Alright friends, let’s break down the big deadline deal from Saturday night that everyone’s talking about, the one that sent a 29-year-old left-handed pitcher who’s an impending free agent from the AL Central to an NL division leader. That’s right, we’re talking about Bailey Falter.

Well, that was fun.

On Saturday night, just before the big news about Tarik Skubal broke, Jeff Passan of ESPN reported that the Royals had traded Falter and veteran outfielder Lane Thomas to Atlanta. FanSided’s Robert Murray reported that the return was minor league pitchers Carter Holton and Lucas Braun. Falter may be able to help a depleted Braves staff finish out the regular season, but he’s headed to Triple-A Gwinnett. Thomas is the clear headliner here. One more Skubal connection before we move on: The biggest moment of Thomas’ career so far came during Game 5 of the 2024 ALDS, when he powered the Guardians past the Tigers with a grand slam off Skubal. Should the Braves and the Dodgers meet in the playoffs this season, which certainly looks like a possibility right now, that will surely be on the minds of everyone involved.

While Thomas has played all three outfield positions this year, he’s spent most of his time in center. But with Michael Harris II ensconced in center in Atlanta and Ronald Acuña Jr. in right, he’ll now be relegated to left field. That’s probably for the best, as his defense has graded out very badly in center but is roughly average in the corners. What’s more, the Braves could use the help out there. Left field is one of three positions where they merited placement as part of Jay Jaffe’s Replacement-Level Killers series; they’ve gotten 0.4 WAR out of the position this season, which ranks 23rd in baseball.

Of course, they were supposed to have Jurickson Profar in left, but he’s serving his second PED suspension since signing a three-year, $42 million employment contract with the Braves; one can only imagine what his year-end performance review will look like. Mauricio Dubón and Mike Yastrzemski have split time in left in his place, but not quite the way the Braves would have hoped. Yastrzemski started the season there while Dubón filled in for the injured Ha-Seong Kim at shortstop. When Kim returned and Acuña went down with a hamstring injury, Yastrzemski moved to right field, where he shared time with Eli White, and Dubón got left field to himself. Dubón, Yastrzemski, and White have all been below average at the plate this season. With Acuña back from the IL, Dubòn will presumably move into more of a utility role while Thomas platoons with Yaz.

Thomas had a very rough 2025 season, losing time to plantar fasciitis and putting up a 48 wRC+ and -0.5 WAR across 39 games. This year, he’s got a 101 wRC+. That’s almost exactly his career average, and it’s not much of an improvement over Dubón’s 94 mark. Moreover, Dubón’s defense has graded out well this season just about everywhere he’s played. As a result, he’s got 1.7 WAR to Thomas’s 0.8. Even accounting for the fact that Dubón has gotten roughly 100 more plate appearances than Thomas, he’s still been the more productive player this season and not by a little. So why bring in Thomas?

First, Thomas isn’t simply going to absorb Dubón’s plate appearances. Thomas will take some from Dubón, but he’ll also take some from White. Dubón is a great defender, but he hasn’t gotten to show off his versatility of late. He’ll probably get to do more bouncing around the diamond to wherever he can be most useful now. Rookie Jim Jarvis is running a 101 wRC+ at shortstop, but Dubón might end up back at the six should Jarvis stop outperforming his xwOBA.

Second, it doesn’t sound Thomas is just going to be the everyday left fielder. “The plan is not the exact same role he had in Kansas City, where he was playing every day in center,” Braves president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos told reporters. “His strength is hitting left-handers.” Anthopoulos elaborated. “We’ve been facing a lot of left-handed openers. I think there’s been moments when [manager] Walt [Weiss] has been in a tough spot, and where he’s had to use a catcher as a right-handed pinch-hitter, and things like that. I don’t want to speak for Walt, but I think having a second right-handed option along with Eli [White], that would have opened things up for him.” Thomas faced righties nearly 60% of the time in Kansas City, and that number sure sounds like it will be much lower in Atlanta. That would be a big deal, because he’s got serious platoon splits. This season, he’s got an 84 wRC+ against righties and 125 wRC+ against lefties, and that’s actually less extreme than his career numbers.

