On Thursday, the internet dealt with countless cases of “Is that really who I think it is?” as Twitter removed verification checkmarks for unpaid users. Yet when baseball fans did a double-take, it wasn’t because of a spam account that looked suspiciously like Jeff Passan or Ken Rosenthal. Instead, it was because of a shortstop who looked suspiciously like Mookie Betts.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts teased fans earlier this week, revealing that Betts could play shortstop on Wednesday. Instead, it was Luke Williams who took to the field at game time. Fans got their hopes up for Betts the following day, but once again, it was Williams on the lineup card. Indeed, it wasn’t until the seventh inning of yesterday’s ballgame that Roberts finally made good on his word; he pinch-hit for Williams with Betts, and Betts would stay in the game at shortstop. Williams may have earned the nickname Captain America for his performance with the US Olympic baseball team, but Betts was the superhero – or should I say super-utility player – everyone wanted to see. Read the rest of this entry »

The mighty Giancarlo Stanton has fallen once again. On Sunday afternoon, the 33-year-old was diagnosed with a Grade 2 strain in his left hamstring, according to Marly Rivera of ESPN. The Yankees placed him on the 10-day injured list, recalling top 100 prospect Oswald Peraza to take his place.

After he crushed a 110-mph double on Saturday afternoon, Stanton returned to the Yankees dugout while Aaron Hicks trotted out to second base. It wouldn’t be the first time the slow-moving slugger was replaced on the bases, so there wasn’t any reason to worry in the moment. Indeed, the DH walked off the field and was greeted with high fives in the dugout, where he remained to watch the game. As it turned out, however, Stanton had requested the pinch runner himself. He recognized the pain in his hamstring and knew immediately that something was wrong. Although Stanton didn’t show any outward signs of pain, it was certainly an awkward play. He thought he’d hit the ball over the fence and only realized he needed to run as he was rounding first.

While Stanton’s decision to prematurely marvel at his handiwork turned out to be a mistake, there’s no reason to blame his poor baserunning for his injury. The unfortunate truth is that Stanton’s legs – his left in particular – are quite injury-prone. He has spent time on the IL with various leg injuries in each of the past five seasons. In 2019, he sprained the PCL in his right knee and missed 72 games. The year after that, it was a left hamstring strain, much like the one he just suffered; he was out for five weeks. In 2021, he lost two weeks to a left quad strain, and last year, he missed 10 days with right ankle inflammation and another month with tendinitis in his left Achilles. Read the rest of this entry »

If you look atop the groundball rate leaderboard, you’ll see some of the usual suspects. Josh Bell and Masataka Yoshida have hit more than two-thirds of their batted balls on the ground this year, while Eric Hosmer and Jean Segura aren’t far behind. Bell, Hosmer, and Segura have been some of the most notable groundball hitters in the majors for years, while Yoshida was a groundball menace in Japan. Even at such an early point in the season, the groundball cream is rising to the top.

At the bottom of the leaderboard, the names are a little more surprising. Noted fly ball hitters Adam Duvall and Brandon Lowe are among the bottom 10, but there are also a handful of players you wouldn’t expect to see. One such player is Daulton Varsho.

Varsho has hit five groundballs this year, good for a 20% groundball rate. Only one qualified batter, Carlos Correa, has hit fewer balls on the ground. However, it was Varsho, and not Correa, who caught my eye, because of his extreme groundball numbers at the very beginning of the season. Over his first eight games, Varsho came to the plate 32 times and put 19 balls in play. Only one was a groundball. Read the rest of this entry »

It came as a big blow to the Phillies when Rhys Hoskins, a career 125 wRC+ hitter and the de facto team captain, went down with a season-ending injury. But if there were a silver lining to the circumstances, it was that Darick Hall would get the opportunity to prove himself with a more regular role in the starting lineup. Even Hoskins agreed; the day after he tore his ACL, he told Hall he was genuinely happy for him. The 27-year-old non-prospect forced his way to the majors last summer after hitting 20 home runs in 72 games at Triple-A, then crushed another nine at the big league level, finishing with a .522 slugging percentage and 120 wRC+. This year, he had a shot to show he could keep slugging over a full season. If he could, the Phillies would be much better equipped to handle the loss of Hoskins.

