After dispatching the Houston Astros in a two-game Wild Card sweep, the Detroit Tigers’ magical season — their playoff odds sat at just 0.2% on August 11 — continues with a matchup against the Cleveland Guardians in the ALDS. For its part, Cleveland emerged as the winner of the surprisingly tough AL Central, the team’s second division title in the last three years. The Guardians flirted with the best record in the American League for most of the season, but a slow July and August meant that they finished a game and half behind the Yankees for the top seed; they ultimately outperformed their BaseRuns record by 11 games, by far the widest differential in baseball this year, on the back of clutch hitting and a shutdown bullpen.

These two division rivals are well acquainted with each other — Cleveland eked out the regular season series 7-6 — but this will be the first time these storied franchises have met in the postseason. Both teams are extremely young and neither had especially lofty expectations entering the season, but here they are, battling for a spot in the ALCS.

As was true in the Wild Card round, one of the primary questions for the Tigers is how they will deploy their pitching. They got a brilliant start from Tarik Skubal in Game 1 in Houston, then bullpenned their way through Game 2 with the help of seven different pitchers. Now the challenge is figuring out how to take the unorthodox approach that got them through the end of the regular season and past the Astros, and adapt it for the Division Series. Fortunately, the postseason schedule means that Skubal should get two opportunities to pitch this series if it goes all the way to five games, but what they do for the other three games is anyone’s guess.

Both Reese Olson and Casey Mize were on the Wild Card roster, and Detroit will probably bring Keider Montero back for the Division Series. Still, Olson hasn’t pitched past the fourth inning in any of his three regular season starts since returning from a shoulder injury a few weeks ago. Mize, meanwhile, was an effective starter for the Tigers for most of the first half of the season, but missed two months with a hamstring injury and was used as a piggyback option in two of Olson’s starts in late September. The ZiPS game-by-game odds assume that Olson will “start” Game 1, with Montero going in Game 3 and a bullpen game for Game 4:

As you can see, if the Tigers are able to force a Game 5, the series is essentially a coin flip, with the odds slightly favoring Detroit thanks to Skubal. The trick will be to win Skubal’s starts and at least one of Games 1, 3, or 4. Of course, no matter who is listed as the official starter in the non-Skubal games, the Tigers will almost certainly use every available reliever to work through those games. In the Wild Card series, they used eight pitchers out of their bullpen between the two games, with Jason Foley and Jackson Jobe the only ones to allow any runs. Will Vest and Beau Brieske were the standouts, pitching in both games and each earning a save.

The Guardians won’t have to scramble quite as hard to find starters, but the rotation certainly isn’t the main strength of Cleveland’s roster. After Shane Bieber was sidelined by Tommy John surgery in April, Tanner Bibee became the de facto ace of the staff, turning in a solid effort (3.47 ERA, 3.56 FIP, 3.3 WAR) in his second big league season. He improved his strikeout rate by more than two percentage points, lowered his walk rate by 1.5 points, and was a reliable workhorse the entire season. His slider and changeup are both legitimate bat-missing weapons, and his fastball is just good enough to support those secondary pitches.

After Bibee in Game 1, things become a little less clear. Matthew Boyd will certainly make at least one start during the series, and potentially two if Cleveland opts to use him in Game 2 (which would line him up to start a potential Game 5). Boyd returned from Tommy John surgery in August and made eight very impressive starts down the stretch. His fastball velocity is sitting right around where it was at his peak with the Tigers, and his secondary offerings are generating plenty of swings and misses.

For Game 3, the Guardians have a number of options to turn to. The game-by-game odds above assume Alex Cobb will be activated off the IL for this series and make the start, but he’s only made three starts all year and just one in September after dealing with blisters on his throwing hand. Gavin Williams has electric stuff to go along with his prospect pedigree, but he’s struggled with inconsistency, particularly with runners on base, leading to a 4.86 ERA that’s more than a run higher than his 3.67 FIP. There’s also the veteran Ben Lively, whose 3.81 ERA and 4.66 FIP across 29 starts gave Cleveland’s rotation some stability after Bieber’s injury, but he’s not exactly the kind of starter you’d want pitching in a big postseason game. However they lineup their rotation, it’ll be a lot more predictable than the chaos Detroit is trying to harness.

