Though they made the playoffs last year for just the fourth time in franchise history, the Marlins’ chances of repeating that feat took a pair of significant hits even before the World Series began. First Sandy Alcantara underwent Tommy John surgery, and then just over a week later, general manager Kim Ng departed after owner Bruce Sherman announced his intent to move her down the pecking order. Following a very quiet offseason and a rash of pitcher injuries this spring, the Marlins are off to their worst start in franchise history at 0-8, making them the majors’ only team without a win. Adding injury to insult, on Thursday the team announced that Eury Pérez would undergo Tommy John surgery as well.

The loss of Pérez is a serious gut punch, particularly given Miami’s efforts to monitor his workload. Signed out of the Dominican Republic for a $200,000 bonus on July 2, 2019, he rocketed through the minors, growing from 6-foot-5 and 155 pounds to 6-foot-8 and 220 pounds by last spring, when he placed fourth on our Top 100 Prospects list while still seven weeks shy of his 20th birthday. After striking out 42 hitters across 31 innings in six starts at Double-A Pensacola, he was called up by the Marlins. He debuted on May 12, made 11 major league starts, then spent most of July and early August back at Pensacola so the team could limit his innings. After returning to the majors on August 7, he wasn’t as effective, and was shut down following his September 20 start due to inflammation in his sacroiliac joint. He finished his rookie season with a 3.15 ERA, 4.11 FIP, and a 28.9% strikeout rate in 91.1 innings. His four-seam fastball averaged 97.5 mph and touched triple digits a handful of times, while his slider, curve, and changeup each produced whiff rates of 46.2% or better and xwOBAs of .227 or lower. That’s a recipe for dominance.

As that midseason interlude suggests, the Marlins handled Pérez with care. He threw just 78 innings split between two levels of A-ball in 2021 and 77 innings (all but two at Double-A) in ’22. He never threw more than six innings or 93 pitches in any of his professional starts and broke 90 in just three at the major league level. Fourteen of his 19 major league starts were made on five or six days of rest, with only five on four days. He threw a total of 128 innings last year, and the Marlins planned to limit his innings this year as well, though they hadn’t publicly disclosed the target.

Pérez was slowed early in the spring by a broken nail on his right middle finger, which forced him to exit his Grapefruit League starts on March 2 and March 13. After the latter, he reported soreness in his elbow and underwent an MRI. The Marlins soon decided he would begin the season on the injured list due to mild elbow inflammation, though they didn’t shut him down from throwing. After experiencing elbow tightness that cut short a bullpen session on Tuesday, he made a second visit to Dr. Keith Meister, who recommended surgery.

Apparently, Pérez had gotten something less than a fully clean bill of health at his previous visit. Here’s what Marlins president of baseball operations Peter Bendix told reporters on Thursday:

“It’s been a bit of a roller coaster… Initially having the frustration of the elbow soreness and followed by the positive outlook on you don’t need surgery right now. There was an understanding that the ligament was not in great shape and essentially, you can pitch with it until you can’t, and nobody knows when that’s going to be. You have to try and see when the symptoms return. And unfortunately, that happened now. Better now than in the middle of the season.”

Ugh. For as careful as the Marlins were, some arms just don’t stand up to throwing in the high-90s 40 or 50 times a night. Pérez will undergo surgery and miss all of this season and likely a good chunk of 2025. Unfortunately, his injury is just the latest in a wave of them among Miami starters dating back to last fall, a significant blow even to a franchise whose strength in recent years has been founded in its deep stockpile of young arms. From 2018–23 — a time period that dates back to the arrivals of Alcantara and Pablo López — no team has even come close to the 35.0 WAR generated by Marlins starters in their age-25 or younger seasons, with the Guardians second in the majors at 27.9. The gap is even larger if you shorten that window; those starters’ 28.2 WAR from 2020–23 is 11.1 more than the second-ranked Mariners.

The thing about young pitchers is that keeping them healthy is as challenging as herding cats. Alcantara won the 2022 NL Cy Young on the strength of a 2.28 ERA, 2.99 FIP, and 207 strikeouts in 228.2 innings, the highest total by any pitcher in six years, but he took a step backwards last year in terms of stuff and performance. He threw 184.2 innings with a 4.14 ERA and 4.03 FIP before being shut down in early September with what was initially diagnosed as a flexor strain. After reporting renewed tightness in his forearm following a September 21 rehab start, he was diagnosed with a sprained ulnar collateral ligament, and underwent surgery on October 6.

As Michael Baumann detailed a couple weeks ago, this spring 26-year-old lefty Braxton Garrett and 25-year-old righty Edward Cabrera both joined Alcantara and Pérez on the sidelines, though thankfully they’re on their way back. Garrett, who made 30 starts and threw 159.2 innings last year with a 3.66 ERA and 3.68 FIP, showed up to camp with a sore shoulder. He’s scheduled to begin a rehab assignment with Triple-A Jacksonville on Sunday and will probably need at least two starts to build up his pitch count before joining the Marlins. Cabrera, who made 20 starts and threw 99.2 innings for the Marlins with a 4.24 ERA and 4.43 FIP, was scratched from his March 10 start due to shoulder tightness and was diagnosed with an impingement, a condition that cost him a month last year. He’s already made one 43-pitch rehab start for Jacksonville and is scheduled for a second on Friday, with a third likely to follow.

If there’s a silver lining, it’s that these outages have allowed for the major league returns of a couple pitchers we haven’t seen enough of lately, namely 25-year-old righty Max Meyer and 26-year-old lefty Trevor Rogers. The third pick of the 2020 draft out of the University of Minnesota, Meyer reached the majors just two years later but started just twice before tearing his UCL and undergoing Tommy John surgery on August 9, 2022. He hadn’t pitched in another competitive game until Monday, when he threw five innings and allowed two runs against the Angels. Rogers, who made the NL All-Star team in 2021 but slipped to a 5.47 ERA in ’22, was limited to four starts last year due to biceps and latissimus dorsi strains. His March 31 start didn’t go great, as he allowed four runs in five innings against the Pirates, but he lived to tell the tale.

