There’s a saying: “God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers.” I guess it started as an earnestly encouraging axiom, but like everything in 2024 it’s gone through a car wash of irony and post-irony, emerging on the other side as something only an expert in semiotics could trace from the Christian bookstore to the Something Awful forum.

Nevertheless, it got me thinking about leverage index. (Most things get me thinking about leverage index.) “There’s nothing so much like a god on earth as a general on a battlefield,” Michael Shaara once wrote. Are the generals of baseball — managers — like God in this respect? Do they give their toughest battles to their strongest soldiers?

The age of managing a bullpen to fit the save rule is, if not over, then at least waning. Today’s relievers are young enough to have grown up mocking Jerome Holtzman, and they accept that the most important inning is frequently not the ninth. That makes the manager’s job a little trickier: Rather than lining up his best bullpen arms by inning, he has to feel the game out. To guess whether the time to use A.J. Minter is with two lefties coming up in a two-run game in the seventh, or to hold on for a higher-leverage situation that may or may not come. How are they doing? Read the rest of this entry »

The Milwaukee Brewers, in recent history, tend to be a little light both on offense and in the payroll department. Which makes Christian Yelich — the team’s leader in batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging, and the recipient of nearly a quarter of the team’s major league salary expenditure — a pivotal figure for the franchise. Perhaps to an extent unmatched by any other position player on a contending team. (That’d be an interesting blog for another day.)

On Tuesday, the Brewers faced a situation tailor-made for Yelich: Leading 1-0, runners on first and second, two outs, the right-handed Julian Merryweather on the mound. Milwaukee had struggled to scratch out even that one run, and just a single by Yelich would’ve given the Brewers bullpen room to relax. And yet, out of the dugout stepped the right-handed Rhys Hoskins, not Yelich. Hoskins struck out, and the Brewers quickly announced that their star left fielder was experiencing back tightness.

Oh, crap. Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Strahm making the All-Star team as a setup man with no saves is a bit of an anomaly. Especially because he didn’t take the Aaron Crow route — his team had its proverbial bases covered.

The Phillies are no. 1 in baseball in pitcher WAR. They’re no. 1 by a huge margin in starter WAR, and no. 2 (a tenth of a win behind a team that has both Emmanuel Clase and 16% more bullpen innings) in reliever WAR. So it’s no surprise that Philadelphia sent five pitchers to Texas among its NL record-tying eight All-Star representatives.

The fact that Strahm is third in his own bullpen in ERA, behind Jeff Hoffman and Orion Kerkering, is mostly a testament to how good that unit has been overall. Strahm is second among relievers in FIP and tied for third in WAR. It’s not bad for a player who was an afterthought when the Phillies acquired him on the free agent market in December 2022, the same week Trea Turner and Taijuan Walker joined the organization. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my enduring memories of watching the All-Star game as a child — a child who became a baseball fan in a time before high-speed internet, social media, or even interleague play — was learning about all the players I’d been unable to see throughout the regular season. That included the American League and West Coast stars, but also a parade of forgettable pitchers, and yes, it always seemed to be pitchers, from crappy teams.

For some reason, Royals right-hander José Rosado is the guy who sticks out in my mind. Rookie of the Year vote-getter in his age-21 season, All-Star at 22 and 24, done in the majors at 25. If he hadn’t shown up in pregame intros between Justin Thompson and Jeff Cirillo that one time, I might never have been aware of him. Read the rest of this entry »

The Cleveland Guardians made history at the Fort Worth Stockyards on Sunday night, drafting Oregon State second baseman Travis Bazzana first overall. I planted my flag on Bazzana Island back in February, and noted that he could become the first Australian player drafted no. 1 overall, as well as the first player born and raised anywhere other than the U.S. or its dependencies. Keith Law pointed out that because no. 2 overall pick Chase Burns was born in Italy (though raised in Tennessee), 2024 marked the first time that both of the top two picks were born outside the U.S.

Had the Guardians chosen University of Georgia third baseman Charlie Condon, a different kind of history could’ve been made. Condon would’ve been the third no. 1 overall pick from Marietta, Georgia, after Dansby Swanson and Kris Benson, which would’ve given that city of some 60,000 people the distinction of being the only municipality in America to produce three no. 1 overall picks. Read the rest of this entry »

Konnor Griffin is the middle child of a Division III college softball coach. His parents’ names both start with K, as do both of his brothers’.

