You lose some, and then you lose some. On Sunday at Oracle Park, the Mariners not only fell to the Giants 5-4, but they were forced to remove Victor Robles from the game after he injured his left shoulder making a remarkable catch on the game’s penultimate pitch. His injury is just one of a handful of notable ones suffered in the past several days.

Robles, who broke out last season after being released by the Nationals and signed by the Mariners, had played every inning of every game in right field until the injury. With the score tied 4-4 in the bottom of the ninth, one out, and Luis Matos on first base, Patrick Bailey fouled a drive into the right field corner. Robles sprinted 113 feet, leapt to grab the ball, and then fell over the half-height padded fence and into the netting. After extricating himself, he fell to his knees in obvious pain, rolled the ball to second baseman Ryan Bliss as Matos tagged up and reached third base, and remained on the ground. While he was tended to by Mariners head athletic trainer Kyle Torgerson, Giants manager Bob Melvin challenged the catch ruling, but the call on the field was upheld [as a reader pointed out, Matos was sent back to second under stadium boundary rules]. Finally, Robles was carted off the field, with Torgerson helping him to support his injured left arm.

Miles Mastrobuoni moved from third base to right field to replace Robles, but he didn’t need to for very long, because on the next pitch after play resumed, Wilmer Flores singled in Matos to send the Mariners to defeat, dropping them to 3-7. Medical personnel at Oracle Park popped Robles’ shoulder back into place, and after undergoing X-rays on-site, he was initially diagnosed with a dislocated left shoulder and placed on the 10-day injured list. The results of the follow-up MRI he underwent on Monday afternoon have yet to be announced. Read the rest of this entry »

12:03

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to the latest edition of my weekly chat. I’m having some technical difficulties and need to restart my browser, so please give me a few minutes before we get up and running.

12:06

Jay Jaffe: Ok, that’s better.

12:08

Jay Jaffe: Since it’s April 8, I’ll note a pair of important milestones:  today marks the 51st anniversary of Hank Aaron’s 715th home run, and the 50th anniversary of Frank Robinson making his debut as the first Black manager in AL/NL history.

12:08

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I wrote about the Reds’ offensive struggles and some interesting developments with Elly De La Cruz’s swing(s) https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-reds-offense-has-been-dreadful-so-far-…

12:09

Jay Jaffe: Today I’ve got a piece on Victor Robles’ spectacular catch and subsequent shoulder injury as well as some other injuries of note: Spencer Arrighetti, Iván Herrera, Ketel Marte and Blake Snell. Should be up before this chat ends

Read the rest of this entry »

The Terry Francona era in Cincinnati is not off to a rousing start, particularly on offense. Last week, the Reds became the first team to lose three straight 1-0 games in 65 years, and so far, they’ve lost all three series they’ve played, against the Giants, Rangers, and Brewers. Despite the promise of a good rotation headlined by Hunter Greene, and some eye-opening changes by Elly De La Cruz, it looks like it could be a long summer in Cincinnati.

The Reds are 3-7 and fourth in the NL Central entering Monday. They’ve actually outscored opponents 39-38, but two of their three wins were lopsided ones, a 14-3 blowout of the Rangers on March 31 and then an 11-7 win on Saturday over the Brewers. Between those games, they lost four straight, including a pair of 1-0 games against the Rangers on April 1 and 2, and then a third 1-0 loss to the Brewers on April 3. They actually went scoreless for 35 consecutive innings, the longest stretch that a Reds team has gone without a run since 1946. The streak began with the eighth inning on March 31 (a home game, so they didn’t bat in the ninth), ran through those three 1-0 losses, and extended until the eighth on April 4, when they were down 3-0; they scored a pair of unearned runs but fell short, 3-2.

