It’s alright. I’ve run the numbers, and you’re not imagining it. People really are bunting more during the playoffs. You really have been screaming “WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT DROPPING DOWN A BUNT RIGHT NOW?” at your television more often than usual. Your neighbors have noticed. The homeowners association is going to get involved. This is an intervention.

But you’re not wrong. So far, 1.1% of all postseason plate appearances have ended with a bunt. That’s 0.4 percentage points above the regular season mark of 0.7%, an increase of 57%. It’s also the highest postseason bunt rate since 2017. Not only are we seeing more bunts than we did in the regular season, we’re seeing more postseason bunts than we have in years! That 0.4-point gap is the highest we’ve seen since at least 2008.

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Yesterday, I published the first half of my votes for this year’s Fielding Bible awards, which will be released at 2 PM ET today. This morning, I’m going to cover my ballots for the three outfield positions, as well as the pitchers, multi-positional defenders, defensive player of the year, and defensive team of the year. Update: the awards have been handed out. Winners are denoted below by an asterisk.

If you’re curious about the methodology I used to help guide my voting, you can read about it in yesterday’s article, but here’s a bite-sized refresher: I used a weighted blend of DRS, FRV, and DRP (the three flagship public defensive metrics), with the weights based on how well each metric did on reliability and consistency. I created different weights for catcher, first base, the non-first-base infield positions, and the outfield. That gave me an initial rough order. From there, I used my own expertise, both in terms of deeper statistical dives on individual players and the copious amounts of baseball I watched this year, to assemble my final rankings. I deferred to advanced defensive metrics when the gaps were big, but for close calls, I leaned heavily on my own judgment.

That’s the kind of explanation that I have to put in front of any article outlining my ballot; if you don’t know what I’m looking for, my votes wouldn’t make as much sense. With that out of the way, we can get to the good stuff: the actual players who played the defense I’m writing about. So let’s get right to my last seven ballots — it’s a voluminous set of awards! Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, Mark Simon of Sports Info Solutions asked me to vote on the Fielding Bible awards. If you’re not familiar with them, they’re my preferred defensive award, created by John Dewan and SIS in 2006. They’re a Gold Glove equivalent for the major leagues as a whole, with one award given out per position. Members of a panel made up of a variety of baseball experts vote for five players at each spot; there are also additional awards for best multi-position defender, defensive player of the year, and defensive team of the year. I’m happy to say that Mark was kind enough to ask me to participate again this year. The results will be released tomorrow, October 23, at 2 PM ET. Update: they’ve now been handed out. Winners are denoted below with an asterisk.

Voting for a national award is a prestigious honor, and this particular award carries extra meaning for me. The list of panelists is a who’s who of the writers and commentators who got me into baseball. Peter Gammons is a frequent voter, for goodness sake. Bill James, the godfather of sabermetrics, was an inaugural panel member. The founder of Strat-o-Matic votes! I absolutely wouldn’t be doing this job today if I hadn’t spent whole summers as a kid playing my All-Stars against my dad’s squad in that formative simulation. Voting for this award has been a dream come true.

Last year, I spent some time talking to MLB Chief Data Architect Tom Tango about the proper way to think about the constellation of reputable advanced defensive metrics I had to choose from when assessing players. It’s a veritable acronym soup out there. There’s DRS, FRV, and DRP, as well as legacy and component metrics like UZR, OAA, RDA, and Total Zone. Each of these systems attempts to measure defense quantitatively. All of them have their merits, and all of them do a fairly solid job of what they say on the label, as it were. On the other hand, they don’t always agree. As an example, Zach Neto was either 13 runs above average (DRS), three runs below average (FRV), or roughly average (DRP) in 2025. Confusing!