Unfortunately, Hall’s big chance was short-lived. On Wednesday afternoon, the winds began to change and the clouds turned dark. The silver lining became harder to see amid the storm. While trying to stretch a single into a double, Hall landed awkwardly at second base, jamming his right thumb into the side of the bag. He stayed in the game for another inning but eventually came out when he realized something was amiss. A righty-throwing first baseman doesn’t use his right thumb in the field all that often, but five out of five doctors recommend hitting the showers when you tear a ligament.

Indeed, a torn ligament was the official diagnosis, and it will require surgery to fix. The Phillies have yet to offer an official timeline for Hall’s return, but it could be several months before he steps back on the field. Mike Trout needed surgery to repair a torn ligament in his thumb in 2017 and missed about six weeks. Kevin Kiermaier had a similar procedure the following year and missed nine. Travis d’Arnaud lost more than three months after such a surgery in 2021. Clearly, recovery time depends on the individual player and the extent of the injury; we should hear more about Hall in the coming weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

Let me tell you a couple of things about Jack Suwinski. First, when Suwinski was still a prospect last winter, Eric Longenhagen had this to say about the young player’s future:

30. Jack Suwinski, DH

“On-paper performance is especially important for a hitter like Suwinski because he’s a positionless defender who needs to rake to have any sort of big league role […] Because he lacks a true position, Suwinski’s chances of playing a significant role increase with the likely implementation of the universal DH.”

It’s rare to see a prospect listed as a designated hitter. Across all 30 lists our team put together last year, only nine ranked prospects had the letters “DH” written next to their name. That’s less than one percent. Even more unusual was the 20/20 grade Eric gave Suwinksi’s fielding tool. That’s the worst grade you can get: a present 20 and a future 20. Essentially, it means a guy is unplayable in the field with little to no hope of improving in the future. Often, the only time you’ll see a 20/20 in any category is to describe a catcher’s speed. Former FanGraphs prospect guru Kiley McDaniel didn’t even bother to define a 20 grade in his overview of the 20-80 scouting scale, explaining “It’s almost never relevant for players that I’ll be writing about or any of their tools.” Read the rest of this entry »

The 2023 season is only a handful of days old, but already another Cy Young winner is on the shelf. After Justin Verlander was placed on the injured list last Friday, Robbie Ray joined him the following afternoon. The Mariners lefty was removed from his season debut against the Guardians in the middle of the fourth inning, having thrown 91 pitches and given up five walks and five runs. It wasn’t clear his exit was injury-related at the time, but Ray later revealed he’d been feeling pain since the second inning. He was ultimately diagnosed with a left flexor strain, which will keep him out for four to six weeks.

Even before Ray’s injury was diagnosed, the Mariners had cause for concern. For one thing, five walks in three-plus innings is certainly a worrisome sign. To make matters worse, two of those walks came in the first inning, before he began to feel sore. Ray has been notoriously wild in the past — he leads all active pitchers in five-walk games — but he had seemingly gotten his free passes under control the last two years:

In his second start of the 2021 season, Ray walked six batters in five innings of work. From that point onwards, he has posted a perfectly respectable 2.64 BB/9 (84 BB/9+). He needs to keep his walk rate in check to succeed going forward; hopefully his control will improve when his flexor strain heals. Read the rest of this entry »

With Opening Day on the horizon, three teams are planning to enter the season with exclusively right-handed rotations: the Guardians, the Twins, and the White Sox. As I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, that’s not the only thing these clubs have in common; they’re also the three contenders for the AL Central crown. An all-righty rotation isn’t unheard of, but it is uncommon, and it’s particularly unusual to see three within the same division. Here’s how they each stack up:

Around this time last season, there were likewise three teams planning to deploy all-righty rotations: the Guardians, the Twins, and the Mets. The Mets, however, had lefty in David Peterson at Triple-A, and it was only a matter of time before they needed him. Indeed, he was called up two days into the season and made his first start a week later. As for the Guardians and Twins, they also had lefties waiting in the wings. Konnor Pilkington was the first man called up when Cleveland needed a sixth starter; Devin Smeltzer wasn’t the first call-up for Minnesota, but he was soon to follow.

