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:

Read the rest of this entry »

Spencer Schwellenbach had just two big-league games under his belt when he was featured here at FanGraphs early last June. The most recent of them had come a few days earlier at Fenway Park, where he’d allowed six runs and failed to get out of the fifth inning. Two starts into his career, the Atlanta Braves right-hander was 0-2 with an 8.38 ERA.

Those initial speed bumps quickly became a thing of the past. Schwellenbach allowed three runs over his next two outings, and by season’s end he had made 21 appearances and logged a 3.35 ERA and a 3.29 FIP. Counting this years’s 10 starts, the 24-year-old Saginaw, Michigan native has a 3.41 ERA and a 3.41 FIP over 185 innings. Moreover, he has a 23.5% strikeout rate and just a 4.7% walk rate. Relentlessly attacking the zone with a six-pitch mix, Schwellenbach has firmly established himself as a cog in Atlanta’s rotation.

On the eve of his returning to the mound in Boston last Sunday, I asked the 2021 second-round pick out of the University of Nebraska what has changed in the 11-plus months since we first spoke.

“Honestly, when we talked last year I was just throwing the ball to the catcher,” claimed Schwellenbach, who was a shortstop in his first two collegiate seasons and then a shortstop/closer as a junior. “It was really only my second year as just a pitcher, so I was very young-minded with how I pitched. Now that I’ve got 30 or so starts, I have an idea of what I’m trying to do out there. Being around guys like Max Fried, Charlie Morton, and Chris Sale last year was obviously big, too. I learned a lot from them, as well as from [pitching coach] Rick Kranitz.”

Morton, who is now with the Baltimore Orioles, helped him improve the quality of his curveball. Their mid-season conversation was the genesis of a more efficient grip. Read the rest of this entry »

Austin Riley was relatively raw when our 2017 Atlanta Braves Top Prospects list was published in February of that year. Six weeks short of his 20th birthday, he was coming off of a Low-A season in which he logged 20 home runs and a 124 wRC+, but also fanned 147 times. With lingering concerns about both his contact profile and conditioning, Eric Longenhagen conservatively ranked Riley no. 28 in a then-strong Atlanta system.

Riley has obviously gone on to have a highly successful career. Since debuting with the Braves in May 2019, Riley has put up a 124 wRC+ and 19.9 WAR across parts of seven seasons, slugged 30-plus homers in three different years, and made a pair of All-Star teams. A mainstay in the middle of Atlanta’s lineup, the 41st-overall pick in the 2015 draft out Southaven, Mississippi’s DeSoto Central High School has developed into one of the senior circuit’s top sluggers.

What did Riley’s 2017 FanGraphs scouting report look like? Moreover, what does he think about it all these years later? Wanting to find out I shared some of what our lead prospect analyst wrote and asked Riley to respond to it.

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“Riley began the year struggling with any sort of velocity and then improved the timing of his footwork, quieted his hands and started hitting. Late in the year, he was turning on plus velocity.”

“Very accurate,” Riley said. “Coming out of high school, I hadn’t seen velo a lot, and I kind of had a lot going on with my swing. I needed to make some adjustments. Being a bigger guy, a power guy, it was kind of, ‘All I have to do is touch the ball, get a barrel to the ball.’ It was one of my first steps in learning how to shorten everything up and just get a barrel to it. From there, good things happen.”

“He has plus raw power (at least) and has improved his body composition since high school (when he was a heavy 230). But at just 19, with some general stiffness to his actions, Riley is pretty likely to kick over to first base as he matures.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Braves have limped through the first seven weeks of the season at far less than full strength, particularly within their outfield, where they lost Jurickson Profar to an 80-game PED suspension and have taken a very slow and deliberate approach to Ronald Acuña Jr.’s rehabilitation from his second anterior cruciate ligament repair surgery in three years. That outfield has ranked among the majors’ least productive, offset only by the emergence of Eli White. But at least help is on the horizon. Acuña’s rehab stint is finally underway, and he could return to the Atlanta lineup as soon as this weekend.

