Every major league player has great individual performances on his résumé, and that’s especially true when you include their time in the minors and amateur ball. From youth leagues on up, they’ve had games where they’ve stood out among their peers with epic displays at the plate and/or the mound. When you’re good enough to have advanced to the highest level of your profession, such showings come with the territory.

With this in mind, my colleague Michael Baumann and I recently asked a dozen players a straightforward question: “What has been the best game of your life?”

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Sal Frelick, Milwaukee Brewers outfielder: “I think I was part of one of the greatest college comebacks in NCAA history. We were down to Auburn 9-1 in the ninth inning, with two outs, and ended up coming back to win. I led off the ninth inning with a single, came around to score, then came back up as the tying run and hit a homer. We went into extras and won the game. This was in 2021 [with Boston College], my draft year. It was an absurd rally.

“I hit for the cycle one time in the Futures League. This was with my summer ball team, the North Shore Navigators. It was after my senior year of high school, before my freshman year at Boston College, and the game was in Worcester. I went strikeout, walk, double, triple, homer, single. A strikeout and a walk, then the cycle. That was crazy.”

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Riley Greene, Detroit Tigers outfielder: “I hit for the cycle at Hagerty High School [Oviedo, Florida]. I’m almost positive that it was the first cycle in school history. I could be wrong, but yeah, it was that game. I started off with a leadoff homer — I was hitting leadoff — and then I went single, double, triple. We were playing Edgewater High School and it was a pretty big game. We had a beef with that team, so it was pretty cool to do it against them in front of all my boys, who I’m still best friends with to this day.

“What probably stands out the most from here is my first homer, the walk-off homer [against the Royals in 2022] to win the game. That’s pretty special.”

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Kyle Finnegan, Washington Nationals pitcher: “I threw an immaculate inning in 2021, in the big leagues. I’d have to say that was my best inning. I struck out Austin Riley, Dansby Swanson, and William Contreras.

“The best game I’ve ever pitched in my life was in college [at Texas State University in 2012]. I was a starting pitcher. We were playing Notre Dame, who was really good at the time. And, here’s a fun fact about that weekend: In the three-game series we didn’t allow an opponent to reach third base. We were in the middle of one of the longest consecutive scoreless streak in modern NCAA history; we threw something like 50 scoreless innings. I pitched the Saturday game in that series and went seven innings with 12 strikeouts. I struck out the first seven guys that game.”

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Josh Lowe, Tampa Bay Rays infielder: “I had a three-homer game my senior year in high school. That would probably be the best game I can remember. It was early in the year and it was freezing cold. The temp was in the upper 20s and it was super windy. I grew up outside of Atlanta and while it doesn’t get that cold often, it does get cold.

“One game in Triple-A, I think I had five or six plate appearances and hit all five or six balls over 105 [mph]. I’d say that was a pretty good game. It was against Jacksonville. I don’t remember anything specific about it outside of having five or six at-bats and hitting the ball hard five or six times.”

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Christian Yelich, Milwaukee Brewers outfielder: “You’re a FanGraphs guy, so what’s better, a three-home run game — probably that one? — or 6-for-6 and hitting for the cycle? I don’t know if I’ll be able to beat [the latter]. Three home runs is pretty cool, but going 6-for-6 and hitting for the cycle is pretty cool, too.

“[Amateur ball], I can’t really remember. I’ve spent 12 years in the big leagues, so high school was a long time ago. I’m sure there were some decent ones back in the day, but everything that happens here is obviously more special for me.”

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Matt Vierling, Detroit Tigers infielder/outfielder: “The game the other day was pretty good [4-for-6 with two home runs, including a walk-off three-run homer, against the Toronto Blue Jays]. There have been a couple of them, but the best game of my life was probably in high school. We were in the state semifinals when I was a sophomore and I threw six innings [and allowed] no runs, and also hit two home runs. It was the most fans we’d had at a game — about 2,000, which was a ton for us in Missouri — and it got us to the state championship game.

“Another good one was when I was with the Phillies. I went 5-for-5 against the Blue Jays. This was in 2022, the year we went to the World Series, and we needed a couple of wins to keep things going. Along with the 5-for-5 — everything seemed to find a hole — I ended up hitting a walk-off single. It was a great game.”

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Jonny DeLuca, Tampa Bay Rays outfielder: “My senior year of high school, in the first game of the year, I went 6-for-6 with a grand slam, another home run, a triple, and three singles. It was a home game, and while I know we won, I don’t remember what the score was. I don’t think I’ve had a game that comes close to that one.

“In pro ball, last year was pretty cool when I made those two catches against Texas. I made a diving catch and then kind of robbed a home run. It’s up for debate if it would have been a homer or not, but yeah, that game last year.”

