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 »

The best team in baseball will be without its biggest star for a few weeks.

The Braves placed Ronald Acuña Jr. on the injured list Sunday with a strained left hamstring. Acuña exited Saturday’s game after pulling up in considerable pain while running out a groundout. Manager Walt Weiss told reporters that imaging revealed a Grade 1 strain, the least severe grade. According to MLB.com, Weiss said:

“It’s not going to be just a couple days. It’s gonna be more than that, so we need to put him on the IL, and hopefully it’ll be sooner than later. No idea with these soft tissue injuries how long they’re gonna take, but I think the silver lining is that the MRI showed it wasn’t too serious.”

While many players return from Grade 1 hamstring strains in just a couple weeks, or even following the 10-day minimum, this is an injury that can linger and delay a return.

This is, obviously, less than ideal for the Braves. Acuña is their best player and was projected in the preseason as the ninth-best position player in baseball with 5.4 WAR, according to our Depth Charts. Though his performance hasn’t been spectacular thus far, with a 111 wRC+ in 152 plate appearances, his .381 xwOBA and 12.2% barrel rate — along with strong strikeout and walk rates — suggest he hasn’t missed a beat this year, coming off his bounce-back 2025 season.

Of course, last year was a comeback campaign because Acuña missed most 2024 (and the early part of 2025) after tearing his ACL. He also missed chunks of 2021 and 2022 with a torn ACL in his other knee. In 2018, he missed about a month with a mild ACL sprain. That means Acuña’s hamstring strain is his fourth lower body injury requiring IL time in his career. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not obvious why Landen Roupp is good, but it’s probably time to find out.

Roupp’s 2.54 xERA is seventh among qualified starting pitchers. He’s striking out batters, getting groundballs, and working deep into games. He’s tied for 15th in the majors with 0.9 WAR. That’s about 70% of what he was projected for by FanGraphs Depth Charts in the preseason. It’s one of the most surprising performances of April.

Most pitchers “get good” because they miss bats, or attack the zone, or both. That doesn’t apply to Roupp this year. His 25.1% whiff rate is about the median among qualified pitchers, and his 37.1% zone rate is bottom five. Frankly, he doesn’t throw a ton of strikes.

The underlying “stuff” metrics aren’t any more impressive.

Roupp doesn’t throw particularly hard, or display outlier movement, or place near the top of any leaderboard I know to check. And yet, he excels. Where is all that value coming from? Read the rest of this entry »

The Washington Nationals are starting out strong, but not strong enough.

They weren’t supposed to be good in 2026. They weren’t good last year, or the year before, or the year before, or the — they haven’t been good since they won the World Series in 2019. Our preseason positional power rankings had them 29th by overall projected WAR. Justin Klugh led the Nationals essay in the 2026 Baseball Prospectus annual with the story of an enema given to George Washington just before his death. And no, the parallel was not a particularly happy one.

Indeed, the Nationals have not been good. They’re 11-15 with a -18 run differential and a bottom-five WAR. They’re not yet last in the NL East because of whatever is going on in New York and Philadelphia. But our projections assume they’ll find their way there eventually.

Still, it’s the way they’ve gotten to “not good” that’s been frustrating, entertaining, and perhaps even a bit encouraging. Let’s start with a plot: Read the rest of this entry »

Only an act of science could get Jeremiah Jackson to take a walk.

Jackson entered Sunday with 65 plate appearances in 2026. He’d picked up 19 hits, including five homers and a double. He’d also struck out 17 times, grounded into two double plays, lined a sacrifice fly, and taken a wayward breaking ball off his back toe. He’d worked through pretty much every standard outcome for a plate appearance to begin the new season — but he hadn’t drawn a walk. In fact, Jackson entered Sunday as the batter with the most plate appearances in the majors to have not recorded a base on balls.

That was initially the case again Sunday as the Orioles wrapped up their series in Cleveland. Jackson struck out in the second inning, hit a sharp line drive single in the fourth, and reached on an error in the fifth.

Then he stepped to the plate to lead off the eighth. On the mound was nasty lefty Erik Sabrowski, fresh out of the Guardians bullpen. Sabrowski started him with a big curveball in the dirt. Jackson laid off for ball one. Sabrowski pumped his signature fastball, but it ran too far inside for ball two. Sabrowski tried to skim the other side of the plate, but missed too high for ball three.

Then it happened. Sabrowski threw another fastball, this time over the center of the plate. But he again missed too high — way too high — for ball four. Jackson had drawn his first walk of 2026.

Except, he hadn’t. Just as Jackson was prepared to set his bat down, the umpire called strike. Jackson paused, tapped his head, and proceeded with setting down his bat and removing his equipment, with a curious eye toward the video board. In zoomed the animated ball, revealing that the pitch was indeed way up and out of the zone for ball four. Jackson walked to first. Read the rest of this entry »

Most players grow up, not out.

When I wrote about Julio Rodríguez a few weeks ago, one of the points I made was that he has a “not-so-distant” shot at being the best player of Generation Z. My wording was intentional, a careful hedge illustrated by this plot:

The plot shows Rodríguez was the best player among Gen Z through his first two seasons and the second best through four seasons, behind only Bobby Witt Jr. This is a lie of omission. Rodríguez debuted when he was 21, and Witt debuted when he was 22; the plot compares them to Ronald Acuña Jr. and Fernando Tatis Jr., who each debuted when they were 20, and Juan Soto, who debuted at 19. Read the rest of this entry »