Jay Jaffe: Before I get going, thanks to a couple participants in last week’s chat for ideas that directly led to articles. Reader Your Name pointed out that at the time, the Pirates didn’t have a single player with a wRC+ of 100 or better, regardless of playing time. That would be a first if they pulled it off, as I discovered: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/aargh-the-pirates-are-in-danger-of-making-… Since then, however, Tommy Pham and Spencer Horwitz have nosed over the line. We’ll see if they can maintain that
Jay Jaffe: For tomorrow, I’m looking at the AL MVP race, which is far from the Aaron Judge cakewalk that it looked like during the first half of the season — particularly if you take note of Cal Raleigh’s pitch framing as well as his prolific home run pace
It’s been a big season for Manny Machado — a revival, as I termed it in June. After being hampered by tennis elbow in 2022 and ’23, then limited to DH duty in early ’24 while recovering from surgery to repair the extensor tendon in that troublesome right elbow, he’s played in all 132 games for the Padres, who ended the weekend tied for first place in the NL West with the Dodgers.
There’s no getting around the fact that the Pirates are a bad baseball team. At 54-74, they’re well on their way to their seventh consecutive losing season and ninth out of the past 10. Even so, they’ve only got the majors’ fourth-lowest winning percentage (.422) — it’s not like they’re the Rockies (.289) or the White Sox (.354). Yet it turns out the Pirates are chasing history, albeit in an under-the-radar and unflattering way. They’re in danger of becoming the first AL or NL team since the start of the 20th century to finish the season without a single hitter producing at a league-average level or better.
I don’t mean “without a single regular,” though depending upon how we define that term, that’s on the table as well. I mean anybody who’s stepped up to the plate while wearing the Pirates’ black and gold this season. The top Pirates hitters by wRC+ are infielders Nick Gonzales and Liover Peguero, both of whom are sporting a wRC+ of 98. The 26-year-old Gonzales, Pittsburgh’s regular second baseman, is hitting .278/.322/.392 through 264 plate appearances. He’s been limited to 62 games due to a fractured left ankle, caused by his fouling a ball off himself during spring training, though he played on Opening Day and even homered off the Marlins’ Lake Bachar. After hobbling around the bases, he landed on the injured list and didn’t return to the lineup until June 3. Peguero, a 24-year-old infielder, has bounced between Triple-A Indianapolis and the majors, where he’s been playing with some regularity since late July; in 58 PA, he’s hit .208/.276/.453.
Nathan Eovaldi is flying under the radar. Unless you’re particularly attuned to the Rangers’ battle to get back to .500 — they’re 63-65 after a recent 1-8 skid — or doing more than a casual perusal of our leaderboards, you might miss that the 35-year-old righty is carrying a 1.76 ERA into the final third of August. A bout of elbow inflammation that sidelined him for a month has left him just short qualifying for the American League lead, but even so, he’s in the midst of one of the best seasons of his career.
It’s an unlikely, out-of-nowhere season, at that. Eovaldi has e(o)volved a great deal since he debuted with the Dodgers in 2011, but even in the second, more successful leg of his career — the years since his 2017 Tommy John surgery (his second), during which he’s won a pair of World Series rings and made two All-Star teams — he’s never posted a full-season ERA lower than 3.63 (2023 with the Rangers) or an ERA- lower than 82 (2021 with the Red Sox). From 2018–24, he put up a 3.94 ERA (91 ERA-) for the Rays, Red Sox, and Rangers, including a 3.80 mark for Texas last year, which was right at the park-adjusted league average (100 ERA-). That recent work led the Rangers to re-sign him to a three-year, $75 million deal this past winter.
Eovaldi has been on this particular run for a while. After his six-inning, two-run effort against the Red Sox on Opening Day, the highest his ERA has been at any point (setting aside in-game fluctuations) was 2.64, on April 19. Beginning with his next start on April 25 against the Giants and running through his turn on August 5 again the Yankees, he put up an 0.90 ERA and a 2.16 FIP while allowing just 52 hits in 80.1 innings. That stretch probably would have garnered more attention had he not departed his May 27 start after two innings due to what was initially described as right triceps fatigue and later diagnosed as posterior elbow inflammation. He didn’t pitch in the majors again until June 27, when he allowed three runs in three innings against the Mariners, the only time during that 3 1/2-month span in which he allowed more than one run. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week, Kenley Jansen did his best to make life harder for his former team. Pitching for the Angels against the Dodgers in Anaheim, the 37-year-old closer secured the final three outs in a 7-4 victory on Monday, August 11. He gave up the go-ahead run in the ninth inning of a tied game on Tuesday by allowing a breathtaking solo homer to Shohei Ohtani, but the Angels came back, tying the score in the bottom of the ninth and winning in the 10th. On Wednesday, Jansen secured a sweep for the Angels by retiring Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and Will Smith in order. The loss knocked the Dodgers out of first place for the first time since August 27.
