I think everyone has moments where they wonder just what the hell they’ve done with their lives. I’ve been blessed with the divine spark of human consciousness, and a body to tote those thoughts around in, and what have I accomplished? I had one of those moments recently while I was holding a friend’s baby, trying to make her laugh. What a delightful and important but most of all profound thing, to create a whole other person and cultivate her — from scratch — into a happy adult.

Or the next best thing, creating art. I’ll speak to what I know: music. I’m left in awe of songs that, through dynamic contrast and precision of rhythm and density of countermelody, seem to be carrying that divine spark themselves — the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th symphony, or Typhoon’s “Prosthetic Love.” So much care and emotion went into such composition that it’s hard not to be bowled over by the emotional transference of the artistic process even as you’re astounded by how precisely the pieces have been crafted and how seamlessly they fit together.

Again: What am I doing with my life to show that I value this gift? How am I using this spark to shape the world into a better place? How am I passing this light on to others? This thought burst out and grabbed me recently when I was poking around our site’s pitcher defense leaderboards and noticed something interesting about Josh Fleming. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

The emotional toll of losing Ronald Acuña Jr. to another ACL tear is obvious. The entirety of the baseball world came together to express shock and disappointment at Sunday evening’s news that Acuña would need season-ending surgery for the second time in four years. At his best, Acuña is arguably the most electric player in the game, as we saw last year during his otherworldly MVP-winning campaign, when he became the first player ever to hit 40 home runs and steal 70 bases in the same season. Baseball is simply not as exciting without him on the field.

Beyond that, though, the injury is a devastating loss for the Braves, whose probability to win the NL East — which was already diminished, as Dan Szymborski noted in his column on Friday — sunk by 10 percentage points within a day after Acuña went down. Sure, he was struggling over the first third of the season — he hit just four home runs in 49 games, and his OPS was nearly 300 points lower than last year’s mark — but his importance to the Atlanta lineup is undeniable.

Monday’s game, an 8-4 loss to the Nationals, provided a look at what the Braves’ offense will look like without the reigning MVP. The good news was that third baseman Austin Riley returned after missing 13 games with an intercostal strain, but it was clear that this was not the same unit that last year drew comparisons to the 1927 Yankees. Second baseman Ozzie Albies replaced Acuña in the leadoff spot, with Riley sliding to the two-hole and DH Marcell Ozuna, who’s been the team’s most productive hitter this year, moving from fifth to third in the order, ahead of slugging first baseman Matt Olson. After that, things drop off considerably, though it helps that catcher Sean Murphy is back from the oblique strain that kept him out since Opening Day. Read the rest of this entry »

Before the start of the season, the Atlanta Braves were the consensus pick to win the NL East. While it wasn’t unanimous – try getting a few dozen writers to fully agree on something – 22 of 25 FanGraphs writers predicted the Braves to win the division for the seventh straight season. Sportsbooks offered odds on Atlanta that had an implied probability of 75-80% for winning the division. ZiPS projected the Braves to win the most games in the majors and gave them a 63% chance to take the NL East crown. But as we approach the end of the first third of the season, it’s the Philadelphia Phillies who are on top of the division with the best record in baseball. The team’s six-game lead over Atlanta isn’t an insurmountable barrier, but it’s still a comfortable cushion for this point of the season. So, how concerned should the Braves be? And how long do they have to overcome their rivals and keep their division streak alive?

Frequently, when I discuss surprise first-place teams at this point of the season, I compare the situation to a hypothetical foot race between Usain Bolt and me. It goes without saying that Bolt is a much faster runner than I am, to the degree that he’d probably beat me in a race hopping on one foot. But what if he gave me a head start so I could get a sufficient lead? How far ahead would I have to be to have a chance to hold off the world’s fastest man? Uhhh, 10 steps from the finish line by the time he starts running might get it done. Obviously, this isn’t the perfect analogy, because even if Bolt is the Braves of running, I certainly am not the Phillies. But you get the idea: At some point in the season, a division race becomes a question of time, not talent.

