Geraldo Perdomo makes me happy. He’s a really good player with an interesting skill set, and he seems like a pleasant person. Last year, he hit .290 with 20 home runs, 27 stolen bases, and more walks than strikeouts. Combined with even adequate shortstop defense, you’d think that would make him one of the most valuable players in the league, and you’d be right.

In a world without Shohei Ohtani, we could’ve had a fun multidirectional NL MVP discussion involving Perdomo, Juan Soto, Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner, Corbin Carroll, and maybe even Paul Skenes. As it stands, Ohtani won in a walk and Perdomo finished fourth. But it’s an honor to even be in the discussion.

What do I want? More Perdomo. We kind of got that last year with Maikel Garcia’s breakout season, but I wasn’t satisfied. Last November, I went on a search for the next Perdomo. I identified young players with elite contact skills, elite plate discipline, rock-bottom bat speed, and the athleticism to play up the middle. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite article genres to produce is “you’ve never heard of this reliever, but he’s great now.” Generally speaking, it’s either some dude who has been in the majors for a while but recently learned something new, or someone who burst onto the scene with some quirky pitch, delivery, or approach. Today, though, I’m trying a slightly different variation. You probably have heard of Dylan Lee. He’s appeared in the majors for six straight years and racked up more than 200 innings pitched in that time. He’s not doing anything particularly new in 2026. But he’s great, and somehow we’ve basically never written about him, so I think it’s time to rectify that shortcoming.

In 19 2/3 innings of work this year entering Wednesday, Lee has posted a 0.92 ERA and 1.08 FIP. He’s striking out a third of the batters he faces and barely walking anyone. And while no one is that good in the long run, Lee’s career stats are very solid, as well. He has a career 2.65 ERA and a 3.24 FIP (2.92 xERA, 3.19 xFIP, 2.79 SIERA). Sure, it’s over only 224 innings, but those numbers are superb. He has the 10th-best ERA of any reliever since his debut, and every other run prevention estimator is similarly situated toward the top of the table.

The simplest way to describe Lee’s game is that he throws a gyro slider as often as possible, plus a fastball and changeup when he needs to switch things up. He’s throwing that slider 56% of the time this year, which is narrowly a career high, but he’s thrown 52.5% sliders in his career, so this is hardly a complete sea change. He leans especially hard on the slider against lefties, using it more than three quarters of the time. But even against righties, he throws 46% sliders and spots his other two pitches off of his breaking ball.

While sweeping sliders are all the rage these days, Lee doesn’t throw one. His slider is most remarkable for how little it breaks. He’s not quite Tatsuya Imai out there, but in 2025, his average slider moved about an inch to his arm side, the “wrong way.” This year so far, it’s moving about an inch to his glove side. Unlike many slow, straight sliders, Lee’s has a tiny bit of induced vertical break; the pitch falls about four inches less on its flight to the plate than your average mid-80s gyro slider.

That sounds terrible, right? “Hey, I throw my slider kind of slow, and also it doesn’t slide, and also it doesn’t have any downward break.” Anyway, on an unrelated note, here’s a leaderboard from 2026:

Huh. Read the rest of this entry »

“If Bobby [Cox] wasn’t here, he’d be one of the leading candidates for the job. A new broom sweeps clean. That’s all,” said Braves owner Ted Turner at the October 8, 1981 press conference to announce the dismissal of the manager who had piloted the team for the previous four seasons, with just one finish above .500. Known then as one of baseball’s most controversial, impulsive, hands-on owners — so hands-on that he had even managed the team for one night, only to be prohibited from doing so again — Turner admitted that he was making a change for change’s sake.

The Braves would win the NL West in 1982 under new manager Joe Torre, but not until Turner rehired Cox as general manager after the ’85 season — just after he’d managed the Blue Jays to their first division title — and focused on building from within instead of chasing expensive free agents did the team sustain its success. Once Cox returned to the dugout in mid-1990, he led the Braves to 14 division titles, five pennants, and a championship in 15 seasons (1991–2005), interrupted only by a second-place finish in strike-shortened 1994. He added a wild card berth in his final season (2010) for a record-setting 16 playoff appearances in 29 seasons of managing. He won four Manager of the Year awards, and on the 2014 Expansion Era Committee ballot, alongside Torre and Tony La Russa, he was elected unanimously to the Hall of Fame.

Cox won more regular season games (2,504) than all but Connie Mack, La Russa, and John McGraw. He ranks third all-time in games above .500 (503), fifth in games managed (4,508), sixth in losses (2,001), and 19th in winning percentage (.556) at a 1,000-game cutoff. Aided by expanded playoffs, he’s first all-time in postseason losses (69), second in games managed (136) behind only Torre, and fourth in wins (67). He’s also the all-time leader in managerial ejections with 162, 41 more than McGraw. The count undergirded his reputation as a players’ manager. “If I were on the field, I’d want the manager sticking up for me,” Cox once said. “Sometimes players are dead wrong, ranting and raving, but you stick up for them. They appreciate that.”

“He treats you like a man. He’s very simple in what he wants,” said Tom Glavine in 1999. “He doesn’t have a whole lot of rules. You show up on time, and you show up ready to play, and you play the game the right way.”

Brash and often profane, or at least offensive, Turner earned nicknames such as “Captain Outrageous” and “The Mouth of the South” for confrontational statements, ostentatious womanizing, and self-aggrandizement. Anecdotes from his early years owning the Braves could fill a book. He eschewed the executive suite for a seat behind the home dugout, often appeared in the clubhouse wearing jeans and boat shoes, and took up chewing tobacco to fit in with players. In 1978, the New York Times’ Roger Vaughan called him “an interesting blend of Southern gentleman and funky downhome goofhead cousin in whose vernacular the words ‘sir’ and ‘ain’t’ nestle compatibly. It is an ideal combination for selling baseball in Atlanta.”

By the mid-1980s, with Cox in the fold, Turner learned to leave baseball to his baseball people and focused more on his cable television empire, where he proved to be a visionary, taking the Braves nationwide via Superstation TBS, founding the Cable News Network, purchasing the libraries of MGM films to broadcast on Turner Classic Movies and Hanna-Barbera cartoons to air on the Cartoon Network. In 1996, he merged his conglomerate — which included the Braves — with Time Warner, creating what was hailed as the world’s largest communications company, and became vice chairman while surrendering control of the Braves. After the Braves moved from Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium to their new ballpark, Turner Field, in 1997, he retained a presence at their games for several more years. He remained with Time Warner after AOL purchased it in 2001, though his prominence in the corporate hierarchy was reduced.

“For the 10 years I ran [the team], it was a disaster,” said Turner in October 1996, after completing the sale. “But buying the Braves was a good move. As I relinquished control of the Braves and gave somebody else the responsibility, they did well.”

