Austin Hays is having a productive-when-healthy season with the Cincinnati Reds. The 30-year-old outfielder has missed time with a calf strain, a hamstring strain, and a foot contusion, but he’s also slashed .282/.338/.510 with 10 home runs in 228 plate appearances. Moreover, his 128 wRC+ and .360 wOBA are both second on the team (behind Elly De La Cruz) among those with at least 140 PAs.

His résumé is that of a solid hitter. From 2021-2023— his first full seasons in the majors — Hays had 97 doubles and 54 home runs, as well as a wRC+ ranging between 106 and 111. Those three seasons were spent with the Baltimore Orioles, who subsequently swapped him to the Philadelphia Phillies in exchange for Seranthony Domínguez and Cristian Pache a few days before last July’s trade deadline. Hays’s 2024 campaign was the worst of his career. Hampered by injuries and illness — a kidney infection proved most problematic — he had a 97 wRC+ while playing in just 85 games. The Reds then inked him to a free agent contract over the winter,

Which brings us to the crux of this column’s lead item: the reasons behind the success he’s currently having.

“Consistency is probably the biggest thing,” Hays told me. “There’s not always an adjustment to be made. Sometimes it’s just the game [and] you’re being pitched tough. I don’t want to be altering too much of what I do well. In the past, I would sometimes pay too much attention to what the pitcher was doing and try to adjust to that. Staying strong to my strengths — locking in on those strengths — is going to help me over the course of 162 [games].” Read the rest of this entry »

Nick Allen is definitely going to show up on my FanGraphs Walk-Off page. I’ve checked in on him a lot over the last month, but of the 1,664 stats on his player page (yes, I counted them all), I’ve really only been paying attention to one number. I just want to know how many plate appearances Allen has. The answer is 304, and that won’t do.

A month ago, I wrote about homerless qualifiers, the all-but-extinct subset of players who come to the plate often enough to qualify for the batting title – a minimum of 3.1 plate appearances per team game, or 502 over a 162-game season – without hitting even a single home run. At the time, Xavier Edwards was the only homerless qualifier left, but I didn’t believe in him – which is to say that I did believe he had the capacity to hit a home run. He did just that on July 12, blasting a 97.8-mph wall-scraper off Scott Blewett:

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A month ago, I checked in on Spencer Strider’s worrisome return from internal brace surgery. After four starts, Strider was 0-4 with a 5.68 ERA and a 6.40 FIP. His fastball had lost two ticks. His arm angle had fallen by seven degrees. He wasn’t getting chases. He wasn’t missing bats. In short, he didn’t look like Spencer Strider. “There’s no way for us to know how long it might take Strider to get back up to speed,” I wrote, “but the longer he looks like this, the more reason there is to worry.” One month later, I return to you with good news. Strider has made six more starts, and over the last five, he is starting to look different. He’s run a 2.70 ERA and a 2.35 FIP. His strikeout rate is up and his walk rate is down. You might even say that Strider is halfway back.

Once again, the velocity is the big ticket item, so let’s not waste any time:

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Last week, I began a series of pieces about team win-loss totals as estimated by BaseRuns, first by taking a broad look at the methodology and its limitations, then by zooming in on the offenses that deviate most notably from their BaseRuns assessment in the run scoring department. Let’s wrap up with a look at the defenses that sit furthest from their runs allowed approximation.

In the offense edition, I used a game show format to evaluate whether the perspective offered by BaseRuns has a point, or if there’s something its methodology is overlooking. We’ll keep that framework going for the defenses as well. Here’s a reminder of how it works:

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.