First things first, let’s take a look at the current simulated ZiPS projected standings, through Thursday night’s games.

Well, at least if you go by the ZiPS projections, Atlanta fans aren’t getting the happiest version of this tale. ZiPS still thinks the Braves are the better team, but the margin has narrowed considerably. What was a 10-win gap in March has thinned to just a hair over a three-win separation per 162 games (20 points of winning percentage, to be exact). In fact, the Phillies are now projected to have an almost identical probability of winning the division as the Braves did at the start of the season, despite Atlanta’s aforementioned 10-game edge; as I remind people, the future is almost always far more uncertain than you think.

This is actually an impressively durable change, which further complicates matters for the Braves. Projections for teams don’t usually move quickly because, well, baseball history says they shouldn’t. ZiPS has been doing team projections since 2005. If all you had to go on to project the last two-thirds of a season was a team’s preseason projection in ZiPS and the team’s actual record for the first-third of the season, the best mix based on two decades of projections is about two-thirds ZiPS and one-third actual record.

The offenses tell much of the story, so let’s start with Philadelphia’s offense. Here are the differences between ZiPS preseason WAR and the current projected final WAR. The latter consists of the WAR already on the books and the rest-of-season projections. Remember, this already includes all those grumpy old regressions toward the mean.

That’s eight players projected to finish with at least a half-win more than at the start of the season. Castellanos is the only Phillies player whose projected WAR is now a half-win worse, but the projection systems didn’t expect much from him going into the season anyway. None of the hitters who are smashing the ball right now are expected to turn into midnight pumpkins. Even Bohm, the infielder ZiPS was most suspicious of, is now in the top 10 for most projected WAR added for 2025. And it’s not shocking that Harper, Realmuto, Turner (who is currently on the IL), and Stott are projected to maintain their strong starts.

As for the pitching, we projected the Phillies to have the second-best rotation in baseball, so their awesomeness is hardly surprising. Philadelphia’s stars have more than balanced out some of the outfield question marks and its depth hasn’t truly been tested yet, except for Turner’s injury — and as Jon Becker noted in his morning column on Tuesday, Turner’s replacements in the lineup, Sosa and Kody Clemens, have excelled in his absence.

As for the Braves, their vaunted offense has come out rather impotent. They rank seventh in the NL in runs scored, which isn’t disaster territory, but Ronald Acuña Jr., Matt Olson, and Austin Riley have all been just barely above league-average hitters this year. Sean Murphy has been out with an oblique injury that he suffered on Opening Day, but that’s been less of an impact because Travis d’Arnaud has been solid as the everyday backstop. Things might be a lot worse right now if not for the performances of d’Arnaud and Marcell Ozuna.

Atlanta’s current place in the standings is the fault of its underperforming stars, not its complementary talent. And that’s what makes it tough for the Braves to turn things around with a few trades, as they did in 2021 before surging to win the World Series. It’d be one thing if the problem were someone like Orlando Arcia, because the Braves wouldn’t think twice about benching or trading him to acquire a better shortstop. But when it comes to Acuña, Olson, and Riley, all Atlanta can do is wait for them to catch fire. What adds to this general feeling of helplessness is that the team’s biggest problem on the pitching side is Spencer Strider’s season-ending UCL injury. Even if the Braves were to try and swing a trade, their farm system is one of the weakest in baseball right now and only a few teams are currently out of contention. Major reinforcements aren’t on the way anytime soon.

The good news for Atlanta is that its stars are capable of breaking out of their funks at any moment, but the longer it takes them to turn things around, the more time the Phillies have to pull away. To get an idea of how much time the Braves have left, I took the current projected standings and had ZiPS simulate the rest of the season with both teams posting the same record going forward (for the sake of the example, I’m going with a 94-win pace) to see how quickly the divisional probabilities would change. Without picking up ground but also not losing any, Atlanta would slip to two-to-one divisional underdogs by June 10, and hit the three-to-one spot on the last day of the month. If this continues to the morning of the trade deadline, the Braves would find themselves with only an 18% projected chance to win the NL East, while the Phillies’ divisional odds would climb to 81%. (The Mets would still retain a few tenths of a percentage point.)

