Nathan Lukes was 28 years old and in his ninth professional season when he made his MLB debut with the Toronto Blue Jays in 2023. He almost didn’t make it that far. Life down on the farm isn’t exactly a bed of roses, and that was especially true prior to conditions — financial and otherwise — improving via a collective bargaining agreement that essentially coincided with his reaching the bigs. A few years earlier, Lukes almost walked away.

“It’s been a journey,” Lukes said of his path, which began when Cleveland selected him in the seventh round of the 2015 draft out of Cal State Sacramento. “Five games into my career — this was in short-season ball — I broke my hamate and was out for the rest of the year. The next year, I started in Low-A, and halfway through I got traded to Tampa Bay at the deadline. I stayed with the Rays until my minor-league contract was up, then signed here [in November 2021].

“It was getting to the point where it was almost time to think about hanging it up,” continued Lukes, whom the Blue Jays placed on the IL with a hamstring strain prior to yesterday’s game. “But then, in 2023, they put me on the 40-man roster. Pretty much as long I had that 40-man ticket, I was going to keep running with it.”

The now-31-year-old outfielder didn’t feel that he had stalled out developmentally when he pondered calling it a career — “I always felt that I could play in the big leagues” — but he did recognize that there is more to life than baseball. Lukes and his wife had a child in 2021, and as he explained. “Family changes things.” While his financial situation had improved somewhat thanks to minor-league free agency, he was “going to play the 2022 season, and after that, probably just be a dad.”

“You weren’t getting rich,” I said to Lukes in our spring training conversation. “No,” he replied. “I was getting poor. My wife was working at the time, which helped… actually, it didn’t just help, it kept us running. At the lower levels, I was bringing home six thousand dollars a year after taxes, so I was making a thousand dollars a month. The most I ever made on a minor-league contract was $15,000. You can’t really do too much with that.” Read the rest of this entry »

A question popped into my head as I edited Ryan Blake’s column on the Nationals Friday morning. In the piece, shortly after noting that James Wood ranked third in the majors with a 170 wRC+, Ryan mentioned that Wood’s teammate, CJ Abrams, was sixth with a mark of 168. Upon reading this, I pulled up our leaderboards to see if the Nationals were the only team to have two players in the top 10. Turns out that, yes, they are. I thought about that for all of two seconds before something else caught my eye. Just below Abrams on the list was Mike Trout, who also had a 168 wRC+. This prompted me to wonder: Can Trout return to form? Can he both stay healthy and produce this year?

I’m hardly the only one who spent the bulk of the 2020s dreaming on a fully healthy season from Trout, just as I’m not alone in having abandoned that hope as the injuries piled up. But after watching him blast home run after home run last week from the Yankee Stadium pressbox, I felt the pull of the past encroach upon the present, and perhaps against my better judgment, I started dreaming again. He sure looked as healthy as ever as his broad body barreled up baseballs and roamed center field. The best way to describe the way Trout moves — really, the way he has always moved — is that he lumbers and boulders; for all of his natural athleticism and breathtaking blend of speed and strength, he does not glide gracefully. I put that dream of a Trout renaissance on ice when the Angels left town, only for it to come back a week later. This time, though, I considered whether, at 34, he still has one more MVP season in him. He entered this weekend slashing .239/.417/.557 with eight home runs, and has posted 1.2 WAR in 25 games. He’s walking more than he’s striking out, and he’s already stolen four bases. His BABIP is a mere .228, 111 points below his career mark, so we should expect his batting average to see some positive regression. (Even if we know batting average isn’t all that indicative of player performance, it still matters for MVP voters.) His .483 xwOBA is second in the majors and 62 points above his wOBA. His defense has been below average so far, but if Trout keeps hitting like this, his glove won’t matter much for his MVP case. The narrative would certainly be in his favor.

I just answered two of my own questions from Friday in this mailbag, so I guess it’s time to get to yours. What if the Astros blow it all up? How might the Pirates benefit from a Houston fire sale? Why don’t teams develop bench players to be knuckleballers? What the heck was Austin Warren doing in the game with the bases loaded in the Mets’ 12th straight loss? We answer all these questions and more in this week’s mailbag. Plus, Jay Jaffe remembers Garret Anderson. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, please visit our Patreon.

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about whether JR Ritchie should want to keep the ball that was hit for a homer on his first major league pitch, José Soriano’s season-starting hot streak, and the Yankees’ new alternate uniforms, plus follow-ups on accidental challenges, player pecks on the cheek, jersey numbers, and Nolan McLean’s apology, and a mini-Blast about the Rockies’ historically hot start (compared to last year). Then (50:36) they take a break from interviewing octagenarian former players to interview a youthful, quadragenarian former player: former All-Star Brad Lidge. An infamous manager once proclaimed, “The closer is the closer because he’s the closer.” But what if the closer becomes an archaeologist? Ben and Meg talk to Lidge at length about his post-playing pivot to archaeology: what drew him to the field, how he’s pursued a second profession (and how it differs from his first one), ancient Etruscans, misconceptions about archaeology, what he could learn from excavating a ballpark, discovering dice (note: not a gambling ad), discussing his career reinvention at cocktail parties, the pleasures and procedures of communing with the past, archaeology’s moneyball, and much more, followed by his thoughts on fellow fastball-slider artist Mason Miller.

