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 (a .500 record or Playoff Odds around 10%), 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.

At the other positions in this series, I have used about 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 fourth full season of the universal DH, 0.6 WAR represents the median, with 10 teams below zero, 11 between zero and 1.0, and eight with 1.0 or more, with only four of those eight reaching 2.0. By comparison, at this time last year, half the teams in the majors were at 0.0 WAR or less. DHs as a group have hit .239/.322/.422 for a 108 wRC+ this season, the last of which matches 2024’s final figure.

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 ’24, the number of players reaching 450 plate appearances in the DH role increased from three to four to seven; this year, we’re on pace for 10. That said, many 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 »

Today the Killers list turns the corner — or rather turns to the teams receiving less-than-acceptable production in the outfield corners. 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 their roster. I’ve batched the two corners into one supersized roundup because three of the seven teams below the WAR cutoff for left field also make the list for right field, and because there’s plenty of crossover in play with regards to personnel. 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 July 31 deadline, but these are teams to keep an eye on.

Royals*

Good grief, somehow Royals corner outfielders have combined for -3.8 WAR, suggesting that the 47-50 team would be over .500 if it had found some typically unremarkable replacement level outfielders to fill those posts. Manager Matt Quatraro has used nine left fielders and eight right fielders, with some crossover between the two. Somehow, only one player at each position has managed even a 100 wRC+ in their thin slice of playing time, namely Jonathan India in left and Drew Waters in right. India, who’s played all of 21 games in left, is new to the position at the major league level; his glove is a liability no matter where you put him and he’s hitting just .251/.332/.348 (91 wRC+) overall. Waters, who’s played 41 games in left, 21 in right, and 22 in center, has hit just .243/.288/.316 (66 wRC+) overall, suggesting his 105 wRC+ in 53 PA in right is a fluke. Mark Canha has collapsed to a 49 wRC+ with career worsts in just about every key Statcast category, though his stints on the injured list for an adductor strain and (currently) tennis elbow have possibly contributed to his woes. None of the other principals at either corner has spent time on the IL.

Hunter Renfroe, who began the year as the regular right fielder, was a full win below replacement before he was released in late May. Jac Caglianone, a 22-year-old 50-FV prospect who has taken over right, has been the next-worst, at -0.9 WAR. Caglianone entered the season ranked no. 47 on our Top 100 Prospects list but had never played above High-A; he’s hit a cringeworthy .140/.196/.264 (22 wRC+) in 138 PA while chasing 41.1% of pitches outside the zone. At some point a responsible adult would send him back to the minors for more seasoning despite the occasional 466-foot homer. Instead, he’s 4-for-40 this month including that July 10 shot. Cool, cool.

In eight seasons of doing this series for FanGraphs (plus a handful of times at Baseball Prospectus and Sports Illustrated), I can’t recall even a fringe contender so hamstrung by an inability to find reasonably productive players at offense-first positions. It’s a testament to the quality of the Royals’ pitching and the play of Bobby Witt Jr., Maikel Garcia and Vinnie Pasquantino that this team even has a shred of a chance at a playoff spot. This is the part where I normally suggest potential trade targets who could help shore up the situation; in this case the answer is “just about anyone not already on the Royals roster.” Candidates such as the White Sox’s Andrew Benintendi and the Marlins’ Jesús Sánchez look like Juan Soto and Aaron Judge next to this crowd.

Reds*

Nothing the Reds have done with either outfield corner has worked for very long or very well. Manager Terry Francona has used 10 different left fielders and eight different right fielders, with six players getting time at both. Offseason acquisition Gavin Lux has logged a team-high 34 starts in left while bouncing around to make 30 more at DH, nine at second base, and five at third. Overall, he’s hit .265/.355/.379 (106 wRC+), but his play in left has been, uh, DH-caliber (-6 FRV, -4 DRS in 278.2 innings). Austin Hays, who’s split his time about equally between left (21 starts) and DH (23 starts), has been very effective when available (.287/.323/.517, 124 wRC+) amid three separate IL stints for left calf and left hamstring strains and a left foot contusion; he and Lux have generally shared the left field and DH roles against righties.

Jake Fraley has started 39 games in right, all but one against righties; he’s hit .224/.336/.376 (100 wRC+), but has served IL stints for a left calf strain and a right shoulder sprain, the latter of which he returned from just before the All-Star break. Will Benson has split his time between left (17 starts), right (22 starts), and center (three starts), with just four from that total against lefties; he’s scuffled to a .223/.276/.427 (87 wRC+) line. Of the eight other corner outfielders Francona has tried, only Santiago Espinal has a wRC+ of at least 100 in that capacity, but that’s over just 30 PA, and his overall 63 wRC+ factors into the Reds’ placement on the third base list.