Let’s be clear: Despite the relatively gloomy outlook for Atlanta, a six-game deficit heading into Memorial Day Weekend is not insurmountable. In fact, the Phillies have the same divisional odds now as the Braves did two months ago. That said, for the first time since 2011, the NL East is the Philadelphia’s division to lose.

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen Chris Sale pitch like an ace — or it had been, until recently. For the first time in more than half a decade, the 35-year-old lefty is dominating hitters on a routine basis. On Monday night in Atlanta, Sale turned in his third consecutive scoreless start, shutting out the Padres for seven innings while striking out nine, and helping the Braves halt a four-game losing streak.

Sale allowed just five hits, didn’t walk a single batter, and went to a three-ball count just twice (he retired both hitters). Only in the fourth, when Donovan Solano and Ha-Seong Kim hit back-to-back two-out singles, did the Padres put two men on base against Sale. Solano took third on Kim’s single, and then Kim stole second, but Sale escaped the jam by getting José Azocar to fly out. San Diego mustered just five hard-hit balls, which together amounted to two singles — a 95.9-mph one in the first inning by Jurickson Profar, and a 108.2-mph scorcher in the second inning by Manny Machado — plus two groundouts and a fly out. The last of those, a towering 104.9-mph drive to left center by Kyle Higashioka, would have been a home run in 28 out of the 30 major league parks according to Statcast, but at Truist Park it was a routine warning track out to left fielder Adam Duvall.

Meanwhile, Sale generated 18 whiffs, seven apiece with his four-seamer and his slider, and four with his changeup. He had a 35% called strike and walk rate, and got the Padres to chase on 37% of his pitches outside the zone, consistent with his season rate, which is also his Statcast-era high. All but one of his strikeouts came on pitches out of the zone, most of them on the outer edge; six of them were swinging (three sliders, two fastballs, one changeup) and two were foul tips, while the other was a swinging strike at the top border:

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. After taking a week off to recharge and travel, I was itching to watch some baseball this week, and the sport delivered. After spending last week in New York, I had the city on my mind, and the Mets delivered with some exciting series against the Braves and Phillies. There was good rivalry action out west, too, with the Dodgers and Giants squaring off. And of course, there’s that classic rivalry, Tommy Pham against the concept of ever taking a single play off. As always, thanks to Zach Lowe for the inspiration for this series. Let’s get right into it.

1. Max Effort Every Time

Tommy Pham is my favorite baseball player. To be clear, I don’t think he’s the best baseball player. I’m not sure that I, personally, would want him as a teammate, even. He’s too intense for my laid back view of the world. But his maniacal drive is absolutely delightful to watch, and it’s particularly delightful now that he’s on a team that is absolutely not competing for a playoff spot this year.
Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday at Citi Field, Max Fried was unhittable. For seven innings, the 30-year-old lefty baffled the Mets, surviving a handful of hard-hit balls, including two that would have been home runs in several other ballparks. But because he walked three batters, went to a three-ball count against five others, and needed 24 pitches to complete the seventh while running his count to a season-high 109, Fried got the hook from manager Brian Snitker. He could only watch as J.D. Martinez — who had already hit two scorchers of at least 105 mph off Fried — clubbed a solo homer off closer Raisel Iglesias with two outs in the ninth. The Mets’ rally would ultimately fall short, but the run left the Braves still searching for their first no-hitter since Kent Mercker’s gem on April 8, 1994.