Third, this graph might have something to do with it:

Thomas got a slow start, but he’s looked much better as the season has gone on. He ran a 124 wRC+ in July, though I’ll note that he’s been ice-cold lately, running a 26 wRC+ over his last 12 games. I doubt the Braves put too much stock in these kinds of splits, but it’s also at least worth mentioning that this is par for the course. Thomas has a career wRC+ of 104 in the second half, compared to a 96 in the first half. Whether or not you believe that he’ll be hotter from here on out, Thomas is also having an interesting season. His walk and strikeout rates are among the best of his entire career, and although his top-end contact quality hasn’t changed much, his average exit velocity and hard-hit rate are the highest he’s put up since 2021. He’s making better swing decisions and making more solid contact this season, which is why his 94 DRC+ is his highest since 2023.

Thomas isn’t a game-changing bat, but you can at least talk yourself into the idea that he’s got more in the tank than his full-season stats indicate. He represents a small upgrade at a position of real weakness for the Braves. He gives them both flexibility and depth, which is rightly a priority with Acuña recovering from a hamstring injury that has already flared up once. Lastly, the Braves should be able to put him in a better position to succeed by letting him spend much more of his time facing lefties.

I don’t know whether the Braves took Falter because they might want to use him or because he represents salary relief for the Royals. He’s making $3.6 million in arbitration, so that’s at least a possibility. He’s spent much of the year on the IL with elbow inflammation, and he’s only made five appearances in Kansas City. The Royals DFA’d him earlier in the year, and his Triple-A numbers, a 3.35 ERA and 3.46 FIP, have been solid over 17 appearances. Atlanta could certainly use the depth, and they’re going to spend the next 30 hours looking for more pitching help. Joey Wentz is out for the season. Spencer Schwellenbach is isn’t yet facing live hitters. Spencer Strider’s future is uncertain. Robert Suarez has been out since June 19. Joe Jiménez, who hasn’t pitched since 2024, had another setback.

Now let’s get to the return. Braun is a 6-foot righty who turns 25 in a couple weeks. He’s got an intriguingly compact delivery that gives him an extremely low release point. It’s deceptive. It must look like the ball is just sort of popping out of his shoulder to hitters:

The Braves took Braun out of Cal State Northridge in the sixth round of the 2023 draft. He’s put up great numbers across the minors. Eric Longenhagen ranked him 10th in the system last year as a 45-FV prospect, seeing him as a future fourth or fifth starter. However, Brendan Gawlowski noted Braun’s lack of a putaway pitch and ranked him 22nd this year as a 40 FV – lower than Holton – despite a long list of positive attributes: great athleticism, a robust arsenal, the ability to hit the strike zone, success in the minors, and the funky delivery I mentioned earlier. “Deception is key here as well,” Brendan wrote, “both modern (a slightly low release) and old school (glove throw, a little hesitation toward the top that can mess with timing). All of those factors are going to be important to maintain because Braun’s stuff is just okay.”

That’s baseball. Will Braun’s funk be enough to keep fooling major leaguers? The best projections say yes, and see him as a future no. 4 starter. Brendan’s not quite so sanguine, seeing his median projection as “a length guy who can flex in and out of the rotation as needed.” We’re not going to know for sure until we see it happen. Knowing this, it’s worth noting that when Braun got promoted to Triple-A this season, his numbers took a step back. His strikeout rate dropped from 25.1% to 16.1% and his walk rate rose from 5.4% to 8.3%. His ERA rose from 3.20 to 3.92, and his FIP and expected numbers took even bigger jumps. Regardless, we’ll probably find out soon enough. Royals GM J.J. Picollo said he hopes Brain will pitch in Kansas City sooner rather than later, which I interpret to mean later this year.

