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.
In a race for a playoff spot, every edge matters. Yet all too often, for reasons that extend beyond a player’s statistics, managers and general managers fail to make the moves that could improve their teams, allowing meager production to fester at the risk of smothering a club’s postseason hopes. In Baseball Prospectus’ 2007 book, It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over, I compiled a historical All-Star squad of ignominy, identifying players at each position whose performances had dragged their teams down in tight races: the Replacement-Level Killers. I’ve revisited the concept numerous times at multiple outlets and have adapted it at FanGraphs in an expanded format since 2018.
When it comes to defining replacement-level play, we needn’t hew too closely to exactitude. Any team that’s gotten less than 0.6 WAR from a position to this point — prorating to 1.0 over a full season — is generally in the ballpark, though my final lists also incorporate our Depth Charts rest-of-season projections, which may nose them over the line. Sometimes, acceptable or even above-average defense (which may depend upon which metric one uses) coupled with total ineptitude on offense is enough to flag a team. Sometimes a club may be well ahead of replacement level but has lost a key contributor to injury; sometimes the reverse is true, but the team hasn’t yet climbed above that first-cut threshold. As with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of hardcore pornography, I know replacement level when I see it. Read the rest of this entry »
Steve Sparks is a good storyteller, which serves him well in the broadcast booth. Now in his 14th season working alongside Robert Ford, Sparks forms one half of a Houston Astros radio team that ranks among the best in the business. He used to throw knuckleballs for a living. Pitching for five teams from 1995-2004, primarily the Detroit Tigers, the 61-year-old Tulsa, Oklahoma native took the mound 270 times to the tune of a 59-76 won-lost record and a 4.88 ERA. All told, he faced 626 different batters over 1,319 2/3 innings of work.
How well does he remember his more-notable matchups? Following in the footsteps of Geoff Blum, David Cone, Mark Grant, Mark Gubicza, Jeff Montgomery, and Dan Petry — links to those pieces can be found on their player pages — Sparks sat down for the seventh installment of our Challenging Career Quiz.
I began by asking which batter he faced the most times.
“It would probably have to be somebody in the American League Central,” replied Sparks, whom I spoke with at Fenway Park in early May. “I’ll say Frank Thomas.”
His guess was spot on. Sparks faced Thomas 60 times, with “The Big Hurt” going 13-for-49 with three home runs, nine walks, and a pair of plunkings. His memories of the Hall of Famer?
“I had the impression that he couldn’t reach the outside corner,” Sparks told me. “I felt like if I had to go somewhere, throwing a fastball or a cutter, I could go away to Frank Thomas. I found out very quickly that I was wrong. He was so far off the plate that I didn’t think he could reach it. But he could. Read the rest of this entry »
The 2026 season has not gone the way the Houston Astros envisioned. After Sunday’s loss to the Athletics, the Astros are 30-37 and in fourth place in the AL West. The only reason they’re even within shouting distance of first place is because the entire division has been mediocre so far. However, that doesn’t mean that everything’s gone wrong for them. One thing that has gone decidedly right for Houston is Yordan Alvarez’s comeback season. A fractured hand cost the three-time All-Star nearly four months of the 2025 season and, combined with a sprained ankle in September, limited him to a total of 48 games, his fewest since a torn patellar tendon wiped out all but two games of his 2020 campaign. But now he’s back with a vengeance, hitting .316/.431/.650 in 65 games for 3.3 WAR. He also leads the American League in home runs, RBI, and is second in batting average, behind only Yandy Díaz, at .325. We’re well into the third month of the season, which means the Triple Crown discussion is more than just silly speculation. Not that I’m above that, of course.
It’s true that two of the three Triple Crown stats have lost a significant amount of their analytical heft in recent decades, but it’s still a rare achievement for a player to finish the season leading his league in batting average, home runs, and RBI. More than that, though, Triple Crowns are cool. In the nearly 60 years since Red Sox legend Carl Yastrzemski won the AL Triple Crown in 1967, only Miguel Cabrera has managed to pull it off, in 2012 with the Tigers. No NL player has secured a Triple Crown since Joe Medwick in 1937.