If Fried’s hitless outing evoked a sense of déjà vu, that’s because he did a very similar thing just 12 days earlier. On April 29 in Seattle, he and the Mariners’ Bryce Miller each held the opposing lineup hitless through six innings, the first time two pitchers did that in the same game in just over three full years. Miller faltered first, giving up an infield single to Ronald Acuña Jr., who came around to score; meanwhile, Fried departed after 100 pitches, and while Pierce Johnson pitched a hitless seventh inning, Joe Jiménez surrendered a single in the eighth. Unlike on Saturday, the Braves lost that one on a walk-off homer. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

The Kansas City Royals’ strong start has been one of the most surprising stories of the season thus far. With a comeback win over the Mariners last night, the Royals raised their record to 26-18 and pulled into second place in the AL Central, just a game and a half behind the Guardians for the division lead. Bobby Witt Jr. is playing like a legitimate MVP candidate, Salvador Perez is walking more and striking out less than ever (at age 34!), and Seth Lugo is pitching like he wants a Cy Young award in his trophy case.

But take a look at Kansas City’s lineup and offensive statistics and it doesn’t exactly look like one of the best teams in the American League. Entering Tuesday, the Royals had a 94 wRC+ (22nd in the majors) and a .307 wOBA (16th); they also ranked 14th in average (.242), 20th in on-base percentage (.304), 14th in slugging (.390), and tied for 18th in home runs (40). That’s a middling offense at best and a bottom-third group at worst.

The easy explanation for Kansas City’s success this year is its pitching staff, which entering Tuesday ranked ninth in baseball with a 3.49 ERA and a 3.73 FIP. More specifically, the rotation has been one of the best in the majors. Royals starters have combined for a 3.26 ERA (5th), a 3.44 FIP (4th), and 4.6 WAR (2nd), again as of the start of play Tuesday.

But a great rotation alone doesn’t make a good team. If the season ended yesterday, the Royals would be in the playoffs right now because they are producing at the plate in the moments that matter.

That 94 wRC+ overall? Forget it. Their wRC+ was 132 with runners in scoring position, 131 with runners on, and 137 in their few dozen bases plate appearances with the bases loaded. They weren’t as excellent in high-leverage spots (101 wRC+), but that’s still notably better than their wRC+ in all other situations (94).

So, is this a skill? Eh, probably not, but if you’d like to re-litigate Esky Magic from 2014 and 2015 in the comments, have at it. More likely, it’s some combination of luck and random variation in a quarter-season sample. Players don’t suddenly become better or worse depending on the situation, they just perform better or worse. The statistics I shared above are merely what has happened; they’re not predictive of what the rest of the season will hold. Jeff Sullivan put it best back in 2018 when looking at “clutch” through a win probability lens: The most important thing about clutch is that you shouldn’t count on it continuing.

Now, this isn’t to say that the Royals are frauds, because the flip side of the above statement also holds true. Just because you shouldn’t count on clutch continuing doesn’t mean that it won’t. Also, Kansas City isn’t winning only because of its situational hitting. They’ve got Witt and Salvy and all that starting pitching! The Royals may not be this good, but they certainly aren’t bad. And when it’s all over, they might just be good enough. They’re a weird team in a weird division, and maybe they can ride that weirdness all the way into the postseason.

Quick Hits

• Bob Nightengale put it best: “Break up the Colorado Rockies!” Wednesday’s win over the Padres gave the Rockies their sixth straight win, and if five meant we should break them up, what are we supposed to do now? And they haven’t beaten bad teams either! The streak started with a win against the Giants, followed by a three-game sweep of the Rangers and a back-to-back victories against the Padres at Petco Park.

This strikes me as positive regression more than anything else (like the White Sox being above .500 since Tommy Pham joined the team), but Colorado’s sweep of the Rangers was quite the spoiler. Scoring just six runs across those three games, the vaunted Texas lineup was shut down by starting pitching luminaries Ryan Feltner, Austin Gomber, and Ty Blach. Even Dakota Hudson got in on the fun on Monday against the Padres. After going 0-6 in his first seven starts, he earned his first win of the season.

• You’re not a baseball writer if you don’t write a story that needs to be updated after it is published. So I would, of course, like to note that after I filed Monday’s column about how infrequently the Braves use their bench, Austin Riley left Sunday night’s game with an inflamed oblique. Riley isn’t expected to go on the IL, but he was kept out of Atlanta’s lineup on both Monday and Tuesday, allowing Zack Short to beef up those ghost bench statistics.

