Welcome to the last 2026 edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. The regular season is headed to a conclusion, with two division titles and four playoff spots still up for grabs. For me, late September is a great time to catch my breath and watch a little meaningless baseball as a palette cleanser before flipping the switch to the maximum-intensity world of October. So while there are some consequential games this week, this column isn’t about those. It’s about some goofy things I saw in low-stakes matchups, a player I enjoyed watching all season, and some voices that have enriched my baseball-viewing experience over the years. With my customary acknowledgment of Zach Lowe of The Ringer, who popularized the format this column shamelessly copies, let’s get started.
1. Professional Courtesy
Baseball players on opposite teams are competitors, but they’re also workers in the same field. Yes, you’d like to beat the other team, but your counterpart on their squad is one of the people who can most relate to your daily struggles. You might compete against them 10 times a year; the other 355 days, your lives are far more alike than different. Catchers have a particular bond; let people throw projectiles right at you all day, and you’ll naturally gain a lot of respect for other people willing to do the same thing.
When the Brewers and Phillies squared off this week, the stakes were moderate. The Brewers hadn’t clinched the top overall seed yet, though they were headed there. (They did last night, when the Dodgers lost to the Padres.) The Phillies haven’t yet clinched a playoff spot, though again, the writing is on the wall. For the most part, it was a playoff tuneup for both sides. In the top of the ninth on Tuesday, with the Phillies up three and cruising home, William Contreras decided that he might as well burn a challenge:
Max Muncy is still a work in progress. Four-plus years after he was featured here at FanGraphs in a piece titled, Oakland Prospect Max Muncy is Trying to Find Himself in High-A, the 2021 first-rounder is doing much the same in the majors. Currently slashing a wholly uninspiring 230/.296/.387 with nine home runs and an 83 wRC+ over 284 plate appearances, Muncy remains — as he readily admitted when I spoke to him earlier this summer — in search of his groove.
“It’s one of those things that might be ever-evolving,” said the 24-year-old infielder, who put up not-dissimilar numbers after debuting with the A’s last season. “You have to just keep working at it. Every level presents a new challenge — the pitchers are better, so you have to make adjustments — and luckily there is no level higher than this one. Once I get enough at-bats, get to play consistently, I’m going to do what I know I can do. I’m going to be a good player.”
Muncy said in our 2022 conversation that he had been doing a lot of experimenting, and to a large extent that has continued throughout what is now more than 2,200 professional PAs. Read the rest of this entry »
As I was scrolling The Website Formerly Known As Twitter on Sunday, perusing for articles to read and news to get caught up on, I stopped dead in my tracks at this post from Giants reporter Alex Pavlovic:
The Giants now have 16 players on the 60-day IL, which will make for an insane series of roster moves at the start of the offseason. When Scott Bandura takes his first at-bat tonight, they'll set a franchise record by using 67 different players.
If you’re a normal baseball fan, that’s not the most interesting piece of news Pavlovic reported around that same time; that would, of course, be the bombshell that Rafael Devers was undergoing core muscle surgery, ending his season and making him that 16th player on the 60-day. The lefty slugger finished his season scorching hot before it came to its abrupt end. He ultimately finished with 3.4 WAR and 37 home runs, just one off his career high set back in 2021. Had he remained healthy and clubbed three more, he would’ve become the first Giants player since Barry Bonds in 2004 to reach the 40-homer threshold.
But from my purview as a roster freak, my wheels immediately started turning and thinking about how the Giants were going to clean up their 40-man roster at the start of the offseason. Our RosterResource data goes back to 2021, and for only one other stretch has a team had 16 players on the 60-day IL: The 2021 Rangers from August 27-30. But that late-August timing afforded the Rangers some in-season wiggle room to work through the 40-man shuffle, a luxury the Giants won’t have. Nobody on San Francisco’s 60-day is expected back this season, the 60-day IL can’t be used again until the onset of spring training, and the Giants have just one pending free agent in JT Brubaker. Needless to say, Buster Posey, Zack Minasian, and the rest of the team’s decision makers have their work ahead of them, with 55 names to sort through all at once and no intermediate moves in the offing.
