Welcome to a new season of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) In Baseball This Week. After a slow, veteran-who-signed-late-this-spring style warmup to the year, it’s time for another dive into the little details that catch my eye each week. It’s the perfect time of year for it. Beautiful weather, early-season optimism, overheard conversations about who should bat third and who’s a bum – it all fuses together to make this one of my favorite parts of the baseball calendar. And even though the WBC whetted my appetite for the spectacular somewhat, there’s really no replacing major league games for the sheer variety of entertainment. I’m sure that Zach Lowe of The Ringer, whose old NBA column format I’ve borrowed, would say the same thing about the basketball regular season. Let’s talk baseball.
1. Ricochets
If you share my baseball consumption habits, it might seem like every weekday offers a Royals game, a Guardians game, or a Royals-Guardians game. And I love it! I’ll take any excuse to watch Maikel Garcia continue his ascent from contact hitter to do-it-all superstar, a kind of modern-day José Ramírez. And I get to watch the actual José Ramírez too? And Bobby Witt Jr.? And Steven Kwan, Vinnie Pasquantino, Bo Naylor, and old favorite Michael Wacha? Both of these teams are sneaky fun, and their series this week didn’t disappoint. Witt might be having a slow start on offense, but he’s still a defensive genius:
Lots of shortstops – pretty much every other shortstop, even – would get only one out, somewhere, on that play. But two?! Ludicrous. When Garcia’s lunging attempt caromed toward Witt, he turned from interested observer to protagonist so smoothly that it looked like he was planning on doing it the whole time. It started with his feet. Instead of charging the ricochet, Witt timed his steps to hop to a stop and get his body in as good a throwing position as he could:
We’ve released a new tool in the FanGraphs Lab. The Paired Pitches tool is a visualizer that shows how the different pitches that a pitcher throws interact with each other. It measures how much gravity, speed, and movement make each pitch diverge from a common center point. It’s probably easiest to start with a picture. This is Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s pitch mix as shown in the Paired Pitches tool:
To use the tool, you pick a pitcher, pick a pitch, and then click anywhere on or around the strike zone to locate that pitch. The tool then locates every other pitch the pitcher throws in relation to that pitch. You can drag any pitch in the resulting graphic to move the locations around, and they’ll remain paired with each other, with the same relative movement distribution:
If you’re wondering why a hitter might swing over a Yamamoto slider in the dirt, it’s because its initial trajectory looks a lot like a middle-middle fastball. If you’re wondering why they might take a cutter on the corner, well, it’s because it looks a lot like a slider in the dirt.
Now for a quick math interlude: The way this tool works is by assuming that each pitch is released from a distinct release point, but aimed so that they would intersect at the same point on the two-dimensional plane of the strike zone if they continued traveling from their release point to home plate with no effects from spin or gravity. Think of it as where a pitch would “go” if you just drew a straight line in the direction the ball is moving immediately upon leaving the pitcher’s hand.
Conveniently enough, that idea of measuring movement in comparison to an imaginary, no-acceleration world and plotting intersect points at home plate is exactly how the math of pitch movement already works. The Paired Pitches tool just does the math for every pitch as though they were “aimed” at a point that puts the anchor pitch wherever you want it.
In practice, that’s sometimes but not always how pitchers use their pitches. Pitchers pair some of their pitches, some of the time, and in different combinations. Take Garrett Crochet. He can pair an in-zone fastball with a diving changeup against righties:
Against lefties, he works off of his sinker, turning the zone into a horizontal nightmare for batters. His sinker lives inside, his sweeper dives away, and he can even use the cutter/sinker pairing to get called strikes on the inner half. The same pitches, paired in different locations, have different effects, which is why you can drag them around in the tool and change anchors:
Now that I’ve shown you how much fun it is to pair pitches and think along with pitchers and catchers, it’s time for a few caveats. This shorthand way of explaining how pitches diverge on their path home isn’t going to explain everything about pitching overnight. Curveballs, in particular, don’t fit into this paradigm well. Pitchers don’t “aim” them, in terms of initial trajectory, at the same spot as their fastballs. Curveballs are so slow that they’d just fall too far on the way home. Instead, pitchers aim at a higher point, which helps explain the distinctive “hump” out of the hand that sometimes helps batters pick them up.
We don’t claim that this tool captures everything about pitch interaction. Pitchers can and do select pitches for how they look compared to one another, but they also employ plenty of other tactics. They might want to throw a pitch on a completely different trajectory than the previous one to change the batter’s eye level. They might want to throw a slider that doesn’t tunnel with anything to take advantage of a batter who doesn’t swing at spin early. But frequently, they want to pair a fastball in with a sweeper away and get batters to swing at both of them:
Below, I’ve compiled a list of tips, tricks, and frequently asked questions from some early testing of this tool:
Bubble sizes are proportional to the movement variation of each pitch. Pitches with variable movement profiles like splitters and changeups have larger bubbles because their movement is less certain from one pitch to the next. Fastballs tend to have smaller variations in their movement. You can change the bubbles to be baseball-sized in the settings.