Of course, the Guardians’ true strength lies in their bullpen. Led by Emmanuel Clase, who just had one of the best reliever seasons ever, Cleveland also has a deep stable of setup men who form a bridge from the middle innings to the ninth:

Cade Smith, Hunter Gaddis, and Tim Herrin are as good a setup trio as there is in baseball, and Cleveland’s relief corps as a whole had the sixth-best league- and park-adjusted ERA among the 750 team seasons since 2000. The same expanded schedule that benefits the Tigers’ heavy bullpen usage will also allow manager Stephen Vogt to deploy his ‘pen aggressively should the Guardians take an early lead.

The x-factor on the Guards’ pitching staff is Joey Cantillo, their 13th-ranked prospect. He made his major league debut in late July and has shown some real promise with his changeup and slider, especially across four September starts that saw him pitch to an impressive 2.25 ERA and 1.17 FIP with 29 strikeouts in 20 innings. It’s possible they’ll use him as their Game 3 starter, but it’s more likely that they’ll deploy him as another multi-inning weapon out of the bullpen.

Not only do the Guardians have the more impressive bullpen, they also employ the series’ biggest superstar in José Ramírez. He was a double and a home run away from posting a 40 double, 40 home run, 40 stolen base season, and will certainly receive down-ballot MVP consideration behind Aaron Judge and Bobby Witt Jr. Despite his fantastic track record in the regular season since his breakout 2016, Ramírez has had a rough go of things in the postseason. In 134 plate appearances across 32 playoff games, he’s slashed just .242/.291/.347 (a 70 wRC+) with a pair of home runs. If Cleveland wants to make a deep run in the playoffs, Ramírez will need to be firing on all cylinders.

Steven Kwan and Josh Naylor are the other key members of the Guardians lineup, with the former posting an excellent 131 wRC+ from the leadoff spot while the latter blasted 31 home runs and collected 108 RBIs from the cleanup spot. Both Kwan and Naylor hit left-handed, which puts them at a disadvantage against Skubal. That’s one reason why Cleveland acquired Lane Thomas from the Nationals at the trade deadline — to balance out the lineup with a strong right-handed batter. Thomas got off to a slow start with his new team in August, but produced a 137 wRC+ during the final month of the season.

Cleveland will also hope to see more consistent production out of Jhonkensy Noel. He slumped pretty badly in September, but he was a key member of the lineup during his hot August. His huge raw power gives Cleveland something it has largely lacked the last few years, and one swing from “Big Christmas” could change an entire game.

Because the Tigers will be looking to exploit as many matchups as they can with their relievers, Cleveland’s bench will bear a lot of weight this series:

David Fry, Cleveland’s surprise All-Star, should get starts against the left-handed Skubal, with Noel in the outfield. Beyond those two straight platoons, Vogt will need to pick and choose the right moments to deploy his pinch-hitters to counter A.J. Hinch’s bullpen machinations. The switch-hitting Angel Martínez, in particular, could be the most valuable piece off Cleveland’s bench.

In my preview of the Tigers-Astros Wild Card series, I wrote that Detroit’s offense would need to rely on four key contributors: Kerry Carpenter, Parker Meadows, Riley Greene, and Spencer Torkelson. That quartet collected just four combined hits against Houston, though Meadows’ home run in Game 2 broke the scoreless tie and Carpenter’s single in the eighth started the game-winning rally. Behind those four, the rest of the Tigers lineup collected 13 hits against the Astros, with Torkelson and Colt Keith the only batters to go hitless in the series. Timely hitting was the differentiator; all three runs in Game 1, as well as Andy Ibáñez’s go-ahead, three-run double in Game 2, came with two outs in their respective innings. The Tigers also left a combined 19 runners on base during the series, squandering a number of opportunities to tack a few more crooked numbers on the scoreboard.

The blueprint for both the Tigers and Guardians should look pretty similar: scratch across a few runs early in the game and hand things off to a shut-down bullpen to close things out. With both teams working from the same plan, the series will likely come down to which club can find a timely hit to put themselves ahead. The moves both managers make will have a huge influence on the course of the series. Hinch’s bullpen management has been pretty flawless so far; Vogt will have his own bullpen to manage, along with a bench that should see heavy usage. For fans of nuanced baseball strategy, this series should prove to be a fascinating matchup.

