The first five months of Teoscar Hernández’s season were largely forgettable. The 33-year-old left fielder scuffled through the first seven weeks before catching fire during the second half of May, only to suffer a left hamstring strain that knocked him out for over a month. Upon returning, he was a major drag on the offense for the better part of two months. But lately, Hernández has been tearing the cover off the ball, rising to the occasion to help a banged-up Dodgers squad — one that just placed Shohei Ohtani on the injured list and called up top prospect Josue De Paula — reel off a season-high seven-game winning streak.

Hernández has hit safely in his last 10 games, from August 30 through September 9, batting .514/.595/.829 (285 wRC+) in 42 plate appearances, with two home runs and 14 RBI. On 28 batted balls during that stretch, he’s produced a 97.1-mph average exit velocity, a 25.0% barrel rate, and a 60.7% hard-hit rate, with a .441 xBA and a .786 xSLG. Fifteen of those 28 batted balls have been hit at least 100 mph; seven of them, all 108.7 mph or higher, rank among his nine hardest-hit balls all season, capped by a 112.6-mph screamer he hit for a three-run homer against the Reds’ Brandon Williamson on Monday night.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the second Five Things of the week. After a bonus recap of Saberseminar, it’s time to get back to what this column is all about: bunts. OK, fine, that’s not entirely true, but trying to bunt for a hit leads to some of the best on-field action, and by the time we hit September, I’m eager for some exciting fielding adventures, whether they end in an out or not. In fact, exciting adventures are pretty much all I’m looking for at the moment. Whether it’s playoff previews, low-stakes barnburners, or maniacally aggressive baserunners, I’m looking for chaos, tension, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat combined in a single play or single game. The past two weeks haven’t disappointed – just so long as you’re willing to extend your definition of action past the usual homers and strikeouts. So buckle up for another five things – after thanking patron saint Zach Lowe of The Ringer for his delightful column idea, which I’ve been faithfully ripping off for four years now.

1. Seeding Clashes
Five Things is generally the domain of silly baseball. The best plays don’t only happen in games between the best teams – really, there are more mid-level teams than great ones, so if anything, this is more of an underdogs column. But while the past few weeks have plenty of that, there have also been some downright amazing battles between teams fighting for the same playoff spot, and I find myself tuning into those games more frequently than anything else recently.

The impetus for this item actually started several weeks ago, when the Dodgers played seven games against the Brewers and Cubs in a two-week span. I was interested in seeing the best teams in the NL measure themselves against each other – and luckily, the league cooperated. The Brewers and Braves themselves squared off in a three-game set just before the Dodgers traveled to Atlanta. That set up a round robin of sorts between the NL’s best – the Brewers went 5-2, the Dodgers went 1-6, and the Braves were 4-2. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s no secret that starting pitchers throw fewer innings than they once did. Not only have complete games become a rarity (there have only been 20 so far this season), it is all too common to see starters limited to just five frames. The proof is in the pudding. Going by 10-year increments, the average number of innings per start has dropped steadily, going from 6.53 in 1976 to 5.08 in the current campaign. Moreover, the number of outings with 100 or more pitches this year is just 510, a 560 pace. Turn the calendar back to 2016 and there were 1,737 such outings. A decade earlier, there were 2,095.

How do current major league starters feel about the collective decline in workloads? Comprehensive polling isn’t practical, but I did query nine starters — some older, some younger — to get their thoughts on the subject. Here is what they had to say. Read the rest of this entry »

This year, the Philadelphia Phillies are 26th in team position player WAR and 27th in wRC+. It’s not because they haven’t thrown enough money at the problem. They’re paying eight position players at least $10 million this year, if you include the cost of Nick Castellanos’ buyout. Nine players have batted at least 250 times for the Phillies this year; Brandon Marsh is the only one who didn’t cost them either eight figures or a first-round draft pick.

And yet: Even as Kyle Schwarber chases yet another home run title and Bryce Harper posts his best OBP in three years, Bryson Stott is within a tenth of a win of the team lead in WAR.

Stott, one of the quietest and least conspicuous members of the Phillies’ core, has taken his turn to carry the baton. Over a two-month span, from June 15 to August 15, Stott hit .306/.404/.462 and was third in WAR in the entire league. Read the rest of this entry »

With Meg Rowley on vacation, Ben Lindbergh continues his quest to (temporarily) resurrect a few dearly departed baseball podcasts. Next Up: The Bandwagon, featuring Hannah Keyser of CNN and Zach Crizer of The Bandwagon (the ongoing newsletter). Ben, Hannah, and Zach discuss Hannah’s transition from baseball specialist to sports generalist, her visit to Driveline Baseball for velocity training, and why position-player pitchers throw so slow. Then they banter about baseball bits and bobs: the buzzer-beating, pre-postseason returns of Aaron Judge and other prominent players; the future of rehab assignments; Zach’s 2026 rebuild rankings and his and Hannah’s debate about how bad David Stearns has been for the Mets; Mickey Gasper’s hot streak and Munetaka Murakami’s slump; a possible Rockies sale; Thomas Pannone’s Triple-A perfect game; and how the challenge system has affected catcher framing and defensive value, plus postscript follow-ups.

