Every successful professional athlete has to have a strong drive for self-improvement. You start each morning with the goal of being a little bit better than you were yesterday; I’m sure I’ve seen words to that effect on a ballplayer’s t-shirt or social media bio somewhere.

Brice Turang can do you one better: He gets a lot better every year. As a 23-year-old rookie, he hit .218/.285/.300, which is not the kind of line that ordinarily gets a guy 448 plate appearances’ worth of playing time. Fortunately for Turang, the Brewers (for all their other successes) have been pretty awful at home-brewing hitters over the past decade, and Turang entered 2024 as their starting second baseman. Read the rest of this entry »

Dan Petry faced 644 different batters across the 1979-1991 seasons, and while he certainly doesn’t remember them all, his level of recollection is impressive. Now 67, the former All-Star right-hander proved as much when he became the latest pitcher-turned-broadcast analyst to tackle one my a matchup-focused career quizzes. As did David Cone, Mark Grant, Mark Gubicza, and Jeff Montgomery — those pieces can be found here, here, here, and here — “Peaches” reached into his personal memory bank to take a stab at answering my questions, and to provide entertaining anecdotes while doing so. Our conversation took place at Fenway Park this past weekend.

I began by asking him which batter he faced the most times.

“It would have to be somebody in the American League East,” replied Petry, who played the bulk of his career with the Detroit Tigers and is now Dan Dickerson’s primary partner in the team’s radio booth. “I’ll say Robin Yount.”

It was indeed Yount, who stepped in against Petry 89 times. I proceeded to ask which player recorded the most hits off him.

“That might be a trick question, because maybe it is Robin Yount,” said Petry, before going with a different answer. “But I think a lot of my answers are going to be George Brett, so I’ll say George Brett.”

He should’ve trusted his initial instinct, because Yount was the answer again. The Hall of Famer logged 24 hits in 83 at-bats against the right-hander, who went 119-93 as a Tiger and 125-104 overall, while tossing 2,080 1/3 innings over 370 big league outings.

“He is a guy who I’ve always, to this day, have so much respect for,” Petry said of the Milwaukee Brewers icon. “I remember when he was just a teenager. At that time [when Yount was in the majors at age 18], I was a teenager also, and thinking about whether I would ever get that opportunity to play, like he was doing. So, just getting to face him was among my most competitive moments.”

How about the batter to whom he surrendered the most home runs? Read the rest of this entry »

When the Dodgers signed Edwin Díaz to a three-year, $69 million deal last December, it marked the second straight winter that they paid top dollar for a free agent closer, after they’d inked Tanner Scott to a four-year, $72 million deal in January 2025. That they double-dipped in such fashion was both a particularly ostentatious display of their purchasing power and an acknowledgement that even the best relievers can be fickle and fragile. Scott scuffled throughout last season while also missing time due to multiple injuries, and ultimately spent October as a bystander as the Dodgers cobbled together a makeshift late-game bullpen and won their second consecutive championship. Now, after struggling with his velocity and command, Díaz has also gone down with an injury. On Monday, one day after failing to retire any of the four Rockies he faced, he was placed on the 15-day injured list due to loose bodies in his right elbow. He is set to undergo arthroscopic surgery on Wednesday to have them removed.

Even in small-sample season, the 32-year-old Díaz’s numbers tell enough of a story to suggest that something is amiss. He’s allowed seven runs in six innings for a 10.50 ERA, accompanied by a 4.96 FIP and a 4.39 xERA. His 15.2% differential between his 30.3% strikeout rate and 15.2% walk rate is just over half of his 29.8% differential last year. His four-seam fastball has averaged just 95.7 mph, down from last year’s average of 97.2 mph while with the Mets, for whom he posted a 1.63 ERA and a 2.28 FIP in 66 1/3 innings. His average arm angle has dropped, changing the movement profiles of both his four-seamer and slider:

Relative to last season, Díaz has lost over two and a half inches of horizontal run on his fastball and nearly an inch of cut on his slider, which itself is one mile per hour slower, as well. Neither pitch has fooled hitters to nearly the same degree as before, and his overall swinging strike rate has dropped from 17.3% in 2024 and 18.0% last year to 9.1% this season. Read the rest of this entry »

With big expectations entering the season, the New York Mets got off to a reasonably solid start; through their first 11 games, they had a 7-4 record and a half-game lead in the NL East. Since then, though, things have gone… less well. And after getting swept by the Chicago Cubs over the weekend, the team is now sitting on an 11-game losing streak, a skid that has dropped them into last place in the NL East, a full 8 1/2 games behind the Atlanta Braves. So, just how doomed are the Mets?

While you can’t win a pennant in April, you can certainly lose one. As my colleague Jay Jaffe noted last week, when the Mets’ losing streak stood at a mere eight games, the offense bears a large share of the blame. They’ve scored just 19 runs since the streak began, and have managed even three runs in just two of those games. The Royals, the next-worst offense over their last 11 games, have scored more than 50% more runs than the Mets (31 to 19), and considering they’re 2-9 over that stretch, it’s not like they’re cruising either. The loss of Juan Soto to a strained calf muscle is significant, but it’s hard to pin the team’s offensive woes solely on that. Their 1.7 runs per game is about three runs off both the 4.7 they scored last year and what ZiPS projected for this year, and no hitter in history has made that big of a difference. Read the rest of this entry »

The other night, I was lying around, looking at my phone, trying to fry as many neurons as possible without using hard drugs or listening to Angine de Poitrine, and I saw something that bugged me a little. It was a highlight reel from a series of interviews with Padres closer Mason Miller and Kait Maniscalco, which started off as follows:

Maniscalco: Do you think closers have to have a couple screws loose to want to pitch in the highest-pressure situation in the game?

Miller: Quietly, yes. Outwardly, I think you can keep it together and be a fairly normal dude… I wouldn’t say anybody would say I have a screw loose quite yet.

There are two ways to read this question. First: Does it take an unusual personality type to thrive in a high-pressure environment like closing out a big league baseball game? Probably, to some extent. The ability not only to thrive under pressure but also to shake off failure when it comes is a special thing, one baseball people have tried and struggled to identify since the closer role was invented. Read the rest of this entry »

The book on Munetaka Murakami was pretty straightforward when he hit the market this winter. Phenomenal cosmic power – itty bitty contact rate. While acknowledging recent injuries, our writeup noted his contact rates against good velocity (63%) and secondary pitches (50%) as red flags in his profile. And these weren’t little red flags, either. As Eric and James put it, “…if Murakami is only ever the quality of contact hitter we’ve seen the last three years, with no changes or improvements, he basically can’t be a good MLB hitter.”

Through a month of play, Murakami has been a very good MLB hitter, with a 153 wRC+ driven by a 21.5% walk rate and eight homers. But he’s struggled with contact, and that’s putting it mildly. He’s striking out a third of the time so far, with the fourth-lowest contact rate in baseball through Sunday’s action. So what can we say about that? One answer is that it’s too soon to say – either his contact rate will go up or his production will go down. But that’s pretty unsatisfying. To be fair, it’s probably right, but that doesn’t make it satisfying. So let’s break his game down more granularly to see where the whiffs are coming from, where the power is coming from, and how the two are related.

We’ll start with the “can’t hit secondaries” part of the scouting report. In the early going, that has been abundantly clear. Sixty-six batters have swung at 25 or more sliders this season. Murakami’s 59.3% whiff rate is the third highest, behind Max Muncy The Younger and James Wood. If you broaden that out to all secondaries, 201 batters have offered at 50 or more secondary pitches this year. Murakami’s 53.3% whiff rate is the third highest of that group, behind only Matt Wallner and Daniel Schneemann. Read the rest of this entry »

“I thought our story was epic, you know. You and me. Spanning years and continents. Lives ruined and blood shed. Epic.”

Over the last decade or two, internet meme-speak has watered down the word epic to a synonym of awesome, but with an exaggerated grandeur not quite captured by merely saying, “That’s awesome!” Because awesome itself has been watered down over the years, and no longer really implies something awe-inspiring, but instead something more akin to “cool.” And now, due to the fleeting nature of internet trends, the word epic is now outdated meme-speak at that, only used by cringe olds, too self-obsessed to notice that no one talks like that anymore.

