When Aaron Judge is healthy, he’s the most dangerous hitter in baseball. Sometimes I get alarmed at how uncontroversial a statement that is; ours is a sport that so frequently humiliates those who make such sweeping, unequivocal judgments as those.

But the empirical evidence is what it is. Judge has played 150 or more games in a season four times in his career. In those four seasons, he’s led all position players in WAR four times and led the league in wRC+ three times. He’s been named AL MVP three times and finished second once, ahead of some real doozies: Cal Raleigh’s 60-homer year, Bobby Witt Jr.’s 10.5-WAR campaign in 2024, Shohei Ohtani’s best pitching season — in fact, a healthy Judge is the only thing that’s ever trumped a healthy Ohtani in an MVP race.

So again, it’s not uncontroversial to say that when Judge is healthy he’s the best hitter in the world. He has not, however, always been healthy. Least of all this season, when he missed three months with a broken rib. And now, the single-season AL home run king is back on the IL with a calf strain. The timing could not be worse. Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, the end of September. For most teams in baseball, it’s a time for planning. Out of the race? It’s time to plan for the future. Playoff spot locked up? Time to plan for October. The Brewers are no exception. They’ve cruised to a postseason bye and look very likely to end the year as the top overall seed. But while the games the rest of the regular season aren’t of huge import to them, one decision is: What to do about Kyle Harrison.

If Jacob Misiorowski hadn’t been the Brewers’ biggest story this year, Harrison would’ve been. After a few tough years in San Francisco and a rocky half-season in Boston, he arrived in Milwaukee in the Caleb Durbin trade and impressed right away. He struck out eight in his first start. He kicked it into overdrive by the end of April. An early summer slowdown notwithstanding, he had spectacular numbers at the All-Star break, and I was surprised he missed earning his first appearance at the Midsummer Classic.

In the end, he wouldn’t have played in the game anyway. The Brewers put him on the IL on July 11 with forearm tightness. When he returned in August, he was down a few ticks of velocity and looked like he was searching for the form that had so befuddled hitters earlier in the year. After a few near-misses and inefficient outings, the wheels fell off in Chicago on August 31; the Cubs tagged him for nine runs in 3.2 innings, courtesy of a gruesome five home runs. In his next start, at Cincinnati on September 6, he gave up six more runs and walked as many as he struck out. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Ron Coomer was a solid hitter while playing for four teams, mostly the Minnesota Twins, across the 1995-2003 seasons. A corner infielder who took his hacks from the right side, the Chicago-area native counted 92 round-trippers among his 827 base knocks. An All-Star with the Twins in 1999, he later suited up for the Cubs, Yankees, and Dodgers.

He is currently in his 13th season as a color analyst in the Chicago Cubs radio booth. Working along the legendary Pat Hughes, Coomer not only provides insight gleaned from his playing days, he consistently contributes entertaining anecdotes. Given those attributes, he was an ideal candidate for an installment of our Challenging Career Quiz series.

As with most of the dozen players-turned-broadcasters who preceded him, I began by asking who he faced the most times.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Would it be Scott Karl?”

Coomer wasn’t particularly close with his guess. He matched up against the erstwhile Milwaukee Brewer a total of 25 times, whereas he faced Chuck Finley 45 times.

“Really?” Coomer said upon learning it was the longtime California/Anaheim Angels southpaw, against whom he went 11-for-42 with a pair of home runs. “I remember Chuck very well. I remember getting some hits off him, and I really remember that I got a lesson taught to me when I was a young big league player. He threw me a pitch inside and I blasted it, but hit it way foul at the Metrodome. I thought, ‘Well, he’s not throwing that again.’ I was wrong. He doubled up and struck me out on the same fastball inside. I went, ‘Hmmm, OK. Don’t forget that.’ I think this was my first year in the big leagues.” Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks!

12:01

Jay Jaffe: Welcome to my final chat of the regular season.

