For seven innings last night, the Mets and Giants played a fairly normal regular season game. There were fireworks—Joc Pederson homered twice, Tommy La Stella homered once, Francisco Lindor sent one deep to bring it within four just before the stretch—but it was a pretty normal game. The Giants were shaking off their losing streak, Chris Bassitt was having a bad-but-excusable night, it was regular season baseball.
Then, the Mets loaded the baseball to start the eighth.
What followed was two innings of mayhem. Thirteen runs were scored. The lead changed hands twice, with a tie and an untie in the middle of it. There was another Pederson home run, a bases-clearing Lindor triple, a leading-off-the-ninth Dominic Smith triple, and four infield singles, all of which came in the remainder of the eighth inning alone. The Giants ultimately won after Pederson, having tied it in the eighth with that third long ball, singled Mike Yastrzemski home with two outs in the ninth to even things again, setting the stage for Brandon Crawford to single home Darin Ruf and win it.
It was a wild two innings.
Here’s the win probability graph:
In the scope of the season, this could mean something or it couldn’t. On the one hand, it’s just one game. On the other, the Giants sorely needed a win, and they got it, and they now have a chance to win a series against one of the NL’s best teams heading into an East-Coast-ish road trip which might get them back into the division race, or at least reestablish them as a clear playoff team. In the scope of the season, this could mean something or it couldn’t. But more than that, we want to talk about Joc Pederson.
Joc Pederson has followed a strange path since debuting in 2014. His best year, by fWAR, was his rookie campaign. His worst year, by fWAR, was a woeful 2020 which ended with him homering in the fifth game of the World Series, a series in which he went four for ten at the plate after batting just .190 during the regular season (his wRC+ wasn’t that far below average, but still). Between those extremes, he was sometimes quite good and sometimes quite bad, often frustrating and often beloved and often a question mark in roster plans.
After 2020, Pederson entered journeyman life, signing on a one-year deal with the Cubs before last season. It wasn’t a great year from him performance-wise. He was a below-average hitter. It did, though, end with him holding the World Series trophy once more, this time for an Atlanta team that traded for him in the wake of Ronald Acuña’s season-ending injury and, over the months to come, watched him transform into something of an icon mostly through matters of personality. Now, he’s in San Francisco, and the production has loudly returned.
Joc Pederson has a 149 wRC+, 49% better than the average MLB hitter. Joc Pederson’s xwOBA is .458, third-best in the Majors among hitters with 100 plate appearances, which means he’s been generating better contact at the plate than anyone but Mike Trout and Aaron Judge. Joc Pederson is not the Giants’ most valuable player—that would be ace Carlos Rodón—but he’s made more of an impact in Win Probability Added than any other guy in that specific orange and black.
How’s he doing it?
This is the thing. Over Pederson’s whole career, it’s been little secret that he can crush righties and do hardly anything against lefties. Against righties, in a 2,605-plate appearance sample, he’s been 25% better than the average Major Leaguer. Against lefties, in a 507-plate appearance sample, he’s been 35% worse than average.
That’s a big ratio between the samples. Pederson has gotten more than five times as many chances against righties in his career than against lefties, compared to a league-average somewhere around 3x (26% of Mike Trout’s career plate appearances have come against left-handed pitchers). It’s also a big split between performance levels. Against righties, Pederson’s career wRC+ is the same as that of Hanley Ramirez. Against lefties, it’s the same as that of Christy Mathewson (who was, for those unfamiliar, a pitcher in the early 1900’s with a career .215 batting average).
Are the Giants tapping into this? Are the Giants playing Pederson’s splits? Is this the secret to Joc Pederson? Yes and no. Yes, the Giants are only letting Pederson see right-handed pitchers. But no, the Giants aren’t doing anything the Dodgers didn’t try. Here are Pederson’s plate appearance ratios over every year of his career:
| Year | PA’s | PA’s Against Lefties | % of PA’s Against Lefties |
| 2022 | 114 | 10 | 9% |
| 2021 | 481 | 112 | 23% |
| 2020 | 138 | 10 | 7% |
| 2019 | 514 | 50 | 10% |
| 2018 | 443 | 57 | 13% |
| 2017 | 323 | 55 | 17% |
| 2016 | 476 | 77 | 16% |
| 2015 | 585 | 129 | 22% |
| 2014 | 38 | 7 | 18% |
Even in the really bad season, 2020, Pederson was not facing lefties. Especially in the really bad season, in fact, Pederson was not facing lefties. This isn’t that simple. Pederson isn’t just avoiding left-handed pitchers. He’s crushing righties. Like he never has before.
Pederson is a limited asset. He is close to unusable in one quarter of at-bats, and he’s relatively easy for other teams to gameplan around in mediumly-high-leverage situations. If Joc Pederson is a key cog in your opponent’s lineup and he’s due up to bat in the 7th inning of a close game, you get a lefty in there and either you’ll get to face Christy Mathewson or you’ll get Hanley Ramirez out of the lineup. But there’s a thing here, too, and this is what the Mets ran into last night in the ninth: Sometimes, your best relief option is not a left-handed pitcher, and you have to make a choice. Last night, the Mets made the conventional, expected choice and opted to have Edwin Díaz face Hanley Ramirez instead of ditching their closer and digging into the ’pen for a lefty they may or may not have even had available. It’s a reasonable choice, but it’s a good phenomenon for Joc Pederson, and for the Giants, because in the highest-leverage scenarios, there’s not necessarily any avoiding this guy.
