The first thing to know about the firing of Carlos Mendoza is that nobody in the Mets’ clubhouse believes their poor performance is the former manager’s fault. Not David Stearns, the president of baseball operations. Not Francisco Lindor, the franchise shortstop. Not Bo Bichette, the big offseason acquisition. Not Andy Green, the farm director-turned-interim manager. Mendoza did not lose the clubhouse, Stearns said at a press conference Friday afternoon, less than six hours after the team announced the dismissal, while Lindor said he and the players failed Mendoza.

It would be easy to point to the embarrassing series the Mets just played against the Cubs at Citi Field, the low point coming in the second game of Wednesday’s doubleheader. Each of the four infielders made at least one error; that hadn’t happened since Sept. 8, 1962. New York recorded six defensive miscues in total. But the truth is, neither one game nor one series did Mendoza in. The only thing surprising about his firing is that it didn’t happen sooner. The Mets went 34-47 (.420) under Mendoza this season, making them the third-worst team in the National League. On June 12, 2025, the Mets held the best record in the majors. As of Friday morning, they had a record of 72-102 (.414) since that high-water mark. This is a team in free fall, and the descent has lasted for longer than a full calendar year. During the offseason, Stearns and the Mets cleaned house of most of their veteran players and brought in a new group of guys. That hasn’t worked through the first 81 games of the season, and so the next thing to do was fire the manager. Stearns said during his press conference on Friday that his own job is safe, that he has the support of ownership. The thing is, so did Mendoza — until he didn’t.

Jay Jaffe will take a more detailed look at Mendoza’s firing and the Mets in a story early next week, so that’s the last I’ll say about the news in this week’s mailbag. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions about the unwritten rules of ABS challenges, what would happen if a team were made up of nine Frank Thomases, the amount of money a player would make from spending just 24 hours on a big league roster, and more. 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 »

Last season, despite his team’s struggles, Byron Buxton set career highs in plate appearances (542), home runs (35), runs (97), RBI (83), hits (129), and WAR (5.0). He only played in 126 games, his second-highest single-season total, because he made two separate trips to the injured list. We saw enough of him in 2025 to appreciate his astonishing abilities, yet at the same time, his presence was a reminder of the career that might’ve been if only he hadn’t gotten hurt so much.

Fortunately, Buxton is healthy again this season. As of Friday morning, he has played in 64 of the Twins’ 76 games this year. That might not seem like a lot, but that works out to a pace of 136 games. Crucially, despite dealing with a few minor injuries, he has avoided the IL so far in 2026. He’s on track to hit 49 home runs and accumulate just shy of 6 WAR. ZiPS and our Depth Charts both project him to slow down a little bit, but they still peg him for at least 45 homers and right around 5 WAR. That would be an impressive season for anybody, but especially for an injury-prone 32-year-old center fielder.

That bit on Buxton is all you’ll hear from me this weekend. I’m on vacation as you’re reading this, and Meg Rowley is handling mailbag editing duties while I’m gone. This week, we’re answering your questions on Juan Soto’s slower swing speed, the teams that have the greatest all-time differences between player WAR and franchise wins, and whether an American League team will make the playoffs with a losing record. 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 »

On Wednesday night, I sent Michael Baumann a Slack message asking him the first question in today’s mailbag: How many teams have never had a 30/30 season? “Phew,” he said. “That’s a good one.” I told him I’d be answering it, but I thought it was a fun bit of trivia and wanted to know what his guess would be. I was on my way back from my softball game, and I told him I’d look it up as soon as I got home. But Baumann was impatient. He proceeded to run the search himself and answer the question for me.

“Thanks for doing the mailbag for me lol,” I said. He replied, “I had that thought. I just couldn’t help myself.” That’s the type of impulsive, obsessive behavior that drives us to answer your mailbag questions every week. Like you, we love all that is trivial, whimsical, historical, hypothetical, strategic, pedantic, gigantic, nitty, gritty, and silly about baseball. Your passion is our passion. Anyway, because Baumann couldn’t resist, part of the answer to the first question comes from his initial Stathead search. He told me to run my own search, just in case he missed something in his fervor.

We’ll get to the answer to that 30/30 question in a moment. We’ll also answer your questions on the teams with the greatest difference between cumulative player WAR generated and actual team wins, bases-loaded walks, and how to get your baseball fix when you’re short on time. 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 »

Last Sunday, the White Sox defeated the Tigers, 2-1, to complete a weekend sweep on the South Side of Chicago. With the win, they pulled their playoff odds up to 20.3%. It was the first time those odds had been above 20% since April 12, 2023. The Sox dropped back below the 20% threshold on Monday with a loss to the Twins, and they enter their weekend series against the Phillies in Philadelphia with a 17.4% chance to reach the postseason, so it’s still way too early to declare them true contenders.

But unlike some of the other American League clubs off to unexpected hot starts, such as the Rays and Guardians, Chicago’s underlying performance supports its strong showing thus far. The White Sox have outperformed both their Pythagorean and BaseRuns records by just one win. The Rays are six and seven wins ahead of their Pythagorean and BaseRuns records, respectively, while the Guardians have exceeded their Pythagorean record by three wins and their BaseRuns mark by five. The A’s, the other AL team that surprised over the first two months of the season, endured a brutal 2-7 stretch to close out May and bring their record closer to their peripherals. Even so, all three of those teams enter the weekend with better playoff odds than the White Sox: the Rays at 83.1%, the Guards at 77.7%, and the A’s at 37.4%. That makes sense. Remember, a team’s Pythagorean and BaseRuns records only account for what’s already happened. Our Playoff Odds project future performance and factor in far more than just the first 10 weeks of play. Understanding that shouldn’t undermine the excitement that Sox fans are feeling right now; if anything, it should provide them with greater incentive to enjoy their team’s success while they can, for however long it lasts.

That’s the last you’ll read about the 2026 White Sox in this week’s mailbag. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions on the best system for bringing amateur talent into baseball, whether the Mets are paying more per win than any team ever, the new Hall of Fame pitching golden ticket, and more. 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 »

The most important thing to know about the initial proposals for baseball’s next collective bargaining agreement is that they were designed to be rejected. It’s the end of May, meaning we still have a little more than six months to go before the current CBA expires at 11:59 p.m. ET on December 1. That’s when the owners are expected to lock out the players and initiate the game’s second work stoppage of the 2020s, but if the last CBA negotiation is any indication of how this one will play out, it’ll take at least another month and a half from then for bargaining to begin in earnest.

The purpose of the initial proposals released this week, by the MLB Players Association on Wednesday and MLB on Thursday, was to set the starting line from where each will slowly, but inevitably, concede ground. We likely won’t see much movement for a while, but once the owners and players start inching toward one another, they’ll point to their proposals from this week as evidence of their efforts to make a deal. Theoretically, in a labor negotiation, you want to set your starting point far from where you want to end up, so that you can abandon some of what you were asking for and still end up with a favorable agreement. So just because, in the words of Ben Clemens, “opposing sides aren’t speaking the same language” right now doesn’t mean we’re any more or less likely to miss games next season. That said, it also doesn’t mean that there’s nothing for us to learn from the proposals. Rather, as Ben explains, “these early offers are revealing of what each side cares about most. The specific numbers quoted are unlikely to survive multiple rounds of bargaining, but the concepts and structures that each side favors at this stage could tell us a lot about what an eventual compromise looks like.” In his piece from Friday, which you can find here, Ben does a great job of laying out everything you need to know about the start of bargaining. You should definitely check that out.

That’s the last we’ll talk about baseball labor in this week’s mailbag. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions on overlooked MVP candidates, how different baseball would be without Tommy John surgery, and which pitchers actually benefit from throwing first-pitch strikes. Before we do, 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 hard to know what to expect from a pitcher returning from a serious injury. In addition to velocity and spin rate, pitching is also about rhythm and feel, and that can take time to come back after a long layoff. But there was little rust for Gerrit Cole to shake off when he made his season debut Friday night at Yankee Stadium. In his first major league start since undergoing Tommy John surgery on March 11, 2025, Cole silenced the first-place Rays, allowing just two hits and three walks while striking out two across six scoreless innings. His only real trouble came in the first inning, when he gave up a leadoff single to Chandler Simpson and walked Junior Caminero to put two on with nobody out. After a Jonathan Aranda fly out, Cole picked the speedy Simpson off second base and then struck out Yandy Díaz looking at an inside fastball to end the inning. From there, he got in a groove. He averaged 96.1 mph with his four-seamer, and he threw 50 of his 72 pitches for strikes.

Cole left the game with the lead, but the Rays scored four runs in the top of the eighth inning to take the first game of the series, 4-2. They now lead the Yankees in the AL East by 5.5 games. Watching the Rays play Friday night, I couldn’t help but think about how annoying they would be to play against. They pitch well, put the ball in play, and are aggressive on the bases. One Yankee told me before the game that they remind him of last year’s Blue Jays because of their pesky bottom of the lineup and refusal to strike out. I’m still not sure how good the Rays are, but I get the feeling that they are always going to be better than I think.

