Early enough in the season, you’ll find some weird stats. This is a well-established fact of baseball in April. There’s even a song about it. As I write this on Tuesday afternoon, Kyle Tucker leads the league in position player WAR, with Aaron Judge third and Corbin Carroll fifth; if the leaderboard looked like that at the end of September, it’d probably be a mild surprise — a highly, highly lucrative one for Tucker — but nobody would write a book about how weird the 2025 season was or anything.

But Wilyer Abreu is second in WAR and Tyler Soderstrom is fourth. Both of them are promising young players, but nobody worth listening to had either one in the preseason MVP discussion.

In short, these things will shake out soon enough. There was an old saying to that effect: Baseball season hasn’t really started until Mike Trout leads the league in WAR. Read the rest of this entry »

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. broke off contract talks with the Blue Jays on February 17. It didn’t seem like there was any animus between the two sides at the time, but the four-time All-Star didn’t want to distract himself during his walk year by negotiating all season long. The deadline was arbitrary, but nonetheless immovable. The Blue Jays tested Guerrero’s resolve with a renewed offer on Opening Day, but he held firm.

Then he changed his mind. I try to avoid the impulse to tell baseball players what to do with their careers, but I’ll say this: $500 million is a really, really good reason to abandon one’s previous position.

Guerrero’s $500 million contract extension with the Blue Jays starts next year, runs for 14 years, and contains a full no-trade clause but no opt-outs. The intention, then, is to keep Guerrero in Toronto for the rest of his career. Read the rest of this entry »

Heston Kjerstad turned 26 in February, and he only has 158 major league plate appearances. That’s more than you or I had at that age, but it’s not a lot relative to expectations. This was a highly polished SEC corner bat who went second overall five years ago, though for reasons I’ll get into, Kjerstad wasn’t your garden variety no. 2 pick. After a token call-up at the end of 2023, in 2024 he spent more time in Triple-A (where he posted a 160 wRC+ in 56 games) than in the majors (where he posted a wRC+ of 116, which isn’t lighting the world on fire, but is still good, especially for a rookie).

Nobody wants to get their shot because of an injury, but Colton Cowser busting his thumb on Sunday leaves a two-month hole that Kjerstad has to, has to, has to exploit. Read the rest of this entry »

During the offseason, I examined Jackson Merrill’s excellent rookie season and concluded that his next big developmental step would have to involve getting on base more. A week into his sophomore season, we don’t know if Merrill is going to walk more. But if he does, he’ll have plenty of walkin’ around money.

Yeah, I feel good about that little bit of wordplay. Let’s move on.

On Wednesday morning, the Padres announced that they’d signed their precocious young outfielder to a nine-year contract extension. The contract is worth $135 million and kicks in next year, leaving his $809,500 salary intact for 2025, but incentives and an option for 2035 could push the total value of the deal to $204 million. Read the rest of this entry »

First of all, Lance Lynn’s wife has a podcast. It’s called Dymin in the Rough. Good for Lance, falling in love with someone who appreciates a pun in the headline. (I, personally, would’ve gone with Shine On You Crazy Dymin, but they didn’t ask me.)

Second, I’m going to have to come up with a new answer to the question: “Who’s your favorite active ballplayer?” Because as of Tuesday morning, our guy is retired.

“Baseball season is upon us and I’m right here on the couch,” Lynn said. “And that is where I’m going to stay. So there’s the update: I’m officially retiring from baseball, right here, right now.” Read the rest of this entry »

One weekend into the 2025 regular season, baseball is already throwing up some pretty big surprises. Here’s one: The Atlanta Braves have the worst record in baseball. The Braves! The perennial best non-Dodger team in the National League, with their Toyota pickup-level dependable lineup and fountain of talented young arms, went 0-4 against the Padres.

Then, on Monday afternoon, more bad news dropped: Jurickson Profar has been suspended 80 games for violating MLB’s policy on performance enhancing drugs. Minutes after Profar’s suspension came out, Reynaldo López was placed on the IL with right shoulder inflammation. All this comes amidst Brian Snitker, the club’s beloved and highly successful manager, hinting that he might hang up his lineup card at the end of the year. And to top off this day of crap, Grant Holmes got knocked around in the series opener against the Dodgers and Atlanta dropped to 0-5.

Fortunately, MLB Shop is already selling jerseys to commemorate the occasion:

As a general principle, I scoff at the idea that a bad weekend can be characterized as a crisis at any point before Labor Day. In case you disagree, consider that the team that ended the weekend atop the NL East was not the Phillies or Mets but the Marlins. Here’s a good rule of thumb: If the Marlins are in first place, it’s too early to panic. Even after the beatings continued against Dodgers, morale should not be bottoming out this early. Read the rest of this entry »

Man for man, the quality of starting pitching will never be higher all year than it is on Opening Day. And there were some good performances. Framber Valdez shut out the Mets and their brand-new Juan Soto for seven innings. Zack Wheeler shoved for six innings in a no-decision for the Phillies. Nathan Eovaldi struck out nine with no walks and three hits in six innings of a no-decision for the Rangers. Sean Burke, believe it or not, allowed only three hits in six scoreless frames for the first-place White Sox!

But the best performance on this Day of Aces came from a pitcher most people wouldn’t consider worthy of the title: MacKenzie Gore. The 26-year-old lefty was once the best pitching prospect in the game, but expectations settled down some. Around this time last year, I was happy he’d developed into a reliable mid-rotation starter.

That’s not what he pitched like against Wheeler and the Phillies on Opening Day. In two trips through the order, Gore struck out 13 batters, allowing only a single baserunner, who was erased on a stolen base attempt. Gore set a new Nationals/Expos franchise record for strikeouts on Opening Day, and became just the 10th pitcher in major league history to strike out 13 or more batters in an Opening Day start for any team. Read the rest of this entry »

I didn’t expect to be writing about Taijuan Walker this close to Opening Day. I doubt that either he or the Phillies would have expected him to be in the rotation to start the season. Last year, Walker pitched his way out of the best rotation in the National League; three Phillies starters received Cy Young votes, and a fourth, Ranger Suárez, made the All-Star team. Just before Christmas, Philadelphia made an opportunistic trade for Jesús Luzardo and plans to promote Andrew Painter (the team’s top pitching prospect since, I dunno, Gavin Floyd?) around midseason.

Even with two years and $36 million left on his contract, the phrase “surplus to requirements” was invented for people in Walker’s position.

But when the end of March actually arrived, Suárez’s back was giving him problems. He’ll start the season on the IL, and back into the rotation goes Walker. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not every day that a piece of baseball news makes just about everyone go, “Oh, yay, that’s nice!” but the Mariners pulled it off less than 72 hours before the start of their season. Cal Raleigh is sticking around for the long run.

Raleigh’s new contract runs from, well, now, through the end of the 2030 season, and will pay him $105 million over those six years, plus a $20 million vesting option for 2031. The extension buys out Raleigh’s previous $5.6 million arbitration settlement, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, who was first to report it. Read the rest of this entry »

During the last week of spring training, after rosters have been more or less settled, some teams will find they have more pitchers than they can use at the moment. There’s a no. 6 starter who’s pitched well enough to earn a job, but there’s no room for him on the roster and he’s out of options. Good news: Another team needs a pitcher and is willing to trade a minor league depth infielder, say, to jump the waiver line and trade for yours.

I find this process oddly heartwarming, because everyone benefits: Both teams get a more balanced roster, and the pitcher in question gets a spot on a major league roster instead of getting DFA’d. Professional baseball is usually a zero-sum competition, but that doesn’t mean you can’t help your friends out. Read the rest of this entry »