12:02

Jay Jaffe: The playoff picture is still unsettled. Yesterday I dove into the remaining possibility of tiebreaker scenarios https://blogs.fangraphs.com/untying-the-tiebreaker-scenarios-one-more-…

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Alas, we won’t get tiebreaker games because of the Fun Police at MLB headquarters

12:03

Jay Jaffe: On Friday I checked in on Elly De La Cruz’s big season https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-red-hot-elly-de-la-cruz/, and earlier last week I wrote about Pete Alonso’s return to Citi Field https://blogs.fangraphs.com/pete-alonsos-return-to-citi-field-turns-me…

12:05

Jay Jaffe: I’m working on something on the weakest spots on the remaining contenders. Aaron Judge was already in my lede due to the uncertainty regarding his calf strain, and now we’ve learned that he received a PPP injection https://bsky.app/profile/chelseajanes.bsky.social/post/3mw4kutow4s2a

Read the rest of this entry »

Did you see Chase Meidroth’s 2026 season coming? If you expected Meidroth to launch 15 home runs, to put up a four-win season, to be a top-30 position player, then by all means, stand up and take a bow, invest in some Powerball tickets, try your hand at writing horoscopes.

When he debuted last year, patience was his calling card. No qualified batter swung less often at pitches in the zone, and because he had the fifth-lowest bat speed, pitchers threw the ball over the plate and invited him do his worst. I mean that almost literally. When Meidroth swung at a pitch in the zone, he ran a .278 wOBA, which ranked 293rd out of 308 batters (minimum 1,000 total pitches seen). When those swings resulted in balls in play, his .295 wOBA ranked 229th out of the 237 (minimum 250 BIP). But let me share with you some wisdom courtesy of C.S. Lewis: “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”

What a sad world it would be if everybody just repeated their rookie season until they retired, if nominative determinism (or, in the case of most ballplayers named Chase, the opposite) were real. Meidroth came into spring training with a new dream. “Just shortening up my swing a little bit,” he told James Fegan for Sox Machine back in February. “Just shortening up the leg kick a little bit. It got a little high last year.” He also opened up his stance and moved up in the box. The goal, Chicago’s hitting coaches explained, was not necessarily to make Meidroth’s already extremely short stroke even shorter, but to help him put the ball in the air a bit more often. The dream came true. Meidroth is hitting more fly balls and line drives and fewer groundballs and popups. This year, he has exactly tripled his 2025 total of five home runs, he’s exactly doubled his .067 ISO to .134, and he’s, well, OK, he’s improved his 87 wRC+ all the way to 112, which is a huge deal, but only an increase of 28.736%. I never promised you all the numbers would be round.

The weird thing is that Meidroth is both swinging the bat and hitting the ball softer than ever. His bat speed dropped from 67.4 mph to 66.9 mph, which moved him from the fifth- to fourth-lowest qualifier. His fast-swing rate dropped from 1.6% to 1.1%. His average and 90th-percentile exit velocities dropped, as did his hard-hit rate. And yet he’s literally doubled his ISO. Read the rest of this entry »

Unless the Los Angeles Angels win their final six games and somehow figure out how to get Major League Baseball to overturn the results of 15 others, the club will finish below the .500 mark for the 11th consecutive season. This postseason will mark the 12th in a row to not feature any Halos, and it has been 17 years since the last time they won a game in the playoffs. The Arte Moreno era is ending, with Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke taking over the helm. And while Kroenke has a mixed record as an owner, a mixed record would qualify as progress after Moreno. New ownership tends to represent a new beginning for a team, setting up an important question: Can the Angels return to playing October baseball in the near future? After all, while the team doesn’t have the same revenue as the Dodgers, it’s still located in the second-most-populous metropolitan area in the United States; theoretically, they have the resources to speed up the process.

I like to joke about baseball’s Anna Karenina issue, because I think the novel’s first line — “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” — is an even more appropriate observation for baseball teams than it is for families. All great baseball teams look kind of the same, but every lousy team looks different. As bad teams go, the Angels have never been spectacularly lousy; if they fail to at least split their last six games, 2026 will be the first time ever that the franchise has lost 100 games. Still, this is a franchise that hasn’t figured out how to play .500 ball while employing the best player of the 2010s and the likely best player of the 2020s. They even had both of those guys on the team for a while! That the Angels have tended to hover just below mediocre rather than being hilariously awful is probably one of the reasons they’ve never truly blown things up and tried something radically different. The Angels never reached a point where they just threw stuff against the wall to see what sticks, something the White Sox finally accepted a few years ago, and that the Rockies appear to be starting to accept now.

