Through the first five weeks of the 2025 season, the best you could say about Mike Trout was that he was at least healthy enough to play every day and was hitting a lot of home runs. However, the 33-year-old slugger departed Wednesday’s game against the Mariners with soreness in his surgically repaired left knee following a sprint to first base, and while he remained on the active roster for Thursday’s game, afterwards, the Angels placed him on the injured list with a bone bruise in the knee. That’s not a worst-case scenario, but it’s frustrating news on top of what’s already been a slow start.

Trout entered this season with more question marks hanging over his head than at any point in his 15-year career. After playing just 82 games in 2023 due to a fractured hamate bone — including just one after July 3 — he was limited to 29 games last year due to a torn meniscus in his left knee. He underwent surgery, but instead of the typical four-to-six week timetable, he needed nearly three months before beginning a rehab stint, and then played just two innings for Triple-A Salt Lake City before exiting due to discomfort in the same knee. After he flew back to Anaheim for further evaluation, he was diagnosed with another meniscus tear, requiring season-ending surgery.

Upon reporting to the Angels’ spring training facility in Tempe, Arizona in February, Trout met with general manager Perry Minasian and manager Ron Washington, and together they decided that the best course of action would be to move the 11-time All-Star center fielder to right field in order to save his body some wear and tear. Up until Wednesday, the plan seemed to be working; he’d played all 29 of the Angels’ games (matching last year’s total) with seven starts at DH interspersed with his appearances in right field. His .179/.264/.462 batting line, 96 wRC+, and 0.1 WAR aren’t anything to write home about, but he’s been hitting the ball hard on contact. His nine homers are enough to tie him for third in the American League alongside Tyler Soderstrom, Spencer Torkelson, and teammate Logan O’Hoppe, behind only Aaron Judge and Cal Raleigh. Read the rest of this entry »

Yordan Alvarez is one of the best hitters on the planet. From 2021-24, only Aaron Judge produced a higher wRC+ than Alvarez’s 165, and only five players surpassed his total of 136 home runs. During that time, the slugger helped the Astros to two pennants and a championship, furthering his legend with some dramatic postseason homers as well. Yet so far in 2025, Alvarez has struggled mightily. In fact, he closed April with a WAR below zero (-0.1) after posting 5.3 WAR last season.

Through 28 games, Alvarez is hitting .219/.316/.354, well shy of last year’s typically stellar .308/.392/.567. In fact, his 81-point drop in wRC+ is the fourth largest among players who took 300 plate appearances last year and have made at least 80 this season:

So what’s going on with Alvarez? He’s actually hitting the ball harder than he did last year or the year before, at least if we’re measuring only by average exit velocity — which isn’t a great way to go:

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Particularly in light of their failure to upgrade their roster this winter, starting pitching is the foundation of the Seattle Mariners. Last year, four of their starters took at least 30 turns, and the unit posted the majors’ lowest ERA (3.38) while ranking either first or second in the American League in FIP and WAR as well. But while this year’s Mariners are currently running first in the AL West at 17-12, their rotation has scuffled, in part because it’s far from whole. George Kirby, who led the staff in WAR last year, began the season on the injured list due to shoulder inflammation, and now Logan Gilbert, who made the All-Star team and received Cy Young votes, has joined him there due to a flexor strain.

The 27-year-old Gilbert made his sixth start of the season on Friday night at T-Mobile Park against the Marlins. While the results were impressive — he needed just 29 pitches to throw three perfect innings, striking out three — his average four-seam fastball velocity was down 1.1 mph from his season average of 95.6, and his slider and curve were a bit slower than usual as well. He did not return for the fourth inning, replaced by reliever Casey Lawrence, and the Mariners soon announced that he had departed due to forearm tightness.

“I felt it a little bit warming up,” said Gilbert. “Just never really went away. Sometimes you just get going and it feels a little better. Tonight, it just didn’t.” Read the rest of this entry »

12:00

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

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I wrote about Eugenio Suárez’s four-homer game https://blogs.fangraphs.com/eugenio-suarez-joins-the-four-homer-club-a… and the changes he’s made over the past year.

