Cal Raleigh is hot. Thumping three homers in a span of two days has put Big Dumper at 56 on the season with 11 games left to play. That binge gives him a realistic shot at hitting a nice round 60 on the season, a threshold that only an elite few sluggers have ever reached. He’s doing it as a catcher, which is absurd. He left the old single-season home run record for catchers in the dust a long time ago.

As I learned all the way back in first grade, 62 is only two more than 60. Given Raleigh’s predilection for blasting bombs in bunches – he hit six in six games earlier this year, and nine in a separate 11-game stretch – Aaron Judge’s single-season AL home run record (and for some people, though not me, the “true” home run record) is definitely in play.

As is tradition at FanGraphs, when someone goes for a home run milestone, we forecast when it might happen. Whether it’s Judge’s quest for 62, Albert Pujols’ push for 700, or Shohei Ohtani’s bid for 50/50, it’s fun and useful to predict when the actual milestone game will occur. I’ll start with the methodology, but if you’re not into that, there are some tables down below that will give you an idea of when and where Raleigh might hit either his 60th, 62nd, or 63rd homer.

I started with our Depth Charts projection for Raleigh’s home run rate the rest of the way. That’s based on neutral opposition, so I also accounted for park factors and opposition. Since Raleigh is a switch-hitter, I used the specific pitchers the Mariners are expected to face to determine whether he starts each game batting lefty or righty, and also used those pitchers’ home run rate projections to determine opponent strength. I used a blend of projected starter, home run rate, and observed bullpen home run rate to come up with a strength of opposition estimate. That let me create a unique home run environment for each game. I also told the computer to randomly select how many plate appearances Raleigh receives each game, with an average of five most likely but some chance of four or six. Read the rest of this entry »

Look, I get it. You keep refreshing FanGraphs, and it keeps saying that the Mets are 99.9999% likely to make the playoffs (okay, fine, 79.4%). You’ve seen the Mets play, though. They stink! They’re 32-48 since June 13. The White Sox are better than that! We think they’re going to make the playoffs? These Mets?! What, do we not watch the games or something?

Well, to be fair, our models don’t actually watch the games. They’re just code snippets. But given how the Mets’ recent swoon has created the most interesting playoff race in baseball this year, and given that our odds keep favoring them to pull out of a tailspin, the time is ripe to re-evaluate how our playoff odds perform. When we say a team is 80% likely to make the playoffs, what does that mean? Read on to find out.

In 2021, I sliced the data up in two ways to get an idea of what was going on. My conclusions were twofold. First, our model does a good job of saying what it does on the tin: Teams that we give an 80% playoff chance make the playoffs about 80% of the time, and so on. Second, our model’s biggest edge comes from the extremes. It’s at its best determining that teams are very likely, or very unlikely, to make the playoffs. Our flagship model did better than a model that uses season-to-date statistics to estimate team strength in the aggregate, with that coverage of extreme teams doing a lot of the work. Read the rest of this entry »

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Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. That title is quite a mouthful. Every time I submit it, our helpful back end interface informs me that it is “far too long.” You’re not wrong, WordPress. But I lifted the title and the inspiration for this column from Zach Lowe’s basketball feature of the same name, and every time I consider removing the parenthetical part of it, I remember that the frustrations and failures of the game are part of what makes baseball so compelling. If you never disliked anything about sports, they wouldn’t be so fun to follow. So while every item this week involves something I liked, they also all contain an element of something I didn’t care for. Missed plays, bobbled balls, artificially abbreviated outings, below-average defensive units, lengthy injury recoveries – there are things to dislike in each of these. They all brought me extreme joy anyway, though. Let’s get going.

1. Relatable Frustration
Mike Yastrzemski has been everything the Royals could have hoped for since he joined the team at the trade deadline. He leads off against righties, gets platooned against lefties, and plays his habitual right field. He’s been the team’s second-best hitter behind Bobby Witt Jr., a huge boon as they chase slim playoff odds. Also, when he goofs something up, his reactions are very relatable:

You can see what happened there right away. Yaz’s first step was in, but the ball was actually over his head, and tailing towards the foul line so strongly that he couldn’t reach it. Sure, it was only his second start of the year in left field. Sure, he hasn’t played left for more than a handful of games since 2019. And sure, the ball had plenty of slice on it. But he’d probably tell you the same thing you’re thinking: Major league outfielders, particularly solid ones like Yastrzemski, should make that play. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year, the Baltimore Orioles turn out a crop of strapping young hitters who just got done obliterating minor league pitching. You’ve probably heard of many of them. Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, Jackson Holliday, Colton Cowser, Jordan Westburg, Samuel Basallo, the list goes on. All six of those guys will be everyday regulars next year; the only reason they aren’t now is because Rutschman and Westburg are on the IL. But lost in that percolation of prospects is Coby Mayo, whose early major league career hasn’t quite gone as expected. I wondered why – and what Mayo could do to capitalize on his promise.

A year ago, Mayo was comprehensively dominating pitchers meaningfully older than him. He posted a 139 wRC+ in Triple-A at age 22, following up on an equally scintillating 2023 season. He was a preseason Top 100 prospect. His raw power was immediately evident to all observers. He looked like he’d be a key piece of the 2025 Orioles’ playoff run. But that run never materialized, and neither did Mayo’s thumping, mid-lineup offense. Instead, he’s hitting .184/.259/.327 and batting ninth for the last-place Birds.

