As one-half of the majors’ most productive catching tandem, Carson Kelly doesn’t have enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title, but like the Dodgers’ Will Smith, he’s been incredibly productive so far, particularly with runners in scoring position. Unlike Smith, he doesn’t have a lengthy track record of success; in parts of 10 major league seasons with five teams, Kelly has not only never made an All-Star team, he’s only played 100 games in a season twice, and finished with a 100 wRC+ or better just twice. But thanks to some changes to his swing mechanics over the past couple of seasons, he’s in the midst of a breakout campaign for the NL Central-leading Cubs.

The 30-year-old Kelly is hitting .290/.412/.589 with nine homers and a 179 wRC+ in 131 plate appearances. He’s started 28 of the Cubs’ 56 games behind the plate, while Miguel Amaya started 25 before landing on the injured list this past weekend due to an oblique strain, an injury that interrupted a promising start to the 26-year-old backstop’s season. Though Kelly homered after replacing Amaya in Saturday’s loss to the Reds, he was limited to a single late-inning cameo over the next three days due to an unspecified illness before returning to the lineup on Wednesday night. Instead of recalling 21-year-old prospect Moisés Ballesteros, who spent five games DHing for the Cubs earlier this month but whose defense needs more refinement, the Cubs brought up Reese McGuire from Triple-A Iowa to replace Amaya on the roster; he started all three games while Kelly was ailing, homering twice in his season debut against the Reds. All told, the trio of Cubs catchers has been great offensively:

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In Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman, the Dodgers don’t lack for superstars with potent bats, but so far this season, Will Smith is swinging — and, notably, not swinging — just about as well as any of them. The two-time All-Star catcher is off to an exceptionally hot start, particularly with runners in scoring position, and the Dodgers recently shook up their roster with an eye towards helping him maintain a high level of production later into the season.

The 30-year-old Smith is hitting .333/.456/.511, good enough to lead the NL in on-base percentage and to rank third in wRC+ (175) behind only Freeman (191) and Ohtani (182). Often batting ahead of either Max Muncy or Michael Conforto — both of whom have struggled thus far this year — he’s been pitched around to some degree, and he’s shown exceptional plate discipline:

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12:02

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! I hope you all had great holiday weekends here. The weather in NYC was great, allowing for a lot of outdoor time — I avoided Friday night’s rain at Citi Field and caught Dodgers-Mets the next night. Wrote about Will Smith and Dalton Rushing in a piece that will be up soon.

12:03

Jay Jaffe: On Friday, I wrote about the Astros’ Christian Walker (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/christian-walker-hasnt-fixed-the-astros-fi…), who hit a walker-off home run yesterday. (sorry, not sorry)

12:05

Jay Jaffe: if you missed “Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe, and the Hall of Fame” — the SABR roundtable I did with Rose biographer Keith O’Brien, ESPN reporter Don Van Natta Jr., and Black Sox expert Jacob Pomrenke, it’s now up on YouTube here

12:05

Jay Jaffe: and with that, let’s chat…

12:07

Jay Jaffe: no sooner had I written about a set of twists and turns in the Red Sox infield — Trevor Story’s slump, Kristian Campbell’s work at first base, and Marcelo Mayer’s work at second (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/trevor-storys-slump-and-the-never-ending-s…) than Bregman got injured, leading the Sox to try Mayer out at third.

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When the Astros signed Christian Walker to a three-year, $60 million deal in December, it felt like a reasonable solution to a longstanding problem. The Astros have rarely gotten good production from their first basemen in the past decade, and while Walker hasn’t quite been All-Star caliber, in recent years he’s generally provided solid offense with exceptional defense for the position. So far this season, he’s struggled mightily, which unfortunately for the Astros has come at a time when other key players have also failed to hit, and the rotation has weathered numerous injuries as well.