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Coming into 2025, you might not have expected Alejandro Kirk and Ernie Clement to play central roles on a playoff contender. Neither player was an above-average hitter last season; in fact, each hit for a 93 wRC+ while playing regularly for a team that won just 74 games. Yet the pair rank first and second in position player WAR on the Blue Jays, thanks not only to improved offense but exceptional glovework, with Kirk battling the Giants’ Patrick Bailey for the top spot in two catching metrics, and Clement ranking among the best third basemen while also posting strong metrics in limited duty at the three other infield positions. The pair have not only helped the Blue Jays to a 47-38 record and the top AL Wild Card position, but also the top ranking in my annual midseason defensive breakdown.

Kirk and Clement aren’t Toronto’s only defensive stalwarts. Second baseman Andrés Giménez and center fielder Myles Straw, a pair of light-hitting glove whizzes acquired from the Guardians in separate trades this past winter, have been strong at their respective positions, with the latter helping to cover for the absences of Daulton Varsho. A Gold Glove winner last year, Varsho missed the first month of this season recovering from right rotator cuff surgery, and returned to the injured list on June 1 due to a strained left hamstring. Even in limited duty, Straw, Varsho, and Giménez — who missed about four weeks due to a quad strain, with Clement filling in at second for most of that time — have all rated as three to five runs above average according to Statcast’s Fielding Runs Value (FRV), and five to eight above average according to Defensive Runs Saved (DRS). Clement has totaled 12 DRS and 10 FRV at the four infield spots; in 359.2 innings at third, he’s second in the majors in both DRS (7) and FRV (5).

This is the third year in a row I’ve taken a midseason dip into the alphabet soup of defensive metrics, including Defensive Runs Saved (DRS), Statcast’s Fielding Run Value (FRV), and our own catcher framing metric (hereafter abbreviated as FRM, as it is on our stat pages). One longtime standby, Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), has been retired, which required me to adjust my methodology. Read the rest of this entry »

When Ozzie Albies signed his current contract, I decried it in such terms that, well, “decried” was an accurate description. This 22-year-old middle infielder, coming off a season of 24 home runs and 4.0 WAR, had signed away his prime earning years to the Braves for seven years at an average of $5 million per. Two option years could keep him in Atlanta through 2027 without increasing the contract’s AAV. It was an all-time swindle, I wrote. Esau got a better deal when he sold his inheritance for a bowl of stew.

Six years later, I sit here contemplating a question that once would’ve seemed unfathomable: Should the Braves pick up those option years?

Through his first 83 games, Albies is hitting .223/.297/.321, which is a wRC+ of 74. He has never before hit under .259, nor slugged under .450, nor posted a wRC+ under 100 in any previous healthy season. There’s probably a little bad batted ball luck in there, and some malaise from Atlanta’s comprehensively frustrating, injury-riddled season to date. Read the rest of this entry »

Nico Hoerner hit a home run on Tuesday. It wasn’t exactly a tape measure shot – the ball left his bat at 97 mph and traveled a projected 364 feet, making it 31 feet shorter and nearly 8 mph softer than the average home run this season – but he certainly got all of it. Plenty of players have hit even softer and shorter homers. It was mostly noticeable because it was Hoerner’s first home run of the season.

Among qualified players, Hoerner ranks in the bottom 10 in hard-hit rate, barrel rate, and both max and 90th-percentile exit velocity. He’s a contact hitter, not a power hitter, and it works just fine. He’s running a 102 wRC+ this season, a mark he’s bettered in each of the last four seasons. Still, he’s hit at least seven home runs in each of the last three seasons, and he was due to get on the board at some point. You can’t say the same for Xavier Edwards.

Over three partial seasons in Miami, the 25-year-old Edwards has hit just one home run in 678 plate appearances. He’s the only qualified player this season with a barrel rate of 0% — that is to say he has not yet hit a barrel over his 291 plate appearances and 216 batted balls. I bring all this up because Hoerner’s home run leaves Edwards as the only player who currently has enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title without a single home run. He’s the only player on pace to join an increasingly exclusive fraternity: The Homerless Qualifier Club.