Also checking in for the first time since 2020 is righty Sixto Sánchez, who’s now 25 years old. Sanchez made seven starts totaling 39 innings with a 3.46 ERA for the Marlins in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, then missed all of the next two seasons due to shoulder surgeries, first a posterior capsule repair in July ’21 and then a bursectomy in October ’22. After rehabbing he closed the 2023 season by throwing a single inning for Pensacola on September 12. Out of options, he made the team as a reliever thanks to an impressive spring training, but he’s been scored upon in all three of his appearances thus far. On Thursday against the Cardinals, he retired just one of four batters he faced, with Paul Goldschmidt reaching base on a Luis Arraez error, and Nolan Arenado and Iván Herrera following with singles. All three runners eventually scored, turning a 5-3 lead into a 6-5 deficit; Sánchez was charged with the loss. While his four-seamer was clocked as high as 98.2 mph in his March 28 debut, he maxed out at 94.2 mph in his next appearance two days later, and at 95.2 on Thursday. It’s great to see him back, but it could be a bumpy ride.

For as welcome as all these returns have been, the Marlins’ staff is carrying a 6.00 ERA (27th in the majors) and 4.94 FIP (24th), this after the rotation and bullpen respectively ranked 10th and 14th in our preseason positional power rankings, accounting for two of the three spots where they landed in the majors’ upper half; center field, where Jazz Chisholm Jr. and friends ranked 12th, is the other. Thus far the starters (Rogers, Meyer, Jesús Luzardo, A.J. Puk, and Ryan Weathers) have combined for a 5.35 ERA and 4.76 FIP, with Puk, who had previously spent the entirety of his career in the bullpen, getting rocked for a 9.00 ERA and 5.76 FIP in a total of just six innings in his first two starts. The bullpen has a 6.50 ERA and 5.10 FIP, and ranks in the majors’ bottom third in walks (11.6%), strikeouts (19.6%), and home runs (1.36 per nine). Closer Tanner Scott hasn’t had a single save opportunity yet, but has been charged with two losses; entering in the 10th inning on March 31 against the Pirates, he bobbled a leadoff sacrifice bunt and gave up two runs, and then the next day against the Angels, entered a tied game at the start of the eighth inning and walked Anthony Rendon, Nolan Schanuel, and Mike Trout before generating a groundout that brought home the go-ahead run.

The Marlins’ offense hasn’t helped, scoring just 3.63 runs per game and hitting a combined .204/.276/.313; their 60 wRC+ is 28th in the majors. Jake Burger is their only batter with a wRC+ above 92 or a WAR above zero, and even Arraez is hitting just .188/.316/.219.

Maybe Bendix, whom the Marlins hired away from the Rays after a 15-year run in Tampa Bay, the last two as GM, should have upgraded an offense that ranked dead last in the NL in scoring (4.11 runs per game) and 10th in wRC+ (94). He signed just one major league free agent all winter: Tim Anderson, who inked a one-year, $5 million deal after a dismal end to his eight-year run with the White Sox. He didn’t do anything to replace slugger Jorge Soler, whose 36 homers led the team and whose 126 wRC+ ranked third, after he opted out. Bendix has made just three trades since taking the reins, acquiring utilityman Vidal Bruján and righty reliever Calvin Faucher from the Rays in exchange for a trio of prospects in November, adding Nick Gordon from the Twins in exchange for lefty reliever Steven Okert in February, and — taking advantage of Brujan’s and Gordon’s versatility — dealing everyday utilityman Jon Berti to the Yankees last week. Miami’s current $99 million payroll ranks 25th according to RosterResource.

That minimal upkeep follows last fall’s drama. Ng presided over the Marlins’ first full season above .500 since 2009 with a team that made the playoffs despite having just a $110 million payroll, the majors’ eighth-lowest and the lowest of the six NL teams that made the postseason. But instead of granting her the latitude to expand and reshape the front office under her own vision, cutting ties with holdovers in the scouting and player development department that she didn’t mesh with, Sherman planned to bring in a president of baseball operations above her, which wasn’t what she had in mind. She declined her end of a mutual option for 2024, ending her groundbreaking three-year run. Bendix did fortify the front office by bringing in former Giants manager Gabe Kapler as an assistant GM, former Yankees Single-A affiliate manager Rachel Balkovec as director of player development, and former Rangers assistant direct of baseball operations Vinesh Kanthan as director of baseball ops, but when set against his management of the roster of a team that had playoff hopes, it looks like another cycle of kicking the can down the road.

Indeed, given this start — which not only has doubled the Marlins’ previous longest season-opening losing streak (from both 1995 and 2001) but also ranks as the majors’ longest since 2016 — more trades are likely in the offing if the losing continues, as The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal detailed earlier this week. Scott is a pending free agent, as is Josh Bell, who at $16.5 million is the team’s highest-paid player, but Bendix could look to make impact moves by dealing Arraez, who has one more year of arbitration eligibility, as well as Luzardo, who has two. It’s all par for the course in Miami. As we’ve seen throughout the history of the Marlins, regardless of owners, executives, or high-quality young players, this is a franchise where nothing good ever lasts long.

With a new baseball season comes a fresh set of box scores to pick apart daily, but the ink on the first one wasn’t even dry, so to speak, when it lodged itself in my brain at an ungodly early hour on March 20 and stuck there like a flashing neon sign: EIGHT SHORTSTOPS! On Opening Day in Seoul against the Dodgers, the Padres fielded a lineup that except for its battery of Yu Darvish and Luis Campusano was entirely made up of shortstops past and present; by contrast the Dodgers had resorted to placing six-time Gold Glove-winning right fielder Mookie Betts at short to accommodate their own uneven roster. To this baseball-addled mind, it felt like a collision of four decades worth of reading about scouting philosophies and sabermetrics, from Dollar Sign on the Muscle and Future Value through Bill James’ defensive spectrum and the basic construction of WAR, with its positional adjustments. It took a remarkable confluence of circumstances to arrive at this arrangement, which to be fair was never intended to be permanent, though manager Mike Shildt has used that same lineup more often than any other since then.

