It’s been an eventful start to June for Matt McLain. Fresh off the worst calendar month of his major league career, the Reds’ 26-year-old infielder snapped out of a 1-for-29 slide on June 1 against the Royals, the same day he began what the team hopes will be a brief residency at shortstop in place of the injured Elly De La Cruz. He homered in back-to-back games on June 6–7 against the Cardinals, with the second two-homer game of his career on the latter day. Then on Monday, McLain became the first player to win three ABS challenges in a single plate appearance, resulting in a base on balls. His brief binge hasn’t been enough to stop the Reds from slipping below .500, but it has offered some hope that he’s finally on the upswing after a prolonged struggle since tearing up his left shoulder in March 2024.

In the wake of De La Cruz straining his right hamstring while running out a single on May 31, McLain has started seven of the Reds’ eight games at shortstop. He has a fair bit of experience there, having played the position at UCLA and in the minors, then for about two and a half months as a rookie in 2023 before De La Cruz took over. Rookie Edwin Arroyo, who had primarily been playing shortstop at Triple-A Louisville, has been called up to cover second base.

I’ll get to the team’s infield picture below, but first, McLain. Monday night’s ABS adventure happened with two outs in the top of the eighth inning against Padres reliever Jason Adam, who was protecting a 3-2 lead. McLain challenged three sliders that were below the zone on 1-0, 2-0, and 3-1 counts, all of which home plate umpire Lance Barrett called strikes:

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In 2024, the White Sox set a single-season record by losing 121 games, and last year, they went 60-102 under rookie manager Will Venable — their third straight season with at least 100 losses. Yet now, more than a third of the way into the 2026 season, the White Sox are one of only five AL teams with a record of .500 or better. At 34-31, they currently occupy the second Wild Card spot and are just 1.5 games behind the Guardians in the AL Central race.

Our projection systems certainly didn’t see this turnaround coming, as the White Sox were forecast for a 67-95 record — worst in the AL by almost five full wins — with just a 1.1% chance of making the playoffs. In our preseason Positional Power Rankings, their starting pitching, all three outfield spots, and designated hitter all ranked among the majors’ bottom three. As of mid-April, the Sox appeared to be fulfilling their destiny of another forgettable season, having skidded to a 6-13 start while scoring just 3.16 runs per game and hitting a cringeworthy .195/.286/.316 (71 wRC+), worst in the majors across the board. Even newcomer Munetaka Murakami was hitting just .167/.346/.417 (111 wRC+) with five home runs and a 21.8% walk rate but not much else. However, since that point, the team has hit .260/.343/.451 (121 wRC+) with 73 homers, leading either the AL or the majors in all of those categories while going 28-18 (.609) for the league’s second-best record over that span, behind only the Yankees (29-17, .630). Unfortunately, the last eight of those games have been without Murakami, who suffered a Grade 2 hamstring strain running out an infield grounder on May 29 and landed on the injured list; more on him below.

While there’s a long way to go in the 2026 season, at their current pace the White Sox could post this century’s second-largest improvement in winning percentage among the teams that lost at least 108 games two years prior:

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12:03

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to another edition of my weekly chat. It’s a lovely day here in Brooklyn, but no, I don’t have Knicks fever. After 31 years running along the spectrum from antipathy to apathy towards the team, I’m indifferent at best to their run to the NBA Finals while my wife and daughter (who’s never rooted for a men’s basketball team before) are swept up in it.

12:04

Jay Jaffe: Anyway, I’ve got a forthcoming piece on the White Sox’s turnaround today (2 PM ET). Most recently, I wrote about Roki Sasaki’s turnaround (https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/roki-sasaki-is-putting-it-all-together) and Aaron Judge’s injury (https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/tough-break-aaron-judge-will-miss-time…).

12:04

Jay Jaffe: and now, on with the show

12:07

Jay Jaffe: I think there’s a lot going on early in the season, with front offices focusing on the amateur draft as well as on the rosters they spent the previous months building, and on the earliest wave of players who might help from within (perhaps related to service time shenanigans but not necessarily)

12:07

Jay Jaffe: After the draft and the All-Star break, it’s easier to focus on the realities of what they’ve put together and where they fit with regards to the playoff races

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Aaron Judge has been in a slump lately, and what’s more, his right shoulder has been bothering him when he swings the bat. The 34-year-old slugger sat out the Yankees’ three-game series against the Guardians this week after initially being diagnosed with a bone bruise on a right upper rib. On Thursday, after consulting with multiple doctors, including a specialist in thoracic outlet syndrome, the Yankees announced that Judge has been diagnosed with a stress fracture in his right first rib, an injury that will sideline him for several weeks and leave a sizable hole in the New York offense.

According to the Yankees, Judge will require a period of rest and limited activity, and then will undergo re-imaging in four to six weeks — sometime in early-to-mid-July — after which the next steps will be determined. The team added that it does expect Judge to return this season.

Prior to Tuesday, Judge had started all 59 of the Yankees’ games, either in right field (53 times) or at designated hitter (six times). He had been experiencing pain in his right shoulder for some indeterminate amount of time, with the problem particularly affecting his swing during the team’s series in Sacramento this past weekend. He went 2-for-12 with three strikeouts against the A’s, though he did record five hard-hit balls out of the nine he put into play. Perhaps more tellingly, he had homered just twice over the past four weeks, and from May 11–22, went 11 games without a single RBI, the longest such stretch of his career; he had 10-game droughts in 2016, ’19, and ’23. To be fair, Judge’s latest drought owes something to his teammates. The Yankees hit just .214/.306/.363 during that 11-game span, giving him just six plate appearances with runners in scoring position; he went 0-for-5 with a walk. Read the rest of this entry »

If you were only looking at the top-line numbers that Roki Sasaki has posted through 10 starts — a 4.59 ERA and a 5.04 FIP in 51 innings — you could be forgiven for thinking that the 24-year-old righty had made little progress since last year’s abbreviated rookie season. At times, it has seemed as though he might be better off ironing out his mechanics and approach in Triple-A or in the bullpen, where he found some success last fall after missing four and a half months with a shoulder impingement. While Sasaki’s early-season starts brought to mind last year’s struggles, a little over a month ago he made a change to his repertoire, adding a second offspeed pitch to his mix. Since then, he’s pitched more effectively thanks not only to the new offering, but also to better command and velocity.

Sasaki’s improvement has come at a particularly opportune time for the Dodgers, as they’re once again carrying on without either Tyler Glasnow or Blake Snell. Glasnow left his May 6 start after just one inning due to back spasms and still hasn’t been cleared to throw off a mound yet, while Snell didn’t make his season debut until May 9 due to shoulder soreness, then lasted just three innings before discomfort in his elbow forced him from his start. He was diagnosed with loose bodies in the elbow and underwent surgery using the same NanoNeedle Scope 2.0 procedure that Dr. Neal ElAttrache had just used on Tarik Skubal. The new version of the surgery is aimed at accelerating recovery time, but Snell has been moved to the 60-day injured list nonetheless, and can’t return until early July. Increasingly, it appears Glasnow won’t be back before July either.

Sasaki’s new pitch is a splitter, but it’s not the same splitter he threw last season, and it’s not entirely new; it bears more resemblance to the one he threw in NPB with the Chiba Lotte Marines and in the 2023 World Baseball Classic for Team Japan than it does to its immediate predecessor. Statcast has redefined the offspeed pitch he threw last year as a forkball and is tracking the two pitches separately. Sasaki throws his splitter about five miles an hour faster than his forkball, and relatively speaking, it gets a bit more rise and a lot more arm-side run. Since introducing the new pitch — which I’ll get into more below — he’s lasted at least five innings in all six of his starts, something he’d done in just four out of eight starts last year and one out of his first four this year. Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to my first chat of June — it’s lovely here in Brooklyn and I wish I could take this outside. I … probably could except I’m not sure how strong the wifi is in the back yard. Hmmm.

