Last week, I turned on the tail end of a Blue Jays-Phillies clash. I was hoping to get some notes for an article on Alec Bohm that didn’t really come together. The game was a complete laugher, with Philadelphia leading by five runs in the ninth. All I wanted was to see Bohm put a ball in play, but instead this happened:

Braydon Fisher came out firing in that low-leverage chance. He came out firing curveballs, to be specific – 12 of his 18 offerings in the inning. The Phillies swung at them like they were learning how physics works on the fly. But so what? Anyone can look that good for one game. Major league pitchers have good stuff, more at 11.

Then I started looking at Fisher’s prior games, and I started getting more intrigued. Wait, this guy almost never throws his upper-90s fastball? Wait, he has two different plus breaking balls? Wait, his walk rate was what in the minors last year (14.2%, and above 15% in Triple-A)? I started watching more at-bats and started getting interested. The slider? It’s nasty:

The key characteristic here is velocity. At 88 miles an hour, sliders don’t give opposing hitters much time to adjust. The tight gyro shape of the pitch means it works against lefties and righties alike. His over-the-top release gives the pitch a ton of downward plane, too: Though he doesn’t induce much break on the pitch, it seems to vanish downward when he locates it around the knees.
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Few things tickle my fancy like a baseball player up to no good. Blue Jays reliever Brendon Little presently holds this distinction. Take a gander:

That’s Ramón Laureano swinging at Little’s knuckle-curve, which Little bounced off the front edge of home plate. Here’s another (pardon Matt Olson’s cameo):

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Hello, and welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. Memorial Day marks the point at which we’re a third of the way through the season, a great time to take stock of how preseason story lines have fared in the light of the regular season day. The Orioles might be bad. The Phillies and Tigers might be great. The Rockies might be the worst team of all time. Aaron Judge might be an alien. We’ve learned a lot so far – but none of those things affect the day-to-day experience of watching baseball. That’s what I like about it so much – you can turn on a random game, completely ignore any of those overarching narratives, and still see something delightful. So this week, let’s celebrate the little things that don’t necessarily win games but do consistently bring a smile to my face. With my customary nod to Zach Lowe of The Ringer for his basketball column that inspired this one, let’s dive in.

1. Determination
I’ve always been fascinated by Nick Allen, who blends elite shortstop defense with a completely powerless approach to offense. That combination got him traded to the Braves this winter to play a utility infielder role, but he outplayed Orlando Arcia in spring training to claim the starting job, and he’s been running with it. Not on offense – his 68 wRC+ is both mortifying and a career high – but on defense, he’s never been better.

Allen’s defense is many things, but most importantly to me, it’s kinetic. He doesn’t give up on plays. He’s always moving. He’ll throw from any platform, any arm angle, jump or twist or slide to get more force behind it. He’s graceful around second base, but it’s a nervous kind of grace, a ballet dancer after four shots of espresso. And if something gets in his way, he’ll just run through it:

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Mason Fluharty is flying under the radar as one of baseball’s most effective lefty relievers. Since making his major league debut with the Toronto Blue Jays on April Fools Day, the 23-year-old southpaw has a 1.96 ERA and a 2.94 FIP over 18 appearances. Moreover, he’s allowed just seven hits in his 18-and-third innings, and prior to surrendering a solo home run to former Jay Danny Jansen this past Tuesday he’d retired 21 consecutive batters. All three of his decisions are in the win column.

His initial two outings were especially challenging. The first batter Fluharty faced in the bigs was Washington Nationals 2024 All-Star CJ Abrams, who lined a run-scoring double. Three days later, the first batter in his second outing was Juan Soto; the New York Mets superstar also stroked a run-scoring double.

I asked the 2022 fifth-round pick out of Liberty University about those welcome-to-the-big-leagues ABs prior to his third appearance.

“Get put into the fire and see what happens,” said Fluharty, who later that same day faced Rafael Devers [E-6], Alex Bregman [K], and Rob Refsnyder [DP]. “I’m glad they have faith in me. While I obviously would have preferred better outcomes in those first outings, it’s all about adjusting. This game is hard.”

