Griffin Jax, the unluckiest man in baseball

[Brock Beauchamp]

So last night, someone in the game thread was concerned that Jax was coming into the game. Jax has been really good this year but unlucky... but I didn't realize just how unlucky he has been in BABIP and hit sequencing.

The one thing he hasn't been good about is walks, giving up seven unintentional walks in 15.2 innings. Let's get that out of the way first.

But over those 15.2 innings, he has allowed only 12 hits with zero home runs.

He has given up six earned runs and the defense has gifted him three additional unearned runs. He has a very respectable 2.80 FIP that would be much better if not for the walks.

This is where the numbers really get crazy. As I said, Jax has 15.2 innings pitched with 12 hits allowed... 11 of those were singles. He has given up all of one extra base hit, a double against the Nationals.

While I can't find a link to the MLB video of that double - probably because it's so embarrassing - it was a 49.9mph ground ball rocket ship that scooted by the third baseman. Oh, and it was raining that evening. If you have MLB.tv and don't remember it specifically, go back and watch the "double". It's so emblematic of Jax's season thus far. April 21st, eighth inning.

The only XBH Griffin Jax has allowed in 2023 was a grounder that didn't even have a 50mph exit velocity. The expected batting average on the ball was .150.

Which explains his Baseball Savant page. Look at those top six numbers. This is not a man who should have an ERA that starts with a three.

[Nashvilletwin]

Brock, you are so right. It’s literally painful to watch the bad breaks this poor guy gets.  But “walks will haunt”.  I’m hanging in there though with him - things will even out.

[Brock Beauchamp]

1 minute ago, Nashvilletwin said:

Brock, you are so right. It’s literally painful to watch the bad breaks this poor guy gets.  But “walks will haunt”.  I’m hanging in there though with him - things will even out.

Absolutely. In slight defense of Jax, I remember at least some of those walks coming after the defense kicked the ball around the field. Nobody is helping Griffin Jax right now. Not the baseball gods, not his own teammates.

[chpettit19]

https://www.mlb.com/video/griffin-jax-in-play-no-out-to-cj-abrams?q=griffin jax double&cp=MIXED&qt=FREETEXT&p=0

"The double"

[Brock Beauchamp]

3 minutes ago, chpettit19 said:

https://www.mlb.com/video/griffin-jax-in-play-no-out-to-cj-abrams?q=griffin jax double&cp=MIXED&qt=FREETEXT&p=0

"The double"

Thank you. That's so weird, I did the same search and it didn't pop up for me.

[chpettit19]

1 minute ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Thank you. That's so weird, I did the same search and it didn't pop up for me.

You have to rub your computer screen, and say "pretty, pretty please." It's a very technical move.

[Mike Sixel]

Thanks. I had a feeling this is what was going on, but was too lazy to look myself. 

[Nine of twelve]

I'm not going to try to link to any stats but this situation reminds me of Ryan Pressly in 2018. He looked way worse on paper than how he was actually pitching and we know how things transpired from there. We may still get good careers out of Alcala and Celestino but they have quite a ways to go to catch up to what Pressly has been for the last 5 years. 

[roger]

1 hour ago, chpettit19 said:

https://www.mlb.com/video/griffin-jax-in-play-no-out-to-cj-abrams?q=griffin jax double&cp=MIXED&qt=FREETEXT&p=0

"The double"

Remember that hit.  If memory serves, Jax has also been hurt with a few walks having very questionable ball calls.  

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

All of Jax’s luck is going to Brock Stewart! 

Jax has one pitch, but he throws it well. The walks may be a result of batters knowing what’s coming, and laying off. If so, it means the walks are baked in to Jax’s good numbers so far. If Jax were to begin throwing more strikes in order to cut down on the walks, then you would see more balls in play. The fastball is hittable. Taylor Rogers made a career of his slider being his one really good pitch, so it’s not impossible, but I’m more on the side of the posters who get the jitters when Jax comes in. I’m also slow to like certain guys, so grains of salt and all that. 

