Shohei Ohtani made his first start on the mound for the Dodgers one year ago today, following a nearly two-year recovery from Tommy John surgery. He threw 28 pitches, exited after the first inning as planned, and flashed great stuff, even if he looked occasionally frustrated with his command. He ramped up slowly from there, from one inning to two to three to eventually six by the fall. He stamped his health with a dominant, 10-strikeout performance in NLCS Game 4 to send the Dodgers to the World Series.

Ohtani has now made 25 starts (of some length) since his return. Not only has he excelled individually over the last year, but his renaissance has run parallel with that of the Dodgers rotation.

Let’s start there: The 2025 Dodgers weren’t a powerhouse. They were great, and I’m sure they’re content with their second consecutive World Series trophy. But they weren’t quite the behemoth we’d seen in the past. They didn’t lock up the NL West until game 159. They finished with their fewest wins since 2018 and “worst” pythag record since 2016. We can see their win rate over 162 games has steadily fallen from its peak of 118 wins in late 2022. Read the rest of this entry »

The homers have yet to arrive for Andrew Benintendi.

My great, big, bold prediction for FanGraphs this year was that Benintendi would hit 30 home runs. It’s now the second week of June, and he has six. If he keeps this pace, he’ll finish with 15. Somehow, I think that means I’m off by 100%.

My reasoning at the time was flawless, of course. Benintendi the last two seasons had quietly reinvented himself. He’d always hit the ball in the air, but rarely with oomf, and almost always to left or center field. He averaged just 12 home runs per 600 plate appearances over the first eight years of his career, with sometimes good, sometimes not-so-good results.

But he clubbed exactly 20 homers in each the last two seasons. How? He simply took his existing contact-in-the-air profile and changed its direction to the pull side. He wasn’t hitting the ball farther; he was simply aiming shallower. This is the thing to do in baseball right now, unless you’re the Rays. Read the rest of this entry »

Reid Detmers has saved his career — again.

Detmers, if you weren’t aware, is a top 10 starting pitcher to this point in 2026. He has accrued 2.0 WAR, which is slightly more than Chris Sale, Max Fried, and Jesús Luzardo. If it weren’t for Cristopher Sánchez, Detmers might have a case as the best lefty starter in baseball right now. He’s also been the Angels’ best pitcher, even a step ahead of José Soriano, who burst onto the national stage with a red-hot April before cooling in recent weeks. Detmers has kept plugging away, quietly — surprisingly — excelling in the background.

If you’d told me in 2022 that Detmers would be a top 10 starter in baseball by 2026, I would have said, “Sure, that sounds reasonable.” That was his first “full” season in the majors, and he posted a 3.79 FIP with fine peripherals. Yes, he got sent down for about a month in the summer to work on some things, but it was a solid rookie season overall. He even showcased his ceiling with a no hitter that May.

It’s what happened in the seasons that followed that makes this one of the most unexpected early performances of the year. Detmers didn’t improve in 2023. He struck out more batters, which is good, but he developed a pesky command issue that resulted in more walks and home runs. And things got worse in 2024. He again boosted his strikeout rate, and he again gave up more walks and home runs than he had the year before. By June, the Angels had seen enough and sent him down to Triple-A. They recalled him in September for five final starts, and when he returned? Even more strikeouts, even more walks, and even more homers. Read the rest of this entry »

Corbin Carroll is the best left-on-left hitter in baseball right now.

It’s been a tremendous year for Carroll, however you want to split up the data. He has a 152 wRC+. He has 2.6 WAR. It’s looking like his best-ever season — a perfect follow-up to his best-ever season last year.

That Carroll appears to be taking another step forward in 2026 isn’t quite newsworthy. But the way he’s doing it certainly is:

Carroll is all of a sudden crushing lefties. He was just average against them the first few years of his career. Last year, he was fairly good in left-on-left matchups, though that improvement seems to stem more from his overall growth at the plate rather than a specific step forward against lefties. Read the rest of this entry »

The Rays are not the best team in baseball.

That statement was true on Opening Day, when the Rays were projected by FanGraphs Depth Charts to win 79.9 games and finish last in the AL East. It’s true again Wednesday morning, after the Rays fell 6-1 to the Orioles for a third straight loss on Tuesday night. But for much of the time in between, the truthiness of that statement wasn’t so clear.

In the last six weeks, the Rays have rattled off a five-game winning streak, two six-game winning streaks, and a seven-game winning streak. Though they no longer hold the best record in the majors, they still boast the top record in the American League, at 34-18. No team has done more to improve its standing during the first third of the season.

They’re just doing it… weird. While the Rays have the second-best record in baseball, they’re 14th in batter WAR and 12th in pitcher WAR. They don’t have a single player in the top 50 on the combined WAR leaderboard and have just three in the top 100.