If you watch Mayo play, one thing jumps off the page: his unconventional uppercut swing. I’m not even quite sure how to describe it, but here’s a video of it at its best:

Swing mechanics aren’t my area of expertise, so I’ll just say it has a little funk to it and move on. The point is that he uses that swing to clobber the ball, and he really does accomplish what he sets out to, bad season notwithstanding. He has elite bat speed, and even in this miserable season, he’s posted good raw power indicators; his EV90, barrel rate, and launch angle suggest that he’s going to be elevating and celebrating plenty over the years to come. Read the rest of this entry »

Every morning, I go to FanGraphs and pull up a few leaderboards. One of my favorites these days shows trailing 30-day plate discipline statistics. Ever since Michael Harris II dug himself a huge hole by swinging at everything and then dug himself out of it by swinging some more, I’ve been checking to see whether he’s reined in his swing-first tendencies. Never fear, he’s still up there hacking — his swing percentage ranks 18th in the majors over the last month — but this isn’t an article about Harris. Here are the top 10 hitters in baseball by swing percentage over the last 30 days:

This generally isn’t a ranking you want to be at the top of. Ezequiel Tovar is on there because he’s never seen a slider he doesn’t like. In the aggregate, this group is hitting horribly over the last month. But there are two exceptions to that statement. Ozzie Albies is having a resurgent stretch, and as you can see from his low swinging strike rate, he’s operating pretty differently from the rest of this group. That’s neat, but Albies also isn’t the focus of today’s article. No, that would be Bryce Harper, who seems to defy everything I know about patience and power.

Sluggers wait for their pitch. I’ve known that for as long as I’ve followed baseball. I grew up on Barry Bonds’ perfect idea of the zone, A-Rod and David Ortiz taking tough pitches off the outside corner, Albert Pujols walking more often than he struck out. And this isn’t some SEAGER issue, either. That metric is about measuring controlled aggression, the ability to swing frequently without bad chases. Corey Seager’s career chase rate is 27.1%. The last time Harper showed that much restraint was 2018. How does he do it?! Read the rest of this entry »

David Hamilton doesn’t wait casually at first base. He lurks, waiting for the slightest opening to take off. Watch an at-bat where Hamilton is on the bases, and he’s often as much a point of discussion as the man at the plate. Take the game between the Red Sox and Guardians on September 1, for example. Hamilton pinch-ran for Carlos Narváez with Connor Wong at the plate. Wong fouled off a bunt for strike one with the entire defense focused on Hamilton at first base. Then Hamilton stole second on the next pitch even with the catcher, pitcher, and infielders all fixed on his every move.

Hamilton isn’t the most prolific basestealer in the majors. He isn’t the most successful. But he is the baserunner who tries to steal most frequently, after adjusting for opportunities, and so he’s a great poster boy for what I’d like to talk about today: stolen base opportunities and takeoff rate.

It doesn’t take much to make a stolen base possible, just a runner and an open base. You do need both of those, though. Draw a walk to load the bases, and you’re not attempting a steal without something very strange going on. Stolen base opportunities aren’t easy to find in a box score or a game recap. They’re the negative space of baseball – no one’s counting them, and it’s easier to see where they aren’t than where they are. So, uh, I counted them. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. You might think that this September is a poor one for baseball drama. The playoff spots in both leagues are fairly decided, give or take a bit of wobbliness from the perpetually star-crossed Mariners and Mets. Few division titles are in play – maybe the NL West or AL East, but neither feels all that likely to flip. But that’s okay, because even the teams that are probably out of it can be fun to watch, and even the teams that are already in it still have seeding to vie for. This week, I’ve turned my eye to a few teams with intriguing storylines in the month to come. I’m focusing my baseball viewing on playoff hopefuls, and there’s plenty to like. So with our customary nod to Zach Lowe of The Ringer, let’s talk baseball.

1. McLean (and Horton and Waldrep and…) Fever
One of my favorite baseball archetypes is the shooting star rookie ace. You know what I’m talking about if it’s happened to your team. Some rookie, often a heralded prospect, makes a mid-season debut and just has it. Their fastball? Unbeatable. Their breaking stuff? It just disappears! And that poise – it’s like they’ve been pitching in the majors for years, not weeks.

Whether you want to harken back to Fernando Valenzuela or rely on a more personally resonant example – 2013 Michael Wacha is my touchstone here – there’s just something special about these meteoric talents. At some point, they’re due for a downturn. How could they not be? It happens to everyone eventually. But until then, we might as well enjoy the ride. Read the rest of this entry »

I was doing some research on hitting the ball in the air the other way when I came across this striking leaderboard:

The five guys who hit the ball hardest the other way when they lift it? Four enormous sluggers and Brice Turang. I was overjoyed by this result at first. I wanted to find a hitter who gets to more power to the opposite field than to the pull side. If Turang is hitting the ball this hard to the opposite side, hard enough to number among the top sluggers in the game, surely it’s because of some particular feature of his swing that manifests only to the opposite field. Let’s just add in pull-side average exit velocity and…

Wait, what the?! Turang hits the ball as hard as Alonso? He has more pull power than Kurtz? This merits further investigation. Luckily, FanGraphs has already been all over it. Esteban Rivera wrote about Turang’s increased bat speed all the way back in May. Michael Baumann highlighted Turang as a potential elevate-and-celebrate candidate. Over at Baseball Prospectus, Timothy Jackson noted that Turang’s bat speed gains have stuck. In fact, his 4.2-mph increase in average swing speed is the largest improvement in the sport. All those gains have brought his swing speed all the way up to… the 22nd percentile. Huh? The guys on that leaderboard with him are in the 94th, 94th, 98th, and 92nd percentiles, respectively. Clearly, swinging harder can’t be the only explanation for Turang’s breakout performance. Let’s go a little deeper than “bat faster ball go far,” shall we? Read the rest of this entry »