The Nationals have the misfortune of playing in the wrong league. At 55-58, they’re absolutely buried in the National League Wild Card race, 4.5 games out with four teams between them and the last spot. Meanwhile, the Guardians have the fortune of playing in the American League, where their 57-56 record not only has them in a playoff spot at the moment, but a mere three games back of the division lead. So while these two teams have played to nearly identical records (the Nats have better Pythagorean and BaseRuns records, but it’s close), Washington is selling and Cleveland is buying. More specifically, Cleveland acquired Nats ace Foster Griffin in exchange for a four-prospect sampler platter, as first reported by Mark Feinsand.

It seems like Cleveland is always hanging around the playoff race. They’ve won the AL Central six times in the last decade and finished in second place another three. Of late, they’ve done it with great bullpens and blah starters, with a contact-and-defense approach to hitters. But this year, the defense isn’t clicking like it normally does, the offense is scoring less than four runs a game, and the bullpen is outside of the top 10 in WAR for the first time since 2023, the only year since 2012 where they’ve finished below .500. In other words, the rotation has been shouldering a much heavier workload this year.

Parker Messick and Gavin Williams have been the straws stirring the drink for the Guardians so far in 2026. Joey Cantillo has been better than advertised as well. Heck, Tanner Bibee isn’t missing bats like he used to, but he’s provided valuable innings. But there just wasn’t enough there for Cleveland to feel comfortable – not enough depth, not enough certainty about who would start in the playoffs, not enough margin for error. And so they acquired not the best pitcher on the market – that’d be Tarik Skubal – but perhaps the most Guardians-y pitcher on the market, a pitchability-and-command lefty who doesn’t throw hard but still gets outs. Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees acquired another bat for their offense on Sunday, bringing in first baseman/second baseman Luis García Jr. in return for pitchers Jack Cebert, Ben Grable, Yovanny Cruz, and Jake Bird. Scratched from Sunday’s lineup due to the strong possibility of a trade being completed, García has had a breakout season, at least when it comes to power, hitting .283/.313/.560 with 23 home runs in 104 games, for a wRC+ of 134 and 2.2 WAR.

The offense has been a real sore spot for New York lately, so making an addition here was a primary concern for the club. When the Yankees woke up for an off-day on the morning of June 1, they ranked second in baseball in wRC+ and fourth overall in runs scored. Aaron Judge had gone 1-for-4 with two RBI the night before, and that was the last time we saw him in a game. Before first pitch that day, the three-time MVP was removed from the lineup due to lingering shoulder soreness. Later, after imaging revealed a stress fracture in Judge’s right rib cage, he was placed on the IL.

Since losing Judge, the Yankees have had the worst wRC+ in baseball, at 87, and have ranked 26th in the league in runs scored. That they have still managed to play barely winning baseball, going 27-26 since then, is thanks to their elite pitching. Crunching some numbers, if the Yankees had merely had a league-average pitching staff over the last two months, they would have about six fewer wins right now, which is basically their entire cushion in the wild card race. Read the rest of this entry »

What has Tarik Skubal been thinking about lately? The obvious answer is where he will be playing once the trade deadline passes, but that wasn’t how I posed the question to him a few weeks ago. What I was interested in were his thoughts on pitching as a whole.

“The evolution of the fastball,” replied Skubal, whom the Detroit Tigers dealt to the Los Angeles Dodgers late last night for a package of prospects. “What is a fastball and how guys pitch. In today’s game, more than ever, guys have two versions of the fastball. Maybe three. The cutter is still a fastball in my eyes, so cut-fastball, sinker, four-seamer. Lance Lynn was the guy who did it when I was first in the big leagues. He threw three fastballs. Now you see Cam Schlittler doing it, others guys doing it. The development of fastball offerings: just how much different it is now versus, say, 10 years ago? That’s something I would be interested to see.”

I dug up that info — more specifically, my colleague Jon Becker unearthed it for me — and we’ll get to that in a moment. First let’s hear more of what the always-insightful southpaw had to say.

“I think you almost have to have two different fastballs now, just to give them different looks,” Skubal told me. “Hitters are so good at covering one fastball, and if you give them two, that’s tough on them. I feel like that transition — multiple fastballs — is happening a lot right now.”

Skubal, whose arsenal is sans a cutter but includes an elite changeup, has thrown his four-seamer at a 36.5% clip this season, and his sinker at a 19.8% clip. The lesser used of his two fastballs isn’t great in a vacuum, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an important weapon in his arsenal. Read the rest of this entry »

The Nationals have been one of my favorite teams to watch this season. Their offense has been spectacular, the best in the majors in multiple statistical categories. They’re scoring 5.48 runs per game, which easily paces the league. Even better for my viewing purposes, they rarely play a dull game. That’s because their pitching staff allows nearly as many runs as their offense scores. They’ve allowed the third-most runs in the majors this year, an ugly 5.21 per game.