I began where I tend to start my rabbit hole of research: tabbing back and forth from RosterResource and a spreadsheet of categorizing players into various buckets. I settled on 24 players for the initial 40-man who should be in no danger of getting cut. This includes all the usual suspects and big contracts, plus some nice mini-breakouts representing silver linings of a lost season.
I’ll Eat 16 Pounds of Garlic Fries if They’re Not on the 40-Man
A special shoutout is in order for Trent Harris, who may singlehandedly be keeping the rainbow curveball alive. The bullpen hasn’t had a set closer all season (Caleb Kilian, currently on the Phillies’ IL, leads San Francisco with eight saves), but Harris and 2025 All-Star Rodríguez (on the IL all year after undergoing Tommy John surgery) could make for an interesting one-two punch next year. Hey, there has to be something positive about the future of the club.
That leaves 31 players for 16 spots, which for many teams would be a gargantuan task. Imagine if the Rays or Dodgers had to sort through that many names with how deep their rosters always are. But not for the Giants, because there is, shall we say… a lot of slop here.
The most puzzling situation here is Bader, whom the Giants signed to a two-year, $20.5 million contract this past offseason. While it’s smaller scale than the contracts of Adames and Chapman, which have been a mixed bag so far, the Bader deal is probably the single biggest disaster of Posey’s tenure. He’s gotten into just 30 games this year, been placed on the IL twice, and the Giants are currently suspending payment to the 32-year-old following a scooter accident, which he suffered while already on the injured list, that ruled out a 2026 return. When able to play, he’s been 51% worse than league average by wRC+ and merely scratch in center field by FRV. Whether the Giants have to pay Bader or not, it’s hard to envision a significant role for him on the roster in 2027, the final year of his contract, especially with the emergences of Schmitt, Gilbert, Cox, and Hill.
Where the Giants go with the rest is anyone’s guess, though some of these players’ jobs are certainly safer than others. For example, they traded Patrick Bailey in part to accommodate Susac, meaning his spot is likely secured. However, I’ll be the first to admit there are plenty of easy cuts here, even if there isn’t consensus on who those easy cuts are. When I teased I was writing this article, a few Giants fans came into my mentions with their ostensible obvious cuts, but their cut lists didn’t even match each other’s, and the Giants’ own list is impossible to nail perfectly without being inside the room with them. (Buster, if you’re reading this, call me.)
The above lists, which feature a combined 55 names, don’t even account for the players who need to be added to the 40-man roster to protect them from the Rule 5 draft. At a minimum, the Giants will add Henry Lalane and Bo Davidson, but the club has other Rule-5 eligible 40-man candidates, including Marty Gair, Luis De La Torre, Joe Whitman, Reggie Crawford, and Sabin Ceballos. The deadline to protect players is a bit later, though (it was November 18 this past offseason), affording the front office more time to shuffle the furniture and make further cuts.
Most of these roster cuts won’t garner major headlines when they happen, but they are decisions that teams don’t make lightly because they could end up biting them later on. This initial roster culling won’t determine the overall trajectory of the 2027 Giants, whether they are a good or bad team, but these moves could make the difference of a few wins — which could be crucial if they are to have any hope of claiming a wild card berth next season.
Welcome to the second Five Things of the week. After a bonus recap of Saberseminar, it’s time to get back to what this column is all about: bunts. OK, fine, that’s not entirely true, but trying to bunt for a hit leads to some of the best on-field action, and by the time we hit September, I’m eager for some exciting fielding adventures, whether they end in an out or not. In fact, exciting adventures are pretty much all I’m looking for at the moment. Whether it’s playoff previews, low-stakes barnburners, or maniacally aggressive baserunners, I’m looking for chaos, tension, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat combined in a single play or single game. The past two weeks haven’t disappointed – just so long as you’re willing to extend your definition of action past the usual homers and strikeouts. So buckle up for another five things – after thanking patron saint Zach Lowe of The Ringer for his delightful column idea, which I’ve been faithfully ripping off for four years now.
1. Seeding Clashes
Five Things is generally the domain of silly baseball. The best plays don’t only happen in games between the best teams – really, there are more mid-level teams than great ones, so if anything, this is more of an underdogs column. But while the past few weeks have plenty of that, there have also been some downright amazing battles between teams fighting for the same playoff spot, and I find myself tuning into those games more frequently than anything else recently.