Shortstops tend to be some of the most gifted and athletic players on the diamond. As Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel put it in Future Value, the requirements for the position include “an above-average arm, plus speed/range, plus footwork, and average hands/action.” A very high percentage of right-handed players were shortstops at some point as amateurs; indeed, playing the position at that stage is “a strong indication of a player’s all-around athleticism,” as Baseball America’s J.J. Cooper wrote last month when noting the Padres’ increasing stockpile. Most of those amateur shortstops migrate across the defensive spectrum to less demanding positions as their bodies grow and they progress through the minors and into the majors, with the development of their offensive skills helping to determine where they might find homes. As James observed long ago, the more difficult the defensive position, the lower the bar for offensive production.

Here’s the lineup in question:

That’s a collection of parts that don’t yet look like they make up a whole. The lineup shows the contours of the boom-and-bust cycle weathered by general manager A.J. Preller, who has committed nearly $1 billion to Machado (11 years, $350 million after the six-time All-Star opted out of his original 10-year, $300 million deal), Tatis (14 years, $340 million), and Bogaerts (11 years, $280 million) alone. While the Padres reached the NLCS in 2022 after knocking off both the 101-win Mets and 111-win Dodgers, Preller’s vision hasn’t translated into full-blown success; after winning just 82 games with a club record $255 million payroll ($280 million for tax purposes) in 2023, he’s been forced to retool — most notably by dealing away late-’22 acquisition Juan Soto — and may be nearing the end of his rope.

Long story short, Preller invested a whole lot of money while packing the Padres’ roster not just with stars, but with stars of a certain type (most of them in line with the trend toward increasingly large but athletic men playing the position), then moving them around as they began to crowd each other. With the team now stretched thin, he’s filling in the gaps with light-hitting utilitymen and an interesting experiment. It’s worth a look at how the Padres got to this point.

The Fringe Guys

Likely the most transient member of this lineup is Wade. A former Yankees prospect, he grazed the Baseball Prospectus Top 101 Prospects list at no. 101 in 2017, following a .259/.352/.349 season at Double-A Trenton and then a stint in the Arizona Fall League learning to play the outfield. Vice president of player development Gary Denbo and others in the organization envisioned Wade as the Yankees’ answer to superutilitymen Ben Zobrist and Brock Holt, but his complete lack of power and failure to make consistent contact prevented him from realizing that lofty goal. Seven years and four DFAs later, the 29-year-old lefty swinger is the owner of a career .220/.297/.302 (68 wRC+) batting line with a 1.7% barrel rate and 24.7% strikeout rate in 726 plate appearances. Signed to a minor league deal in November after getting just 55 PA with the 112-loss A’s last year, Wade has started five of the Padres’ nine games at third base in place of Machado, who’s still recovering from October surgery to repair his right extensor tendon in his elbow. Of the four games Wade hasn’t started, two apiece have been started by 24-year-old righty rookie Eguy Rosario (who has pinch-hit for Wade three times and who himself has played 130 minor league games at shortstop) and 23-year-old lefty-swinging third base prospect Graham Pauley, who finished last season with 20 games at Double-A, but whose infield defense was described as “currently untenable.”

Also on the fringe is Profar, who goes further back with Preller than any other Padre, having been signed out of Curaçao by the Rangers on July 2, 2009, when Preller was the team’s director of professional and international scouting. By 2013, the 20-year-old Profar was the game’s top prospect, but with a trio of All-Stars — Ian Kinsler, Elvis Andrus, and Adrián Beltré — blocking his path to regular playing time in the Texas infield, he was limited to utility duty as a rookie. His trajectory shifted once he lost nearly two full years to right shoulder injuries, first a torn teres major that cost him all of 2014, then a torn labrum that required surgery and limited him to a rehab stint in late ’15. He’s tasted only intermittent success since, finishing with least a 100 wRC+ and 1.0 WAR just three times in the last seven years while more or less playing himself out of the infield; in 2022–23, he logged one inning at second base and 151.1 at first.

After hitting 15 homers with a 111 wRC+ and a career-high 2.5 WAR in 2022, Profar opted out of the final year of his three-year, $21 million deal with the Padres, then went unsigned into mid-March ’23 before catching on with the Rockies. His season was such a disaster that the team released him in late August, and while he enjoyed a bit of September success upon being picked up by San Diego, he finished with a 76 wRC+ and -2.0 WAR. Yet he’s back on a one-year, $1 million-plus-incentives deal, starting in left field because of the team’s lack of outfield depth.

The Cornerstone

As for the other six (former) shortstops, they’ve basically been shoehorned into the lineup by whatever means necessary in a process that dates back to 2019, when the team signed Machado to a 10-year, $300 million deal with the intention of returning him to third base after he had spent most of the previous season at shortstop for the only time in his major league career.

When the Orioles drafted Machado out of a Miami high school with the third pick in 2010, he had already played shortstop for the legendary 2009 under-18 U.S. national team that won a gold medal at the Pan American Junior Championships. Machado played almost exclusively at shortstop in his three minor league seasons (the first of which was only five games long). By the spring of 2012, the 19-year-old phenom was the no. 11 prospect in the game according to Baseball America, drawing comparisons to Alex Rodriguez but also concerns that he might physically outgrow the position. Meanwhile, the Orioles already had a shortstop they were quite satisfied with in 29-year-old J.J. Hardy, who was coming off a 30-homer, 4.5 WAR season and who had recently signed a three-year, $22.5 million extension. Machado began that season at Double-A Bowie, but when the Orioles, who had gone 69-93 in 2011 — their 14th consecutive losing season — found themselves in contention, they called up Machado in early August and stuck him at third base, where he had just two games of professional experience. He quickly proved to be a spectacular defender, a major upgrade over incumbent Wilson Betemit, who was soon lost to a wrist injury anyway. The Orioles won 93 games and claimed a Wild Card spot in 2012, and the Machado-Hardy left side remained in place through two more playoff appearances over the next four years before the latter’s body broke down.