Last year, Walker hit .251/.335/.468 (119 wRC+) with 26 homers and 3.0 WAR for the Diamondbacks, while over the past three seasons, he averaged 32 homers, a 120 wRC+, and 3.6 WAR; his 2024 shortfalls mainly owed to his missing a month due to an oblique strain. Even with time missed, that 2024 production looks like the second coming of Jeff Bagwell next to the .226/.291/.360 (87 wRC+) performance of Astros first basemen last year, with 18 homers but -1.4 WAR, a total that was somehow not quite as bad as the first basemen of the Rockies and Reds. Starter José Abreu crashed and burned and was released in mid-June despite only being about halfway through his three-year, $58 million deal. Thereafter, Jon Singleton did the bulk of the first base work, sharing the job with Yainer Diaz and Victor Caratini on days when one or the other wasn’t catching. It wasn’t great, but it at least stopped the bleeding in that Abreu alone produced -1.5 WAR, while the rest — a group that also included Zach Dezenzo, Mauricio Dubón, and three players who made a single appearance at the position — netted 0.1 WAR.

As Michael Baumann pointed out when Walker signed in December, first base has been a multiyear problem for the Astros. During the 2022-24 span, only three teams had lower WARs at a single position — right field for the White Sox, Rockies, and Pirates — than the Astros’ -2.7 WAR at first. Over the past decade, Yuli Gurriel was the only Astros first baseman to exceed 2.0 WAR in a single season (he did it twice), and five times in the past six seasons, the team’s regular or co-regular first baseman finished with negative WAR. Read the rest of this entry »

After missing significant chunks of the past three seasons due to injuries — including all but 26 games last year — Trevor Story has been healthy enough to play in 48 of the Red Sox’ first 51 games. He hit well over the first few weeks of the season, but lately he’s fallen into a deep slump. With Boston struggling to climb above .500 but awash in promising young players, he may wind up fighting for his job.

The 32-year-old Story entered this season having played just 163 games since the Red Sox signed him to a six-year, $140 million deal in March 2022. He played just 94 games in 2022 due to a hairline fracture in his right wrist and a contusion on his left heel, then just 43 in ’23 after undergoing internal brace surgery to repair a torn ulnar collateral ligament, and 26 last year before fracturing the glenoid rim and tearing the posterior labrum of his left shoulder. That’s not only a lot of time missed — basically two seasons out of three — but it’s also time missed at a pivotal juncture in his career. Even without catastrophic injuries, not many players are the same at 32 as they were at 28, and the version of Story capable of producing at least 20 homers and 20 steals while providing strong defense at shortstop may be gone.

Through Wednesday, Story has hit for just a 65 wRC+, the seventh-lowest mark among AL qualifiers. That’s bad enough, but his recent performance looks even even worse if we simply split his game log down the middle, with 24 games played on each side:

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When we last checked in on the Twins, they had stumbled out of the gate, losing eight of their first 12 games — a start that looked particularly dismal given last September’s collapse, which cost them a playoff berth. But times have changed, with the offense heating up and the pitching staff emerging as one of the league’s stingiest. Thanks to a just-ended 13-game winning streak, the Twins now own the American League’s fourth-best record (26-21, .553), though injuries to players such as Byron Buxton and Carlos Correa threaten to stall their momentum.

On May 3, the Twins beat the Red Sox 4-3 in Boston, ending a four-game losing streak that had dropped them to 13-20 and had included two walk-off wins by the Guardians. They beat the Red Sox to close out a road trip, then went home and pulled off three-game sweeps of the Orioles and Giants, punctuated by a 10th-inning walk-off victory. Back on the road, they swept three from the hapless Orioles in Baltimore before taking the first two from the Brewers in Milwaukee, running their record to 26-20. On Sunday, they finally lost again, falling to the Brewers 5-2.

The final three wins of the Twins’ streak were all shutouts, starting with a 4-0 blanking of the Orioles by starter Chris Paddack and two relievers on Thursday, continuing with a 3-0 whitewashing of the Brewers behind Joe Ryan and three relievers on Friday, and concluding with a 7-0 drubbing of Milwaukee highlighted by the work of Pablo López and three relievers on Saturday. In all, the Twins shut out their opponents for 34 consecutive innings (the longest since the franchise moved to Minnesota in 1961), beginning with the fourth inning of Wednesday night’s game, after the Orioles had scored six runs; they extended that streak until the second inning on Sunday. Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! It’s a gorgeous day here in Brooklyn, and while that may not make a difference to you if you’re staring at a computer screen, it’s lightening my mood just a bit.

12:01

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I wrote about the Braves’ outfield situation with the return of Ronald Acuña Jr. finally on the horizon https://blogs.fangraphs.com/as-the-braves-recover-from-their-sluggish-…

12:01

Jay Jaffe: Today I’ve got a piece on the Twins’ just-completed 13-game winning streak. That’s in the pipeline and should go up shortly.

12:04

Jay Jaffe: Tomorrow evening at 7 PM ET, I’ll be participating in a SABR roundtable on the subject of the recently reinstated Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson, along with Keith O’Brien (author of the recent Rose bio Charlie Hustle) and ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr., who has reported on the reinstatement efforts regarding both Rose and Jackson. Jacob Pomrenke, an expert on Jackson and the 1919 Black Sox scandal, will serve as moderator. https://sabr.org/latest/this-week-in-sabr-may-16-2025#shoelessjoe

12:05

Jay Jaffe: It was just after last week’s chat wrapped up that all hell broke loose with the Rose news. My coverage of it is here: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/say-it-aint-so-commissioner-manfred-posthu…

12:05

Jay Jaffe: And with that housekeeping out of the way, on with the show!

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The Braves have limped through the first seven weeks of the season at far less than full strength, particularly within their outfield, where they lost Jurickson Profar to an 80-game PED suspension and have taken a very slow and deliberate approach to Ronald Acuña Jr.’s rehabilitation from his second anterior cruciate ligament repair surgery in three years. That outfield has ranked among the majors’ least productive, offset only by the emergence of Eli White. But at least help is on the horizon. Acuña’s rehab stint is finally underway, and he could return to the Atlanta lineup as soon as this weekend.

Acuña tore his left ACL on May 26, 2024 and underwent surgery to repair it on June 4. When he returned from his 2021 tear of his right ACL nine months and one week after surgery, he did not play up to his usual standard in ’22. The Braves resolved to take his rehab more slowly this time around, resisting the urge to accelerate his timeline even with Acuña reportedly hitting 450-foot bombs in batting practice early in spring training, and even with the team stumbling out of the gate by losing its first seven games and 13 of its first 18. The 27-year-old slugger finally returned to action last Tuesday with the Braves’ Florida Complex League affiliate, homering off Kevin Velasco, a 19-year-old righty on the Orioles’ FCL squad:

.@ronaldacunajr24 goes yard in his first rehab start! pic.twitter.com/e5ZFhb9jSF

— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) May 13, 2025

Acuña then moved up to Triple-A Gwinnett, where he went 3-for-6 with a homer and six walks in three games against the Charlotte Knights, affiliate of the White Sox, from Thursday through Saturday. The homer, a 102-mph, 420-footer to dead center, was hit off 25-year-old lefty Tyler Schweitzer. Read the rest of this entry »

Though Roki Sasaki’s deal with the Dodgers wasn’t anywhere close to the winter’s biggest, few free agents were so coveted or came with as much hype attached. Known as “The LeBron James of Japanese baseball” for his exploits in high school, he was dominant — even transcendent — during his 2021–24 NPB run with the Chiba Lotte Marines. As he went through the posting process, his combination of youth and a tantalizing repertoire featuring an elite, 80-grade splitter as well as a fastball with triple-digit velocity generated widespread interest by teams, though a dip in that velo last year did rate as a cause for concern. Now, eight starts into his career with the Dodgers, the 23-year-old righty has been underwhelming, and now he’s hurt, too. On Tuesday, the team placed him on the 15-day injured list due to a shoulder impingement, continuing the dizzying level of turnover within the rotation of the NL West leaders.

This is the latest turn in what’s been a rocky rookie season for Roki. Through 34.1 innings — about 4 1/3 per start — he’s carrying a 4.72 ERA, a 6.16 FIP, and a 6.13 xERA. He’s struck out just 15.6% of batters, while walking 14.3% (the highest mark of any pitcher with at least 30 innings), and has served up 1.57 homers per nine. His 21.9% chase rate is the third-lowest at that 30-inning cutoff.

Batters have struggled to do anything with Sasaki’s splitter, which he’s thrown in the zone just 29.6% of the time; they’ve chased it 30.4% of the time, and overall have hit .137 and slugged .237 against it. Even so, his 35% whiff rate on the pitch is well off the 56.5% whiff rate it generated last year in NPB according to Sports Info Solutions. Batters have fared better against his slider (.250 AVG/.417 SLG, 33.3% whiff) and his four-seamer (.253 VG/.494 SLG, 10.1% whiff), rarely chasing either (14% of the time for the former, 15% for the latter). All six of his home runs allowed have been off of four-seamers, as have two would-be homers robbed by Andy Pages; his xSLG on that pitch is a worrisome .663. His 17.8% whiff rate on four-seamers in the upper third of the strike zone or higher is better, but batters have still slugged .692 on pitches there, with a .903 xSLG. Read the rest of this entry »

Roll over Pete Rose, and tell Shoeless Joe Jackson the news. In an historic decision that reversed over eight decades of precedent, on Tuesday commissioner Rob Manfred formally reinstated Rose, Jackson, and 15 other deceased individuals who had previously been placed on the permanently ineligible list for violating Rule 21, which bars players, umpires, and club and league officials and employees from gambling on baseball. The move opens the door for Rose (and Jackson) to be considered for election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, but that opportunity won’t come until December 2027 at the earliest. Neither their placement on the Classic Baseball Era Committee ballot nor their election to the Hall is automatic even if they do become candidates, as the Hall’s heavy hand in committee proceedings — particularly with regards to players linked to performance-enhancing drugs — should remind us.

Given the extent to which Rose spent decades lying about his gambling and showing a lack of contrition even after he was banned — to say nothing of the allegations of statutory rape that surfaced in recent years — Manfred’s decision is a bitter disappointment, perhaps even a shock. While his decade-long tenure as commissioner has produced no shortage of grounds for criticism, he appeared to be hyper-conscious when it came to drawing a distinction between Major League Baseball’s recent embrace of legalized gambling, and the lines crossed by those who flouted Rule 21. Last June, Pirates infielder Tucupita Marcano was placed on the permanently ineligible list for making 387 baseball bets totaling $150,000 through a legal sports book, while in February, an arbiter upheld the firing of umpire Pat Hoberg for sharing legal sports betting accounts with a professional poker player who bet on baseball, and for impeding MLB’s investigation. Rose’s gambling, via bets placed through bookies, was illegal at the time as well as completely out of bounds given his role within baseball.

Manfred’s latest move was driven by the Rose family’s petition to remove Rose — who died last September 30 at the age of 83 — from the permanently ineligible list so that he can be considered for election to the Hall. Rather than just revisit Rose’s eligibility, however, the commissioner chose to issue a broader ruling that erased what had previously been a meaningful distinction between a popularly misunderstood “lifetime ban” (i.e, one ending with the death of the banned individual) and a permanent spot on baseball’s blacklist. Created by commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis in 1920, the permanently ineligible list was reserved for those found to have gambled on baseball (plus a few who committed other transgressions Landis viewed as grave) from future participation within the game. Read the rest of this entry »