12:03

Jay Jaffe: Anyway, yesterday I wrote about the myriad issues that have led to the Tigers bottoming out. At 23-38, they’re still tied for the majors’ worst record, but last night they did win 10-9, scoring more than 6 runs for the first time since May 3 and at least 10 runs for the first time since April 16. The Jaffe Reverse Jinx strikes again!

12:03

Jay Jaffe: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-tigers-have-collapsed-but-not-because-…

12:09

Jay Jaffe: whoa whoa whoa, that’s a bit too lofty, I think. We’ve seen Cole and Schlittler pitch like aces, and Rodón’s been reasonably close at his peak but right now is dealing with significant command issues that make it very difficult to imagine him getting back to his 2021–22 form. Warren has taken a big step forward, and I like Weathers but don’t see him as having the stuff to be more than a mid-rotation guy.

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In early February, just before camps opened, the Tigers added both Framber Valdez and Justin Verlander to their rotation. After a rather underwhelming winter full of speculation as to whether they would trade two-time Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal, a pending free agent, the moves kept them in win-now mode, making them the favorites in the AL Central. Yet injuries to Skubal, Verlander, and several position players have hamstrung Detroit, and after playing .500 ball through the end of April, the team crashed and burned in May, losing eight series in a row while going 6-22 due to an utterly inept offense. At this point, the Tigers have dug themselves a big enough hole that trading Skubal may be a necessity.

This past week was particularly bleak. First, the Tigers dropped two out of three at home to the Angels, the only AL team who had a worse record than them. After Thursday’s 7-1 defeat, the two were both 22-35, and the Tigers followed that by getting swept by the White Sox over the weekend. On Friday night, after Troy Melton and Will Vest held Chicago to one run through eight innings, Kyle Finnegan allowed the tying run in the ninth. And then, once the Tigers retook the lead with a run in the top of the 10th, Drew Anderson served up a walk-off two-run homer to Miguel Vargas. It was Detroit’s seventh walk-off loss this season, the most in the majors. On Saturday, the Tigers were trounced, 7-1, and then on Sunday, when manager A.J. Hinch pulled starter Keider Montero after he’d thrown six scoreless innings on just 65 pitches, Anderson came in and served up a game-tying solo shot to Colson Montgomery, then yielded three more singles and the go-ahead run. The Tigers lost 2-1, for their 21st loss in 25 games. They’re now 5-13 in one-run games — the most losses of any team in that context — and, at 22-38, are tied with the Rockies for the majors’ worst record.

This is just about the last thing anyone expected of the Tigers. Led by Skubal, they claimed back-to-back Wild Card berths in 2024 and ’25, surging over the final two months of the former season to snag a playoff spot, then spending most of last year in first place, though they faded late and lost the division title on the final day. Both times, they won their Wild Card Series before being bounced in a five-game Division Series, including last year’s squeaker against the Mariners, which took until the 15th inning of Game 5 to decide. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Friday, after missing the entire 2025 season due to Tommy John surgery, Gerrit Cole fared well in his return to the Yankees rotation, firing six scoreless innings against the Rays even while struggling to miss bats. On Wednesday night in Kansas City, Cole truly looked back, this time throwing 6 2/3 scoreless innings while striking out 10 Royals without issuing a walk. The former Cy Young winner’s reassuring performance is a welcome development for a rotation that has weathered some high-profile absences — and will have to continue doing so.

The Yankees began the season with Cole, Carlos Rodón, and Clarke Schmidt all recovering from elbow surgeries, and while the first two have now returned, Max Fried — their most valuable pitcher last season — has been sidelined for a spell, as has 2024 AL Rookie of the Year Luis Gil. Nonetheless, the team’s rotation has been one the game’s best thus far, leading the majors in WAR (7.5), leading the AL in FIP (3.22), and ranking a close second in the league in both ERA (2.98) and strikeout rate (24.5%). Despite backing that unit with the most potent offense in the league, the 34-22 club finds itself trailing the Rays (34-19) by 1 1/2 games in the AL East.

