I don’t want to be rude, but here’s a fact of life: I pay less attention to the Nationals than the average team in Major League Baseball. It’s not because I have a grudge against them or anything; I went to college in Virginia and have a ton of family in the D.C. area, so I know an absolute ton of Nats fans. They’re just not that interesting at the moment, and there’s a lot of baseball to watch, so someone has to slide down the priority queue.

When I have paid attention to the Nationals, though, I’ve liked what I’ve seen. I thought they made some smart signings this offseason. They’ve done a good job of giving plenty of playing time to interesting players. Lane Thomas might never have found a regular home if the Nats hadn’t come calling, Joey Meneses is being given every chance to play out of a season-starting slump, and Hunter Harvey looks like a nice bullpen arm for the trade deadline.

In my chat this week, someone mentioned that the Tigers would be in the thick of the AL Central race if they’d merely held onto Jeimer Candelario and Isaac Paredes. And that drove a realization for me: Candelario looks good again. Is he the real deal? Can some contending team plug him in at third base and have an All-Star–level contributor? Let’s find out. Read the rest of this entry »

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It’s been a topsy-turvy year in baseball, at least from a team perspective. Shohei Ohtani is still great, and so are Ronald Acuña Jr. and Juan Soto, but the teams leading the charge look nothing like last year’s playoff hopefuls. The Rangers, Diamondbacks, and Reds are in first place in their respective divisions. The Orioles are in second place but sport the third-best record in the game.

In a lot of ways, those teams are doing well because they have great players. That’s just kind of how it works, you know? You don’t get good by having a pile of bad players. That makes it harder to suggest clean upgrades. Sure, occasionally you get a situation like Texas’ outfield mishmash or the back end of Cincinnati’s rotation, but for the most part, “how do we get good players to upstart teams?” is a self-solving problem. The teams are good because they have good players, and there’s just no need to complicate it more than that.

A lot of the good hitters and starters now are the same guys who were good half a decade ago, so teams build their farm systems accordingly. Each of these four surprising teams has core position players and starters who will be there a while. Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman, Corbin Carroll and Zac Gallen, Marcus Semien and Corey Seager, the entire Reds infield: they’re pillars of their respective franchises. Read the rest of this entry »

Bryce Miller led off last Friday’s game with a fastball to Yandy Díaz. He missed low and away, and Diaz took the pitch for ball one. Miller came back with another fastball, wildly away, then another one low to send the count to 3–0. But then things turned. He threw another fastball right down the middle for strike one, fired one past Díaz for strike two, and finally threw a perfectly-located missile that Díaz waved through. Six pitches, six fastballs, and one out: it’s exactly how Miller drew it up at home.

The rest of the first inning held more of the same. He threw Wander Franco three straight fastballs to garner another strikeout, one that Luke Raley tapped into play (he reached on a fielding error), then six straight fastballs to Randy Arozarena to duplicate the 3–0-to-strikeout path he’d walked against Diaz. All told, Miller threw 16 fastballs in the first inning and nothing else whatsoever.

To some extent, this was an unsurprising tactic. Miller boasts one of the best fastballs in baseball, period. It’s one of those mindbending pitches that seems to defy gravity by rising out of its path halfway to home plate. Whether you’re looking at it statistically or visually, it’s hard to find faults. He’d used it nearly two-thirds of the time heading into last Friday’s game. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers came into 2023 with a ton of question marks. Was a platoon of James Outman and Trayce Thompson truly the answer in center field? Was Miguel Rojas a sufficient backstop given Gavin Lux’s injury? Was Jason Heyward’s bat salvageable, and where would he play if it was? Was Miguel Vargas ready? The offense was hardly up to the standards of the team’s recent run.

They didn’t answer all those questions positively, but with the benefit of hindsight, the offense seems fine. The team is hitting a collective .243/.328/.446, good for a 110 wRC+. They’re one of the best baserunning teams in baseball. Mookie Betts can play shortstop now, which is neat. But they’ve exchanged those worries for one that has dogged every team in baseball over the years: Is there enough starting pitching to go around?

In the past week, the Dodgers were dealt two more blows on that front. One is a bump in the road: Clayton Kershaw’s sore left shoulder sent him to the IL Monday, where he hopes to make a minimum 15-day stay. That’s mildly concerning, but if Kershaw and the Dodgers are right, it’s just a temporary setback. One of Kershaw’s potential replacements got far worse news, however. Yesterday, the club announced that Dustin May will have elbow surgery to repair his flexor tendon, which means he’s done pitching in 2023. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another look at five things that caught my eye in baseball this week. As usual, I’m following a template set by Zach Lowe, who is great at his job and popularized the concept. Summer doldrums are here for many teams, but nearly everyone is in the race and there’s still plenty of fun baseball happening. I was particularly drawn to two young catchers this week, as well as two key members of the 2019 World Series winning Nats and some great baserunning. A quick programming note: I’m spending this whole weekend on vacation and not watching any baseball, so this column will take a break next Friday and return the following week. Let’s get started.