After selling his company, Turner put his money toward humanitarian and conservation efforts. In 1997, he donated $1 billion to create the United Nations Foundation, supporting the UN and its causes; at the time it was the largest philanthropic gift in history. He became the fourth-largest landowner in the U.S., using his two million acres spread across 13 ranches for sustainable agriculture and managing the world’s largest private bison herd.

Turner died on May 6 at age 87. He had suffered from Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder, since being diagnosed in 2018. Cox died on May 9 at age 84, after battling numerous health issues following a massive stroke in 2019. Their deaths followed the May 4 passing of John Sterling, a play-by-play broadcaster for the Braves from 1982–87 who gained greater fame in that role with the Yankees.

That’s a rough stretch for Braves fans, even with the team currently making a strong rebound from a rare losing season (76-86) that ended a run of seven straight postseason appearances and a 2021 World Series championship. While Turner and Cox didn’t do it alone — scouting director Paul Snyder, Hall of Fame GM John Schuerholz, and pitching coach Leo Mazzone figured prominently, and pitchers Glavine, Greg Maddux, and John Smoltz, center fielder Andruw Jones, and third baseman Chipper Jones built Hall of Fame careers with the Braves — the late great tandem raised the bar for Atlanta baseball.

“Whatever truth is to be found in it, the following is incontrovertible,” wrote the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Ken Sugiura. “It would seem a near impossibility for another two-person team to have a greater impact on sports in Atlanta than Turner and Cox. Turner was the dynamic owner who stopped at nothing to support the team. Cox was the steady skipper who delivered Atlanta — a fan base whose sporting history is draped in heartache and failure — its most consistent winner, and arguably its grandest moment, the 1995 World Series championship.”

…

Robert Joe Cox was born on May 21, 1941 in Tulsa, Oklahoma to J.T. Cox, an electrician, and Willie Mae (Hendrix) Cox, a store clerk. When the young Cox was three years old, his family moved to Selma, California, a farming community in the San Joaquin Valley. He grew up a Cardinals fan because the team based a Class-C affiliate in nearby Fresno, and idolized Stan Musial. At Selma High School, he played baseball, football, and basketball. In 1959, legendary Dodgers scout (and later pitching coach) Red Adams recruited him out of Reedley Junior College to sign for a hefty $40,000 bonus.

Cox spent five years in the Dodgers’ system (1960–64), splitting time between second base and third and climbing as high as Double-A Albuquerque in 1964. In November of that year, the Cubs chose him in the minor league portion of the Rule 5 draft; he spent 1965 at their Triple-A Salt Lake City affiliate, then on April 28, 1966 was traded to the Braves. After a strong 1967 season at Triple-A Richmond, he was dealt to the Yankees for catcher Bob Tillman and pitcher Dale Roberts on December 7, 1967.

In the spring of 1968, the going-on-27-year-old Cox initially won a reserve spot on the Yankees; when 23-year-old third baseman Mike Ferraro slumped and was sent down to Triple-A Syracuse, Cox took over for him. He played regularly in 1968, and even earned Topps All-Star Rookie honors, but was reduced to a bench role in ’69, when 23-year-old Bobby Murcer won the third base job, and then a platoon role after Murcer moved to right field. Across two seasons, Cox hit a combined .225/.310/.309 (87 wRC+) with nine homers and 1.6 WAR, and endeared himself to manager Ralph Houk, who called him “an old-fashioned ball player… comes to work early, keeps busy, hones his bat, talks baseball all the time and thinks baseball all the time. He has his limitations, of course, but you can’t help rooting for him.”

“My knees were shot by the time I got to the major leagues. I struggled a little bit when I was up there,” Cox told Kevin Newell in a 2009 interview. “But I loved it. It was a great experience. I had the opportunity to play alongside Mickey Mantle in 1968.”

After spending 1970 at Syracuse, Cox retired as a player. The Yankees believed he was worth keeping around, hiring him to manage the team’s A-level Fort Lauderdale affiliate, which went 71-70 in 1971. In 1972, Cox managed Double-A West Haven of the Eastern League to an 84-56 record and a division championship. He spent 1973–76 managing Syracuse, finishing above .500 each year and winning the International League championship in ’76 after going 82-57. During that time, he oversaw dozens of future major leaguers, most notably Rick Dempsey, Scott McGregor, and Ron Guidry.

In 1977, Cox joined the Yankees as first base coach under Billy Martin, alongside Yogi Berra, Elston Howard, and Dick Howser. “I got to know those guys really well. Pick their brains here and there,” he told Newell. After that team won the World Series, Turner hired the 36-year-old Cox to manage the Braves, replacing the fired Dave Bristol. “We’re hoping Bobby can be the manager to lead us to the promised land as soon as possible,” said Turner. “His credentials, background, and experience were just what the doctor ordered.”

Cox understood the tall task ahead, saying, “We lost 101 games last year, so obviously there is the need for a lot of work… Our top pitcher (Phil Niekro) won 16 games and lost 20 and our next-best pitcher (Dick Ruthven) won seven games. We definitely need pitching, that’s all there is to it. You can’t win without pitching.”

…

Robert Edward Turner III was born on November 19, 1938 in Cincinnati to father Robert Edward Turner Jr. (known as Ed) and Florence Rooney Turner. Ed was a Mississippi native whose family grew cotton; he moved to Ohio during the Great Depression. When Ted was nine, the family moved to Savannah, Georgia, where Ed started a billboard advertising company. While growing up, Ted suffered physical and psychological abuse at the hands of his alcoholic father, whom he nonetheless strove to please. He romanticized his harsh treatment, telling The New Yorker’s Ken Auletta in 2001, “He thought that people who were insecure worked harder, and I think that’s probably true. I don’t think I ever met a superachiever who wasn’t insecure to some degree.”

Ted attended the Georgia Military Academy, the military program at Chattanooga’s McCallie School, and then Brown University, where he was vice president of the debating union and captain of the sailing team. His choice of studies angered his father, whose disdainful letter Ted published in the campus paper: “I am appalled, even horrified, that you have adopted Classics as a major. As a matter of fact, I almost puked on the way home today… I think you are rapidly becoming a jackass, and the sooner you get out of that filthy atmosphere, the better it will suit me.”

While Ted later switched to economics, he was suspended twice and ultimately expelled for multiple infractions of having women in his dorm room. After leaving Brown and spending six months in the Coast Guard to fulfill his military service obligation, he returned to Georgia to join his father’s company. But even while expanding the business, Ed spiraled downwards while battling depression as well as alcohol and drug abuse. On March 5, 1963, Ed committed suicide at age 53. Deeply in debt, he had agreed to sell the company’s largest division, but the 24-year-old Ted decided to keep it, returning the down payment and paying a penalty for annulling the deal.