If the Angels were to compete again soon, where would the talent come from? At first blush, there’s no amount of squinting that can make the Angels look like they have the foundation of a solid team. Mike Trout is still pretty good, but he’s a galaxy away from the player he once was, and as hard as it is to believe, he turned 35 last month. Zach Neto is solid, but if you listed the rest of the starting lineup and told me that I was looking at the starting lineup for the Durham Bulls or the Round Rock Express, I might believe you.

To get a more comprehensive look at the team’s offensive future, I ran updated WAR and OPS+ projections for the Angels over the next five seasons. I’ve included pretty much everyone on the roster or in the high minors, as well as those top prospects who are at a minor league level where projections are practical. That leaves out intriguing players like Johnny Slawinski, Joswa Lugo, and Yilver De Paula, but we’re also talking about non-elite prospects at the very low levels, so the median outlook for their projections is going to be fairly low. Still, it’s worth keeping in mind that there are at least a few additional lottery tickets out there for the Angels.

To make a quick read of the table easier, I’ve highlighted all of the 3-WAR projected seasons in red and all of the 2-WAR projected seasons in yellow. I’ve also blacked out the seasons where a player isn’t under team control, or where ZiPS is highly confident that they won’t be in baseball based on their performance. Oh, and I threw in Anthony Rendon for the sake of curiosity:

There… isn’t a lot of color in that chart. ZiPS doesn’t see anyone beyond Neto as a key part of a contending team. Trout is almost certainly going to become less and less of a contributor in coming seasons, and Denzer Guzman and Christian Moore look more like complementary options than guys threatening to attend a string of All-Star games (though Guzman does have some decent projected upside). Even given the very real possibility that ZiPS is underrating Arjun Nimmala, that’s still a stunning lack of offensive talent in the organization.

Let’s move on to the pitching, where things do look a bit better. There are no borderline star seasons projected, so I’ve highlighted all the 100 ERA+ seasons in yellow:

Reid Detmers and Walbert Ureña both project as very good mid-rotation starters, and the latter is a long way from free agency. There may be No Such Thing as a Pitching Prospect©, but ZiPS does think Tyler Bremner is likely to be at least solid. None of the rest of the arms look amazing, but the Angels do have an interesting bunch of plausible bullpen candidates, though nobody who would blow your mind. If the Angels get lucky with either Grayson Rodriguez or George Klassen, and Najer Victor figures out the significance of that white house-shaped pentagon next to the batter, it’s a pitching staff they could make quite decent with a few splashy upgrades.

Sum it all up, and ZiPS sees the Angels as a 70-win team in 2027, with only minor growth from there based on their in-organization options. To that end, the team’s player development absolutely has to improve; the Angels only barely moved out of the bottom third of our farm rankings on the last update, the first time they’ve done so since 2020. That’s particularly concerning for a team that hasn’t contended in more than a decade. Hopefully the team will move on from a draft philosophy that emphasizes high-floor/low-ceiling prospects who can be promoted to the majors very quickly.

As for their options beyond the organization, could the Angels contend with a spending spree next year? I get asked that question fairly regularly in my weekly chats, so at least someone is interested in the answer, or at least wants to trick me into writing about the Angels. Let’s give it a spin.

A contending Angels team needs a high-end starting pitcher, a veteran bulk arm, and probably three additional good relievers. Here’s one set of potential additions:

Most of the names here are interchangeable with other options, but you can’t really fake signing Tarik Skubal and have to go with the real thing. ZiPS estimates that doing so would make the Angels a 77-85 team, but also one that just added more than $80 million in salary to get there.

As for the offense, it needs a lot of work and there is only so much they can practically do, even in an ultra-aggressive buying frenzy. Assuming that Trout stays at DH, they certainly need a couple of outfielders, and there’s no Aaron Judge to sign. The corner infield spots aren’t the weakest on the roster, but Teruaki Sato is one of the best players (possibly) available, and I’d like a bit more certainty at second base if we’re doing full-on win-now mode:

You may have noted the problem I’m running into for the quick-fix route: There’s a hard limit on just how many difference-makers there are available in free agency. These four signings probably add another $80 million to the payroll, and once you throw in the player benefits, the Angels would have a luxury tax payroll creeping into the $300 million range. Their projection would only improve to 83-79, and while that would be the team’s best year in a decade, it’s a pretty brutal projection to intentionally pay $300 million for.