This year, the White Sox have joined the all-righty ranks. In fact, they haven’t had a left-handed starter since releasing Dallas Keuchel last May. Meanwhile, the Guardians and Twins have more right-handed depth than last season. Pilkington is still around for Cleveland, but he had a poor showing this spring, and several right-handed prospects are moving their way up the depth chart. As for Minnesota, Smeltzer elected free agency in October, and every new starter the team acquired this offseason has been a righty. Read the rest of this entry »

Before I started at FanGraphs, most of my writing was about the Phillies. When I took this gig, I made a promise that I’d continue to write about my favorite team, joking that this was merely “one more place to gush about Rhys Hoskins.” I must admit, this isn’t how I hoped to fulfill that promise.

On Thursday afternoon, Hoskins was manning first in a Grapefruit League contest against the Tigers. It was a happy day for Philadelphia, with Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber, and J.T. Realmuto making their return from the World Baseball Classic. The Phillies were fielding what could have been their Opening Day lineup for the very first time. This wasn’t just any old Thursday in March; it was a chance to see how the reigning NL champs planned to defend their title.

Things got off to a promising start when Schwarber doubled and Hoskins drove him home in the bottom of the first. Woefully, the good feelings wouldn’t last for long. The following inning, Austin Meadows hit a high-bouncing grounder along the first-base line, and Hoskins turned to chase it into shallow right field. He nearly made the play, but the ball slipped out of his glove, like a scoop of ice cream falling from the top of the cone. As he moved to retrieve the ball, he took an awkward turn. One step later, and Hoskins was crumpled on the grass in pain:

It was immediately clear that something was wrong. Bailey Falter signaled for help from the dugout as Bryson Stott called for time. Every Phillie on the field came to check on their fallen teammate. Soon, the paramedics would cart him away. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier today, Jay Jaffe covered the league’s first basemen. Now, Leo Morgenstern examines the state of the keystone.

Second base is going to be a fascinating position to watch this season. Under the new rules limiting defensive shifts, teams must have “at least two infielders completely on either side of second base,” and those players “may not switch sides” within an inning. Consequently, second basemen will no longer have help from a shifted shortstop or third baseman, making defensive range all the more important at the keystone. On the other side of the ball, second basemen could have their best offensive season in years. While excellent bat-to-ball skills aren’t a requirement to play the position, the two often go hand in hand. Second basemen are consistently the best contact hitters (and some of the worst power hitters) in the sport. This means their performance is more dependent on BABIP, so with the distinct possibility that league-wide BABIP will rise this season, second basemen could stand to benefit quite a bit.

And it’s not just about the new rules! Second base is projected to have the most even distribution of talent, from the Rangers at the top to the Nationals at the bottom. It’s the only defensive position where no team is projected for more than 5 WAR, and yet 28 teams are projected for at least two wins. The bottom-ranked Nationals are still projected for 1.8 WAR – the highest among last-place teams at any position. Read the rest of this entry »

If you had to guess which teams would be doling out eight-year deals this winter, the Nationals probably wouldn’t have made the top of your list. Yet on Friday evening, they came to terms on just that: an eight-year extension. The recipient, equally surprising: Keibert Ruiz. The pact is worth $50 million and comes with two club options that could keep the young catcher in Washington through 2032. Full financial terms of the contract have yet to be revealed, but it comes with a signing bonus and is reportedly front-loaded, giving Ruiz a substantial raise for the upcoming season.

In both length and value, this is one of the largest extensions ever given to a player with fewer than two years of service time. Other players to sign similarly large deals with such little MLB experience include Michael Harris II (this past August), Ke’Bryan Hayes (this past April), and Corbin Carroll (this past weekend). Harris and Hayes, though, had longer and/or better track records, and Carroll is an uber-prospect with superstar potential. Ruiz had a fine season in 2022, but he’s yet to demonstrate he can be more than an average player at the big league level. Read the rest of this entry »