That the Dodgers have retaken the top spot doesn’t detract from what’s been a banner season for Jansen. Pitching for the sub-.500 Angels — his third team in four years since departing the Dodgers in free agency — he’s posted a 2.68 ERA, his lowest mark since 2021. While his 24.6% strikeout rate is a career low and his 4.01 FIP is just off a career high, he’s notched 23 saves in 24 attempts and is now fourth all-time at 470, eight saves shy of Lee Smith’s 478, which stood as the major league record from late 1997 until Trevor Hoffman surpassed it in late 2006. Smith and Hoffman are now in the Hall of Fame, and Jansen has solidified his position as the next reliever due for serious consideration for Cooperstown. Not only does he have a legitimate shot at becoming the third pitcher to reach 500 saves following Hoffman (who finished with 601) and Mariano Rivera (603), but he’s closing in on 2025 enshrinee Billy Wagner’s no. 6 ranking in Reliever JAWS (R-JAWS).
Admittedly, relief pitching is a strange place to start my annual Hall of Fame progress series, but for reasons that will soon become apparent, opening this rundown with the starting pitchers made less sense, and when I began writing this roundup, Jansen’s jump in JAWS surprised me as much as that of any player. At the end of 2023, Jansen was tied for 14th with Craig Kimbrel, but he climbed to 10th by the end of ’24 and is now seventh, closing in on Wagner. So we’re beginning here; in this batch, I’ll get to the starters and catchers as well. Unless otherwise indicated, all statistics are through Monday, August 18. Read the rest of this entry »
Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! It’s been a minute since our last chat, to say the least. Summer goings-on, especially a family vacation that ran Tuesday to Tuesday, did a number on my schedule here. Anyway, I’m back in Brooklyn and back on my b.s., so here we are.
12:02
Jay Jaffe: Yesterday, I wrote about the season-threatening shoulder issues faced by Zack Wheeler and Josh Hader https://blogs.fangraphs.com/injuries-put-the-seasons-of-zack-wheeler-a… since that went up, Wheeler had his blood clot removed by thrombolysis, but that doesn’t address the cause of the clot, and we’re waiting to hear from the Phillies as to whether he’ll pitch again in 2025.
Jay Jaffe: Tomorrow I should have the first installment of this year’s Cooperstown progress report; my plan is to follow up with a second one next week.
12:04
Jay Jaffe: Anyway, on with the show…
12:04
Pitchers for the Hall: Great article on Logan Webb today from Mike Baumann. I know it’s early in his career, but do you think that today’s version of the ultimate inning eating sinker baller is on the start of the path to the Hall?
The Astros and Phillies sit atop their respective divisions despite weathering injuries to some of their top pitchers, and now both teams face the prospect of finishing out the regular season — or perhaps going even longer — without one of their best. On Tuesday, the Astros placed Josh Hader on the 15-day injured list with what was initially described as a shoulder strain; on Friday, they clarified that he has been diagnosed with a shoulder capsule sprain. On Saturday, the Phillies announced that Zack Wheeler had landed on the IL due to “a right upper extremity blood clot” near his shoulder.
The Wheeler injury is the more serious of the two, as blood clots can be life-threatening if untreated, and career-threatening even if they are. Fortunately, it sounds as though the Phillies’ medical team caught this one before it could become an even more serious situation. Wheeler had struggled to some degree since throwing a 108-pitch complete-game one-hitter on July 6 against the Reds, with his ERA and FIP rising as his velocity trended downward. His scheduled August 8 start against the Rangers was pushed back by two days due to shoulder soreness. An MRI taken at the time came back clean, but even so, he set season lows for the average velocity of all six of his offerings once he finally took the mound on August 10.
Zack Wheeler grinded his way through 5 innings to get his 1st win in more than a month … but his velocity was down significantly and his fastball command continued to elude him.
Both Wheeler and manager Rob Thomson downplayed concerns about Wheeler’s waning velocity at the time. While the 35-year-old righty’s velocity rebounded by 1-2 mph in his August 15 start against the Nationals, he struggled with his command and lasted just five innings for the second start in a row — the first time all season he’d failed to go longer than five in back-to-back starts. Afterwards, Wheeler reported feeling “a little heaviness” on his right shoulder, and an examination on Saturday revealed the blood clot. “Yesterday, some symptoms had changed,” said head athletic trainer Paul Buchheit on Saturday. “Doctors were great in helping to diagnose and expedite that diagnosis this morning.” Read the rest of this entry »
Don’t look now, but for the first time in three and a half months, the NL West has a new leader. While the Dodgers have struggled to the point of face-planting, the Padres have surged, producing a 10-game swing in the NL West standings since July 3 thanks in large part to a dominant bullpen and some timely upgrades ahead of the July 31 trade deadline. The Southern California rivals are set to square off six times in the next 10 days, starting with a weekend series in Los Angeles — but the Padres will be without staff ace Michael King, who landed on the injured list on Thursday due to left knee inflammation.