Neto is hardly the only player to fall into this camp. That’s part of the reason there are so many defensive systems, in fact; if they all said the same thing, there would be no need for this dizzying array of options. Each system has its own methodology, and measures success and failure using its own definitions. A holistic, overarching view of defense requires weighting each of these metrics carefully and then coming to an overall view of each player based on each system’s particular merits. To make matters even more confusing, each “system” is itself multiple systems specialized for individual positions. The first base model and the left field model clearly can’t be the same, and don’t even get me started on catching.

I’ll spare you the nitty gritty of how I handled this difficult puzzle (last year’s version of this article offers a deep dive into my methods if you’re interested), but I created weighted ranking scores for each position based on the relative stability of the metrics and used that to create my initial rankings. From there, I used my own expertise and judgment to move players around from their initial ordering. I tried to have a light touch overall, though. No amount of eye test vibes could overrule the fact that Heliot Ramos grades out as one of the worst defenders in the major leagues (for the record, his defense fails the eye test, too). I considered past defensive value because I know that single-season defensive statistics are noisy, but mostly as a tiebreaker; I’m attempting to vote for the best defenders in the major leagues in 2025, not the best defenders of the last few years.

I think this process did a good job of combining the best information that publicly available defensive systems can produce with a critical, evidence-focused eye on the game. I watch a ton of baseball, and I also spend quite a bit of time thinking about how to measure player skill, and the limits of doing so. I’m just talking my own book here, but I really do believe this is the best way I can determine who played the best defense in baseball this season. So without further ado, let’s look at my infield ballot. Read the rest of this entry »

Kevin McGonigle is an elite prospect, and his bat is a big reason why. Playing across three levels in the Detroit Tigers organization — topping out at Double-A — the 21-year-old shortstop/third baseman slashed .305/.408/.583 with 19 home runs and 182 wRC+ over 397 plate appearances in 2025. Ranked third on The Board behind only Konnor Griffin and Jesús Made, McGonigle has been described by Eric Longenhagen as having “real juice in his hands” and a swing that is “geared for launch.” Built to bash baseballs, McGonigle’s left-handed stroke is both compact and lethal.

Currently with the Arizona Fall League’s Scottsdale Scorpions — he’s in the desert primarily to work on his defense — McGonigle has a bright future regardless of where he ends up in the infield. Longenhagen feels that his best fit might be second base. But again, there is juice in his hands. The bat is McGonigle’s carrying tool, and it promises to carry him a long way.

McGonigle sat down to talk hitting prior to a recent game at Scottsdale Stadium.

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David Laurila: How have you evolved as a hitter? For instance, if I looked at video from the time you signed and compared it now, would I see the same guy?

Kevin McGonigle: “You’d see the same swing. I’m a little bit bigger now, obviously, but the swing hasn’t changed. It’s been the same since I was 10 years old, to be honest with you. That’s the way my body naturally wants to move, and the best way I can explode on a baseball, so I try to keep doing the same thing I’ve done since I was younger.”

Laurila: How does your body naturally move?

McGonigle: “I’ve got the toe tap, and I’m in my legs more than a lot of guys are at the plate. I pretty much see ball, hit ball, and try to… not take the same swing. I feel that you’re going to have a different swing on every pitch. But I try to keep the same toe tap, the same everything.”

Laurila: While you’re continuing to do what comes naturally, you also have talented hitting instructors to work with. How are you balancing that?

McGonigle: “What I like about the Tigers is that they’re not really hands-on unless you have questions. I go to them for little pieces, like routines or drills that I want to do. One big thing for me was bat speed, so they put me on a bat-speed program last offseason. That really helped me with power this year. Bat-to-ball, of course. Gap-to-gap power. I’m trusting in them — the Tigers and all the coordinators — because they’re there to help you get better and better each day.”

Laurila: What is your approach in terms of where you’re looking to hit the ball?

McGonigle: “It depends on who is on the mound. If a good lefty is out there, I’ll think left-center gap and then just react to his offspeed and pull it. Same thing with right-handers. If it’s a guy throwing really hard, like upper-90s, maybe I’ll think right-center. That’s the farthest I’ll go with a heater. Then, changeup, curveball — whatever secondary he throws — pull it down the line. Top hook it in the corner is what I like thinking.