In the end, the Angels don’t appear to have enough in-house options to make buying their way into contention a real possibility. That means that the road ahead will be a lot harder, with them eating some awful seasons without any pretense of contending, trying some new things, and taking some chances, all of which the franchise has struggled with for the last decade. As it turns out, needing to replace about 20 players on your roster isn’t something you can do quickly. By the time the Angels are good again, we might be talking about the next lockout!

We’ve made it to the final week of the regular season. There are still two divisions in the American League up for grabs, a couple of long-shot playoff hopefuls looking to make a last-minute run, and playoff seeding to fight over. It should make for a dramatic end to a great season.

Our power rankings use a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant ranking format that measures teams’ relative strength and is very reactive to recent performance. To avoid overweighting recent results during the season, we weigh each team’s raw Elo rank using our coin flip playoff odds (specifically, we regress the playoff odds by 50% and weigh those against the raw Elo ranking, increasing in weight as the season progresses to a maximum of 25%). The weighted Elo ranks are then displayed as “Power Score” in the tables below. As the best and worst teams sort themselves out between now and October, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise remains reactive to hot streaks and cold snaps. If you’re looking for a visual representation of the ups and downs of your team throughout the season, look no further than the brand new Power Rankings Board in the FanGraphs Lab.

First up are the full rankings, presented in a sortable table. Below that, I’ve grouped the teams into tiers with comments on a handful of clubs. You’ll notice that the official ordinal rankings don’t always match the tiers — there are times where I take editorial liberties when grouping teams together — but generally, the ordering is consistent. One thing to note: The playoff odds listed in the tables below are our standard Depth Charts odds, not the coin flip odds that are used in the ranking formula.

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It was a great week for the Brewers. They won their fourth straight NL Central title and sixth in the last nine years, and also set another franchise record for wins in a single season, one year after setting the previous record. They now have a chance to win 100 games for the first time in club history this week and still have the top seed in the NL to play for.

The Rays swept the Athletics and won their series against the Red Sox last week to put some distance between themselves and the Yankees in the AL East race. The gap in the division is now six games, and even though the two rivals play each other four times during the final week of the season, it would take a massive collapse from Tampa Bay to upset the current standings. Because the Rays also currently lead the season series with the Yankees, 6-3, all they need is to win one of the four games in New York to take the division title. With Shane McClanahan still recovering from his forearm injury — his availability for the playoffs is up in the air — Freddy Peralta has stepped up to lead the pitching staff over the last few weeks. Across his last five starts, he’s allowed just three runs in 28 2/3 innings. That’s the kind of production the Rays were hoping to get when they acquired him at the trade deadline.

The Dodgers are getting all their pieces in place for the postseason. Andy Pages and Roki Sasaki will be activated off the IL on Tuesday, and Shohei Ohtani should follow on Wednesday. There’s a lingering question about Blake Snell’s status after he injured his groin last week, but it sounds like he’ll be able to make a start during the final weekend of the season. And even though the majority of the year has been a slog for Kyle Tucker, his bat seems to have finally woken up at the right time; he collected nine hits and three home runs last week.

Having won 13 of their last 14 games, the Padres are peaking at exactly the right moment. They’ve surged five games ahead of the Diamondbacks and one ahead of the Phillies in the NL Wild Card standings, and are now tied with the Cubs for the top spot. San Diego’s final series of the season against Arizona still looms large, especially if the Friars stumble against the Dodgers in the series beforehand. You’re probably familiar with Fernando Tatis Jr.’s hot streak — he blasted four home runs last week to bring his total in September up to eight — but the biggest contributor to the Padres’ success recently has been Ty France. He had 12 hits and a home run last week and has posted a fantastic 168 wRC+ during the second half of the season.

After a couple of years away from the top, the Braves are NL East champions again — it’s their seventh division title in the last nine years. Atlanta’s dominance this year has been a welcome return to form. Even though his season has been a bit up and down, Ronald Acuña Jr. is looking like the superstar that won the MVP back in 2023 again. Last week, he smacked three home runs, including a go-ahead grand slam on Saturday, and is running a 191 wRC+ in September.

