Jonah Cox had never set foot in Wrigley Field prior to June 5th of this season. It turned out to be a day he won’t soon forget. Six games into his MLB career, the 25-year-old San Francisco Giants outfielder went 3-for-3 and left the yard for the first time at baseball’s highest level. In front of an announced crowd of 39,060, the visitors ran roughshod over the Chicago Cubs by a count of 18-3.

His initial impression of the Friendly Confines?

“It’s one of those stadiums you see in movies, like Rookie of the Year, so when you walk out there it’s like ‘Oh my gosh,’” the Colorado native told me earlier this week. “Knowing the history and the fanbase, it’s just a really cool place to play.”

“Oh man, the ball was flying,” Cox went on to say of the contest, which featured eight home runs, seven of them by the Giants, “It was a ton of fun watching guys swing and have so much success. Then I got the call to come in and face Hoby Milner, the lefty [in the sixth inning with the Giants leading 9-0]. I was excited to get in there, and one thing led to another.”

Did it ever. The rookie recorded his second hit of the game — and just his third in the majors — in that same inning, which ended with the Giants on top 16-0. Then came the top of the ninth. With Cubs catcher Carson Kelly toeing the rubber, Cox cleared the ivy. Read the rest of this entry »

As you all probably know, at the start of every season, the FanGraphs staff puts together our bold predictions for the coming year. Each is, to varying degrees, plausible but unlikely, which is what makes it such a fun exercise. Anyway, entering the 2025 season, my bold prediction was: Corbin Carroll will become the fifth-ever 20/20/20/20 player — 20 doubles, 20 triples, 20 home runs, and 20 stolen bases in a single season — joining Frank Schulte in 1911, Willie Mays in 1957, and Curtis Granderson and Jimmy Rollins, who both did it in 2007. Carroll ultimately fell just three triples short of the threshold, while tallying 32 doubles, 31 homers, and 32 steals.

I decided not to run it back this year, figuring that wouldn’t be as fun, though I am very much still rooting for it to happen. The 20/20/20/20 Club is one of the most exclusive baseball has to offer. Pulling it off requires a precise combination of power, speed and instincts, and it has to happen at the exact right moment in a player’s career. As I wrote in my bold prediction: “A player needs to have enough pop to hit 20 homers, but not so much that the majority of his extra-base hits land in the seats. He also needs the speed to steal bases and stretch singles into doubles and doubles into triples. His instincts must be sharp, so he can know when to attempt the extra base without running into outs.”

Last Saturday, when I saw that Carroll had doubled and tripled in a 10-3 Diamondbacks win over the Braves, I pulled up his player page to check on his progress. He was up to 26 doubles, 15 triples, 18 homers, and 16 steals. He stole a base the next day, and after going without an extra-base hit in Arizona’s three-game series against the Red Sox, Carroll entered play Friday at 26 doubles, 15 triples, 18 homers, and 17 steals with 34 games left to play. This prompted my own question for this week’s mailbag, which I will get to momentarily. We’ll also answer your questions on the worst player to ever hit three home runs in a game, the biggest drop-off for a player in the season after finishing second in the MVP voting, and teams missing the playoffs despite leading the league in run differential. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

Davis Martin had a first inning to forget on Tuesday. Pitching at Fenway Park, the Chicago White Sox right-hander was torched for six runs by a scorching-hot Red Sox team that went on to prevail 14-2. He settled down after the tumultuous frame — only one more runner crossed the plate before Martin departed in the sixth — but by then the damage was done.

What happened in the fateful first inning? I asked him that question the following day, but before we get to his thoughts, a quick recap:

With two on and one out, Willson Contreras singled home a run. Two batters later, Caleb Durbin launched a grand slam. Jarren Duran then followed with a solo shot on Martin’s 20th pitch of the game.

The hurler’s take?

“First, there is a lot to be said about how good this Red Sox team is, and what they’ve been doing,” said Martin, who is 9-6 with a 4.13 ERA and a 3.48 FIP over 122 innings on the season. “We studied the scouting report, and there weren’t a lot of pitches that I would want to take back. But yeah, I felt that they were one step ahead. They were doing a really good job of keeping me off balance.”

Red Sox hitters had clearly been more aggressive than the White Sox expected. Half a dozen runs coming on 20 pitches thrown to seven batters is notable, especially when you consider that Contreras saw six of them. His at-bat was arguably the key to the inning. After fouling off consecutive two-strike offerings, the slugger got his RBI knock on a breaking ball that was well wide of the plate. Read the rest of this entry »

Having somewhat unexpectedly found themselves in a playoff spot at the deadline, the Diamondbacks have acquired outfielder Lars Nootbaar from the Cardinals in exchange for minor league pitchers Daniel Eagen and Sandro Santana, along with a player to be named later.

Cardinals Devil Magic has its tentacles in all sorts of places, but a key component of this witchcraft was an ability to conjure up certain types of players at will: innings-eating sinkerballers, pesky middle infielders, and corner guys who get called “professional hitters.”

Nootbaar was one of the last great hitterish Cardinal discoveries before this three-year playoff drought (and counting) set in. His peak came in 2023, when he achieved cult hero status in Japan for his role in helping the country win the World Baseball Classic. During that regular season, he hit .261/.367/.418, good for a 118 wRC+ and 3.1 WAR in just 117 games. He even stole 11 bases and made 67 starts in center field, opening the door for a future in which he could offer more than just good vibes and a bunch of walks. Read the rest of this entry »

What has Tarik Skubal been thinking about lately? The obvious answer is where he will be playing once the trade deadline passes, but that wasn’t how I posed the question to him a few weeks ago. What I was interested in were his thoughts on pitching as a whole.

