Friday night’s game at Tropicana Field featured a rare sight: the Rays trailing a team by a 1–0 margin. It was a blink-and-you-missed it moment, with a run in the top of the second inning putting Tampa Bay behind for the first time since Tuesday night, and just the second time all season. But it didn’t last long: on the first pitch of the second inning, Harold Ramirez hit a Ken Waldichuk offering for a solo homer into the right field corner, kicking off a six-run inning that also featured a grand slam by Isaac Paredes. The Rays never looked back, beating the A’s, 9–5, on Friday and then 11–0 on both Saturday and Sunday to run their record to 9–0.

It’s an understatement to say that the Rays are off to the best start in franchise history (their previous record for season-opening wins was three) or the best of any team this year. By consecutive victories to open a season, they’re off to the best start in 20 years, and by run differential, they’re doing some things not seen in the majors since the late 19th century — and some never seen before. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a tough start to the season for the Mets’ rotation. Their two-headed ace monster isn’t looking so fearsome, as Justin Verlander went on the IL before throwing a regular-season pitch — joining fellow free-agent signee Jose Quintana — and Max Scherzer has been ineffective through two starts. To make matters worse, Carlos Carrasco dealt with erratic velocity in the first of the team’s back-to-back blowout losses at the hands of the Brewers and yielded a six-spot against the light-hitting Marlins. But one major bright spot has shone.

Kodai Senga, the former three-time NPB All-Star, shut down the Marlins in his Mets debut. With a trademark offering he calls the “ghost fork” and an emblazoned glove to match, he seems poised to become a fan favorite.

Kodai Senga's ghost fork glove ? pic.twitter.com/0Xr9zaL8l7

— David Adler (@_dadler) April 2, 2023

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Of all the things that happened in baseball this weekend, the only one I cared about was a Double-A game between the Chattanooga Lookouts and the Rocket City Trash Pandas. Now, I know what you’re thinking. If an April Double-A game is worth caring about at all, it must be a real doozy. To have it overshadow a weekend of MLB action — the Rays went to 9-0, Jordan Walker tied Ted Williams’ record for longest career-opening hitting streak, Oneil Cruz got hurt — well surely I must be exaggerating.

Try this on for size: The Trash Pandas led 3–0 heading into the seventh and final inning of the game, having not allowed a hit. They went on to lose that game 7–5, still not having allowed a hit. “You can’t predict baseball” is a bit of a cliché; baseball has been around for more than 150 years. All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again. But allowing seven runs while preserving a no-hitter? That’s worthy of detailed examination. Read the rest of this entry »

Look, this might not happen at all, but that’s okay. The not happening is kind of the point. We’re a week and a half into the regular season, and while we’ve seen plenty of pitch clock violations, we’ve yet to see a shift ban violation. That makes sense. Tardiness is much more common than trespassing. People get in trouble for being late all the time, even in industries that don’t have timing operations administrator positions to fill. Once we do see a shift ban violation — whenever it is that a shortstop or a second baseman finally forgets that the outfield grass and the dirt behind second base are in fact lava — we’ll enter into a new era of baseball that didn’t officially happen.

One of the things that makes baseball different from other sports is that every single play counts. I always liked the purity of that. If you saw something happen on a baseball field, that thing got written down by the official scorer (unless the official scorer position also needed to be filled). Even if a call got overturned on review, the review was just helping the umpires decide what happened on that play. It didn’t nullify the entirety of the play. Read the rest of this entry »

Three Sundays ago, the answer to this column’s weekly quiz was Carlos Santana. The question was, “Which player has appeared in the most regular-season games over the past 10 seasons?” and the now-Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman had played in 1,440 — 13 more than Paul Goldschmidt and 40 more than Freddie Freeman and Anthony Rizzo.

Santana professed not to be aware of the distinction when I mentioned it to him earlier this week. He did seem pleased to hear it, and “humbly prideful” might be the best way to describe his reaction.

“I prepare,” said Santana, who celebrated his 37th birthday yesterday. “I prepare my body. I prepare mentally. I also try to enjoy the game every day. That’s why I can play a lot. The game is my passion. This is my 14th year and I want to play two more. Or maybe three more. Whatever God tells me, and what my body says I can do.”

Count Andrew McCutchen among those who are impressed by his teammate’s reliability and durability over the years.

“It’s really good, to be honest,” said McCutchen, who was likewise unaware of Santana’s distinction. “To be able to do it how he’s done it — he’s in [the lineup] more times than not —shows that he’s stayed healthy, which is a key to doing that. You have to be good enough to do it, too. You’ve got a whole lot of variables to be able to do what he’s done.” Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Vierling’s 2022 with the Phillies was a mixed bag. He started off slowly enough to merit an option to Triple-A Lehigh Valley in May before rejoining the club with a bang in June in the form of a game-winning pinch-hit home run off Josh Hader in Milwaukee. Over the rest of the regular season, he struggled to develop much of a pattern of offensive production while splitting center field duties with first Odúbel Herrera and then Brandon Marsh, and filling in in the corner outfield – and even in limited action at first, second, and third – as needed.