Turner pushed the company to greater success than his father had, and kept up with competitive sailing, trying out unsuccessfully for the 1964 Olympics. By 1970, bored of billboards, he bought a money-losing UHF television station, Channel 17, which ran fifth out of five stations in the Atlanta market. He renamed the station WTCG, which stood both for Turner Communications Group and its slogan: “Watch This Channel Grow.” The station ran old movies, classic cartoons, and syndicated sitcoms like Andy Griffith and The Beverly Hillbillies. In 1973, Turner acquired broadcasting rights for both the Braves and the NBA’s Hawks, providing WTCG with bulk programming. He bid $600,000 for the Braves’ rights, triple what the previous rights-holder, WSB, had been paying, and agreed to televise three times as many games, going from 20 to 60 per year. Turner expanded his station’s range beyond Atlanta by relaying WTCG’s signal using microwave dishes throughout the Southeast. Cable systems picked up the station.

However, the Braves were flailing. They went 67-94 in 1975 while ranking 11th in a 12-team league in attendance. An ownership group from Boston sought to purchase the team and move it to Toronto. Fearful of losing his programming, in January 1976, Turner purchased the team for $500,000 in cash and $8 million at 6% annual interest over 10 years — giving him a complete inventory of 162 games to broadcast; in 1977, he bought the Hawks, as well. Meanwhile, changes in FCC rules allowed over-the-air broadcasters to use RCA’s communications satellite to transmit their signal to cable providers, facilitating the ability for WTCG to go national. The station had two million subscribers by the end of 1976 and reached all 50 states by the end of ’78; its value had increased by $40 million. In 1979, it would be rechristened Superstation WTBS. Around this time, Turner branded the Braves as “America’s Team.”

Thanks to the landmark Messersmith-McNally decision that opened the floodgates for free agency, baseball’s landscape was changing, too. Turner’s opening salvo was to sign Andy Messersmith, the three-time All-Star who successfully challenged the reserve clause, to a three-year, $1 million deal in April 1976, and assign him jersey no. 17, with CHANNEL in place of MESSERSMITH above it — free advertising for his station, at least until NL president Chub Feeney cracked down in late May. At that time, Feeney also ordered Turner to stop playing poker with his players, and disallowed contractual incentives based on the team’s performance and attendance.

As if Turner needed even more ways to set himself apart from other owners, for the Braves’ 1976 home opener, he led the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium crowd in singing a pregame “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” rode a chariot while racing ostriches against the team’s broadcasters, and climbed onto the field to congratulate right fielder Ken Henderson after he homered.

OTD in 1976, Ted Turner competed with Skip Caray, Pete Van Wieren, and Ernie Johnson in a pre-game Ostrich race. The idea was a one lap around the warning track heat, but the Ostriches apparently weren't clear on the course. Ted and the announcers even wore custom racing silks. pic.twitter.com/frKd3Jn0hf

— Braves Historian (@BravesHistorian) July 26, 2024

Another pregame promotion called for players to race while pushing baseballs with their noses from third base to home plate. After Braves players balked at participating, director of public relations Bob Hope (not the legendary entertainer) interrupted the owner’s dinner with the Reverend Jesse Jackson and asked him to race Phillies reliever Tug McGraw. Turner won, bloodying his face in the process.

On September 17, 1976, Turner quietly made baseball history by promoting Bill Lucas, a former minor league infielder then working as the team’s farm director, to the title of vice president of player personnel and charged him with performing the duties of a GM — though Turner himself kept the GM title. Lucas became the first Black man to run a major league franchise, but alas died of a brain hemorrhage in May 1979 at age 43. Turner also brought back franchise icon Henry Aaron after his 1976 retirement. Aaron spent 13 years as vice president and director of player development before becoming a senior VP in 1989.

Turner wanted more free agents. During the 1976 season, commissioner Bowie Kuhn fined him $10,000 for tampering by having GM John Alevizos convey his interest to the agent of Giants outfielder Gary Matthews, an upcoming free agent. At a cocktail party during the World Series, Turner publicly challenged Giants owner Bob Lurie to outbid him for Matthews, and in November, signed the outfielder to a five-year, $1.875 million deal. After Lurie complained, Kuhn suspended Turner for one year while allowing the contract to stand. Kuhn also stripped the Braves of the third overall pick in the June amateur draft.

“I’m thankful he didn’t order me shot,” said Turner, who sought an injunction to block the suspension. While that process played out, on May 11, 1977, with the Braves having lost 16 straight games, he sent Bristol on a 10-day sabbatical “scouting trip,” donned a uniform, and appointed himself as “acting manager,” justifying the move as a chance to get an up-close look at his investment; coach Vern Benson made the lineup and dictated strategy. After the Braves lost to the Pirates, executives around the game voiced their disapproval. “By making himself manager, he’s making a bigger laughingstock out of the team than the losing streak is,” said Lurie. “It’s got to be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve seen in baseball,” said Padres GM Buzzie Bavasi. “Well, maybe they’ll Turner it around,” quipped White Sox GM Roland Hemond.

The next day, Feeney disallowed the move, ordering Bristol reinstated. On May 19, a federal judge upheld Kuhn’s right to suspend Turner but reinstated the draft pick. In September, while under suspension, Turner skippered the Courageous to victory in the 1977 America’s Cup, beating the challenger Australia in a four-race sweep.

Bristol was fired on October 25, 1977. The Braves’ board of directors focused on six candidates, including Berra and Howser, but did not talk to all of them; Niekro, the team’s 38-year-old ace, also threw his hat in the ring, but in the end, Turner chose Cox.

…

The Braves lost 187 games in Cox’s first two seasons, but with 1974 first-round pick Dale Murphy, originally a catcher, breaking out with a move to center field, the team went 81-80 in 1980, its best showing in six years, and drew over one million fans for the first time. In the strike-torn 1981 season, the Braves went a combined 50-56; additions of expensive free agents, such as reliever Al Hrabosky (signed in November 1979) and Claudell Washington (signed in November 1980), did nothing to change their fate. Shuffling the deck chairs, Turner dismissed Cox, whom the Blue Jays hired a week later. Toronto GM Pat Gillick, who as the Yankees’ coordinator of player development in the mid-1970s had worked with Cox, believed his new manager could mold a young team into a contender.