In this week’s mailbag, we discuss another surprising team over the first two months of the season. We’ll also answer your questions about how many players in baseball have the ability to win MVP, how good Randy Johnson and other all-time-great starting pitchers would’ve been as closers, and why the 9-9-9 challenge beers are so small. 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 »

Earlier this week, we crossed the quarter mark of the season, and while 40 games is hardly a large sample size, the round number makes for an easy occasion to reflect on what’s happened thus far and consider how that could impact what’s still to come. My favorite bit of trivia is that it’s been a month since an NL Central team had a losing record. That team, remarkably, was the Cubs, who were last below .500 on the morning of April 15 and are now in first place after rattling off two separate 10-game winning streaks. Meanwhile, both the Brewers and Cardinals have never spent a game below .500. Only three other teams in baseball have not had a losing record this season: the Yankees, Braves, and Dodgers. Notice that quintet includes just one team in the American League, which has been underwhelming overall through the first quarter of the season. Entering play Friday, only five teams in the AL had winning records. In addition to the Yankees, the other four teams, hilariously, are the Rays, Guardians, White Sox, and Athletics. Just as we all expected.

On the individual side of things, many of the usual suspects rank near the top of the offensive leaderboards. There’s Aaron Judge, Yordan Alvarez, Kyle Schwarber, and Matt Olson all within the top 10 for wRC+, with Olson, Judge, and Alvarez also in the top 10 when sorting by WAR, along with Bobby Witt Jr., the leader. But there are also some unexpected names alongside this cohort. Ben Rice (193 wRC+), Shea Langeliers (179), Mickey Moniak (170), Jordan Walker (166), and Brice Turang (166) have emerged as top-10 hitters so far this season, and while it’s not a shock to see a Dodgers duo in the top 10 for position player WAR, it is a surprise that the two players in the pair are Andy Pages and Max Muncy (both at 2.0 WAR). By his standards, Shohei Ohtani has struggled at the plate — he’s slashing .240/.370/.427 with seven home runs and a 122 wRC+ entering Friday — but he’s offset that by turning into the best pitcher in baseball, at least by ERA. Through seven starts and 44 innings, he has a 0.82 ERA and 1.6 WAR, with the latter figure ranking seventh among major league pitchers. He’s the only pitcher with a top-10 WAR who has thrown fewer than 50 innings. Of the six pitchers above him, pitcher WAR leader Cam Schlittler (2.4) and Davis Martin (1.9 WAR) stand as the most surprising.

So the natural question is this: How much of what we’ve seen so far should we expect to continue? I’d say at least one NL Central team will finish the year below .500, as will the White Sox. I said two weeks ago that I wasn’t buying the Rays and A’s as true contenders, and I stand by that. But I do think Langeliers and Walker can sustain most of their production at the plate, and none of us should doubt Ohtani at this point. Otherwise, I’d rather not prognosticate further. We’ve got a mailbag to get to, and that’s way more fun that anything I have to say about Mickey Moniak. 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 »

One of my biggest regrets in the years I’ve been covering baseball is that I never got John Sterling’s list. You see, in addition to our mutual love of baseball, Sterling shared my appreciation for film noir. I don’t remember how it came up, but I learned of Sterling’s noir kick in the summer of 2023, when Yankees beat writer Chris Kirschner, of The Athletic, suggested I talk to the longtime Yankees radio broadcaster about it. I had never met Sterling before, but the next day in the Yankee Stadium press box dining room, I introduced myself. He was so excited to know that this 27-year-old kid also loved noir, and he immediately asked me what my favorites were. Right away, I rattled off In a Lonely Place, Out of the Past, and Double Indemnity, which looking back on it, must have made me seem like a noir novice, as if I said my three favorite Springsteen songs were “Born to Run,” “Born in the USA,” and “Dancing in the Dark.” But Sterling didn’t think anything of it. Or if he did, he didn’t show it. Instead, his face lit up, and in his baritone voice, he beamed about Bogart and Mitchum and MacMurray. We chatted for a few minutes before I asked him for his recommendations. He had to get back to the booth — it was almost game time — but he told me to come find him next homestand and he’d make a list for me. Unfortunately, I didn’t see him for another month or so, and when I did, I didn’t ask him for the list. We didn’t really know each other, and I didn’t want to bother him with something so trivial. He retired early the next season.

Growing up a Yankees fan from the Hudson Valley, I listened to Sterling for most of my life. His voice is woven into the fabric of my baseball fandom. It’s not a stretch to say that all those years spent listening to him on the radio contributed to my becoming a baseball writer. And yet, when I saw the news that Sterling had died on Monday at age 87, the first thing I thought about was the brief time we spent talking about film noir in front of the press box coffee machine that summer day in 2023. I never got the list, but I did get a wonderful memory. I’ll cherish it forever.

There’s no natural transition to the mailbag from there, so let’s just get to it. This week, we’ll be answering your questions about Austin Hedges’ unexpected hot start at the plate, the most efficient pitchers on a per-pitch basis, teams that register a .500 OBP in a game, and the largest percentage of career stolen bases coming in the shortest span of time. 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 »

I don’t pay too much attention to the standings in April. I look at them, of course, but that’s more a matter of routine than a desire to learn something substantial. It’s hard for teams to pull ahead of the pack this early in the season, and I’d rather not read too much into the fact that, say, the banged-up Blue Jays are a few games below .500, or that none of the five teams in the NL Central has a losing record. It takes time for these things to sort themselves out.

And yet, upon checking the standings Friday morning, I found myself pondering the significance of what I saw: specifically, that only three teams in the American League had a winning record. After a dizzying 20 minutes of digging, I lifted my head from my laptop in a daze, wondering how the heck I ended up staring at Baseball Reference’s playoff odds for the 14-18 White Sox. I think seeing the number 16.1% is what snapped me out of my stupor. (For what it’s worth, our Playoff Odds gave the South Siders a 2.2% chance to make the postseason, double their odds on Opening Day.) Anyway, about those three AL clubs above .500, the Yankees (20-11) were expected to be one of the best teams in baseball, so their place atop the standings wasn’t surprising, but the strong starts of the Rays (18-12) and Athletics (17-14) caught me a bit off guard. I thought Tampa Bay was destined for last place when the season began, and our Playoff Odds agreed, projecting the team to finish with 79.7 wins and giving it a 28.9% shot to reach the postseason. Entering May, the Rays have only added about two wins to their median projection (81.9), but they now have a 45.6% chance of making the playoffs. Meanwhile, I believed the A’s would be better this year, but better meant maybe a third-place finish in the AL West and an outside shot to snag the final AL Wild Card spot. Still, I figured they were more likely still a year or two away from true contention. Our preseason Playoff Odds tabbed them for 78 wins and a 21.4% shot at the playoffs. Now, they’re up to a projected 81.3 wins and 43.1% odds. I still don’t think either team will play postseason baseball this year; according to both their Pythagorean and BaseRuns records, the Rays have played more like a .500 team than one that’s on pace to win 97 games, while the A’s simply don’t have enough pitching. Remember, it’s only the start of May. There’s so much more baseball still to be played.

OK, that’s enough about the Rays and A’s in this week’s mailbag. Today, we’ll be answering your questions about how good Shohei Ohtani would be at basketball, whether James Wood is one of the best lefty batters ever at hitting the ball the other way, which batter has the most hits against a pitcher without recording an out, and what would happen if ZiPS forgot about 2020. But before we get to all of that, 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 »

A question popped into my head as I edited Ryan Blake’s column on the Nationals Friday morning. In the piece, shortly after noting that James Wood ranked third in the majors with a 170 wRC+, Ryan mentioned that Wood’s teammate, CJ Abrams, was sixth with a mark of 168. Upon reading this, I pulled up our leaderboards to see if the Nationals were the only team to have two players in the top 10. Turns out that, yes, they are. I thought about that for all of two seconds before something else caught my eye. Just below Abrams on the list was Mike Trout, who also had a 168 wRC+. This prompted me to wonder: Can Trout return to form? Can he both stay healthy and produce this year?

I’m hardly the only one who spent the bulk of the 2020s dreaming on a fully healthy season from Trout, just as I’m not alone in having abandoned that hope as the injuries piled up. But after watching him blast home run after home run last week from the Yankee Stadium pressbox, I felt the pull of the past encroach upon the present, and perhaps against my better judgment, I started dreaming again. He sure looked as healthy as ever as his broad body barreled up baseballs and roamed center field. The best way to describe the way Trout moves — really, the way he has always moved — is that he lumbers and boulders; for all of his natural athleticism and breathtaking blend of speed and strength, he does not glide gracefully. I put that dream of a Trout renaissance on ice when the Angels left town, only for it to come back a week later. This time, though, I considered whether, at 34, he still has one more MVP season in him. He entered this weekend slashing .239/.417/.557 with eight home runs, and has posted 1.2 WAR in 25 games. He’s walking more than he’s striking out, and he’s already stolen four bases. His BABIP is a mere .228, 111 points below his career mark, so we should expect his batting average to see some positive regression. (Even if we know batting average isn’t all that indicative of player performance, it still matters for MVP voters.) His .483 xwOBA is second in the majors and 62 points above his wOBA. His defense has been below average so far, but if Trout keeps hitting like this, his glove won’t matter much for his MVP case. The narrative would certainly be in his favor.

I just answered two of my own questions from Friday in this mailbag, so I guess it’s time to get to yours. What if the Astros blow it all up? How might the Pirates benefit from a Houston fire sale? Why don’t teams develop bench players to be knuckleballers? What the heck was Austin Warren doing in the game with the bases loaded in the Mets’ 12th straight loss? We answer all these questions and more in this week’s mailbag. Plus, Jay Jaffe remembers Garret Anderson. 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 »