It was supposed to happen on Tuesday. Loss no. 121, the record-setter, the final stamp of disapproval on this year’s Chicago White Sox. It couldn’t have gotten worse after a 3-22 start, but it didn’t get much better. The White Sox tied the modern-era record for losses in a season with a week to spare, which gave plenty of notice to prepare the latest round of postmortem analysis for the worst team in major league history.

ESPN’s entry, by Buster Olney and Jesse Rogers, noted that the White Sox had the opportunity to lose their record-setting 121st game on Dog Day at Guaranteed Rate Field, sponsored by Tito’s Handmade Vodka. (Drink responsibly.) I had the same joke in my column, which was originally supposed to run Wednesday morning. Rule no. 1 of sportswriting: Don’t look a gift metaphor in the mouth. Read the rest of this entry »

The Detroit Tigers have been baseball’s hottest team, rattling off 31 wins in 43 games to go from eight games under .500 to 11 games over and into the postseason for the first time in a decade. That they’ve done so is nothing short of remarkable. Not only were most outside expectations relatively low coming into the campaign, the A.J. Hinch-led team has dominated September with a starting staff largely comprising of Tarik Skubal, unheralded rookie Keider Montero, and an array of openers. On the season, Detroit Tigers starters have thrown 748-and-a-third innings, the fewest in the majors (notably with a 3.66 ERA, fourth best in the majors).

There is obviously more to why the Tigers have emerged as a surprise team — not to mention a legitimate postseason contender — than the presence of an ace left-hander and Hinch’s expertise in mixing and matching starters and relievers. That is a deeper dive than fits here in Sunday Notes, but I did ask the “Why are the Tigers good?” question to three people who saw them sweep a series just this past week. I asked a second question as well: “What was the atmosphere like at Comerica Park?”

“From an atmosphere standpoint it was one of the best we’ve seen this year,” said Tampa Bay Rays broadcaster Andy Freed. “What impressed me most is that our first game there was supposed to be a night game, and because of rain coming in it was moved to the day. We thought, ‘What are they going to get, 5,000 people?’ It was a Tuesday and school was in session, but they got a great crowd. People decided they were still going to come to the baseball game. It reminded me how great of a sports town Detroit is. And they were into every pitch. It was the closest I’ve felt to a postseason atmosphere all year, except for maybe Philadelphia. Read the rest of this entry »

Having gone around the horn and then some to identify the strongest players at each position among the remaining contenders in the National and American Leagues, I’ve turned to the weakest ones, with the NL slate running yesterday. This is something of an offshoot of my annual Replacement Level Killers series, and in fact, even some confirmed October participants have spots that still fit the bill as true lineup sinkholes, only this time with no trade deadline to help fill them. For this, I’m considering full-season performance but with an eye to who’s best or worst now, with injuries and adjustments in mind. Unlike the Killers series, I’m also considering pitching, with the shortening of rotations and bullpens factoring into my deliberations.

Until now, the pool of teams I’ve considered has consisted of eight clubs in the American League and seven in the National League. On Thursday, we officially lost the Mariners, who were mathematically eliminated with wins by the Royals and Tigers. What’s more, the Twins stand on the brink of elimination — they own the head-to-head tiebreakers with both the Tigers and Royals, but are three games back with three to play — so I’ve opted to exclude them here.

For this installment, I’ll highlight the biggest trouble spots from among an AL field that still includes the Yankees (who clinched the AL East on Thursday), Guardians, Astros, Orioles, Royals, and Tigers. Read the rest of this entry »

Andie Anderson wants to do serious journalism, but instead she’s stuck writing how-to columns for a women’s lifestyle magazine. The 2003 feature film, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, follows Andie (played by Kate Hudson) as she attempts to demonstrate that even a conventionally attractive straight woman will find herself single in a hot minute if she commits all the common faux pas known to drive straight men away. The subject of her journalistic experiment is Benjamin Barry (played by Matthew McConaughey), who coincidentally is running an experiment of his own. He claims to have a foolproof formula to make any woman fall in love with him in 10 days flat. The premises of both endeavors rely heavily on traditional gender stereotypes, but eventually the pair realize their situation is more nuanced, both in terms of the circumstances and the individuals involved (or at least as nuanced as a movie that came out in 2003 can muster).