“If my mom’s trying to get a hold of me, she’ll probably say my other two brothers’ names first and then get to mine,” he said. “It’s kind of confusing, but everybody in my family has K as a first initial. It’s different, but it makes us unique.”

Griffin has a broad smile and an equally broad Mississippi accent, and from the neck down he’s pure muscle. He’s just preposterously big: 6-foot-4, 205 pounds, though he’d have no trouble convincing me he was being cheated another inch and 20 or 30 pounds. At his size, there’s the potential for plus-plus power. He can also run — he stole more than 80 bases in his final high school season — and hit the mid-90s throwing off a mound.

He’s 18 years old and just graduated high school. He says he can play shortstop at the next level, but can he cook and do laundry? Read the rest of this entry »

Last season, the college baseball game of the year was the national semifinal matchup between LSU and Wake Forest. It pitted the first two pitchers chosen in that year’s draft — Paul Skenes and Rhett Lowder — against one another, with a berth in the College World Series final on the line. The two star right-handers obliged, combining to strike out 15 while allowing just eight baserunners over 15 scoreless innings. The game remained tied, 0-0, until the very final at-bat, when Tommy White hit a two-run walk-off home run to win it for LSU.

The closest thing we had to that kind of pitching matchup in 2024 came in the losers’ bracket of the Greenville Regional. The top four college starters in this year’s draft — Wake Forest’s Chase Burns, Arkansas’ Hagen Smith, East Carolina’s Trey Yesavage, and Iowa’s Brody Brecht — all played in different conferences. The only time any of those four faced each other was in a win-or-go-home matchup between ECU and Wake on the second day of the NCAA Tournament, and the contours of this game were somewhat different as well. Read the rest of this entry »

When I was in Phoenix for the Draft Combine, I kept running into Seaver King’s friends.

“That’s my homie,” said JJ Wetherholt, the West Virginia infielder and presumptive top-five pick. He and King played together on Team USA last summer, and Wetherholt said King was the person he’d been looking forward to seeing most at the Combine. “He’s a great kid. He’ll be funny. Good dude.”

Michael Massey, the Wake Forest right-hander and sometime pitch design experimentalist, lived with King last season and gave him a positive reference as a roommate.

“He’s fun. He’s a high-energy guy,” Massey said. “Always wants to keep the vibes up, keep everyone having fun.” Read the rest of this entry »

“Oh hi, Tyson,” I said, slightly startled. “We were just talking about you.”

Tyson Neighbors, the star closer from Kansas State, had appeared at my shoulder suddenly and completely noiselessly. He was shorter than the other pitchers I’d interviewed at the draft combine, not much taller than six-foot, but with the kind of upside-down triangle body you’d expect from someone who’d been a standout linebacker in high school. In 2023, his sophomore season at K-State, Neighbors had struck out nearly two batters an inning and won All-America honors for holding opponents to a .135 batting average. He’s one of the top reliever prospects in this year’s draft.

All of that made the expression on his face hilariously incongruous. He was staring at Eric Longenhagen’s laptop, wearing the exact mix of curiosity and excitement you’ll see from a kindergartener who’s about to ask if you have games on your phone. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in January, I expressed grave concern over the state and direction of the Washington Nationals. They’d followed their World Series title with four straight last-place finishes, jettisoned most of their good players, and watched a series of prospects flame out. It wasn’t just a matter of waiting for Dylan Crews and James Wood to hit the majors; I argued that Washington needed to build a foundation of strong supporting players. Wood and Crews could be the difference between the Nats winning 80 games a year and 90, but if the infrastructure wasn’t ready, they’d turn a 70-win team into an 80-win team. And at that point, why did we even bother?

I’m pleased to report that the Nationals — no doubt sobered and inspired by my pessimistic appraisal of the situation — have answered the call. They don’t stink anymore. I don’t know if they’re good right now, as 38-41 and fourth place in the division isn’t exactly reminding anyone of the Big Red Machine. But on the journey from cheeks to championships, mediocrity is the first waypoint. Besides, with the NL Wild Card race being what it is, the Nats look like they’re going to be within a couple games of a playoff spot halfway through the season. Read the rest of this entry »