Holton is an undersized lefty who sits 92-94 mph with a herky-jerky delivery and an over-the-top release point. He was a three-year starter at Vanderbilt, but after a brilliant freshman showing, his performance worsened in each of the following years. The Braves drafted him in the second round in 2024, but he underwent Tommy John that August after pitching just two innings and missed the entire 2025 season. Eric ranked him 18th in their system last year as a 40 FV, noting that in those two innings, he showcased an interesting slider. Brendan put him 19th this March (still as a 40 FV), noting that the hard slider really does look good. Unfortunately, Holton doesn’t have much beyond the slider. He’s now 23 years old, and he isn’t putting up great numbers in Low-A. He’s got a 4.32 ERA and 4.53 FIP.

I get that this is not the Tarik Skubal trade, or even the Luis Castillo trade. Thomas’ stock is lower than it was when the Guardians traded for him at the deadline two years ago, and it might seem odd for the pitching-starved Braves to be sending away a starter who seems awfully close to major league-ready. But they’re not in the market for fourth starters right now. The Braves are headed for the playoffs, and they’re looking for ways to improve their chances once they get there. They’re shoring up their weaknesses and building up their depth. They’ve landed one of the better outfielders on the market, and should they run into Skubal and the Dodgers down the line, they’ll undoubtedly feel a bit better about their chances.

Hello. While on paternity leave, I kept a journal about baseball and my daughter, who is not named Derek Jr., but who will henceforth be referred to as Derek Jr. You can read all of the entries here.

May 25
After nearly five hours of sleep, Derek Jr. wakes up a bit past one in the morning. She’s clearly struggling with some gas issues. I try to soothe her without taking her out of the crib, bicycling her little legs to help her through it, but it doesn’t help at all. She displays every sign of ravenous hunger, so I change her and start her on a bottle, but the milk just won’t go down. Something is going on. She’s clamoring for the bottle, she’s pulling milk into her mouth, and she’s riotously upset every time I take the bottle away, but she keeps letting all the milk run right down her chin. She doesn’t need to burp. It’s not her diaper. I’m not sure what else could be wrong, so after awhile, I give up on the bottle and get her into what has become my standard soothing-a-gassy-baby position. It’s basically a human swaddle.

I settle Derek Jr.’s shoulder in the crook of my right arm, my hand reaching down to grab hold of her right thigh and pull her knee up toward her belly. With my left hand, I give her a pacifier and press her right arm across her chest, then I turn my right arm to press her into my body so that her face is buried in my chest, which holds the pacifier in place. When it works, this position soothes her instantly, though she still pulls frantically at the pacifier. It takes a good 20 minutes for her to work through the gas, and then, suddenly, she relaxes. Not only is she hungry, but she wolfs down the entire the bottle and falls promptly to sleep. I settle her on my shoulder to burp her gently, and I pull out my phone to check what happened in baseball today.

Tomorrow — well, today I guess — is my first official day back at work. I spent the morning preparing this journal’s introduction and first installment for editing, then going through my wife’s camera roll looking for images I could use. I found pictures of myself from the day Derek Jr. was born. Parents are strongly encouraged to give the baby as much skin-to-skin contact as soon as possible. It’s good for bonding and it promotes the release of oxytocin, so there I am in the hospital room wearing my FanGraphs hoodie with no shirt underneath, feeling supremely silly, the zipper cold against my chest. It never really worked out, though. Derek Jr. just wasn’t comfortable being against my chest that way, and I felt like I’d failed. I’d forgotten about that until I saw the pictures this morning.

Tonight, my wife and I only had an hour or so of free time between getting Derek Jr. down to sleep and going to bed ourselves. My going back to work will be enough of an adjustment, so I didn’t want to force her to spend her one hour of relaxation time watching baseball. We put something else on the TV while I perused the leaderboards looking for something to write about tomorrow. As a result, I still have no idea what happened during tonight’s games. What I missed was Houston’s Tatsuya Imai, Steven Okert, and Alimber Santa combining to no-hit the Rangers. With Derek Jr. still asleep on my shoulder, I pull up the highlights. They are hilarious.