If a pitch isn’t showing up, it’s probably because that pitcher hasn’t thrown enough of them in the filter/time frame you’re looking at. You can lower the minimums in the dropdown.
This tool, and all Lab tools, now have copy and download options. If you want to share a picture of it, we want you to be able to.
I think the separation lines look pretty sharp, but they can be toggled off in settings.
If you’re using this to think like a pitcher, remember that fastballs pair best with different pitches depending on where they’re located.
Since we’re calculating a lot of pitch metrics and also location, we dynamically calculate vertical approach angle in the Pitch Metrics tab. It’s a great interactive lesson in how much plate location influences approach angle.
Go look at Nolan McLean’s arsenal. It’s so fun – and this tool explains why he has a hell of a time commanding his curveball.
Sean and I expect to make feature updates to the Paired Pitches tool in the coming weeks and months. This version was good enough to release, but we’re still making improvements of our own. We also want to hear what improvements you’d make, so please give us feedback via the menu that pops up on every Lab page.
This isn’t how they drew it up on the North Side this winter. The Cubs won 92 games in 2025, and then they made some additions in the winter. The Brewers, meanwhile, subtracted. Chicago had the best playoff odds of any team in the NL Central, whether you’re talking about our odds, PECOTA’s odds, or pretty much any projection system you can name. The Cubs had exciting rookies, battle-tested veterans, and fun vibes. Surely, they’d sail through 2026.
Nearly two weeks into the season, it’s fair to say that things haven’t gone according to plan. There’s the standings, for one thing: They’re in last place in the NL Central. But this early in the year, only four games separate first and last in the division, so that’s not the biggest problem in Wrigleyville. A bigger concern is that Cade Horton and Matthew Boyd, two of Chicago’s top starting pitchers, hit the IL on consecutive days. Seiya Suzuki hasn’t appeared yet this year, though he’s expected back on Friday.
Horton’s injury looks to be the worst of the two. He left last Friday’s start after feeling forearm discomfort, and after getting some scans over the weekend, he’s seeking a second opinion from Dr. Keith Meister. That ominous turn of phrase doesn’t guarantee a long-term injury, of course, but it’s definitely not a good sign. Pitchers don’t generally seek second opinions from famous surgeons unless there’s a decent chance of surgery.
Boyd was supposed to be the safe option in the Cubs rotation. We had him down for the most innings and the most WAR, the staff ace. His bicep strain might not be all that bad; he noted that he could have pitched through the injury if it weren’t so early in the year. But that’s not really the nature of pitcher injuries, in my experience. Sure, sometimes they’re short. But a guaranteed minimum stay doesn’t exist. I think it’s reasonable to be worried about Boyd’s prognosis until he’s back on a major league mound, even though he seems likely to return far sooner than Horton. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week, Dan Szymborski looked at how much a team’s fortunes can change in the first month of the season. That old truism – you can’t win the World Series in April, but you can lose it – turns out to, in fact, be true. Dan’s research found that even teams we think are good – those projected to win 90 or more games – had meaningfully worse results after a bad April, even if their actual talent remained the same.
In other words, those early losses really do count. But I like to look at things from a glass-half-full perspective, so my takeaway was that there’s still plenty of time to fix a bad start, because it’s still early in the season. But how to fix it? That’s a trickier question. Luckily, “that’s a tricky question” is just FanGraphs for “that’s a fun thing to write an article about,” so I’ve got answers for you. Read the rest of this entry »
Let me tell you a story about a 34-year-old baseball player. Seven games into the new season, there are some worrying signs about his performance. His swing speed is down half a tick, and two full ticks from 2024. His fast-swing rate has declined precipitously. He’s squaring the ball up less frequently than ever, the opposite of what’s supposed to happen when you rein in your swing. He’s never run a lower hard-hit rate. He’s never run a higher infield fly ball rate. Somebody call an ambulance.
… But not for him. The hitter in question is Mike Trout, and he’s off to a scorching start. He’s slashing an absurd .261/.485/.522, good for a 192 wRC+. Whenever process statistics and result statistics diverge this much, this early in the season, I’m tempted to yell “April” in my best Dan Szymborski voice and move on. But when it’s Trout, one of the best players of all time, I’m willing to be more open-minded. Let’s take a quick peek into what’s changed, what hasn’t, and what’s too early to tell.