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Last Wednesday against the Mets, Chris Sale nearly went the distance for the first time in over six years. Now he’s been sidelined — an all-too-familiar occurrence in recent years — thanks to a freak injury, a fractured rib cage suffered while making an acrobatic defensive play. His loss interrupts a strong follow-up to his first Cy Young-winning season and a stretch in which the Braves have tried to dig themselves out of their early-season hole.

At Truist Park, Sale shut out the Mets on four hits through the first eight innings, needing just 102 pitches. With a 5-0 lead, manager Brian Snitker sent his ace back out for the ninth, giving him a shot at his first shutout since June 5, 2019, when he spun a three-hitter for the Red Sox against the Royals. Facing Juan Soto to lead off the inning, Sale ran the count full, then induced the slugger to hit a soft chopper to the right side of the infield. The 36-year-old lefty dove for the ball halfway between the mound and first base, landed on his left side while stopping it, and recovered to throw to first from his knees. It was an impressive play, if not an entirely necessary one given the score and the possibility that second baseman Ozzie Albies could have thrown out the none-too-fleet-footed Soto. “Do you think he wants this complete game?” marveled play-by-play broadcaster Brandon Gaudin.

With the adrenaline pumping, Sale didn’t show any sign of injury. He followed up his diving play by striking out Pete Alonso, blowing a 96-mph four-seamer by him for his sixth punchout of the night. He was one strike away from finishing when Brandon Nimmo blooped a single into left field on his 116th pitch of the night. Not wanting to push the matter any further — Sale hadn’t gone past 116 pitches since August 19, 2017, and no pitcher this season has gone past 117 — Snitker brought in closer Raisel Iglesias, who needed just two pitches to close out the game by retiring Luis Torrens on a grounder. Read the rest of this entry »

Max Fried is one of the best pitchers in baseball. Now in his ninth big league season, and his first with the New York Yankees after eight with the Atlanta Braves, the 31-year-old southpaw is 9-2 with a 1.89 ERA over 95 innings. His career marks are impressive as well. Since debuting in August 2017, Fried has a 2.96 ERA and 3.25 FIP to go with a sparkling 82-38 record. His .683 winning percentage ranks behind only Clayton Kershaw (.695) among active pitchers with at least 100 decisions.

When our 2015 Atlanta Braves Top Prospect list was published in January of that year, Fried was coming off a 2014 season that saw him miss the first three months with forearm soreness and throw just 10 2/3 innings in the low minors before undergoing Tommy John surgery in July. Acquired by Atlanta from the San Diego Padres shortly before our list went up, the seventh overall pick in the 2012 draft was ranked third in the Braves system by Kiley McDaniel, then our lead prospect analyst.

What did Fried’s 2015 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 McDaniel wrote and asked Fried to respond to it.

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“The 6-foot-4, 185 pound lefty was half of what may have been the best one-two punch in high school baseball history, with Nationals top prospect RHP Lucas Giolito at Harvard Westlake High School in 2012.”

“It was definitely a good little thing,” replied Fried. “It didn’t mention that Jack Flaherty was in there, too. He was probably a better performer in high school than both of us. His stats blew mine and Lucas’ out of the water.”

“Scouts were concerned going into the 2012 draft spring about the unusually high volume of pitches with limited down time on the high school’s pitching program.” Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. I took a week off to indulge in a little French Open binge-watching, and after one of the greatest finals of my lifetime, I was ready to charge back into baseball. That feeling – charging ahead – has been something of a theme across baseball of late. You want speed? Chaos? Huge tools and do-or-die choices? This week’s list is for you. It starts, as usual, with a nod to Zach Lowe of The Ringer for originating this format. It also starts, as everything seems to these days, with a green-and-gold blur.

1. The Flash
If you turn on a random A’s game of late, you’re liable to see something like this:

And if you’re lucky, something like this afterward:

Denzel Clarke is on quite the heater right now. That spectacular play doesn’t even come close to his greatest major league feat, this absurd home run robbery:

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