With Hays and Fraley both healthy, the Reds are in better shape than they’ve been for most of the season; the pair has spent just about two weeks together on the active roster (the second half of April). Still, between those two and the everyday play of Lux at one position or another, they’re a bit light (spoiler alert: they’ll be on the DH list as well), with a right-handed bat probably their bigger need. Unlike the Phillies (below), they’re less inclined to add payroll, but as one of the league’s younger teams, they should think in terms of multiple years. Three righties who could be available, the Rangers’ Adolis García, the Orioles’ Ramón Laureano, and the Angels’ Taylor Ward, each have another year of club control remaining; the first two will be arbitration-eligible, the last has a $6.5 million option. Red Sox lefty Wilyer Abreu, who’s got one more pre-arbitration season, offers even more upside and control but will require a greater return.

Phillies*

As noted in Wednesday’s installment, the Phillies rank 27th in the majors in total outfield WAR at 0.3, with left field the weakest of the three positions. Max Kepler spent the better part of a decade as a league-average hitter with a good enough glove to be a two-to-three-win right fielder for the Twins, but last year, he made two trips to the IL and slipped to a 93 wRC+ and 0.9 WAR. The Phillies didn’t overcommit, signing him to a one-year, $10 million deal, but his offense has continued to lag. His 90 wRC+ (.210/.307/.371) is a career low, and in his first taste of left field — the easier of the two corners — his -2 FRV is as well. Kepler’s average exit velocity is about 2 mph higher than last year, with his barrel rate improving from 6.2% to 11.4%, and his hard-hit rate from 36.6% to 44.8%, but he’s fallen 51 points short of his .412 xSLG.

Right fielder Nick Castellanos needs no introduction to readers of this annual series. Four years into a five-year, $100 million deal with the Phillies, his timing remains impeccable: he’s landed here annually. His offense isn’t completely terrible for a change; his 107 wRC+ (.273/.313/.438) is in line with his final 2022 and ’23 lines, and only three points shy of the major league average for right fielders. Alas, he’s a DH stuck in the field because the Phillies already have a better DH in Kyle Schwarber. Castellanos’ defensive metrics are on track to be his worst since 2018; after averaging -9 DRS and -12 FRV in his first three seasons in Philly, he’s at -14 DRS and -12 FRV with 66 games to go.

The Phillies have recently given a bit of playing time in left field to 25-year-old rookie Otto Kemp, an undrafted free agent who hit .313/.416/.594 at Triple-A Lehigh Valley and is at .247/.316/.337 (86 wRC+) with a 28.6% strikeout rate through 98 PA thus far in the majors. Kemp has 30-grade contact skills due to his problems with secondary stuff, and his defense at third base, his primary position in the minors, is shaky. He might work as the short half of a corner platoon, but the Phillies really need to add a quality bat. Abreu, García, and Ward each offer some firepower (not necessarily without flaws), while Benintendi and Sánchez would at least raise the production floor.

Padres

Where have you gone, Jurickson Profar? A nation turns it’s lonely eyes to you… The departure of their 2024 left fielder left a hole that the Padres have tried to fill using 10 different player. The bygone platoon of Jason Heyward and Oscar Gonzalez wasn’t up to the task. What has worked lately, particularly on the offensive side, has been using Gavin Sheets in left. The ex-White Sock has hit .265/.324/.451 (119 wRC+) in 44 games at DH, 34 in left (with all but two of them coming since May 25), and 12 at first base. Historically, the 6-foot-3, 235-pound lefty has been brutal in right field (-23 DRS, -18 FRV in 1543 innings) but has been within one run of average in the two metrics in 263 innings in left thus far. He’s been light against lefties (96 wRC+, compared to 128 against righties), so he could use a platoon partner, particularly one who can also serve as a defensive replacement; neither Brandon Lockridge nor Bryce Johnson have shown themselves to be up to the task, but this shouldn’t be the hardest problem for A.J. Preller to solve at deadline time.

Dodgers

Michael Conforto’s one-year, $17 million deal flew under the radar this past winter given the team’s fancier expenditures, but like those, the early returns aren’t too hot. The 32-year-old Conforto has hit just .184/.298/.322 (80 wRC+) with eight homers and subpar defense in left field (-3 DRS, -3 FRV). July is his first month with a wRC+ of at least 100, albeit in just 38 PA, and there’s no underlying batted ball trend suggesting notable improvement. Indeed, Conforto’s Statcast contact numbers, while still above average, are down relative to last season, and he’s lagging well behind both his .243 xBA and .421 xSLG, with his 99-point shortfall in SLG the seventh-largest in the majors.