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

Matt Olson’s streak of consecutive games played is expected to hit 500 on Saturday against the Padres, but he’s far from the only iron man in Atlanta this season. Third baseman Austin Riley, center fielder Michael Harris II, right fielder Ronald Acuña Jr., and designated hitter Marcell Ozuna have started every Braves game at their respective positions, and Orlando Arcia has started 36 of 37 games at shortstop. Second baseman Ozzie Albies would’ve been in the Never Takes A Day Off club, too, if he hadn’t missed eight games with a broken toe — yes, only eight games.

All told, except for catcher and left field (where Jarred Kelenic and Adam Duvall platoon), the remaining seven positions have had 259 starting opportunities (seven positions times 37 games), with only nine of them going to backups: six for Luis Guillorme (five at second and one at shortstop) and three for David Fletcher at second base. But that lack of playing time hasn’t stopped the Braves from shuffling players into and out of the two bench spots not occupied by one of the two left fielders and backup catcher Chadwick Tromp. (Starting catcher Sean Murphy has not played since Opening Day, when he strained his oblique; while Travis d’Arnaud, an All-Star catcher in his own right, has started 24 games behind the dish.)

Atlanta signed Guillorme to a $1.1 million contract in the offseason, a move that seemed to assure him a spot for the entirety of the season, even though he didn’t fit the roster perfectly. (Guillorme doesn’t have the speed to be a pinch-running threat, for example.) With all those bulletproof starters, the Braves didn’t really need him to do much of anything; he’d be there in case of an emergency because he could play any of the four infield positions. However, it turns out the Braves really didn’t need him, as Guillorme is now a member of the Angels. Outfielder Forrest Wall, who occupied the last bench spot on Opening Day (along with Guillorme, Duvall, and d’Arnaud), is now back in Triple-A.

In all, the two bench spots that don’t belong to a catcher or a left fielder have been occupied by five players this season: Wall, Guillorme, Fletcher, Luke Williams, and Zack Short, who was acquired from the Red Sox ahead of the Guillorme trade. Currently, the two rotating members of the ghost bench are Short and Williams. Those five have combined for just 34 plate appearances across 21 games, with Atlanta sticking to its brand of having its everyday players be exactly that.

Of course, after I filed this column, the Braves lifted Riley from last night’s 4-3 loss to the Mets with what Atlanta announced was “left side tightness.” As of now, it’s unclear whether Riley will be in the lineup tonight against the Cubs, but the Braves said his exit was precautionary, so the discomfort — for now it feels too early to call it an injury — doesn’t seem to be serious.

3B Austin Riley was removed from tonight’s game as a precaution with left side tightness.

— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) May 13, 2024

During this era of load management, teams stress the importance of having a deep bench, but that just doesn’t seem to be necessary for the Braves. Indeed, one of the main reasons the Braves have been so good these last few years is their most talented position players have also been their most durable.

Christian Scott Looks Legit

Christian Scott has acclimated himself quite nicely to the big leagues in his first two starts with the Mets. In his debut on May 4, he pitched six innings of one-run ball against the Rays. He followed that up with eight strikeouts in Saturday’s quality start against the aforementioned tough and durable Braves lineup. The Mets lost both starts, though, providing Scott with one run of support in each game.

Scott, who entered the season ranked no. 98 on our Top 100 Prospects list, was heralded coming up through the minors for having a fastball that — as Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin wrote — “jumps on hitters,” though that’s been his least impressive pitch thus far. He has demonstrated the promise of the pitch getting opponents to whiff on 37% of their swings against it, but it has been inconsistent, as batters have also piled up nine hits off the heater, including a home run. That actually portends well for Scott since it shows that he can get by on more than just his signature pitch. He also has two devastating breaking balls that, along with his fastball, could make him a capable member of the next great Mets rotation.

