At last we reach the end of my annual series spotlighting the weakest positions on contending clubs. While still focusing upon teams that meet that loose definition of contenders (Playoff Odds of at least 10% when this series began), I’ve also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included it here because the team’s performance is worth a look.

At the other positions in this series, I have used 0.6 WAR or less thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — as my cutoff, but for the designated hitters, I’ve limited the list to the teams below zero, both to keep the length manageable and to account for the general spread of value. In the fifth full season of the universal DH, 0.2 WAR represents the current median, with 11 teams below zero, 12 between zero and 1.0, and just seven with 1.0 or more, with only five reaching 2.0. DHs as a group have hit .244/.325/.422 for a 106 wRC+ this season, down four points from last year’s final mark, the highest since the adoption of the universal DH.

It does appear that an increasing number of teams are investing more playing time in a single DH. From 2022 (the first full-length season with the universal DH) to ’25, the number of players reaching 450 plate appearances in the DH role increased from three to four to seven to nine; this year, they’re on pace for nine, as well. That said, all but one of the teams on this list are the ones that haven’t found that special someone to take the lion’s share of the plate appearances. Read the rest of this entry »

Having gone around the horn during the first three entries of this series, it’s time to turn to the outfield. In a break from tradition, instead of looking at the teams with trouble at either corner in one fell swoop, this time I’m addressing the ones receiving less-than-acceptable production from their left and center fielders. Right fielders will get a standalone list in order to keep the length of these articles manageable. There’s still some crossover between today’s positions and their respective lists, with two contenders double-dipping.

While still focusing on clubs that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far (which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season), I’ve also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance is worth a look.

As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly within the context of the rest of a team’s roster. The capsules are listed in order of their left field rankings first, while noting those crossover teams with an asterisk. As always, I don’t expect every team here to go out and track down upgrades before the August 3 trade deadline, but these are ones to keep an eye on. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, we have the first of several Killers two-fers, with a pair of lists covering the right side of the infield. While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of a contender (Playoff Odds of at least 10%, a criterion that 22 of the 30 teams meet) and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far (which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season), I have also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. That may suggest that some of these teams will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because their performance at that spot is worth a look. All statistics are through July 12.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, a reader named Kevin submitted a particularly pithy mailbag question. I have reproduced it here in its entirety. This won’t take long:

Dear FanGraphs team,

Steven Kwan is broken. Should us Guardians fans have any hope that he can be fixed?

Kevin

In honor of Kevin’s brevity, I suppose my answer should have consisted of a single word, but Kwan has been one of the most interesting players in baseball for years. It’s worth taking a full look at what’s going on with him right now. Read the rest of this entry »

After building a 4 1/2-game lead just a few weeks ago, the Guardians (39-33) are now in a virtual tie with the upstart White Sox (38-32) atop the AL Central. As the two teams continue to battle for the division lead, however, the Guardians will have to do without their biggest star for the next several weeks. During Saturday’s 3-1 victory over the Tigers, José Ramírez fractured the hamate in his left hand, an injury that will require surgery and sideline him until some time after the All-Star break.

Ramírez suffered the injury during a fifth-inning plate appearance against Tarik Skubal, who was making his return from surgery to remove loose bodies in his elbow. According to manager Stephen Vogt, the slugger first felt the injury while swinging at a slider that he popped foul. He grounded out on the next pitch, and while he hoped to remain in the game because outfielders Angel Martínez and Chase DeLauter had already exited due to injuries, he was replaced by Daniel Schneemann — who had initially replaced DeLauter as a pinch-runner — at the start of the sixth inning.

“He tried to go back out,” said Vogt of Ramírez. “He knew the position we were in, grabbed his glove. He said, ‘Maybe I can at least play defense,’ and couldn’t squeeze his glove. [He] wanted to get back out there to help us win that game and just couldn’t.” Read the rest of this entry »

Trivia question for you: Which active pitcher has the lowest career ERA, with a minimum of 50 innings pitched? Paul Skenes is third, Jhoan Duran is ninth, Jacob deGrom is all the way down in 20th.

The answer is Erik Sabrowski, and by a pretty big margin. Sabrowski’s 1.47 career ERA is 0.41 runs lower than that of second-place Emmanuel Clase, who I guess is still technically an active player. He has Skenes beat by half a run. Read the rest of this entry »

In a world defined and cheapened by soulless and repetitive optimization, the Cleveland Guardians are intractably themselves. Make no mistake, the Guardians’ quirks and foibles are the result of those same nihilistic capitalist forces; they’re trying to compete against teams with less-tightfisted owners in more fashionable locales. Those restrictions have shaped the Guardians into something gnarled and odd and occasionally unsightly, like a knotted tree sprouting from a rockface, or a squid that’s evolved to live in darkness 10,000 feet below the ocean surface.

It’s not always traditionally pretty, but it’s unique.

Here we are, in the middle of May, with Cleveland once again in sole possession of first place in the AL Central. (Don’t look at anyone’s record within the division, I’m making a point.) Not everything has gone smoothly for the Guardians so far this year, but they’re getting contributions where it counts. Especially from Parker Messick. Read the rest of this entry »

In his first three seasons, Patrick Bailey carved a niche as one of the game’s top defensive catchers, dominating the Statcast defensive leaderboards and winning two Gold Gloves. The development of his offense has lagged, however, and with the Giants struggling to score runs and sporting one of the majors’ worst records, they’ve decide they can live without Bailey’s glovework. On Saturday, they traded the 27-year-old backstop to the Guardians for 23-year-old lefty pitching prospect Matt “Tugboat” Wilkinson and a Competitive Balance pick in the upcoming draft.

This is the second season in a row that president of baseball operations Buster Posey has shaken up San Francisco’s roster with an early-season trade; last year, it was the mid-June acquisition of slugger Rafael Devers in a blockbuster with Boston. You don’t have to squint too hard to accept that both trades were aimed at upgrading moribund offenses, but when the Giants dealt for Devers, they were 11 games above .500 (41-30), one game behind the Dodgers in the NL West. They felt they’d landed the offensive cornerstone that had eluded them after unsuccessful pursuits of Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, a player who could help them return to the postseason for the first time since 2021. This time around, they entered the day of the trade 15-23, last in the division, and the move appears far more tilted toward the future, as Wilkinson has just gotten his feet wet in Double-A and the draft pick won’t make an immediate impact.

If this trade had occurred just prior to the deadline (August 3 this year), it might have been characterized as a white flag, part of a larger selloff. To these eyes, it’s a shakeup that at worst smacks of panic and at best places a lot of faith that Posey — a likely Hall of Fame catcher who has yet to show similar prowess as an executive — has found a diamond or two in the rough with his two recent catching acquisitions: Jesus Rodriguez, who came from the Yankees in last year’s Camilo Doval trade, and Daniel Susac, who was flipped by the Twins in December after being plucked from the A’s as a Rule 5 pick. Both are 24 years old and have fewer than 10 games of major league experience, with Susac, who turns 25 on May 14, currently on a rehab assignment after being sidelined by neuritis in his right elbow. Eric Haase, a 33-year-old backstop who hit his way out of a starting job in Detroit in 2023, started in Saturday’s 13-3 drubbing by the Pirates — San Francisco’s ninth loss in 11 games — while Rodriguez started Sunday’s 7-6 win, which lifted the team’s record to 16-24, still third worst in the NL. Read the rest of this entry »

When David Morgan was profiled in last year’s rankings of the San Diego Padres’ top prospects, it was pointed out that the 26-year-old right-hander had joined the organization as a non-drafted free agent in 2022. Moreover, he’d barely taken the mound. A two-way player at Hope International University — an NAIA school in Fullerton, California — Morgan had thrown just nine-and-a-third innings. At the time he signed, he was playing for the Portland Pickles in the summer collegiate West Coast League (for which Rob Neyer is the commissioner).

Morgan’s backstory sets him apart him from his MLB brethren, but what about from a pitch-specific standpoint? Are there any differentiating characteristics?

“My ability to pick stuff up and kind of run with it is probably the most unique thing about me,” said Morgan, who made his big-league debut last May and has since logged a 3.41 ERA and a 4.15 FIP over 52 appearances comprising 60-and-two-thirds frames. “Last year, when I had to throw a sinker, it wasn’t really a learning process. It was in-between innings. I came into the dugout, grabbed a new grip, and threw it the next inning.”

The outing, his sixth in the majors, came on June 10 with the Padres holding a commanding late-inning lead against the Los Angeles Dodgers. When Morgan returned to the dugout after working the eighth, pitching coach Ruben Niebla pulled him aside and asked if he’d ever thrown a sinker. The answer was yes and no. Morgan had toyed around with one, but that was about it.

With the game not in doubt — San Diego led 11-1 — Niebla “gave [him] a grip and said to go out and throw it next inning.” Morgan did, the pitch “danced around a little bit,” and the rest is history. By season’s end, he’d thrown his sinker at a 21.5% clip, and this year the usage is up to 34.7%. Read the rest of this entry »

A major league debut is always an exciting occasion; it represents hope for the team and its fans, and the culmination of a lifetime of hard work for the player. I’m a cynical old crank, but I never tire of watching proud parents gush about their beloved son in a mid-inning interview with a sideline reporter.

It’s not remarkable that, in the fourth inning of the Guardians’ 1-0 loss against the Rays, that Gary Bazzana flushed red and got choked up when telling Andre Knott about his son. What’s remarkable is that he talked about his son in an Australian accent.

See, Tuesday marked the long-awaited debut of the no. 1 pick in the 2024 draft, second baseman Travis Bazzana. Read the rest of this entry »