Last year’s National League West race was a doozy, with the 107-win Giants outpacing the 106-win Dodgers, but this year’s race is shaping up to be an interesting one for a different reason. Through Sunday, all five teams owned winning percentages of .500 or better, though Monday’s loss by the Rockies (17-18), part of a 1-7 skid, upset that arrangement. Even so, it’s an impressively strong division headed by the Dodgers (22-12), with the Padres (22-13) and Giants (21-14) close behind, and the Diamondbacks (18-18) and Rockies playing quite respectably, and much improved over last season.

The biggest surprise of the bunch is the Diamondbacks, who just last year tied the Orioles for the majors’ worst record at 52-110 and finished a honkin’ 55 games out of first place. The team did not have a high-impact offseason; the only free agents the Diamondbacks signed to major league deals were starter Zach Davies and relievers Mark Melancon and Ian Kennedy, with Melancon’s two-year deal the only one stretching beyond 2022. They weren’t exactly big players in the trade market, either, with Sergio Alcántara and Jordan Luplow representing their highest-profile acquisitions. That pair has combined for 103 plate appearances and 0.1 WAR, and Alcántara was DFA’d and lost to the Padres via waivers earlier this month. Read the rest of this entry »

It was weird, it was wild, it was perhaps a bit irresponsible, and it was certainly bittersweet. On Sunday in Pittsburgh, Reds rookie Hunter Greene was dominant, setting a career high for strikeouts and combining with reliever Art Warren to hold the Pirates hitless for the entire afternoon. Yet when it was all said and done, Cincinnati — which had won six out of its last nine after starting the season 3–22 — found a new way to lose, 1–0. Greene and Warren didn’t even get credit for an official no-hitter, combined or otherwise.

The game’s only run scored in the bottom of the eighth inning. After Greene issued a pair of one-out walks to Rodolfo Castro and Michael Perez to push his pitch count to 118 — oh, we’ll get to that — manager David Bell pulled him in favor of Warren, who walked Ben Gamel, then induced a chopper by Ke’Bryan Hayes. Second baseman Alejo Lopez briefly bobbled the ball, and while he still threw to shortstop Matt Reynolds in time to force Gamel, Reynolds’ throw to first base was too late to complete the double play.

The Reds themselves managed just four hits against starter José Quintana and relievers Chris Stratton and David Bednar, the last of whom set down the side 1-2-3 in the ninth. Thus they joined a short and dubious list, becoming just the fifth team to hold their opponents hitless for eight innings but lose because they were nonetheless outscored. Such efforts used to be considered no-hitters, but in 1991, MLB’s Committee for Statistical Accuracy tightened the official definition of the feat, ruling that those falling short of nine innings would not receive such a designation. That put the Reds in this company:

The most infamous of such games is that of Hawkins, who allowed four eighth-inning runs via a combination of three errors and two walks, all with two outs; he did walk five overall, so his outing was kind of a mess to begin with. Greene and Warren combined to walk six, but they were the only one of the five teams above to lose after eight hitless innings without being charged with an error as well. Congrats on discovering that new way to lose, I guess. Read the rest of this entry »

Robinson Canó will get to write another chapter to his major league career. Cut loose by the Mets earlier this month amid a roster crunch, the twice-suspended 39-year-old second baseman is reportedly on the verge of signing with the Padres. While he may not have much left in the tank, there’s very little risk involved in giving him a look, and if nothing else, San Diego could use some help for its bench.

Canó hit just .195/.233/.268 in 43 plate appearances before being designated for assignment by the Mets on May 2, the day that rosters were reduced from 28 players to 26, and then released on May 8. They parted with Canó despite owing him $44.7 million on his contract over this year and next, the final portion of the 10-year, $240 million deal he signed with the Mariners in December 2013 (Seattle still has a $3.75 million installment to pay the Mets). The Padres will be paying him only the prorated portion of the $700,000 minimum salary, which is noteworthy given that they’re less than $1.2 million below the $230 million Competitive Balance Tax threshold, according to Roster Resource.

Canó was a very productive hitter as recently as two years ago, slashing .316/.352/.544 (142 wRC+) with 10 home runs in 182 PA during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. But on November 18 of that year, Major League Baseball suspended him for the entirety of the ’21 season following a positive test for Stanozolol, a performance-enhancing drug. Canó had already drawn an 80-game suspension in May 2018 after testing positive for the diuretic known as Lasix, hence the year-long ban. The two suspensions have carried a massive cost for the eight-time All-Star even beyond the roughly $36 million in lost salary, all but wiping out any hope that he would reach 3,000 hits (he has 2,632), surpass Jeff Kent’s record of 351 home runs as a second baseman (316 of his 335 have come in that capacity), and gain entry to the Hall of Fame, which would have been a lock given his milestones and no. 7 ranking in JAWS.

In his limited opportunities with the Mets this season, Canó showed little sign of hitting like the Canó of yore. He swung and missed on 15.9% of all pitches and struck out 25.6% of the time, rates that are both more than double his career marks. His chase rate was an astronomical 48.9%, over 14 points above his career mark, and his swing rate was 58.9%, over seven points above his career mark. I’ve played this song before — since swing rates stabilize before most other stats — but the pattern does suggest he was pressing, which is understandable given his long layoff and tenuous hold on a roster spot. Canó’s 85.4% average exit velocity, 6.7% barrel rate, and 40% hard-hit rate don’t suggest he was mashing the ball; his .359 xSLG is 91 points ahead of his actual mark, but there are more than 100 hitters with larger differentials in this offense-suppressed season, and his .264 xwOBA is still cringeworthy. Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees swept the Blue Jays in a quick two-game series in the Bronx this week on the strength of the long ball. More specifically, they sandwiched a pair of shots into Yankee Stadium’s infamous short porch in right field around a towering, no-doubt walk-off homer by Aaron Judge on Monday night, with all three homers of the three-run variety. In a year where home run and scoring rates have plummeted, the Bronx Bombers are 22-8, off to their best start since 2003 in large part because they’ve handily outhomered their opponents — an achievement that owes something to their pitchers as well as their hitters.

In Tuesday night’s game, the Yankees trailed 3-0 in the bottom of the sixth inning but put two on base with one out to bring Giancarlo Stanton to the plate against Yimi Garcia. The righty left a slider to the slugger on the outer third of the plate, and Stanton poked it to right field. Tie ballgame.

This was not a standard Stanton special. While it sped off the bat at 105.1 mph, its 33 degree launch angle gave it an estimated distance of just 335 feet, still more than enough to get out when hit into the right field corner of Yankee Stadium, where the distance is just 314 feet at the foul pole. It was Stanton’s shortest home run since at least 2015, and according to the Statcast Home Run Tracker leaderboard would not have gone out at any other major league park (though the @would_it_dong Twitter account and its Dinger Machine web page — both of which automatically pull from Statcast data — calculated that Stanton’s drive would have been out at Target Field, which is 328 feet down the right field line, as well. Read the rest of this entry »

It wasn’t long ago that the Cardinals viewed Paul DeJong as a foundational player. Coming off a 25-homer 2017 season in which he was the runner-up in the NL Rookie of the Year voting, they signed him to a six-year, $26 million extension — a record at the time for a player with less than a year of service time. But since his 30-homer All-Star showing in 2019, he’s battled injuries, illness, and himself with diminishing returns. On Tuesday, the Cardinals addressed his increasing struggles by optioning the 28-year-old shortstop to Triple-A Memphis.

DeJong is hitting just .130/.209/.208 for a 30 wRC+, ranking among the bottom four in the majors in all four of those categories among players with at least 80 plate appearances (he has 86). His dismal showing has followed two disappointing seasons with very different shapes, a 2021 campaign in which he hit for power with little else (.197/284/.390/, 86 wRC+, 19 HR) and a ’20 season in which he showed little pop (.250/322/.349, 87 wRC+, 3 HR).

Despite missing nearly three weeks (but just 11 games) when the Cardinals had a COVID-19 outbreak in August 2020, DeJong actually rebounded and hit quite well until mid-September of that season, but he closed in a 6-for-46 funk that dragged his numbers down, and went just 2-for-10 in the Wild Card Series against the Padres as the Cardinals were eliminated. He missed a month in May and June of last season due to a non-displaced rib fracture, then tweaked his back later in the year, and started just 19 of the team’s final 47 games as fill-in Edmundo Sosa outplayed him. Sosa, who hit .271/.346/.389 (104 wRC+) last year, got the call in the Wild Card Game, which the Cardinals lost to the Dodgers. Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox may not be as catastrophically awful as the Reds, but at 10-19 they’re running last in the AL East and own the league’s second-worst record ahead of only the Tigers (8-20). Cripes, they’re looking up at the 12-17 Orioles, losers of at least 108 games in each of the last three full seasons. But while Baltimore is in the midst of a seemingly interminable rebuilding effort, Boston is coming off a season in which it won 92 games and fell just two wins short of a World Series berth, and its payroll — $236.6 million for Competitive Balance Tax purposes — is over the tax threshold. At the moment, the Red Sox look like the worst team that money can buy.

You’re forgiven if this feels somewhat familiar, because the Red Sox have made precipitous falls something of a specialty. In 2011, they won 90 games, then crashed to 69 wins the following year while carrying a $175 million payroll, second only to the Yankees. They followed that with a 97-win rebound and their third championship in a decade in 2013… only to plummet to 71 wins a year later. They fell even further from 2018 (108 wins) to ’19 (84) than from ’11 to ’12, but they at least finished above .500 in the latter campaign before plummeting to 24-36 — and last place in the division — during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.

Here’s a quick look at where this start fits in among expansion-era Red Sox teams:

This current team is tied with the 1996 edition for the third-worst record to this point. While some of the above squads were able to scramble back above .500, none of them made the playoffs; the slow start cost the 1972 team a spot in the strike-shortened season. No team that has started 10-19 since the playoffs last expanded in 2012 has even claimed a Wild Card spot, though an 11-18 Pirates team did in ’14, and five other 11-18 teams did so from 1995-2011, when each league only awarded one Wild Card spot. Read the rest of this entry »

The Reds won a series this weekend, beating the Pirates in two out of three games. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t rate as news, but it’s the first time since they swept the Nationals last September 24-26 that they could claim such an accomplishment, and the first time all season that they came from behind to win a game. They entered Friday with a 3-22 record — a standard of futility surpassed by only one team since 1901 — and had won just one of their previous 21 games in the wake of president Phil Castellini’s now-infamous “Where are you gonna go?” speech before the team’s April 12 home opener. Even with the series win, which came at the expense of the garden-variety bad Pirates (now 11-16), this undermanned team has been unsightly so far.

After making the expanded playoffs with a 31-29 record in 2020, the Reds went 83-79 last year, but missed out on the postseason thanks to their payroll slashing and then gutted the roster even further. With general manager Nick Krall euphemizing the teardown by telling reporters, “We must align our payroll to our resources and continue focusing on scouting and developing young talent from within our system” in November, the team was similarly aggressive in slashing payroll this past winter. They let lefty Wade Miley — on whom they held a $10 million club option after a solid, 2.9-WAR season that even included a no-hitter — escape via waivers to the Cubs, made no attempt to retain Nick Castellanos after he opted out, and traded Tucker Barnhart to the Tigers, though at least they had a ready successor to him in Tyler Stephenson. Once the lockout ended, they quickly dealt away Sonny Gray, Jesse Winker, Eugenio Suárez, and Amir Garrett. They did sign four free agents to major league deals, though all were for a single year, and only those for Donovan Solano ($4.5 million) and Tommy Pham ($7.5 million) came in north of $2 million. In fact, only two players, Joey Votto and Mike Moustakas, are signed to guaranteed deals beyond this season. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been far too long since we celebrated Rowdy Tellez. We ought to be toasting the achievements and the moniker of the Brewers’ burly first baseman on a routine basis, as they testify to the extent to which skilled ballplayers comes in all shapes and sizes, and if anyone wants to convene a parade towards that end, I’m happy to volunteer my services as grand marshal. With the 27-year-old slugger in the midst of a superlative week that’s placed him among more familiar names on the leaderboards, it’s high time to check in on ol’ Rowdy.