It’s got to be one of the sillier no-hitters in history. The highlight package starts in the first inning, with no outs and two Rangers already on base, because apparently Imai walked the first two batters of the game. He only strikes out two, and aside from a couple popups, every ball in play seems to fall into one of two categories. Either center fielder Jake Meyers is running down what looks off the bat like a surefire double in the gap, or a middle infielder is standing on his head to corral a hard-hit grounder that appears destined either to fracture Imai’s tibia or end up in center field.

Imai started the season (and his MLB career) in disastrous fashion. He went on the IL with arm fatigue, got shelled in one of his two rehab appearances, then got shellacked in his first start back in Houston. He came into the game with an 8.31 ERA and -0.2 WAR. Tonight, he walked twice as many as he struck out and had a 50% hard-hit rate. The Rangers walked fewer batters and allowed only one more hard-hit ball than Imai did, and they got lit up for nine runs. The Astros didn’t throw a single offspeed pitch or curveball all night. Aside from four sinkers from Imai, every pitch was either a four-seamer or a slider. Somehow, that didn’t help the Rangers much. Maybe this is what I should write about tomorrow.

A minute or so into the highlights, Derek Jr., still asleep, does sort of a reverse bear crawl from my shoulder down to my chest. She settles with her knees on my lap and her torso pressed against mine, her head resting sideways just below my chin. It’s a position both the teachers of a parenting class and the nurses at the hospital encouraged us to use, as it allows for maximal skin-to-skin contact. They made it sound special, and I was excited for it. I’d seen other people hold their babies that way. It’s why we have those dumb pictures of me holding Derek Jr. with no shirt under my hoodie. But I couldn’t make her comfortable that way, and I gave up. All of a sudden, two months later, it’s where she wants to be. After a rough afternoon and night, she’s finally comfortable and happy, her warm little body pressed against me. She gets so tense when she’s upset; sometimes we lift her up from the crib and her whole body is stiff as a board. But she’s relaxed now. The highlight package is long, and as I watch the Rangers smash the ball every which way except into some grass, I’m overwhelmed by gratitude for the chance to have this moment with Derek Jr. melted against me. Maybe it’s the oxytocin.

I shouldn’t be up writing this. I’ve mortgaged two hours of sleep to document this moment, and I have to be up in three-and-a-half more to write about how James Wood can’t seem to figure out which pitches to challenge. If Derek Jr. wakes up right now — which could absolutely happen — I’ll be doing so on very, very little sleep. That’s been the tradeoff of this whole project, though. I can make sure we never forget all of these special moments, but only if I’m willing to lose some sleep in the night and be a bit more of a zombie during the day. I don’t know how much longer I can keep it going now that I’m going to be spending my days writing. It’s certainly felt worth it so far, and I’ve been so lucky to have had this time, to have such an amazing job that lets me write this journal at all.

Here’s one thing that I haven’t been able to document, that I don’t think I’ll be able to document fully. I’ve written a lot about what it feels like to have Derek Jr. asleep in my arms in the rocking chair in the middle of the night. It’s the most special thing I have. It’s my time to be close to her, to share my warmth, and to know that I’m taking care of her as well as I possibly can. I sing to her. I tell her how loved and beautiful she is. I crane my head down to look at her perfect face, and then I tilt my head back until I’m looking at the ceiling (my God, does that hurt, by the way) and try to burn the image into my memory. But I can’t do it. My brain just doesn’t work that way. I can’t hold onto it, and there’s no way to take a picture of it. I know I’m going to forget this image. It is the most precious thing to me, and I’m going to lose it. In some sense, I’ve lost it several times already; too slowly for me to notice, it must have changed so much as Derek Jr. has grown and grown over the past two months. No matter how tightly I hold her, so much slips away. So I stay up late. I put it into words as best I can. I get through the day.