While the Dodgers have alternatives in left, Enrique Hernández figures in the third base picture with Max Muncy sidelined, and Andy Pages — whose 205 wRC+ in 44 PA is propping up the offensive numbers here — is better used in center or right. One as-yet unexplored option would be to add rookie Dalton Rushing to the mix. The 24-year-old backstop has hit just .221/.293/.309 (73 wRC+) since debuting in mid-May, but a weekly diet of 10 PA can’t be helping his cause, and he does have 33 games of minor league experience in left.

It’s not inconceivable that the Dodgers cut bait on Conforto, particularly if they have a roster crunch. But so long as their offense is scoring a major league-high 5.33 runs per game, the matter is less urgent than their perennial need for pitching amid so many injuries.

Astros

The Astros haven’t entirely buried the Jose Altuve experiment yet, but the 35-year-old star has started just two of Houston’s last 19 games in left (and 39 overall) compared to four at designated hitter and 13 at second base. His offense (.277/.336/.465, 121 wRC+) has been fine, but his defense at the new position has been brutal (-8 DRS, -4 FRV in 325 innings), and it’s been no picnic at second either (-3 DRS, 0 FRV in 263 innings). His best position these days is probably DH, and with Yordan Alvarez sidelined due to inflammation in his right hand with no clear return date, that option is at least open.

Of the eight other Astros who have played left, the best on both sides of the ball has been Mauricio Dubón, who’s made more starts at second than left (29 versus five) while also filling in at shortstop (where he’s helped to cover for the loss of Jeremy Peña to a broken rib), third, and the other two outfield spots. He’s hitting a comparatively robust .255/.292/.415 (96 wRC+) overall and is, of course, a better defender than Altuve at either post, but he belongs at a position where he can best utilize those defensive skills. The Astro who’d merit a closer look is Zach Dezenzo, but the 6-foot-5, 220-pound rookie was recently transferred to the 60-day IL while recovering from a capsule strain in his left hand. He’s just 6-for-47 while playing left but is hitting .245/.321/.367 (96 wRC+), with a 16.4% barrel rate and a .440 xSLG offsetting his 33.9% strikeout rate. He’s eligible to return in August, so the Astros may push forward with their current jumble and hope he can help later. Still, with apologies to Cooper Hummel, Taylor Trammell, et al, this team needs a garden-variety left fielder who can hit a lick and catch the ball.

Diamondbacks

Lourdes Gurriel Jr. is now in his third season as Arizona’s left fielder. While his .251/.299/.421 slashline represents drops of 28 points of AVG, 23 points of OBP, and 14 points of SLG relative to last year — for a 10-point drop in wRC+ (from 108 to 98) — his average exit velocity, barrel rate, and hard-hit rate are virtually unchanged, and his xBA, xSLG, and xwOBA have only fallen by six or seven points. Aside from a 4.5-percentage point drop in strikeout rate, resulting in more batted balls, nothing’s really changed for him on the offensive side. He’s on this list because of a bit of bad luck here and a dip in defensive metrics there (from 3 DRS to -6, and from 1 FRV to -2), but he’ll probably remain the everyday left fielder unless the Diamondbacks clear out some outfield depth and cut salary ahead of the trade deadline — in which case he could wind up with another team on this list.

Guardians

Originally drafted and developed by the Guardians, Nolan Jones made four Top 100 Prospects lists (2019–22) before being traded to the Rockies in November 2022. Following a strong rookie season in Colorado (20 homers, 20 steals, 137 wRC+, 3.7 WAR), he battled injuries — most notably a lower back strain — and struggled in 2024, hitting just .227/.321/.320 (69 wRC+) with three homers. The Guardians reacquired him in March and have generally started him against righties either in right (45 times) or center (12 times), with nine starts against lefties spread across the three outfield positions. Unfortunately, the lefty-swinging 27-year-old’s offense hasn’t returned; he’s batting just .229/.319/.330 (87 wRC+), though as noted in the center field installment, he’s hitting the ball harder than those results suggest, with a 91.5-mph average exit velocity (3.3 mph higher than last year), an 8% barrel rate, and a 46.3% hard-hit rate. He’s cut his groundball rate, is pulling the ball more often, and has even shaved his strikeout rate to 26.5%. The 95-point gap between his .425 xSLG and his actual mark is tied for the majors’ ninth-largest.