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Tomorrow I’ll have something on the Logan Gilbert injury and the shape of the Mariners rotation.

12:03

Jay Jaffe: Today I am alas nursing a sore lower back, something that’s dogged me for over a week and has me in a bit of a grouchy mood. I’m moving gingerly at best. Ugh.

12:04

Jay Jaffe: he’d have to convince me that his -115. 8 framing runs was just an accounting error.

Read the rest of this entry »

Eugenio Suárez had himself a night. On Saturday at Chase Field against the Braves, the Diamondbacks third baseman homered four times, becoming the 19th player in major league history to do so in a single game. The fourth of those shots tied the score in the bottom of the ninth, but unfortunately for Suárez and Arizona, his incredible performance wasn’t enough. The D-backs lost in 10 innings, 8-7.

The 33-year-old Suárez is the first player to homer four times in a game since another Diamondback, J.D. Martinez, did so against the Dodgers on September 4, 2017. Suárez is just the third player ever to homer four times in a losing cause — it happened just once over a 128-year stretch — and only the second to make just four plate appearances in his four-homer game.

Read the rest of this entry »

Francisco Lindor has played MVP-caliber baseball for the Mets over the past three seasons and change. He finished as the runner-up to Shohei Ohtani in last year’s NL MVP voting after ninth-place finishes in 2022 and ‘23, and over that span, no position player besides Aaron Judge has accumulated more WAR than his 20.8. Yet Lindor hasn’t made an All-Star team since 2019, in part because he’s often started slowly, making it easier for voters and managers to bypass him. While he was scuffling along in typical April fashion until eight days ago, he’s spurred a seven-game winning streak that’s given the Mets the best record in baseball at 18-7.

Through 25 games, this is the Mets’ best start since 1988, when they also jumped out to an 18-7 start. Those Mets finished 100-60, taking the NL East title under manager Davey Johnson before losing a seven-game NLCS to the upstart Dodgers. They also started 18-7 in 1972; the only time they’ve done better was in 1986, when they started 20-5 and went on to win 108 games and the World Series.

Admittedly, these Mets haven’t assembled their record against the most robust competition. While they did just sweep a three-game series from the Phillies, who won 95 games last year, they’ve played 12 of their 25 games against the Marlins (who lost 100 games last season), A’s (who lost 93), and Blue Jays (who lost 88); their other 10 games have come against the Astros (who won 88), the Cardinals (who won 83), and Twins (who won 82) — and St. Louis and Minnesota appear to have taken several steps back from their 2024 mediocrity, at least in the early going. The Mets have won blowouts (4-1 in games decided by five or more runs) and close ones (7-2 in one-run games); they’ve dropped series only to the Astros and Twins, each of whom took the rubber game of a best-of-three by one run. Competition aside, New York’s record isn’t soft, in that the club is only about one win ahead of its major league-best PythagenPat and BaseRuns winning percentages (.675 and .672, respectively). Read the rest of this entry »

You’re welcome, Yankees fans. Exactly one year ago today, I checked in on Aaron Judge while the slugger was in the throes of a season-opening slump. Though the Yankees were 16-8 when I wrote that piece, it was a dark time for Judge, who a few days earlier had heard a smattering of Bronx cheers while striking out four times on Aaron Judge Bobblehead Day and conceded with typical Jeterian diplomacy and humor, “I’d probably be doing the same thing in their situation.” He’d shown faint signs of turning things around since, combining a couple of days worth of hard-hit balls — including a double on April 23, his first extra-base hit in 10 days — with the apparent end of a strikeout spree, but he wasn’t out of the woods.

In the year since, Judge has put together what might be the best offensive performance any of us has seen. He not only recovered from his slump, he went on to hit 58 homers, win his third home run title and American League MVP award, help the Yankees to their first World Series since 2009, and secure his place in the pantheon of the game’s greatest hitters. What do you even do with these numbers besides gawk?