Over the weekend, the Red Sox decided to go for it. They traded exciting young pitcher Connelly Early to Washington in exchange for less-exciting, less-young, but playing-very-well-right-now infielder Curtis Mead. The move elicited strong reactions. Early is a genuinely promising lefty starter who will be under team control until 2032. Mead is only one year older with one less year of team control. He’s had a wonderful breakout season at the plate, and his offensive profile fits Fenway Park beautifully. But he’s a poor defender whose track record of success at the plate is extremely short. Even Boston’s chief baseball officer Craig Breslow went out of his way to spell out exactly why the team pulled the trigger, telling reporters, “Our goal wasn’t to win the trade. It was to make the team better.”

I had my own strong reaction to the deal, but that was mainly because I really wanted to be the one to write it up so I could title the article, “Red Sox Go For It Now by Giving Up Early.” But the reactions to the deal are now more or less irrelevant. Mead did make the team better, but for a very, very short time. He struck out in his first plate appearance with the Red Sox, then got hit by a pitch and broke his wrist in his second. According to Baseball Prospectus’ Recovery Dashboard, the average recovery time for a fractured wrist is 52 days and the median is 47. Mead may or may not return before the regular season ends, but he’s certainly not going to be powering the Red Sox down the stretch, and they’re already out looking for more infield help.

You have to feel for Mead. He was in the midst of a true breakout season. After putting up a combined 0.1 WAR in his first three major league seasons, he was already at 1.6 this year. He was traded to a contender that also happened to be the hottest team in baseball. What an exciting time for the 25-year-old, and then one pitch took it all away.

You can also imagine how Boston’s front office must feel after putting in all the work to make this trade happen. Breslow stuck his neck out for this high-risk, win-now move, and just like that, it’s gone. I don’t think there’s much I could do to cheer up Mead right now, but I can take a crack at cheering up Breslow. I’d like to remind him that although this may seem like the worst case scenario for his bold challenge trade, things could have gone much, much worse. In order to see that, you just have to look at things like a chief baseball officer, removing the human element and focusing solely on pure, unadulterated on-field production. Let’s lift our spirits by acting like soulless robots. Read the rest of this entry »

For one day, the Marlins were probably going to make the playoffs. On July 8, after they’d shut out the Mariners, 2-0, our Playoff Odds gave the Fish a 51.5% chance of playing in October. It was the first time they’d crested 50% since 2023.

They had just swept the A’s in West Sacramento and were about to finish sweeping the Mariners at home. Crank, crank, crank, crank, crank went the roller coaster. With the final win against Seattle, the Marlins had won 16 out of 20, tied for the best 20-game span in franchise history. The six-game winning streak that closed that span put them 10 games above .500, at 52-42. Crank, crank, crank. They were tied with the Phillies for the second and third Wild Card spots. They were three full games ahead of the Cardinals in fourth place. Not only were the Marlins going to hold onto Sandy Alcantara at the deadline, wrote Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, but they were going to be buyers for the first time in Peter Bendix’s three years at the helm, “barring” — crank — “an utter” — crank — “collapse.” Then the Playoff Odds took a stomach-churning plunge. It was the opposite of the famous Sarah Langs Whee! It was an Eeew, and it was gross indeed.

The Marlins lost their next 12 games. Last night, after coming within an eyelash of unlucky 13, they finally broke the streak with a win. They blew a three-run lead to the Phillies in the sixth inning and went into the bottom of the ninth down two. But they came back to walk it off on a bases loaded single from Griffin Conine. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello. While on paternity leave, I kept a journal about baseball and my daughter, who is not named Derek Jr., but who will henceforth be referred to as Derek Jr. You can read all of the entries here.

May 23
Today marks my first time leaving the house for more than an hour or two since Derek Jr. was born. I’ve got band practice, and then the band is going out to a bar to watch the game. I don’t tell anyone, but I’m so out of the loop these days that I have no idea what game everyone is talking about. The timing couldn’t be worse, and that turns out to be the theme of the evening.