Jones could use some better luck and a better supporting cast. Jhonkensy Noel plummeted from last year’s 118 wRC+ to zero — yes, a 0 wRC+ — with a .140/.162/.215 slashline, earning him a ticket back to Triple-A Columbus. Current platoon partner Johnathan Rodríguez has been only slightly better (.140/.189/.220, 12 wRC+). Given their 46–49 record and other trouble spots (including shortstop and center field), the Guardians may wind up selling or holding, but one trade candidate who would make sense is Laureano, who spent parts of 2023 and ’24 with the team. The Guardians did release him last May, but his 135 wRC+ for the Braves and Orioles since then suggests he’s worth another look.

Mariners

The early-April loss of starting right fielder Victor Robles to a fracture of the humeral head in his left shoulder cost the Mariners a valuable catalyst. Luke Raley took over the position, but he strained his oblique in late April, missed seven weeks, and upon returning took over the long half of a first base platoon. Leody Taveras came and went. Fortunately for the Mariners, Dominic Canzone arrived from Triple-A Tacoma and has more or less saved the day. The 27-year-old lefty, who’s closed up his stance somewhat and is swinging the bat harder, has hit a sizzling .319/.340/.564 (158 wRC+) in 97 PA. Yes, he’s chasing nearly 38% of pitches outside the zone and walking just 3.1% of the time, but he’s also barreling the ball 15.6% of the time, and both his .300 xBA and .564 xSLG are in line with his actual numbers. He’ll cool off eventually, but currently this doesn’t look like a serious problem for the Mariners, and there’s still hope that Robles can return in September to provide support.

Cardinals

Jordan Walker entered the 2023 season as a 60-FV prospect ranked no. 12 on our Top 100 list, but in parts of three seasons, he’s produced diminishing returns, including a meager .210/.267/.295 (60 wRC+) with a 33% strikeout rate in 191 PA this season. He’s been largely absent from the lineup since late May, first missing a couple of weeks due to inflammation in his left wrist, then enduring a bout of appendicitis in late June. While on his latest rehab assignment, the Cardinals are again tinkering with his swing, but so far, he’s gone just 7-for-46, albeit with five extra-base hits, at Double-A Springfield and Triple-A Memphis.

Walker’s still just 23, but it’s fair to wonder if he’ll ever live up to that lofty prospect billing, at least in St. Louis. The good news for the Cardinals is that Alec Burleson has taken over right field and absolutely raked, hitting .333/.374/.592 (158 wRC+) in 138 PA. Overall, the 26-year-old lefty has hit .293/.340/.466 (125 wRC+), though he could use a platoon partner; he has a career 52 wRC+ against southpaws.

Twins

Matt Wallner can mash. In 2023 and ’24 combined, he hit .254/.371/.515 (148 wRC+) with 27 homers in 515 PA for the Twins, even while striking out a whopping 34% of the time and spending chunks of both seasons in Triple-A. The Twins hoped that he could approximate that production across a full season, but a mid-April hamstring strain curtailed his strong start; he didn’t return until May 31 and has managed just a 91 wRC+ since. His overall line (.205/.299/.449, 107 wRC+ with 10 homers) in 41 games in right and 12 at DH rates as a disappointment. He’s getting under too many balls; his 21.8% infield fly ball rate is the second-highest of any player with at least 150 PA. Trevor Larnach, who covered right for part of Wallner’s absence and has lately been sharing the job, has hit a modest .245/.311/.415 (102 wRC+) while playing 34 games in right plus another 59 at DH and in left field. Willi Castro, the only other Twin with at least 20 PA as a right fielder, has struggled in his time there (28 games but just 15 starts) but has hit for a 124 wRC+ overall in his utility role.

Considering this is now the fifth position at which the Twins have made a Killers list, it’s clear they’ll have to solve some problems from within in order to challenge for a playoff spot. Despite his struggles, Wallner’s recent track record provides more reason for optimism than, say, Ty France at first base.

With the draft and the All-Star Game out of the way, the next waypoint on the baseball calendar is the trade deadline. In other words, it is officially Trade Season. And the Royals and Pirates kicked it off on Wednesday morning with the first deadline deal. I got a little excited; sometimes, when the Royals and Pirates make a deal, you end up with Sir Francis Drake’s invaluable contribution to the defeat of the Spanish Armada at the Battle of Gravelines in 1588.