Amid that streak, the Reds made some dubious history, becoming just the sixth AL or NL team to lose three straight 1-0 games since 1901:

Read the rest of this entry »

Kristian Campbell has come a long way in a short time. Less than two years after being drafted by the Red Sox out of Georgia Tech, with just 137 minor league games under his belt, he placed seventh on our Top 100 Prospects list in February, and won the starting second base job during spring training. Now, with just a week of major league service time under his belt, Campbell has agreed to an eight-year, $60 million extension that includes a pair of team options and escalator clauses that can push the contract’s value past the $100 million mark. It’s a deal that provides both security for Campbell and some opportunity for growth, though it’s not hard to notice the much more lucrative extension that the Padres announced for Jackson Merrill on Wednesday as well and wonder whether Campbell should have waited. Either way, the Red Sox have ensured that another talented youngster will be part of their foundation in the coming years.

The 22-year-old Campbell is raking at a .400/.500/.750 (258 wRC+) clip through the first week of his major league career. So far, five of his eight hits have been for extra bases, including a 431-foot homer off the Rangers’ Jacob Webb on Saturday. He celebrated the news of his extension on Wednesday night with a pair of opposite-field doubles off Orioles starter Zach Eflin.

While Campbell was a co-favorite to win AL Rookie of the Year honors in our annual staff poll, nobody expects him to continue at this breakneck pace. Still, buzz about an extension had been circulating in recent days, and while this move isn’t nearly as big as the six-year, $170 million extension the Red Sox announced on Monday for lefty Garrett Crochet, the team clearly views Campbell as an important piece of its future. Read the rest of this entry »

Kyle Tucker’s final year before hitting free agency is shaping up to be a big one. Traded from the Astros to the Cubs in a blockbuster deal last December, the 28-year-old right fielder has yet to play a regular season game with his new team at Wrigley Field, yet he’s settling into his new surroundings in impressive fashion. At this writing, he’s riding a streak of homering in four consecutive games, one that has helped him to a prominent spot on the leaderboards.

Tucker went hitless in his debut for the Cubs during the Tokyo Series against the Dodgers on March 18, though in his second game, he drove in a run with a bases-loaded walk against Roki Sasaki, then added a ninth-inning double. Still, he was just 2-for-16 through the season’s first four games before going to town on the Diamondbacks’ Brandon Pfaadt on Saturday, collecting a single, a double, and a two-run homer against the freshly-extended righty in a 4-3 win. He followed that up with a three-run homer off Arizona’s Joe Mantiply in a losing cause on Sunday, then on Monday went 4-for-7 in an 18-3 rout of the A’s in their Sacramento debut, with doubles off Joey Estes and Noah Murdock, a homer off Jhonny Pereda (the team’s backup catcher), and three RBI. Read the rest of this entry »

As you might expect from a team that set a record for futility with 121 losses last year, then traded its ace over the winter, the White Sox did not enter this season with a powerhouse rotation. In fact, according to our Positional Power Rankings, Chicago is projected to have the second-worst starting pitching in the majors, ahead of only the A’s. Yet that rotation has already earned a spot in the history books, as the South Side starters have yet to allow an earned run through the season’s first four games.

Admittedly, the word earned is a load-bearing one in that last sentence. But in becoming just the fifth team to pull off this feat in the 113 years since earned runs became an official statistic, Chicago’s unlikely accomplishment is worth noting, a fluky and probably fleeting performance that has at least earned its run in Small Sample Theater, particularly given the circumstances surrounding it. I’ll get to those, but first let’s meet the company the Sox are keeping:

That’s not a particularly heralded bunch of teams, at least outside of the 1914 Red Sox, who went 91-62 and finished in second the American League. Their season-opening rotation included Dutch Leonard, who still holds the AL record with a 0.96 ERA; in July, they added a 19-year-old lefty named Babe Ruth. The other three predecessors finished below .500, and not by a little; the Giants went 76-86 between championship seasons, the Brewers 66-95, and the Blue Jays 67-95. Even so, they all caught lightning in a bottle during the season’s first week, as have the White Sox, who are 2-2. Last year, they didn’t notch their second win until their 11th game. Read the rest of this entry »

