Archive for Featured

The most exciting story as we approach the final week of the regular season is, at least by my accounting, the race for first place in the American League Central. On one side, we have the Chicago White Sox, a team that two years ago broke the modern record for the most losses in a season. Their outlook entering this season reflected their recent history. On Opening Day, Chicago had the worst playoff odds in the AL, with a 1.2% chance of making the playoffs, a 0.6% chance of winning the division, and a 0.1% chance of securing a first-round bye. And yet: The White Sox held at least a share of the division lead for 96 days this year, including a 73-day stretch from the start of play on July 5 until the end of the day Wednesday, when the Cleveland Guardians won the rubber match of a three-game set against the South Siders.

Unlike Chicago, Cleveland has seven playoff berths, including six division titles, in the past 10 years. The Guardians are winning the same way they always do, with excellent pitching, defense, and baserunning. Now, their lineup is deeper than it’s been at any point in the 2020s, though it’s still not exactly good.

In Wednesday’s game, the Sox had a one-run lead over the Guards, who were batting in the bottom of the sixth with a runner on first, two out, and Austin Hedges — he of the lifetime 54 wRC+ — at the plate against the left-handed Hagen Smith, who had relieved lefty starter Anthony Kay the previous inning. Hedges walked, prompting White Sox manager Will Venable to replace Smith with yet another lefty, Sean Newcomb. Up next for Cleveland was backup center fielder Petey Halpin, a left-handed hitter who was in the lineup for the injured lefty killer Angel Martínez. Halpin entered the game 1-for-35 on the season against southpaws, and though he did record a single in his first at-bat against Kay, what happened next still ranks among the most unexpected events of the 2026 campaign. Facing a 3-1 count, Halpin turned on a belt-high sinker and launched a no-doubt three-run homer to put the Guardians on top for good.

After an off day Thursday, Cleveland began a three-game series at home against the Athletics on Friday, while Chicago played the second of its four-game set against Detroit. As of Friday afternoon, our Playoff Odds gave the Sox a 50.9% chance to win the division and an 80.3% shot to make the postseason; for the Guards, those odds were, respectively, 49.1% and 77.0%.

We’ll talk a little bit more about the Guardians in this week’s mailbag, when we answer a question about shortstop Brayan Rocchio. We’ll also discuss a bonkers idea to get rid of batting lineups and the shortest season-long winning streak for a team that finished with the best record in baseball. But first, I’d like to remind you that 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 »

It’s time for another installment of Mathemadage, where I investigate time-honored baseball sayings using whatever data I can get my hands on and explore whether there’s any validity to them. If you’re new to my writing, I would describe my method as a semi-rigorous blend of math and intuition, with a rigorous amount of skepticism applied on top. If you’re not new to my writing, hi, hello! Welcome back. Today, we’re investigating a saying that was both my top candidate for this article and the one that came up most frequently in the comments of my last one. Yes, it’s time to talk about outs at third base. Oh, and if you’re looking for Five Things, it will return next Friday – Pete Alonso’s return to Citi Field was my favorite thing this week, and Jay Jaffe already covered it.

“Don’t make the first or third out at third base” was one of the rules that got hammered into me most frequently as a kid. It’s so ingrained that the last time I played rec league softball, I bonded with teammates over how we reflexively repeated it every time we coached third base. (I’m a big nerd, OK? I’ll take whatever bonding I can get.)

The logic behind this one makes good sense, too. With no one out, two productive outs could drive you home from second – why risk erasing yourself heading to third? With two outs, most plays that score you from third would score you from second as well – why risk erasing yourself again? But with one out, getting to third base is a big deal, because then a sacrifice fly or well-placed groundout can bring you home. From that angle, the logic is incontrovertible. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday night at Citi Field, the 2026 Mets season reached either a rather humiliating new low or a moment of catharsis, depending upon your point of view. With one out in the top of the ninth inning and the Mets clinging to a 3-2 lead over the Orioles, closer Kodai Senga left an 82.5-mph forkball over the plate, and Pete Alonso absolutely hit the fork out of it for a game-tying solo shot, the 300th home run of his career. The 31-year-old slugger punctuated the shot with an emphatic bat toss as the ball caromed off the face of the second deck in left-center field. While most opponent homers in such situations would elicit groans and boos, Alonso — who made his long-awaited return to Queens this week after signing a five-year, $155 million deal with the Orioles last December — instead received a standing ovation and made a curtain call.

Though unorthodox, the response from the crowd was understandable. Alonso hit 264 home runs during his seven seasons with the Mets, the most homers in franchise history, making five All-Star teams and two trips to the postseason while earning a spot in the hearts of fans as their beloved Polar Bear. Tuesday night’s game was just his second at Citi Field as a visitor, and as they’d done the night before, Mets fans brought their homemade cardboard signs displaying sentiments such as: “Thank You Pete — Forever a Met,” “Mets Fans Still Love Pete,” and “Should’ve Paid Pete.” The last of those also featured a Mets logo in front of the phrase “Fans Rooting For” before an Orioles logo.