But near the end of the second season of Veronica Mars, when Logan Echolls (quoted above) bemoans the way his relationship with Veronica has seemingly fizzled out, he’s using the more traditional, literary definition of epic (a little less Homer Simpson and a little more Homer’s The Iliad). Epic poems are rhythmic, lyrical narratives, known for their vast length and fantastical foes. Veronica immediately pushes back against Logan’s romanticized notion of epic love. Epic should not be an aspirational modifier for one’s love story. In general, epic narratives are pretty unpleasant for everyone with direct involvement, but they make for great television. And baseball games.

Late Saturday afternoon, the University of Northern Colorado Bears earned a walk-off win against the University of St. Thomas Tommies in a 21-inning epic at Koch Diamond in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was the longest game in Summit League history and the eighth-longest game by innings in Division I history.

But the sharp-eyed among you may have noticed a strange detail in the game’s description, aside from the general oddity of its going 21 innings. To understand how the Bears were able to win in a walk-off on the Tommies’ home field, we have to go all the way back to March, when the first bad omen befell the season series between these two teams. Read the rest of this entry »

Before we get into the power rankings proper, I wanted to highlight a new tool in the FanGraphs Lab: the Power Rankings Board. As you can guess, it’s a leaderboard showing Elo ratings, playoff odds, and Power Scores for every team. It includes a date filter, so you can look up the power rankings on any date over the last five years — our Elo rating data goes back to the start of 2022. There’s also a graph mode to help you visualize the ups and downs of your team throughout the season.

Inspired by the emoji on Ben Clemens’ Hot Streak tool, I’ve also included some emojis in this table to show which teams are on a hot or cold streak or are facing particularly tough or easy stretch of opponents.

I’ll be referencing this tool throughout the season. I hope you enjoy!

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Our power rankings use a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings or FiveThirtyEight’s defunct sports section, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant ranking format that measures teams’ relative strength and is very reactive to recent performance. To avoid overweighting recent results during the season, we weigh each team’s raw Elo rank using our coin flip playoff odds. (Specifically, we regress the playoff odds by 50% and weigh those against the raw Elo ranking, increasing in weight as the season progresses to a maximum of 25%.) The weighted Elo ranks are then displayed as “Power Score” in the tables below. As the best and worst teams sort themselves out throughout the season, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise will remain reactive to hot streaks or cold snaps.

First up are the full rankings, presented in a sortable table. Below that, I’ve grouped the teams into tiers with comments on a handful of clubs. You’ll notice that the official ordinal rankings don’t always match the tiers — there are times where I take editorial liberties when grouping teams together — but generally, the ordering is consistent. One thing to note: The playoff odds listed in the tables below are our standard Depth Charts odds, not the coin flip odds that are used in the ranking formula.

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The Dodgers have company in this top tier. The Braves just completed a weekend sweep of the Phillies and have already opened up a five-game lead in the NL East. After a slow-ish start, Austin Riley has started to heat up over these last few weeks; he blasted three home runs last week and has collected multiple hits in six of his last 11 games. After a couple of down seasons, the Atlanta offense looks a lot like the dominant 2023 group, and that’s thanks to some bounce-backs from Riley, Ozzie Albies and Michael Harris II, and some surprise production from guys like Dominic Smith and Mauricio Dubón.

As for the Dodgers, they swept the Mets earlier in the week before losing two games in a row in Colorado over the weekend. The big concern is Edwin Díaz’s arm. He made his first appearance since April 10 on Sunday and allowed three runs to give away the lead in the eighth inning. His velocity was down a couple of ticks, and suddenly, the guy the Dodgers brought in to stabilize a shaky bullpen is himself facing some mounting issues.

Mason Miller picked up his league-leading eighth save on Sunday, though he only struck out two, pushing his FIP up a few points to -1.11. It was a return to form for Miller after he allowed just his second hit and second walk of the season in his appearance on Saturday — there was a man in scoring position against him before he shut the door! With so much elite pitching in the league these days, the idea of a reliever winning the Cy Young is farfetched, but Miller is quickly off to one of the strongest starts for a relief pitcher in history. His dominance is a big reason why the Padres are just a half-game behind the Dodgers in the NL West.

Aaron Judge isn’t leading the Yankees offense right now. That honor is currently held by Ben Rice, with his .338/.476/.800 (a 245 wRC+) slash line. He’s hit a home run in four straight games. Not to be out done, Judge cracked five homers last week, including four in a four-game series against the Angels — Mike Trout hit five of his own in that series — in a fantastic display of slugging. After a rough sweep in Tampa Bay to close out the previous week, the Yankees look like they’ve righted the ship with five wins in their last seven games.