When all was said and done, the righty managed only a .246/.297/.351 batting line, good for a meager .285 wOBA and 81 wRC+; Vierling’s 110 wRC+ off lefties was negated by a 63 mark against same-handed pitchers. The defensive metrics don’t agree entirely, but he graded as below average – to different degrees – by DRS, UZR, and OAA. He ultimately came in at -0.1 WAR. His versatility, 97th-percentile sprint speed, success against lefties, and ability to defend more capably than Kyle Schwarber or Nick Castellanos, though, did not go unappreciated, and Vierling earned himself a spot on each of the Phillies’ postseason rosters, eventually even starting two World Series games. Read the rest of this entry »

Let me tell you a couple of things about Jack Suwinski. First, when Suwinski was still a prospect last winter, Eric Longenhagen had this to say about the young player’s future:

30. Jack Suwinski, DH

“On-paper performance is especially important for a hitter like Suwinski because he’s a positionless defender who needs to rake to have any sort of big league role […] Because he lacks a true position, Suwinski’s chances of playing a significant role increase with the likely implementation of the universal DH.”

It’s rare to see a prospect listed as a designated hitter. Across all 30 lists our team put together last year, only nine ranked prospects had the letters “DH” written next to their name. That’s less than one percent. Even more unusual was the 20/20 grade Eric gave Suwinksi’s fielding tool. That’s the worst grade you can get: a present 20 and a future 20. Essentially, it means a guy is unplayable in the field with little to no hope of improving in the future. Often, the only time you’ll see a 20/20 in any category is to describe a catcher’s speed. Former FanGraphs prospect guru Kiley McDaniel didn’t even bother to define a 20 grade in his overview of the 20-80 scouting scale, explaining “It’s almost never relevant for players that I’ll be writing about or any of their tools.” Read the rest of this entry »

The White Sox lost a good chunk of the best parts of their starting lineup to the injured list in 2022. Indeed, it was one of the main reasons the team fell to a .500 record after winning 93 games the year prior. So when Eloy Jiménez was placed on the 10-day IL with a strained hamstring just five games into the 2023 season, it was an unwelcome reminder of both the team’s problems last year and their limited depth in the present.

Jiménez, who was one of the two main prospects acquired from the Cubs in the 2017 José Quintana trade (Dylan Cease was the other), has spent a great deal of time on the shelf since 2020. After an encouraging 138 wRC+ in the COVID-shortened season, he tore a pectoral tendon during spring training in 2021. It required surgery and kept him out until the end of July; last season’s early injury, a torn hamstring tendon, also required surgery. Still, Jiménez was able to come back more quickly than the year before, and his .305/.372/.523 line after returning was one of the team’s highlights over the second half of the season.

Fortunately, this injury does not appear to be on the same level as either of the other two. The strained hamstring, resulting from running the bases in a game against the Giants, is not the same one that required surgery last spring. There has been no talk of surgery, and the team seems relatively optimistic, floating two to three weeks as the timeframe for his return. Jake Burger was called up from Triple-A Charlotte to take Jiménez’s place on the roster. Read the rest of this entry »

The San Francisco Giants have an improved farm system, one that is highlighted by the presence of Kyle Harrison (no. 26) and Marco Luciano (no. 97) on our preseason Top 100. There are other promising prospects in the system as well. I recently asked Giants Senior Director of Player Development Kyle Haines about four of them:

• Vaun Brown, a 24-year-old outfielder who was taken in the 10th round of the 2021 draft out of Florida Southern College. Brown slashed .346/.437/.623 with 23 home runs and 44 stolen bases last year between Low-A San Jose and High-A Eugene (plus one game with Double-A Richmond).
• Casey Schmitt, a 24-year-old third baseman/shortstop who was selected in the second round of the 2021 draft out of San Diego State University. Schmitt slashed .293/.365/.489 with 21 home runs between High-A and Double-A (plus five games in Triple-A).
• Carson Whisenhunt, a 22-year-old left-hander who was taken in the second round of last year’s draft out of East Carolina University. Whisenhunt was suspended for his final collegiate season, then made two appearances each in the Arizona Complex League and Low-A.
• Rayner Arias, a 16-year-old outfielder who was signed as an international free agent this January. The son of former Detroit Tigers pitching prospect Pablo Arias is a native of Bani, Dominican Republic.

In the opinion of Eric Longenhagen, all four have “impact FV grades.” Overall, our lead prospect analyst considers pitching development to be the organization’s strength. Read the rest of this entry »

This won’t surprise you if you’re an NBA fan, but I love reading Zach Lowe’s 10 Things column every week. Lowe is a basketball writer for ESPN, and his column is packed with data-driven anecdotes that wouldn’t quite fill a column on their own but are interesting nonetheless. Somehow, it had never quite occurred to me to use that format in baseball, but it feels like a perfect fit.

It had never occurred to me, that is, until I tried to write about the first observation that you’ll see in this piece. I couldn’t turn it into an entire article, but I kept trying because I really wanted to write about it. There just wasn’t enough meat on the bone, but I didn’t want to leave it there. Then I started noticing other little things I wanted to highlight, and a lightbulb went off.

My plan is to start writing up five things that have caught my interest every Friday. There’s a lot of baseball in the world, which means a lot of interesting but bite-sized stories, ones that wouldn’t work on their own but are nonetheless too good to ignore. Without further ado, let’s get to liking (and, occasionally, not liking) things. Read the rest of this entry »