Acuña tore his left ACL on May 26, 2024 and underwent surgery to repair it on June 4. When he returned from his 2021 tear of his right ACL nine months and one week after surgery, he did not play up to his usual standard in ’22. The Braves resolved to take his rehab more slowly this time around, resisting the urge to accelerate his timeline even with Acuña reportedly hitting 450-foot bombs in batting practice early in spring training, and even with the team stumbling out of the gate by losing its first seven games and 13 of its first 18. The 27-year-old slugger finally returned to action last Tuesday with the Braves’ Florida Complex League affiliate, homering off Kevin Velasco, a 19-year-old righty on the Orioles’ FCL squad:

.@ronaldacunajr24 goes yard in his first rehab start! pic.twitter.com/e5ZFhb9jSF

— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) May 13, 2025

Acuña then moved up to Triple-A Gwinnett, where he went 3-for-6 with a homer and six walks in three games against the Charlotte Knights, affiliate of the White Sox, from Thursday through Saturday. The homer, a 102-mph, 420-footer to dead center, was hit off 25-year-old lefty Tyler Schweitzer. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

It’s not often that I take a pause from the prospect lists to write about individual call-ups, but we have three big league debuts on the docket for today, and I wanted to update readers on those pitchers, as well one other prospect-related bycatch that’s come up during the course of me working on the Reds, Guardians, and Brewers org lists.

First, let’s talk about the starting pitchers making their big league debuts today: Chase Petty of the Reds, AJ Blubaugh of the Astros, and Noah Cameron of the Royals. All of them have updated player profiles over on The Board.

Chase Petty, RHP, Cincinnati Reds (50 FV)

Petty, who touched 102 in high school, came to the Reds from Minnesota during the spring of 2022 in a trade for Sonny Gray. After missing time with an elbow issue in 2023, he had a healthy and complete 2024 season in which he worked 137 innings spent mostly at Double-A Chattanooga, many more frames than he had thrown in any year prior. Proving he could sustain big stuff across that load of innings was instrumental to his inclusion among the 2025 Top 100 Prospects. His fastball was still sitting 94-97 mph after Petty had been promoted to Louisville at the very end of last season, and he has carried that into 2025. As of his call-up, he has 27 strikeouts, nine walks, and a 1.30 WHIP in 23 innings (five starts). Read the rest of this entry »

Sean Newcomb has thus far fallen short of the high expectations he’d set coming out of college and during his first years of pro ball. Drafted 15th overall by the Los Angeles Angels in 2014 out of the University of Hartford, the 31-year-old left-hander has a record of 28-28 to go with a 4.50 ERA and a 4.38 FIP over 454 1/3 career big league innings. He’s currently trying to revive his career. Now with his fifth organization after signing with the Boston Red Sox as a minor league free agent over the winter, Newcomb made the team out of spring training — injuries to multiple Red Sox hurlers played a role in his doing so — and he’s since taken the hill six times. Over five starts and one relief appearance, the Massachusetts native has a 4.24 ERA, a 2.61 FIP, and a 27.5% strikeout rate in 23 1/3 frames. All three of his decisions have been losses.

His second major league season suggested stardom was in his future. Traded from the Angels to the Atlanta Braves as part of the Andrelton Simmons deal in November 2015, Newcomb went on to make 30 starts in 2018 and log a 3.90 ERA over 164 innings. In June of that year he was featured here at FanGraphs, with yours truly writing that the hard-throwing southpaw was “rapidly establishing himself as one of the best pitchers in the National League.” A month later, he came within one strike of notching a no-hitter. Then things started going in the wrong direction. Newcomb not only landed in the Braves bullpen in 2019, he had a stint in Triple-A. From 2020-2024, he tossed just 98 2/3 big league innings while toiling for three different teams. His ERA over that span was 6.66 ERA.

Turn the clock back to March 2015, and Newcomb was ranked no. 2 on our Angels Top Prospects list, behind only Andrew Heaney. What did Newcomb’s FanGraphs scouting report look like at the time? Moreover, what does he think about it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what our then prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel wrote, and asked Newcomb to respond to it.