Move aside AL East, the NL Central looks like the toughest division in baseball right now. All five teams in that division are above .500, and both the Cubs and Cardinals are riding five-game winning streaks.

Chicago’s injury woes continued last week, as the team placed closer Daniel Palencia on the IL with a strained oblique. No matter. The offense carried the load in a series win against the Phillies and a sweep of the Mets. The lineup scored double-digit runs in three straight games and completed a come-from-behind extra-innings victory on Sunday. The guys leading the offense? Nico Hoerner (159 wRC+) and Carson Kelly (160), just like the Cubs drew it up.

With a strong performance last week, the Reds pulled into sole possession of first place in the Central, though it certainly looks like they’re a little out over their skis with a -8 run differential. They’ve banked so many wins in spite of their underlying metrics because they’re already 6-0 in one-run games. To wit, Cincinnati’s bullpen has the best ERA in baseball, at 2.31, with Emilio Pagán, Tony Santillan, and Graham Ashcraft forming a potent, if unheralded, trio of high-leverage arms.

The Tigers were the latest team to sign one of their top prospects to a massive contract, agreeing to an eight-year, $150 million deal with Kevin McGonigle on Wednesday. He’s been one of the best hitters on a Detroit team that had been scuffling to start the season. Things turned around last week, though, when the Tigers rattled off six straight wins by sweeping the Marlins and Royals, and then won two of three against the Red Sox over the weekend in a series that concludes on Monday. With the second-best run differential in the AL, Detroit is now just a half-game behind the Guardians in the Central.

Parker Messick came within three outs of securing the year’s first no-hitter on Thursday. Along with Gavin Williams, the Guardians have two phenomenal starters leading their rotation; Messick is fourth in baseball with a 1.05 ERA, and Williams is 13th with a 2.12 ERA. On the other side of the ball, José Ramírez is finally heating up at the plate; he launched two home runs on Sunday, his third and fourth of the week, and he’s collected multiple hits in six of his last 11 games.

The Brewers bounced back from a rough stretch to win both of their series last week. Despite a 12-9 record, they’re currently tied with the Cubs for last place in the NL Central, owing to the aforementioned strength of that division. For those of you wondering if Brice Turang could repeat last year’s power breakout in 2026, he’s done so emphatically through the first month of the season. He’s taken another step forward with his contact quality and is currently slugging .571 with a 180 wRC+.

The Twins have slipped back to .500 after getting swept by the Reds last weekend. Minnesota is getting some excellent production from a couple of young starters acquired last July; Taj Bradley has allowed just five total runs across his five phenomenal starts, and Mick Abel has tossed two scoreless outings in a row, including a seven-inning, 10-strikeout gem last Tuesday against the Red Sox. With Pablo López out for the season, finding two mid-rotation starters from the pile of players brought into the organization during last summer’s sell-off would be a huge positive development for the franchise.

Who needs Jackson Holliday when you’ve got Jeremiah Jackson holding down the fort at second base? The Orioles utility infielder has done an admirable job filling in for Holliday while the young phenom rehabs from his hamate surgery. Jackson collected nine hits last week and blasted four home runs — and he took his first walk of the season on Sunday! At this rate, Baltimore will have to find a spot to play him when Holliday wraps up his rehab assignment, which could be as soon as next week.

The five clubs in this tier are really testing whether or not Dan Szymborski was right to say that pennants can be lost in April. The woes of the Mets have overshadowed the Phillies’ rough start to the season. With the worst run differential in baseball, Philadelphia is fourth in the NL East and just 1 1/2 games ahead of the floundering Mets. Phillies pitchers have been hit pretty hard, and the offense has been really slow to get going. Zack Wheeler is on track to be activated off the IL this weekend, and the hope is that he can stabilize the shaky starting rotation.

Things have quickly spiraled out of control for the Mets. They lost their 11th game in a row on Sunday, and it’s easy to see why: They’ve been shut out three times, scored four or more runs just twice, and totaled just 19 runs during this losing streak. Jared Young, one of the only hitters who was producing, was placed on the IL last Monday with a torn meniscus, and Jorge Polanco joined him later in the week. Mercifully, Juan Soto is expected to return from his calf injury sometime this week, and the Mets desperately need him to provide a spark for the offense.