12:04

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to my first solo regular season chat! It’s been a few weeks since I could occupy this slot; at this time last week, I was in the midst of a fruitless trip to the DMV, where a reservation apparently doesn’t mean what you think it means. Anyway, it’s the first of April, which means that it’s my mother’s 83rd birthday; she’s not reading this chat, but I note it merely to introduce the guarantee that none of what follows will be in the form of an April Fool’s joke. I spend enough time mixing bullshit with earnestness in my online persona that some people have enough trouble figuring out which is which, so let’s just skip that part. Anyway, yesterday I took a look at some goings-on in the Diamondbacks rotation https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jordan-montgomery-may-be-done-as-a-diamond…

12:05

Jay Jaffe: Hot off the presses, I’ve got a piece about the White Sox rotation, which through the season’s first four games has yet to allow an earned run — a fluky thing but one that’s earned them a run in Small Sample Theater. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-white-sox-rotation-has-put-up-mostly-z…

12:06

Jay Jaffe: Like, that sucker just went live while I started typing that paragraph. Don’t burn your hands. And now, on with the show…

12:07

Jay Jaffe: Let’s say 15 starts, some relief appearances, good performance and a spot in the postseason bullpen. Hope springs eternal!

Read the rest of this entry »

Jordan Montgomery isn’t likely to pitch for the Diamondbacks again. Brandon Pfaadt could be pitching for them well into the next decade. That’s the upshot of an eventful few days for the Diamondbacks rotation, as Montgomery revealed last week that he would undergo Tommy John surgery and miss the 2025 season, while Pfaadt agreed to a five-year, $45 million extension that includes a couple of additional option years.

For the 32-year-old Montgomery – who was outpitched by Pfaadt and Ryne Nelson in this spring’s battle for the fifth starter job — this is the latest twist in a saga that has largely been an unhappy one ever since he helped the Rangers win the 2023 World Series. He hit the market on a high note after being dealt ahead of the trade deadline for the second straight season; between his time with the Cardinals and Rangers in 2023, he set career bests while posting the majors’ eighth-lowest ERA (3.20) and ranking 12th in WAR (4.3). He capped that with a 2.90 ERA in 31 postseason innings, starting a pair of series-opening combined shutouts against the Rays (ALWCS) and the Astros (ALCS), and chipping in 2 1/3 innings of emergency relief following Max Scherzer’s injury-related exit in Game 7 of the ALCS. Though he was knocked around by the Diamondbacks in Game 2 of the World Series, it didn’t stop Texas from winning its first championship.

Off of that run, Montgomery and agent Scott Boras reportedly set their sights on a contract topping the seven-year, $172 million extension that Aaron Nola signed with the Phillies shortly after the offseason began, but as with Boras’ other high-profile clients that winter, namely Cody Bellinger, Matt Chapman, and Blake Snell, the big deal envisioned for Montgomery never materialized, and he lingered unsigned past the start of spring training. He was pursued by the Red Sox — which would have been an excellent fit given that his wife had begun a dermatology residence at a Boston-area hospital in the fall of 2023 — as well as the Rangers, Yankees (who drafted and developed him), and Mets, among others. In the end he settled for a one-year, $25 million contract with the Diamondbacks on March 29, with a $20 vesting option for 2025 based on 10 starts, rising to $22.5 million with 18 starts and $25 million with 23 starts. Read the rest of this entry »

All hail Chris Sale and Tarik Skubal! Last year, both southpaws dominated opposing hitters, winning the Pitching Triple Crown by leading their respective leagues in wins, ERA, and strikeouts. They also topped their circuits in both the FanGraphs and Baseball Reference flavors of WAR, and took home their first Cy Young Awards. It was just the second time that AL and NL hurlers won the Pitching Triple Crown in the same year, after Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw in 2011. Like that pair in 2012, they’re both slated to usher in the 2025 season by taking the ball on Opening Day, with Sale facing the Padres in San Diego at 4:10 p.m. ET on Thursday and Skubal going up against the defending champion Dodgers (who already had their Opening Day on March 18 in Tokyo against the Cubs) in Los Angeles at 7:10 p.m. ET.