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Jordan Weems, Washington Nationals pitcher: “I had a game with five punchies when I was with Double-A Portland. That one really stood out, because I had really good stuff that night. In the big leagues it would have to be the one in Seattle where I had the bases loaded, got out of it, then came back for another inning to shut them down and we got the win.

“As a kid… I mean in 9- or 10-year-old All-Stars there was a game where I went something like 5-for-6 with two home runs. That was in a championship game to go the regionals. That was a pretty cool experience. Not trying to brag, but there were a lot of cool games in Little League, high school, and all that. I remember a playoff game, right before the state championship, I went 3-for-4 with two home runs. This was in high school.

“Another time — I could go forever on these — we lost the first game [of a high school playoff series] to Matthew Crownover, a big lefty who went to Clemson but then had Tommy John and never really came back from it. He was throwing really hard and kind of shoved it up our butts, so we had to win the second game. We were down by a run going into the bottom of the seventh inning, and I led off with a double. Cody Walker, who went to Mississippi State as a catcher, had this great at-bat. He hit a ground ball up the middle and I scored to tie the game. I remember going crazy at home plate after sliding in safely. We ended winning to force a Game 3, then went on to win the state championship.”

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Grant Anderson, Texas Rangers pitcher:

“There were a couple of games in high school, but I’ve got to go with my [MLB] debut, which was in Detroit last year. I got called up and struck out seven out of nine guys. That’s pretty high up there in the best game I’ve ever played. Like, I didn’t really have any expectations. At the end of the day I just wanted to throw up some zeros, so the strikeouts were kind of like a cherry on top. To be honest, it was kind of an out-of-body experience to strike out that many guys. It was almost a blur. It was a pretty crazy experience.”

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Whit Merrifield, Philadelphia Phillies infielder: “The first thing that comes to mind is the College World Series [with the University of South Carolina, against UCLA, in 2010] — the walk-off World Series with the walk-off hit. I’ve had better individual games; I’ve had a couple five-hit games, multi-homer games, a six-RBI game, but I honestly can’t really remember the games [specifically]. I remember the World Series game like it was yesterday.

“[In the ninth inning] our leadoff guy walks. Evan Marzilli gets the bunt down — good bunt — the pitcher fields it and throws to first. Watching from my angle, I thought he had thrown it away, because he kind of short-hopped it. The guy made great play at first base to catch it.

“Trevor Bauer is warming up in the bullpen. I’m thinking that he’s going to come in to face me. I step up. The manager goes to the mound. I’m thinking he’s going to bring [Bauer] in, but he doesn’t. He walks back to the dugout and I’m thinking they’re going to walk me. Jackie Bradley, who’d had a great World Series, was behind me, and Christian Walker was behind him. Christian was a freshman, so I’m thinking they’re going to walk me and Jackie, and pitch to Christian with the bases loaded.

“I really don’t have any intention to hit. Catcher is standing up, then finally squats down. As soon as he squats down I get a rush of nerves and emotion. Balls one and two aren’t really close pitches. I’m thinking unintentional intentional walk; they’re going to try to get me to chase something. Guy takes awhile, shakes off some pitches. I end up calling time. Like I said, in my head I’m thinking they’re going to try to walk me. But I thought to myself, ‘You’ve got a chance to win the World Series here. If the ball is close, I’m swinging. I’m going to try to win the game.’ He threw a good pitch, a fastball down and away — not really a good 2-0 pitch for a hitter to go after — but I made a good swing and hit the ball to right. We won. I can’t believe it was 14 years ago.”

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Spencer Torkelson, Detroit Tigers first baseman: “Minor leagues, Double-A Erie, and it wasn’t one game; it was a doubleheader. In two seven-inning games, I went 7-for-7 with three home runs, a double, and [six] RBIs. I remember it felt like I was literally seeing a beachball for a whole day. It was amazing.

“I had a couple of two-homer games [as an amateur], but nothing crazy. I think my greatest [quality] growing up was just how consistent I was. It wasn’t like really high, really low, really high, really low; it was just being consistently good. I’m sure there were some really good days in travel ball, but I can’t really remember. There is no book on that.”

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Zack Littell, Tampa Bay Rays pitcher: “Off the top of my head, I don’t really know. Especially in pro ball, they all kind of run together. I don’t know that I have that kind of memory. I guess there was one in high school. I had a game in our conference championship where I had two home runs, a double, and a single. I went 4-for-4 and also threw seven innings. We won 3-1, or something like that. In terms of sheer everything, it would probably have to be that one.

“I’d had one home run all year, and then in our three-game conference tournament I had three, including two in the championship. And again, I pitched seven innings. I was Shohei Ohtani that day. That’s the way I like to think of it.”