Audio intro: Guy Russo, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Andy Ellison, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to The Bandwagon podcast archive
Link to The Bandwagon newsletter
Link to Hannah’s CNN archive
Link to CNN Explains series
Link to first Bandwagon reunion pod
Link to second Bandwagon reunion pod
Link to Hannah and Lindsey appearance
Link to Marte’s cap
Link to Alcaraz vs. Shelton story
Link to Jay on position-player pitching
Link to Sam on position-player pitching
Link to underhand free throws story
Link to Episode 2372
Link to position-player velo by year
Link to late-comeback candidates
Link to Hannah and Zach on Trajekt
Link to Ben on Trajekt
Link to Dan S. on Judge
Link to Judge on his abbreviated return
Link to Judge/Jones fun fact
Link to Schwarber postseason comeback
Link to Cohen on Stearns
Link to Ben on Mets turnover
Link to team rookie batting WAR
Link to negative-run-differential division story
Link to Yankees hitting without Judge
Link to Yankees pitching without Judge
Link to Gasper/Murakami leaderboard
Link to Gasper wiki
Link to Rockies/McCarthy play
Link to Paige’s Rockies report
Link to report summary
Link to Greg Penner wiki
Link to BP on team sales
Link to Pannone story
Link to Pannone photos
Link to minor league perfectos list
Link to Jeff on framing
Link to Ben on framing in 2018
Link to team defensive challenges
Link to Tango on team challenges
Link to catcher-defensive deviation data
Link to catcher-defense deviation graph
Link to Ohtani/De Paula news
Link to catcher’s interference explainer
Link to 23 ways piece
Link to 23 ways book
Link to Nine Innings to Love trailer
Link to Nine Innings to Love premiere
Link to Tiglath-Pileser III wiki
Link to Yankees winning-season streak

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The NL MVP race is over. Truthfully, it’s been over since the Dodgers announced that Shohei Ohtani was taking a break from pitching all the way back in July. Pete Crow-Armstrong had so thoroughly lapped the field by then that only a unicorn like Ohtani had a shot at some kind of narrative-based upset, and without the chance of him putting up Cy Young-caliber starts to go along with bruising slugging, that was that. Likewise, the Cubs haven’t really been in a playoff race since July; they’re a lock for one of the top two Wild Card spots, but they’re surely not catching the Brewers.

It’s natural for you to take your eye off the ball in a situation like this. How good is Crow-Armstrong? How good are the Cubs? Well, good enough that you don’t have to think about them again until October. If you’re a neutral fan, I wouldn’t blame you for filing away your view of team and player, tuning back in to your local nine, and resting assured that you already know who the best player in the league was this year, regardless of what transpired the rest of the way.

But while you were (potentially) looking away, Crow-Armstrong is still on a tear. He’s not just the best player in the majors this year; he’s also been the best player in the majors over the past month. Where last year he melted in the late-summer heat, this year he’s getting better as time passes. Not only that, the way he’s doing it has me revising my long-term outlook on him.

When Crow-Armstrong broke out in 2025, he had an obvious weakness. He simply never saw a pitch he didn’t think he could tattoo. That made him run hot and cold; he paired incredible runs of scalded contact with stretches where he couldn’t buy a hit. Early this year, he was alternating between swing-happy stretches and periods of extreme patience. As Jay Jaffe pointed out, that helped him get the ball in the air to the pull side more frequently, in addition to forcing pitchers to venture into the zone more often or give up free passes. Read the rest of this entry »

Leading Astros pitchers in WAR usually takes some doing. The current AL West standings have Houston in line for its eighth division title and 10th postseason appearance in the past 12 years. Over that time, Astros pitchers have won three Cy Young Awards — two for Justin Verlander, one for Dallas Keuchel. Six other starters (Gerrit Cole, Framber Valdez, Lance McCullers Jr., Hunter Brown, Collin McHugh, and Yusei Kikuchi) have gotten downballot votes.

This year, the first-place Astros’ pitching WAR leader is 29-year-old Peter Lambert. It’s not a classic Astros rotation by any means — Brown and Cristian Javier have both spent a big chunk of the season on the IL — but Lambert is at the front of it nevertheless. No one expected this, least of all Lambert himself. Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Trout has been one of the best hitters of his generation, if not one of the best in baseball annals. Now 35 years old and in his 16th major league season — all with the Los Angeles Angels — the pride of Millville, New Jersey has left the yard 424 times while logging a 163 wRC+ over 7,765 plate appearances. A 12-time All-Star and three-time MVP, he has been awarded nine Silver Sluggers.

When Trout arrives in Cooperstown — already with 90.2 WAR, enshrinement is basically a fait accompli — he will do so as a slugger who embraced a relatively straightforward approach. Much like his longtime contemporary Bryce Harper, who was featured in our Talks Hitting series back in May, Trout is steadfastly old school in the batter’s box. It’s hard to argue with the results. While no longer in his prime — not even legends can defeat Father Time — he is undeniably an all-time great.

Trout sat down to talk hitting prior to Tuesday’s game at Fenway Park.

———

David Laurila: How much have you changed as a hitter since signing your first professional contract?

Mike Trout: “I’m pretty much the same guy. I try to keep it that way. If you look at when I was younger — high school to early in pro ball — it’s pretty much the same now. I mean, there have been tweaks here and there. It might look a little different, but I feel like I’m the same hitter.”

Laurila: Can you elaborate on “might look a little different?”

Trout: “Subtle differences in my setup. The main thing is my contact points, and you probably wouldn’t see much difference there, but the setup is what gets you to that spot. That’s what I’m working on during the times I’m trying to figure stuff out.”

Laurila: Is that basically a feel thing? Read the rest of this entry »