The Blue Jays had finished last in the seven-team AL East in each of their first four seasons and the first half of 1981 before rising to sixth in the second half of that year, but a booming farm system had already produced a two-time All-Star in righty Dave Stieb, a fifth-round 1978 pick. With Stieb having his first Cy Young-caliber season, righty Jim Clancy making his lone All-Star team, and youngsters Jesse Barfield, Lloyd Moseby, and Willie Upshaw acclimating to the majors, the team went 78-84 in 1982, finishing sixth, then jumped to 89 wins in ’83 and ’84, with finishes of fourth and second. Hitting coach Cito Gaston, a former minor league teammate of Cox who played for him in 1978, helped mold one of the game’s top offenses, led by Barfield, Moseby, and former Rule 5 pick George Bell. Stieb emerged as the AL’s top pitcher but never won a Cy Young.

Further fueled by the emergence of shortstop Tony Fernández — the crown jewel of the team’s pipeline of Dominican talent — and the shifts of Jimmy Key to the rotation and Tom Henke to closer, the Blue Jays went 99-62 in 1985, winning the AL East by two games over the Yankees. They took a three-games-to-one lead over the Royals in the first best-of-seven ALCS, but Cox’s gambit of starting Key, Doyle Alexander, and Stieb on three days of rest in Games 5 through 7 failed, and Kansas City’s young pitching held Toronto to five runs over those three games. The Royals completed the series comeback and went on to beat the Cardinals in the World Series.

“Bobby instilled winning,” former Blue Jays communication head Howard Starkman told Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi. “We were only eight years into the business and all of a sudden we were one win from having the World Series at Exhibition Stadium… Bobby knew how to get the most out of players.”

Upon election to the Hall in 2013, Cox called his Toronto stint “one of the greatest experiences I ever had in baseball… I had more fun there than probably anywhere in the world.” But with his contract expired and his family still in Atlanta, he accepted Turner’s overture to return as GM.

After winning the NL West in 1982 — the first of Murphy’s back-to-back MVP seasons as he emerged as a wholesome icon ideal for marketing “America’s Team” — the Braves slipped to second in each of the next two years, with totals of 88 and 80 wins. Torre was fired, after which the team crashed to 66-96 under Eddie Haas and interim replacement Bobby Wine. Turner hired manager Chuck Tanner, who had won the 1979 World Series with the Pirates, before hiring Cox as GM.

The team barely improved, and Turner earned a reputation as such an easy mark for free agents that some approached him without being represented by agents, who were still comparatively new to the sport. Other owners disliked him, not only for his boorish, outspoken nature, but also for driving up salaries even while unsuccessfully pursuing the likes of Goose Gossage, Pete Rose, and Dave Winfield. Turner’s 1984 signing of Bruce Sutter to a six-year, $9.1 million contract included an outrageous 13% interest rate on deferred payments. That deal that looked worse when shoulder trouble hastened Sutter’s decline and ended his career prematurely.

Finally in 1986, team president Stan Kasten — who also served as the Hawks’ GM and president — advised Turner to lay off the big signings. “We had a last-place team with the highest payroll in baseball,” Kasten told The Athletic’s Tyler Kepner. He told Turner, “I know the ad boys who are selling our game on TV — which is the engine driving our train — need something to sell in the offseason, so you’re signing free agents every year… You’re also blocking the development of younger players and you’re giving up draft-pick compensation.”

“Stan, I don’t need a lecture. Just do it,” Turner told Kasten. He and Cox fell into line during the mid-1980s collusion scandal, where owners avoided poaching other teams’ free agents. Notably, in an incident described in John Helyar’s vastly entertaining Lords of the Realm, Cox withdrew an offer to free agent righty Bryn Smith, in part because the structure of Turner’s ownership fell under league scrutiny as he brought in minority partners to bail him out of debt after buying MGM and trying to buy CBS. Even while telling his fellow owners, “Gentlemen, we have the only legal monopoly in the country and we’re f—ing it up,” Turner could only afford to buck the system so hard.

From 1985–89 under Tanner (who was fired in early 1988) and Russ Nixon, the Braves annually lost between 89 and 106 games, never finishing higher than fifth, but below the surface, Cox was laying the groundwork for what would follow, aided by Snyder. They drafted pitchers Kent Mercker (1986), Steve Avery and Mark Wohlers (both 1988), outfielder Ryan Klesko (1989), and third baseman Chipper Jones (1990, with the first pick); all would soon contribute, as would 1983–85 draftees Glavine, Ron Gant, and David Justice, whom Cox inherited. Cox’s August 1987 trade of the veteran Alexander to the Tigers for Smoltz, a 20-year-old prospect, was a stroke of genius that also helped Detroit win its division; by 1989, Smoltz was an All-Star.

On June 22, 1990, with the team en route to a 65-97 record and its third straight season of attendance below one million, Cox fired Nixon and returned to the dugout. For as bad as things looked, the rotation — led by Glavine, Smoltz, and Charlie Leibrandt — emerged as a strength, Justice won NL Rookie of the Year, and Gant broke out. In the fall, Cox relinquished GM duties to Schuerholz, who had helped build the Royals into an AL powerhouse and at one point tried to hire Cox.

In 1991, Glavine won 20 games and his first Cy Young, Avery came into his own, and Schuerholz signee Terry Pendleton won the NL batting title and MVP award. The team won 94 games, including eight in a row from September 28 to October 4 to turn a two-game deficit into a division title. Thanks to back-to-back shutouts by Avery (the series MVP) and reliever Alejandro Peña in Game 6 and Smoltz in Game 7, the Braves outlasted the Barry Bonds/Bobby Bonilla Pirates in a thrilling NLCS to capture their first pennant since 1958.

The World Series against the Twins — who also vaulted from worst to first — proved to be an instant classic, with five games decided by one run and four via walk-off, three of which came in extra innings. The Twins won the first two in Minnesota, but the Braves took the next three in Atlanta. They lost Game 6 at the Metrodome on Kirby Puckett’s 11th-inning walk-off homer, and then Jack Morris shut out the Braves for 10 innings in Game 7; Smoltz, Mike Stanton, and Peña matched zeroes with Morris until Gene Larkin’s 10th-inning walk-off single against Peña decided the championship.

The agonizing near-miss was hardly the last. In 1992, after a 98-64 record and another NL West title, the Braves again outlasted the Pirates in a seven game NLCS, rallying for three runs in the bottom of the ninth against flagging starter Doug Drabek and reliever Stan Belinda. With two outs, pinch-hitter Francisco Cabrera drove in the tying and winning runs for a 3-2 victory that sent the Braves back to the World Series to face the Blue Jays, now managed by Gaston.

Atlanta won Game 1 behind Glavine and catcher Damon Berryhill’s three-run homer off Morris (now a Blue Jay), but lost three one-run games in a row. After Smoltz beat Morris in Game 5, the Braves scratched out the tying run against Henke in the bottom of the ninth in Game 6 to send it to extras. Leibrandt, relegated to relief duty that postseason, yielded two runs in the top of the 11th. The Braves rallied to bring the tying run to third base before Otis Nixon — who had driven in the ninth-inning run — grounded out to end the series.