During Hardy’s injury-related absences in 2015–16, Machado filled in at shortstop, playing a total of 52 games there. After Hardy retired following the 2017 season, Machado returned to his old position, first with the Orioles, who were amid a tear-down phase, and then with the Dodgers, who traded for him on July 18, 2018. Though he produced 7.0 WAR in his walk year, Machado’s metrics at shortstop weren’t great (-10 DRS, -6.5 UZR, 1 RAA), and by the time he signed with San Diego in February 2019, the 20-year-old Tatis was on the cusp of the majors, ready to make the jump from Double-A. Back at third, Machado has made two All-Star teams and had two top-three finishes in the MVP voting while emerging as a team leader — so much so that the Padres lavished a new extension on him after he opted out of his original deal at the end of the 2022 season. As for when he’ll return to the field — thereby trimming the shortstop total down to a reasonable (?) seven, with Machado replacing Wade at third and a better hitter than Wade starting at DH — the timeline is tentative at best, “possibly by the end of April.”

The Prodigy

While Machado didn’t have a great first year with the Padres in 2019, Tatis was a revelation on the offensive side, hitting .317/.379/.590 (151 wRC+) in 84 games before a stress reaction in his lower back ended his season in mid-August. His defensive metrics were another story, in the red across the board (-3 DRS, -5.8 UZR, -12 RAA); while Machado’s were somewhat better during a 37-game stint at shortstop when Tatis missed nearly six weeks due to a hamstring strain, the Padres opted to restore their previous configuration during the shortened 2020 season. Both players performed well; Tatis’ defensive numbers even improved across the small sample, and the team went 37-23, making the playoffs for the first time in 14 years, albeit via an expanded field.

With the infield getting increasingly crowded due to the arrivals of Cronenworth (in a December 2019 trade with the Rays along with Tommy Pham) and Kim (from the KBO in the winter of 2020–21), the Padres inked Tatis to a massive extension in the spring of 2021, then experimented with him in center and right field while he was in the midst of a monster 42-homer, 158 wRC+ season that again included mostly below average defensive metrics at shortstop (-7.5 UZR, -6 DRS, 2 RAA). The plan to go forward with him as an outfielder in 2022 was interrupted by Tatis’ misadventures, first a fracture in his left wrist that required surgery and may have occurred during one of the multiple motorcycle accidents he was involved in while in the Dominican Republic that offseason, and then an 80-game PED suspension that landed while he was on a rehab assignment. When he finally returned last year, it was as a right fielder, and while his offense wasn’t up to his usual level, his defense was elite. He led all right fielders with his 29 DRS, 13.8 UZR, and 10 RAA, taking home not only a Gold Glove but the NL Platinum Glove.

The Swiss Army Knife

Drafted as a second baseman out of the University of Michigan — where he pitched and played first, second, third, and left field but not shortstop — in 2015, Cronenworth spent most of the next four seasons playing short in the Rays’ organization, albeit with healthy servings of second base and third base. He even pitched in seven games at Durham in 2019, and might have continued to do so if not for MLB’s dumb rule changes, which included one that set a 20-inning bar for someone to be considered a two-way player; otherwise, he could only enter when his team was winning or losing by more than six runs.

As a rookie in 2020 he hit a robust .285/.354/.477 (126 wRC+) while playing mainly at second base, but he started at shortstop in the three games Tatis did not, and served as a late-inning replacement in eight others. During Tatis’ initial outfield foray, it was Cronenworth who took over at shortstop, starting 31 of 34 games and performing right around average according to the metrics.

He held the second base job in 2022, and was a Gold Glove finalist while hitting for a 110 wRC+ with 4.2 WAR, but the arrival of Bogaerts the following winter pushed him to first base, a position where the Padres had long struggled for offensive production due to their misguided belief in Eric Hosmer, who netted 0.4 WAR in four and a half seasons before being traded. Unfortunately, Cronenworth’s offense has declined since the move, putting the Padres at a deficit offensively; he slipped to a 92 wRC+ and 1.1 WAR last year.

The (Kiwoom) Hero

The infield got even more crowded in 2021 with the arrival of Kim, who had starred as a shortstop for the Nexen (later Kiwoom) Heroes in the KBO. When he first came stateside via a four-year, $28 million deal, he scuffled at the plate, hitting .202/.270/.352 (71 wRC+) while backing up at second, short, and third. He filled in for Tatis during a COVID-related IL stint in May, but was mainly consigned to pinch-hitting duty during Tatis’ outfield experiment.

Once the Padres committed to making Tatis an outfielder, it was Kim they chose to play shortstop for 2022. He rewarded their faith by doing standout work (10 DRS, 4.9 UZR, 4 RAA), becoming a Gold Glove finalist while improving to a 106 wRC+. He accommodated the team by moving to second base with the arrival of Bogaerts in 2023, winning a Gold Glove while hitting 17 homers with a 112 wRC+ and 4.4 WAR. In February, the Padres decided they would be better with the smaller, rangier Kim at shortstop and Bogaerts at second, a move that not only makes sense on paper but seems geared to keeping Kim around past his current deal (he has an $8 million mutual option for 2025).

The Interloper

Signed out of Aruba just shy of his 17th birthday in 2009, Bogaerts played exclusively at shortstop until he reached Triple-A four years later. Following a quick initiation at Pawtucket, the Red Sox squeezed the 20-year-old prospect into their lineup as a third baseman alongside shortstop Stephen Drew, and won the World Series with that combination. When Drew opted out, Bogaerts began the 2014 season at shortstop; he shifted back to third when Drew belatedly re-signed, but when the veteran didn’t hit a lick, the Red Sox foisted him on the Yankees in a July 31 trade and reinstalled the rookie at short. Over the next eight seasons he emerged as one of baseball’s best shortstops, hitting for a 125 wRC+ with 34.0 WAR (second at the position) from 2015–22 and signing a six-year, $120 million extension in ’19. Even so, he accumulated -50 DRS and -25 RAA in that span.

Bogaerts exercised an opt-out in his contract after 2022 and signed a massive deal with the Padres with the understanding that a position switch might happen down the road. He was solid defensively in his first season in San Diego (-4 DRS, 2 RAA, 0 UZR) while hitting for a 120 wRC+, but during spring training, the Padres convinced him to swap places with Kim. “I signed here as a shortstop,” Bogaerts said in late February. “But to me, I just live and die baseball… I’m just doing it in the best interests of the team, and in the end, I feel like I’m at peace with moving off.”