Having gone around the horn and then some to identify the strongest players at each position among the remaining contenders in the National and American Leagues, I’ve turned to the weakest ones, with the NL slate running yesterday. This is something of an offshoot of my annual Replacement Level Killers series, and in fact, even some confirmed October participants have spots that still fit the bill as true lineup sinkholes, only this time with no trade deadline to help fill them. For this, I’m considering full-season performance but with an eye to who’s best or worst now, with injuries and adjustments in mind. Unlike the Killers series, I’m also considering pitching, with the shortening of rotations and bullpens factoring into my deliberations.

Until now, the pool of teams I’ve considered has consisted of eight clubs in the American League and seven in the National League. On Thursday, we officially lost the Mariners, who were mathematically eliminated with wins by the Royals and Tigers. What’s more, the Twins stand on the brink of elimination — they own the head-to-head tiebreakers with both the Tigers and Royals, but are three games back with three to play — so I’ve opted to exclude them here.

For this installment, I’ll highlight the biggest trouble spots from among an AL field that still includes the Yankees (who clinched the AL East on Thursday), Guardians, Astros, Orioles, Royals, and Tigers. Read the rest of this entry »

With the playoff fields in both leagues nearly set, we here at FanGraphs are turning our focus to how teams set up for October. Jay Jaffe has covered the best players at each position among the contenders, with a run down of the worst positions in each league still to come. Dan Szymborski looked into the particulars of playoff lineup construction. Inspired by Meg Rowley, I’m taking a different tack: I’m looking for the players, strategies, and matchups that could be the difference between success and failure for each team.

We already know who the best players in baseball are, and they will of course be hugely important in the postseason. But less heralded players frequently have a lot to say about who takes home the World Series trophy. Think Steve Pearce and David Freese lengthening their respective lineups to turn those offenses from good to great, or the Braves bullpen mowing down the opposition in 2021. (On the flip side, you don’t hear a lot about teams let down by their supporting casts, because they mostly lose early on.) The best players aren’t always the most pivotal. In that spirit, I went through each team and focused on one potential pivot point. I’m looking at the American League today, with the National League to follow tomorrow.

New York Yankees: Austin Wells, Jazz Chisholm Jr., and Giancarlo Stanton

It’s not hard to come up with a game plan against the Yankees offense. It involves putting giant red boxes around Aaron Judge and Juan Soto, who have been the two best hitters in baseball this year, and writing “don’t let these guys beat us” in bold lettering beneath those boxes. The Yankees have the best wRC+ in baseball, all while their non-Judge/non-Soto hitters have combined for a 93 wRC+, the rough equivalent of the Washington Nationals. Sure, every team would be worse without its two best hitters, but not this much worse. Every pitcher who faces New York will have spent the vast majority of their preparation time looking at Judge and Soto, and building everything around that.

The easiest way to overcome Soto and Judge is to avoid them. I don’t mean intentionally walking them every time, though I’m sure Judge will receive his fair share of free passes. But teams will try to get those two to chase and avoid giving in even when behind in the count against them, which will result in plenty of walks the natural way. There’s going to be a ton of traffic on the bases for the team’s number four hitter, either Austin Wells or Jazz Chisholm Jr./Giancarlo Stanton depending on the matchup.

Wells has hit a rookie wall in the last month, with an 18 wRC+ in the last 30 days. Righties have simplified their attack against him, hammering the zone with fastballs and then aiming sliders at his back foot. This feels like the kind of slump that’s part fatigue and part adjusting to the majors. Wells hasn’t been aggressive enough on early-count fastballs (his swing rate on in-zone fastballs in the first two pitches of an at-bat has fallen from 64% to 54%), and so pitchers are taking the invitation to get ahead. Given how many runners tend to be on base in front of him, that approach will probably continue. It’s up to him to make opposing pitchers reconsider.