In December 1992, the Braves signed Maddux, the reigning NL Cy Young winner, to a five-year, $28 million deal, winning out over a reported $34 million bid by the rebuilding Yankees. With Maddux winning his second of an unprecedented four straight Cy Youngs, Glavine placing third, and Justice, midseason acquisition Fred McGriff, and Gant finishing 3-4-5 in the NL MVP voting, the 1993 team won a franchise-record 104 games. They needed every win to edge the Giants, who themselves had added Bonds in free agency, in the NL West standings, but fell to the Phillies in a six-game NLCS. The 1994 team was 68-46, second in the newly reorganized NL East behind the Expos, when the players’ strike began in August.

On May 7, 1995, two weeks into the strike-delayed season, Cox was arrested at his home and charged with simple battery for allegedly punching his wife Pamela and pulling her hair during a domestic dispute. The police report said Cox was intoxicated and that his wife had visible swelling and redness on the left side of her face. She said he had spilled a drink on the carpet while the couple had guests over and that she had made a comment about it; the alleged assault occurred after their guests departed. In the report, Pamela Cox “stated that this has occurred many times before, but (she) never called the police because of possible media attention” and the effect on their children, the youngest of whom witnessed the attack. Cox admitted to pulling his wife’s hair and calling her a name but denied hitting her, according to the report. He added “that she also has been violent in the past, and that he hit her in reflex to her assault on him.”

In a joint press conference two days later, Pamela “said she didn’t make statements to police about physical abuse in the past or on Sunday night and didn’t know why they were in the police report,” according to a newspaper report in the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. More:

“Said Pam Cox of the dispute: ‘It was just a personal problem… that had been escalating. We needed to talk about this a month ago, but due to the (Braves’) extended spring training it just kept escalating.’

“Bobby Cox, who said, “I’m just not a good listener,” said the couple will attempt to resolve their problems with the assistance of counseling. But he strongly denied the charge that he hit his wife.”

While today Major League Baseball would have placed Cox on leave and likely would have disciplined him in accordance with its domestic violence policy, at the time neither the league nor the Braves imposed any penalty on Cox — or even investigated the matter. The couple attended court-ordered counseling, after which the charges were dropped.

On the field, the Braves put it all together in 1995, going 90-54 to begin their string of NL East titles. Maddux and Glavine finished first and third in the Cy Young voting, and McGriff, Justice, Klesko, and rookie Chipper Jones all hit at least 20 home runs. After steamrolling the Rockies in a four-game Division Series, the Braves held the Reds to five runs in a four-game NLCS sweep. In a tight six-game World Series, the Braves limited a powerhouse Cleveland lineup that included Albert Belle, Kenny Lofton, Manny Ramirez, and future Hall of Famers Eddie Murray and Jim Thome to just 19 runs; five games were decided by one run. The Braves secured their championship — the franchise’s first since 1957, when it played in Milwaukee, and the first ever for an Atlanta team in a major professional sport — when Glavine (the Series MVP) and Wohlers combined for a one-hit shutout, backing Justice’s solo homer in a 1-0 victory. “The team of the Nineties has its world championship!” exclaimed NBC announcer Bob Costas.

“At last, at last,” said an elated Turner, whose five-year plan to bring Atlanta fans a championship instead took two decades. In September 1995, just before all of that went down, he agreed to sell Turner Broadcasting — which by that point owned CNN, TBS, TNT, the Cartoon Network — as well as the Braves to Time Warner for $7.5 billion dollars worth of stock. The deal, which took just over a year to complete, made Turner the vice chairman of Time Warner and its largest single shareholder (10%), but he relinquished control of the Braves, from whom he’d already stepped back.

“I’ve been a C.E.O. for 33 years, and that’s a long time for anyone,” Turner said when the deal was first announced. “I’m married to Jane Fonda, so I know what it’s like to be No. 2,” he added, referring to his third wife, who would help shape his political evolution and his latter-day philanthropic efforts.

The regular-season dominance continued, as the Braves annually led the NL in wins from 1996–99, with the majors’ best record in ’97 (101-61) and ’99 (103-59), and a new franchise record of 106 wins in ’98. Smoltz’s 1996 Cy Young ended Maddux’s four-year reign, and after the Braves swept the Dodgers in the Division Series and beat the Cardinals in a seven-game NLCS, 19-year-old Andruw Jones, a late-season call-up, clubbed two homers in the World Series opener against Torre’s Yankees. But while the Braves won the first two games in New York, the Yankees took four straight in Atlanta to capture their first championship since 1978.

After winning four pennants in five years, Cox’s Braves ran into buzzsaws in the postseason in 1997 and ’98, falling to the Marlins and Padres in a pair of six-game NLCS. The team did return to the World Series in 1999, the year Chipper Jones won NL MVP honors, but was swept by the Yankees in the World Series.

Cox’s Braves continued to win division titles, but from 2000–05, they were ousted in the Division Series all but once, with three straight Game 5 losses from ’02–04. The great rotation, the foundation of the team’s success, scattered. Smoltz lost his 2000 season to Tommy John surgery and returned as a reliever. Glavine defected to the Mets after 2002, and Maddux rejoined the Cubs after ’03. The farm system produced NL Rookie of the Year Rafael Furcal in 2000 and a solid second baseman in Marcus Giles in ’01, but it would take until the ’05 arrivals of Jeff Francoeur and Brian McCann before factoring in again. In 2006, after Mazzone departed to join the Orioles, the Braves slipped to 79-83, their first losing season since 1990, and their first of four straight outside the postseason; they sandwiched winning records around a 72-90 crash in 2008.

On September 23, 2009, Cox announced he would return for one final season. With a lineup anchored by McCann and rookie Jason Heyward and a staff led by Tim Hudson and Billy Wagner, the 2010 Braves rose to the occasion by going 91-71 and claiming the NL Wild Card, but the eventual champion Giants ousted them in the Division Series. All four games were decided by one run, but the Braves scored just 11 total.

Such offensive droughts, or at least a lack of timely hitting, often doomed Cox’s postseason teams despite the starters’ great efforts. While Smoltz went 15-4 with a 2.65 ERA for the Braves in October, Glavine went 12-15 with a 3.44 ERA, and Maddux 11-13 with a 2.81 ERA. In 129 postseason games from 1991–2010 under Cox, the Braves outscored opponents 539-472 but went 64-65, including 19-25 in one-run games and 5-7 in walk-offs. Their batting clutch score in that span was -3.20, their pitching clutch score -0.44 — in other words, they underperformed, particularly on the offensive side.