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Thanks to Michael for procuring the quotes from Grant Anderson and Whit Merrifield.

Baseball is big business and no team is infinitely patient with players who are struggling. While teams won’t generally describe it in such blunt terms, at the beginning of the season, every player has some unknown, invisible amount of leeway when it comes to poor performance. Established role players and fringe starters who just squeezed their way onto the big league roster in March may find themselves in the Pacific Coast or International League come late April or early May as they feel the heat of a poor start. As summer approaches, the names facing demotion become bigger, especially when those players are younger guys who still have minor league options remaining. On Sunday night, two of those bigger names ran out of rope, at least for now: Spencer Torkelson and Edouard Julien are headed to Triple-A to play for smaller crowds in smaller towns.

Before we examine what this pair of demotions means, I thought I’d put some numbers to the broader phenomena. I looked at the preseason ZiPS projections for players optioned during the season over the last 10 years. In nine of the 10 seasons, June was the month in which the players with the most combined projected WAR were sent to the minors. That holds true on a rate basis as well, with 0.75 projected WAR per June demoted player the highest monthly average. Naturally, demoted players tend to be worse performers than those who keep their jobs. To use last year as an example, of the 1,091 demotions, only 19 involved players projected for at least 2 WAR. Just one such player, Brayan Bello, was optioned in April, but starting on May 10 with Jose Miranda, bigger demotions started populating the list, with Miranda, David Villar, Oswald Peraza, Brandon Pfaadt, Alek Manoah, Josh Rojas, and Luis Urías all hitting the minors from mid-May through the end of June. Only four two-win players were demoted in July, with Manoah’s second demotion on August 11 the final one. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, Kyle Schwarber became the first player in MLB history to drive in more than 100 runs (104, to be exact) in a season with a batting average below .200. He was also the first player to hit 40 home runs (he hit 47), score 100 runs (he had 108), or draw at least 120 walks (he drew 126) despite getting a hit in fewer than one-fifth of his at-bats. The fact that he finished tied for third in the NL in plate appearances (720) certainly helped him compile those counting stats – no other hitter has ever topped 650 PA with an average so low – but there was no denying that Schwarber was a valuable offensive player despite his league-worst .197 batting average. He became the second qualified, sub-.200 hitter in history to post an OPS above .800 and came just shy of beating 2021 Joey Gallo for the highest-ever wRC+ in a qualified, sub-.200 season; Gallo finished that year at 121, while Schwarber was at 119 in 2023.

When I hear those fun facts, my inclination is to celebrate Schwarber and his unusual accomplishments. Sure, he’d be a better ballplayer if he could bat .300 and still club 40-plus homers and draw 120-plus walks, but that’s not really saying anything. Just as chocolate cake would be better if it were chocolate cake with ice cream, Schwarber would be better with Luis Arraez’s batting average. That’s not analysis; it’s a Facebook graphic asking you to build your dream hitter with $15. The fact of the matter is that Schwarber is excellent at what he does, batting average be damned.

Unfortunately, not everyone is so inclined to focus on the positives. When Schwarber himself spoke about his season last September, he couldn’t help but lament his low batting average: “Heck, do I like seeing a .193 [batting average]? No. Do I wish I was hitting higher? Absolutely.”

Schwarber elaborated this spring, telling Scott Lauber of the Philadelphia Inquirer, “If you’d have told me I was going to hit .190-whatever and hit 47 bombs and drive in 100, score 100, and punch out 200 times, I would’ve said you’re crazy. But it happened, right? I lived it.”

In Lauber’s words, the slugger spent the winter “figuring out how to never, ever live it again.” To be clear, Schwarber understood that he was still productive at the plate last season, but he wanted to be more than a three-true-outcomes player. As he put it: “I just know that there’s more [of a] hitter in there.”

I hate to destroy the illusion of my journalistic objectivity, but I must admit the Phillies fan in me was scared by Schwarber’s comments. Except for Bryce Harper, who because of injuries played just 225 of the team’s 324 regular season games across 2022 and ’23, Schwarber was probably Philadelphia’s most dangerous bat over his first two seasons in the City of Brotherly Love. He didn’t need to change. Call me a metathesiophobic, but when it comes to a 31-year-old, nine-year veteran, I say if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Yet, 60 games into the year, it certainly seems like Schwarber’s offseason efforts are paying off. His TTO% is lower (50%, down from his league-leading 53.8% in 2023) and his batting average is significantly higher than last year’s .197. In fact, his .239 batting average is only a tick below league average. Among qualified players from 2023 and 2024, only seven have seen a higher year-over-year increase. What’s more, Schwarber’s overall numbers haven’t taken a hit like I worried they would. He is enjoying another strong season at the plate with a .341 wOBA, .356 xwOBA, and 122 wRC+, all of which place him among the top 25 qualified batters in the National League.