This was not one of those times. Kansas City sent minor league infielder Cam Devanney to Pittsburgh in exchange for Adam Frazier. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, we have a Killers two-fer, with lists covering a couple of important defensive positions, specifically second base and catcher. While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of a contender (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of roughly 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 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 thus far is worth a look. All statistics are through July 12.

Padres

With Kyle Higashioka departing for the Rangers in free agency, the Padres — who ranked 24th in the majors last year in catcher WAR (1.1) — pencilled in Luis Campusano, the weaker partner of last year’s catching tandem, alongside late-season addition Elias Díaz to do the bulk of the work behind plate. The pair, augmented by 38-year-old free agent Martín Maldonado, ranked dead last in our preseason Positional Power Rankings. After optioning Campusano to Triple-A El Paso in March (he was recalled yesterday), they’ve approximated that billing, ranking 29th out of the 30 teams in catcher WAR. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. Today that title is a bit of a misnomer; I got back from vacation Monday night, so I saw very little baseball before Tuesday. That said, I didn’t need to see very much to have a great time. This week has been awesome. Home runs both mammoth and inside-the-park, great baserunning by slow guys, bad baserunning by slow guys, reflex plays and dekes; the list goes on and on. We might need the All-Star break just to catch our collective breath before a bustling trade deadline and sprint to the finish. For now, though, let’s just marvel at the week – after my customary nod to Zach Lowe of The Ringer, of course.

1. Unconventional Double Plays
Cody Bellinger has been great addition to the Yankees after they acquired him for peanuts over the winter. He is flashing the offensive prowess that has come and gone over the years, and with Trent Grisham manning center, he is playing the corner outfield more than he has in the past. His glove isn’t as good as it was at his peak, but putting a center fielder in left is still a plus for your team defense, as the Mets learned on Sunday. This Juan Soto line drive would have been a hit against almost anyone else:

Statcast gave it a 25% catch probability, and I think it was probably even harder than that. Catch probability measures how far Bellinger had to run and how much time he had to do it, but that ball was absolutely scalded and had so much topspin that it was hooking down hard in the brief time it was in the air. He caught it by the very end of the webbing; “baseball is a game of inches” is usually about the bat hitting the ball or a bang-bang play, but in this case, one inch separated a catch from extra bases:

Oh yeah, then this happened:

That throw is as good of a play as the catch! At full extension, stretched out awkwardly to secure the ball, Bellinger still managed to find first base on the run and unleash an absolute seed that hit Paul Goldschmidt right in the glove on the fly. Making that catch was hard enough. Making it without falling was even harder. Making it without falling and then throwing a frozen rope on target? Almost unthinkable.

Even after that catch, even with that throw, you might wonder why Francisco Lindor got doubled off. Partially, he couldn’t believe anyone could catch that line drive. Partially, too, he got deked. Goldschmidt no-sold the play, barely moving his glove until he absolutely had to. This isn’t the body language of a guy desperate to turn a double play:

That’s not the perfect angle, but you get the idea. The rhythm of this play, to Lindor, didn’t feel like the kind where he’d need to sprint and dive back to first. When someone makes a play that good, you turn around and go back, but what are they going to do, unleash an off-balance missile while the first baseman you’re staring at barely moves? Apparently, yes!

2. Irrational Exuberance
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is not a good baserunner. That’s not an opinion. He’s been below average in each year of his major league career. He has 24 career steals and has been caught stealing 12 times. He’s slow, and he hits into a lot of double plays. But despite all that, Vlad likes to run. Give him the chance, and he’ll take off. Take Wednesday, for example. Guerrero took advantage of an errant pickoff throw to scamper to second:

You’ve seen that play a million times. Everyone was pretty relaxed about it; in the game audio, you can actually hear Jays first base coach Mark Budzinski calmly telling Vlad “go ahead, go ahead.” But the play wasn’t over:

Yeah, don’t do that. I’ve already mentioned that Guerrero isn’t fleet of foot, but it also took him forever to get moving; acceleration isn’t a strength either. Watch his feet – his first step was actually backwards, out into right field. Adrian Houser was on the wrong side of the mound, but Vlad just didn’t have enough straight line speed to make it matter. To make matters even worse, that was the third out of the inning, at third base, with Addison Barger — one of the teams’ hottest hitters — at the plate. Against the White Sox! Don’t do this.

Don’t do this either:

Now, to be fair, this is a tougher play than before. The underlying cause, though, is similar: a belief that baserunning is easier than it actually is. Elite runners might be safe there. That said, elite runners are a lot faster, and better at sliding, and they’d probably take two steps to their left to better block the throwing lane. That should be an extremely difficult throw for a right-handed first baseman, instead of the easy pitch-and-catch that it was. And once you’re dead to rights, well, hitting the brakes and retreating is a better option than starting your slide so early. You probably won’t survive the rundown, but you might stay in it long enough to give the runner on third time to score before you’re tagged for the final out of the inning.