The Latest Experiment

Given the flimsiness of their outfield and the logjam in the infield, the Padres decided late last year to try Merrill, their 2021 first-round pick, in the outfield; as Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin wrote when they placed him 30th on this year’s Top 100 Prospects list, his below-average hands suggest that he’ll permanently move off shortstop eventually. Merrill played five games in left field at Double-A San Antonio, and the Padres prepared him for the likelihood of continuing down that path. They tried Merrill in both left and center field this spring, and the 20-year-old (whose birthday is April 19) impressed them enough to open the season at the latter spot. So far, he’s hit a respectable .240/.321/.440 while starting seven of nine games there and taken over after pinch-hitting for the light-hitting José Azocar in the other two. If Kim leaves after this season, Merrill could be back in the shortstop mix, but for now, this is how the Padres are rolling.

Will it all work? The early returns are mixed, as the Padres are just 4-5. Their offense has been robust, scoring 5.78 runs per game (sixth in the NL), but their shaky pitching has allowed an even six runs per game (10th). It’s far too early to get a read on defensive metrics, but for now we’ll note that the team’s .651 defensive efficiency is 11th, 24 points below the league average. Stay tuned.

2:02	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to my first (solo) chat of the 2024 season. I’ve got a piece today about Ronel Blanco’s no-hitter here https://blogs.fangraphs.com/on-a-day-for-no-hit-bids-astros-righty-ron…

2:02	Jay Jaffe: And yesterday I wrote about the Yankees’ hot start thanks to Juan Soto and the fill-ins for injured third baseman DJ LeMahieu https://blogs.fangraphs.com/juan-soto-and-the-third-base-fill-ins-star…

2:05

Jay Jaffe: Blanco had his changeup working last night, and it baffled the Blue Jays. They have the potential for a pretty decent offense, but punting on third base by letting Matt Chapman go and replacing him with Isiah Kiner-Falefa is going to cost them, and I’m not wild about their second base situation either.

2:07	Jay Jaffe: after getting just 237 games over the past three seasons, I’m glad to see any Mike Trout, and holy smokes did he destroy that baseball. 473 feet! and that was just one of his homers https://www.mlb.com/video/mike-trout-drills-a-473-foot-homer-run

Read the rest of this entry »

No fooling: April 1 was a day for no-hit bids. On Monday afternoon at Wrigley Field, in his major league debut, Shota Imanaga threw 5 2/3 innings of hitless ball against the Rockies before yielding a single to Charlie Blackmon. On Monday evening at Citi Field, in his first start for the Mets, Sean Manaea matched Imanaga with 5 2/3 hitless innings against the Tigers before finally surrendering a single to Andy Ibáñez. (The Mets still managed to lose in extra innings.) And finally, on Monday night at Minute Maid Park, Ronel Blanco went the distance for the Astros against the Blue Jays, at one point retiring 26 hitters in a row. He capped a 10-0 rout by getting Vladimir Guerrero Jr., whom he’d previously struck out three times, to ground out to second base.

The win was the Astros’ first of the season after they opened with four straight losses at home against the Yankees. According to MLB.com’s Sarah Langs, manager Joe Espada, who took over from the retiring Dusty Baker, became the first skipper ever to notch his first major league win — or his first with a new team — with a no-hitter. This is the earliest no-hitter by calendar date, per Sportradar, surpassing Hideo Nomo’s April 4, 2001 no-no for the Red Sox against the Orioles. The first of last year’s four no-hitters, a perfect game by the Yankees’ Domingo Germán, wasn’t thrown until June 28.

If you haven’t heard of Blanco, you’re forgiven. The 30-year-old Dominican-born righty entered the game with just 58 1/3 major league innings under his belt, and until last year, he hadn’t made more than two starts in a season since 2017, his second in pro ball. He’s a late bloomer who was never considered much of a prospect; he did place 30th on our Astros Top Prospects list last year as a 35+ FV reliever, with Eric Longehagen and Tess Taruskin describing him as an “up/down relief piece” whose 94-97 mph fastball “plays below its velocity.” According a 2022 profile at The Athletic by Jake Kaplan, Blanco is a former position player who didn’t begin pitching until he was 18. He signed for a $5,000 bonus in 2016, when he was 22, after trying out for at least four other teams. Before getting signed, he practiced baseball in the mornings and washed cars in the afternoons in his hometown of Santiago in order to support himself and his mother. Astros scout Francis Mojica spotted him throwing 94 mph while scouting Julio Rodríguez, who had the same trainer. Read the rest of this entry »

The Juan Soto era of Yankees baseball is off to a resounding start. The 25-year-old superstar put on a tour de force as his new team swept a four-game series against the Astros in Houston to open the season, most notably by throwing out the potential tying runner at the plate in the ninth inning on Opening Day and then driving in the decisive runs in each of the next three games. The sweep would not have been possible, however, without a couple of unheralded reserves rising to the occasion, namely Oswaldo Cabrera and Jon Berti, both filling in for the injured DJ LeMahieu at third base.

First, let’s note Soto, who absolutely wore out Astros pitchers by going 9-for-17 with a trio of walks and a quartet of RBI, one in each game. He began with a fifth-inning single off Framber Valdez that brought home the Yankees’ first run of the season and started a comeback from a 4-0 deficit. Then with one out in the ninth and the Yankees up 5-4, he scooped up Kyle Tucker’s single and nabbed Mauricio Dubón at the plate. In the seventh inning on Friday, he worked a bases-loaded walk against Rafael Montero to break a 1-1 tie, and in the bottom half of the frame followed with a sliding catch off an Alex Bregman bloop that could have brought in the tying run. In the seventh inning on Saturday, he broke a 3-3 tie by poking an opposite-field solo homer into the Crawford Boxes at the expense of Bryan Abreu. And in the ninth inning on Sunday he again broke a 3-3 tie, capping a three-hit day by slapping a two-out, full-count RBI single off Josh Hader. Oh, is that all?