All that being said, I haven’t seen enough to allay my preseason fears. The best way for a hitter to reduce his TTO% and increase his batting average is to cut back on strikeouts and make more contact, but that’s not what Schwarber has done. He has struck out in 29.5% of his plate appearances, right in line with his 29.9% rate last season, and his 34.1% whiff rate is a career high. Instead, the 2022 NL home run leader is sacrificing long balls for base hits. If you’re familiar with the basic rules of baseball, you’ll see why that’s a problem: The farther you make it around the bases, the better.

Schwarber is on pace for 30 home runs this year. He hit 47 last year and 46 the year before. He crushed 32 home runs during an injury-shortened 2021 campaign. Thirty homers is nothing to scoff at, but Schwarber is sending the ball out of the park at the lowest rate of his career. The same is true for doubles and, thus, extra-base hits overall. He is currently averaging an extra-base hit once every 17.3 plate appearances; his career pace entering the season was once every 10.2 PA. To be fair, power is down across the league this season; the league-average isolated power (.147) has never been lower since Schwarber debuted in 2015. Even so, his career-low .170 ISO this season is only 20% higher than league average. That’s a big step back for a slugger whose career ISO (.259) is 56% better than that of the average hitter. Similarly, his .408 slugging percentage, which would be the lowest full-season mark of his career, is only 5.4% above average. For his career, his .486 slugging is 17.7% better than the average hitter in that span.

Without the context of Schwarber’s preseason comments, the simplest explanation for his dropping power numbers might be age-related decline. However, the poster boy of the Phillies’ “ball go boom” lineup has not lost a lick of strength. His 54.9% hard-hit rate, a new career high, places him among the top 10 qualified batters in the sport. And although we can’t compare his bat speed to previous seasons, the fact that it sits in the 99th percentile makes me pretty confident he has not entered his decline phase quite yet.

Another explanation for Schwarber’s low home run rate could be his typical streakiness. He has a reputation for heating up later in the season, specifically during June, August, and September. He had a 95 wRC+ through the end of May in 2023 and a 102 wRC+ through the end of May the year before. However, his extra-base hit rate was still significantly higher during the first two months of 2022 and ’23 than it is right now. He averaged an extra-base hit once every 12.5 PA in March/April/May during his first two seasons with the Phillies; as a reminder, that number is one extra-base hit every 17.3 PA so far this year.

Instead of representing a step back or a slump, this looks like a deliberate adjustment on Schwarber’s part. Although his hard-hit rate is higher than ever, his barrel rate is a career low. His launch angle sweet spot rate is the lowest it’s been since 2020, the worst season of his career. On a related note, his groundball rate (39.6%) is significantly higher than it was during his first two seasons with the Phillies (33.8%), while his fly ball rate is significantly lower (down from 50.3% to 42.4%). Among qualified hitters from the past two seasons, he has seen the eighth-largest decrease in fly ball rate. According to a recent piece by Phillies beat writer Alex Coffey, Schwarber’s teammates and coaches have started joking that “he’s a slappy leadoff hitter now.”

For what it’s worth, Schwarber has been a better groundball hitter this season than in years past, and I can’t say I’m surprised. He’s a talented hitter, and I didn’t doubt he could change his approach if he wanted to. He said he was going to improve his directional hitting this year, and he has done exactly that, pulling fewer groundballs in favor of sending them up the middle, and he is making more hard contact on those groundballs. It’s further evidence that he’s hitting more grounders with intention, but hey, at least it’s working. Except… his BABIP on groundballs is absolutely, undeniably, without a doubt unsustainable. The league average BABIP on groundballs this season is .242. Schwarber’s career mark entering the year was .204. So far in 2024, he is running a .368 BABIP on the ground. That’s not to say Schwarber has merely been getting lucky; his .246 xBA is actually slightly higher than his actual batting average. However, he can’t keep this up. No one can maintain a BABIP on groundballs this high, especially not such a slow runner. Schwarber is due for some regression, and it when comes, he won’t be able to continue replicating his past production with his new approach.

Another thing Schwarber wanted to improve this season was his consistency. He didn’t want to prop up mediocre performances in April, May, and July with strong showings in June, August, and September. Unfortunately, baseball is inherently volatile, and he might be about to learn that BABIP is even more fickle than home run-to-fly ball ratio.

I tend to think consistency and well-roundedness are overrated. Schwarbombs, on the other hand, are a thing of beauty. Including the postseason, no batter crushed more no-doubters last season than Schwarber. Indeed, thanks to his power stroke, he has been the author of some of the most exciting moments in recent postseason memory. A common criticism of the three true outcomes is that they make baseball less interesting, aesthetically speaking. However, that criticism is more relevant for the sport as a whole, rather than specific batters. On an individual level, TTO hitters are part of the diverse landscape of players that make the sport so wonderful. As Michael Baumann put it, “One of the beautiful things about baseball, or any sport, is the emergence of varied and seemingly contradictory paths to success.”

