“You can’t win the pennant in the first month of the season, but you can lose it.” We’ve heard that axiom a million times, but by God the Chicago Cubs were out to prove it wrong. By close of business on May 8, the Cubbies were 27-12, having just wrapped up their second discrete 10-game winning streak of the season.

Our preseason playoff odds had the Cubs, Pirates, and Brewers in a close three-way fight for the NL Central, all with odds between 24.3% and 35.6%. The Reds and Cardinals were in the single digits, but by no means without hope. Chicago’s odds of winning the division peaked on May 7 at 63.4% — a mighty statement in a division expected to be competitive.

But shouldn’t it have been higher? The Braves got off to just as hot a start, and their odds for winning the division have been in the 80s since the last week of April. The Yankees’ division-winning odds peaked around the same time as Chicago’s, but about 20 points higher. Read the rest of this entry »

When I announced my intention to write about Antonio Senzatela, Jon Becker burst into my Slack DMs like the Kool-Aid Man to demand I use a Penn and Teller-based headline. Credit where due: It was a great idea.

You know what’s not traditionally a good idea? Writing about Antonio Senzatela.

The rigorous study of baseball empirics has made us all smarter and better, but there are a few things I miss about the old days. Foremost among them is Nichols’ Law of Catcher Defense, an old pre-sabermetrics axiom which states the following: A catcher’s defensive reputation is inversely proportional to his offensive abilities. Read the rest of this entry »

Joe Ryan is about as steady a pitcher as you’ll find in the big leagues. Since his first full season in the majors, 2022, Ryan has never made fewer than 23 starts. He’s never thrown fewer than 135 innings nor more than 171, and his season-by-season WAR has stayed between 2.2 and 3.1. He hasn’t been a front-end starter, but he’s making just $6.2 million, which is a tremendous bargain. He was a hot commodity who somehow stayed put during the Twins’ fire sale last summer; if Minnesota is out of contention again, you’ll probably hear his name come up at this coming deadline, as well.

It also helps that Ryan is having a career year at the right time. He’s already at 2.1 WAR on the season, and we’re only about a third of the way through the calendar. That puts him fifth in the league. He’s also sixth in FIP, 12th in strikeouts, and 10th among qualified starters in K-BB%. Read the rest of this entry »

At 2:26 a.m. ET on Tuesday, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that the Athletics intended to call up their top pitching prospect, Gage Jump. First of all: Sweet Jesus, Jeff, go to sleep. If you keep burning the candle at both ends like this, you’re not going to be presentable for TV come October.

The A’s didn’t make the move official until Tuesday evening; Jump wasn’t on the 40-man roster, so they had to clear a roster spot by putting Aaron Civale on the IL with shoulder tendinitis and sliding Denzel Clarke over to the 60-day IL. The debut itself was a little rocky, as Jump allowed four runs and nine hits in five innings, but it’s exciting to see him in the majors all the same. And not just because of what it means for writers who traffic in song-lyric headlines. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year was a rough time for the best pitchers of the early 2020s. Zac Gallen cost himself untold tens of millions of dollars with a brutal walk year. Aaron Nola got hurt, and even when he was available, he was little more effective than a batting practice machine. Spencer Strider made 23 starts, but nearly doubled his FIP from his 20-win campaign in 2023.

Sandy Alcantara, like Strider, was coming back from a torn UCL that wiped out his 2024 season, he also had a rough go of it. Alcantara’s ERA was over 7.00 at midseason, leaving the Marlins unable to cash in on their former Cy Young winner at the trade deadline. Even with a strong stretch run, Alcantara ended 2025 with a 5.36 ERA, and an xERA and FIP in the mid-4.00s. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite sticks to beat the White Sox with (and over the past few years, there have been plenty) has been the Erick Fedde trade of 2024.

You know the one: Chicago was en route to a record-breaking number of losses, and with the season in the tank, GM Chris Getz flipped three of his best-performing players — Michael Kopech, Tommy Pham, and Fedde — in a three-way deal with the Cardinals and Dodgers. The 2024 White Sox were enduring a lost season that redefined the term; trading those guys was obviously the right thing for Getz to do. My objection was the return.

The headliner for the White Sox was Miguel Vargas, who at the time was the Dodgers’ second-best utility infielder named Miguel, behind a 35-year-old for whom the Marlins had no need. The Dodgers not only got Kopech, they managed to finagle Tommy Edman, the best player in the deal, as well. Kopech immediately slotted in as a leverage reliever, Edman won NLCS MVP, and the Dodgers won the World Series. Read the rest of this entry »

Things could be going better for Brayan Bello. I guess that’s true of most Red Sox players these days, but the right-hander is having an especially rough go of things. On Sunday, Bello took the decision in an 8-1 loss to the Braves, allowing seven earned runs in five innings pitched.

That kind of line doesn’t necessarily signal a terrible outing; sometimes a starter trudges along in quality-start territory before running into trouble late. A couple quick walks, then the bullpen lets a couple inherited runners score… three runs allowed over four innings can turn into seven runs in five innings in a flash.

That wasn’t the case here. Seven of the first 10 Braves hitters reached base; five of them scored. Manager Chad Tracy let Bello wear it until he’d reached five innings and 98 pitches. And it was Bello’s 27th birthday on Sunday, too. Usually you only hear “wear it” on a guy’s birthday in the context of a party hat or a new shirt. Read the rest of this entry »

Trivia question for you: Which active pitcher has the lowest career ERA, with a minimum of 50 innings pitched? Paul Skenes is third, Jhoan Duran is ninth, Jacob deGrom is all the way down in 20th.

The answer is Erik Sabrowski, and by a pretty big margin. Sabrowski’s 1.47 career ERA is 0.41 runs lower than that of second-place Emmanuel Clase, who I guess is still technically an active player. He has Skenes beat by half a run. Read the rest of this entry »

Geraldo Perdomo makes me happy. He’s a really good player with an interesting skill set, and he seems like a pleasant person. Last year, he hit .290 with 20 home runs, 27 stolen bases, and more walks than strikeouts. Combined with even adequate shortstop defense, you’d think that would make him one of the most valuable players in the league, and you’d be right.

In a world without Shohei Ohtani, we could’ve had a fun multidirectional NL MVP discussion involving Perdomo, Juan Soto, Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner, Corbin Carroll, and maybe even Paul Skenes. As it stands, Ohtani won in a walk and Perdomo finished fourth. But it’s an honor to even be in the discussion.

What do I want? More Perdomo. We kind of got that last year with Maikel Garcia’s breakout season, but I wasn’t satisfied. Last November, I went on a search for the next Perdomo. I identified young players with elite contact skills, elite plate discipline, rock-bottom bat speed, and the athleticism to play up the middle. Read the rest of this entry »

In a world defined and cheapened by soulless and repetitive optimization, the Cleveland Guardians are intractably themselves. Make no mistake, the Guardians’ quirks and foibles are the result of those same nihilistic capitalist forces; they’re trying to compete against teams with less-tightfisted owners in more fashionable locales. Those restrictions have shaped the Guardians into something gnarled and odd and occasionally unsightly, like a knotted tree sprouting from a rockface, or a squid that’s evolved to live in darkness 10,000 feet below the ocean surface.

It’s not always traditionally pretty, but it’s unique.

Here we are, in the middle of May, with Cleveland once again in sole possession of first place in the AL Central. (Don’t look at anyone’s record within the division, I’m making a point.) Not everything has gone smoothly for the Guardians so far this year, but they’re getting contributions where it counts. Especially from Parker Messick. Read the rest of this entry »