Upon retiring, Cox continued as a team consultant, but he suffered a massive stroke after participating in the Braves’ home opener in 2019. Though his condition eventually improved somewhat, he never regained full capacity for speech or the use of his right arm, and made it to Truist Park — where a statue of him was unveiled in 2017 — just three times, the last on August 22, 2025 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his championship team.

Turner’s volatility and Cox’s steadiness made them quite an odd couple. Both men had their flaws, but they paired well. Together and separately, they left an indelible mark on baseball.

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 »

Yandy Díaz was in the news last week when he recorded his 1,000 career hit, making him the 20th Cuban-born MLB player to reach that milestone. The plaudits he received were well deserved, and they were also relatively uncommon. Playing in a lower-profile market, the Tampa Bay Rays stalwart flies under the national radar. Be honest. Outside of when he captured the American League batting title with a .330 average in 2023, when was the last time you paid more than a modicum of attention to the player who is arguably the top hitter in Rays franchise history?

You’re excused if you weren’t aware of just how good Díaz’s numbers are. Now in his eighth season with Tampa Bay after parts of two in Cleveland, he boasts a 133 wRC+ with the Rays, the highest in team annals among hitters with at least 1,000 plate appearances. Over 3,627 plate appearances with his current club, the 34-year-old corner infielder/DH has a .291/.373/.447 slash line and 104 home runs.

Díaz was admirably humble when asked about his milestone the following day.

“I never thought I’d get to 500, let alone 1,000,” he told reporters. “When I signed with Cleveland, I honestly never really thought I was going to get to the major league team. I thought, yeah, I was going to be a professional, but maybe I was going to get cut — specifically because it’s a different style of play over in Cuba. I thank God that I made the team and have been able to do it for so long.”

I asked the Sagua la Grande native how much he’s changed — and how much he really hasn’t changed — since coming stateside to play professionally in 2013. Read the rest of this entry »

It used to be said that old guys couldn’t stick at shortstop.

“You know, it’s kind of like a running back after 30 [years old],” then-Rangers manager Chris Woodward said back in 2020, marveling at the defensive longevity of Elvis Andrus. “Shortstops after 30? There’s not too many of them.”

As of late, though, something has changed. Here is a plot showing the number of primary shortstops qualifying for the batting title in their age-30 season or older. In 2026, there are nine pacing to qualify, almost touching the previous peak in 2014: Read the rest of this entry »

Since the start of the year, I’ve been watching Jordan Walker mash the ball as I try to figure out something to say about it. As a card-carrying Walker booster – I’ve got a Top 50 Trade Value ranking to prove it – I’m very willing to believe in Walker’s promise. But as a sometime Cardinals fan – being a professional baseball writer makes fandom complicated – I’m afraid of getting burned. Walker has already gone from one of the most heralded prospects in the game to one of its worst-performing full-time players. Now he’s one of the best-performing players? Being a little skeptical is just a matter of self-preservation.

Now that we’re a month and a half into the season, though, I can’t keep myself from investigating. Walker hasn’t had stretches this productive since his rookie year. He hasn’t had stretches where he’s hit the ball on the ground this rarely as a major leaguer, period. He’s been 14.5 runs above average offensively in 2026 – after being 13 runs below average offensively for his entire career before now. If that isn’t screaming for an article, I don’t know what is.

If you know two things about Walker, they’re probably these: He swings hard, and he can’t get the ball off the ground. That makes it easy to think through how he might improve: keep swinging hard and stop hitting it on the ground. When I designed the Squared-Up Explorer for the FanGraphs Lab, Walker was actually one of my favorite examples to use. Look at where his best swings are, compared to another guy who swings very hard:

The bubble size represents frequency, and being further right means more squared-up contact. Before 2026, Walker squared up the ball most frequently on grounders, and he hit a ton of them. For his part, Judge isn’t squaring the ball up every time he hits it or anything, but he’s following a simple recipe. He swings really hard, he gets the ball in the air a lot, and then he profits. The harder you swing, the more valuable hitting the ball flush becomes; Judge doesn’t need to hit it pure every time to clobber dingers at a historic rate. Read the rest of this entry »

Spencer Arrighetti has twice been featured here at FanGraphs in standalone fashion, yours truly having interviewed the 26-year-old Houston Astros right-hander in April and August of his 2024 rookie season. On both occasions, he displayed an impressive knowledge of pitching analytics, as well as a thoughtful overall approach to his craft.

Our third conversation ended up focusing on his curveball. Arrighetti has been throwing the pitch at 31.4% clip this season, and not only has it been his most-used offering, it has been highly effective. As of this writing, it has yielded a .121 batting average and a .151 slugging percentage while eliciting a hefty 50.9% whiff rate. Arrighetti, who took the mound just seven times last season due to a fractured thumb and then right elbow inflammation, has made five starts this year to the tune of a 4-1 record and a 1.88 ERA over 28 2/3 innings. I spoke with him about his curve at Fenway Park earlier this month.

———

David Laurila: You’re throwing a lot more curveballs than in years past. Why is that?

Spencer Arrighetti: “Before I got hurt, it was a top-10 curveball in baseball. That makes me feel confident to throw it to whomever, and at any time in the count. Having a pitch like that goes a long way, especially as a starting pitcher. I’ve just leaned into it a little more this year. In the past, I had the thought process that to get a chase or a whiff on a curveball, you had to set it up with a fastball — something harder in the zone — in order to make a hitter be early on it, or to be off of the shape. I’ve kind of found that there are guys that I can just spam it to. I can throw it as many times as I want, in the zone, out of the zone, and get good results. Read the rest of this entry »

In a world defined and cheapened by soulless and repetitive optimization, the Cleveland Guardians are intractably themselves. Make no mistake, the Guardians’ quirks and foibles are the result of those same nihilistic capitalist forces; they’re trying to compete against teams with less-tightfisted owners in more fashionable locales. Those restrictions have shaped the Guardians into something gnarled and odd and occasionally unsightly, like a knotted tree sprouting from a rockface, or a squid that’s evolved to live in darkness 10,000 feet below the ocean surface.

It’s not always traditionally pretty, but it’s unique.

Here we are, in the middle of May, with Cleveland once again in sole possession of first place in the AL Central. (Don’t look at anyone’s record within the division, I’m making a point.) Not everything has gone smoothly for the Guardians so far this year, but they’re getting contributions where it counts. Especially from Parker Messick. Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago, I presented some in-depth research on the size of the 2026 strike zone. The results were clear and unambiguous: The called strike zone is smaller this year than it was last year, and most of that shrinking is coming at the top of the zone. But saying that the strike zone is smaller is different than saying that the smaller zone is causing the overall major league walk rate to increase, and walks are up by a lot this season. Last year, batters walked in 8.4% of their plate appearances. This year, through May 8, they’ve walked in 9.5% of plate appearances. Still, walk rates move around all the time for reasons unrelated to the strike zone. That meant I had another question to answer: Are the walks coming from the smaller strike zone, or are they coming from something else?