After notching 93 victories last season — the second-highest total in franchise history — and making the playoffs for the third year out of five, the Padres bolted out of the gate in 2025, winning 15 of their first 19 games and spending much of April leading the division. They fell out of the top spot on April 26, but spent the next six weeks or so within striking distance before a 13-15 June dragged them down. Both the Padres and Giants were nine games out of first at the close of play on July 3, but since then, San Diego has put up the NL’s second-best record behind only Milwaukee (28-5), while Los Angeles and San Francisco are tied for the league’s third-worst record, half a game better than lowly Colorado and Washington (both 12-22):
Padres and Dodgers Before and After July 3
Padres
W-L
W%
RS
RA
Pyth%
1-run
1-Run W%
Thru July 3
46-40
.535
4.09
3.97
.515
18-14
.563
Since July 4
23-12
.657
4.49
3.31
.607
7-2
.778
Change
+.122
0.40
-0.66
+.092
+.215
Dodgers
W-L
W%
RS
RA
Pyth%
1-Run
1-Run W%
Thru July 3
56-32
.636
5.61
4.48
.602
16-9
.640
Since July 4
12-21
.364
4.00
4.61
.436
3-9
.250
Change
-.272
-1.61
+0.13
-.166
-.390
The Padres took over first place on Wednesday afternoon in emphatic fashion, scoring seven second-inning runs off control-challenged Giants stater Kai-Wei Teng and cruising to an 11-1 victory. With that, they completed a three-game sweep, extended their winning streak to five games, and claimed their 14th victory in their last 17 games dating back to July 26. Later that night, the Dodgers coughed up a 5-2 lead, allowing the Angels to sweep them in Anaheim and knock them a full game out of first. Read the rest of this entry »
The Dodgers may have peaked too early. On July 3, they completed a three-game sweep of the White Sox, lifting their record to a season-high 24 games over .500 (56-32) and their NL West lead to nine games over both the Padres and Giants. It’s been mostly downhill since then for Los Angeles, starting with a seven-game losing streak from July 4–11, which included three-game sweeps by the Astros and Brewers. This week, they dropped three straight to the Angels while the Padres swept the Giants, knocking the Dodgers out of first place for the first time since April 27. The two Southern California rivals face off six times in the next 10 days, bookended by three-game series in Los Angeles this weekend and San Diego next weekend.
I’ll zoom out to the bigger picture below and in a subsequent Padres installment, but Tuesday night’s Dodgers-Angels game had a couple moments that had to be seen to be believed. The Dodgers scratched out a run in the top of the first against Angels starter Victor Mederos, but opposite number Emmet Sheehan, who has generally pitched quite well since returning from Tommy John surgery in mid-June, fell behind each of the first five Angels he faced, leading to three first-inning runs. A two-run Dalton Rushing homer tied it in the second; the Angels retook the lead with runs in the third and fourth, but the Dodgers’ two-out rally for two runs tied it in the fifth, 5-5.
The Dodgers had a golden opportunity to break the game open when Miguel Rojas and Rushing both singled off reliever Brock Burke to open the sixth. Up came Shohei Ohtani, who amid the team’s recent malaise entered the game on a 17-for-38 run that included homers in three straight games. Ohtani lined a Burke fastball up the middle, but shortstop Zach Neto, shifted about six feet to the left of second base, speared it and was perfectly positioned to double off Rojas, then fire to first. Rushing, who had ranged too far towards second, punctuated becoming the third out in the triple play by face-planting while trying to avoid a tag (luckily, he at least escaped injury). Oof.
In 38 starts and one relief appearance totaling 193 2/3 innings since the start of 2024 — numbers suppressed by his 11-week stay on the injured list this season due to left knee inflammation — Stroman managed just a 4.69 ERA, a 4.73 FIP, and 1.0 WAR. Among pitchers with at least 180 inning in that span, only Logan Allen, Kyle Gibson, and Randy Vásquezproduced less value. In 39 innings this year, Stroman was lit for a 6.23 ERA and 5.15 FIP while making just one quality start out of nine.
Stroman was squeezed out of New York’s five-man rotation by the return of Luis Gil. The 27-year-old righty, who won AL Rookie of the Year honors last season, suffered a high-grade lat strain in late February, before he’d even pitched in an exhibition game. Gil began a rehab assignment on July 13, making the first of two starts for Double-A Somerset before adding two more with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, and maxing out at 4 1/3 innings and 75 pitches. He made his season debut for the Yankees on Sunday, and it was a rough one. Facing a Marlins team that has been playing very good baseball lately by going 30-22 since the start of June, Gil struggled with his command, walking four and yielding five hits while striking out three in 3 1/3 innings. He was charged with five runs, the last two of which scored after reliever Brent Headrick served up a three-run homer to Kyle Stowers. Read the rest of this entry »
Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to another edition of my weekly chat.