1. Patrick Corbin (Briefly) Returning to Form
I won’t surgarcoat this – Patrick Corbin has been one of the worst starters in baseball over the past three years. He went from key cog in the Nats’ World Series machine to a guy who couldn’t buy an out in seemingly no time at all. He has a 5.89 ERA since the start of 2021. The only worse marks posted by a pitcher with 200 or more innings belong to Dallas Keuchel, who played himself out of baseball with remarkable speed in 2022, and ex-teammate Chad Kuhl, who got released earlier this week. Keuchel accrued his 6.35 ERA over 222 innings; Corbin has thrown a remarkable 421. He’s actually among the top 25 starters in innings pitched over those years, despite the eye-watering ERA. Read the rest of this entry »

Want a good example of how tough it is to pitch? Look at Sandy Alcantara. He was the consensus NL Cy Young last year, with a 2.28 ERA accrued across a whopping 228.2 innings. Stamina, command, grounders, and strikeouts: what more could you ask for? I had him 10th on last season’s Trade Value Series and if anything, the consensus feedback I received rated him even more highly.

Of course, the good times didn’t continue, which is why I’m writing this article. Alcantara has been downright ordinary this year – he came into last night’s game with a 5.08 ERA. He’s walking more batters, striking out fewer, and getting fewer grounders. He’s averaging fewer innings per start. Every single bright light in Alcantara’s 2022 performance has been dimmed this year.

The reason why isn’t particularly hidden: as Robert Orr documented back in May, Alcantara’s changeup is the culprit. It was his best pitch last year. By pitch values, it’s been his worst pitch this year. At the time, he was throwing it in the strike zone too frequently, and batters weren’t chasing the pitch when he left the zone. He wasn’t getting the same downward bite as last year, either, which helped explain the other problems. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re like me, this year’s bumper crop of pitching prospect debuts has overwhelmed you. I write about baseball for a living, and it still gets to be too much for me sometimes. Mason Miller, Bryce Miller, Taj Bradley, Bobby Miller, Grayson Rodriguez, Andrew Abbott, Michael Grove… you could almost make an entire starting rotation just out of Millers. Some of these debuts have been spectacular. Some have been lackluster. Some are works in progress. It’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s hype.

That leads me to Eury Pérez, our top pitching prospect and perhaps the most anticipated debut of the year. It’s easy to equate all debuts, or at least to think of them as quite similar until a pitcher does something to set himself apart. Don’t fall for that trap, though. I’m here to tell you: Pérez is amazing, and it’s time to start paying attention to him if you’ve been missing out.

One thing is almost universally true about the heralded pitching debuts this year: these guys have stuff coming out their ears. I don’t mean that in an ‘ew gross earwax’ way, either: they’re tooled up like you wouldn’t believe. I think that’s just the way the world works now. Teams are better than ever before at applying objective measurements to individual pitches. In the past, a guy toiling in Hi-A with so-so numbers wasn’t going to the bigs regardless of how much vertical break he imparted. Now, if you’re throwing a fastball that looks at home in the majors, your team knows right away. Read the rest of this entry »

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Welcome to another installment of Five Things, a look at odd circumstances and delightful happenings that caught my eye this past week. With the NBA solidly in its offseason, Zach Lowe’s column is taking a break, which means I might be the only Things show in town right now. This week was an awesome one for watching baseball, and I had a hard time narrowing the list down. I hope you like legends making big plays, unheralded rookies swinging games, and two Bay Area teams headed in opposite directions. Who am I kidding? Of course you like those things. Let’s get to it.

1. Joey’s Back!
The Reds are so much fun that I thought about making an entire five things column out of things I’m loving in Cincinnati these days, but I think we just call that an article, so I’m going to settle for writing about one of the best parts of their recent winning streak. As fun as it’s been to see the baby Reds gain confidence and romp to the top of the NL Central, there was something missing. All these kids are fun, but they were missing the team’s best player in a generation while he rehabbed in preparation for what will almost certainly be his last ride.

I started to get excited when Joey Votto’s goofy bus driver persona resurfaced. But I won’t lie to you: I was worried that he might not fit in as well as hoped. The infield was already packed with contributors, and Votto might lead the team to some tough playing time decisions they didn’t really want to make. He wasn’t even that good last year! It was definitely not preordained that everything would work out. Read the rest of this entry »