Weekend Wrap Up

Let’s run through some things that stood out to me this weekend:

• Tyler Glasnow and Michael King had a pitcher’s duel for the ages on Friday. Each starter threw seven innings: Glasnow allowed just one run on one hit (a solo homer to Luis Campusano) and struck out 10; King didn’t give up a run and struck out 11, surrendering just two hits. The homer kept the game at 1-0 until the top of the eighth, when Yuki Matsui coughed up the lead on a Freddie Freeman sac fly. Ultimately, Luis Arraez delivered the victory with a walk-off hit in his first home game with the Padres; he’s helped to lengthen the lineup in a big way, mostly as San Diego’s DH.

• Jo Adell kept his hot streak going over the weekend. His Saturday homer was his third in four games, and his wRC+ is now 134. With Mike Trout on the shelf and Taylor Ward scuffling, Adell is the only Angel I’d be particularly afraid to pitch to right now, and yet he remains in the seventh spot in the lineup. That rigidity for the sake of comfort feels unwise.

• We’ll have more on Paul Skenes’ debut later on today, but my general take on his outing is that he looked good! Surprising for the top pitching prospect in the sport, I know. The command definitely came and went, but the stuff looked like it can get anybody out, and I think his splinker will prove to be his best pitch, especially at neutralizing lefties. Skenes allowed three runs over four-plus innings, though two of those runs came in after he was removed with runners on first and third and nobody out in the fifth. He finished with six hits, including a home run to Nico Hoerner, two walks, and seven strikeouts.

As hyped and box-score-filling as Skenes’ outing was, it was far from the most interesting thing about that game. Once Skenes departed, the Pirates issued six (!!!) bases-loaded walks in the fifth inning, with a long rain delay in the middle of all the chaos. Despite that ignominious relief-pitching performance, the Pirates still won, 10-9, thanks to five homers.

When the Braves signed Reynaldo López to a three-year, $30 million contract last winter, I was confused. Like most people in baseball, I thought López and Lucas Giolito had an E.T.-and-Elliott thing going on, where they couldn’t be separated. They’d come up together as minor leaguers with the Nationals, before being traded together to the White Sox, then traded again to the Angels, then waivered over to Cleveland, all without breaking the telepathic link.

Denuded of his longtime colleague, López cut a curious figure. The White Sox had tried to make him a starter in the late 2010s and it went badly. The only time López has ever led the league in anything was when he led the league in earned runs allowed in 2019. Since the dawn of the 2020s, he’s been a reliever, and a good one, but it was unlikely he’d return to the rotation, let alone for a team with standards as high as Atlanta’s.

But starting pitching is harder to come by than ever these days, and a major theme of the 2023-24 free agent class was, “OK, but let’s make absolutely sure this guy can’t start.” Jordan Hicks, Jakob Junis, Nick Martinez, Michael Lorenzen, and López, of course. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

After an interminable wait for Pittsburgh fans (read: under 10 months), the Pirates on Wednesday finally announced they were calling up top pitching prospect Paul Skenes to make his major league debut on Saturday at PNC Park against the Cubs.

The 2023 first overall draft pick rocketed to the majors after just 12 minor league starts and a mere 34 innings. After the organization limited him to only five starts and 6 2/3 innings across three minor league levels last year, Skenes began this season at Triple-A Indianapolis and absolutely dominated hitters. Over seven starts (27 1/3 innings), the 6’6” righty posted a 0.99 ERA and struck out 42.9% of the batters he faced while walking just 7.6% of them.

In many ways, how Skenes pitches on Saturday is the least of the Pirates’ concerns when it comes to their prized prospect. The real puzzle will be managing his workload. Skenes has never thrown more than 75 pitches in a professional game, and his final Triple-A start was his first on just four days of rest, having been eased into a traditional rotation schedule after pitching just once a week at Louisiana State.

Skenes’ situation somewhat parallels that of Pittsburgh’s other stud rookie starter Jared Jones, who’s pitched on regular rest just once this year — a start wherein he was limited to 59 pitches (50 strikes!) in five scoreless innings. We should expect the Pirates to be just as or even more cautious with Skenes when it comes to load management.