For sheer offensive impact as measured by wRC+, that performance would outrank any AL/NL season — even Barry Bonds’ best:

Read the rest of this entry »

Perhaps it was the batting order switcheroo, or maybe it was the minor league ballpark. Bumped out of the leadoff spot for the first time since last August 11, and down to fifth in the order for the first time during Bruce Bochy’s run as manager of the Rangers, Marcus Semien recorded his first multi-hit game of the season on Tuesday night in Sacramento. The 34-year-old second baseman went 2-for-3 with a three-run homer, a walk, a sacrifice fly, and four runs batted in against the Athletics — a much-needed positive sign given his season-opening slump.

Semien’s big night took place at Sutter Health Park, where the relocated A’s and their opponents have bashed out 5.4 runs per game while batting .270/.342/.466. Whether or not the venue was a factor, Bochy’s new lineup worked like a charm, as new leadoff hitter Josh Smith, new no. 2 hitter Wyatt Langford, and the slumping Jake Burger all homered for the Rangers as well. All of the shots were served up by 29-year-old righty Osvaldo Bido; Semien, who had already plated the Rangers’ second run with a first-inning sacrifice fly, crushed a middle-middle sinker 417 feet to center field to break open a 4-2 game in the fifth inning:

The homer was just Semien’s second of the season, and just his third extra-base hit. He entered the game batting .141/.209/.192 for a 17 wRC+, with all four of those numbers ranking among the bottom four among the 170 players with enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title. His new and improved slash line (.160/.231/.247, 39 wRC+) now puts him among the bottom 10 qualifiers in those categories, but he isn’t close to being the worst on the team. Joc Pederson (.052/.141/.069, -37 wRC+) is having even bigger problems, including an 0-for-3 on Tuesday, but the Rangers don’t have nearly as much invested in him as they do in Semien, whom they signed to a seven-year, $175 million deal in December 2021. Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks!

12:01

Jay Jaffe: After spending most of the past 24 hours in bed with a low-grade fever and stomach bug, I have returned to the land of the living

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Before I went under, I wrote about the weirdness of Sunday’s Yankees game, with the official scoring change regarding Max Fried’s no-hit bid and the umps appearing to mess up a call on a potential Aaron Judge home run https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-no-hit-bid-and-home-run-that-wasnt/

12:04

Jay Jaffe: He’s off to a great start, and it’s certainly nice to see. I don’t expect him to stay this hot but I think he can be a force in that lineup if he stays healthy. The thing is, health is a skill, and he’s had a hard time staying available. Fingers crossed he can do so

Read the rest of this entry »

Chandler Simpson may be the fastest player in baseball. At the very least, the 24-year-old center fielder is one of the few major leaguers with 80-grade speed, befitting a player who stole 104 bases in 110 games at two minor league stops last year. A day after making his major league debut with the Rays, Simpson’s speed figured into a controversial play in Sunday’s game against the Yankees at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, as he broke up Max Fried’s no-hitter… retroactively. That might not even have been the game’s most contentious call, as Aaron Judge lost an apparent home run on a towering fly ball that was ruled foul, even after a replay review.

Fried had held the Rays hitless through 5 1/3 innings when he faced Simpson for the second time in the bottom of the sixth inning. With a 2-2 count, Simpson hit a 78.6-mph grounder between first and second base. Yankees first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, a four-time Gold Glove winner, ranged over to his right to field the ball, but as he did, it deflected off the heel of his glove and towards second base. Simpson reached safely.

The play was initially ruled an error on Goldschmidt, and Fried carried on, retiring five of the next six hitters — the exception being when he grazed Curtis Mead’s right foot with a sweeper — and keeping the no-hitter intact through seven innings while the Yankees stretched their lead to 3-0. By the time the 31-year-old lefty took the mound for the eighth, the official scorer had reversed his previous decision, wiping out Goldschmidt’s error, crediting Simpson with a hit, and ending Fried’s no-hit bid. Read the rest of this entry »