This will be the sixth Opening Day start for Sale, who turns 36 on March 30, but his first since 2019, as a variety of injuries limited him to just 31 starts from ’20–23. After being traded from the Red Sox to the Braves in December 2023, he went 18-3 with a 2.38 ERA and 225 strikeouts as well as 6.4 fWAR and 6.2 bWAR, and reinvigorated his long-dormant Hall of Fame case along the way. The only down note to his season was that he didn’t pitch after September 19 due to back spasms and was left off the roster for the Wild Card Series (also against San Diego, coincidentally), which the Padres swept. As for the 28-year-old Skubal, he went 18-4 with a 2.39 ERA and 228 strikeouts as well as 5.9 fWAR and 6.4 bWAR. His breakout helped the Tigers reach the postseason for the first time since 2014, which they did thanks to an improbable 24-10 sprint to the finish; according to our Playoff Odds, at 62-66 on August 22, they had just a 0.8% chance of making it.

Setting the historic nature of the dual Triple Crowns and the rest of those story lines aside, having both reigning Cy Young winners starting on Opening Day marks a return to normalcy. For as commonplace as such assignments may seem, last year neither of the 2023 winners, Gerrit Cole and Blake Snell, were available, with the former sidelined by nerve inflammation and edema in his elbow and the latter not built up yet after signing with the Giants on March 19. As I noted at the time, the absence of both Cy Young winners from the slate was more or less a once-every-couple-decades occurrence. Prior to 2024, the last time neither reigning Cy Young winner started on Opening Day was in ’05, when both Astros right-hander Roger Clemens and Twins lefty Johan Santana yielded to longer-tenured teammates. Before that, one had to flip the calendar back to 1982, when Dodgers southpaw Fernando Valenzuela held out in a contract dispute, and Brewers righty Rollie Fingers was a reliever. Read the rest of this entry »

As spring training ends and rosters are finalized, one team’s flotsam and jetsam becomes another team’s reserve outfielder. Such was the case this past weekend as two outfielders who were in camp with the Brewers but deemed superfluous subsequently found homes within the AL Central. The Brewers traded Mark Canha to the Royals and released Manuel Margot, who signed a deal with the Tigers.

When camps opened last month, the 36-year-old Canha and the 30-year-old Margot were both still free agents, but within a two-day span in late February, Brewers president of baseball operations Matt Arnold inked them to minor league deals with non-roster invitations to spring training. Ultimately, the team decided to head into the season with a starting outfield of Jackson Chourio in left, Garrett Mitchell in center, and Sal Frelick in right, with designated hitter Christian Yelich and switch-hitting second baseman/outfielder Isaac Collins also in the mix, and Blake Perkins recovering from a fractured right shin. As free agents who ended last season on major league rosters, signed minor league deals this past offseason, and had at least six years of service time, both Canha and Margot had the first of three opt-out dates looming on March 22.

This was Canha’s second go-round with the Brewers, who acquired him from the Mets on July 31, 2023, and played him regularly down the stretch on a squad that claimed a Wild Card spot. Canha was on a $26.5 million, two-years-plus-option deal at the time; after that season, the Brewers flipped him to the Tigers in exchange for righty prospect Blake Holub, and Detroit picked up his $11.5 million option for 2024. During the first four months of the season, Canha made 30 starts at DH, 29 at first base, 19 in left field, and 11 in right field. He mustered less power than usual, hitting a modest .231/.337/.350 (101 wRC+) with seven homers in 377 plate appearances. Read the rest of this entry »