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“Newcomb was the Hunter Dozier of the 2014 draft, a player that clubs liked higher than the media consensus had them, partly because teams weren’t sure if they were the only team that had him so high, so they kept it pretty quiet.”

“I think a big part of it was my coming out of the Northeast,” Newcomb replied. “That made me a little more of an unknown, but I did kind of have an idea that I was going to be a first-rounder. I talked to all 30 clubs. I actually thought there was a chance that I was going with the fifth pick to Minnesota.”

“Sources have indicated that the Mariners probably would’ve taken Newcomb with the sixth pick if Alex Jackson wasn’t there.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Braves entered 2024 with high hopes for the coming season, but their campaign ended in disappointing fashion. After making the playoffs by the slimmest of margins, they were unceremoniously eliminated by the Padres. It’s now been more than seven months since Atlanta’s early exit, and the calendar has flipped to a new season. The same cannot be said for the team’s fortunes.

Indeed, the Braves have started off this year in a funk, and not of the good Sly and the Family Stone variety. A season-opening series against the Padres, followed by a trip to Chavez Ravine for a matchup with the defending-champion Dodgers, left Atlanta with seven losses to start the season and Reynaldo López on the IL for most, if not all, of 2025. A sweep of the similarly underwhelming Minnesota Twins staunched the bleeding somewhat, but another wound opened up soon after, as Spencer Strider strained his hamstring playing catch on Monday and returned to the IL just one start after coming back from major elbow surgery.

A 9-14 start, even when coupled with the loss of López and Strider, doesn’t make 2025 a lost cause, but it does complicate matters considerably. Let’s first look back at the ZiPS preseason projections for the NL East standings. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2023, the Braves didn’t just lead the league in basically every offensive category, they posted historic numbers. They followed up that performance with a more middle-of-the-pack showing in 2024. Some of that downturn can be classified as regression to the mean, while some of it was definitely injury-related, with key contributors such as Ronald Acuña Jr., Ozzie Albies, Sean Murphy, and Austin Riley missing large chunks of the season. Moving forward, those theories imply that a healthy Braves lineup should perform somewhere in between their historically great 2023 and their exceptionally mediocre 2024. So far, however, the 2025 Braves have posted a gaunt 82 wRC+ as a team, creating anxiety that 2024 wasn’t just an unlucky draw from the low end of the range of possible outcomes, but rather something representative of a new normal, an indication that the range of possible outcomes in Atlanta has shifted downward. Of course, it’s too early to say for sure, especially since Acuña hasn’t made his 2025 debut, but batted ball and swing data, as well as changes in opponent pitching strategy, may offer insight into how pitchers have regained the upper hand when facing the Braves’ lineup.

If the extreme discrepancy in outcomes between 2023 and 2024 really was just variation within the error bars around Atlanta’s true talent level, then we’d expect to observe some amount of luck (good or bad) in their batted ball outcomes, which would lead their expected stats to diverge from their actual numbers, but the table below indicates their expected stats align pretty closely with reality:

Read the rest of this entry »

This seems like an apt moment to reexamine the concept of value. What is a relief pitcher worth? What is anything worth? The context matters quite a bit. In boom times, when you can barely remember a past in which the arrow pointed any direction but up, the upside feels so real that it’s hard to resist. Sure, a premier setup man with a short track record is a luxury, but what’s the harm in splurging? In the darker times, when the eggs sitting in your refrigerator have suddenly gone from basic staples to commodities so precious that you can’t afford to waste them on something as trivial as breakfast, you need to hunt for value wherever you can find it.

For an Astros team determined to reset its luxury tax penalty, that means trading away reliever Rafael Montero and eating 72% of the money remaining on his contract in order to be free of the other 28%. For the Braves, reeling from a series of early-season setbacks, that means taking a chance on the discounted Montero and his untested splitter in exchange for a player to be named later. Read the rest of this entry »