I feed Derek Jr. and put her down for a nap right before I head out, but she wakes up with horrible stomach trouble as soon as I leave. Band practice is two hours long, and my wife spends the entire time soothing Derek Jr. Band practice is a delight, as always. It’s extraordinarily loose. I haven’t touched a guitar in months, but nobody else has been practicing either, and it’s not like we need to be ready for a show or anything, so nobody minds much when a song goes off the rails. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello. While on paternity leave, I kept a journal about baseball and my daughter, who is not named Derek Jr., but who will henceforth be referred to as Derek Jr. You can read all of the entries here.

May 21
So Jose Siri made the coolest play I’ve seen in a while. He’s on the Angels now, a fact I had missed entirely, even though I now realize I saw him pinch-running against the A’s just two nights ago. When you think about Jose Siri, you think of great center field defense (and one million strikeouts), but that great center field defense usually comes in the form of great jumps and fantastic athletic catches. Tonight, however, he racked up an out with a combination of savvy and a perfect, powerful throw. A’s right fielder Carlos Cortes hit a routine single back up the middle. There was nothing notable about that whatsoever, but the Angels must have a scouting report that says Cortes likes to take aggressive turns when he singles. Whoever wrote it deserves a raise.

Siri played the ball normally right up until the moment when he didn’t. He intercepted it at a slow jog. It looked like he wasn’t taking the threat of Cortes going for a double seriously, but what he was actually doing was baiting Cortes, while also allowing the slow route to let him field the ball with his momentum still pushing him to his left, toward first base. That way, when he came up firing behind Cortes, he was able to got everything he had behind the throw. First baseman Nolan Schanuel was clearly in on it too. He lurked in foul territory, out of view of both Cortes and the first base coach so as to avoid arousing any suspicion, then popped back onto the field in time to catch the throw and apply the tag.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last month, Ben Clemens declared 2026 to be The Year of the Bunt. “Bunts are making a comeback,” he wrote, and then he backed that contention up with numbers and graphs and such, because while the FanGraphs style guide doesn’t have a hard target for words per article, we’re generally expected to use more than five. Ben was right, of course. That’s what the graphs and the words were for. Bunts have gone from 0.7% of plate appearances in 2025 to 0.9% in 2026. We’re talking about very small numbers here, but that’s still a year-over-year increase of nearly 23%.

Not only are teams bunting more often, but they’re also bunting in optimal situations and laying them down more successfully. This year’s bunts have a .533 batting average, compared to .468 last year. Unsuccessful bunts, which result in neither a hit nor a sacrifice, are down from 22% to 19%. According to Baseball Savant’s Run Values, last year’s bunts were worth 13 runs. This season’s bunts are already at 50 runs, and we’ve still got a couple months left! Over the winter, the whole league seems to have finally figured how and when to bunt. But not the Detroit Tigers.

The Tigers have laid down eight bunts this year. Eight. That works out to just under one bunt every 12.5 games. In this article, I will show you all eight of them. It will not take long. The Tigers have more triples than bunts. The Rays have bunted 10 times more than the Tigers. Every team except the Phillies has bunted at least twice as often as the Tigers. Twenty different individual players have bunted more than the Tigers. The Tigers recognize The Year of the Bunt as a fad, and they want no part of such ephemeral frivolities. They didn’t attempt to bunt for the first time until May 4, their 36th game of the season. It, uh, did not go well.

Read the rest of this entry »

You know the joke. “Where do you see yourself in five years?” asks the interviewer. Mitch Hedberg has the perfect answer. “Celebrating the five-year anniversary of you asking me this question.” Mike Elias and the Orioles sure seem to have their own five-year plan, and they fleshed it out on Sunday, signing right-hander Kyle Bradish to a five-year, $90 million extension. The deal buys out the starter’s final two years of arbitration, along with three free agent years, keeping him in orange and black until his age-35 season in 2031. Bradish is making $3.55 million in arbitration this season, and he’ll make $10 million when the new deal kicks in next year. He’ll get a $3 million raise in 2028, then get $1 million added to his annual raise in each subsequent season. So he’ll make $10 million in 2027, then 13, then 17, then 22, then 28 in 2031. It’s a classic example of linear growth rather than exponential, and it should help Bradish stay a step ahead of inflation. According to The Baltimore Banner’s Andy Kostka, it’s also the largest deal for a pitcher in franchise history.