To Guerrero’s credit, he did try a nifty maneuver at second that nearly rescued the whole thing:

Again, though, leave the high-difficulty baserunning stunts for the high-talent baserunners. Both of these decisions would be excellent if, say, Trea Turner had made them. Knowing what you can accomplish is a key part of accruing value on the bases. Watching what happens when that crucial step doesn’t occur sure is fun for a neutral observer, though.

3. One-up-manship
Kyle Schwarber had himself a game on Tuesday night. He went 2-for-4 with a double and a home run, and that homer was outrageous. Not only did he hit it into McCovey Cove, but he did so more or less flat-footed:

He even showed off another facet of his game an inning earlier, swiping second base off a distracted Robbie Ray:

That brought Schwarber to nine steals on the year, with only one caught stealing. He’s one of the slowest runners in baseball, but he understands the proper application of that speed, generally stealing bases off pitchers who forget about him. He’s not a particularly good baserunner overall, but he’s been picking smart spots to go this year.

One batter later, though, Schwarber tried to double up on his baserunning feat by swiping third. Enter Patrick Bailey:

Schwarber had a great read on Ray; he got an excellent jump in a great spot to steal, with the batter screening the catcher at the plate. Bailey just did everything he had to do that much better:

Watch his footwork there. He cleared batter Alec Bohm and got his lead foot planted at the back of the batter’s box while he was catching the ball. The catch and transfer were both perfect, letting him throw in rhythm. The throw? A laser beam to Matt Chapman’s glove for a tag that got Schwarber by an inch or two. I don’t think Schwarber could have done anything better; he just got beat by perhaps the best defensive catcher in the game.

Bailey is having a miserable season at the plate, but he even outdid Schwarber there, too. The Schwarbomb in the seventh put the Phillies up 3-1, and the score stayed there until Bailey batted with one out in the ninth. Then, well:

It’s hard to imagine a more exciting walk-off than that, and it made for the perfect kicker to this game. Sure, Schwarber had a stolen base and two-run homer, but Bailey had a caught stealing and a walk-off, three-run, inside-the-park homer. Real “anything you can do I can do better” vibes.

4. Two-Way Excellence
Oh, you like inside-the-park home runs? Northern California has your back:

That’s Lawrence Butler leading off the home half of the first for the A’s with an only-in-Sacramento play. It involved the ball kicking off of a chain link fence section of the wall and eluding the entire Braves outfield. That let Butler score even with one of the most nonchalant starts to an inside-the-parker you’ll ever see:

That’s the stride of someone who thought he hit the ball out of the park, but the crazy carom and Butler’s speed made it all work in the end. That’s been a hallmark of his game this year, in fact. He’s not the best defender in the world, but he’s got enough range and instincts to make up for a scattershot arm. He has plenty of swing-and-miss in his game, but he has enough plate discipline to keep his strikeouts from capsizing his offensive contributions. He’s a savvy baserunner capable of hitting top speed faster than you’d think. And he has enough power to make up for any small flaws elsewhere:

Inside the park? Outside the park? Butler has the speed/power combination to accomplish both. He looks like a nice building block of the next good A’s team – not this year’s team, of course, but maybe next year’s. After 1,000 major league plate appearances, it seems pretty clear that he’s a solid all-around player but not quite a star. That’s just fine for both the contract and the prospect pedigree, though – and as a huge bonus, he’s tremendously fun to watch. More home runs like these, please.

5. Raw Power
More home runs like these, too. Jac Caglianone was playing college baseball last year. The sixth pick in the 2024 draft, he looked more like a developmental stash than a plug-and-play star. He played both ways in college, though he was clearly a lot better offensively, and the Royals drafted him with that in mind. But he was raw, with iffy command of the strike zone and a swing-first mentality that led to ugly swings over sliders.

A whirlwind tour of the minors – 158 wRC+ in Double-A, 164 in Triple-A – convinced Kansas City to call him up at the beginning of June. Through just over a month of play, the results have been disappointing; Caglianone is hitting .151/.205/.286, for a 31 wRC+. But the results are lying. He’s been much better than I thought he’d be, to be quite honest. He’s running a 22% strikeout rate, far lower than I would have expected given that he’s chasing 41% of the pitches he sees outside the strike zone, one of the worst marks in the big leagues. The stats might be rough, but the process isn’t; by xwOBA, he’s been about an average hitter, rather than 70% below average, thanks to his prodigious exit velocities.