If Schwarber continues to produce like a top 30 hitter in the National League, I doubt the Phillies will complain about his new path to success. That said, as he strives to become a jack of all trades, he runs the risk of devolving into a master of none. For the sake of his slash line – and the sake of Schwarbombs – he might be better off going back to his old ways.

NEW YORK — In the early going on Friday night, it appeared that Luis Severino would wind up among the rocks at whatever bottom the Mets had found in recent weeks. The 30-year-old righty has been one of the team’s top starters since moving across town following a dismal final season with the Yankees, but facing the Diamondbacks and former teammate Jordan Montgomery, Severino struggled early, surrendering three first-inning runs while burning through 28 pitches. His teammates picked him up, however, and he salvaged a respectable 97-pitch outing that helped the Mets string together their first back-to-back victories in over three weeks.

“A battle for him today, especially the first couple of innings,” said Mets manager Carlos Mendoza while noting that Severino had trouble reaching his usual velocity. “It was a night where he wasn’t at his best and still found a way to go back out for the sixth and kept us in the game.” Severino’s final line score — 5.1 innings, six hits, five runs (four earned), one walk, and four strikeouts — won’t be mistaken for a gem, but just getting that far felt like a major accomplishment given the way his evening began.

The Diamondbacks pounced upon Severino from the game’s first pitch, a 93-mph sinker on the outside edge that Corbin Carroll dumped into left field before taking second on a balk. Severino then hit Ketel Marte in the left leg and surrendered a 102-mph RBI single to Joc Pederson, with Marte taking third. Severino finally recorded his first out by striking out Christian Walker on a low-and-away sweeper, but Pederson stole second on the third strike, then took third when the next batter, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., threaded a 99-mph single through the left side of the infield, scoring Marte. Pederson came home when Jake McCarthy grounded to second base and beat the throw from shortstop Francisco Lindor, putting the Mets in a 3-0 hole before they’d swung a bat. Severino then fell behind Eugenio Suárez 2-0 before battling back and getting him to fly out to right. Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball is a game all about decisions. Some are minuscule, micro-level decisions that everyone will forget about after they happen. Should I sit fastball on this pitch? Should I take off for second base? Meanwhile, some are much larger, macro-level decisions felt over the course of one or multiple seasons. Should I try to lift the ball more? Should I change the grip of my slider? Everyday games over the course of a long season let us keep track of these larger trends, but no one could possibly analyze every substitution or pitching change over a 2,430-game regular season. So, instead, I’ll look at just three. In a midweek series last week, the Phillies and Giants put on a clinic of cat-and-mouse strategy and mostly excellent pitching. Let’s take a look at both the small- and large-scale decisions that contributed to this excellence on the mound.

Game 1 was a relatively high-scoring affair in which neither starter shined. There was nothing interesting to report from the Phillies side, as backend starter Taijuan Walker completed six innings but allowed as many runs. Opposite him was the struggling Blake Snell, who, in his typical inefficient fashion, lasted just four innings before being removed. To begin the fifth, manager Bob Melvin turned to rookie Randy Rodríguez, a sensible choice given his consistent multi-inning appearances to provide length to the Giants bullpen. In his first inning, Rodríguez retired the heart of the lineup in order on just 10 pitches, making him the easy choice to come back out for the sixth, due to face a pair of Phillies platoon hitters inserted into the lineup to face Snell.

Pache and Merrifield really aren’t guys you want hitting against a righty, especially one as nasty as Rodríguez, whose absolute hammer of a slider creates a difficult look for same-handed batters. Despite Marsh and Stott, the regular starters, ready to pinch-hit, Phillies manager Rob Thomson elected to keep them on the bench in a one-run game. His reason was the man standing on a bullpen mound beyond the center field fence: Lefty Erik Miller was warming up for the Giants.

While the Giants could have sent in Miller in response to a pinch-hitter, I still think using Marsh and Stott would’ve been the correct decision for Thomson. First, given Pache and Merrifield’s futility against right-handed pitching, almost any other scenario would have been more favorable. Indeed, the two managed a fly out and groundout against Rodríguez, combining for an xBA of .090. Furthermore, with lefty sluggers Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper at the top of the lineup (with a 91 and 72 point gap in projected OPS, respectively, between their splits vs. right-handed and left-handed pitchers), it would’ve been wise for Thomson to force Melvin to burn one of the two lefty relievers in the Giants bullpen, which could’ve led to more favorable matchups later in the game. Because Thomson decided not to make any substitutions, Miller wasn’t needed until the next inning, a scoreless effort in which he allowed just one hit, the popup single in front of home plate that Ben Clemens wrote about in Friday’s Five Things column. Marsh and Stott did eventually hit in the ninth, as did lefty bench bat Kody Clemens, but only after Philadelphia’s deficit had ballooned to four runs.