The Yankees couldn’t have asked for more from their latest marquee addition, who helped them to their first 4-0 start since 2003 (also on the road) and their first four-game series sweep ever in Houston. Including their three-game sweep at Minute Maid Park last September, they’ve won seven in a row against the team that has tormented them for most of the past decade by eliminating them from the postseason in 2015, ’17, ’19, and ’22. For a Yankees team that missed the postseason last year, that has to be a boost.

They did it all while scrambling to fill the shoes of the 35-year-old LeMahieu, who was slated to be their leadoff hitter and regular third baseman to start the season. On March 16, LeMahieu fouled a ball off the top of his right foot in an exhibition game, and was initially diagnosed with a bone bruise after X-rays, a CT scan, and an MRI all came back negative. His slow recovery made apparent his need to start the season on the sidelines; on Opening Day, the Yankees made it official by placing him on the IL retroactive to March 25. A follow-up MRI on Saturday revealed that he had actually suffered a fracture.

This is the second year out of three that LeMahieu has contended with an injury to his right foot. In 2022, he broke a sesamoid bone in his right big toe that led to ligament damage in his second toe; he needed a cortisone shot at the All-Star break and played through the injury for most of the second half, hitting just .228/.308/.327 over that span, spiraling into a 1-for-31 slump before missing three weeks in September, and getting left off the postseason roster. He never underwent offseason surgery to alleviate the issue, which may have contributed to his first-half struggles in 2023 (.220/.285/.357, 77 wRC+), but thanks to former hitting coach Sean Casey, who helped LeMahieu improve his lower body positioning, he hit for a 129 wRC+ in the second half, though he still finished with a thin .243/.327/.390 (101 wRC+) line.

While the Yankees did not announce a full timeline for his return, manager Aaron Boone said the infielder would work out at the team’s spring training facility in Tampa as his pain allows, and that he would be re-imaged in two weeks; a best-case scenario might put his return at the end of April, though the team isn’t going to rush him back. LeMahieu’s slow recovery from his previous foot injury is an “added concern, which is why we’re not pushing it,” Boone said, “It’s not something that he’s going to play through. He’s going to be 100 percent.”

The Yankees hadn’t confirmed the fracture until after the season started, but they knew LeMahieu would be out and also that Oswald Peraza would begin the year on the IL with a right shoulder strain. Both injuries prompted New York to pulled off a three-team trade just 24 hours before Opening Day, acquiring Berti from the Marlins, trading 18-year-old outfielder John Cruz — a “prospect of note” on the Yankees’ Top Prospects list — to the Marlins and 26-year-old out-of-options backup catcher Ben Rortvedt to the Rays, with 23-year-old outfield prospect Shane Sasaki going from Miami to Tampa Bay, as well. In 2023, the 34-year-old Berti, who spent the past five seasons with the Marlins, batted .294/.344/.405 (103 wC+) with seven homers in a career-high 424 plate appearances en route to 2.1 WAR; his batting average was a career high, and he just missed setting full-season highs in the other slash categories. One oddity about his numbers is that he went from stealing a major league-high 41 bases in 46 attempts in 2022 to just 16 in 22 attempts in ’23 despite the new rules that had so many players running wild; even so, his sprint speed still placed in the 95th percentile, according to Statcast.

The righty-swinging Berti can play second base, shortstop, and third base, and also has experience at all three outfield positions, though 29 of his 30 starts in the outfield over the past three seasons were in left field. He didn’t see his first action for the Yankees until Sunday, when he went 1-for-4 with a fourth-inning single off Astros starter J.P. France; the hit brought home Anthony Rizzo to put the Yankees ahead 2-1, but they couldn’t hold that lead. It was in the ninth inning where Berti came up bigger. With the Yankees having taken the lead thanks to Soto’s RBI single, the Astros began the inning with back-to-back singles by Jeremy Peña and Victor Caratini against closer Clay Holmes. Jose Altuve then ripped a hot grounder down the third base line, but Berti prevented what could have been an RBI double with a diving, backhanded stop, then recovered to beat Peña to third for the force out.

Berti didn’t get to play until Sunday because the 25-year-old Cabrera had done such a strong job holding down the hot corner. A 45-FV switch-hitting prospect who was more or less crowded out of the middle infield by the rises of Peraza and Anthony Volpe, both younger and with higher ceilings, Cabrera reached the majors first, on August 17, 2022. He hit .247/.312/.429 (111 wRC+) with 1.5 WAR in 171 PA in a utility role over the final third of the season, learning the outfield corners on the fly but starting key games at shortstop as well, including two against Houston in the ALCS. He made the team out of spring training last year and spent most of the season in the majors but struggled mightily, hitting just .211/.275/.299. His 60 wRC+ tied for the sixth-lowest mark among players with at least 300 PA, and he finished with -0.6 WAR. He struggled from both sides of the plate, with a 61 wRC+ against lefties and a 60 against righties.

While he started spring training in a 1-for-23 slump, Cabrera overhauled his swing and approach. He ditched a high leg kick in favor of a toe-tap that he had previously used mainly in two-strike situations in order to reduce his movement and simplify his path to the ball. He also focused more on contact and on hitting line drives after observing Soto in batting practice. Cabrera told The Athletic’s Chris Kirshner:

“The one big thing that I see from that guy is he doesn’t try to hit fly balls… He’s not trying to hit the ball in the air every time. His hands just get quick to the ball. That’s what got my attention. He’s always trying to hit line drives. When I saw Soto hitting in the cage for the first time, it was low line drives all of the time, so what am I doing trying to hit homers all of the time? I talked with the hitting coaches about it — obviously, Soto and I are not the same. But I’ve been trying to take some of the things he does into my game.”

On Opening Day, Cabrera batted ninth and collected a fifth-inning infield single off Valdez and then a game-tying solo homer off Montero in the sixth. On Friday, he went 4-for-5, with a single and a double off Cristian Javier, then an RBI single off Tayler Scott, and a two-run single off Parker Mushinski. While he batted right-handed against Valdez, he went lefty-on-lefty against Mushinski, something the team is having him do against certain southpaws. He had less success with that approach against Josh Hader, striking out against him on both Saturday and Sunday, but in the first of those games he had already hit a game-tying two-run homer in the seventh off Abreu, a righty. He started at shortstop on Sunday, filling in for Volpe, who sat due to a stomach bug.