The impetus for this item actually started several weeks ago, when the Dodgers played seven games against the Brewers and Cubs in a two-week span. I was interested in seeing the best teams in the NL measure themselves against each other – and luckily, the league cooperated. The Brewers and Braves themselves squared off in a three-game set just before the Dodgers traveled to Atlanta. That set up a round robin of sorts between the NL’s best – the Brewers went 5-2, the Dodgers went 1-6, and the Braves were 4-2. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s no secret that starting pitchers throw fewer innings than they once did. Not only have complete games become a rarity (there have only been 20 so far this season), it is all too common to see starters limited to just five frames. The proof is in the pudding. Going by 10-year increments, the average number of innings per start has dropped steadily, going from 6.53 in 1976 to 5.08 in the current campaign. Moreover, the number of outings with 100 or more pitches this year is just 510, a 560 pace. Turn the calendar back to 2016 and there were 1,737 such outings. A decade earlier, there were 2,095.
How do current major league starters feel about the collective decline in workloads? Comprehensive polling isn’t practical, but I did query nine starters — some older, some younger — to get their thoughts on the subject. Here is what they had to say. Read the rest of this entry »
Sal Stewart is a frontrunner for NL Rookie of the Year honors. A formidable presence in the middle of the Cincinnati Reds lineup, the 22-year-old corner infielder has bashed 31 home runs and put up a 121 wRC+. Moreover, he leads all MLB hitters with 106 RBIs. Per the team’s press notes, Ted Williams (144 in 1939) and Walt Dropo are the only rookies to lead the majors in RBIs since 1920.
Stewart’s ability to square up baseballs far exceeds his wordiness when discussing the art and science of hitting — at least that was the case when I talked to him prior to a recent game at Wrigley Field. Entertainingly demonstrative when interacting with teammates in the clubhouse prior to our conversation, he was far from expansive when responding to questions about his craft.
“I’m kind of always tinkering and trying to find what’s best,” Stewart replied when asked how he’s grown as a hitter since entering pro ball in 2022 out of a Miami high school. “But for the most part, I have the same swing I’ve had since I was 12 years old.”
The burgeoning star told me that he still has the same offseason hitting coaches who helped him hone his right-handed stroke in travel ball. As he explained, “I trust my people and stick with my people.” Ditto training methods. He doesn’t hit off of a Trajekt, preferring instead to follow his established routine of “doing some tee stuff, some flips. Drills that I know work for me, and prepare me for the game.”
Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Angels unexpectedly announced that longtime owner Arte Moreno had agreed to sell the organization to Stan Kroenke, the icositetra-billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Rams of the NFL, the Denver Nuggets of the NBA, the Colorado Avalanche of the NHL, the Colorado Rapids of MLS, the Colorado Mammoth of the National Lacrosse League, and Arsenal Football Club, both the men’s team of the English Premier League and the women’s team of the Super League. The deal is reportedly for $4 billion, a record price for the sale of a controlling stake in an MLB franchise, surpassing the $3.9 billion sale of the San Diego Padres to Kwanza Jones and José E. Feliciano earlier this summer.
Forbes estimates Kroenke’s net worth to be $24.3 billion, making him the new wealthiest MLB owner, ahead of Steve Cohen, who’s worth about $23 billion. Ben Clemens wrote about the sale on Wednesday, and I’d encourage you to check it out for everything that you need to know about the Angels under Moreno and the ever-increasing values of MLB franchises. That second part is what I want to stress, especially as it pertains to the seemingly inevitable lockout coming this offseason. Rob Manfred and the 30 team owners are going to push for a salary cap, and to support their case, many of them will both cite the need for competitive balance and claim that baseball is a bad business. When they do, think back on the two record-setting sales from this year and understand the real reason why management has shut down the sport. But let’s not get too caught up in the doom and gloom right now, because the upshot of the sale is the Angels’ future looks a whole lot more promising under Kroenke than it did under Moreno.