The fact that Miller only threw one inning in Game 1 became significant the next day, as he was fresh enough to slot in as the opener for bulk man Spencer Howard, a former Phillies top prospect who stalled upon hitting the majors and entered play with a career ERA north of seven. Thomson rolled out the lefty-heavy lineup hoping to feast on Howard’s mediocre fastball shape, so for the second day in a row, Miller faced the Phillies’ top three without allowing any damage. In traditional opener games, Howard would come out next and make his start as normal. Instead, Melvin went a different route, delaying Howard’s entrance in favor of bringing in Taylor Rogers, the only other available lefty he had. It’s not the first time a team has used multiple openers, but it’s certainly unorthodox during the regular season, with few off-days to rest the staff. The left-handed Rogers twin breezed through two scoreless innings, turning the lineup over before handing the ball off. Howard still had to get the job done, but Miller and Rogers lessened his load by nine outs, taking out a lefty-vulnerable lineup that wouldn’t turn to pinch-hitters so early in the game. Howard turned in four scoreless frames, and his team needed every bit of it, as they won 1-0 in extras.

Melvin’s management of his staff made the most of his available, although depleted, personnel. Under ideal circumstances, teams wouldn’t use emergency bulk arms, multiple openers, or an entire staff composed of swingmen, but an open rotation spot due to injury forced the Giants to scrap together innings by any means necessary. While Melvin’s tactical decisions were the best use of his limited arms, the opposite side of this matchup showed a fully operational, elite rotation at its finest. The Phillies currently have the best starting pitching in the league by every measure, and it’s not particularly close.

Most of that value comes from four excellent arms, two of which appeared in this series. First, in the second game, it was Zack Wheeler, who has continued his run as baseball’s most consistently excellent starter over the past half-decade. Even with his velocity finally starting to show signs of age, he’s on pace for career bests in ERA (2.32) and xERA (2.60), and his 29.0% strikeout rate is just below the career-high 29.1% mark he posted in 2021. Much of his success has come from an eagerness to change his approach and arsenal over time – first emerging as a Cy Young finalist after embracing the power of the elevated fastball, then adding a new pitch to his arsenal in each of the last two seasons. In 2023, a sweeper became his breaking pitch of choice; this season, like many other pitchers, he’s added a splitter. Wheeler now throws six pitches with regularity, a re-invention of his style from just a few years ago.

In dominating the Giants, Wheeler demonstrated the complementary power of his sinker and new split, with the former earning called strikes at a 29% clip and the latter inducing four whiffs on just 10 uses. The splitter has above-average run just like his two-seamer; it even spins on the same axis after adjusting for seam-shifted wake. It’s almost as if Wheeler precision engineered his splitter to travel on the exact same tunnel as his sinker for the first 40 feet of flight before diverging, making it extremely difficult for batters to tell them apart. The brand-new splitter is already Wheeler’s best secondary offering by run value, and it’s also helped make his sinker considerably more effective, with a 40-point drop in xwOBA compared to last season.

Wheeler put together one of his best starts of the season, striking out nine San Francisco hitters across six scoreless innings, but he couldn’t outdo his opponent’s parade of openers and was saddled with a no-decision. The next afternoon, in the series finale, Cristopher Sánchez enjoyed a Phillies offensive outburst that was absent from the first two games. In last year’s breakout campaign, the lefty Sánchez put up above-average numbers over 19 appearances, but what held him back from excellence was an abysmal showing against right-handed hitters, who ran a slugging percentage that was more than double their that left-handed counterparts. He’s leveled up this year, currently holding a share of the NL lead in FIP. And while he still runs an exaggerated platoon split, he’s been able to limit the power of opposite-handed hitters, as seen on Wednesday against a daunting all-righty Giants lineup.

The calling card of Sánchez’s arsenal is a changeup with few comps in terms of movement, boasting 97th percentile drop and 95th percentile run. This exceptional pitch generated gaudy whiff numbers during his time as a prospect, and has only continued in the big leagues. The problem is that Sánchez’s sinker, which he uses to set up the changeup, gets absolutely hammered, especially by righties. Drastically cutting his sinker usage wouldn’t be the solution, because that would allow batters to sit on his change and make it more hittable. So, rather than shelving the sinker, Sánchez made a change to when he used it.

Sánchez took advantage of the Giants’ passivity on first pitches by throwing juicy sinkers to 12 of the 24 batters he faced; none of them were put into play. In fact, over a third of his sinkers in the game were taken for called strikes, his highest mark of the season. After getting ahead in the count, Sánchez then let the changeups rain down, racking up strikeouts and groundouts. By the end of the start, Sánchez’s sinker — a pitch that had allowed loud contact like no other in the past — surrendered zero barrels and zero extra-base hits. Like Wheeler the day prior, Sánchez turned in six scoreless innings, while the Philadelphia bats knocked around the surprisingly hittable Kyle Harrison. The vulnerability of Sánchez’s sinker likely caps his upside as a mid-rotation guy, but certainly one more than capable of starting playoff games for his contending team.

The Giants won the series, taking two games out of three. They showed they could win even with a starting rotation depleted by injury and underperformance, tilting the odds in their favor with crafty personnel decisions that kept the Phillies’ offense guessing as to who would come out next. (Of course, over the weekend, the Giants were swept by the Yankees in San Francisco, perhaps displaying the limitations of a team with a shaky staff.) On the other side, Philadelphia’s buzzsaw of a rotation was created by decisions as well, albeit ones made on the more macro level. From arsenal tweaks to command improvements, these changes demonstrate why this team is top dog right now in the National League.

Matt Vierling has been swinging a hot bat with the Detroit Tigers. Over his last 11 games, the 27-year-old third baseman/outfielder is 16-for-41 with four doubles, a triple, four home runs, and 13 RBIs. His slash line over the span is .390/.435/.829 bringing his seasonal mark to a solid .292/.324/.509. While by no means an offensive force, he has nonetheless been an integral part of the lineup. Since being acquired by Detroit from Philadelphia prior to last season as part of the five-player Gregory Soto swap. Vierling has the second-most hits (175) on the team, and a respectable 106 wRC+.

Defensive versatility adds to Vierling’s value — his big-league ledger includes games at 3B, 2B, CF, RF, and LF — and there is a chance that another non-DH position could eventually be added to the list. Given the right circumstances, he might even pitch. It would be familiar territory. Vierling thrived on the mound as a prep, then was a two-way player at the University of Notre Dame from 2016-2018.

A Perfect Game showcase in Minneapolis is a standout memory for the St. Louis, Missouri native. Vierling recalls Carson Kelly’s brother, Parker, being one of his teammates, while Ke’Bryan Hayes and Josh Naylor — “I pitched against him if I remember correctly” — were among his notable opponents. Playing well against that type of talent garnered him attention from colleges and professional scouts alike, and while his bat showed promise, it was the arm that stood out the most. Read the rest of this entry »

During most baseball games, there are eight people calling the action. Both the home and away teams have radio and television broadcasts, and most of those crews consist of a play-by-play announcer and a color commentator. If those teams have a Spanish language broadcast, the number is even higher. More often than you might think, something notable happens in the middle of a game and not one of those eight people notes it. Maybe a player will square around to bunt but end up taking the pitch, and that detail just goes unremarked upon by everyone. It’s a small detail, but it’s part of the story of the game. It tells you about the batting team’s strategy and their confidence in the hitter. It informs the defense’s pitch selection and positioning. Maybe the television crews figure you already saw it. Maybe the radio crews need to squeeze in a promo or the color guy’s in the middle of an anecdote about that one time he got to be an extra in Little Big League. There’s only so much time between pitches, and the announcers all have a decision to make on how best to fill it. Either way, if you’re listening on the radio, or if you’re looking away from your television for a moment, you’ll never know it happened at all.

Something happened on Wednesday, in the first game of a doubleheader between the Tigers and Pirates. I found it remarkable, but apparently I was alone. No one else mentioned it. The Pirates were starting Jared Jones and Paul Skenes that day, and I was watching Detroit’s television broadcast. I did so partly because Jason Benetti is a delight, but mostly because when Jones and Skenes are on the mound, it’s fun to hear the opposing announcers react with awe as they watch batter after batter on their own team get taken apart limb from limb. Unfortunately for both Jones and me, the Tigers avoided dismemberment, hanging five earned runs and two unearned runs on Jones en route to a breezy 8-0 victory. On the bright side, Benetti and Kirk Gibson, who was serving as color commentator, decided that for much of the game, the best way to spend their time was by bickering like an old married couple.

Benetti: Do they know you at your local donut shop?

Gibson: No.

Benetti: They know you as the guy who orders all the chocolate fry cakes.

Gibson: I don’t. I’m on the sugar free now, so I’m not doing it now. So nobody knows.