[RickOShea]

10 hours ago, Nashvilletwin said:

Brock, you are so right. It’s literally painful to watch the bad breaks this poor guy gets.  But “walks will haunt”.  I’m hanging in there though with him - things will even out.

Walks are part of 'his game'.  So you have to give them full consideration when evaluating him.  When he reduces his walk total, his stats will or should shine better.  No different than saying a hitter would hit .300, except he strikes out alot.

I think Jax has the tools and temperament to be a very good, to outstanding relief pitcher.  He's still very young and seems to be coachable.  Remember when Nolan Ryan first came up?  Strike outs and walks were his game.  He still piled up the walks, but reduced them significantly as his career progressed.

[jkcarew]

I agree his stuff has been better than the results…but the delta is mostly self-inflicted. He throws sweeper after sweeper (after sweeper after sweeper) and very often he’s failing to finish the batter off with it…but refuses (or the catchers are refusing) to have the batter see anything else. So far, it seems like the sweeper is a great soft-contact pitch, but not a great finishing pitch….or at least not in the sequence he has been using it. (His K% is right at league average…which, I assume, is probably below average among late relievers…and is below the overall K rate for the Twins staff. Meanwhile, his BABiP against is not high.)

A middling out pitch is a problem waiting to happen if you’re a late-innings guy who inherits baserunners or creates them by walking people. 

[TwinsDr2021]

10 hours ago, RickOShea said:

Walks are part of 'his game'.  So you have to give them full consideration when evaluating him.  When he reduces his walk total, his stats will or should shine better.  No different than saying a hitter would hit .300, except he strikes out alot.

I think Jax has the tools and temperament to be a very good, to outstanding relief pitcher.  He's still very young and seems to be coachable.  Remember when Nolan Ryan first came up?  Strike outs and walks were his game.  He still piled up the walks, but reduced them significantly as his career progressed.

I agree with everything you said except he is very young, he is 28, which isn't old but not close to very young. I don't even consider Varland very young and he is 25. Otherwise spot on.

[Doctor Wu]

As always, thanks for the research and showing us the "alternative" stats. I've always liked Jax and happy to see him making progress at the MLB level. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

8 hours ago, jkcarew said:

I agree his stuff has been better than the results…but the delta is mostly self-inflicted. He throws sweeper after sweeper (after sweeper after sweeper) and very often he’s failing to finish the batter off with it…but refuses (or the catchers are refusing) to have the batter see anything else. So far, it seems like the sweeper is a great soft-contact pitch, but not a great finishing pitch….or at least not in the sequence he has been using it. (His K% is right at league average…which, I assume, is probably below average among late relievers…and is below the overall K rate for the Twins staff. Meanwhile, his BABiP against is not high.)

A middling out pitch is a problem waiting to happen if you’re a late-innings guy who inherits baserunners or creates them by walking people. 

This is partially true but also partially untrue. Look at his 4-seam this year. He has a batting average against of nearly .600 on the pitch, yet an exit velocity under 80mph. Batters are getting insanely lucky against him, the quality of the pitch does not align whatsoever with the results.

Year	Pitch Type	#	# RHB	# LHB	%	MPH	PA	AB	H	1B	2B	3B	HR	SO	BBE	BA	XBA	SLG	XSLG	WOBA	XWOBA	EV	LA	Spin	Ext.	Whiff%	PutAway%
2023	Sweeper	177	106	71	68.9	86.6	48	46	6	6	0	0	0	13	33	.130	.185	.130	.242	.140	.207	83.5	-2	2865	6.3	26.4	24.1
2023	4-Seam Fastball	64	39	25	24.9	96.0	12	7	4	3	1	0	0	1	7	.571	.421	.714	.484	.612	.505	78.3	-2	2337	6.4	21.1	20.0
2023	Changeup	16	7	9	6.2	90.1	8	7	2	2	0	0	0	2	5	.286	.192	.286	.207	.310	.243	86.3	18	1588	6.4	25.0	33.3
2022	Sweeper	560	455	105	48.4	86.4	161	150	28	22	3	1	2	56	96	.187	.194	.260	.293	.219	.238	86.8	11	2844	5.9	36.8	24.5
2022	4-Seam Fastball	390	234	156	33.7	95.4	75	66	17	9	3	0	5	11	56	.258	.260	.530	.497	.373	.361	90.6	16	2391	5.9	19.3	10.4
2022	Changeup	158	22	136	13.7	89.8	38	36	8	7	1	0	0	10	26	.222	.233	.250	.329	.232	.268	84.1	-7	1580	6.0	31.7	27.8
2022	Curveball	49	15	34	4.2	82.6	13	12	3	2	0	1	0	1	11	.250	.296	.417	.393	.312	.328	90.0	12	2736	5.9	15.8	7.7