Prior to last Friday, Cole’s last competitive appearance in the majors had been a reminder of a golden opportunity lost: His inexplicable failure to cover first base in the fifth inning of Game 5 of the 2024 World Series fueled the Dodgers’ comeback from a 5-0 deficit on a night they ended up clinching the title. Limited to 17 starts that season due to nerve irritation and edema in his elbow after finally bringing home a Cy Young award in 2023, Cole made just two appearances in spring training last year before being diagnosed with a torn UCL and undergoing surgery. He progressed enough in his recovery to make two brief appearances in Grapefruit League games this spring, then continued his rehab by making six starts spread across three minor league levels before returning to the Yankees. Read the rest of this entry »

When he broke in with the Brewers last season, Jacob Misiorowski was tough to miss, unless you were a hitter trying to catch up to his ridiculous velocity. The gangly 6-foot-7 righty announced his presence by reaching 100.5 mph on his first major league pitch and topping out at 102.2 mph in five no-hit innings against the Cardinals in Milwaukee on June 12. He followed that up with six perfect innings against the Twins before yielding a walk and a homer, and was named to the National League All-Star team as an injury replacement after just five starts. He soon leveled off, and finished with comparatively unspectacular numbers — he was an afterthought in the NL Rookie of the Year voting — but this season is a different story. The 24-year-old righty has dominated hitters like a true ace, and has improved in practically every important statistical category.

Misiorowski’s latest outing, once again facing the Cardinals in Milwaukee, was both a gem and an awe-inspiring display of firepower. Monday’s effort began with an unprecedented, if somewhat unproductive, barrage of six consecutive four-seam fastballs to JJ Wetherholt, each clocked at 103.0 mph or higher — but four of them were well outside the strike zone, resulting in a walk:

Misiorowsi overcame the leadoff walk, escaping the inning by throwing just seven more pitches on back-to-back three-pitch strikeouts of Iván Herrera and Alec Burleson, then a first-pitch groundout by Jordan Walker. In fact, he retired 15 straight hitters after the walk, again completing five no-hit innings before yielding a leadoff single to Pedro Pagés in the sixth. The Cardinals turned that into a run after speedster Victor Scott II replaced Pagés on a forceout, took third on a single to right field by Wetherholt, and scored on a grounder by Herrera, but Misiorowski stuck around to complete the sixth and seventh innings before departing with a 4-1 lead. The Brewers won, 5-1. Read the rest of this entry »

12:00

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon! I hope you all enjoyed the three-day weekend.

12:02

Jay Jaffe: I flew solo while my wife and daughter drove upstate to visit my father-in-law (I had to stay behind to dog-sit). Did a lot of dad-puttering around the house, some repair projects, some yardwork, and a trek to Jersey City to see the 50th-anniversary celebration — and perhaps the final show ever — of The Feelies.

12:03

Jay Jaffe: Anyway, back to baseball. Before we get started, I need to note that as with last week, we’re trying a new system with our chats, where you’re required to log in to FanGraphs to ask a question. You don’t need to be a Member, but you do need to have an account, just like you need an account to comment on any article. This is still something we’re evaluationg. If you have feedback, feel free to just leave it as a question, or you can send a note to support@fangraphs.com.

12:06

Jay Jaffe: Eh, I’m not sure. Yes, it’s harder to come up with a great third baseman, and the Phillies have had their problems there since then (Alec Bohm has had one season above 2.0 WAR) but I think Harper was the better fit for the city and the culture, as Machado has been for the city and culture in San Diego

12:07

Jay Jaffe: the two are almost dead even in fWAR 27.9 to 27.7 for Harper, and that’s with an additional 107 games missed due to injuries

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