When we think of the Miami Marlins throughout their history, offense doesn’t frequently come to mind. This franchise’s various owners haven’t traditionally put many resources behind the club, and what resources do come in often go to pitching. We remember the rotations led by Dontrelle Willis and Josh Beckett, or Kevin Brown and Livan Hernandez, or José Fernández.
Giancarlo Stanton’s 59-homer MVP campaign stands out in the memory partially because of how loanDepot Park blunted even his prodigious pop. (And also because Stanton got salary dumped to the Yankees before he could defend his NL home run crown.)
Here’s a wild stat: After this past weekend, the Marlins have a team wRC+ of 100. That’s their third-best wRC+ in history; they have only bested that mark in 2007 and 2017, with a joint franchise record of… 101. Read the rest of this entry »
Back in August, the baseball savants at Baseball Savant bestowed upon us nerds yet another helping of Statcast data, this time in the form of a first base receiving leaderboard. Mike Petriello and Tom Tango wrote explainers describing how the new metric works and what exactly it means. Want to know who’s the best at scooping the ball, or corralling bouncers, or jumping up and snaring high throws and then landing on the bag before the runner? Now you can learn that information without having to watch all that bothersome baseball.
In the simplest terms, receiving works like other Statcast metrics. Each throw to the first baseman has a catch probability, which then maps onto out expectancy. Say a throw has a catch probability of 75%. A first baseman who makes the play earns 25% of an out, while the first baseman who muffs it loses 75%. With this data, I can tell you that this season, Alec Burleson has been the best at this skill by a wide margin, while Bryce Harper has been the worst by the same amount. That last part’s not necessarily a surprise, considering that six weeks before the new metric dropped, I wrote an entire article detailing ways in which Harper needed to improve at the cold corner, and that four weeks after that, the Phillies moved Harper off the position altogether (maybe they should’ve tried some of my fixes).
Within his explainer, Petriello noted that, as is so often the case in the game we love, the numbers tell us that receiving is not quite as important as we might want it to be. In our hearts, scooping the ball is the soul of the first base position. If you can’t pick it, you don’t belong there. But in reality, opportunities to scoop the ball come so infrequently that its value is in no way commensurate with the premium we place upon it. Spencer Torkelson and Jonathan Aranda sit atop the scooportunity leaderboard with 18 apiece, which means that they don’t even see one per week. The next time you attend your Saturday night Moneyball singalong and you shout along with Ron Washington that first base is incredibly hard, feel free to voice your own addendum: “But it doesn’t matter much anyway.”
Nevertheless, I haven’t been able to keep away from this leaderboard. Tango and Petriello explained a whole lot, but I still found myself overflowing with questions that this new data can finally help us answer. Scoops and bouncers and wide throws may not be as important as I want them to be, but that doesn’t make them any less interesting. I have a bunch of article ideas about this topic, but today, we’re starting small. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s no secret that starting pitchers throw fewer innings than they once did. Not only have complete games become a rarity (there have only been 20 so far this season), it is all too common to see starters limited to just five frames. The proof is in the pudding. Going by 10-year increments, the average number of innings per start has dropped steadily, going from 6.53 in 1976 to 5.08 in the current campaign. Moreover, the number of outings with 100 or more pitches this year is just 510, a 560 pace. Turn the calendar back to 2016 and there were 1,737 such outings. A decade earlier, there were 2,095.
How do current major league starters feel about the collective decline in workloads? Comprehensive polling isn’t practical, but I did query nine starters — some older, some younger — to get their thoughts on the subject. Here is what they had to say. Read the rest of this entry »
This year, the Philadelphia Phillies are 26th in team position player WAR and 27th in wRC+. It’s not because they haven’t thrown enough money at the problem. They’re paying eight position players at least $10 million this year, if you include the cost of Nick Castellanos’ buyout. Nine players have batted at least 250 times for the Phillies this year; Brandon Marsh is the only one who didn’t cost them either eight figures or a first-round draft pick.
And yet: Even as Kyle Schwarber chases yet another home run title and Bryce Harper posts his best OBP in three years, Bryson Stott is within a tenth of a win of the team lead in WAR.
Stott, one of the quietest and least conspicuous members of the Phillies’ core, has taken his turn to carry the baton. Over a two-month span, from June 15 to August 15, Stott hit .306/.404/.462 and was third in WAR in the entire league. Read the rest of this entry »
The NL MVP race is over. Truthfully, it’s been over since the Dodgers announced that Shohei Ohtani was taking a break from pitching all the way back in July. Pete Crow-Armstrong had so thoroughly lapped the field by then that only a unicorn like Ohtani had a shot at some kind of narrative-based upset, and without the chance of him putting up Cy Young-caliber starts to go along with bruising slugging, that was that. Likewise, the Cubs haven’t really been in a playoff race since July; they’re a lock for one of the top two Wild Card spots, but they’re surely not catching the Brewers.
It’s natural for you to take your eye off the ball in a situation like this. How good is Crow-Armstrong? How good are the Cubs? Well, good enough that you don’t have to think about them again until October. If you’re a neutral fan, I wouldn’t blame you for filing away your view of team and player, tuning back in to your local nine, and resting assured that you already know who the best player in the league was this year, regardless of what transpired the rest of the way.
But while you were (potentially) looking away, Crow-Armstrong is still on a tear. He’s not just the best player in the majors this year; he’s also been the best player in the majors over the past month. Where last year he melted in the late-summer heat, this year he’s getting better as time passes. Not only that, the way he’s doing it has me revising my long-term outlook on him.