In the midst of a six-game onslaught during which the Brewers pounded 20 homers and scored 54 runs against the Cubs and Reds, on Wednesday, Tellez put together the biggest game of a career that’s spanned parts of five seasons, going 4-for-6 with a double, two homers, and eight RBIs. To be fair it came against a Cincinnati squad that took the opportunity to allow a season-high 18 runs while losing their eighth straight game and 19th out of 20, and against pitchers of questionable quality even within that context. After collecting a first-inning single off Vladimir Gutierrez, Tellez crushed a grand slam off him in the third, one with a projected distance of 453 feet; the drubbing helped push the Cincinnati righty’s ERA to 8.86. In the sixth inning, Tellez added a 431-foot two-run homer off rookie reliever Dauri Moreta (ERA: 5.11), and in the eighth, he added a bases-loaded double against position player Matt Reynolds:

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Tylor Megill got his no-hitter, after a fashion. After pitching the first five innings of a combined no-no in his previous start on April 29 against the Phillies — just the second no-hitter of any kind in the franchise’s 51-season history — the 26-year-old righty added another four consecutive hitless frames to his streak on Wednesday afternoon against the Braves before Adam Duvall’s fifth-inning single ended his streak. Megill and the Mets’ bullpen ended up faltering in the sixth inning, but the starter’s impressive run through the season’s first four weeks is a major reason why they own the National League’s best record thus far at 18–9 — all without the services of Jacob deGrom.

After a season in which deGrom didn’t throw a single competitive pitch in the second half due to what was eventually revealed to be a low-grade sprain of his ulnar collateral ligament, the Mets have been without his services so far due to a stress reaction in his right scapula. Last year’s loss of the two-time Cy Young winner played a significant part in sending the Mets’ season off the rails. They were 46–38 through July 7, the day of their ace’s final start, with a rotation ERA of 2.96, a FIP of 3.42, and a 4.5-game lead over the rest of the NL East field. From there, they went just 31–47 the rest of the way, with their starters pitching to a 4.93 ERA and 4.77 FIP, and finished 11.5 games out of first.

This year, it’s been a different story. Thanks in large part to Megill, free-agent addition Max Scherzer, trade acquisition Chris Bassitt, and a healthy Carlos Carrasco, Mets starters are currently ranked third in the NL in ERA (2.78), second in FIP (2.94), strikeout rate (26.8%), and strikeout-walk differential (20.2%), and first in innings (149) and WAR (3.2).

Though he was ultimately charged with three earned runs allowed in 5.1 innings after Adam Ottavino failed to bail him out of a bases-loaded jam, Megill was again impressive on Wednesday, as he’s been all season. He struck out a season-high nine batters, seven of them through a comparatively efficient four hitless innings, during which he used only 61 pitches; the only batters to reach during that span were Dansby Swanson in the third and Matt Olson in the fourth, both via walks. In doing so, he was the first Met to complete nine hitless innings since Matt Harvey on April 8 and 13, 2013, though deGrom did have a three-start stretch from June 11–21 of last season where he recorded 28 outs without yielding a hit.

Megill needed 22 pitches to get through a labor-intensive fifth inning, as Francisco Lindor committed an error on Travis d’Arnaud’s grounder before Duvall hit a clean single to left field. With two on and nobody out, he escaped on a Swanson fly ball and strikeouts of Guillermo Heredia and Ronald Acuña Jr. Even with that extra work, his 83 pitches through five was five fewer than he used during the combined no-hitter, during which he walked three and struck out five. Read the rest of this entry »