First, I decided to look for which counts have had the greatest impact on the increase in walks. To do so, I used a technique called Markov chain decomposition. Think of each plate appearance as falling through a Plinko board. Every plate appearance starts at 0-0, and then it progresses in one of four ways: ball, strike, ball in play, or hit-by-pitch. Ball in play and hit-by-pitch results end the plate appearance, of course, but ball and strike outcomes on 0-0 feed into other buckets: 1-0 and 0-1 counts. In each of those counts, the same thing happens, with the next pitch resulting in either a ball, strike, ball in play, or hit-by-pitch. That keeps happening – with foul balls behaving like do-overs in two-strike counts – until you get to three strikes, four balls, a ball in play, or a hit-by-pitch. The reason that this is helpful is because you can start with small events – balls, strikes, balls in play – and build bigger outcomes, like walks and strikeouts. In that way, you can use per-pitch results to learn things about per-plate-appearance results.

That’s a Markov chain. To figure out how much each count’s changing results are contributing to the change in walk rate, we need to do a little decomposition, which means that another example is in order. Imagine a 2-2 count. Next, imagine that the only possible results are ball and strike. Further, imagine that there’s a two-thirds chance of a ball on 2-2, and a 50% chance of a ball on 3-2. You can work out the odds of a walk – one-in-three – and the odds of a strikeout – two-in-three – from those numbers. Now, let’s imagine a world where the walk rate balloons from 33% to 40%.

How can that happen? One of two ways: batters reaching 3-2 more frequently, or batters walking more frequently when they reach 3-2 counts. If 2-2 pitches go from being balls two thirds of the time to being balls 80% of the time, the walk rate would hit 40% without anything at all changing in 3-2 counts. Likewise, if 3-2 pitches go from being balls half the time to being balls 60% of the time, the walk rate would hit 40% without anything at all changing in 2-2 counts. In both of those scenarios, the walk rate goes up by the same amount, but in each case, the change in walk rate can be directly attributed to changing behaviors in a given count. As the likelihood of each individual result in each count varies, a Markov chain can calculate how much that affects the overall results.

In real life, the decomposition is a bit more complex, because there are more intermediate states and more outcomes, and because the results in each count are all changing at once. But that’s really just a matter of more math; it doesn’t alter the core concept. That means that you can look at a change in walk rate between two years and break down which counts are contributing to it the most. I did just that. I took every pitch from the 2025 and 2026 seasons and used them to create Markov chains. Then I decomposed them by count to see what’s going on with more granularity:

There’s an easy story here. Walks aren’t increasing because hitters are recovering from disadvantageous counts more frequently. Walks are increasing because when hitters get ahead in the count, they’re turning that advantage into a walk more frequently. The biggest contributing count is 3-2, with 2-0 and 3-1 close behind. It’s interesting to see 0-0 in the mix, but I think it’s very notable that four of the five counts that are contributing most to the higher walk rate feature more balls than strikes. The only reason 3-0 isn’t on that list is because the count hits 3-0 fairly rarely; it can’t contribute much.

Digging into why results in each count are changing requires leaving our Markov chain behind. If you compare 3-2 counts from 2025 and 3-2 counts in 2026, balls are happening 1.4 percentage points more often. Strikes are happening about one percentage point less often (the reason these don’t match the per-plate appearance results is that foul balls lead to a redo). But that doesn’t tell us why we’re getting more balls. To learn more, we’ll have to start integrating pitch location and batter behavior.

I’d say we should start with zone rate, but we run into a problem right away: “Zone rate” doesn’t mean the same thing anymore. There’s a new strike zone in town. And even putting aside the fact that the zone is being called more tightly, the zones listed by Statcast on each pitch have changed. I did a quick test: I took all the batters who have appeared in both 2025 and 2026, and measured the change in the listed height of their strike zone in those two years. If you weight it by the number of pitches that they faced in 2025, the aggregate league-wide strike zone, as defined by ABS, is about three inches shorter than it was last year, with most of the decline coming at the top of the zone. Only three batters in all of baseball have taller strike zones in 2026 than in 2025.

Since zone rate is a moving target, we’ll have to measure pitch locations relative to one consistent zone. I chose to use the 2026 zone, but really, we could use either. The key here is that we have to make sure we’re comparing apples to apples, as it were. That’s because we need to distinguish between two effects: pitchers throwing to the same place but getting called balls where they used to get called strikes, and pitchers throwing to less central locations.

I broke up the strike zone into 14 regions. There are four “just inside the zone” regions, four “just outside the zone in one direction” regions, four “just outside the zone, on the corner” regions, and then the heart of the zone and far from the zone. Using a consistent zone, pitchers are throwing the ball outside the strike zone slightly more often in 3-2 counts this year:

For the record, “far outside” is defined here as far enough out of the regulation zone that a take will almost never lead to a called strike. I chose one inch as the cutoff for the size of my “just inside” and “just outside” zones, which worked fairly well to differentiate between close calls and easy ones. In 2025, only 2.3% of taken pitches in the “far outside” zone were called strikes. In 2026, only 0.8% of them have been called strikes, out of a sample of more than 3,000 pitches.

Not every one of those “far outside” pitches gets taken, of course. Here are swing rates in each region on 3-2 pitches in 2025 and 2026:

You don’t have to worry too much about the changes in swing rates on corner pitches, because pitchers have only hit the corners a combined 19 times in our 2026 sample. It’s just not a very frequent area of attack on 3-2 – and really, we’re talking about hitting one-square-inch targets, so it’s not a very frequent area of attack generally.

I performed a more complete analysis by working out how many pitches batters took in each region in 2025 and 2026, accounting for both changing pitcher behavior (where they locate the ball) and batter behavior (how often they swing). In 2025, 23.4% of 3-2 pitches resulted in hitters taking a pitch that was located outside the consistent strike zone we defined. In 2026, 24.5% of pitches have resulted in hitters taking a pitch located outside the consistent strike zone. That adds to the rate of called balls, but not by 1.1 percentage points. That’s because not every pitch outside of the strike zone is called a ball, and vice versa:

That’s right: The areas at the fringes of the strike zone are being called differently. It’s not so much that the areas where strikes are most frequently called have moved (with the exception of the area just above the top of the zone, which as previously noted, is where the zone is shrinking). The difference is that balls outside the zone are being called strikes less frequently than before, while balls inside the zone are being called strikes more frequently than before.