Audio intro: PJ Harding, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Philip Bergman, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to The Only Rule closer line
Link to line’s EW wiki entry
Link to Lidge’s SABR bio
Link to postseason saves leaders
Link to best post-’88 RP seasons
Link to Pujols homer
Link to 2008 WS victory
Link to Episode 2323
Link to Wood’s HR
Link to Ritchie game story
Link to Yankees jerseys report 1
Link to Yankees jerseys report 2
Link to Yankees jerseys report 3
Link to jersey number history
Link to Gilbert “catch”
Link to Gilbert “catch” rules
Link to Vargas “accidental” challenge
Link to Gonzales “accidental” challenge
Link to Martin-Davis smooch
Link to Soriano’s six-start stretches
Link to Soriano’s 2025 stretch
Link to Soriano’s 2026 stretch
Link to exit velo responsibility
Link to Soriano article 1
Link to Betteridge’s law 1
Link to Soriano article 2
Link to follow-up McLean report
Link to fastest team improvements data
Link to 2018 archaeoLidgey article
Link to 2026 archaeoLidgey article
Link to Lidge Explorers Club
Link to Poggio Civitate wiki
Link to Under the Tuscan Sun wiki
Link to Etruscan civilization wiki
Link to Roman Empire meme
Link to Lidge’s publications
Link to Lidge’s dice paper
Link to North American dice article 1
Link to North American dice article 2
Link to Ben on Detectorists

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Welcome to the latest FanGraphs Changelog, where we update you on some of the recent improvements we’ve made to the site as we work to build a better FanGraphs.

First, here are some important updates we’ve already announced over the past month, in case you missed them:

• We added three new tools to the FanGraphs Lab, rolling out the Paired Pitches tool, the Power Rankings Board, and the Baseball Simulator.
• We also added Home Field Advantage to the Baseball Simulator.
• Lastly, we added ABS strike zone, arm angle, and spin rate related stats to our player pages and leaderboards.

We’ve worked hard to get our tools updated for the new strike zone and the ABS challenge system. In addition to the new plate discipline metrics added to player page season stats and leaderboards, those stats were also added to the game logs and spark graphs cards. To see how successful players have been when they make ABS challenges, we added an ABS Challenges leaderboard.

We also made a significant update to the FanGraphs mobile app, which can be download here: App Store (iOS) or Play Store (Android).

• We’ve added the full Major League Leaderboards to the app, including your custom reports. The custom report features are the same on the app as they are on the website. You have to be a FanGraphs Member to have more than 10 player or custom stat columns:
  
• You can also set the default for all leaderboards in the app to show you the left edge of the data grid or the right edge. We put some of the most important stats on the right side and default sort data grids by the right column on the website, so we are giving users the option to change this. This can be found under More >> App Settings:
  
• We also updated the RosterResource Closer Depth Charts in the app to reflect the updates on the site:
  

Speaking of RosterResource, the Closer Depth Charts now have more stats:

• The Results section has most of the stats that were previously there, and we’ve added SwStr%, K%, BB%, Shutdowns, and Meltdowns.
• The Arsenal section has individual pitch metrics, including Stuff+.
• We also added the number of pitches thrown and innings pitched over the last six days for each pitcher.
• There’s now a tooltip that has game-level information including innings pitched, total batters faced, innings appeared in, and leverage when the pitcher entered game.

We also made a small Member update. You are now able to download or copy a .png image of many of our graphs and charts, so you no longer have to screenshot them:

If you have questions, please leave them in the comments below, and if you have any suggestions for site features, be sure to let us know. And lastly, a thank you to our Members! Membership is the best way to ensure that we are able to continue to grow and improve the site, and support our staff. We couldn’t do any of this without you.

The Washington Nationals are starting out strong, but not strong enough.

They weren’t supposed to be good in 2026. They weren’t good last year, or the year before, or the year before, or the — they haven’t been good since they won the World Series in 2019. Our preseason positional power rankings had them 29th by overall projected WAR. Justin Klugh led the Nationals essay in the 2026 Baseball Prospectus annual with the story of an enema given to George Washington just before his death. And no, the parallel was not a particularly happy one.

Indeed, the Nationals have not been good. They’re 11-15 with a -18 run differential and a bottom-five WAR. They’re not yet last in the NL East because of whatever is going on in New York and Philadelphia. But our projections assume they’ll find their way there eventually.

Still, it’s the way they’ve gotten to “not good” that’s been frustrating, entertaining, and perhaps even a bit encouraging. Let’s start with a plot: Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

The Philadelphia Phillies have released right-handed pitcher Taijuan Walker, and it’s not hard to understand why. The Phillies, two-time defending NL East champs and one of the preseason favorites for the National League pennant, are down two engines and spiraling rapidly toward an uncontrolled crash landing. They need to dump everything that’s not bolted down, and unfortunately for Walker, that’s him.

The 33-year-old right-hander took the loss in two of the Phillies’ eight consecutive defeats, and if his 9.13 ERA is due to regress with better sequencing and luck, it wasn’t going to regress by much. Walker’s xERA is 7.04 and his FIP is 7.82. In 22 2/3 innings, he has struck out 17 batters while allowing 36 hits (including eight home runs) and 11 walks.

On the heels of his final outing in Phillies colors, Jayson Stark posted a statistical coincidence that’s so damning, it almost feels unkind to notice: Opponents have hit .353/.417/.657 against Walker this season. In 1941, the year of his record 56-game hitting streak, Joe DiMaggio hit .357/.440/.643. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Washington Nationals. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the sixth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »