Pete Alonso’s Return to Citi Field Turns Mets Fans Against Their Own Team

Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images

On Tuesday night at Citi Field, the 2026 Mets season reached either a rather humiliating new low or a moment of catharsis, depending upon your point of view. With one out in the top of the ninth inning and the Mets clinging to a 3-2 lead over the Orioles, closer Kodai Senga left an 82.5-mph forkball over the plate, and Pete Alonso absolutely hit the fork out of it for a game-tying solo shot, the 300th home run of his career. The 31-year-old slugger punctuated the shot with an emphatic bat toss as the ball caromed off the face of the second deck in left-center field. While most opponent homers in such situations would elicit groans and boos, Alonso — who made his long-awaited return to Queens this week after signing a five-year, $155 million deal with the Orioles last December — instead received a standing ovation and made a curtain call.

Though unorthodox, the response from the crowd was understandable. Alonso hit 264 home runs during his seven seasons with the Mets, the most homers in franchise history, making five All-Star teams and two trips to the postseason while earning a spot in the hearts of fans as their beloved Polar Bear. Tuesday night’s game was just his second at Citi Field as a visitor, and as they’d done the night before, Mets fans brought their homemade cardboard signs displaying sentiments such as: “Thank You Pete — Forever a Met,” “Mets Fans Still Love Pete,” and “Should’ve Paid Pete.” The last of those also featured a Mets logo in front of the phrase “Fans Rooting For” before an Orioles logo.

Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images

Prior to Monday night’s first pitch, the Mets presented a tribute video, and shortstop Francisco Lindor joined the crowd of 35,880 in an ovation before Alonso’s first plate appearance. Alonso went 0-for-3 with a walk in Baltimore’s 2-1 win that night, a victory that officially eliminated the Mets from playoff contention. Tuesday’s homer, his 36th of the season, was his lone hit in five plate appearances, though it loomed large in an 11-inning, 7-5 win that sent the Mets to their 82nd loss, guaranteeing them their first sub-.500 season since 2023, before David Stearns took over as president of baseball operations.

In the wake of Alonso’s homer, the scene at Citi Field took a surreal turn, as chants of “Fire Stearns!” followed Alonso’s cameo, ringing out around the ballpark. The crowd — officially 28,097 but in actuality much more sparse, befitting a home team playing out the string — vented its anger and disappointment regarding Stearns’ offseason overhaul of the roster.

Read the rest of this entry »


Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 9/17/26

12:01
Avatar Dan Szymborski: The appointed time has arrived.

12:01
robertobeers: A man, a Dan, a chat, odds of two losing records in the playoffs? sffoyalpethinsdrocergnisolowtfosddotahcanadanama

12:01
Avatar Dan Szymborski: It’s getting into low single digits now. There are enough contenders in the AL hovering around .500 that it’s likely that both the ALC and wild cards will now be marginally winning teams

12:03
Charles Bengal Tiger: What prospect has made the biggest ZIPs jump this season?

12:03
Avatar Dan Szymborski: Luis Lara I believe

12:03
Avatar Dan Szymborski: if he had had had a 2026 projection, Eric Hartman would be up there too

Read the rest of this entry »


The 120 Club Is Closed This Season

Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images

Back in March, I wrote about Jac Caglianone’s entry into the 120 Club. Even during a spring training game, when the brawny Royal sent a line drive into the right field gap at 120.2 mph, it was news. Statcast has been measuring exit velocity since 2015, and one thing we’ve learned from the data is that batted balls don’t get hit that hard very often. In fact, I can tell you the exact frequency. Between spring training, the regular season, the playoffs and the All-Star Game, Statcast has registered an exit velocity for just under 1.45 million batted balls. Twenty-nine of those balls were hit at least 120 mph. That works out to 0.002% of batted balls. It’s not never, but it’s not all that far from never.

If you’re willing to include spring training, Caglianone became just the eighth person to join the club, out of 2,593 players who have registered an EV, which means this skill is limited to just 0.231% of the player population. Still, we’ve seen at least one ball hit 120 mph in the regular season in every year of the Statcast era. But with just 11 days left in the regular season, that streak looks like it’s about to be snapped. Read the rest of this entry »


Fernando Tatis Jr. As Statistics Lesson

Denis Poroy-Imagn Images

If you’re a time traveler who jumped forward from late May 2026 to today, you’d probably recognize most of what’s going on. Gas is expensive. People hate data centers. Super El Niño is coming, even if no one knows exactly what that means for the weather. But if you’re a time traveler from San Diego in particular, one thing will no doubt floor you: Fernando Tatis Jr. isn’t in the biggest slump of his career. He’s been the second-best position player in the majors since the calendar flipped to June, in fact. So let’s make a trade. You can give me the secrets of your time travel down in the comments. I, in turn, will try to use Tatis’ resurgence to explain variance. No pressure.

Tatis hit his first home run of the year May 30, in his 239th plate appearance of the season. Up to that point, he’d looked like a completely different hitter from his 2025 form. Here’s a big old smorgasbord of statistics that changed:

Fernando Tatis Jr., Various Statistics
Year GB/FB Pull% Barrel% Avg EV SLG xSLG Bat Speed Fast Swing% Squared Up%
2025 1.44 38.5% 10.9% 93.3 .446 .488 74.0 42.6% 37.0%
Mar-May 2026 2.10 31.3% 9.6% 90.1 .318 .404 75.5 58.9% 33.8%

It’s almost too much to think about. He swung harder and hit the ball softer. He put it on the ground too much, but also didn’t pull it often enough. If you looked up what not to do in a baseball textbook, it’d probably say something like that. Now let’s add on the rest of the year:

Fernando Tatis Jr., Various Statistics
Year GB/FB Pull% Barrel% Avg EV SLG xSLG Bat Speed Fast Swing% Squared Up%
2025 1.44 38.5% 10.9% 93.3 .446 .488 74.0 42.6% 37.0%
Mar-May 2026 2.10 31.3% 9.6% 90.1 .318 .404 75.5 58.9% 33.8%
June-Sep 2026 1.40 41.9% 14.2% 94.7 .545 .546 77.0 68.7% 38.1%

Read the rest of this entry »


Effectively Wild Episode 2532: Can the Public Still Teach Teams?

EWFI
After a brief PSA about an open producer position (email wanted@fangraphs.com with the subject line “Podcast Editor 2026” to apply) Ben Lindbergh (kind of) continues his quest to temporarily resurrect a few dearly departed baseball podcasts by bringing on MLB.com’s Mike Petriello, former host of Ballpark Dimensions, to banter about a record home run trot, which “Statcast era” records they’re most confident are also all-time records, Junior Caminero’s defense and the value of small-sample defensive splits, the latest Statcast tools, Statcast WAR, predictive vs. descriptive stats, a divisive standing ovation for Pete Alonso at Citi Field, and this week’s White Sox-Guardians series. Then (58:25) Ben chats with former Astros AGM Andrew Ball and former Phillies quantitative analyst Tom Kim about Tom’s new command metric, OpenCommand, whether public baseball research still has something to teach teams, the public-private knowledge gap, and overrated secrets.

Audio intro: Philip Bergman, “Effectively Wild Theme
Audio interstitial: The Spaghettis, “Effectively Wild Theme
Audio outro: Justin Peters, “Effectively Wild Theme

Link to Ballpark Dimensions podcast archive
Link to Caminero trot
Link to Caminero LIDOM trot
Link to Langs post
Link to Tater Trot Tracker
Link to exit-speed contributions
Link to Mike’s post on Caminero’s defense
Link to Mike on the Williams homer
Link to Mike’s last EW appearance
Link to 2024 bat tracking
Link to 2025 swing tracking
Link to Nats farm system article
Link to 2026 scoops article
Link to scoops leaderboard
Link to “I’m tired, boss” meme
Link to predicted xwOBACON
Link to VAAAA
Link to Baseball Savant
Link to “last mile” wiki
Link to standing Alons-O article
Link to team 1B WAR
Link to Piazza ovation
Link to Seaver ovation
Link to Pujols ovation
Link to Pham story
Link to White Sox-Guardians gamer
Link to Peters PA article 1
Link to Peters PA article 2
Link to Davy on Jack Reacher
Link to Andrew’s baseball bio
Link to The Athletic profile on Andrew
Link to Tom’s OpenCommand thread
Link to OpenCommand account
Link to OpenCommand github
Link to The Athletic on OpenCommand
Link to OpenCommand validation
Link to OpenCommand accuracy
Link to computer vision article 1
Link to computer vision article 1
Link to pitch-tipping detection info
Link to Tom on miss distance
Link to Tango on miss distance
Link to Sam on misses
Link to Ben on COMMANDf/x
Link to The Athletic on Command+
Link to “Stuff” model command stats
Link to BP on command 1
Link to BP on command 2
Link to team targets article
Link to team targets graph
Link to command value post
Link to Tom’s post on baseball analytics
Link to Andrew’s Substack
Link to Andrew on public baseball analysis
Link to Andrew on idea value
Link to Ben on baseball secrets
Link to Andrew on idea value
Link to Andrew on draft performance
Link to Hustle+ paper
Link to Ben on hustle
Link to Andrew’s podcast post
Link to Andrew’s podcast
Link to Marvel’s Wolverine clip 1
Link to Ben’s first Wolverine pod
Link to Ben’s second Wolverine pod
Link to previous Winquest banter
Link to Gasper story
Link to Paine on position-player pitchers

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Queens Reign Over the Heights and Advance to WPBL Championship Series

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

To the extreme dismay of schoolchildren everywhere, the semifinal series between the Los Angeles Queens and the New York Heights came down to which team was the most thorough in completing its homework. In any league, a playoff series provides the opportunity to devote more dedicated study time to an opponent than is typically afforded by the day-to-day grind of the regular season. It’s a group project with season-ending consequences, if not done properly. Both sides delivered a strong showing during the practical exam, but Monday’s decisive Game 3 ended with a 15-11 victory for Los Angeles. Yet, despite the win on the scoreboard and in the series, it would be a bridge too far to say that the Queens aced the test. At several points during the series, the Heights posed a question and the Queens had no answer, but Los Angeles kept New York guessing too, and you can only default to bubbling in B on the scantron so many times before your score starts to look ugly.

Here’s the game-by-game breakdown of how the Queens ultimately outwitted the Heights.

Game 1

Queens Game 1 starter Michelle Roche was interviewed on the field following their 10-3 win. She went five innings, threw a modest 65 pitches, and allowed just one run on four hits and a walk with two strikeouts. When asked what made her so effective, Roche said the team’s pitchers and catchers got together and, “Went through all the data, all of the games, and just figured out the weaknesses of their batting, but also the strengths of our pitching — and just went with our strengths.”

By contrast, here’s a quote from Heights manager Rocky Henley during a postgame press conference on August 19, “I really don’t know about Trackman yet. Trackman is available, but it takes so much time,” she said. “My days are just so full of other things right now that I just can’t sit down and learn Trackman. I need someone to actually walk me through it, so I can kind of learn a little bit more about it, and I’m waiting for that day. Maybe this weekend, I can really sit down on Sunday and start really diving into those numbers.” Read the rest of this entry »


Don’t Freak Out About Jesús Luzardo’s Shoulder. At Least Not Yet.

Eric Hartline-Imagn Images

On August 24, I wrote about the Phillies, who’d just completed a nine-game winning streak in terrific style. After dropping the first two games of an extended West Coast road trip, they ripped off another six-game winning streak, with a run of seven games against the first-place Braves in a 10-day stretch to come.

Things haven’t gone so well since. Over the past two weeks, the Phillies are 4-8, with five of those losses coming by a single run. The bullpen is showing fatigue cracks; Jhoan Duran has lost twice while pitching in non-save situations, while on Friday, three different Phillies relievers blew saves in the span of three innings.

One of the bright spots of the Phillies’ last homestand came on Labor Day, when Jesús Luzardo threw a shutout in a 1-0 victory over Atlanta, thus obviating the need for a bullpen. Read the rest of this entry »


Sandy Alcantara, Quantity Starter

Jim Rassol-Imagn Images

It’s been almost four months since one of my periodic check-ins on Sandy Alcantara. And everything’s going well. In May, I declared the 2022 NL Cy Young winner “part of the way back,” after he’d lowered his ERA from 5.36 in 2025 to 3.53 in his first 10 starts of 2026.

Alcantara has started another 21 games since that post, and the results have been similar, if not quite as good. Since May 21, Alcantara is 10-8 with a 4.01 ERA, with xERA and FIP marks in the low 4.00s as well. Even in 2022, Alcantara was never a big per-inning strikeout guy; he was fourth in the league in punchouts mostly on the strength of how many innings he threw. That year’s NL strikeout leader, Corbin Burnes, struck out 36 more batters in 26 2/3 fewer innings.

But Alcantara used his height and changeup and three-fastball combination to get lots of groundballs and allow basically zero homers. Thus: The no. 11 strikeout rate in the NL (out of just 22 qualified starters) led to the no. 2 ERA. Read the rest of this entry »


Let’s Help Jack Reacher Remember Some Guys

Brad Penner-Imagn Images

Reacher needs our help. Reacher is in trouble, and only we baseball nerds can provide the assistance he needs. Wait, I should back up.

Reacher is the eponymous protagonist of the television show Reacher, based on Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels. He’s an enormous former military policeman and current drifter who wanders across America maiming, torturing, and murdering people – but, like, in a good way. It’s another in a long line of entertainments based on the simple premise that it’s perfectly fine to enjoy watching somebody commit horrific acts of violence so long as they visit that violence on people who deserve it. It’s also a baseball show. Reacher likes baseball. Most of the characters like baseball. They tie themselves in knots wedging baseball into conversations where it absolutely does not belong, and for that I not only salute them. I want to help.

Trouble always finds Reacher. He visits Georgia to pay his respects to a legendary blues singer and stumbles onto the world’s largest counterfeiting operation. He visits Philadelphia to watch an unnamed Phillies pitcher who touches 105 mph and winds up entangled in a plot to auction off chemical weapons to the highest bidder. He visits Maine for lobster and just happens to run into a man he once marched to the edge of a cliff, shot in the head, and left for dead. (Just to clarify once more: In this world, the guy who got shot in the head and fell off the cliff is the bad guy; the shooter is the good guy.)

Because trouble always seems to find him, Reacher takes precautions. He stays off the grid. He travels by bus. He checks into fleabag motels under false names. And because he’s a baseball fan, he always uses the names of Yankees second basemen. We’re going to help him do a better job of that, because, well, he sucks at it. Read the rest of this entry »


Job Posting: Los Angeles Dodgers – Multiple Openings

Direct links to applications (please see job details below):

Manager, International Baseball Strategy and Information
Analyst, International Baseball Strategy & Information


Manager, International Baseball Strategy and Information

Description
The Los Angeles Dodgers currently have a job opportunity for Manager, International Baseball Strategy and Information. Following you will find a brief description of the job and application process. For additional information, please contact TalentRelations@ladodgers.com.

Title: Manager, International Baseball Strategy and Information
Department: Baseball Strategy & Information
Status: Full-Time/Non-Union
Pay Rate: $120,000 – $135,000
FLSA: Exempt
Reports to: Director, Baseball Strategy and Information/Vice President, Player Personnel
Location: Los Angeles, California
Posting Date: September 15, 2026

Job Summary
The Baseball Strategy and Information team of the Los Angeles Dodgers is responsible for supporting Major League Coaches, Baseball Operations Leadership, and multiple other key stakeholders with data and information needed for strategic decision making.

As a Manager, you will take on a brand-new role focused on advancing the statistical rigor and tooling we bring to International Scouting. The ideal candidate will have some experience working with multi-source data, will help us evaluate what priorities should be and what to build next, and will work collaboratively across departments to create tools and reports.

Essential Duties/Responsibilities:

Data Foundation

  • Take ownership of understanding what international scouting data we have — across every vendor, internal system, and tool — and determine what’s trustworthy, what’s missing, and what’s not being used
  • Establish what “data quality” should mean for this function and build the validation processes to get us there, leveraging existing tools when appropriate.
  • Identify and propose new data sources (vendors, scraping, or otherwise) where you see gaps worth closing

Analytical Tools

  • Build tools that let scouts, coordinators, and analysts explore historical trends by combinations of country, league, position, age, and signing bonus
  • Make this self-serve for non-technical stakeholders, not locked in a notebook only you can run
  • Use your own judgment on where analytical effort is best spent, and bring recommendations rather than waiting to be assigned a specific question

Valuation & Projection

  • Once the data foundation is solid, lead or significantly contribute to building broader valuation and projection models for international players. This includes but isn’t limited to advancing our understanding league translations, bonus pool allocation strategies, and leveraging biomechanical data into our evaluations and projections.

Day-to-Day

  • Write code daily — SQL for data work, Python/R for analysis, some blend of manual coding and AI-assisted development
  • Work closely with international scouts, analysts, and data engineering/IT
  • Translate ambiguous baseball questions (“what’s the track record of X archetype”) into data pipelines and analysis
  • Present findings to non-technical stakeholders (scouts, coordinators) in usable form

Basic Requirements/Qualifications:

Education

  • B.A. or B.S. in mathematics, economics, statistics, computer science, data science, operations research, or a related quantitative-field.

Work Experience

  • 3-5+ years of experience working with messy, multi-source data — sports/scouting data experience is a plus but not required if the underlying skill set transfers
  • Strong track record of writing production-quality SQL and Python or R; real experience with data pipelines or ETL
  • Experience distilling complex analyses into compelling, executive-level narratives and visualizations
  • A demonstrated history of identifying problems and proposing solutions without being asked — this role rewards initiative, not just execution
  • A solid understanding of baseball and international markets — you don’t need scouting/evaluation ability, but you should have some knowledge of signing dynamics and the leagues/markets involved
  • A. or B.S. in mathematics, economics, statistics, computer science, data science, operations research, or a related quantitative-field.
  • Able to communicate technical findings and recommendations to non-technical baseball people
  • Ability to spend extended time in Los Angeles for onboarding, if not able to relocate
  • Ability to work a varied schedule including evenings, weekends, and holidays.
  • Nice to have: fluency in Spanish or Japanese; prior work with geographically distributed / multi-source data; experience with cloud data infra (AWS S3/RDS/Lambda) or BI/dashboard tools.

Current Los Angeles Dodgers employees should apply via the internal job board in UltiPro by following these prompts:

MENU > MYSELF > MY COMPANY > VIEW OPPORTUNITIES > select the position > CONSENT > APPLY NOW

LOS ANGELES DODGERS LLC is an equal opportunity employer.

LOS ANGELES DODGERS LLC is firmly committed to providing equal opportunity for all qualified applicants from every race, creed, and background. LOS ANGELES DODGERS LLC is also firmly committed to complying with all applicable laws and governmental regulations at the state and local levels which prohibit discrimination.

LOS ANGELES DODGERS LLC considers all applicants without regard to national origin, race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, disability, military status, citizenship status, pregnancy or related medical conditions, marital status, ancestry-ethnicity, or any other characteristic protected by applicable state or federal civil rights law. The Immigration Reform and Control Act requires that LOS ANGELES DODGERS LLC obtain documentation from every individual who is employed, which verifies their identity and authorizes their right to work in the United States.

LOS ANGELES DODGERS LLC is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, LOS ANGELES DODGERS LLC will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations for the hiring process. If reasonable accommodation is needed, please contact TalentRelations@ladodgers.com.

To Apply
To apply, please follow this link.


Analyst, International Baseball Strategy & Information

Description
The Los Angeles Dodgers currently have a job opportunity for Analyst, International Baseball Strategy & Information. Following you will find a brief description of the job and application process. For additional information, please contact TalentRelations@ladodgers.com.

Title: Analyst, International Baseball Strategy & Information
Department: Baseball Strategy & Information
Status: Full-Time/Non-Union
Pay Rate: $80,000 – $95,000
FLSA: Non-Exempt
Reports to: Director, Baseball Strategy and Information
Location: Los Angeles, California
Posting Date: September 15, 2026

Job Summary
The Baseball Strategy and Information team of the Los Angeles Dodgers is responsible for supporting Major League Coaches, Baseball Operations Leadership, and multiple other key stakeholders with data and information needed for strategic decision making.