The pitches that were turned around for two-baggers? Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. For once, I don’t have a fistful of double plays to show you. I don’t even have that many great catches. The baseball I watched this week was disjointed and messy, the regular season at its finest. Making the easy plays tough? We’ve got that. Bringing in your lefty to face their righty slugger? Got that too. Doubles that weren’t? Collisions between out-of-position players? Yes and yes. So thanks Zach Lowe for the wonderful article format, and let’s get started.

1. Tell ‘Em, Wash
I mean, how hard could first base be? Incredibly hard, of course. The Red Sox and Rangers are both on to their respective Plan Bs at first base after Triston Casas ruptured his patellar tendon and Jake Burger got sent down to Triple-A. No big deal defensively, right? Each team plugged in a utility player — Romy Gonzalez for Boston and Josh Smith for Texas — and moved on with life. Look how easy first is:

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It is well known that analytics have changed the baseball landscape. Moreover, it is widely understood that the evolution is ongoing. Embracing innovation, especially within the technology realm, has increasingly become a must for teams looking to keep up with — and ideally get a step ahead of — the competition. For front offices across the game, it’s adapt or die.

What does that mean for the general managers and presidents of baseball operations who lead those front offices? In other words, how have the ever-continuing advancements impacted their jobs over the years? Wanting to find out, I asked four longtime executives for their perspectives.

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On how analytics have impacted the job

John Mozeliak, St. Louis Cardinals

“When I first broke in, how you made decisions was basically based on scouting reports and traditional statistics. Now it’s much more analytically driven because of the advanced metrics. If you think about it, in the old days when people would invest in stocks… it’s the same kind of thinking now. The more information you have, the better your decisions are. That’s changed quite a bit over the last 25 years.

“Two things come to mind. One is understanding the longevity of a player. In other words, how long should you be investing in a player? The other thing is prospect evaluation; how much value someone might have, even though they’re still in the minor leagues. When you think back to 20-30 years ago, a lot of times minor league players didn’t have the same type of value that you’re seeing today.

“The economics of baseball have changed drastically. There is more revenue in the game, and higher payrolls, but there is also how you think about moving talent for talent. It’s much more based on economics than just pure ‘I think he’s a good baseball player.’”

Jerry Dipoto, Seattle Mariners Read the rest of this entry »

Brooks Baldwin doesn’t profile as a future star, but that doesn’t mean he won’t have a long and productive major league career. Versatility is a big reason why.
A poor man’s Ben Zobrist, the 24-year-old switch-hitter has played every defensive position besides first base, catcher, and pitcher since debuting with the Chicago White Sox last summer. It may be only a matter of time before those three are added to his résumé. Counting his days as a North Carolina prep and a UNC-Wilmington Seahawk, there isn’t anywhere he hasn’t played.

The versatility dates back to his formative years.

“I’ve been playing all over the field since I was 10 years old,” explained Baldwin, who was announced as a third baseman when the White Sox selected him in the 12th round of the 2022 draft. “It’s something my dad instilled in me, not restricting myself to one position. He played pro ball a little bit [in the Cleveland Guardians system], and before that in college at Clemson. He did the same thing.”

Chuck Baldwin’s son has seen time at first base in the minors, and the other two missing positions at the major league level are ones he’s well acquainted with. The chip off the old block caught “pretty often” in his freshman and sophomore years of high school, and pitched all four years. Primarily a starter, he had a fastball in the upper-80s as a senior.

Baldwin has been switch-hitting since he was eight or nine years old. His father’s high school coach, Linwood Hedgepeth, made the suggestion. After watching the naturally-left-handed hitter in the batting cage, the member of the North Carolina Baseball Hall of Fame told the elder Baldwin,’This kid can switch it.’” Read the rest of this entry »

Max Scherzer has had a Hall of Fame-quality career. Now with the Toronto Blue Jays, the 40-year-old right-hander has accumulated 73.0 WAR to go with 216 wins and a 133 ERA+ across his 18 big league seasons. Moreover, his 3,408 strikeouts rank 11th all time, and his résumé also includes three Cy Young Awards, eight All-Star selections, and a pair of World Series rings. Writing about his Cooperstown chances last summer, my esteemed colleague Jay Jaffe called Scherzer “a lock for election.”