“When I’m on, I’m mostly hitting balls hard in the right-field gap or down the right-field line. That’s even with pitches dotted away. I’ll still be able to get under it and pull it. There does comes a time and place when I want to let the ball travel, though. With two strikes, I try to use all parts of the field.

“I’m also always sitting on fastballs and reacting to offspeed from there. I don’t like sitting on other pitches, really. If it’s a lefty that just spams sweepers, I’ll sit sweeper, but that’s about it. For me, it’s mostly all reaction.”

Laurila: My impression is that you fit into the KISS category — Keep It Simple, Stupid — yet you think about hitting quite a bit. Is that accurate?

McGonigle: “Definitely. I mean, if I’m hitting the ball hard and it’s going right at somebody, there’s nothing you can do about it. So, my main thing is to just find the barrel. That’s it. If you find the barrel, it’s a win. If you don’t, then get him next time.”

Laurila: Coming up from amateur ball and and through different levels of pro ball, you’re basically the same guy, but with more reps under your belt…

McGonigle: “Yeah, just seeing more pitching. In high school, I didn’t really see 95 [mph] really at all. Once I got a feel for that, I had to get used to guys having better offspeed. They like to throw it in leverage counts, and that’s one thing I really needed to work on this year. Last year I got a lot of fastballs to hit, and this year they’re flipping in 3-0 sliders, 3-1 sliders, changeups in 0-0 counts.

“Getting my hack off on 0-0 counts when I get offspeed that is middle-middle, or it’s a get-me-over offspeed… if I swing and miss, so what? I’m down 0-1. But if I put a barrel on it, then it’s a win. I’m more aggressive now than I was last year.

“If he’s a fastball-changeup guy who throws a lot of changeups, I’ll still sit fastball. A lot of times I’m going to look up. The changeup is going to start there, then have a little bottom to it and go to the heart of the plate. I’m kind of tunneling where I want the pitch to start.”

Laurila: Has bat-speed training helped you react better to heaters when you’ve been expecting something offspeed?

McGonigle: “Yeah. I’d say there were a few times this year that I was sitting offspeed, a guy threw a heater down the middle, and I was still was able to hit it hard to left field. Having a quicker bat has definitely helped. I’m able to protect on two-strike counts. If I’m beat on a fastball, I can at least get a bat on it and foul it off, give myself life to hopefully win that two-strike count.”

Laurila: How much do strikeouts matter? That was something Riley Greene struggled with this year, even while putting up good numbers.

McGonigle: “It’s not a great feeling. I mean, Riley Greene is a great baseball player. I’m looking forward to hopefully one day sharing a field with him. He wouldn’t be in the spot he is right now if it wasn’t for the way he plays baseball, and the way he hits. Strikeouts aren’t the best thing in the world, but he also performed in all the different aspects of the game. The whole strikeout thing… I think it is a big deal, but not as big as everyone thinks it is.”

Laurila: Outside of defense, what do the Tigers want you to work on this coming offseason?

McGonigle: “We have exit meetings with our hitting coordinators — mine will be after [the AFL] — and off the top of my head, I don’t know exactly. But the curveball is one pitch that I struggled with this year. I was either under it, or on top of it.”

Laurila: Why was that?

McGonigle: “Some of it was timing, but some of it was swinging at the wrong curveballs. If it’s low, that’s where the pitcher wants it, and the high ones would kind of fool me. A pitcher would go up top with a curveball, and I would clip it back, whereas that’s a pitch you want to hammer. I’m so used to training it down in the zone, where pitchers usually want to get it, but now some guys are trying to get it up top. I need to work on that, on hitting offspeed up top.”

Laurila: Any final thoughts on hitting?

