On Opening Day, Paul Skenes had his worst start since at least high school. He threw 37 pitches, allowed five runs (not all of which were his fault) and lasted only two-thirds of an inning. Skenes left that outing with an ERA of 67.50; even for a high-volume starting pitcher, that’s a big hole to climb out of.

From that point on, the NL Cy Young race has been a heads-up contest between Jacob Misiorowski and Cristopher Sánchez; the former, with his big velocity and strikeout totals, seems to be the favorite at the moment. But a third pitcher has entered the race in the past seven weeks: Chris Sale. Read the rest of this entry »

In a team sport, everyone involved — players, media, fans — has their own outlook on individual awards. Personally, I think they mean a lot. Yes, the player’s ultimate goal is to serve the team, but when individual effort is only tenuously related to team success, I think it’s worthwhile to recognize outstanding individual performances when they come.

But even I struggle to get too worked up about MLB’s Player of the Week awards. I get the press release in my inbox every week, but I usually check the headline, mark it read, and forget about it forever. As far as I know, there’s no cash prize or physical trophy involved; winning Player of the Week is more like getting all A’s on your report card than winning an Olympic medal. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s easy to forget that the trade deadline isn’t actually the last chance for teams to reload before the postseason. Players can join a team through waivers as late as August 31 — Monday, for those of you who, like me, have trouble keeping track of the calendar — and still be eligible for the playoffs.

It’s common practice for teams to put expensive vets on the wire to see if anyone will bite and take the contract off their hands. The Angels famously flooded the waiver wire in 2023, as their last-ditch effort to load up for a playoff run with Shohei Ohtani left backfired in a matter of days. This year, the biggest name on the move was Luis Robert Jr., who’s bound for Baltimore. Read the rest of this entry »

As Pete Crow-Armstrong authors his breakout season and Chris Sale side-eyes Laz Diaz, the battle for the future of baseball rolls quietly on in the background. On Thursday, MLB delivered to the MLB Players Association its latest set of proposals for the next collective bargaining agreement. This is news for nerds and diehards — you either have to love the minutiae of labor relations or have a vested interest in the structure of the Rule 5 draft to get excited about this stuff.

Fortunately, I know what my audience is. Read the rest of this entry »

Behold, a table. Does anything strike you as odd about this leaderboard?

Some of those guys are just the best relievers in baseball and have been for a while. We’ve also got a couple breakout relief aces from this season, including Brent Headrick, Erik Sabrowski, and Samy Natera Jr., who is apparently not the lead singer from Chicago. Don’t feel bad, it’s an easy mistake to make. Read the rest of this entry »

Brandon Pfaadt — former top prospect, 2023 postseason hero, recipient of a long-term extension after just one full season of big league work — lasted only three starts in the major league rotation at the beginning of 2026. After allowing 12 runs in 16 2/3 innings, the Diamondbacks had seen enough. Big contract or no, Pfaadt went off to middle relief.

Pfaadt had a 5.94 ERA and 5.37 FIP when he made his last start on April 11. In 10 bullpen outings that followed — including, it must be said, a couple very strong bulk relief stints — Pfaadt posted a 5.91 ERA and 5.47 FIP in 21 1/3 innings. The next demotion was to Triple-A Reno, an indignity for a pitcher who’d started 65 games across 2024 and 2025. Only Logan Webb and Jake Irvin had made more big league starts in that time.

Pfaadt spent less than four weeks in the minor leagues. When he came back, he went straight back into Arizona’s rotation, and immediately started pitching better than he ever had before. Read the rest of this entry »

Summer is nearly over. The Premier League is back in business and the NFL is close behind. Kids are going back to school. The other day, I opened a window and it didn’t feel like sticking my face in a pizza oven.

That means it’s time for me to look at the Cleveland Guardians’ lineup and wonder what the heck they’re doing in the playoff race. But rather than do a deep dive on whoever this year’s load-bearing Tyler Naquin or Owen Miller is, I want to take a step back and look at this issue from a historical perspective.

Because this year, the Guardians aren’t the only team with playoff aspirations and a lineup full of question marks. Read the rest of this entry »

The Phillies won their ninth straight game on Sunday. Cristopher Sánchez started and Kyle Schwarber hit a game-winning home run.

There are home runs and then there are home runs, and even by Schwarber’s standards, this one was a tank: straight out to dead center, over the batter’s eye. Read the rest of this entry »

As an inveterately unhappy middle-aged man, I don’t like pointing out when things get better. So when I say that the 2023 MLB rule changes massively improved baseball as a spectator experience, you can rest assured that I’m not making that assertion lightly.

You know what I’m talking about: The shift ban, the pitch clock, and the pizza box bases. Back in the olden days, a sufficiently daring and athletic ballplayer could rack up 50, 60, or even 100 steals in a season. But the response to that era has been a gradual tightening up of baserunning tactics.

First, the roided-up giants of the 1990s got too stiff and meaty to run and slide. Even those athletes who maintained their springiness didn’t want to run into an out when the guy at the plate could use his 25-inch forearms to drive them in from anywhere. In the 2000s, an army of Theo Epstein wannabes took over baseball operations en masse. These men, with their locust-like commitment to efficiency, discouraged risky baserunning behavior even further. While their Harvard MBA classmates were killing the American housing market, they killed the stolen base. Read the rest of this entry »

I say this with nothing but charity in my heart: It’s generally not a good sign when your team has a load-bearing Derek Hill. When the Phillies traded for Hill in June, he was arguably less valuable than the international bonus money they picked up in the same deal.

Hill is a career fifth outfielder with a strikeout rate (31.5% in 806 career plate appearances) that would make almost any hitter unplayable, especially a hitter with a career .281 on-base percentage and a career .132 ISO. But he can run, he can play center field, and he can hit lefties a bit. Best of all — and again, I’m not trying to be unkind here — Hill could not have dreamed up a scenario in which the bar for success was lower. Read the rest of this entry »