Bradish has a 3.50 ERA and a 3.62 FIP for his career, but there’s still room for some uncertainty in his profile. He debuted in 2022 and put up ugly numbers across 23 starts, running a 4.90 ERA and a 4.46 FIP. He broke out in 2023, going 12-7 with a 2.83 ERA and a 3.27 FIP. The underlying numbers weren’t quite so spectacular, as a big component of his improvement was a drop in home run rate that looked unsustainably large. Although Bradish had made more sustainable improvements to his walk, strikeout, and groundball rates, it still would have been fair to expect some regression. Instead, he came out of the gate even better in 2024. His walk rate did indeed regress, but he suppressed homers even further and ratcheted his strikeout rate all the way up to 33%. It was a huge jump, but it lasted just eight starts before the god of ulnar collateral ligaments demanded its tribute.

Bradish returned from Tommy John surgery at the end of August 2025, and he picked up right where he’d left off before the injury. In fact, over his six starts, he struck out more than 37% of the batters he faced. If you combine the two seasons, Bradish threw 71 1/3 innings across 14 starts, posting a 2.65 ERA and a 2.48 FIP. He put up 2.5 WAR in what was essentially half a season. It was legitimate dominance. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello. While on paternity leave, I kept a journal about baseball and my daughter, who is not named Derek Jr., but who will henceforth be referred to as Derek Jr. You can read all of the entries here.

May 20
Derek Jr. and I will be on our own for much of the day. My wife is planning on meeting up with a friend for a walk in the park, taking an hour-long call, and then spending a couple hours editing her novel. Things go beautifully at first. Derek Jr. naps for nearly three hours in the morning, during which time I do a little writing myself. I feed and change her when she wakes up, but the effort of having someone else feed and clothe her seems like it’s already tuckered her out. Such is the life of a baby.

I put her right back down to sleep and try to nap in the room with her, but I can’t sleep. My brain is still whirring from the writing I did earlier. So I grab the monitor and take a crack at mixing a children’s song I’ve been working on. It’s the last thing I recorded before Derek Jr. was born. Fittingly, it’s called “I’m Sleepy.” Read the rest of this entry »

Hello. While on paternity leave, I kept a journal about baseball and my daughter, who is not named Derek Jr., but who will henceforth be referred to as Derek Jr. You can read all of the entries here.

May 18
The summer after my wife and I moved in together, we had a mouse in our apartment. We set traps everywhere we could think to put them, but no matter what kind of traps or bait I used, the mouse wanted nothing to do with them. After a couple days, I got desperate. I wanted to figure out exactly where the mouse was getting in so that I could close up the gap to keep it out. Failing that, I wanted to figure out where it was going so that I could set traps in the right places. So I propped up an iPad against the arm of the couch with its camera pointed at the kitchen, called it on FaceTime from my laptop, and brought the laptop into the bedroom and closed the door. Then I sat quietly, stared at my kitchen from the other room, and waited for the mouse to show up. Even as I was setting everything up, I recognized it as an act of madness. But it worked.

I didn’t glean much that first day. If I recall correctly, the mouse did eventually show up, but it turned out that the iPad didn’t have a good angle on its movements. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from or where it was going, only that it crossed the kitchen a time or two. Convinced that the concept was sound and the execution could be improved upon, I tried it again the next day. My wife was off work, so I explained that I needed her to hole up in the bedroom with me. She recognized it as an act of madness too, but she found it hilarious. She dubbed it Mouse TV, and she understandably shrieked when the mouse finally showed up. We watched and stifled our laughter as it nosed around the kitchen. It took a couple more days of Mouse TV to figure out where the mouse was coming from, plug the hole, and make sure that the mouse wasn’t coming back. My wife was tickled the whole time. Whereas I felt embarrassed and vaguely unclean about having a rodent in my home, she’d tell the story of Mouse TV to anyone who could listen. It has, somehow, become a fond memory. Read the rest of this entry »