When Matt Waldron made his major league debut for the Padres last June 24, it was a noteworthy event. While a few position players had thrown the occasional knuckleball ast a goof after taking the mound for mop-up duty, no true pitcher had thrown one in a regular season game in two years. The last one who had done so, the Orioles’ Mickey Jannis, made just one major league appearance. Mixing his knuckler in with four other offerings, Waldron bounced between the minors and majors for a couple months before sticking around in September. Now he’s a regular part of the Padres’ rotation, and he’s having success… some of the time.

Through six starts totaling 31 innings this season, Waldron owns a 4.35 ERA (111 ERA-) and 4.06 FIP (103 FIP-), which won’t put him in contention for the Cy Young award but is respectable enough to keep him occupying a back-of-the-rotation spot. For what it’s worth, within the Padres’ rotation he’s handily outpitched both Michael King (5.00 ERA, 6.30 FIP), whom the Padres acquired from the Yankees as one of the key pieces in the Juan Soto trade, and Joe Musgrove (6.94 ERA, 6.59 FIP), who last year signed a $100 million extension.

Waldron is striking out a modest 19.7% of hitters but walking just 7.3%; his 12.4% strikeout-walk differential is second best among Padres starters behind only Dylan Cease’s 18.7%, and Waldron’s 1.16 homers per nine sits in the middle of the pack among their starting five (which also includes Yu Darvish) — and a vast improvement on his 1.67 allowed per nine at Triple-A El Paso in 2022–23. He’s done a very good job of limiting hard contact, with his 87 mph average exit velocity placing in the 78th percentile and his 33.3% hard-hit rate in the 75th percentile. Read the rest of this entry »

2:00	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to another edition of my Tuesday chat!

2:02	Jay Jaffe: I’m a bit late in setting this up today as I was scrambling to file a piece on Padres knuckleballer Matt Waldron that will actually run tomorrow.

2:02	Jay Jaffe: We’ll give this a few minutes for the queue to fill up and for me to finish this structurally unsound turkey sandwich.

2:06	Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I took a look at Paul Goldschmidt and a handful of other former All-Stars who have been playing at or below replacement level through the season’s first month. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/paul-goldschmidt-and-the-crowd-below-repla…

2:09	Jay Jaffe: My usual go-to when I make a sandwich at home: Boar’s Head cracked pepper smoked turkey on Arnold Country White bread with mayo, mustard (eye-watering stuff from Philippe The Original, home of the French dip), sliced cucumber, and Potbelly Giardiniera (ikyky).

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With five hits in a three-game span against the Diamondbacks and Mets, Paul Goldschmidt finally got off the interstate — to use former All-Star-turned-broadcaster Ken Singleton’s memorable term for hitters with a batting average below .200 — but as the end of April approaches, the 36-year-old first baseman has nonetheless produced at a sub-replacement level thus far. It’s early, but he’s got some company in that department among former All-Stars, as well as some high-profile free agents both past and future.

Goldschmidt won the National League MVP award in 2022, hitting a robust .317/.404/.578 with 35 homers; he led the league in both slugging percentage and wRC+ (176) while totaling 6.9 WAR. His value slipped to about half of that last season (3.4 WAR) as he batted .268/.363/.447 (122 wRC+) with 25 homers — respectable by most standards, but the lowest slugging percentage of his 13-year career to that point. Right now, both he and the Cardinals would gladly settle for that batting line, as he’s hitting just .208/.304/.287 with two homers, a 74 wRC+, and -0.3 WAR.

Goldschmidt is hardly the Cardinals’ only hitter who is struggling. Last week, the team optioned Jordan Walker, who was carrying a .155/.239/.259 (44 wRC+) line, back to Triple-A Memphis, but that hasn’t exactly cleared up the problem. Nolan Gorman (77 wRC+) and Lars Nootbaar (81 wRC+) have been terrible as well, and their center fielders, Michael Siani and the since-demoted Victor Scott II, have combined to “hit” .095/.170/.131 (-7 wRC+) en route to a net -1.0 WAR. Small wonder the team is second-to-last in the NL in scoring at 3.57 runs per game. But this dive isn’t so much about the Cardinals as it is about Goldschmidt, whose offensive profile looks as though it has aged 10 years in the past two. After going 3-for-4 with a home run off the Dodgers’ Tyler Glasnow on Opening Day, he went 92 plate appearances (of which just 12 were hits) before collecting his second extra-base hit. He’s up to four now, having doubled both on Wednesday and Saturday. Read the rest of this entry »

Ribs have been in the headlines this week, but sadly, not as part of a review of exciting new ballpark barbecue offerings. On Monday, Triston Casas was diagnosed with a fractured rib on his left side, an injury that will result in a prolonged absence and comes at a time when the Red Sox infield has already been depleted. On Wednesday, the Cubs’ Cody Bellinger was diagnosed with fractured ribs on his right side, interrupting his rebound from a slow start.

The 24-year-old Casas left Saturday’s game against the Pirates after injuring himself while fouling off a Mitch Keller pitch. He was initially diagnosed with a strain in his left rib cage and was placed on the injured list on Sunday. An MRI taken on Monday revealed a fracture as well, and the presumption is that his absence will be a long one given that the damage involves muscle and cartilage as well as bone. “Timetable, there’s none. It has to heal on its own. We’ve just got to be patient,” said manager Alex Cora. That sounds like a trip to the 60-day IL could be in order. Read the rest of this entry »

Monday afternoon’s game between the A’s and Yankees ended in impressive fashion for Oakland, with closer Mason Miller buzz-sawing through the top of New York’s lineup to close out a 2-0 victory. The 25-year-old righty struck out Anthony Volpe, Juan Soto, and Aaron Judge consecutively on 14 pitches, mixing eight four-seam fastballs — all with velocities above 100 mph — with four nasty sliders. He absolutely overpowered Judge:

Those fastballs Judge flailed at were clocked at 100.7 mph, 102.2 mph, and 102.5 mph, the last of which wasn’t quite as fast as the 103.3-mph heater Miller used to strike out Soto. Whoosh! Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to an eight-run fifth inning that included Andy Pages‘ first major league home run, the Dodgers beat the Mets 10-0 on Sunday to avoid being swept at home. Even so, they’re off to a sluggish start this season after committing nearly $1 billion in free agent contracts this past winter and pushing their payroll to a club record $314 million. Maybe they’re not the juggernaut that figure suggests, though even given their star-laden roster, they came into this season as a work in progress.