Benetti: Well, everybody knows you’re on the sugar free diet because you keep saying it. Read the rest of this entry »

Last month a piece titled “Player’s View: Tales From the Minor Leagues” ran here at FanGraphs. Comprising a collection of current and former major leaguers relating stories from their time on the farm, it was equal parts entertaining and informative of life below the big league level. What you’re reading now is a followup, albeit with a notable twist. The storytellers here are all broadcasters: two who picked up a microphone after their playing days were over, and three more who never played professionally. As was the case with the earlier piece, many of the stories will leave you laughing, if not shaking your head.

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Jeff Levering, Milwaukee Brewers broadcaster:

“There are a lot of great stories. One I’ll always remember is from when I was [broadcasting] with Springfield, in Double-A. We played a night game in Little Rock and needed to get to Tulsa for a game the next day. There was a torrential downpour — the worst rain I’ve seen in my life — and I was in charge of getting the movies for the bus. Our manager at the time was Pop Warner, who is now the third base coach for the St. Louis Cardinals, and he was staunch about no comedies. It was all horror movies, all the time, and the gorier the better — for him. Anyway, most of the guys were asleep in the back, but some of us were watching and it’s getting to be one of the scariest parts of the movie. This was in the middle of a torrential downpour in rural Arkansas.

“Up ahead we see a pair of headlights, but the headlights are sideways in the middle of the road. Our driver doesn’t see it until the last moment and we missed this car, which had spun out in the middle of the road, by a foot — no less than a foot. We ended up going into the left lane and down into the embankment, and right back up. That woke everybody up. From that point on everyone was awake. It was a really bad accident that could have happened but didn’t happen, and it was the middle of the night. Again, we were in the middle of Arkansas. No one would have found us until the next day. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the double-R that makes it tricky. In the name Victor Robles, all of the emphasis is front-loaded. Victor is spondaic and Robles is trochaic, which means three stressed syllables in a row followed by that one last unstressed syllable: VIC-TOR RO-bles. It’s a shout followed by a whisper, which doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. But even if you cheat a little bit and turn the first name into a trochee — VIC-tor RO-bles, sing-songy like Mickey Mantle or Dr Pepper — you still can’t get it to flow because you need to pause between those two Rs, lest the two names get pressed together into one breathless pileup of syllables: victorrobles. No matter what you try, that emphatic start grinds to a halt.

After more than 10 years and nearly as many false starts, the center fielder’s time with the Washington Nationals has come to a complete stop. The team designated Robles for assignment on Monday, eight days after his 27th birthday. They now have a week to trade, waive, outright, or release him. Robles, who is in his eighth season as a big leaguer, would almost certainly opt for free agency rather than accept an outright assignment to the minors. Despite his struggles, he seems likely to garner another opportunity. To Washington fans who had been dreaming on him since 2015, Robles often seemed tantalizingly close to finally breaking out. Over the course of his career, Robles has a combined .725 OPS in his first 10 games of a season and a combined .576 OPS in his last 10. He has a career 93 wRC+ in March and April; May is the only other month when he’s within 10 points of that mark. Many of those hot starts were also marred by early-season injuries: a hyper-extended elbow in April 2018, a sprained ankle in May 2021, back spasms in May 2023, a strained hamstring this April. He just never found a way to keep it going. Read the rest of this entry »

On the one hand, free agency is an important right that grants players the power to choose their employer and negotiate a fair salary. On the other hand, job hunting is super, mega stressful. I don’t say this to imply anyone should try to avoid free agency, but rather to acknowledge that some things are objectively good and still leave you so nervous about making the wrong choice that you impulse purchase one of those patron saint figurines from a display near the register at a convenience store, then bury it in your front yard for good luck while sipping on a cherry coke slushy, even though you’re not particularly religious, and looking back with the clarity of hindsight, you’re pretty sure that figurine was an angelic depiction of Dale Earnhardt Sr.

Anyway, players don’t need to rely on Nascar voodoo to make career choices. A more logical system is possible. Specifically, a system to help players evaluate which teams tend to facilitate a player’s best on-field performance. In a previous piece, I compared the performance of players acquired by the Angels to that of players acquired by the Dodgers in the name of comparing how Shohei Ohtani’s stint with the Angels might have gone if the Angels were secretly run by the Dodgers. But why stop there, when we can compare all 30 teams and give free agents a feel for which clubs are most likely to offer a boost to their performance and which ones are baseball purgatory?

But first, let’s run through the methodology. In back-to-back seasons, it’s reasonable to expect a player’s performance to be roughly the same aside from the usual variation within a player’s true talent range and a mild adjustment for aging (insert caveats on injuries and other extenuating circumstances here). So if a player changes teams and goes on to post notably different numbers, it’s reasonable to credit a decent chunk of the change in output to the new work environment. Therefore, comparing player performance in adjacent seasons with different teams and aggregating at the team level provides a metric for evaluating how well a team maximizes the ability of its major league acquisitions. Read the rest of this entry »