[August J Gloop]

His walks are up a lot and his strikeouts are down a tiny bit. This is a big part of his luck. I assume that several of his walks this year are because players know they can't hit his sweeper with any authority, and the ball travels out. His next trick will be to read the batter that's in take mode and drop a sweeper on the outside corner. That will get the swings again.

He's given up 6 earned runs and somehow got 4 losses. That's wildly bad luck. 

[jkcarew]

5 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

This is partially true but also partially untrue. Look at his 4-seam this year. He has a batting average against of nearly .600 on the pitch, yet an exit velocity under 80mph. Batters are getting insanely lucky against him, the quality of the pitch does not align whatsoever with the results.

Year	Pitch Type	#	# RHB	# LHB	%	MPH	PA	AB	H	1B	2B	3B	HR	SO	BBE	BA	XBA	SLG	XSLG	WOBA	XWOBA	EV	LA	Spin	Ext.	Whiff%	PutAway%
2023	Sweeper	177	106	71	68.9	86.6	48	46	6	6	0	0	0	13	33	.130	.185	.130	.242	.140	.207	83.5	-2	2865	6.3	26.4	24.1
2023	4-Seam Fastball	64	39	25	24.9	96.0	12	7	4	3	1	0	0	1	7	.571	.421	.714	.484	.612	.505	78.3	-2	2337	6.4	21.1	20.0
2023	Changeup	16	7	9	6.2	90.1	8	7	2	2	0	0	0	2	5	.286	.192	.286	.207	.310	.243	86.3	18	1588	6.4	25.0	33.3
2022	Sweeper	560	455	105	48.4	86.4	161	150	28	22	3	1	2	56	96	.187	.194	.260	.293	.219	.238	86.8	11	2844	5.9	36.8	24.5
2022	4-Seam Fastball	390	234	156	33.7	95.4	75	66	17	9	3	0	5	11	56	.258	.260	.530	.497	.373	.361	90.6	16	2391	5.9	19.3	10.4
2022	Changeup	158	22	136	13.7	89.8	38	36	8	7	1	0	0	10	26	.222	.233	.250	.329	.232	.268	84.1	-7	1580	6.0	31.7	27.8
2022	Curveball	49	15	34	4.2	82.6	13	12	3	2	0	1	0	1	11	.250	.296	.417	.393	.312	.328	90.0	12	2736	5.9	15.8	7.7

Nice data. Thanks. Agreed. Soft contact will eventually result in success. First priority…the walks…and he should be good. To get to ‘shut down’ it would be good to see the put away on the sweeper creep up some…and that might be doable simply by better sequencing. I think the drop in whiff rate on the sweeper from 2022, might bare that theory out.

[USAFChief]

This aged well.

 

Now on the books for 27% of the year's losses.

[Mike Sixel]

3 hours ago, USAFChief said:

This aged well.

 

Now on the books for 27% of the year's losses.

It's almost like you ignored the point completely. 

[ashbury]

I don't use ERA for relief pitchers.  FIP may be an improvement over ERA for forecasting, for starting pitchers, but I don't pay it much mind for relievers either. 

I like two other ways better.  OPS-against tells you a certain amount, clean innings tells you more, because unlike for starters, a reliever's job is to shut down the opposition for one inning.

The one thing I like about Jax's season so far is that he's limited the extra-base hits.  Just two doubles and no HR.  That's very important, and it helps keep his OPS-against to an impressive .589 this year.