McGonigle: “There’s not a perfect swing. Every swing is going to be different. If it’s a low pitch, if it’s a high pitch, if it’s away… but you see a lot of guys trying to chase that perfect swing. That’s hard to do when you have a guy throwing 99 and it’s running 20 inches, or sinking 20 inches. My thought is just, ‘Go up there and get the bat to the ball.’ Keep it that simple. Don’t try to chase the perfect swing. I want my swing to be adjustable. Simple and adjustable.”

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Earlier “Talks Hitting” interviews can found through these links: Jo Adell, Jeff Albert, Greg Allen, Nolan Arenado, Aaron Bates, Jacob Berry, Alex Bregman, Bo Bichette, Justice Bigbie, Cavan Biggio, Charlie Blackmon, JJ Bleday, Bobby Bradley, Will Brennan, Jay Bruce, Triston Casas, Matt Chapman, Michael Chavis, Garrett Cooper, Gavin Cross, Jacob Cruz, Nelson Cruz, Paul DeJong, Brenton Del Chiaro, Josh Donaldson, Brendan Donovan, Donnie Ecker, Rick Eckstein, Drew Ferguson, Justin Foscue, Michael Fransoso, Ryan Fuller, Joey Gallo, Paul Goldschmidt, Devlin Granberg, Gino Groover, Matt Hague, Andy Haines, Mitch Haniger, Robert Hassell III, Austin Hays, Nico Hoerner, Jackson Holliday, Spencer Horwitz, Rhys Hoskins, Eric Hosmer, Jacob Hurtubise, Tim Hyers, Walker Jenkins, Connor Joe, Jace Jung, Josh Jung, Jimmy Kerr, Heston Kjerstad, Steven Kwan, Shea Langeliers, Trevor Larnach, Doug Latta, Dillon Lawson, Brooks Lee, Royce Lewis, Evan Longoria, Joey Loperfido, Michael Lorenzen, Mark Loretta, Gavin Lux, Dave Magadan, Trey Mancini, Edgar Martinez, Don Mattingly, Marcelo Mayer, Hunter Mense, Owen Miller, Paul Molitor, Colson Montgomery, Tre’ Morgan, Ryan Mountcastle, Cedric Mullins, Daniel Murphy, Lars Nootbaar, Logan O’Hoppe, Vinnie Pasquantino, Graham Pauley, David Peralta, Luke Raley, Julio Rodríguez, Brent Rooker, Thomas Saggese, Anthony Santander, Drew Saylor, Nolan Schanuel, Marcus Semien, Giancarlo Stanton, Spencer Steer, Trevor Story, Fernando Tatis Jr., James Tibbs III, Spencer Torkelson, Mark Trumbo, Brice Turang, Justin Turner, Trea Turner, Josh VanMeter, Robert Van Scoyoc, Chris Valaika, Zac Veen, Alex Verdugo, Mark Vientos, Matt Vierling, Luke Voit, Anthony Volpe, Joey Votto, Christian Walker, Jared Walsh, Jordan Westburg, Jesse Winker, Bobby Witt Jr. Mike Yastrzemski, Nick Yorke, Kevin Youkilis

My job is to write about baseball, which means that in large part, my job is to generate novel circumlocutions for the word “jump.” How many times can you say that somebody’s exit velocity jumped, their whiff rate jumped, their outfield jump jumped into the 82nd percentile before your editor is tempted to bludgeon you with a thesaurus? I would prefer not to find out, as I bruise easily.

I would estimate that I write the word jump about 20 times more often than I actually jump. Nobody jumps all that much on any given day. Unless you’re at the gym, unless you’re playing sports, unless you’re a child, life just doesn’t involve much jumping. This is intentional. It is a result of the way we have structured our lives. We keep things in reach. We have downstairs neighbors. We wear complicated shoes. With the notable exception of the décor at Barnes & Noble, nearly every aspect of our lives encourages us to remain seated. Jumping in jeans is a rare occurrence. All in all, this seems like a bad thing.