When Crow-Armstrong broke out in 2025, he had an obvious weakness. He simply never saw a pitch he didn’t think he could tattoo. That made him run hot and cold; he paired incredible runs of scalded contact with stretches where he couldn’t buy a hit. Early this year, he was alternating between swing-happy stretches and periods of extreme patience. As Jay Jaffe pointed out, that helped him get the ball in the air to the pull side more frequently, in addition to forcing pitchers to venture into the zone more often or give up free passes. Read the rest of this entry »
Leading Astros pitchers in WAR usually takes some doing. The current AL West standings have Houston in line for its eighth division title and 10th postseason appearance in the past 12 years. Over that time, Astros pitchers have won three Cy Young Awards — two for Justin Verlander, one for Dallas Keuchel. Six other starters (Gerrit Cole, Framber Valdez, Lance McCullers Jr., Hunter Brown, Collin McHugh, and Yusei Kikuchi) have gotten downballot votes.
This year, the first-place Astros’ pitching WAR leader is 29-year-old Peter Lambert. It’s not a classic Astros rotation by any means — Brown and Cristian Javier have both spent a big chunk of the season on the IL — but Lambert is at the front of it nevertheless. No one expected this, least of all Lambert himself. Read the rest of this entry »
Mike Trout has been one of the best hitters of his generation, if not one of the best in baseball annals. Now 35 years old and in his 16th major league season — all with the Los Angeles Angels — the pride of Millville, New Jersey has left the yard 424 times while logging a 163 wRC+ over 7,765 plate appearances. A 12-time All-Star and three-time MVP, he has been awarded nine Silver Sluggers.
When Trout arrives in Cooperstown — already with 90.2 WAR, enshrinement is basically a fait accompli — he will do so as a slugger who embraced a relatively straightforward approach. Much like his longtime contemporary Bryce Harper, who was featured in our Talks Hitting series back in May, Trout is steadfastly old school in the batter’s box. It’s hard to argue with the results. While no longer in his prime — not even legends can defeat Father Time — he is undeniably an all-time great.
Trout sat down to talk hitting prior to Tuesday’s game at Fenway Park.
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David Laurila: How much have you changed as a hitter since signing your first professional contract?
Mike Trout: “I’m pretty much the same guy. I try to keep it that way. If you look at when I was younger — high school to early in pro ball — it’s pretty much the same now. I mean, there have been tweaks here and there. It might look a little different, but I feel like I’m the same hitter.”
Laurila: Can you elaborate on “might look a little different?”
Trout: “Subtle differences in my setup. The main thing is my contact points, and you probably wouldn’t see much difference there, but the setup is what gets you to that spot. That’s what I’m working on during the times I’m trying to figure stuff out.”
As special and precious as Shohei Ohtani is, it makes sense that he’s delicate. Both the Dodgers and the Angels before them have handled Ohtani with padded tongs: six-man rotations, pitch counts, a full-time DH role. Ohtani has played just 8 1/3 career innings in the outfield, even though he clearly has the legs and arms to play center.
It hasn’t mattered. For spurts lasting a season or two at most, Ohtani has held up, but he’s needed two UCL surgeries in an American pro career of nine seasons and only 644 1/3 innings on the mound, including the playoffs and the World Baseball Classic. Nolan Ryan has an innings-to-ligaments ratio more than 25 times Ohtani’s. It’s not great. Read the rest of this entry »
Late last week, I arrive at Peoria, on the opposite corner of the Phoenix Metro, where Padres first-round pick Coleman Borthwick is making his uniformed debut against the Rangers. I’ve settled on “uniformed debut” rather than “pro debut” for these kinds of box score-free backfield outings that precede the player’s first real game at an affiliate. The second I walk across the threshold between the parking lot and the field, I spot Ramón Laureano playing catch with a softball, and then with a regular baseball. He looks incredibly strong, like he’s taken outstanding care of himself as he rehabs from a labrum tear. I’m one of the first interested parties here, with former big leaguer Ernie Young among the scouts who have beaten me to the field. Several Padres players and personnel make their way behind home plate, including Lucas Giolito, whose upper arm/tricep hair rivals that of your author’s. Read the rest of this entry »
Sal Stewart is a frontrunner for NL Rookie of the Year honors. A formidable presence in the middle of the Cincinnati Reds lineup, the 22-year-old corner infielder has bashed 31 home runs and put up a 121 wRC+. Moreover, he leads all MLB hitters with 106 RBIs. Per the team’s press notes, Ted Williams (144 in 1939) and Walt Dropo are the only rookies to lead the majors in RBIs since 1920.
Stewart’s ability to square up baseballs far exceeds his wordiness when discussing the art and science of hitting — at least that was the case when I talked to him prior to a recent game at Wrigley Field. Entertainingly demonstrative when interacting with teammates in the clubhouse prior to our conversation, he was far from expansive when responding to questions about his craft.
“I’m kind of always tinkering and trying to find what’s best,” Stewart replied when asked how he’s grown as a hitter since entering pro ball in 2022 out of a Miami high school. “But for the most part, I have the same swing I’ve had since I was 12 years old.”
The burgeoning star told me that he still has the same offseason hitting coaches who helped him hone his right-handed stroke in travel ball. As he explained, “I trust my people and stick with my people.” Ditto training methods. He doesn’t hit off of a Trajekt, preferring instead to follow his established routine of “doing some tee stuff, some flips. Drills that I know work for me, and prepare me for the game.”
