The first deal of the 2026 trade deadline was interesting more than it was important.

On Wednesday, the Astros sent Lance McCullers Jr., Colton Gordon, and cash considerations to the Brewers in exchange for Jadyn Fielder, the son of Prince Fielder. The Athletic’s Chandler Rome described the deal as a “salary dump” for Houston, noting that owner Jim Crane convinced McCullers to waive his no-trade clause to help the team manage its budget and roster. The Brewers were happy to oblige, adding depth and taking on a new pitcher project, parting with the son of a franchise legend to do so.

The deal marks the end of an era in Houston. The Astros drafted McCullers 41st overall in 2012, the same year they took Carlos Correa first overall. He developed right alongside the Astros as they progressed from tankers to titans, often serving as an exemplar for their forward-thinking pitching strategy. Nobody threw a higher rate of curveballs (44%) from 2015 through 2018 than McCullers, even going so far as to throw 24 straight curveballs to close out a four-inning save in Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS. Read the rest of this entry »

Jordan Walker was down to his last swing. Then he got another, and another, and another. When he finally stopped swinging, he was the Home Run Derby champ.

The Cardinals right fielder won the 2026 Home Run Derby in Philadelphia on Monday with five straight do-or-die swings. Hometown favorite Kyle Schwarber led off the final round and hit 11. That brought Walker to the plate under a chorus of boos from fans at Citizens Bank Park — boos that persisted and only grew stronger with every home run.

Walker tallied just eight homers in his 15 allotted swings for the final round, but new Derby rules this year did not allow rounds to end on a home run, so batters could keep swinging so long as they kept going yard. And so Walker kept swinging — and kept going yard. He launched his ninth and 10th long balls before crushing a 450-foot shot to left center to tie Schwarber. Walker took a brief pause to catch his breath, then took one last swing to end it. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been thinking a lot about the All-Star rosters this week. They’re not bad, but they’re weird, and missing many of the biggest names in the sport. That’s fine. There’s been heavy turnover atop the WAR leaderboards this year, as Ben Clemens pointed out last month, and that’s given us plenty of fresh storylines — many of which will be deservedly celebrated at the annual halftime show next week.

Still, this feels like it must matter in some way beyond an exhibition. And so I scoured the rosters, looking for a narrative to drive. One thing I noticed is, of the top 25 batters projected by FanGraphs Depth Charts, 17 did not make an All-Star team. Of those, eight are in competitive races out west.

Indeed, the stars have dimmed in the West. How these players perform after the break could determine the shape of the season still to come. Read the rest of this entry »

Who?

That was my reaction on Saturday after seeing the American League’s pitching staff for the 2026 All-Star Game. Sure, I’m generally aware of this collection of pitchers, and yes, there are deserving All-Stars here. But without Tarik Skubal, Garrett Crochet, and Max Fried, the AL lacks the star power of year’s past, especially in comparison to the National League.

Today, I want to briefly walk through the names on the roster so far, why they’re here, and who might join them should the opportunity arise over the next week: Read the rest of this entry »

After wandering for years, Jake Bauers has found himself in Milwaukee as one of the top hitters of 2026.

I first learned about Bauers because of a stat I made up sometime in 2019, around when Baseball Savant began publishing the attack region perspective of the strike zone. Rather than labeling pitches as simply in or out of the zone, Savant drew the distinction between meatballs, borderline strikes, and various distances beyond. Analysts had made similar observations for as long as PITCHf/x had been around, of course, but this was the first time (to my knowledge) the data was easily searchable, sortable, and available to download. No longer was the concept of plate discipline limited to walks and strikeouts, or even simple chase rate, but we could now look at which players were actually swinging at the right pitches within the zone, too.

At a high level, batters should only swing at pitches in the heart region. At a more granular level, this isn’t entirely true, as things like the count, situation, and swing profile change the calculus from pitch to pitch. But as a general rule, the players who swing at the right pitches are the ones who swing at heart pitches and lay off everything else. This gives us some fairly simple math: Read the rest of this entry »

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 »