If you’ve had to avert your eyes from the funeral pyre of the 2025 Baltimore Orioles, I feel ya. It has, at times, not been a pretty sight. But hope springs anew, as of Tuesday, with the return of Kyle Bradish to the Orioles’ rotation.

Bradish was a late-blooming prospect who only really put it together in his age-26 season, and was only at the top for a little over a season before he tore his UCL last June. Since Bradish went down, the Orioles’ pitching staff has weathered some even noisier crises: The departure of Corbin Burnes, a season-ending back injury to Zach Eflin, a season-ending (possibly multiple seasons-ending) shoulder injury to Félix Bautista, and ongoing elbow issues that have kept Grayson Rodriguez out of action all year. (I’m not comfortable calling Rodriguez’s injury season-ending, because the question of whether you can end something that never started is an ontological conundrum I’m not equipped to solve.) Read the rest of this entry »

Early in the season, the American League Most Valuable Player race didn’t look like much of a race at all. Continuing a stretch of dominance dating back to the latter days of April 2024, Aaron Judge was destroying opposing pitching at a level not seen since Barry Bonds, putting himself on a pace to challenge his 2022 AL record of 62 home runs and even flirting with a .400 batting average. He couldn’t maintain that breakneck clip, however, and while he’s cooled off, Cal Raleigh has closed the gap, setting a home run record of his own while powering the Mariners’ bid for a playoff spot.

On Sunday against the Athletics at T-Mobile Park, Raleigh went 3-for-5 with a pair of two-run homers, both off lefty Jacob Lopez; the first had an estimated distance of 448 feet — his longest of the season — and the second 412 feet. On Monday against the Padres, Raleigh went deep against JP Sears, a solo homer with an estimated distance of 419 feet.

The home runs against the A’s were Raleigh’s 48th and 49th of the season; with them, he tied and then surpassed Salvador Perez’s 2021 total to claim the single season record for a player whose primary position is catcher. The shot against the Padres was his 50th, an unfathomable number for a player who spends most of his days squatting behind the plate. Read the rest of this entry »

You might remember that, back in May, I issued a challenge to baseball fans across the globe: Give up your favorite team for a week and follow another. Thus was the inaugural FanGraphs Fan Exchange Program born.

I published the original survey on May 20, assigned everyone a new team to watch between June 16 and June 23, and promised to publish my findings sometime in mid-July. July, as you might have noticed, has come and gone, and so has most of August, but the results are finally in.

Why the delay? Well, I want to say that draft season bled into trade deadline season and I just couldn’t find the time, but that’s not the whole story. I didn’t consider that I would have to do more to publicize the exit survey than post a link on BlueSky, and quite a bit of time passed before I went back to the original email list and sent a link directly. If you’re still waiting for the exit survey as you’re reading this, well, I’m quite embarrassed to say that doesn’t surprise me. At the end of the day, I’m not sure it went out to everyone. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets are the best Rorschach test in baseball right now. You can see almost anything you want to when you look at them. A band of high-paid underachievers? Sure. A great team in a rough stretch? Yup. A triumph of pitching development? Sure thing, but also a cautionary tale about what happens when you don’t have enough starters to get through the season. Each of those topics – and plenty more – are worth a closer look. But in watching the Mets in recent weeks, I’ve been struck by the same observation every time I watch a game. That observation? Man, Francisco Lindor is good.

Lindor has been right at the center of the Mets’ mid-summer meltdown. After starting the season as hot as he ever has, he posted two straight abysmal months in June and July while the team swooned in sympathy. I’m not sure you understand quite how bad it was, so let’s look at the numbers. He hit a desultory .205/.258/.371 over those two months, good for a 77 wRC+. So imagine my surprise when I looked at this year’s hitting leaderboard and saw Lindor’s 4.7 WAR in 11th place.