Here in 2024, Kevin Brown recently noted on a MASN broadcast that Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson had grounded into only two double plays all season. That felt startlingly low for a roughly 150-game sample, but I’ll admit to not habitually tracking the GIDP leaderboard. What is a “good” number of GIDP for a full season? Has anyone ever posted a perfect, no-GIDP season? What makes players particularly good or bad at avoiding GIDP?

These questions have intuitive answers, but this is FanGraphs; we like to test our assumptions around here. Andie Anderson thought she knew all the obvious ways to get dumped, but in practice it wasn’t as easy as she thought. It turns out two is a good number of GIDP. Only Masyn Winn, with one, has fewer than Henderson this season, who is tied for second place with Daulton Varsho, Riley Greene, and Jackson Merrill. Going back to 1949 (the earliest season with GIDP data), and omitting 2020, there have been nine players with GIDP-free seasons, most recently TJ Friedl in 2023. Read the rest of this entry »

The chances of Bailey Ober’s start on Sunday sending the Minnesota Twins to the postseason have taken quite a hit in the last 24 hours. A 13-inning loss to the Miami Marlins dropped the September-swooning club to three games out in the Wild Card race with just three left to play. Still, whatever his team’s recent struggles, from a personal standpoint, the 29-year-old right-hander has had a successful season. Over 30 starts comprising 173 2/3 innings, Ober has a 12-8 record to go with a 3.94 ERA, a 3.81 FIP, a 27.1% strikeout rate, and 2.9 WAR. Enjoying what has objectively been a career-best year, he has stood tall in the Twins rotation.

I sat down with Ober on the penultimate weekend of the season to talk about his continuing evolution as a pitcher. I also checked in with Twins pitching coach Pete Maki to get his perspective on the 6-foot-9 hurler’s development path. The two first worked together in 2018, one year after Minnesota drafted Ober out of the College of Charleston in the 12th round.

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David Laurila: You have a good understanding of pitching analytics and how they can positively impact success. How has that process evolved for you?

Bailey Ober: “I feel like I started getting into all that stuff when I got drafted. We have an unbelievable team here with guys who provide all that information, and it’s kind of up to us if we want to take it and use it to our benefit. Once I got drafted into the minor leagues, I was very interested in seeing all the data. Over the years, you’re always learning. There is always new stuff coming up. For instance, there are new stats, new analytic tools to be used. Every year I’ve been taking in what I can, and continuing to learn.” Read the rest of this entry »

With the playoff fields in both leagues nearly set, we here at FanGraphs are turning our focus to how teams set up for October. Jay Jaffe has been covering the best players at each position among the contenders, as well as the worst. Dan Szymborski looked into the particulars of playoff lineup construction. Inspired by Meg Rowley, I’m taking a different tack: I’m looking for the players, strategies, and matchups that could be the difference between success and failure for each team.

We already know who the best players in baseball are, and they will of course be hugely important in the postseason. But less heralded players frequently have a lot to say about who takes home the World Series trophy. Think Steve Pearce and David Freese lengthening their respective lineups to turn those offenses from good to great, or the Braves bullpen mowing down the opposition in 2021. (On the flip side, you don’t hear a lot about teams let down by their supporting casts, because they mostly lose early on.) The best players aren’t always the most pivotal. In that spirit, I went through each team and focused on one potential pivot point. I looked at the American League yesterday; today, the National League gets its turn. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers’ defeat of the Padres on Wednesday night did a lot to clear up the last suspenseful division race by restoring their NL West lead to three games, reducing their magic number to two, and cutting the San Diego’s odds of winning the division to 3%. The bigger story, however — an infuriating one given commissioner Rob Manfred’s unwillingness to override the Braves’ profit-minded intransigence with some proactive schedule shifting — is the Hurricane Helene-induced postponement of the final two games of the Mets-Braves series. Unless the Diamondbacks slide completely out of the picture, the two NL East rivals will now play a 1:10 p.m. ET doubleheader in Atlanta on Monday, the day after the scheduled end of the regular season. Whichever of the two teams survives (possibly both) would then face flights to Milwaukee (locked in as the third seed) and/or California (either Los Angeles or San Diego as the fourth seed) to start their respective Wild Card series the next day, with their pitching staffs at a significant disadvantage. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

Anyway, having gone around the horn and then some to identify the strongest players at each position among the remaining contenders in the National and American Leagues, we now turn to the weakest ones. This is something of an offshoot of my annual Replacement Level Killers series, and in fact, even some confirmed October participants have spots that still fit the bill as true lineup sinkholes, only this time with no trade deadline to help fill them. For this, I’m considering full-season performance but with an eye to who’s best or worst now, with injuries and adjustments in mind. Unlike the Killers series, I’m also considering pitching, with the shortening of rotations and bullpens factoring into my deliberations.