A little more than a week after being activated off the IL, Aaron Judge is back on the shelf, this time with a calf injury sustained on Wednesday. His availability for the playoffs is still up in the air, though he’s confident that he’ll be able to return sooner rather than later. Thankfully, Jazz Chisholm Jr. should be activated off the IL on Tuesday, and there’s some confidence that Trent Grisham will also be ready to return for the postseason. It helps that Ben Rice has bounced back from a rough August to post a 192 wRC+ in September. Still, Judge’s injury is a major blow to the Yankees’ hopes for a deep October run.

Even though the Red Sox lost both of their series last week, they managed to clinch a postseason berth on Sunday. It’s the cap to a remarkable turnaround after the team looked completely lost in mid-June. Boston can officially secure the second Wild Card spot with a couple of wins against the Guardians this week. Then the team can turn its attention to the Yankees and the rematch of last year’s Wild Card matchup between these two historic rivals.

Nothing is going to come easy for the Phillies over the next few weeks. The team placed Jesús Luzardo on the IL last week with a shoulder injury, but thankfully, it sounds like he’ll be ready to pitch in the playoffs. But before they count their chickens, they need to actually clinch a playoff spot. Philadelphia is four games up on the Diamondbacks in the NL Wild Card race, but its upcoming opponents are no cake walk; the Phillies have the Brewers and Rays on the schedule to finish off the regular season. Facing two of the best teams in baseball is quite a test ahead of the postseason, and the Phillies haven’t exactly been playing well lately.

The biggest concern for the Cubs right now is the status of Alex Bregman. He was struck by a foul ball in the face while standing in the on-deck circle during Sunday’s game and was taken to the hospital for further evaluation. Alongside Pete Crow-Armstrong, Bregman has been one of the best hitters in baseball since the All-Star break. It would be a huge blow if the third baseman had to miss any significant amount of time at this point in the season. As for Crow-Armstrong, he’s two stolen bases away from joining the 40/40 club. He put a few finishing touches on his MVP case last week by bopping four more home runs, bringing his season total up to 45.

There was some upheaval in the two division races represented in this tier. Entering last week one game behind the White Sox in the AL Central standings, the Guardians took two of three games against the South Siders in a dramatic series, which included a walk-off on Tuesday and an improbable go-ahead homer on Wednesday. From there, although Chicago took advantage of playing — and winning — on Thursday while Cleveland was off to pull back into a tie atop the division, the Guardians just kept winning, sweeping the the Athletics over the weekend to bring their winning streak to five. José Ramírez finally broke out of his extended slump, tallying nine hits, a home run, and four stolen bases last week.

As for the White Sox, they won three of their four games against the the Tigers, but that one loss was enough to drop them to a game behind Cleveland in the Central. Still, the Sox have a three-game cushion for the final AL Wild Card spot, and they own the tiebreaker over the Guardians, meaning both first place and a potential first-round bye are still in their sights. Miguel Vargas is carrying most of the load for the lineup right now, hitting three home runs last week, but he needs some support if Chicago wants to make some noise in the postseason.

Over in the AL West, the Astros were swept by the Braves this past weekend, allowing the Rangers to jump into first place with a .500 record. Texas enters this week one game up, but crucially Houston holds the tiebreaker. If the Rangers can manage to hang on, it would be just their second postseason appearance in the last decade. The last time they made the playoffs, they won the World Series.

The Houston bullpen was responsible for the backbreaking losses on Saturday and Sunday, but the lack of offense has been a much bigger problem. Over the Astros’ last 10 games, they’ve scored more than four runs in a game just once. Yordan Alvarez looked fine last week (eight hits, including two home runs) after his ankle scare the previous weekend, and Jeremy Peña has been great too (10 hits, three homers), but the rest of the lineup has been struggling. During this 10-game stretch, Houston hitters not named Alvarez or Peña have combined for an ugly 55 wRC+.

The Diamondbacks managed to keep their slim playoff hopes alive with a pair of wins over the Yankees on Saturday and Sunday. The first victory was a walk-off and the second was highlighted by a go-ahead grand slam from Nolan Arenado. Arizona needs to take care of business in Colorado and get some help from the Dodgers to ensure that the final series against the Padres has some stakes. There’s a chance the Phillies could crash out, opening another window for the Snakes, but the direct path is through San Diego.

The Blue Jays’ hopes for a last-minute surge into the playoffs were dashed last week when they lost both of their series to the Tigers and Rangers. They’re three games back and have the Astros to contend with if they want to try and sneak into that final Wild Card spot. It’s probably too little, too late, but the team is activating Trey Yesavage off the IL on Monday as one more reinforcement ahead of a final push.