Let’s turn the clock back to 2007, when Scherzer made his professional debut that summer a full year after he was drafted 11th overall by the Arizona Diamondbacks out of the University of Missouri. The following spring, Scherzer was ranked fourth in the D-backs system when Baseball America’s 2008 Prospect Handbook was published. Rankings and in-depth scouting reports weren’t yet a thing here at FanGraphs.

What did Scherzer’s 2008 Baseball America scouting report look like? Moreover, what does he think of it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what BA’s Will Lingo wrote and asked Scherzer to respond to it.

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“The 11th overall pick in 2006, Scherzer pitched for the independent Fort Worth Cats and held out before he would have reentered the draft pool.”

“That’s right,” replied Scherzer. “Now that you think about it, the rules have changed since then, but when I got drafted by the Diamondbacks… actually, let’s go back to pre-draft. That season, my junior year, I slammed a door on my finger. I tried to pitch through it and developed biceps tendonitis. That scared off a lot of teams.

“I came back at the end of the year and pitched well, so I went into the draft saying that I was still looking for a top-college-pitcher contract. That was when you could still sign major league contracts out of the draft, and it’s what I told teams I was looking for. Arizona drafted me under those pretenses, but then tried to tell me I was hurt. I was like, ‘You guys literally just saw me at the Big 12 tournament. Everything is back. I’m good.’ I let them know that I wasn’t going to take 11th-pick slot; I was looking for a major league contract, which is what the top college pitchers in the past few years had gotten. Read the rest of this entry »

Penn Murfee was mentioned in the interview with Trent Blank that ran here at FanGraphs on Friday. Discussing pitch profiles, Seattle’s director of pitching strategy recalled the erstwhile Mariners reliever being “a guy who had cut-ride” on his four-seam fastball.

Murfee is now with the White Sox, and Chicago’s South Side club is in Boston for a weekend series, so I took the opportunity to get his own perspective on the offering. What I learned talking to him at my home base of Fenway Park is that the movement he gets on his heater is circumstantial. Moreover, it’s legal.

“Back in 2021, in [Triple-A] Sacramento, my pitch profile changed from a running arm-side fastball,” explained Murfee, who was in the Seattle system from 2018-2023, the last year-plus of that span in the majors. “For whatever reason, I started choking the ball a little tight, and began throwing what was classified as a cutter. It went to zero inches of horizontal movement. My pitching coach at the time said, ‘Whatever you changed, don’t change it back.’ He said that I went from having a very average fastball to something unique.”

The reason behind the movement change? He stopped using sticky. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. There must have been something in the water across the league over the past seven days, because while this column always highlights delightful oddities that I caught, they aren’t often so delightful or so odd. This week, rarities abounded. There were runners getting hit by throws, wild acrobatics, no-look passes, and even a pitchout. Hot teams and cold teams clashed, errors got compounded, and situations that felt in hand rapidly got away. So keep an eye on the runner at first base, and let’s get started – after my customary thanks to Zach Lowe of The Ringer, who popularized this column format for basketball.

1. Not-Quite-Free Bases
Jarren Duran is off to a slow start to the 2025 season. And while the problems have mostly come at the plate, everything seems a little off. Take this misadventure on the basepaths last Thursday. Duran led off the bottom of the 10th inning with a game-tying single. That made him the winning run, and he immediately started plotting a theft of second base to get into scoring position. Nick Sandlin checked on him:

Then he checked on him again:

That’s two disengagements; Sandlin wasn’t likely to try again. Duran stole 34 bases last year. He’s blazing fast. He was 5-for-5 on the season and had already swiped one in this game. Second base was as good as his. And so the Blue Jays took extreme measures, calling for one of the least-used plays in modern baseball, a pitchout:

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