“The evolution of the fastball,” replied Skubal, whom the Detroit Tigers dealt to the Los Angeles Dodgers late last night for a package of prospects. “What is a fastball and how guys pitch. In today’s game, more than ever, guys have two versions of the fastball. Maybe three. The cutter is still a fastball in my eyes, so cut-fastball, sinker, four-seamer. Lance Lynn was the guy who did it when I was first in the big leagues. He threw three fastballs. Now you see Cam Schlittler doing it, others guys doing it. The development of fastball offerings: just how much different it is now versus, say, 10 years ago? That’s something I would be interested to see.”

I dug up that info — more specifically, my colleague Jon Becker unearthed it for me — and we’ll get to that in a moment. First let’s hear more of what the always-insightful southpaw had to say.

“I think you almost have to have two different fastballs now, just to give them different looks,” Skubal told me. “Hitters are so good at covering one fastball, and if you give them two, that’s tough on them. I feel like that transition — multiple fastballs — is happening a lot right now.”

Skubal, whose arsenal is sans a cutter but includes an elite changeup, has thrown his four-seamer at a 36.5% clip this season, and his sinker at a 19.8% clip. The lesser used of his two fastballs isn’t great in a vacuum, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an important weapon in his arsenal. Read the rest of this entry »

At last we reach the end of my annual series spotlighting the weakest positions on contending clubs. While still focusing upon teams that meet that loose definition of contenders (Playoff Odds of at least 10% when this series began), I’ve also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included it here because the team’s performance is worth a look.

At the other positions in this series, I have used 0.6 WAR or less thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — as my cutoff, but for the designated hitters, I’ve limited the list to the teams below zero, both to keep the length manageable and to account for the general spread of value. In the fifth full season of the universal DH, 0.2 WAR represents the current median, with 11 teams below zero, 12 between zero and 1.0, and just seven with 1.0 or more, with only five reaching 2.0. DHs as a group have hit .244/.325/.422 for a 106 wRC+ this season, down four points from last year’s final mark, the highest since the adoption of the universal DH.

It does appear that an increasing number of teams are investing more playing time in a single DH. From 2022 (the first full-length season with the universal DH) to ’25, the number of players reaching 450 plate appearances in the DH role increased from three to four to seven to nine; this year, they’re on pace for nine, as well. That said, all but one of the teams on this list are the ones that haven’t found that special someone to take the lion’s share of the plate appearances. Read the rest of this entry »

Having gone around the horn during the first three entries of this series, it’s time to turn to the outfield. In a break from tradition, instead of looking at the teams with trouble at either corner in one fell swoop, this time I’m addressing the ones receiving less-than-acceptable production from their left and center fielders. Right fielders will get a standalone list in order to keep the length of these articles manageable. There’s still some crossover between today’s positions and their respective lists, with two contenders double-dipping.

While still focusing on clubs that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), 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’ve also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance is worth a look.

As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly within the context of the rest of a team’s roster. The capsules are listed in order of their left field rankings first, while noting those crossover teams with an asterisk. As always, I don’t expect every team here to go out and track down upgrades before the August 3 trade deadline, but these are ones to keep an eye on. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been thinking a lot about the All-Star rosters this week. They’re not bad, but they’re weird, and missing many of the biggest names in the sport. That’s fine. There’s been heavy turnover atop the WAR leaderboards this year, as Ben Clemens pointed out last month, and that’s given us plenty of fresh storylines — many of which will be deservedly celebrated at the annual halftime show next week.

Still, this feels like it must matter in some way beyond an exhibition. And so I scoured the rosters, looking for a narrative to drive. One thing I noticed is, of the top 25 batters projected by FanGraphs Depth Charts, 17 did not make an All-Star team. Of those, eight are in competitive races out west.

Indeed, the stars have dimmed in the West. How these players perform after the break could determine the shape of the season still to come. Read the rest of this entry »

While he’s never been a true liability on the infield, Max Muncy has generally been a player whose defensive contributions took a back seat to his offense. The Dodgers have long counted on Muncy’s combination of power and plate discipline to outweigh his shortcomings in the field while bouncing him from first base to second to third depending on their roster’s current needs. That handling has paid off handsomely, as he’s been a vital contributor to four pennant winners and three World Series champions since being plucked off the scrap heap in April 2017. This year, however, Muncy has really flashed the leather at third base, showing the best range of his career. He leads all third basemen in Statcast’s Fielding Run Value, while tying for second in Defensive Runs Saved.

According to Statcast, Muncy was 11 runs below average at third base in 3,817 innings from 2018–25, roughly the equivalent of four runs below average per full season of play; he was four below average by that measure in just 801.1 innings last year. This year, he’s already six runs above average in 621 innings. According to Statcast’s Outs Above Average, he’s gone from being the majors’ worst qualifier on plays coming in (-9) to tying for second-best (4). DRS has generally been more charitable in its assessment of his defense; he was 16 runs above average at third from 2018–25, and is eight above average this season.

Muncy is just one of several Dodgers whose defensive play has helped his team top the rankings in my annual midseason defensive breakdown, with shortstop Mookie Betts, center fielder Andy Pages, second baseman Alex Freeland, and catcher Will Smith also making major contributions to that placement. I’ll explain the methodology below, but first, a bit more about the 35-year-old slugger, who on Monday night hit a towering solo homer in the first Dodgers-Athletics matchup to feature both Max Muncys, who share the same birthday (August 25) and drafting team (Oakland). Read the rest of this entry »