This combination of amazing hitting and questionable pitching has given the Nationals their best shot at making the playoffs since they won the World Series in 2019. It also makes their goals at the trade deadline simple: Get more pitching. But before the Nats decide who to acquire, they need to figure out who to replace. That means the question I’ve been wondering in recent months is also surely of great interest to the DC decision-makers. That question: Is Cade Cavalli this good?

The majority of the Washington rotation is easy for me to evaluate. Foster Griffin? Pretty good! He came back from a three-year stint with the Yomiuri Giants this winter, and the six-pitch mix he developed there has served him well. Nothing he throws will wow you, but he has good command of it all and uses everything well. Sure, he’s not as good as his 2.76 ERA, but pretty much every other ERA estimator has him in the mid-to-high threes. The Nats, again, are allowing more than five runs a game. He’s an outlier relative to the rest of the pitching staff. Read the rest of this entry »

The Boston Red Sox and Washington Nationals kicked off trade deadline season in earnest on Saturday night, when Boston sent left-handed pitcher Connelly Early to the Nats for corner infielder Curtis Mead.

Most consequential trades this time of year involve a contender swapping one or more prospects for an established big leaguer. Not so this one. At the time of the trade, the Red Sox and Nationals were in similar positions in the standings: The Sox were 53-50, seven and a half games out of the division lead, but half a game up in the AL Wild Card race. The Nats were 53-52, eight and a half games out of first place in the NL East, but only two games out of a Wild Card spot. Both teams are playing with house money: Boston on account of being 14 games under .500 less than five weeks ago, and Washington on account of… everything that’s happened since the start of the 2020 season.

And there’s little difference between Early and Mead in terms of age or team control: Mead is 25, and barring substantial changes in the next CBA, he’ll be arbitration-eligible after the 2027 season and under team control through 2030. Early is one year younger and one year behind Mead on the journey to both of those milestones.

Sound the alarm, friends, because what we’ve got here is a bona fide challenge trade. Read the rest of this entry »

Troy Melton has excelled since returning to the mound in late May. Over nine starts comprising 55 innings, the 25-year-old Detroit Tigers right-hander has won five of six decisions while logging a 1.80 ERA and a 3.86 FIP. Sidelined for the initial two months of the season due to elbow inflammation, he is back to being one of baseball’s most-promising young pitchers.

What most stands out about Melton’s campaign to date? From an arsenal perspective, the answer has to be his cutter. Last season, he threw the pitch at a 10.8% clip to the tune of a .368 BAA and a 12.8% whiff rate. This year, the offering has elicited a .083 BAA and a 26.0% whiff rate while being thrown at a nearly-double 20.5% clip.

Why the increased reliance on his cutter, and why has it been so effective?

“I didn’t really change anything, which is the weirdest part,” Melton told me in the days leading up to the All-Star break. “I’ve just been throwing it way, way harder and getting a lot of swing-and-miss. I’ve been throwing my slider harder, too. I got one up to 91 [mph] in my last start, which is well above what I’d been doing previously.

“It’s definitely interesting,” the second-year big-leaguer continued. “It’s not even something I consciously changed, it’s just that I’ve had a little bit more intent. I realized that my intent wasn’t high enough, so I literally started trying to throw harder, and that didn’t sacrifice any execution. I’ve been executing just as good, if not better. My cutter has been kind of been the leading beneficiary of that.”

In terms of velocity, Melton’s cutter is averaging 92.2 mph, up from 90.9 mph in his rookie campaign. Locating the pitch better has likewise been a factor in its success, as has its role in his attack plan. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello. While on paternity leave, I kept a journal about baseball and my daughter, who is not named Derek Jr., but who will henceforth be referred to as Derek Jr. You can read all of the entries here.

May 18
The summer after my wife and I moved in together, we had a mouse in our apartment. We set traps everywhere we could think to put them, but no matter what kind of traps or bait I used, the mouse wanted nothing to do with them. After a couple days, I got desperate. I wanted to figure out exactly where the mouse was getting in so that I could close up the gap to keep it out. Failing that, I wanted to figure out where it was going so that I could set traps in the right places. So I propped up an iPad against the arm of the couch with its camera pointed at the kitchen, called it on FaceTime from my laptop, and brought the laptop into the bedroom and closed the door. Then I sat quietly, stared at my kitchen from the other room, and waited for the mouse to show up. Even as I was setting everything up, I recognized it as an act of madness. But it worked.

