Pitching Grips

Peter Aiken-Imagn Images The fences moved in, and Michael Wacha felt the pinch. The right-hander allowed exactly twice as many home runs in 2026 as he did in the prior year, and the obvious place to look is the ballpark. Kansas City pulled the Kauffman Stadium fences in by enough to turn it from one of the toughest places to leave the yard into a roughly average home run environment. Or at least, that’s where I started when I set out to analyze Wacha’s 30 homers allowed, the third-highest mark in baseball and a career worst for the veteran pitcher. I kept an eye on Wacha’s home run issue for two reasons. First, I was curious about how the new fences would play, and as a fly ball pitcher without strikeout stuff, Wacha was a great barometer. Second, I’ve done a lot of work on which pitches are most likely to get hit for home runs in the past few seasons, and Wacha generally finished high on those lists. But despite showing the characteristics of a pitcher who should get hit hard, h...

Ben Clemens 11:00 AM Hey everybody, welcome to the chat. I am just getting back from a dog walk and coffee run so need a few minutes to set up, my apologies. Please feel free to queue up some questions; we'll get started shortly. Ben Clemens 11:02 AM Alright, let's get going. Topher 11:02 AM With people bemoaning the lack of a good free agent class this year and with the talk of small market fans wanting their team to sign their young stars to extensions, do you think there is a way to marry the two ideals (wanting big free agencies with many stars and also having young stars signing extensions)? Ben Clemens 11:02 AM Oh, fun question. I think it's probably difficult with the existing pre-free-agency structure. Ben Clemens 11:03 AM Like, the NBA manages this somewhat, but the way they do is b/c their stars hit free agency pretty young and there's a collectively bargained limit on contract length. Ben Clemens 11:03 AM Also, I'm n...