The arrival of Skenes also means that Pittsburgh will need veterans Mitch Keller and Martín Pérez to handle more innings when they start to ease the burden on the bullpen, which will almost definitely be covering at least three innings when Skenes pitches. Determining how to piece everything together will be another logistical challenge for the Pirates.

All that said, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. After all, those are problems for the Pirates to figure out, not us. Instead, our job is simple: sit back and enjoy the debut.

Chris Sale Looks Vintage Against His Old Team

Braves lefty Chris Sale got to catch up with his old Red Sox teammates on Wednesday, though it wasn’t exactly a pleasant day for Boston. Sale turned in his best start yet since he was traded to Atlanta over the winter, with six scoreless innings and 10 strikeouts.

The seven-time All-Star topped out at 97.2 mph and averaged 94.8 mph on his fastball, up 0.6 mph from his average in his other six starts. His slider was particularly filthy, with the Red Sox offering at 18 of them with 13 whiffs.

Perhaps it’s still too soon to declare Sale all the way, but he is pitching better than he has in years. Over his last four starts, he is 4-0 with a 1.80 ERA and 32 strikeouts across 25 innings; twice in that span he’s completed seven innings. Overall on the season, Sale is 5-1 (42 2/3 innings) with a 2.95 ERA, a 2.64 FIP, a 30.6% strikeout rate, a 4.7% walk rate, and 1.2 WAR. Yeah, that’ll play.

The Yankees’ Big Boys Are Finally Bopping

Although they lost to the Astros on Thursday, 4-3, to snap a five-game winning streak, the Yankees still got an absolutely massive home run from Aaron Judge, emblematic of why they’ve been playing so well over the past week: their offense has finally come alive.

The most encouraging part of Wednesday’s win — the last of the streak — was that Judge, Juan Soto, and Giancarlo Stanton all homered in the same game for the first time since New York traded for Soto in the offseason. Soto has been better than ever this year, but Judge and Stanton struggled for the first month of the season. Over the last week, though, the two sluggers have started mashing again. Judge hit .500/.591/1.096 (346 wRC+, and no, there are no typos there!) during the five-game winning streak, clubbing two homers and four doubles. Meanwhile, Stanton clobbered two massive home runs in the series against Houston. The first one, off Justin Verlander on Tuesday, was clocked at 118.8 mph off the bat; the next night he one-upped himself, with a 119.9 mph missile — the hardest hit ball in the majors this season.

The one core Yankees hitter who still hasn’t turned things around is Gleyber Torres. He hit .176/.300/.176 with a 54 wRC+ during the streak, before going 1-for-3 with a walk in Thursday’s game. On the season, his final one before free agency, Torres is batting .215/.301/.264 with just one home run, after he hit 25 homers last season, and his 71 wRC+ is a far cry from last year’s mark of 123.

Craig Kimbrel’s Honeymoon Period Is Over

Nobody can really replace Félix Bautista, but Craig Kimbrel was doing his darnedest when Ben Clemens checked in on him on April 16. I won’t call this a Clemens Curse (patent pending) because Kimbrel had three more scoreless appearances after the article was published, but he’s come crashing down since then.

Perhaps owing in part to a back injury that forced him to leave the game on April 28 and then sit out until May 3, Kimbrel has been scored upon in five of his last six appearances. In that time, he’s walked eight of the 23 batters he’s faced, and he’s also given up two homers. When I’ve watched him, he’s falling into the mechanical failure that’s ailed him every year since 2019: He’s yanking his fastball off to the side instead of getting under it and letting it ride at the top of the zone, which he did so successfully in his first 10 outings of the season.

Baltimore needs Kimbrel to figure it out, and figure it out quickly. For whatever reason, he is not someone who’s had much success doing anything but closing, so rearranging the bullpen could make the volatile righty functionally useless. As the O’s eye their second straight division title, they’ll be monitoring the bullpen closely and surely won’t be afraid to upgrade it come July.