Chisholm and Stanton have split reps as the Judge follower with a lefty on the mound, and I’m not sure who will end up with the job. Like Wells, Chisholm has been too passive on early-count fastballs in his protection role, and he’s getting some tough counts and chase pitches as a reward. Still, I’m more optimistic about his outlook than Wells’. Chisholm might be taking fewer swings at crushable pitches, but he’s laying off tough breaking balls too, so it feels like part of a coordinated approach designed to minimize bad swings, and I don’t see an obvious plan of attack here for opposing lefties.

Pitchers attack Stanton high in the zone, where he’s prone to swinging under well-located fastballs. It’s a carnival game, almost: hit the brass ring on the high inside corner, and you’ll win a strikeout. Miss low, and you might surrender a home run. I expect the Yankees to deploy Stanton against pitchers who are less comfortable up in the zone, while Chisholm gets the nod against four-seam specialists.

How these three are able to respond to opposing game plans will go a long way towards deciding the Yankees’ fate this October. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle, too; if these four-spot hitters struggle, teams will naturally become more and more cautious with Soto and Judge, giving more opportunities to the guys behind them. If the four-hole hitters start to click, avoiding the two in front of them becomes less palatable.

Cleveland Guardians: Joey Cantillo and Matthew Boyd

The Guardians have used a simple blueprint to storm to one of the best records in the AL: timely hitting, great defense, and a lockdown bullpen. That’s how you end up with 90-plus wins despite a bottom-five starting rotation, one that looked sketchy heading into the year and lost Shane Bieber almost immediately. Tanner Bibee has been great, and Alex Cobb has been effective when not injured, but the spots after that are up for grabs.

In the past month or so, Joey Cantillo and Matthew Boyd have been the best options. Cantillo, in particular, has shown huge swing-and-miss upside, and he’s done it by using his best pitch, a changeup, more than a third of the time. He still has a fastball-heavy approach, and that pitch is probably his worst, but I expect that to change somewhat in the playoffs. With more off days and more bullpen availability overall, I think the Guardians will ask Cantillo to focus on his changeup and curveball, cut down on fastballs, and pitch twice through the order at max effort. He’s been intermittently great at doing just that, and when he’s on, the Guardians might not need to score much to win.

Boyd joined the Guardians when they were desperate for innings, and he’s been a pleasant second-half surprise. Still, I’m a lot less convinced by his performance than Cantillo’s. Call it the “new is always better” effect, because I’ve seen plenty of Boyd starts over the years and feel like I know what I’m getting at this point. That said, if he can put up average results in a five-and-dive role, the Guardians’ outlook will improve greatly. Their biggest weakness is always going to be the rotation, but Boyd and Cantillo have been great of late, and the rotation has actually been in the top half of baseball in the last month. For one of the weakest offenses in the AL field, improved run prevention would be a huge boon.

Houston Astros: Framber Valdez

The Astros look like a mirror image of the Guardians in a lot of ways. Despite adding Josh Hader, their bullpen has been a weakness thanks to a combination of injuries and regression. The defense isn’t great. But between resurgent bats and a few great starters, they’re putting up early runs and giving their bullpen enough cushion to make things work. Their second-half surge has been keyed by starting pitching in general, and by Framber Valdez in particular.

Valdez had been quietly bad for about a year by the time this All-Star break rolled around. From July 15, 2023 through July 15, 2024, he compiled a 4.13 ERA and 4.01 FIP. He’s always relied on producing a huge number of grounders, but changes in his fastball shape eroded that edge last summer, and it took him quite a while to adjust his game accordingly. His solution has been simple: use his best pitch more frequently. Valdez’s curveball is one of the best in the game, and he’s leaning on it:

More curveballs, more whiffs, more strikeouts, plummeting ERA — he looks like a whole new Valdez. He’s even getting more grounders again, at least partially because hitters are forced to look for the curveball more often and take emergency swings against sinkers. He’s been one of the best starters in the game over the past few months. That’s mostly what people already thought of Valdez – the top starter on a top team – but for a minute there, it wasn’t quite true. Now he looks dominant again, and he’s pitching deep into games too; he’s pitched into the seventh inning in six of his last 10 starts. The Astros could use that combination of length and quality, because if they’re going deep into their bullpen, things could get ugly.