In this installment, I’ll highlight the biggest trouble spots from among an NL field that includes the Phillies, Brewers, Dodgers, Padres, Diamondbacks, Mets, and Braves. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, the Oakland Athletics will play their final home game ever. They have played in the Oakland Coliseum ever since the team moved from Kansas City in 1968. The Coliseum has set the scene for World Series triumphs and collapses. It has been home to the greatest basestealer in the history of the world, some of the most magnificent mustaches the game has ever seen, and at least one possum.

The Coliseum opened in 1966, part of the wave of multipurpose stadiums that swept the country. The concrete behemoth was never the warmest stadium, but its character was unmistakable. In recent years, it hasn’t exactly fallen into disrepair; rather, it’s been deliberately pushed. Like the team on the field, it’s been allowed to atrophy in order to demonstrate how badly the organization needs (never wants) out of Oakland. After last night’s game, groundskeepers patiently scooped dirt from the field for grateful fans who wanted a memento. Below, some of our writers share their memories of the Coliseum and the A’s in Oakland. We encourage you to share your own memories in the comments section. – Davy Andrews Read the rest of this entry »

The Chicago White Sox haven’t had much go their way this year, and that includes the pitching department. Only Garrett Crochet (4.4) and the since-traded Erick Fedde (2.6) have produced as much as 1.3 WAR. Those things said, a few young pitchers have shown promise, one of them being 24-year-old rookie right-hander Jonathan Cannon. Over 119 2/3 innings, the 2022 third-round pick out of the University of Georgia has logged a 4.37 ERA, a 4.57 FIP, and 1.2 WAR — not sexy numbers, but thanks to a five-pitch mix and a cerebral approach to his craft, his potential is real. Prior to the season, Eric Longenhagen assigned Cannon a 45 FV, calling him “a high-floored no. 4/5 starter prospect thanks to his repertoire depth and command.”

Cannon discussed his M.O. on the mound when the White Sox visited Fenway Park earlier this month.

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David Laurila: You’re primarily known for your sinker, which you’ve thrown more than any of your other pitches this season. It’s also the pitch you’ve had the least success with from a statistical standpoint. Why is that?

Jonathan Cannon: “For the most part, it’s been the command of it being bad. If you look at the best sinkerballers in the game right now — I’m thinking guys like Logan Webb — what makes their sinkers so good is they do a really good job of commanding it down-and-away to righties. It kind of sets up everything else. When they’re missing, they’re missing down, but more middle. Right now, I feel like I command the outer half well, but a lot of them are elevated to around thigh high. When it leaks into the middle and is thigh high, I don’t get a lot of groundballs with it. That’s kind of been the main focus for me. When I do miss, I want to miss where I’m getting a groundball rather than a hard line drive into the gap. Read the rest of this entry »

The last week of the regular season isn’t quite as fun as the first week of the playoffs, but it’s close. Everyone’s scoreboard-watching, doing back-of-the-napkin math to track who can clinch when and under what circumstances, and also wondering how on Earth the Mariners are still technically alive. It’s the time of year when Jay Jaffe turns a warm, rich copper color and transforms into a glowing orb.

Since 2022, the last week of the season has been a little less interesting. Up until that point (with one or two exceptions), MLB had taken a unique view toward ties in the standings. Where other leagues in other sports would settle a deadlock by going down a list of tiebreakers, MLB teams would settle ties on the field, with a (usually one-game, sometimes three-game) playoff before the actual playoffs.

For generations, this system made sense. In a league with either two or four divisions and only one or two playoff rounds, the stakes were incredibly high, and time was abundant. And it produced some incredible moments: the Bucky Dent homer, the Giants soaking the infield to slow down Maury Wills, the Matt Holliday slide… oh, and the Shot Heard ‘Round the World, probably the most famous non-World Series play in baseball history. Read the rest of this entry »