Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, and welcome to another edition of my weekly chat. I’ve got a piece about Edwin Díaz’s impending elbow surgery in the pipeline, while yesterday I wrote about Yordan Alvarez’s hot start (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/amid-houstons-problems-yordan-alvarez-is-l…).
21127: After you wrote about the Mets, would you have guessed another FG writer would write about the Mets before the losing streak ended?
12:05
Jay Jaffe: Hah, that is brutal. I focused my piece on the offense’s shortcomings, knowing that there would probably be room for a follow-up on their pitching or some other aspect of their struggles at some point, but I did expect them to at least win a game here or there along the way.
12:05
Justin: I don’t think Mendoza should be fired, but I’m surprised he hasn’t been. Do you think the Mets let him go? Thanks
These are not good times for the Astros. The team has stumbled to an 8-15 start, and while slow starts themselves are nothing new for Houston, this Astros’ roster has been particularly depleted by injuries. Including All-Stars Hunter Brown, Josh Hader, and Jeremy Peña, they currently have a major league-high 14 players on the injured list. In the grand scheme, one of the few thing going right for the club is the return of Yordan Alvarez, who’s back to being healthy and unstoppable. Limited to just 48 games by injures last year, the 28-year-old slugger has not only played every game, but has hit a major league-high 10 homers.
During Sunday’s game against the Cardinals at Daikin Park, the Astros trailed 4-1 with two outs and nobody on when Alvarez stepped in against lefty JoJo Romero in the eighth inning. In running the count to 2-2, he fouled off three pitches, including a sweeper that was well off the plate. Romero then threw him a changeup that sank below the bottom edge of the zone, and Alvarez went down and got it, hitting a towering solo homer to right field:
The Astros then added two more runs in the inning as Jose Altuve and Isaac Paredes sandwiched singles around a Christian Walker walk and a wild pitch from incoming reliever Riley O’Brien. That tied the game, which went to extra innings, where the Astros couldn’t do enough to counter the three runs the Cardinals scored against reliever Bryan King; they lost 7-5. Read the rest of this entry »
The Mets’ 2026 season began with such promise. With a remade roster after last year’s disappointing 83-79 finish — new looks in the infield and outfield, a new Opening Day starter to lead their staff, and infusions of youth both in the lineup and in the rotation — they kicked things off by beating up reigning NL Cy Young winner Paul Skenes and won three out of their first four games. Though April 7, they were 7-4, including a pair of walk-off wins. They haven’t won since, and already owner Steve Cohen is pleading with fans to stay the course.
First, the Mets dropped the final five games of their second homestand against the Diamondbacks and Athletics, getting shut out twice and scoring more than two runs just once; meanwhile, they gave up seven or more runs three times. Then they flew to Los Angeles to face the two-time defending champion Dodgers, and while they did get a seven-inning, one-run gem from rookie Nolan McLean opposite Yoshinobu Yamamoto on Tuesday night, they lost all three games by a combined score of (gulp) 14-3.
At 7-12, the Mets are tied with the Giants and Rockies for the National League’s worst record. They’re last in the NL East, five games behind the Braves, who have bolted from the gate by winning 12 of 19 despite injuries to a full rotation’s worth of starters, including Spencer Strider and Spencer Schwellenbach, as well as catcher Sean Murphy and shortstop Ha-Seong Kim. If there’s good news, it’s that the rest of the division has started sluggishly as well, with every team besides the Braves below .500. The Mets are only two games out of second place, not that that adds wins to their ledger. Read the rest of this entry »
Konnor Griffin isn’t the only rookie infielder to land a nine-figure extension within his first few weeks in the majors. On Wednesday, the Tigers reached an agreement with Kevin McGonigle — who made the jump from Double-A into Detroit’s Opening Day lineup and has been the team’s top hitter thus far — on an eight-year, $150 million extension for the 2027–34 seasons. The contract slightly surpasses the value of Griffin’s deal, making it the largest guarantee to a player with fewer than 100 days of major league service time, even before its other bells and whistles are considered.
According to MLB.com, McGonigle will receive a signing bonus of $14 million, $8 million of which is payable within 30 days and the rest in 2028. He’ll then earn $1 million next season, $7 million in 2028 (when he would have qualified for Super-Two status), $16 million in ’29, $21 million in ’30, $22 million in ’31, and then $23 million annually from ’32–34, which would have been his first three years of free-agent eligibility. Escalator clauses can increase the values of the deal by an additional $10 million, with higher salaries for those last three seasons of $25 million (2032), $26 million (2033), and $28 million (2034).
Those escalators are based on MVP voting and other honors, and can be triggered starting this season, per ESPN. McGonigle could get boosts of $2 million for winning an MVP award, $1 million for finishing second through fifth in MVP voting, and $500,000 for finishing sixth through 10th; he’ll also get $500,000 for making the All-MLB first or second team, $250,000 for making an All-Star team, and $250,000 for winning a Silver Slugger award. His contract has no options or opt-out clauses, but additionally includes a $5 million assignment bonus for every time he’s traded to another organization under the life of the contract. Read the rest of this entry »
Davey Lopes was my first favorite ballplayer. In retrospect, I’m not sure how my eight-year-old self settled upon Lopes in a star-laden lineup featuring power hitters Dusty Baker, Ron Cey, Steve Garvey, and Reggie Smith, who the year before (1977) had become the first quartet of teammates to homer 30 times apiece in a season. I have a much better grasp of how Bill James helped my teenage self appreciate Lopes for his combination of high on-base and stolen base rates with mid-range power, but James wasn’t communicating those ideas via mass-market paperbacks circa 1978. Perhaps it was Lopes’ position atop the lineup I memorized while learning to decode box scores (my theory) or the Topps baseball card set that began my collection. Maybe it was simply his instantly recognizable, bushy mustache (my friends’ theory), but one way or another, even before laterheroes such as Fernando Valenzuela and Jim Bouton, Lopes was my guy.
The news that Lopes passed away on April 8 at age 80 due to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases — a brutal double bill — reached me while I was traveling in Austria with my own 84-year-old parents and additional family as we tracked down the Vienna addresses of my long-deceased paternal grandparents. I had no shortage of thoughts regarding mortality, and yet the hits kept coming. Lopes wasn’t even the most recent former All-Star-second-baseman-turned-manager to pass away, as Phil Garner, his National League rival and then predecessor in managing the Brewers, died of pancreatic cancer on April 11. So it goes.
Though he didn’t debut until well past his 27th birthday, Lopes spent 16 seasons in the majors (1972-87), the first 10 with the Dodgers, whom he helped to four pennants and a championship while making four All-Star teams, winning a Gold Glove, and becoming team captain. From 1973–81, he manned the keystone in the longest running infield in major league history, along with Garvey at first base, Cey at third, and Bill Russell at shortstop — a unit that formed the foundation of those pennant-winning teams under managers Walter Alston and Tommy Lasorda. “He was the catalyst of the engine. It was 700 horsepower with the four of us, and the equation was his ability to get on base,” Garvey told CBS LA in the wake of Lopes’ death. Read the rest of this entry »
Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon! Welcome to my first chat of April
12:02
Jay Jaffe: I was out of town last week, traveling in Austria with my family, retracing some ancestral roots and testing out my newly-acquired dual citizenship. It’s very weird to drop in on baseball when there’s a 6-hour time difference in that direction, to say the least
Jay Jaffe: For tomorrow I’ll be writing about Davey Lopes, my first favorite ballplayer, who passed away last week.
12:05
Bob: Do you think the Brewers will regain their magic this year?
12:06
Jay Jaffe: if I’ve learned one thing, it’s never take the Brewers lightly. They always seem to find a way to contend, and in that division, that’s often more than enough
Andy Pages was the starting center fielder — and the youngest starter, period — on championship-winning Dodgers teams in each of his first two campaigns, showing considerable year-to-year improvement in the regular season but practically disappearing in October due to epic slumps. Now, the 25-year-old has put those postseason indignities behind him and emerged as one of the game’s hottest hitters to start 2026, while also helping the team jump out to the best record in the majors.
Through 15 games, the Dodgers are 11-4, a game and a half better than the second-best team thus far, the Padres (10-6). Pages, who has played all but four innings, has multiple hits in eight of his 15 games; only the Rangers’ Brandon Nimmo (nine) and the Rays’ Chandler Simpson (eight) have as many or more such games. In his latest multi-hit effort, on Friday against Texas, Pages went 3-for-3 with a walk and two key extra-base hits. He smoked a two-run double down the right field line off Robert Garcia in the seventh inning, turning a 4-3 deficit into a 5-4 lead, and followed up with a two-run homer to left-center field off Luis Curvelo in the eighth to extend the lead to 7-4. The Dodgers needed all of those runs as they hung on to win 8-7 on Max Muncy’s walk-off home run, his third dinger of the game.
To date, Pages is hitting an absurd .429/.467/.714 (233 wRC+). He finished the weekend leading the NL in all of those categories except slugging percentage; he’s also first in WAR (1.2, tied with Jordan Walker) and RBI (17). Two and a half weeks into the season isn’t enough to confirm whether he’s unlocked a new level of performance — he’s obviously not going to maintain those slash stats — but he’s shown some promising signs, and his prominence atop the leaderboards at least merits a closer look. Read the rest of this entry »
Sal Stewart made a promising showing when the Reds called him up last September, clubbing five home runs in 18 games while helping Cincinnati reach the postseason for the first time since 2020. His 2026 campaign is off to a flying start, as well. Not only did he bank NL Player of the Week honors for the season’s opening week, but his performance underscores the notion — supported by both scouting and statistical projections — that he’s leveled up significantly.
Through the Reds’ first six games, the 22-year-old first baseman has put up video-game numbers, batting .474/.615/.947 (313 wRC+) with two homers in 26 plate appearances. His hot streak began with an eventful Opening Day; while the Reds lost to the Red Sox, 3-0, it was hardly his fault. He went 3-for-4, including a pair of bases-empty doubles, one apiece off starter Garrett Crochet and reliever Garrett Whitlock, as well as a single to right field off Crochet with men on first and second. With third base coach Willie Harris wary of testing two-time Gold Glove winner Wilyer Abreu’s arm, lead runner Matt McLain was held up and ultimately stranded.
Stewart also survived a scare in the fifth inning, when a 110-mph liner off the bat of Roman Anthony hit his left wrist as he tried to backhand the ball. He was shaken up but remained in the game, and reassuringly collected two of his three hits after being drilled. Read the rest of this entry »
Chase DeLauter got an odd start to his major league career last fall — and an inauspicious one, at that — when he became the sixth player to debut in a postseason game before playing in a regular season one. The Guardians’ rookie right fielder has fared much better in the early stages of his first regular season in the majors, going on a home run binge that made a bit of history.
Facing the Mariners in Seattle on Opening Day last Thursday, the 24-year-old DeLauter started things off by homering in his first plate appearance, launching a towering 358-foot solo shot off Logan Gilbert. It was the first Cleveland run of the season, and though at least 140 players in AL/NL history have homered in their first career at-bat, in the ninth inning he joined a much more exclusive club. With the Guardians ahead 5-4, DeLauter hammered a 422-foot solo home run off Cooper Criswell, helping to seal the victory and becoming just the sixth player to homer twice in his regular season debut:
Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to my first chat of the 2026 regular season.
12:02
Jay Jaffe: It’s a gorgeous day here in Brooklyn. Alas, we have no day baseball to accompany this chat; when I’m commissioner, I will mandate a minimum of one day game for every day through at least the first 30 days of the season.
12:03
Jay Jaffe: Anyway, I’ve got a thing in the pipeline about Chase DeLauter’s hot start, which should go up sometime while we’re chatting.
Allan: Incredibly early, but both Murakami and Okamoto have looked quite good so far. Have major league teams been underrating the ability of Japanese hitters to succeed at the MLB level?
Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, and welcome to another edition of my weekly chat. I’ve got a piece about Edwin Díaz’s impending elbow surgery in the pipeline, while yesterday I wrote about Yordan Alvarez’s hot start (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/amid-houstons-problems-yordan-alvarez-is-l…).