In other words, over the long run. Caglianone is going to hit for a lot of power. He’s already hitting the ball very hard, in fact, he just hasn’t quite harnessed that into doubles and dingers. But oh my god, have you seen what it looks like when he gets hot? Tuesday night, he did this:

If you want to know how scalded that ball was, watch the outfielders. Those are courtesy jogs, not “maybe I can get this one” sprints. That was 114 mph off the bat, the kind of home run that only the Judges and Stantons of the world can consistently pull off. When you hit the ball that low (19 degrees), it’s hard to leave the stadium. Caglianone is part of that group of elite power hitters already.

One hard-hit ball often begets another. His results so far have been poor, but he’s clearly close to unlocking something. If you leave a pitch over the middle of the plate against Caglianone, it’s going to travel a long way. Look at this nonsense from the next day:

That’s not a reasonable place to hit a home run. It went 466 feet, some real Bo Jackson stuff. I had the volume cranked up on this game, and the crack of the bat was so thunderous that the entire crowd went “ooooh” in unison. He might not have hit that ball quite as hard as the previous one, but he got it at the perfect angle and still tattooed it. His power binges are park-proof; Kaufmann Stadium is the stingiest stadium in baseball for left-handed power hitters, but if you hit the ball as hard as Caglianone does, it doesn’t matter where the fence is.

I didn’t think Caglianone was going to hit the majors this quickly. I’m still kind of surprised at how well he’s adapted to big league pitching; he’s getting attacked relentlessly on the inside part of the plate and chasing 40% of the time, and yet still running reasonable strikeout rates. But I’m not at all surprised at how fun he is to watch – and I can’t wait for more rainmaking home runs, and more mob movie celebrations in the dugout:

In a post yesterday, I wrote about the BaseRuns approach to estimating team winning percentages and how it attempts to strip away context that doesn’t pertain to a team’s actual ability, so as to reveal what would have happened if baseball were played in a world not governed by the whims of seemingly random variation. In this world, a win-loss record truly represents how good a team actually is. Try as it might, the BaseRuns methodology fails to actually create such a world, sometimes stripping away too much context, ignoring factors that do speak to a team’s quality, or both.

I delayed for a separate post (this one!) a deeper discussion of specific offensive and defensive units that BaseRuns represents quite differently compared to the actual numbers posted by these teams. To determine whether or not BaseRuns knows what it’s talking about with respect to each team, imagine yourself sitting in the audience on a game show set. The person on your left is dressed as Little Bo Peep, while the person on your right has gone to great lengths to look like Beetlejuice. That or Michael Keaton is really hard up for money. On stage there are a series of doors, each labeled with a team name. Behind each door is a flashing neon sign that reads either “Skill Issue!” or “Built Different!” Both can be either complimentary or derogatory depending on whether BaseRuns is more or less optimistic about a team relative to its actual record. For teams that BaseRuns suggests are better than the numbers indicate, the skill issue identified is a good thing — a latent ability not yet apparent in the on-field results. But if BaseRuns thinks a team is worse than the numbers currently imply, then skill issue is used more colloquially to suggest a lack thereof. The teams that are built different buck the norms laid out by BaseRuns and find a way that BaseRuns doesn’t consider to either excel or struggle. Read the rest of this entry »

Most former players remember details about personal milestones. A hitter can typically tell you where, and against whom, he recorded his first hit and home run. Ditto for details about an especially meaningful moment, perhaps a pennant-clinching double, or even a game-deciding grand slam against a bona fide ace. The same goes for pitchers. Ask them about their first win, their first strikeout — even their first home run allowed — and they can rattle off an answer without much effort. How many Ws were they credited with over the course of their career? Piece of cake.

Other questions aren’t so easy. With that in mind, I challenged former Kansas City Royals (and briefly Anaheim Angels) right-hander Mark Gubicza to a quiz. The now-Angels broadcaster wasn’t deterred when I warned him my questions weren’t going to be layups. Gubicza, who pitched in 384 games from 1984-1997, agreed to give it a shot.

——

The first question I asked the former All-Star was which batter he faced the most times. Gubicza guessed Kirby Puckett. Nope. His second guess, Jose Canseco, was likewise incorrect. I informed him the correct answer: Wade Boggs.

“I should have remembered that,” replied Gubicza, who squared off against the five-time batting champion 97 times. (Puckett was close behind at 92, while Canseco was further down the list at 60.) “He hit about .387 against me, or something like that.”