Prior to Monday night’s first pitch, the Mets presented a tribute video, and shortstop Francisco Lindor joined the crowd of 35,880 in an ovation before Alonso’s first plate appearance. Alonso went 0-for-3 with a walk in Baltimore’s 2-1 win that night, a victory that officially eliminated the Mets from playoff contention. Tuesday’s homer, his 36th of the season, was his lone hit in five plate appearances, though it loomed large in an 11-inning, 7-5 win that sent the Mets to their 82nd loss, guaranteeing them their first sub-.500 season since 2023, before David Stearns took over as president of baseball operations.

In the wake of Alonso’s homer, the scene at Citi Field took a surreal turn, as chants of “Fire Stearns!” followed Alonso’s cameo, ringing out around the ballpark. The crowd — officially 28,097 but in actuality much more sparse, befitting a home team playing out the string — vented its anger and disappointment regarding Stearns’ offseason overhaul of the roster.

Pete Alonso grins as Mets fans chant “fire Stearns” after Alonso hit his 300th home run in his old ballpark pic.twitter.com/XbNLhDE7yn

— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) September 16, 2026

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If you’re a time traveler who jumped forward from late May 2026 to today, you’d probably recognize most of what’s going on. Gas is expensive. People hate data centers. Super El Niño is coming, even if no one knows exactly what that means for the weather. But if you’re a time traveler from San Diego in particular, one thing will no doubt floor you: Fernando Tatis Jr. isn’t in the biggest slump of his career. He’s been the second-best position player in the majors since the calendar flipped to June, in fact. So let’s make a trade. You can give me the secrets of your time travel down in the comments. I, in turn, will try to use Tatis’ resurgence to explain variance. No pressure.

Tatis hit his first home run of the year May 30, in his 239th plate appearance of the season. Up to that point, he’d looked like a completely different hitter from his 2025 form. Here’s a big old smorgasbord of statistics that changed:

It’s almost too much to think about. He swung harder and hit the ball softer. He put it on the ground too much, but also didn’t pull it often enough. If you looked up what not to do in a baseball textbook, it’d probably say something like that. Now let’s add on the rest of the year:

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Reacher needs our help. Reacher is in trouble, and only we baseball nerds can provide the assistance he needs. Wait, I should back up.

Reacher is the eponymous protagonist of the television show Reacher, based on Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels. He’s an enormous former military policeman and current drifter who wanders across America maiming, torturing, and murdering people – but, like, in a good way. It’s another in a long line of entertainments based on the simple premise that it’s perfectly fine to enjoy watching somebody commit horrific acts of violence so long as they visit that violence on people who deserve it. It’s also a baseball show. Reacher likes baseball. Most of the characters like baseball. They tie themselves in knots wedging baseball into conversations where it absolutely does not belong, and for that I not only salute them. I want to help.

Trouble always finds Reacher. He visits Georgia to pay his respects to a legendary blues singer and stumbles onto the world’s largest counterfeiting operation. He visits Philadelphia to watch an unnamed Phillies pitcher who touches 105 mph and winds up entangled in a plot to auction off chemical weapons to the highest bidder. He visits Maine for lobster and just happens to run into a man he once marched to the edge of a cliff, shot in the head, and left for dead. (Just to clarify once more: In this world, the guy who got shot in the head and fell off the cliff is the bad guy; the shooter is the good guy.)

Because trouble always seems to find him, Reacher takes precautions. He stays off the grid. He travels by bus. He checks into fleabag motels under false names. And because he’s a baseball fan, he always uses the names of Yankees second basemen. We’re going to help him do a better job of that, because, well, he sucks at it. Read the rest of this entry »

ZiPS has been generally one of the most positive projection systems in recent years regarding the Cleveland Guardians, but it has not been quite as excited about them when it comes to the postseason. The reason? Throughout the 2020s, their rotation has typically been thoroughly competent, but not very top-heavy, and the sprint of the playoffs is a different beast than the marathon of the regular season.

This season, Cleveland is hovering around the .500 mark, but that’s no fault of the starting pitching, where there’s an argument that it has now developed two aces, an ingredient that’s an important part of a recipe for making a deep postseason run. One is Parker Messick, who previously dominated in the upper minors and seemingly didn’t need an adjustment period when he debuted with the Guardians last August. He’s emerged as one of the top pitchers in the AL, and he’ll almost definitely get downballot Cy Young votes this season. Gavin Williams, on the other hand took a bit longer to really arrive in the majors, but I think he’s unambiguously there now. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »