4 RBI, 3 R) 🔺 PETE ALONSO (1B/NYM): 2-4 (2 HR, 3 RBI, 2 R) Check out our [Live Daily Leaderboards]( to track each day's top performers in real-time. ⚾️ ROSTER REPORT For the latest roster information, please visit our [RosterResource]( pages. 📚 [Spin Doctors: the team that have added the most fastball spin]( by Kenny Kelly, Beyond the Box Score: What I’ve done is I’ve looked at every pitcher who has thrown at least 10 four-seam fastballs in each of the last two seasons and grouped them by what team they are currently playing for. In the case of free agents, I lumped them in with the last team they played with. I found 417 pitchers who fit this description. The question I wanted to answer wasn’t “who added the most spin to their roster” but “who was the most successful at increasing the spin of their pitchers.” The point of this isn’t to identify teams that are encouraging the use of foreign substances to boost spin rates. Nothing that follows is proof that any of the teams or players mentioned are or are not using boiled down Pepsi or Spider Tack or pine tar to give themselves an unfair advantage. 📚 [How baserunning has become an embarrasing problem in Major League Baseball]( by Tim Kurkjian, ESPN: It is not necessarily the fault of the players. The industry, infatuated with home runs being the primary way to score runs in today's game, has de-emphasized baserunning. It hasn't taught it very well. It doesn't pay for great baserunning. It doesn't penalize bad baserunning. The industry has decided that the risk of getting thrown out trying to advance 90 feet is far greater than the reward for hitting a three-run home run. That was one of Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver's philosophies 50 years ago. But the industry has gone too far. It has taken one of the most exciting and most critical parts of the game and devalued it. In doing so, it has turned baseball into a slower game, one base at a time. It has become a game that, at times, can be spectacularly boring. 📚 MORE READS: [What Advanced Data Tells Us About The Best Hitters, Pitchers At Super Regionals]( by J.J. Cooper, Baseball America ($) [Looking at What's Been Causing Clint Frazier's Troubles]( by Matt Wallach, Pitcher List [Getting the best of Yu: Can Padres' Darvish find what he's searching for?]( by Andy McCullough, The Athletic ($) [@fangraphs]( [FanGraphs]( [FanGraphs]( [RSS]( [FORWARD]( [SUBSCRIBE]( Copyright © 2021 FanGraphs Inc, All rights reserved. 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