Overall, FanGraphs is projecting Pederson to finish with 2.2 fWAR, which wouldn’t be the highest of his career but is pretty darn solid, especially on a per-plate appearance basis. He’s also on pace for 39 home runs, which is very unlikely—he’s not going to keep hitting 49% better than the average Major Leaguer—but is also potentially possible? He’s hitting the ball harder and at a better angle than everyone but arguably the two best hitters alive.
Regardless, the Giants got a wild win last night. And Joc Pederson, whose future was comparably uncertain to that of Kyle Schwarber entering 2021, isn’t going anywhere.
Injuries
Kris Bryant is back on the IL with his back injury, and a quarter of the way into his first year with the Rockies he’s only played in 17 games, he has yet to hit a home run, and he’s been below replacement-level. We love Kris Bryant, but this is a bad situation at the start of a big contract for everyone involved.
Giancarlo Stanton left last night’s game with calf tightness. Unclear if it’ll be serious or not, and hopefully it isn’t, but a potential big development in the Bronx, especially with DJ LeMahieu probably fine but still battling injury himself.
Finally, Yan Gomes—obviously of the same stature as Bryant and Stanton—missed yesterday’s game with oblique tightness. Bad news for the Cubs. Hard to see it shutting the door on a Willson Contreras trade if one’s there, but bad news for the Cubs nonetheless. And with that, let’s move on to the Cubs.
The Cubs Won
They won! Again! It was against the Reds, so, you know, but it was another win.
A thing I’ve mentioned before and keep coming back to with following rebuilding teams is that it is a lot better, as a fan, to see a 75-win team than a 65-win team, to use baseball numbers as a landmark. Yes, at some level when you’re far enough away it’s hard to see more than a couple active players still being there when the window reopens, which is another thing we’ve hammered, but ten wins is a lot of wins, and a team that wins 75 games is, on average, a 75-win team in terms of quality, while a team that wins 65 games is, on average, a 65-win team in terms of quality. Which would you rather be improving from? Again, it’s not quite this straightforward, but there’s truth to this element. A 75-win Cubs team is probably getting a solid year from Ian Happ, a good year from Seiya Suzuki, some production from Nico Hoerner and Nick Madrigal, maybe some good starts from Justin Steele…that stuff matters in terms of future outlook. A 65-win Cubs team is probably not getting all of that.
So, it’s nice to beat the Reds, and not just for the immediate enjoyment. 69-win pace, 74-win FanGraphs projection (my tweet last night was wrong, I expected the improvement in the projection to be a little smaller).
The Rangers Are Alive, the Flames Might Be Dead
The Rangers won again at home, successfully holding serve against the Hurricanes and setting up a back-and-forth best-of-three which will begin tomorrow night in Raleigh. The Oilers almost blew a big lead against Calgary, but Ryan Nugent-Hopkins answered after the half-rink shot disaster, and the Oilers have the Flames on the brink as the series moves back down Highway 2.
To highlight how bad Gelo thinks the Flames currently are: Despite the Flames holding home-ice advantage in the series from here, they are only 1.9 percentage points more likely than the Blues to make the Western Conference Finals entering play tonight. Gelo doesn’t take injuries into account, but still—the system does not like the Flames, and what it’s really saying is that the Flames’ results over these last four weeks have been entirely unimpressive, and actively alarming for those who’d been hoping on a Calgary breakthrough.
No Sweep in Dallas
The Mavericks did not get swept. Not a lot to add to that one—the assumption is that the Warriors will clean this up tomorrow night and Luka Doncic will go home—but it happened. Tonight’s Game 5 for Celtics/Heat, and I don’t know what’ll happen but I’m not particularly excited. Sorry, NBA. Not all that excited about Blues/Avalanche either but at least the other two series are fun.
Scheierman Stays—Kind Of
Tying up a loose thread in the transfer portal world: Baylor Scheierman is withdrawing from the NBA Draft, meaning we can now say with certainty that he’ll be attending Creighton. Fardaws Aimaq is doing the same at Texas Tech, and Grant Sherfield is doing the same at…Oklahoma, it turns out. Simultaneous announcement of draft decision/transfer destination on that one.
With Scheierman and Creighton, they can certainly be good. They almost certainly will be good. And playing in the Big East, good is often enough to have you around the top of the beyond-Villanova league, which is probably the whole thing this coming season as that program turns over in the wake of the departures of Collin Gillespie and, more notably historically, Jay Wright. Still, I’m not sure even best-in-the-Big-East Creighton is necessarily a force nationally. This is a program that’s never finished ranked higher than 12th in KenPom despite being consistently respectable for over twenty years under Greg McDermott and, before him, Dana Altman. This is a program that has gotten to the corner. It is also a program that has never turned that corner. It’s dumb to judge programs off their NCAA Tournament history, but in the case of Creighton, one Sweet Sixteen appearance since 1974 is about accurate for how you should feel about the Blue Jays. Maybe they’ll be great. I’ll believe it when I see it. And a reminder: Baylor Scheierman is not Dougie McBuckets.
***
Viewing schedule, today/tonight (second screen rotation in italics):
- 4:10 PM EDT: Brewers @ Padres, Ashby vs. Darvish (ESPN+/MLB TV)
- 6:40 PM EDT: Cubs @ Reds, Hendricks vs. Castillo (MLB TV)
- 8:00 PM EDT: Blues @ Avalanche, Game 5 (TNT)
- 8:30 PM EDT: Celtics @ Heat, Game 5 (ESPN)