Instead, the Rays are outperforming both their ability to score and prevent runs, and their ability to turn those runs into wins. The story of their season to this point is no doubt centered on the sticky concepts of luck, fortune, and deservedness. How much should we adjust our expectations for a team, perhaps, playing above its head? Read the rest of this entry »

Elly De La Cruz is one-third of the way to an all-time season in Cincinnati.

De La Cruz collected his first triple of the season on Tuesday, ripping a middle-middle changeup from Jesús Luzardo into the gap in left-center at 103 mph. He later drew a walk to raise his wRC+ on the year to 147. His 2.6 WAR ranks third in the majors behind only Bobby Witt Jr. (3.1) and Shohei Ohtani (2.9). If the season ended today, De La Cruz would be the favorite to at least challenge Ohtani for the National League MVP:

De La Cruz at the moment is on pace for 30 stolen bases, 38 home runs, and 8.9 WAR. The first two numbers aren’t all that notable, beyond our affinity for the nice round, rhythmic 30-30 label. Well, 38 homers would be a career high for De La Cruz, who topped out at 25 in 2024. But no, it’s the 8.9-WAR pace that’s caught my attention. That would tie him with George Foster in 1977 for the fifth-best Reds season ever — a leaderboard that goes back to 1882 — behind only Joe Morgan, who registered 11.0 WAR in 1975 and 9.5 WAR in both 1973 and 1976, and Johnny Bench, who put up 9.2 WAR in 1972. We simply haven’t seen a a performance this good in Cincinnati in 50 years. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mariners didn’t expect to call up Colt Emerson, but they had no choice.

Emerson made his big league debut Sunday in the Mariners’ 8-3 loss to the Padres. It wasn’t a particularly eventful day in the box score. He flied out to right field in his first at-bat, drew a walk in his second, and flied out to right field again in his third. But at just 20 years old, he became the youngest Mariner to reach the majors since Félix Hernández in 2005.

General manager Justin Hollander told reporters that calling up Emerson wasn’t a move he anticipated making when he woke up that morning. However, Emerson was next on the depth chart, and once it became clear that Brendan Donovan needed time on the injured list, Hollander felt it was the only choice to make. Read the rest of this entry »

Cal Raleigh is, apparently, not invincible.

Raleigh landed on the injured list Thursday for the first time in his career. He’d been dealing with “general soreness” in his right side since early May, but seemed to aggravate it on a couple of plays in the eighth inning of Wednesday’s 4-3 loss to the Astros. There’s no timeline for his return.

With the game tied 2-2, nobody out, and Braden Shewmake on first base, Brice Matthews attempted a sacrifice bunt. The ball trickled back to Mariners reliever Eduard Bazardo, who scooped it up and sailed it into center field. Scrambling for the ball, Julio Rodríguez booted it back toward the infield, picked it up near the edge of the dirt, and came up firing home, but Josh Naylor cut it off before it could get there because Shewmake was held at third. However, while getting in position to field the throw, Raleigh made an awkward shuffle, appearing to tweak his already-sore side. He winced in considerable pain, but stayed in the game.

Bazardo then hit Zach Cole to load the bases, prompting the Mariners to bring the infield in. Christian Vázquez followed with a hard chopper to J.P. Crawford at short, who looked to start a double play with a strong throw home. But in attempting to make the turn, Raleigh’s leg gave out from underneath him. He stumbled to the ground with the ball still in hand, and exited after the inning. Read the rest of this entry »

Ceddanne Rafaela has a weak arm. He also has a strong arm.

This is an analysis I’ve wanted to do for a while. It’s not that important or complicated, and most of it is fairly obvious. But it gets at something that comes up from time to time in the various places baseball is discussed online. The conversation tends to start like this: Team A should sign Player X and move him to a new position. Inevitably, one of the first questions asked about such a plan is whether Player X has the arm strength to play that new position.

The number that gets cited to “yay” or “nay” such a follow-up is arm strength, in miles per hour. But ask any baseball fan to sit with this for a moment, and they’ll raise a concern. Arm strength, to some degree, is a function of position. A third baseman has a longer throw to make than a second baseman. A right fielder has a longer throw to make than a left fielder. This means players with better arms tend to play those positions, as we can see in this plot:

Read the rest of this entry »

Luke Raley took a big hack. Then he took another.

Raley has struck out 36.6% of the time to begin 2026, third most among batters with at least 100 plate appearances. He’s walked just 5.9% of the time, well below the median. His 0.16 K/BB ratio is one of the 10 worst in baseball this year. That’s typically not a recipe for success.

But this is:

Raley has six homers so far in 2026, carrying him to a 132 wRC+. He’s hitting the ball hard (51.8%), to the pull side (50.0%), and in the air (60.7%). His .595 xwOBA on contact is third in the majors. The only batters who have made better contact are Aaron Judge and James Wood, putting Raley ahead of Ben Rice, Munetaka Murakami, Mike Trout, and Yordan Alvarez. It’s impressive company to keep. Read the rest of this entry »