Cabrera’s .438/.471/.875 across 17 PA is a clear signal that we’re in small-sample territory, but it’s worth at least a passing note regarding how much harder he’s hit the ball. Last season, he averaged just 87.8 mph in exit velocity, with a 3.5% barrel rate and a 32.5% hard-hit rate. Through his first 10 batted balls, he’s averaged 91.6 mph with one barrel and five hard-hit balls.

Obviously, the samples will have to get much larger before we have any real idea whether Cabrera truly has improved. Nonetheless, his rising to the occasion in timely fashion offers hope that the Yankees are a deeper team than last year, one that will be able to weather the absence of LeMahieu.

Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto walk into the Dodgers clubhouse in 2032, where… they’re greeted by Will Smith. There’s no punchline to this setup because it’s not joke, as the All-Star receiver has joined those other three Dodgers in inking a deal that’s at least a decade long. On Wednesday, the day before his 29th birthday, Smith agreed to a 10-year, $140 million extension.

Smith has already helped the Dodgers win a World Series and established himself as one of the game’s preeminent catchers. He’s second in WAR among catchers since 2019, the year he debuted, with his 15.8 WAR trailing only the 19.8 WAR of J.T. Realmuto, who took nearly 500 more plate appearances over that same stretch. He’s tops among all catchers for the 2021–23 stretch with 12.9 WAR, a span over which he and Realmuto (who had 12.6 WAR) had nearly identical PA totals. Though he still had one more year after this one before becoming eligible for free agency, he and the Dodgers had wanted to hammer out a long-term deal for a while, so much so that according to MLB.com’s Juan Toribo, the two sides had engaged in extension discussions “each of the last few seasons.”

Smith is coming off an admittedly uneven season. Though his 119 wRC+ was the lowest mark of his five-year career, he posted his second-highest WAR (4.4). He hit .261/.359/.438 with 19 homers in 554 plate appearances, but tailed off after a hot start:

Smith made his first All-Star team (!) on the strength of that first half, but even then, all wasn’t quite well. On April 12, he suffered a concussion when a foul ball hit his mask and missed two weeks of action. Three days after returning, on April 30, he was hit by a Jake Woodford sinker. He suffered a broken rib and an oblique strain but played through them, and doing so created some bad habits with regards to his mechanics. From a September 22 piece by Jack Harris in the Los Angeles Times:

Instead of his typically smooth, compact inside-out swing, Smith said his bat path has been too “out to in” lately, leading to more whiffs and mis-hits on pitches he used to crush.

He said his front side is opening up too much, causing him to cut across the ball instead of driving it with his easy pop.

… Added [manager Dave] Roberts: “There was probably a little bit of guarding [the injury] initially after. And then when you’re talking about the rib, the oblique, that sort of dovetails into some changed mechanics.”

Particularly with the Dodgers’ awareness of his slump, the team probably should have dialed Smith’s workload back a bit more than it did; he matched his 2022 total of 106 starts behind the plate but DHed only 14 times, compared to 25 the year before. He had enough success in ironing out his mechanics that he went 5-for-12 with a double and a triple in the Dodgers’ three-and-out Division Series loss to the Diamondbacks, and he’s off to a 6-for-14 start this year, so there’s no reason to think he’s permanently broken.

As for the contract, it’s the longest ever for a catcher, surpassing the eight-year extensions of Joe Mauer, Buster Posey, and Keibert Ruiz, who came up in the Dodgers’ system, generally a level behind Smith, before being traded to the Nationals in the Max Scherzer blockbuster in 2021. Smith’s deal isn’t nearly as lucrative as either the Mauer or Posey ones for $184 million and $167 million — and that’s without adjusting for inflation, as both of those were signed more than a decade ago. In terms of unadjusted average annual value, Smith’s $14 million a year ranks just 12th among catchers historically and fourth currently, according to Cot’s Contracts. On an annual basis, that $14 million average comes to only about 60% of the $23.1 million that Realmuto, the game’s highest-paid catcher, is making.

That AAV requires adjustment, however, because as with the Ohtani and Betts deals — and those of Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernández, so long as we’re on the subject of the Dodgers — a significant amount of the money is deferred. In his case, it’s $50 million, with the team paying out $5 million a year from 2034–43. That reduces the AAV of Smith’s deal to $12.24 million for Competitive Balance Tax purposes, about 53% of what Realmuto (who himself deferred half of his $20 million 2021 salary) is making.

Structure-wise, according to MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand, Smith will receive a $30 million signing bonus — half payable on November 15, the other half on January 15 — and be paid $13.55 million this year (replacing the one-year, $8.55 million contract he signed in January), then $13 million a year for 2025–27, $9.5 million for ’28-32, and $9.95 million for ’33. That’s a cool breeze running through Guggenheim Baseball Management’s bank account; in 2028, Betts will be taking home more than three times as much ($30 million), and Yamamoto nearly that ($26 million). While he doesn’t have explicit no-trade protection, he’ll reach 10-and-5 status in mid-2028, and his contract has one other provision that protects him: If he’s traded, the deferred money becomes payable in season, meaning that the acquiring team will take a larger CBT hit unless the two sides agree to a similar arrangement.

Even given the length of the deal, ZiPS is surprisingly optimistic about Smith. Via Dan Szymborski:

That’s 23.9 WAR over the life of the contract, with 17.1 WAR in the first half of the deal, a very strong return. In fact, the ZiPS suggested contract for this projection is $164 million over 10 years, but once the deferred money is accounted for, the Dodgers are paying him the equivalent of about 75% of that in present value. This is a very good deal for them, and if it seems like Smith is getting the short end here, it’s just that the two sides have figured out a mutually advantageous way of structuring the payments. To these eyes, the way it makes the most sense is to think of that signing bonus and the higher salaries of the first four years as one deal that without deferrals averages out to $20.6 million a year over the next four years (which would be the second-highest AAV for a catcher, surpassing Salvador Perez’s $20.5 million), and then about $9.6 million per year for the last six, a little less than the $10.15 million James McCann is making as a well-compensated backup.