Now, am I writing an article to tell you that Francisco Lindor is good? I mean, kind of. More than that, though, I’m thinking of this as an appreciation post. Lindor’s year-to-year consistency is otherworldly. He’s putting the finishing touches on his fourth straight five-win campaign, all with wRC+ marks between 121 and 137. He’s doing it without it ever feeling like it’s unsustainable. So let’s appreciate that greatness and take a look at what this year’s roller coaster says about Lindor’s time in Queens more broadly. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a big season for Manny Machado — a revival, as I termed it in June. After being hampered by tennis elbow in 2022 and ’23, then limited to DH duty in early ’24 while recovering from surgery to repair the extensor tendon in that troublesome right elbow, he’s played in all 132 games for the Padres, who ended the weekend tied for first place in the NL West with the Dodgers.

Along the way, Machado has collected some milestones. He clubbed his 350th home run, a two-run shot off the Giants’ Robbie Ray, on June 5, and he collected his 2,000th hit, an infield single off the Diamondbacks’ Zac Gallen, on July 7, the day after his 33rd birthday. By industry convention, based on a player’s age on June 30 of that season, Machado became just the 12th player to reach both milestones in his age-32 season or earlier, joining Hall of Famers Henry Aaron, Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, Ken Griffey Jr., Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Mel Ott, and Frank Robinson, future Hall of Famers Miguel Cabrera and Albert Pujols, and cautionary tale Alex Rodriguez. That makes him an apt choice to lead off this installment of my annual Hall of Fame progress series; I checked on pitchers and catchers last week, and will cover outfielders and unicorns next week. Read the rest of this entry »

Most of the time, you don’t really have to squeeze your glove when you catch the ball. At least, you don’t have to think about squeezing it. It’s an instinctual thing, and while it’s different if you’re a catcher, the whole point of the glove is to corral the baseball. It was designed just for that. The ball tends to stick in there.

That’s most of the time. Sometimes you really do have to think about squeezing the ball, though. Sometimes there’s geometry involved. I love the geometry.

I love thinking about the angles. How do I position myself so I can catch this throw and apply the tag in one motion? Should I wait on this ball, or should I circle around it so I can charge it and field it on a short hop? At what point do I give up on picking this throw and step back to catch it on the long hop? Read the rest of this entry »

Tarik Skubal and Hunter Brown matched up at Comerica Park earlier this week, and the aces didn’t disappoint. In a game Detroit won 1-0 in 10 innings, the Tigers southpaw fanned 10 batters through seven stellar innings, while the Houston Astros right-hander tossed six scoreless frames with half a dozen strikeouts. In terms of modern-day pitchers’ duels, this was nearly as good as it gets.

On pace to win his second straight AL Cy Young Award, Skubal is currently 11-3 with a 2.32 ERA and a 33.1% strikeout rate. Brown, who is fast establishing himself as one of baseball’s best pitchers, is 10-5 with a 2.36 ERA and a 29.3% strikeout rate. Both cook with gas. Skubal’s fastball ranks in the 91st percentile for velocity, while Brown’s ranks in the 83rd percentile.

A few hours before they went head-to-head, I asked Detroit manager A.J. Hinch how — left and right aside — the two hurlers compare.

“I know my guy, and don’t know Hunter as well — how he goes about it or how he prepares — but if you’re looking at who has the best fastballs in the league, you’re going to look at both of those guys,” replied Hinch. “If you look at who has elite secondary pitches, both do. Tarik will use his changeup more than Hunter will. I just think there’s an it factor that comes with a guy where, when we come to a ballpark and Tarik is pitching, we expect to win. I’m sure when Hunter is pitching, the Astros expect to win. That’s the definition of top of the rotation.”