Baltimore Orioles: Jordan Westburg

These don’t all have to be complicated. When Jordan Westburg broke his hand on July 31, the Orioles were a game back of the best record in baseball. Since then, they’ve gone 22-26, and his replacements haven’t impressed. Jackson Holliday hasn’t exactly replicated his nightmare April call-up, but he has a 70 wRC+ since returning to the majors. Emmanuel Rivera has been hitting well, but he’s more of a utility infielder/platoon piece than an everyday starter. Westburg’s presence means that Baltimore’s lineup makes sense; it felt stretched when he was out.

Broken hands are notoriously difficult injuries to forecast. Sometimes recovery is swift and complete. Sometimes power is slow to come back even as everything else rebounds. There’s no strict timeline; we simply don’t know how he’ll look. There’s also the matter of rust. After a brief rehab stint, the O’s activated Westburg over the weekend, but that still means only having about a week to get back up to major league conditioning and form before the games start to count.

Plenty of Baltimore’s hitters have had power outages in the second half — it’s not like you can pin the team’s entire swoon on Westburg’s absence. Adley Rutschman, in particular, looks worn down to me, and Anthony Santander and Ryan O’Hearn have cooled off. But Westburg’s return is a huge potential boost. If he’s back to his former self, the lineup gets scary to navigate. If he’s still not 100%, the other options aren’t amazing. Keep your eyes out to see how he handles inside fastballs, often a tough pitch to deal with if your hand is still hurt.

Detroit Tigers: Performance Against Good Fastballs

The Tigers seem to have worked out a good plan on the pitching front: Let Tarik Skubal cook, and fill in everything else with bullpen innings. But that’s only half the equation. They need to score runs, too, and that’s been a challenge this year. They’ve scored the fewest runs of any potential playoff team, and it’s not fluky; they have the worst wRC+ of the bunch, and they’re in the middle of the pack when it comes to baserunning.

To make matters worse, the Tigers have been especially weak against good fastballs. Only five teams in baseball have done worse against fastballs 96 mph and above this year: the Rockies, White Sox, Blue Jays, Marlins, and Rays. (They’re also bad against fastballs 95 and above, to be clear – 96 just feels like the new definition of “hard fastball” as velo keeps creeping up.) That’s not good company to keep, and the playoffs are chock full of hard fastballs. In the 2023 regular season, 10.4% of all pitches were fastballs thrown 96 mph or harder. In the playoffs, that crept up to 15.5%. Teams with hard-throwing relievers make the playoffs more often, and they also use their best relievers more while asking their starters to throw harder in shorter bursts in October. If you’re weak against velocity, teams will come after you.

Spencer Torkelson has had well-publicized struggles against hard stuff. Matt Vierling, Jace Jung, and Trey Sweeney, all of whom will start plenty in the playoffs, have looked overmatched this year against very good heaters. Kerry Carpenter and Colt Keith are doing damage against them, so look for opponents to attack the lefty-heavy heart of the Detroit lineup (Carpenter, Keith, and Riley Greene) with secondary-heavy lefties and then bring the thunder against everyone else. The Tigers are going to see a lot of fast pitches in the strike zone. If they can’t handle them, it might make for a short October run. If they can, their offense will surprise to the upside.

Kansas City Royals: GB/FB Ratio Allowed

The Royals are one of the best defensive teams in baseball, and the eye test and defensive models agree. But while the Bobby Witt Jr.-led infield is outstanding, the outfield is more of a mixed bag. Center fielder Kyle Isbel has been great in 2024, but he’s not getting much help. Tommy Pham is a hair below average in right, hardly surprising given that he’s 36. MJ Melendez is one of the worst defensive outfielders in baseball. Isbel covers so much ground that he can make up for some shortcomings, but one man can only run so fast. Think of it this way: Per Statcast, Kansas City’s infield defense has been 31 outs above average. Their outfielders have been three outs above average, and that’s with Garrett Hampson putting in solid work in left when Melendez isn’t available. The Royals’ preferred lineup is light on outfield defense, in other words.

