Sal Stewart is a frontrunner for NL Rookie of the Year honors. A formidable presence in the middle of the Cincinnati Reds lineup, the 22-year-old corner infielder has bashed 31 home runs and put up a 121 wRC+. Moreover, he leads all MLB hitters with 106 RBIs. Per the team’s press notes, Ted Williams (144 in 1939) and Walt Dropo are the only rookies to lead the majors in RBIs since 1920.

Stewart’s ability to square up baseballs far exceeds his wordiness when discussing the art and science of hitting — at least that was the case when I talked to him prior to a recent game at Wrigley Field. Entertainingly demonstrative when interacting with teammates in the clubhouse prior to our conversation, he was far from expansive when responding to questions about his craft.

“I’m kind of always tinkering and trying to find what’s best,” Stewart replied when asked how he’s grown as a hitter since entering pro ball in 2022 out of a Miami high school. “But for the most part, I have the same swing I’ve had since I was 12 years old.”

The burgeoning star told me that he still has the same offseason hitting coaches who helped him hone his right-handed stroke in travel ball. As he explained, “I trust my people and stick with my people.” Ditto training methods. He doesn’t hit off of a Trajekt, preferring instead to follow his established routine of “doing some tee stuff, some flips. Drills that I know work for me, and prepare me for the game.”

His approach when he steps up to the plate? Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Angels unexpectedly announced that longtime owner Arte Moreno had agreed to sell the organization to Stan Kroenke, the icositetra-billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Rams of the NFL, the Denver Nuggets of the NBA, the Colorado Avalanche of the NHL, the Colorado Rapids of MLS, the Colorado Mammoth of the National Lacrosse League, and Arsenal Football Club, both the men’s team of the English Premier League and the women’s team of the Super League. The deal is reportedly for $4 billion, a record price for the sale of a controlling stake in an MLB franchise, surpassing the $3.9 billion sale of the San Diego Padres to Kwanza Jones and José E. Feliciano earlier this summer.

Forbes estimates Kroenke’s net worth to be $24.3 billion, making him the new wealthiest MLB owner, ahead of Steve Cohen, who’s worth about $23 billion. Ben Clemens wrote about the sale on Wednesday, and I’d encourage you to check it out for everything that you need to know about the Angels under Moreno and the ever-increasing values of MLB franchises. That second part is what I want to stress, especially as it pertains to the seemingly inevitable lockout coming this offseason. Rob Manfred and the 30 team owners are going to push for a salary cap, and to support their case, many of them will both cite the need for competitive balance and claim that baseball is a bad business. When they do, think back on the two record-setting sales from this year and understand the real reason why management has shut down the sport. But let’s not get too caught up in the doom and gloom right now, because the upshot of the sale is the Angels’ future looks a whole lot more promising under Kroenke than it did under Moreno.

That’s the last we’ll talk about the business of baseball today. Instead, in this week’s mailbag, we’ll answer your questions about teams that finished the season below .500 with a positive run differential, the single-game feat most correlated with career success, the pitchers who had the longest careers while pitching their first and last games on the same field, and the ideal hot dog per game ratio. 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 season was supposed to be something different for the Giants. Following last year’s 81-81 finish, president of baseball operations and franchise icon Buster Posey went outside the box to hire manager Tony Vitello straight from the college ranks, and added free agents Luis Arraez and Harrison Bader to upgrade a couple of the lineup’s dead spots. Throw in a full season of mid-2025 acquisition Rafael Devers, and the team had reasonable hope of reaching the playoffs for the first time since 2021, and just the second time in the past 10 seasons. Instead, the 2026 Giants haven’t spent a day over .500, and at 58-83, they own the National League’s second-worst record. Like the Tigers, they’re in danger of making some dubious history, in their case by falling short of their BaseRuns-projected win total by the largest margin of any team since 2002.

As I explained on Thursday, the Tigers are nearly 11 full wins short of their Pythagorean-projected win total, an estimate based upon their totals of runs scored and runs allowed using the formula Winning % = RS^2 /(RS^2 +RA^2). Out of all the teams playing full seasons in the Wild Card era (not the strike-shortened 1995 season or the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, but including 2026 for the purposes of comparison), that’s the third-largest shortfall.

Where Pythagorean projections use actual runs scored and allowed to calculate an expected winning percentage, BaseRuns uses estimated runs scored and allowed, derived from familiar statistical components such as hits, walks, hit-by-pitches, stolen bases, and so on. Those run estimates are then plugged into the Pythagenpat formula — a variant of Bill James’ Pythagorean formula where the exponent itself is a function of the scoring environment via the formula X = ((RS + RA)/G)^0.287 — for a second-order estimate of winning percentage. Both the Pythagorean and BaseRuns estimated winning percentages provide useful if imperfect ways of measuring teams’ underlying performance and helping to identify outliers in either direction. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Quick programming note: I’m working on a very special bonus Five Things that would normally run in this slot, but as with most bonus things, it’s taking a bit longer than expected. Look for it next week, along with a regular Five Things. In the meantime, join me in puzzling over what’s gotten into the A’s.