Every once in a while, jumping is a matter of practicality. There’s no way I’m lugging the stepladder out from the laundry room just to get this stupid cake pan off the top shelf. I’m not tracking back five blocks just because a tiny part of this walkway is blocked by a low fence. I’ve been staring at the backs of various heads for this entire concert and I just want to get one good, unobstructed look at the band. It never occurs to us at that moment, jumping out of some mixture of desperation and exasperation, that what we’re doing could be beautiful, graceful. Read the rest of this entry »

The year of the splitter has come and gone. Actually, those of us who follow these things closely know that both 2023 and 2024 were considered the years of the splitter, and then we established back in March that 2025 would be the year of the kick change. While major league pitchers ran a 3.3% splitter rate in 2025, the highest mark since the pitch tracking era started in 2008, that represented a jump of just 0.21 percentage points from 2024. It’s a difference of less than one splitter per team every three games. While the number is still going up, the big increases came in 2023 and 2024, and the pace fell off this year.

That graph makes it official. This isn’t the year of the splitter. But now let me add another line to that graph. That was the regular season. We’re in the thick of the playoffs, so let’s throw the postseason in the mix, too. If you saw that first graph and wondered why I left all that empty space at the top, well, now you know.

That’s more like it. October 2025 has seen a splitter explosion. The red line is always going to be more volatile than the blue line because the postseason is such a small sample, but even so, the playoffs have seen a 6.6% splitter rate. That’s not just the highest we’ve ever seen. It’s twice the rate for any regular season or postseason in the past 23 years. Maybe 2025 was the year of the kick change, but October 2025 is very definitely shaping up to be the month of the splitter. The playoffs aren’t even over, and we’ve already seen more splitters this October than in the postseasons of 2023 and 2024 combined. Read the rest of this entry »

Forgive me for getting excited about this one, because even in sports, it’s not every day that the most interesting outcome happens. But the Giants are, according to The Athletic, “closing in on” hiring a new manager: Tony Vitello.

Two offseasons ago, I wrote about the five categories of major league manager: The hot assistant to a successful skipper; the grizzled baseball lifer; the front office liaison; the recent ex-player who’d been talked up as a future coach since his late 20s; and Aaron Boone.

Vitello is none of those things. When I run the player linker for this post, Vitello’s name is not going to come up in bold. Not only has he never played in the majors, he’s never drawn a paycheck from a professional baseball team in any capacity — not as a player, or a coach, or a scout, or a special assistant. Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Burrows was rated as having the best curveball in the Pittsburgh Pirates system when I talked to him to for our old Learning and Developing a Pitch series back in 2022. Then a highly-regarded prospect, the 25-year-old right-hander relied heavily on his hook, a pitch that Eric Longenhagen assigned a 70 on the scouting scale and described as having “devastating bite and depth.” Our lead prospect analyst referred to it as his “meal ticket.”

Burrows is now a bona fide big-leaguer, but not because of a bender. Pitching in his first full MLB season — he made one appearance in 2024 — Burrows threw his erstwhile go-to just 11.9% of the time while logging a 3.94 ERA and a 24.1% strikeout rate over 96 innings. He’s evolved into split-change artist. Burrows threw what has become his most-used secondary pitch at a 23.7% clip this year. Moreover, he did so to the tune of a .147 BAA, a .220 slug, and a 43.1% whiff rate.

Why and how did he go from a killer curveball to a bat-missing splitter variant?
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Shohei Ohtani had quite a night, didn’t he?

Let’s be more direct: Ohtani just had the greatest individual game in postseason history. On the mound, he threw six scoreless innings, allowing two hits and three walks while striking out 10. He got pulled after giving up two straight baserunners to start the seventh, which kind of mucked up his line, which is ironic, because that’s what the Dodgers offense has been doing to other starting pitchers over the past two weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

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