The Royals pitching staff isn’t particularly focused on grounders, though. They’re in the middle of the pack when it comes to GB/FB ratio, and Brady Singer is the only one of their playoff starters who effectively keeps the ball on the ground. Opposing teams will be looking to elevate against the Royals, keeping the ball away from Witt’s all-encompassing glove. That might go double in Kansas City, where Kauffman Stadium’s cavernous confines mean that balls in the gap can travel a long way. Isbel is so good that he can cover for some of the corner deficiencies, but if the Royals’ opponents can pepper the pull side in the air, Kansas City’s defensive excellence will be blunted.

Minnesota Twins: Bridge Relievers

Let’s throw in the Twins as a bonus, even though they’re out of playoff position at the moment. They’re two back in the loss column with four left to play, which doesn’t leave them much margin for error. On the bright side, though, they hold the tiebreaker over both the Royals and Tigers, which gives them an outside chance at sneaking into the field if either of their divisional rivals hits a banana peel in the last series of the year. We give them a 22.8% chance of making the playoffs, which feels like enough of a shot to include in this article.

The business end of the Minnesota bullpen is fearsome. Jhoan Duran isn’t having his best season, but he’s clearly one of the better closers in the game. Griffin Jax has been outstanding. He has five plus pitches and is commanding them well, absolutely overwhelming opponents in the process. He might end up as the most valuable reliever in baseball this year when you consider volume, leverage, and results.

Should the Twins make the postseason, Duran and Jax are going to be very busy. But they can’t pitch all of the relief innings, and the guys behind them are question marks. Louie Varland has a 5.79 FIP (don’t even ask about the ERA, it’s ugly) and is coming into bigger spots than any Minnesota reliever aside from the top duo. Cole Sands has had an up-and-down season, and we consider him their secondary setup man after Jax. Scott Blewett and Ronny Henriquez have seen their strikeout rates plummet to borderline unplayable levels. Caleb Thielbar is dancing on a knife’s edge between effectively wild and unable to find the zone.

To be clear, this isn’t a case of an unfixably bad unit. I think Thielbar is an impact lefty when he’s right. Varland has premium stuff. Henriquez’s changeup is a weapon. Starting with Duran and Jax is a huge tailwind. It isn’t hard to imagine a world where some of the bullpen options pop and the Twins suddenly have a dominant relief corps.

But that hasn’t happened this year. Minnesota’s bullpen is playing its worst baseball of the season over the past few weeks – they have a 4.80 ERA even with the two top options taken into account, and a 5.33 without them. The middle innings are feeling shakier than ever, and that’s particularly concerning given that the starting rotation has been covering fewer innings since Joe Ryan hit the IL. If this group rises to the occasion, the Twins will look like a completely different team than they have so far this September. But, uh, that’s kind of the problem: Right now they don’t look very good.

With just 10 days left to go in the regular season, four teams — the Brewers, Dodgers, Guardians, and Yankees — have clinched playoff berths, and while just one division race has been decided, only two others have even a faint pulse. There’s still plenty of drama to be had with regards to the Wild Card races, which essentially boil down to a pair of four-to-make-three scenarios; Seattle might have been a stronger fifth in the AL if certain Mariners who reached third base didn’t insist upon taking very strange walkabouts. Beyond that, it’s also worth checking in on the jockeying for position to claim the first-round byes that go to the top two teams in each league.

Once upon a time, this space would be filled with my reintroducing readers to the concept of Team Entropy, but through the 2022 Collective Bargaining Agreement, Major League Baseball and the players’ union traded the potential excitement and scheduling mayhem created by on-field tiebreakers and sudden-death games in exchange for a larger inventory of playoff games. The 12-team, two-bye format was designed to reward the top two teams by allowing them to bypass the possibility of being eliminated in best-of-three series. So far, however, things haven’t worked out that way, because outcomes in a best-of-five series are only slightly more predictable than those of a best-of-three.