For better or worse, Alvarez has tended to be overshadowed by Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani when the masses talk about baseball’s most feared sluggers. It’s hard for a huge power hitter on a successful franchise to be underrated, but I’d argue that Alvarez is actually one of those few examples. His 165 wRC+ ranks 11th in baseball history and fourth in the expansion era among players with a minimum of 3,000 plate appearances, and while that is bound to come down during his eventual decline phase, he’s set himself up nicely to be one of baseball’s all-time-great sluggers. He offers little defensive value, but he’s an incredibly well-rounded offensive player; he’s not a swing-and-miss hacker like many huge power hitters, and his production doesn’t diminish against left-handed pitchers. In fact, as Matt Martell explained in a Members-only mailbag column in January, Alvarez is the best left-on-left hitter since Barry Bonds. And even when we lower the minimum to 1,000 plate appearances, Alvarez is fifth in batting average among active players. Read the rest of this entry »
On Monday night, the Astros celebrated Memorial Day by no-hitting the Rangers. Throwing to catcher Christian Vázquez, pitchers Tatsuya Imai, Steven Okert, and Alimber Santa combined for the 18th no-hitter in a franchise history that dates back to 1962. According to the great Sarah Langs, not only is that the most no-hitters over that period, but the second-place Dodgers are a full five no-nos behind with 13. Imai was making just his sixth major league start. Santa was making his major league debut. There must be something in the water in Houston.
I didn’t catch any of the game live. I saw a supercut that shows all 27 outs the Astros got. This is it. You don’t have to watch it to enjoy this article, and it’s seven minutes long, but I at least wanted to give you the chance to experience the game the way I experienced it.
Several things jumped out at me at the beginning of the video. It starts with an establishing shot of Imai. He’s toeing the rubber before he throws his first pitch, and his stats are overlaid on the screen. They are yucky. He’s 1-2 with an 8.31 ERA, a 1.79 WHIP, a 3:2 walk-to-strikeout ratio, and a 4.64 xFIP. With the Seibu Lions in NPB, Imai ran an ERA below 2.50 in each of the last four seasons. He was unhittable. But his first five-start stretch stateside was abysmal. He hit the IL with arm fatigue after three outings, got lit up in his first Triple-A rehab start, then got lit up again in his first start back with the big club. In the start after that one, on May 18, Imai put up a game score of 41. Somehow, it was his second-best mark of the season. He previously threw a curveball, splitter, and regular changeup, but he seems to have abandoned them entirely. “Command,” wrote The Athletic’s Chandler Rome, “has been somewhere between spotty and nonexistent.” All of this is to say that, to this point in his short MLB career, Imai has not looked like a guy with no-hit stuff. Read the rest of this entry »
Geoff Blum faced 841 different pitchers over the course of 14 big league seasons, and while he doesn’t remember them all, many come to mind easily. That was proven when he recently became the sixth player-turned-broadcast-analyst to take part in our Challenging Career Quiz series. Did the erstwhile infielder maybe take a few liberties and look a few things up before we sat down for the exercise? He admitted as much, but as was the case with David Cone, Mark Grant, Mark Gubicza, Jeff Montgomery, and Dan Petry — links to those pieces can be found on their player pages — right and wrong answers are largely a secondary consideration. Entertaining anecdotes are the primary objective, and Blum followed suit by providing plenty of them.
I began by asking Blum — the first position player to be featured in this series — which pitcher he stood in the batter’s box against the most times.
“I was going to say Carlos Zambrano, but you gave me some time to look it up and I did cheat a little bit,” Blum replied with a laugh. “I knew it was going to be somebody in the NL Central, and we faced the Cubs a lot, so I figured it was going to be either Zambrano or Ryan Dempster. I also faced Dempster a bunch when he was with Florida and I was with Montreal, so I’m not surprised that he is the answer.”
Blum faced the right-handed Dempster 58 times — 18 more than Zambrano — going 15-for-53 with five walks. What does he remember about the current MLB Network analyst? Read the rest of this entry »
AJ Blubaugh has given a boost to the Astros bullpen since debuting in late April of last season. Over 29 big-league appearances (including three as a starter), the 25-year-old right-hander has logged a 3.22 ERA over 58-and-two-thirds innings while being credited with five wins, against three losses, and three saves. Drafted in the seventh round by Houston out of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2022, he ranked third among the system’s prospects with a 45 FV when he reached The Show.
His backstory is atypical, in part because of a pitch he hasn’t thrown since his days as an Ohio prep. Moreover, the Mansfield native now has a delivery that is both conventional and consistent. That wasn’t always the case.