That’s the last we’ll talk about the business of baseball today. Instead, in this week’s mailbag, we’ll answer your questions about teams that finished the season below .500 with a positive run differential, the single-game feat most correlated with career success, the pitchers who had the longest careers while pitching their first and last games on the same field, and the ideal hot dog per game ratio. 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 »
This season was supposed to be something different for the Giants. Following last year’s 81-81 finish, president of baseball operations and franchise icon Buster Posey went outside the box to hire manager Tony Vitello straight from the college ranks, and added free agents Luis Arraez and Harrison Bader to upgrade a couple of the lineup’s dead spots. Throw in a full season of mid-2025 acquisition Rafael Devers, and the team had reasonable hope of reaching the playoffs for the first time since 2021, and just the second time in the past 10 seasons. Instead, the 2026 Giants haven’t spent a day over .500, and at 58-83, they own the National League’s second-worst record. Like the Tigers, they’re in danger of making some dubious history, in their case by falling short of their BaseRuns-projected win total by the largest margin of any team since 2002.
As I explained on Thursday, the Tigers are nearly 11 full wins short of their Pythagorean-projected win total, an estimate based upon their totals of runs scored and runs allowed using the formula Winning % = RS^2 /(RS^2 +RA^2). Out of all the teams playing full seasons in the Wild Card era (not the strike-shortened 1995 season or the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, but including 2026 for the purposes of comparison), that’s the third-largest shortfall.
Where Pythagorean projections use actual runs scored and allowed to calculate an expected winning percentage, BaseRuns uses estimated runs scored and allowed, derived from familiar statistical components such as hits, walks, hit-by-pitches, stolen bases, and so on. Those run estimates are then plugged into the Pythagenpat formula — a variant of Bill James’ Pythagorean formula where the exponent itself is a function of the scoring environment via the formula X = ((RS + RA)/G)^0.287 — for a second-order estimate of winning percentage. Both the Pythagorean and BaseRuns estimated winning percentages provide useful if imperfect ways of measuring teams’ underlying performance and helping to identify outliers in either direction. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s been a dismal and deflating season in Detroit. The Tigers, who entered the year as favorites to win the AL Central after signing both Framber Valdez and Justin Verlander in February, played middling baseball through the first five weeks of the season before hitting the skids in May, at one point losing 16 out of 18 games. Instead of loading up for the stretch run ahead of the August 3 trade deadline, they dealt away both Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize to other contenders. While the team has actually outscored opponents by 47 runs (610 to 563), the Tigers are currently 11 games below .500 at 64-75, and in danger of making some dubious history by falling short of their Pythagorean-projected win total by the largest margin of any Wild Card-era team.
Misery loves company, and the Tigers are not alone in undershooting their target. The Giants, who at the outset of the season looked to have a reasonable chance of claiming a Wild Card berth, are not only 24 games below .500 (58-82) but in danger of falling short of their BaseRuns-projected win total by the largest margin of any team since 2002.
If you’re not familiar with either of these concepts, a Pythagorean projection is one of the most enduring Bill James creations, introduced in his self-published 1980 Baseball Abstract. James showed that simply by knowing a team’s runs scored and runs allowed, one could estimate its winning percentage with a reasonable degree of accuracy via the formula Winning % = RS^2 /(RS^2 +RA^2). The use of the squares, reminiscent of the Pythagorean formula to calculate the length of a right triangle’s hypotenuse, is what gives the stat its name. Further refinements by James and other sabermetricians showed that using a slightly smaller exponent increased the accuracy of the estimate. The Pythagenpat formula, where the exponent itself is a function of the scoring environment via the formula X = ((RS + RA)/G)^0.287, is the one we use for our Projected Standings pages, which now have all major league seasons dating back to 1871 (damn those underachieving Rockford Forest Citys). Read the rest of this entry »
On Thursday, I woke up to a text warning me that first pitch of the Diamondbacks-Giants Bridge League game had moved up to 10 AM local time – presumably due to the heat, our morning low on Thursday was 95 degrees and cranked up to 113 – and that a rehabbing Ketel Marte was in the lineup. The change in schedule meant I could spend an hour watching Ketel and Co., then slip over to the Rockies’ side of the Salt River Fields Complex to catch a second game. Rehabbers typically hit every inning, so I hoped to squeeze in three Marte at-bats before changing locations. Read the rest of this entry »
