On Wednesday night, Gerrit Cole took his first loss since coming back from Tommy John surgery. After two starts of at least six scoreless innings, Cole got tagged for three home runs against the Guardians. Even so, it’s a promising return for the Yankees’ ace, who’s still throwing in the mid-to-upper 90s. His curveball is still curving, and while his fastball mix has evolved over his career in response to some trend or other, I’m confident he’ll find something that works. He always has.

I got to thinking about Cole in the context of a question I posed earlier this week about Adley Rutschman: Who’s the best draft prospect of the 21st century? Who presented the best combination of high floor and elite upside? The answer to that question is probably not Cole; if you were going for a workhorse college starter, you’d pick Mark Prior, Stephen Strasburg, or Paul Skenes. Or maybe even Carlos Rodón. But Cole definitely fits the bill; there’s a reason he was the top pick in the best draft class of the past 15 years. Read the rest of this entry »

Reasonable people can disagree on who the best draft prospect of the 21st century is. I think there’s a pretty good case for Adley Rutschman: A switch-hitter with patience and power, a plus defender at a premium position, a College World Series champion who’d been tested repeatedly against the toughest amateur competition in the world and come out on top routinely.

I get why you’d want the tantalizing upside of Bryce Harper, Stephen Strasburg, or Mark Prior, but to me no other prospect combined a big league starter-level floor with the ceiling of a superstar the way Rutschman did. Read the rest of this entry »

Emboldened by my success in predicting breakout seasons for Liam Hicks and Xavier Edwards, I’ve decided to rebrand myself as the world’s greatest booster of short Marlins guys.

I’ve been a Max Meyer fan since long before he became a Marlin. I love undersized hard-throwing college right-handers. I love plus athletes from unfashionable Midwestern schools. I love guys with a breaking ball and an edge. Meyer was a freshman on the 2018 Minnesota team that gave the eventual national champion, a totally loaded Oregon State club, everything it could handle. (I’ve mentioned the 2018 Corvallis Super Regional previously, as the center fielder on that Minnesota team grew up to be Sketchy Ben from Love Is Blind.)

By 2020, Meyer was the no. 3 overall pick and top college pitcher in his draft class. Not that I expect any of you to remember my thoughts on draft prospects from six years ago, but here’s what I wrote on draft night: “Meyer isn’t the best player in this draft, but he’s my favorite.” Read the rest of this entry »

“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 »