“When I was in high school and started to get into pitching, I threw from three different slots,” Blubaugh explained. “An over-the-top arm slot, a sidearm arm slot, and a submarine arm slot. I would differentiate that every single pitch. One pitch would be a curveball from over the top, then I’d drop to sidearm and throw a slider. Then I’d throw a fastball from submarine. I was just a funky junk-ball thrower. I threw a knuckleball a bunch, probably from the time I was 10 years old to the time I graduated. It was probably my main pitch.”
Remarkably, his butterfly wasn’t simply delivered from down under; it came from each of his arm angles. Read the rest of this entry »
Spencer Arrighetti has twice been featured here at FanGraphs in standalone fashion, yours truly having interviewed the 26-year-old Houston Astros right-hander in April and August of his 2024 rookie season. On both occasions, he displayed an impressive knowledge of pitching analytics, as well as a thoughtful overall approach to his craft.
Our third conversation ended up focusing on his curveball. Arrighetti has been throwing the pitch at 31.4% clip this season, and not only has it been his most-used offering, it has been highly effective. As of this writing, it has yielded a .121 batting average and a .151 slugging percentage while eliciting a hefty 50.9% whiff rate. Arrighetti, who took the mound just seven times last season due to a fractured thumb and then right elbow inflammation, has made five starts this year to the tune of a 4-1 record and a 1.88 ERA over 28 2/3 innings. I spoke with him about his curve at Fenway Park earlier this month.
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David Laurila: You’re throwing a lot more curveballs than in years past. Why is that?
Spencer Arrighetti: “Before I got hurt, it was a top-10 curveball in baseball. That makes me feel confident to throw it to whomever, and at any time in the count. Having a pitch like that goes a long way, especially as a starting pitcher. I’ve just leaned into it a little more this year. In the past, I had the thought process that to get a chase or a whiff on a curveball, you had to set it up with a fastball — something harder in the zone — in order to make a hitter be early on it, or to be off of the shape. I’ve kind of found that there are guys that I can just spam it to. I can throw it as many times as I want, in the zone, out of the zone, and get good results. Read the rest of this entry »
Kai-Wei Teng had a limited repertoire when he signed with the Minnesota Twins out of Taiwan in 2017. The right-hander from Taichung possessed just a fastball and a curveball. A lot has changed since that time. Now 27 years old and pitching for the Houston Astros, Teng attacks hitters with a five-pitch mix that includes a sweeper that is not only hard to hit, it is no fun to be on the receiving end of in catch-play.
“It’s insanely good,” Spencer Arrighetti told me last weekend at Fenway Park. “I throw a sweeper. Lance [McCullers] throws a sweeper. We have a couple of other guys who toy around with it. But Teng’s is incredible. Truly. I played catch with him, and it looks like a fastball for 48 feet, then takes a 90-degree left turn. Not all sweepers are created equal. Some of them are a little loopier and bigger, but his is 85 mph. I mean, it’s gross. It really is a great pitch.”
The numbers back that up. Teng has relied on his most-used offering 36.3% of the time this season to the tune of a .118 BAA, a .118 SLG, and a 27.9% whiff rate. His other numbers are impressive, as well. Over 14 appearances, Teng has a 2.35 ERA, a 3.83 FIP, and a 24.7% strikeout rate over 23 innings.
On Tuesday night, the Astros came away with a big win against the Dodgers, but they suffered an even bigger loss, as an ankle injury in batting practice resulted in Carlos Correa being pulled before the game. The exact extent of the injury was not initially known, with the shortstop/third baseman scheduled to visit a specialist today, but Brian McTaggart of MLB.com reported late this morning that Correa will have surgery and miss the rest of the 2026 season:
Astros source: Carlos Correa will have surgery on his left ankle and will be out for the season. A devastating injury blow for the Astros.
This didn’t seem like the sort of mild sprain that’s healed by a bag of ice and a weekend spent watching old episodes of Top Chef with your foot elevated. Indeed, the initial returns Tuesday night were already pretty concerning, with McTaggart reporting that “the expectation was that Correa would be sidelined indefinitely.” Correa’s injury is to his left ankle, not his right, which appears to have been the source of worry when both the Mets and Giants put the kibosh on signing him in 2022 following team physicals. Read the rest of this entry »