The most obvious change in Trout’s statistics this year is that he’s walking 30% of the time. Walks have always been a part of Trout’s game, of course. He has a keen eye at the plate, annually notching one of the lowest chase rates in the game, and he makes enough contact that he can grind his way back into at-bats even after falling behind. But 30% is double his career rate. What gives? Read the rest of this entry »
Frank Bowen IV/The Enquirer-USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
In Bubba Chandler’s first start of the 2026 season, he didn’t allow a single hit. Oh yeah, and he struck out more than 30% of the batters he faced. Spectacular! Just, um, don’t look over at the walk column. Oh, you did? Yeah, fine, he walked more than 30% of the batters he faced, too. Oh, and he allowed a run, and didn’t get out of the fifth inning. To understand what Chandler was up to, and what it might mean for the rest of his year, we’ll have to dig a little deeper.
Chandler leaned heavily on his fastball to start his year, as many pitchers do in their first appearance of the season. He breezed through the first inning with 11 straight fastballs, eclipsing 100 mph on the radar gun four times and essentially daring the Reds to hit it. TJ Friedl waved feebly at 100 above the zone. Matt McLain did the same. Chandler’s fastball is dynamite, particularly when he’s locating it high. It explodes upwards, and some offseason tweaks have it moving less arm side than before, making it even harder to square up.
I could watch a montage of Chandler overpowering Reds hitters all day. In fact, you can too:
You can see how difficult it is to track Chandler’s fastball by watching the check swings. The pitch that Jose Trevino, the last batter in that loop, offered at was more than a foot above the zone. The combination of velo, movement, and Chandler’s loping delivery means that hitters have a lot of trouble figuring out where the ball is going. Read the rest of this entry »
In the new season’s early going, the challenge system has been all the rage across the majors. If you don’t believe me, you can read ESPN’s coverage of it, or The Athletic’s, or MLB.com’s, or … well, you get the idea. The coverage has been extensive and positive, and I couldn’t agree with its enthusiasm more. I love the new system, and I’m also really excited to think about challenges in general. There are so many fun angles to consider. So here’s the math nerd’s take on what challenges have looked like so far, and what I’m most interested to learn about them moving forward.
How I’m Thinking About Challenges
Every time a strike or ball is called, there’s an opportunity for a challenge, at least so long as the relevant team has one remaining. That makes it easy to measure the prospective value of a challenge on any given pitch: It’s worth however much flipping the result of that particular pitch would change the game situation in the challenging player’s favor. All we have to do is figure out how many runs were likely to score in the inning in each case and compare the two. Read the rest of this entry »
A week ago, the Cubs roster was light on long-term commitments. Only Alex Bregman and Dansby Swanson held guaranteed contracts that extended past 2027, and only two others – Phil Maton and Shelby Miller – even had guaranteed years in 2027. But as it turns out, Chicago payroll commitments abhor a vacuum. On Tuesday, Pete Crow-Armstrong signed a six-year extension. On Thursday, Nico Hoerner followed suit with a six-year pact of his own, as Michael Cerami first reported. The deal starts in 2027 and is worth $141 million, with minor deferrals that drop the total present value to the mid-130s.
If you don’t catch many Cubs games, it’s easy to overlook Hoerner. His offensive game is most notable for its lack of extremes. He doesn’t walk much. He doesn’t strike out much. He doesn’t hit for a ton of power. He’s not excessively swing happy like so many contact hitters. He doesn’t pound the ball into the ground, but he equally doesn’t sell out to lift and pull. He’s produced low-power, solid-OBP seasons for four years running, and they’ve been almost metronomically consistent: his seasonal wRC+ marks of 108, 103, 102, and 109 work out to a 105 average.
That’s the 105th-best batting line among hitters over that span. That doesn’t sound particularly impressive. Hoerner is wedged between Jake Cronenworth and Mike Yastrzemski, solidly in nice-but-forgettable territory. He’s 57th in OBP over that span, which is a little bit more exciting, but truthfully, he is not a star at the plate.
The fun starts when you get into the rest of his game. Over that same time frame, from 2022-2025, Hoerner is the sixth-best baserunner in the majors. The guys in front of him – Corbin Carroll, Bobby Witt Jr., Trea Turner, Jarren Duran, and Elly De La Cruz – are famed for their exploits on the bases. Hoerner is the slowest of that group by a fair margin, but he makes up for it with excellent instincts and great reads. He’s fifth in the bigs in steals during that span, and his 85% success rate is better than everyone in front of him on the list. When he gets on base, he’s a threat to steal, and yet he almost never gets thrown out. Read the rest of this entry »