In 2023, the Oakland A’s were putrid. They won only 50 games, got outscored by 339 runs, and generally looked like the worst team in baseball. But over the next two years, sandwiched around a move to Sacramento, they figured things out. In 2024, they improved by 19 games. In 2025, they improved again, to a 76-86 record. Nick Kurtz, Shea Langeliers, Tyler Soderstrom, Brent Rooker, and Jacob Wilson either broke in or broke out in that span. Coming into 2026, the A’s weren’t favorites in the AL West, but they were trendy playoff picks, with various market and model estimates spitting out projections between 75 and 80 wins.

Yeah, about that. The American League is about as bad as it’s ever been this year, and the AL West is particularly poor. Eighty-two wins might be enough to take the division. But the A’s aren’t part of the race. They’re 54-86, a mere game ahead of the Angels for the worst record in baseball. They’ve been outscored by 194 runs, 54 runs clear of the Rockies in second-to-last place. I had to investigate what went down – both because rubbernecking is fun, and because I want to figure out what I should think about the A’s for 2027.

The obvious place to start is the offense. Last season saw four different Athletics eclipse 3.0 WAR on the batting side – Kurtz and Wilson had standout rookie seasons while Langeliers and Soderstrom both broke out to establish new career highs. Throw in Rooker and Lawrence Butler as offensive building blocks, mix in a blazing-fast center fielder (your choice of Denzel Clarke or Henry Bolte), and the bones of an upper echelon offense were clearly there. Even if you count the two center field options as only one position filled, that’s seven spots spoken for. The A’s traded for Jeff McNeil to fill an eighth spot. Their plan was surely to score a boatload of runs – a great plan in the snug confines of Sutter Health Park. Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball is a team sport, but sometimes there’s only room for two faces on a poster.

Before every playoff series, the league, its broadcast partners, and anyone else with an interest in promoting the event will circulate something based on the poster for the 1997 John Woo film Face/Off.

Half Cage, half Travolta, all smoldering scene-chewing and cartoonish violence. If that doesn’t get your blood pumping I don’t want to know you. There’s more to each side of the matchup than just the one guy, but in baseball as in film you put the superstar’s mug on the promo material if you want to sell tickets. 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 duplicate episode titles and the Angels being slightly less bad than previously indicated, Stat Blast about extended team droughts between multi-hit MLB debuts, and discuss the arrival and role of Padres prospect Ethan Salas, a (deep breath) Cubs-produced, TikTok-based, baseball-themed, microdrama rom-com, whether they have any interest in VR baseball broadcasts, and an apparent change in Minor League Baseball’s ball, followed by additional Blasting about a Jordan Walker fact that may or may not be fun, catcher hot-swaps, center fielders on the mound, and all-win/loss days for divisions.

Audio intro: Jimmy Kramer, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Gabriel-Ernest, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to duplicate episode titles
Link to Episode 1240
Link to Episode 1573
Link to Paine on Moreno/Kroenke
Link to Kroenke’s land ownership
Link to Langs post 1
Link to Langs post 2
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Link to gaps between debuts
Link to Close Encounters scene
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Link to Ichiro rookie hits record
Link to Ichiro video
Link to Montes video
Link to Ben on debutant batters
Link to proj. strength of schedule
Link to M’s rookie batting WAR
Link to BP on Jenkins
Link to BP on Salas
Link to ESPN on Salas
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Link to Quibi wiki
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Link to Nine Innings to Love trailer
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Link to VR broadcasts article
Link to Jake/Jordan broadcast info
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Link to Cooper on the MiLB ball
Link to Cooper on college homers
Link to Ben on the MiLB-to-MLB gap
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Link to FG on MiLB ball construction
Link to Walker alleged fun fact
Link to ITYSL meme
Link to Williams vs. Wood post
Link to catchers data
Link to The Onion on Gillette
Link to wild 1902 game
Link to Garver EW episode
Link to all-loss division days
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It’s been a dismal and deflating season in Detroit. The Tigers, who entered the year as favorites to win the AL Central after signing both Framber Valdez and Justin Verlander in February, played middling baseball through the first five weeks of the season before hitting the skids in May, at one point losing 16 out of 18 games. Instead of loading up for the stretch run ahead of the August 3 trade deadline, they dealt away both Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize to other contenders. While the team has actually outscored opponents by 47 runs (610 to 563), the Tigers are currently 11 games below .500 at 64-75, and in danger of making some dubious history by falling short of their Pythagorean-projected win total by the largest margin of any Wild Card-era team.

Misery loves company, and the Tigers are not alone in undershooting their target. The Giants, who at the outset of the season looked to have a reasonable chance of claiming a Wild Card berth, are not only 24 games below .500 (58-82) but in danger of falling short of their BaseRuns-projected win total by the largest margin of any team since 2002.

If you’re not familiar with either of these concepts, a Pythagorean projection is one of the most enduring Bill James creations, introduced in his self-published 1980 Baseball Abstract. James showed that simply by knowing a team’s runs scored and runs allowed, one could estimate its winning percentage with a reasonable degree of accuracy via the formula Winning % = RS^2 /(RS^2 +RA^2). The use of the squares, reminiscent of the Pythagorean formula to calculate the length of a right triangle’s hypotenuse, is what gives the stat its name. Further refinements by James and other sabermetricians showed that using a slightly smaller exponent increased the accuracy of the estimate. The Pythagenpat formula, where the exponent itself is a function of the scoring environment via the formula X = ((RS + RA)/G)^0.287, is the one we use for our Projected Standings pages, which now have all major league seasons dating back to 1871 (damn those underachieving Rockford Forest Citys). Read the rest of this entry »