The Astros earned a couple of hard-fought wins against the Rockies last week, but were subsequently swept by the Cardinals over the weekend. With a pitching staff absolutely ravaged by injuries, Spencer Arrighetti’s six-inning start on Wednesday had to have been a breath of fresh air. It was just the second time in 13 games that an Astros starter has completed six innings. Yordan Alvarez is doing everything in his power to carry the team on his back; he’s collected 14 hits over his last 10 games, including six home runs, but given the pitching woes, his production hasn’t been enough.

I’m not sure if the Angels are good or not, but they’ve certainly been entertaining to watch. The slugfest between Trout and Judge in New York was a bit surreal to watch — two future Hall of Famers matching each other home run for home run, one looking to get back to his previous level of production and the other securely in his prime. And there was Oswald Peraza getting some measure of revenge against his former team; he collected five hits and two home runs in that series. Peraza’s performance has been a pleasant surprise this year; he’s sporting a 147 wRC+ so far.

The Rockies have looked like a competent ball club from time to time this year. That’s more than could be said for them last year. Some clutch hitting earned them two wins against the Dodgers last weekend, and they have a shot at a series win in the final game of the four-game wraparound series on Monday. The most surprising performance has come from Antonio Senzatela; he allowed his first run of the season on Sunday. With a 32.7% strikeout rate and a 1.39 FIP, he has been fantastic in his reinvention as a reliever this year. And it’s not just Senzatela. Colorado’s relief corps ranks third in the majors in park- and league-adjusted ERA (69).

These are not good times for the Astros. The team has stumbled to an 8-15 start, and while slow starts themselves are nothing new for Houston, this Astros’ roster has been particularly depleted by injuries. Including All-Stars Hunter Brown, Josh Hader, and Jeremy Peña, they currently have a major league-high 14 players on the injured list. In the grand scheme, one of the few thing going right for the club is the return of Yordan Alvarez, who’s back to being healthy and unstoppable. Limited to just 48 games by injures last year, the 28-year-old slugger has not only played every game, but has hit a major league-high 10 homers.

During Sunday’s game against the Cardinals at Daikin Park, the Astros trailed 4-1 with two outs and nobody on when Alvarez stepped in against lefty JoJo Romero in the eighth inning. In running the count to 2-2, he fouled off three pitches, including a sweeper that was well off the plate. Romero then threw him a changeup that sank below the bottom edge of the zone, and Alvarez went down and got it, hitting a towering solo homer to right field:

The Astros then added two more runs in the inning as Jose Altuve and Isaac Paredes sandwiched singles around a Christian Walker walk and a wild pitch from incoming reliever Riley O’Brien. That tied the game, which went to extra innings, where the Astros couldn’t do enough to counter the three runs the Cardinals scored against reliever Bryan King; they lost 7-5. Read the rest of this entry »

Arjun Nimmala has a high ceiling that he is still far away from reaching. No. 2 on our Toronto Blue Jays Top Prospects list, and No. 48 on our Top 100, the 20-year-old shortstop is presently slashing .163/.308/.372 with two home runs and a 94 wRC+ in 52 plate appearances with High-A Vancouver. Last season, he left the yard 13 times while putting up a 92 wRC+ over a full course of games at the same affiliate. But while the production hasn’t been anything to write home about, the potential is clearly there. As Brendan Gawlowski explained in his scouting profile, “We really like the athlete and tools here, and we’re betting the results will follow in time.”

Nimmala’s right-handed stroke projects to produce plus power once he fully matures, and I asked him about it during spring training

“It’s a swing that’s built to do damage,” replied Nimmala, whom the Blue Jays drafted 20th overall in 2023 out of Dover, Florida’s Strawberry Crest High School. “I pride myself in taking good swings. When things are going well, I have a really good idea of the zone and am doing damage to all parts of the field.”

Asked to elaborate, Nimmala said he considers his bat path a plus — “I think it’s been good since high school” — adding that his adjustments since reaching pro ball have mostly been about putting himself in better launch positions. He further explained that he has tweaked his posture and how he lands.

As for reports saying that his swing is a little on the long side, but also quick, he agrees — but only to a point. Read the rest of this entry »