But ... he's hittable.  Opponents are batting .239, and league-wide the BA is only .247.  In the small numbers we have so far, that's basically an average pitcher. As was pointed out, he walks some batters, so his OBP of .320 is likewise around league-average.

Looking at his 2023 game log, I see 6 appearances out of 18 where he gave up neither a hit nor a walk.  I don't know what is "average" but this doesn't look like a shut down arm to me.

Why I harp on clean innings - if you throw a lot of them, then one instance of "bad luck" won't do you (or the team) in.  If men are on base when the bad luck happens, then a run may score and you can try to explain it away as not the pitcher's fault and the "defense gifted the opponents a run" but the pitcher's hands ain't clean.

He's also given up 5 stolen bases this year.  They say you steal on the pitcher, not the catcher, but I'd have to dig deeper to the individual cases to make sure these SB weren't someone else's fault than Jax's.  Nor can you say it's situational, being in tight games or whatever - Duran and JLopez each have 2 SB, by contrast.

In late innings of tight games, it's the little things that sometimes separate winning from losing.  Jax to me isn't a difference-maker, and I don't think it's fair to call it bad luck.  If we're going to focus on one seeing-eye double against the shift, it doesn't negate the other innings where he put men on base.  His BABIP is .329, so probably that one double accounts for him being any different than the league on this.

I don't dislike Jax - average pitchers are useful - but he's miscast.  If he's option #7 in an 8-man bullpen, you have a real good bullpen.  If he's counted on as #3, it spells trouble.

I want a real good bullpen, so for me, explaining away Jax's bad outcomes is merely a distraction.

[USAFChief]

Still unlucky 

[ashbury]

23 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

Still unlucky 

Bad luck for him to be that unlucky so many times now.

[tony&rodney]

Jax is a concern. He doesn't use his fastball up or in enough.

[Schmoeman5]

On 5/12/2023 at 9:05 PM, USAFChief said:

This aged well.

 

Now on the books for 27% of the year's losses.

And climbing

[twins_89]

Jax is on pace to have over 20 losses. That's pretty amazing for a reliever.

[Jocko87]

This discussion is a great case study for both the stat heads and the old school eye test folks. I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face, it’s not having the data, it’s knowing what data applies in a given situation and applying it correctly. 

No argument from me that stuff+ and all that is off the charts. Problem is a lot of bad relievers have good stuff. There is a robust trade market based almost entirely on seeing an adjustment another staff isn’t making. There isn’t an analytical number for tipping pitches that I’m aware of. 

Outliers eventually return to the mean. In Jax case, the weak contact numbers appear to be the outliers and not the results. Tonight wasn’t rockets all over the field but they were well hit by a hitter with a plan. Without some adjustments they will be rockets soon enough.  High walks, low Ks, with a high volume of contact, soft or not, tells the old school guy in me there’s a darn good scouting report on him.

I don’t think we are hearing the real story through the press conferences, at least I hope not. “Everything is great, keep doing it” is an ok public stance but it better not be what’s happening in practice. Bad luck correcting is not a strategy. 

[Jocko87]

Here’s a fresh relevant example. I can see differences but I don’t know what they mean.  Apparently the Orioles do. 
 

 

[CRF]

I don't know how "unlucky" he is...he's just not very good. 

[Linus]

Something about walks that tend to make pitchers unlucky. If my memory is correct he wasn’t real good during the second half last year. Perhaps the league has adjusted to him. 

[Twodogs]

10 hours ago, tony&rodney said:

Jax is a concern. He doesn't use his fastball up or in enough.

Personally, I think the Twins need to send Jax to the mound a couple of times.  Two different appearances 1 inning each and tell him he can only use his fastball.  I'd like to see what happens, I bet it wouldn't be any worse than this?  I mean I was sitting in the stands, last night and after 20 or so pitches 15 of them must have been the so called sweeper.  He has a 96mph fastball and used it like once maybe twice.  I mean I know even the fans felt like they could hit that sweeper because they knew it was coming.  Set that pitch up with the fastball?  Or at least set the fastball up with the sweeper.  I mean sweeper after sweeper after sweeper they are going to start hitting it for sure and they are.  It's maddening.