Particularly in the wake of the Ohtani contract, I’ve seen complaints that the Dodgers’ penchant for using deferred money is somehow a subversion of the Competitive Balance Tax system — as if that were sacrosanct — and therefore bad for baseball. I don’t find this notion particularly convincing. The league and the owners knew exactly what they were doing when they designed this system; as former MLBPA executive subcommittee member Collin McHugh told The Athletic recently, “They’re better at finding loopholes in the system because that is their job, to maximize profit” for the 30 owners. Does anyone out there actually think that even the most miserly of the multimillionaires and billionaires who own teams got filthy rich without understanding the time value of money and the advantages, tax-related and otherwise, of spreading out large payments? The concept permeates our society; not all of us are fortunate enough to have socked away money for retirement, but at some point, most of us have been encouraged to participate in a pension plan, 401k, or IRA that provides tax advantages and spreads out our income to compensate for lesser earnings down the road.

As for the players and owners, in December the Wall Street Journal’s Linsdey Adler and Richard Rubin reported that the owners have proposed limits on the amount of salary that can be deferred, with one 2021 proposal including a full ban, but the MLB Players Association rejected the idea. Understandably, they have no incentive to give up that right without receiving major concessions in return. Maybe they’d agree to forgo deferrals if the owners were to allow players to reach eligibility for arbitration and/or free agency more quickly, but we all know that’s not happening anytime soon.

Anyway, it’s not like the Dodgers, who now have $915.5 million worth of deferrals on their books for the salaries of Betts, Freeman, Hernández, Ohtani, and Smith, are doing this while avoiding paying the CBT. They’re well past the fourth-tier threshold of $297 million, and figure to be paying taxes annually for the foreseeable future, with increasingly steeper penalties and the risk of an inflexible roster; it’s hardly inconceivable that some of these contracts could go south and cause the Dodgers headaches down the road. As for Smith, he’s now got a handsome deal that rewards him for his place as part of the team’s foundation, with protection from the cumulative impact of so many innings behind the plate. Good for him, and good for the Dodgers.

If you were searching for evidence of the changing of the guard in the major leagues — or of the occupational hazards faced by starting pitchers — look no further than this year’s slate of Opening Day hurlers. As the 2024 season launches with what was supposed to be a full schedule on Thursday — the Brewers-Mets and Braves-Phillies games have both been postponed until Friday — the absences of so many of the game’s most renowned pitchers due to injuries and other issues loom large. If there’s good news, it’s that we still have plenty of top arms on tap.

Consider, for example, the fact that neither of last year’s two Cy Young Award winners, Gerrit Cole and Blake Snell, will be taking the hill on Thursday. After being diagnosed with nerve inflammation and edema earlier this month, Cole — one of just two pitchers to throw at least 200 innings in both 2022 and ’23 — will start the year on the injured list and won’t even begin throwing again until early or mid-April. A best-case scenario has him returning around the start of June; in his place, the Yankees will start Nestor Cortes. Snell, who reached free agency after winning his second Cy Young last year with the Padres, didn’t even sign with the Giants until March 19 and isn’t built up enough to be on the Opening Day roster, let alone take his turn. Instead, Logan Webb will get the call for San Francisco for the third straight season, though that might have been the case even if Snell had signed in a timely fashion.

This is more or less a once-every-couple-of-decades occurrence. According to ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian, the last time neither Cy Young winner started the following Opening Day was in 2005. That year, despite their hardware, both the Astros’ Roger Clemens and the Twins’ Johan Santana yielded to teammates with longer tenures with their respective clubs, namely Roy Oswalt and Brad Radke. Before that, you have to go back to 1982, when neither the Dodgers’ Fernando Valenzuela nor the Brewers’ Rollie Fingers (a reliever) started. Read the rest of this entry »

2:02

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to my pre-Opening Day chat. I’m just back from a brief ski vacation in Salt Lake City with my daughter; due to delays we didn’t get home until 3 AM so forgive the cobwebs. The second of my two Positionl Power Rankings ran while I was gone, the Right Fielders https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2024-positional-power-rankings-right-field

2:02	Jay Jaffe: The first of those was, um, first base, which ran early last week https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2024-positional-power-rankings-first-base

2:02	Jay Jaffe: Anyway, on with the show…

2:03	Jay Jaffe: womp womp

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Leo Morgenstern and Davy Andrews previewed left and center field. Now we round out the outfield positions with a look at right field.

Last year, right field boasted the two best players in the National League… sort of. While Ronald Acuña Jr. finally picked up where he left off before tearing his right ACL in July 2021, becoming the first player to combine at least 40 homers and at least 70 stolen bases in the same season, Mookie Betts had his best season as a Dodger. The pair finished first and second in the majors in wRC+ (170 to 167 in Acuña’s favor) and virtually tied for the lead in WAR (8.3 apiece). The wrinkle was that the diminutive Dodger — who had already banked six Gold Gloves and an MVP award while climbing to ninth in JAWS as a right fielder — did a substantial amount his work as a middle infielder, starting 62 games at second base and another 12 at shortstop without missing a beat. That versatility helped the Dodgers compensate for the loss of Gavin Lux to his own ACL tear, and it was enabled by an impressive comeback by 33-year-old Jason Heyward, whom the Dodgers plucked off the scrapheap and slotted into a well-defined platoon role in right. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Meg Rowley introduced this year’s rankings, while Kyle Kishimoto examined the state of the league’s catchers. Today, we turn our attention to first and second basemen.

Two years ago, shortly after the lockout ended, the reigning champion Braves made what felt like a cold-blooded decision, trading for A’s first baseman Matt Olson and then signing him to an eight-year, $168 million extension, effectively closing the door on free agent Freddie Freeman’s 12-year run with the team. Still smarting, Freeman turned around and signed a six-year, $162 million deal with the Dodgers. While the latter still had some hurt feelings to vent, these days it feels as though the sequence worked out for the best for both players and both teams. The pair tops our Positional Power Rankings, just as they did in 2021, in fact, with Freeman, who’s coming off his first 200-hit season and his fifth top-five finish in the NL MVP voting, claiming the top ranking for the third year out of four and Olson climbing after bashing 54 homers. Read the rest of this entry »