I didn’t glean much that first day. If I recall correctly, the mouse did eventually show up, but it turned out that the iPad didn’t have a good angle on its movements. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from or where it was going, only that it crossed the kitchen a time or two. Convinced that the concept was sound and the execution could be improved upon, I tried it again the next day. My wife was off work, so I explained that I needed her to hole up in the bedroom with me. She recognized it as an act of madness too, but she found it hilarious. She dubbed it Mouse TV, and she understandably shrieked when the mouse finally showed up. We watched and stifled our laughter as it nosed around the kitchen. It took a couple more days of Mouse TV to figure out where the mouse was coming from, plug the hole, and make sure that the mouse wasn’t coming back. My wife was tickled the whole time. Whereas I felt embarrassed and vaguely unclean about having a rodent in my home, she’d tell the story of Mouse TV to anyone who could listen. It has, somehow, become a fond memory. Read the rest of this entry »

Tarik Skubal started a spring training game I attended back in March — I believe it was in Dunedin — and something he said following the outing caught my attention. Speaking to a small group of reporters, the Detroit Tigers southpaw said “Ding was really creative back there today. I loved the pitch mix. I felt like he was using every weapon we needed.”

I asked Skubal if he could elaborate.

“I don’t know to explain it other than the flow was great,” he replied. “Mixing spin in counts where we typically don’t throw spin, then going to back to spin to get to the changeup. I felt like he was in control today. He was pressing the right buttons and I was synced up. It’s part of the sport where things happen subconsciously.”

Ding is, of course, All-Star catcher Dillon Dingler. Four months after Skubal spoke those words, I had an opportunity to ask the backstop how he would describe creativity within the framework of game-calling — not just when the Tigers ace is on the mound, but for the staff as a whole.

“You’re not going to try to recreate the wheel,” replied Dingler, whose diligent game prep is well-chronicled. “You’re going to stick with strengths, so it’s about finding different avenues to get to those strengths. That could be spinning in certain counts, spinning early, not showing the fastball until later. Then, once they’re on the fastball you can go changeup or to something else. There are a bunch of different avenues to get to the final result. Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday night’s outing wasn’t anything to write home about — four hits and five runs allowed over 5 2/3 innings in a 6-3 Washington Nationals loss to the Houston Astros — but Andrew Alvarez is having a good season. Across 12 appearances, including six as a starter, the 27-year-old southpaw from Los Alamitos, California has tossed 47 frames with a 3.64 ERA, a 2.97 FIP, and a 25.4% strikeout rate. Pitching in his first full big league season, he has been one of the few bright spots on a staff that is statistically among the worst in the majors.

Velocity isn’t his carrying tool. At 92.3 mph, Alvarez’s fastball ranks in just the 18th percentile for velocity. What the 2021 12th-round pick out of Cal Poly brings to the table is a five-pitch arsenal that leans heavily on a somewhat atypical breaking ball combination. In terms of usage, his mix has been 29.8% four-seamers, 28.7% curveballs, 24.7% gyro sliders, 13.9% sinkers, and 2.9% changeups.

The left-hander’s self-identity as a pitcher pretty much mirrors his profile.

“The Nationals have certainly helped me grow my game and understand who I am,” Alvarez told me prior to a recent game. “I’m not someone who is going to overpower you with stuff, but rather keep you off balance, get some weak contact and a little bit of chase here and there, a little bit of swing-and-miss. For me, it’s more about moving the ball around, changing speeds and locations, and [getting] a lot of groundballs”

Alvarez’s 57.1% groundball rate is tied for sixth highest among hurlers with at least 40 frames on the season. Moreover, his chase rate (57th percentile) and whiff rate (65th percentile) are both comfortably above league average.

And again, Alvarez’s breaking ball combination is atypical, as well as his primary attack plan against most hitters. Read the rest of this entry »

Recent Sunday Notes columns have included soccer segments with Jake Burger (Tottenham Hotspur) and Tommy Kahnle (Bayern Munich) discussing their respective allegiances, as well as their thoughts on the World Cup. This week we’ll hear from Sean Doolittle. The Washington Nationals’ assistant pitching coach is a devoted fan of Leeds United.

“It really kind of took off in 2020,” explained Doolittle, who prior to joining the coaching ranks made 463 relief appearances while playing for four teams, primarily Oakland and Washington, from 2012-2022. “Harvey Sharman, our director of medical services — the head of our training staff group [with the Nationals] — was a “physio” at Leeds for 15 years before he came to the states. I learned a lot about the club from him. Before that I was more of a casual soccer fan, playing a lot of FIFA on Xbox.

“They were in the Championship,” continued Doolittle, referring to England’s second-tier league. “They started up before us after the shutdown, and I remember watching those games and kind of jumping on the bandwagon. They won and got promoted to the Premier League. I was hooked after that. It’s since been an up-and-down couple of years, but last season [a mid-table finish] was really fun.”

Doolittle told me that his Leeds allegiance “isn’t super-influencing” the way he has been watching the World Cup, although he is very much aware of how the team’s players — four in all — have been faring on the sport’s biggest stage. He cited how Gabriel Gudmundsson (Sweden), Ao Tanaka (Japan), and Crysencio Summerville (Netherlands) have all seen their countries eliminated, while Brenden Aaronson still has a chance to hoist a trophy with Team USA. Read the rest of this entry »