The hurler-turned-analyst got two of those three digits right. Boggs batted .367 against him, going 29-for-79 while also drawing 17 walks and lofting a sacrifice fly.

How about the batter who got the most hits off of him? Read the rest of this entry »

The Royals’ rotation was a key reason last year’s team made the playoffs for the first time since 2015, with the one-two punch of Seth Lugo and Cole Ragans leading the way. It was the first full season in the majors for Ragans, whose five-pitch mix helped him dominate hitters en route to an AL All-Star selection and a fourth-place finish in the Cy Young voting. Unfortunately, his follow-up season hasn’t gone so smoothly, and after landing on the injured list with a groin strain in May, Ragans has now been diagnosed with a rotator cuff strain and figures to miss significant time.

A 2016 first-round pick who underwent two Tommy John surgeries before debuting for the Rangers in ’22, Ragans enjoyed a meteoric rise in ’23, after his average fastball velocity jumped from 92.1 mph to 96.5. Not until he was traded to the Royals in a June 30, 2023 deal centered around Aroldis Chapman did he finally stick in a rotation (he had a nine-start trial in 2022), but once he did, the results were revelatory. He posted a 2.64 ERA, 2.49 FIP, and a 31.1% strikeout rate in 12 starts totaling 71.2 innings post-trade; his 2.4 WAR ranked 12th in the majors from July 1 onward. On the strength of an impressive fastball-changeup combo accompanied by a knuckle curve, slider, and cutter, he solidified his spot among the majors’ top pitchers last year. He made 32 starts and finished second in the AL in FIP (2.99), strikeouts (223), strikeout rate (29.3%), and WAR (4.9); seventh in innings (186.1 innings); and eighth in ERA (3.14). Read the rest of this entry »

With the sixth pick in the 2024 draft, the Kansas City Royals took slugger-pitcher Jac Caglianone out of the University of Florida, and set him to the task of being a full-time hitter. Caglianone’s short 2024 debut was a middling performance at best, as he hit .241/.302/.388 for the High-A Quad Cities Rivers Bandits, and while he showed impressive power in spots in the Arizona Fall League, he hardly dominated the opposition.

But since the calendar flipped to 2025, Caglianone has been on a quest for vengeance against pitchers with the ferocity of a Liam Neeson movie protagonist. First, he went 9-for-18 in spring training with six extra-base hits, in order to give major leaguers fair warning that he was coming for them. After hitting .322/.394/.553 for Double-A Northwest Arkansas, a promotion to Triple-A hasn’t tamped down his homerlust, and he’s already smacked five home runs for Omaha. The question of Caglianone’s promotion to the majors has rapidly become “when” rather than “if,” and it’s in the interest of the Royals to answer it with a three-letter word: “Now.” Read the rest of this entry »

No team has been caught stealing more than the Royals this year. As hard as it might be to believe, their 20 thwarted stolen base attempts are the most in the league. Their 70.1% stolen base success rate ranks 27th, as do their -2.1 weighted stolen base runs (wSB). This stands in stark contrast to what many think of as the Royals’ brand of baseball. After all, you’d have to go back to 2017 to find a full season in which the Royals didn’t rank among the top five AL teams in wSB, and all the way back to 2010 to find the last time their wSB was below league average. Thanks to players like Whit Merrifield, Jarrod Dyson, Adalberto Mondesi, Alcides Escobar and, most recently, Bobby Witt Jr., the Royals of the 2010s and 2020s developed a reputation as the most larcenous team in the league. From 2011-24, no team stole more bases, and no team racked up more wSB.

Kansas City’s stolen base supremacy hasn’t been limited to one side of the ball, either. From 2011-24, only two teams allowed fewer stolen bases than the Royals, and none caught would-be basestealers at a higher rate. According to the stolen base component of DRS (rSB), their catchers were twice as productive as any other team’s backstops in that period, while their pitchers were 12 runs better than the next-best team (the Diamondbacks) and more than three times as valuable as the next-best AL club (the Orioles). The Statcast numbers tell a similar story, although they only go back to 2016. From 2016-24, Kansas City catchers ranked second in both catcher and pitcher stealing runs. No other team placed within the top five in both metrics. So, you could make a pretty convincing case that preventing stolen bases is even more essential to the Royals’ brand of baseball than stealing bases, especially with the way things have gone in 2025. Their baserunners might be struggling to swipe bags like they did in the past, but their defense has taken control of the running game like never before. Read the rest of this entry »