The series between the Orioles and Mets last week in Queens turned out to be more interesting than you’d expect from two teams mired in hugely disappointing seasons. Pete Alonso made his first appearance as a member of the opposing team at Citi Field and wound up hitting his 300th career home run on Tuesday, a game-tying shot in the ninth inning. He received a huge ovation from the hometown crowd, which drew some irksome comments from a few Mets players and staff after the game. Baltimore wound up sweeping New York to cut its deficit in the AL Wild Card race to 2.5 games. Alas, a sweep by the Brewers over the weekend slammed the door shut on any playoff hopes the O’s still had.

Even though the Marlins’ season essentially ended with that 12-game losing streak back in July, they have made some significant progress in their quest to become a contending club. Otto Lopez looks like a star they can build the lineup around, while Eury Pérez and Max Meyer should be strong enough to anchor the pitching staff in the years ahead. There’s also a cohort of young prospects in the upper minors who should be making their debuts soon. The future in Miami is brighter than it’s been in a while.

This is the huge step forward the Reds were hoping to see from Elly De La Cruz. In September, he has blasted seven home runs, including in five straight games earlier this month, and is running a major league-best 236 wRC+. It’s too bad the rest of Cincinnati’s roster is a bit of a mess. Sal Stewart has been excellent as De La Cruz’s sidekick, but the starting rotation has struggled mightily, and the big injury to Hunter Greene has thrown the ceiling of that group up in the air heading into next year. Still, building around a superstar like De La Cruz should make things easier if the resources to improve the rest of the roster are made available.

The AL Central crown runs through Kansas City; both the White Sox and Guardians travel to face the Royals during the final week of the season. Unfortunately, the Royals haven’t been playing well enough recently to act as a spoiler. They ended August with a 13-3 stretch, but they’ve been the worst team in the AL in September, with just five wins in 18 games.

It took a lot longer than expected, but the Twins were finally eliminated from the playoff race last week. It was a drama-filled week, too. They won a wild extra-inning walk-off affair against the Yankees on Wednesday and then were walked-off twice against the Angels between two shutout victories over the weekend. Even though they all made their big league debuts over the last few weeks, Walker Jenkins, Kaelen Culpepper, and Emmanuel Rodriguez never all appeared in a game together. That trio represents the future of the organization, so it’s a little disappointing that that future couldn’t be realized in a small way this year.

Read the rest of this entry »

Despite a middling second half, the Nationals have been one of this season’s pleasant surprises. After years of feeling both directionless and punchless, they’ve put together a spectacular offensive group and have won more games than in any year since their 2019 World Series championship. They’ve scored more than five runs a game on the season, the third-best mark in the majors, and it has been a team effort. Unfortunately, the pitching staff hasn’t followed suit; they’ve allowed the third-most runs in baseball themselves. But there has been one shining light in that group: Cade Cavalli, the team’s oft-injured first round draft pick from 2020. And they weren’t about to let a good thing go. Last Friday, Cavalli and the Nationals agreed to a four-year, $47 million contract extension with a club option for a fifth year, as Spencer Nusbaum first reported.

Cavalli is a fascinating pitcher – so fascinating that I wrote about him in late July. I think that piece is worth a read – hey, I wrote it – but if you’re looking for the TL;DR, the gist is that two months ago, Cavalli’s career was at an inflection point. His lengthy struggles with injury had limited him to roughly 50 innings before the 2026 season, and he’d scuffled in the minors in 2025 as he worked to build up his workload again. But he was spectacular in the first half of this season, the best arm on the Nats by a fair margin, particularly when taking his underlying numbers into account. What was to come was uncertain, but there were tons of bright outcomes in the distribution of possible futures.

A few months hence, I think we might be living in the best of those outcomes. Cavalli has made nine starts since I wrote about him, and he’s been spectacular, with 70 strikeouts and just 12 walks across 53 innings en route to a 1.87 ERA. He’s been a rare bright spot as the team has sputtered to an 18-23 record since the trade deadline. Thanks in part to the offensive contributors the Nats traded away, they’ve scored only 4.5 runs per game over that span. But they’re looking to the future, not to the past or even the present, and Cavalli’s phenomenal year has made him an indispensable part of that future. Read the rest of this entry »