Which brings us to the baker’s dozen innings they combined to throw on Tuesday night. Once upon a time, it would have been several more. For much of baseball history, pitchers who were dealing were generally allowed to keep dealing. The legendary July 2, 1963 matchup between San Francisco’s Juan Marichal and Milwaukee’s Warren Spahn is a case in point. That afternoon, Marichal threw 16 scoreless innings, while Spahn (at age 42, no less) tossed 15-and-a-third of his own — only to then be taken deep by Willie Mays for the game’s only run. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the funniest things to come out of this mailbag column so far occurred two weeks ago, when I wrote about the most replacement-level players of all time. I began that week’s mailbag by talking about questions that require both quantitative data and subjective analysis to answer, and I used the question “Who is the greatest baseball player of all time?” as an example. I made it quite clear that I wasn’t going to give my opinion on the subject; instead, I explained how people might consider the question and formulate their arguments, and in doing so, I mentioned a few of the best players ever. Nothing to it.

Except, of course, I should’ve known that you wonderful baseball sickos couldn’t resist hashing out that debate in the comments. A good number of you latched on to the part about how someone might give Barry Bonds the edge over Babe Ruth because “Bonds wouldn’t have been allowed to play during Ruth’s career.” Readers also made points about expansion and cited U.S. census numbers to compare the population sizes of major league baseball and the country. I truly did not expect any of that.

So maybe I should be prepared for anything with the question I answered to begin this week’s mailbag, which also deals with all-time great players and lineups. It’s quantitative for sure, but context is also necessary to understand why things turned out the way they did. It’s a fun one, so let’s get to it. Before we do, though, I’ll remind you all that while anyone can submit a question, this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s no getting around the fact that the Pirates are a bad baseball team. At 54-74, they’re well on their way to their seventh consecutive losing season and ninth out of the past 10. Even so, they’ve only got the majors’ fourth-lowest winning percentage (.422) — it’s not like they’re the Rockies (.289) or the White Sox (.354). Yet it turns out the Pirates are chasing history, albeit in an under-the-radar and unflattering way. They’re in danger of becoming the first AL or NL team since the start of the 20th century to finish the season without a single hitter producing at a league-average level or better.

I don’t mean “without a single regular,” though depending upon how we define that term, that’s on the table as well. I mean anybody who’s stepped up to the plate while wearing the Pirates’ black and gold this season. The top Pirates hitters by wRC+ are infielders Nick Gonzales and Liover Peguero, both of whom are sporting a wRC+ of 98. The 26-year-old Gonzales, Pittsburgh’s regular second baseman, is hitting .278/.322/.392 through 264 plate appearances. He’s been limited to 62 games due to a fractured left ankle, caused by his fouling a ball off himself during spring training, though he played on Opening Day and even homered off the Marlins’ Lake Bachar. After hobbling around the bases, he landed on the injured list and didn’t return to the lineup until June 3. Peguero, a 24-year-old infielder, has bounced between Triple-A Indianapolis and the majors, where he’s been playing with some regularity since late July; in 58 PA, he’s hit .208/.276/.453.

Six other Pirates have a wRC+ in the 90s:

Read the rest of this entry »

Bryan Woo is due to start this evening against the Athletics in Seattle. I expect he’ll go six innings. Why? Because he’s gone at least six innings in all 24 of his starts this season. Woo’s streak, as you’ve probably guessed, is the longest in baseball by some distance. Only two other active pitchers — Cristopher Sánchez and Spencer Schwellenbach — have gone six or more in their 10 most recent starts. (Schwellenbach will keep that streak going through the end of the year, having fractured his elbow in June.)

The fact that Woo has completed six innings every time he’s taken the mound this year is self-evident proof that he’s been consistent. But at the same time, this yearlong run of metronomity has not been interrupted by bursts of transcendence. He’s only recorded one out in the eighth inning all season. He hasn’t posted back-to-back scoreless starts since June of last year, and he’s still looking for the first double-digit strikeout game of his entire major league career.

On April 12, Woo allowed one run across seven innings in a 9-2 win over the Rangers, lowering his ERA to 2.84. Ever since then, his ERA has always been within half a run in either direction of 3.00. It hasn’t been more than a quarter of a run from 3.00 since the second week of June. The man is a machine. Read the rest of this entry »