Let’s set aside the top of the zone for a moment. On the other three edges, the transition from 2025’s all-umpire strike zone to the 2026 challenge/umpire hybrid zone has been, well, striking. Balls that are just barely in the strike zone on those three edges were called strikes 56.7% of the time in 2025; they’re being called strikes 76.7% of the time in 2026. Balls just off those three edges were called strikes 37% of the time in 2025; they’re being called strikes 13.5% of the time in 2026. In other words, the strike zone is getting less fuzzy. The shape is only changing at the top, but the number of incorrect calls in a given area is declining across the board.

How does that lead to an increase in walk rate? It’s a neat little mathematical relationship. The closer a pitch is to the center of the strike zone, the more likely a batter is to swing, particularly in two-strike counts. That means that an increase in accuracy across the board will add more balls than strikes, because there will be more takes, and thus more chances for the umpire to call a ball or strike, on pitches located outside of the strike zone.

Take the example we just used. Swing rates on the inside, outside, and bottom edges of the zone – but still in the zone – hover around 75%. Swing rates on pitches just off those edges are around 70%. That’s a small but non-negligible effect from a one-inch difference in location – and it’s bigger in counts that don’t feature two strikes, where swinging at a ball in the strike zone is optional. There’s an even bigger difference between pitches over the heart of the plate and pitches outside the strike zone. Centrally-located pitches are being called strikes 1.2 percentage points more frequently in 2026 than they were in 2025, while pitches far outside the zone are being called strikes 1.5 percentage points less frequently. But batters swing at 90% of the strikes and only 40% of the balls, so the net effect is that improving ball/strike accuracy in three-ball counts leads to more walks.

There are three effects driving the change in outcomes on 3-2 counts this year: pitcher/batter behavior, a change in the definition of the top of the strike zone, and increased call accuracy. I mathematically decomposed those into three parts using a simple test. First, I calculated what the walk rate would be if we took all of the actual pitches, swings, and takes from 2026, but used the called strike rates by zone from 2025 (based on the consistent strike zone definition detailed above) for taken pitches. This explains how much the walk rate would increase merely from changes in batter/pitcher behavior with a constant strike zone. A methodological note here: I only considered pitches thrown to batters who appeared in both 2025 and 2026 so that I could standardize the size of the strike zone for our analysis. That means that the overall numbers differ slightly from league-wide rates, though the divergence is minimal.

Next, I took the relevant pitches from 2025 and used the 2026 called strike rates for the top of the strike zone and the 2025 called strike rates for the rest. That gave me the increase in walk rate you’d expect if the only change was the shape of the top of the zone. Finally, I took the relevant pitches from 2025 and the 2026 called strike rates for everywhere except the top of the zone, where I kept the 2025 rates. That gave me the increase in walk rate you’d expect from increased ball/strike accuracy. I found that you can attribute 0.9% of the increased rate of 3-2 balls to changing batter/pitcher behavior, 0.1% to changes in calls at the top of the strike zone, and 0.4% to changes in correct call frequency in the rest of the strike zone.

That analysis explains the change in 3-2 results. To understand the whole picture, I just repeated the calculation for every count. That gave me values for how much changes in batter/pitcher behavior, changes at the top of the strike zone, and increased call accuracy changed the rate of balls and strikes in each count so far this year. Then, to complete the circle, I fed this data back into our Markov chain from above; I ran hypothetical Markov chains for each of the three effects independently, which let me calculate the change in overall walk rate attributable to each.

In the aggregate, you can split the change in walk rate into three parts. One is a change in pitcher/batter behavior. This covers changes in where pitchers locate, how frequently batters swing in each location, how frequently they make contact, and how frequently that contact is fair. Those changes have added 0.5 percentage points to the overall walk rate. Next, changes in the shape of the top of the strike zone have added 0.2 percentage points. Finally, an increase in the accuracy of calls has added 0.4 percentage points to the overall walk rate. That’s the headline finding of this study: Walks are increasing for three different reasons, all working in concert.

The next question I had was how much of that increased accuracy is due to challenges – not the overall challenge system, but specifically the pitches that players have challenged and in some cases overturned. There’s an easy way to test this: I just told my computer to take the original umpire calls instead of the final calls. The results are both interesting and intuitive: ABS challenges themselves have actually decreased the walk rate. That’s not surprising – more balls have been overturned into strikes than the reverse – but it sounds funny when you say it out loud. MLB switched to an ABS challenge system this year, and the direct effect of that system is slightly decreasing walk rates. Also, walk rates have increased by a striking amount, and more than half of that is attributable to changes in the way that balls and strikes are called, which appears to be an indirect effect of the ABS challenge system. Isn’t that weird?

Finally, I performed some analysis to ensure that my findings are robust. I varied the sizes of the slices I used to define the various zones in this analysis. Regardless of how large or small I made those slices, the contribution of pitcher and batter behavior to walk rate was stable at around 0.5 percentage points. But the relative contributions of the top of the zone and of increasing accuracy changed; the larger I defined the top of the zone to be, the more effect it had. For very large definitions of “top of zone,” the effect was roughly equal in magnitude to the effect of increased accuracy. In other words, it’s difficult to disentangle exactly how much of the walk rate increase can be attributed to increased accuracy of an existing zone and how much can be attributed to a change in the size of that zone, but both factors are important, and I think it’s quite likely that the accuracy component is of slightly greater import.

So 3,000 words in, what does it all mean? This year’s strikingly high walk rate isn’t just about pitchers and batters behaving differently, and it isn’t just about the size of the strike zone. It’s both, and it’s also about umpires making calls more accurately. I think that’s why the increase appears so dramatic; lots of things are all changing at once, and they all happen to be changing in the same direction.

This isn’t a stable equilibrium. Both pitchers and batters will continue to adjust to the new way that balls and strikes are being called. Batters are swinging less frequently this year, and pitchers will likely adjust to that by throwing in the strike zone more frequently. Now that the rewards to fishing off the edges have declined thanks to an increase in call accuracy, attacking the zone is being rewarded even further. And batters don’t have to take those potential changes lying down. If pitchers start throwing in the zone more frequently, batters will likely increase their aggression.

I’m not sure where walk rate is headed. But I do feel confident in saying that plenty of this year’s increase comes down to a change in the way balls and strikes are called. I also feel confident that a majority of that effect is about the increased accuracy of calls rather than a change in the size of the strike zone. Finally, challenges themselves aren’t contributing to this change; taken in isolation, they’ve actually decreased walk rate.

As is customary, I’ve included the dataset and Python code used to generate these results here. The study can also be expanded to previous years or run on different data; in fact, I couldn’t upload the 2025 data to GitHub for size reasons, so you’ll need to download that yourself. You can also replace those with your own similarly-formatted data if you’re interested in expanding the analysis.