The Dodgers entered Sunday having lost seven of their past nine games. They dropped the finale of a six-game midwest road trip to the Twins, then two of three to the Padres at Chavez Ravine, followed by two of three to the Nationals and two in a row to the Mets. The skid undid a 10-4 start, and they were in danger of — gasp — sinking to .500 had they lost on Sunday. They weren’t exactly getting steamrolled by powerhouses, either. The aforementioned teams had a weighted projected winning percentage of .472 at the outset of the season, and finished Sunday having produced a .453 winning percentage outside of this nine-game stretch against Los Angeles.

For the Dodgers, run prevention has been the biggest issue. Even with Sunday’s shutout — their first of the season, with eight dominant innings from Tyler Glasnow and one from Nick Ramirez — they’re allowing 4.54 runs per game, 11th in the National League. While they haven’t allowed runs at that clip over a full season since 2005, they allowed exactly the same number of runs over their first 24 games last year while going 13-11, then picking up the pace and winning 100 games. Déjà vu all over again? Read the rest of this entry »

No manager defined the era of baseball marked by artificial turf and distant outfield fences as Whitey Herzog did. As the manager of the Royals (1975–79) and Cardinals (1980, ’81–90) — and for a short but impactful period, the latter club’s general manager as well — he assembled and led teams built around pitching, speed, and defense to six division titles, three pennants, and a world championship using an aggressive and exciting brand of baseball: Whiteyball. Gruff but not irascible, Herzog found ways to get the most out of players whose limitations had often prevented them from establishing themselves elsewhere.

“The three things you need to be a good manager,” he told Sports Illustrated’s Ron Fimrite in 1981, “are players, a sense of humor and, most important, a good bullpen. If I’ve got those three things, I assure you I’ll get along with the press and I guarantee you I’ll make the Hall of Fame.”

Herzog was finally elected to the Hall in 2010, an honor long overdue given that he was 20 years removed from the dugout and had never been on a ballot. He passed away on Monday in St. Louis at the age of 92. Read the rest of this entry »

Coming up through the Dodgers system, Michael Busch gained a reputation as “a bat-only prospect,” a player whose offensive skills far outpaced his defensive ones. So when the Dodgers landed Shohei Ohtani in December, it closed the door on the team finding room for Busch as a DH, and they were already set at first base — Busch’s main position in college — with Freddie Freeman in the fold. Busch needed a trade to clear his path, and in January he got one, a four-player deal with the Cubs. So far, the 26-year-old rookie is off to a flying start, ranking high on the leaderboards after reeling off a streak of five consecutive games with a home run.

Busch’s streak, which ended on Tuesday night in Arizona, took place during the Cubs’ nine-game western road trip, beginning with a game-tying two-run homer off the Padres’ Dylan Cease at Petco Park on April 10. Two days later in Seattle, he went deep off the Mariners’ Ryne Stanek. The Cubs lost both of those games, but he helped them win three straight, starting with a solo shot off Tyson Miller in the seventh inning of a 4-1 win Saturday night, then a two-run homer off Luis Castillo in the fourth inning of a 3-2 win on Sunday. Moving on to Arizona, he didn’t waste any time, connecting off Merrill Kelly in his first plate appearance of Monday’s game, an 11-inning, 3-2 win. Read the rest of this entry »

2:01	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to my Tuesday chat. Apologies for the technical glitch in terms of the pre-chat queue but we should be up and running.

2:01	Jay Jaffe: Pouring one out for Whitey Herzog, the Hall of Fame manager best known for piloting the Cardinals to the 1982 championship and two other pennants.

2:03

Jay Jaffe: And pouring another one out for Carl Erskine, a true mensch who not only helped the Dodgers to five pennants and their 1955 championship — and threw two no-hitters as well — but became “a fierce champion of human rights, racial equality and, when his late son Jimmy was born with Down syndrome, became immersed in fighting for people with special needs.” The Hall of Fame honored Erskine with the Buck O’Neill Lifetime Achievement Award last summer https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/2024/04/16/indianas-carl-erskine…

2:04	Jay Jaffe: Forgot about Holtzman, who was a big part of the A’s three straight championships and holds the record for most wins by a Jewish pitcher (174).

2:05	Jay Jaffe: I’m thinking about whether I can pull off a Herzog tribute in a timely fashion.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros have dominated the American League West in recent years, winning three straight division titles and six out of the past seven, and getting at least as far as the American League Championship in each of those years. Their quest to extend that run is off to a rocky start, however. Despite taking two out of three from the Rangers this weekend in Houston, they own the league’s second-worst record thus far at 6-11, ahead of only the White Sox (2-13).

Even with the series win over the Rangers — whom they’ve now beaten in four out of seven games while going 2-8 against their other opponents — the Astros are off to their worst start since 2016, when they went 5-12. Notably, that season was the last one in which they missed the playoffs. Their 4-11 record through Friday was their worst through 15 games since 2013, the year they lost a franchise-record 111 games. That said, this is their fifth straight season below .500 at this juncture:

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