As an Analyst, you will take on a brand-new role focused on advancing the statistical rigor we bring to international scouting. This is an early-career role for someone who can help us audit, consolidate, and validate data, and can help build real infrastructure, not just run existing reports. The best candidates will be able to bring expertise that allows them to contribute across Baseball Operations.

Essential Duties/Responsibilities:

Phase 1: Data Audit & Quality

  • Inventory every international scouting data source we currently purchase or have access to verify what’s being ingested, where it lives, whether it’s accurate, and how it’s being used
  • Build data quality and validation checks so we have confidence in what we’re looking at, and leverage existing internal tools for this.
  • Identify gaps — data we don’t have but should, including evaluating new vendors or scraping/collecting publicly available sources

Phase 2: Exploratory Tools

  • Build tools that let scouts, coordinators, and analysts explore historical trends by combinations of country, league, position, age, and signing bonus
  • Make this data self-serve for non-technical stakeholders, not locked in a notebook only you can run

Phase 3: Valuation & Projection

  • Once the underlying data is trustworthy and well-understood, contribute to building broader valuation and projection models for international players. This includes but isn’t limited to advancing our understanding league translations, bonus pool allocation strategies, and leveraging biomechanical data into our evaluations and projections.

Day-to-Day

  • Write code daily — SQL for data work, Python/R for analysis, some blend of manual coding and AI-assisted development
  • Work closely with international scouts, analysts, and data engineering/IT
  • Translate ambiguous baseball questions (“what’s the track record of X archetype”) into data pipelines and analysis
  • Present findings to non-technical stakeholders (scouts, coordinators) in usable form

Supervisory Responsibilities

  • This role will have no supervisory responsibilities

Basic Requirements/Qualifications:

Education

  • B.A. or B.S. in mathematics, economics, statistics, computer science, data science, operations research, or a related quantitative-field.

Work Experience

  • 0-3 years of experience with strong quantitative/statistics/data science training

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

  • Comfortable writing production-quality SQL and Python or R; experience with data pipelines, ETL, or dbt-style workflows a strong plus
  • Genuine interest in baseball and international markets — you don’t need scouting/evaluation ability, but you should understand signing dynamics, international free agency rules, and the leagues/markets involved
  • Comfortable with ambiguity — this role starts with “we don’t fully know what we have,” not a clean spec
  • Able to communicate technical findings and recommendations to non-technical baseball people
  • Ability to relocate to Los Angeles and commute to Dodger Stadium
  • Ability to work a varied schedule including evenings, weekends, and holidays.
  • Nice to have: fluency in Spanish or Japanese; prior work with geographically distributed / multi-source data; experience with cloud data infra (AWS S3/RDS/Lambda) or BI/dashboard tools.

Current Los Angeles Dodgers employees should apply via the internal job board in UltiPro by following these prompts:

MENU > MYSELF > MY COMPANY > VIEW OPPORTUNITIES > select the position > CONSENT > APPLY NOW

LOS ANGELES DODGERS LLC is an equal opportunity employer.

LOS ANGELES DODGERS LLC is firmly committed to providing equal opportunity for all qualified applicants from every race, creed, and background. LOS ANGELES DODGERS LLC is also firmly committed to complying with all applicable laws and governmental regulations at the state and local levels which prohibit discrimination.

LOS ANGELES DODGERS LLC considers all applicants without regard to national origin, race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, disability, military status, citizenship status, pregnancy or related medical conditions, marital status, ancestry-ethnicity, or any other characteristic protected by applicable state or federal civil rights law. The Immigration Reform and Control Act requires that LOS ANGELES DODGERS LLC obtain documentation from every individual who is employed, which verifies their identity and authorizes their right to work in the United States.

LOS ANGELES DODGERS LLC is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, LOS ANGELES DODGERS LLC will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations for the hiring process. If reasonable accommodation is needed, please contact TalentRelations@ladodgers.com.

To Apply
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Los Angeles Dodgers.