In fact, the National League teams who have received byes under the newish system have lost all four Division Series since, two apiece by the Dodgers and Braves. The 111-win Dodgers were ousted by an 89-win Padres team in 2022, and then last year’s 100-win team was knocked off by the 84-win Diamondbacks. In 2022, the 101-win Braves fell to an 87-win Phillies team, and last year, after winning 104 games in the regular season, Atlanta once again was eliminated by a Philadelphia club that had finished 14 games behind the Braves in the standings. American League bye teams have had more success, going 3-1, with last year’s 90-win Rangers beating the 101-win Orioles for the lone upset. The Astros have taken care of business in both years, with their 106-win club sweeping the 90-win Mariners in 2022 and their 90-win team beating the 87-win Twins last year. Read the rest of this entry »

Colton Cowser is a leading contender for American League Rookie of the Year honors, and his power numbers are among the reasons why. The 24-year-old Baltimore Orioles outfielder has 20 home runs to go with a .240/.321/.431 slash line and a 115 wRC+. San Diego’s Jackson Merrill (23) is the only rookie in either league to have left the yard more times.

That Cowser is clearing fences with some regularity is in many ways unsurprising. At a listed 6-foot-2, 220 pounds, his build is that of a basher. That said, his profile going forward wasn’t entirely clear when he was first featured here at FanGraphs in February 2022. Drafted fifth overall the previous summer out of Sam Houston State University, Cowser had propelled just a pair of baseballs over outfield barriers in 149 low-level plate appearances. Moreover, as I related to him in our offseason conversation, Baseball America had recently cited his “impressive walk-to-strikeout ratio,” adding that his swing path is “presently more geared toward contact versus power.”

The numbers suggest that Cowser is no longer the same style of hitter. After having more free passes than Ks in college and in his first taste of professional action, the left-handed-swinging slugger has fanned a team-worst 157 times this season with a 30.5% strikeout rate and a 9.5% walk rate. He’s also hitting more balls in the air, as evidenced by his 38.2 FB%. That number was just 26.9 in his two-plus years down on the farm.

Cowser’s thoughts on making less contact as he settles in to what promises to be a productive MLB career? 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.

Tight playoff races, milestone and award chases, and looking ahead to the offseason — these are the things I love about September baseball. One of the first decisions to be made after the World Series is determining who will receive qualifying offers, which currently projects to be valued at $21.2 million.

As a quick reminder before we continue, the qualifying offer is set at a price of the mean average annual value of the 125 highest-AAV players in the league. Once it’s offered to a player, he has 10 days to decide whether to accept or decline the offer. If the player accepts, he’s locked into 2025 at that salary, though he can always negotiate a contract extension that may override the qualifying offer. If the player declines and signs with a new team, his new team will forfeit at least one 2025 draft pick, and his old team will receive exactly one ’25 draft pick.

With less than three weeks left in the regular season, let’s run through which pending free agents could be getting qualifying offers come November.

Locks to Receive Qualifying Offers

These decisions are all straightforward. Juan Soto, Corbin Burnes, Alex Bregman, Max Fried, Willy Adames, Pete Alonso, Anthony Santander, Jurickson Profar, Teoscar Hernández, and Sean Manaea (once he exercises his opt out) are all having seasons somewhere between strong and elite. They’re all sure to reject the offer in favor of longer-term deals.

Likely to Receive, Plausible to Accept

Paul Goldschmidt is a tough act to follow, but Christian Walker has done well since taking over for him after the Diamondbacks traded Goldschmidt to the Cardinals in December 2018. Walker has been especially great the last three years, with 10.9 WAR, a 122 wRC+, and excellent defense at first base. He’s not spectacular, but he’s very good, and if the Diamondbacks are fine with running a record payroll again, they’d be wise to keep him around.

Walker’s got one big drawback, though: his age. Next year will be his age-34 season, and while he’d certainly like to earn a multi-year deal in free agency, the qualifying offer might tamp down his market to the point that accepting it would net him more money in 2025. He also might not want to risk rejecting it, hanging out on the open market for months, and then having to sign a prove-it deal. He’s a core member of a team that went to the World Series last year, is almost certainly going to return to the playoffs again this season, and is built to contend next year, too. Additionally, he seems comfortable in the desert. For all of these reasons, he is probably the player most likely to return to his team on a qualifying offer.

Likely to Receive, Likely to Reject

Tyler O’Neill has popped 30 home runs in his best and healthiest season since 2021, with his wRC+ just one point away from tying that career year. On the surface, that makes him seem like a slam dunk to receive the qualifying offer, and a slam dunk to reject it. He’s entering his age-30 season, and coming off his strong performance this year, he could look to get a three- or four-year deal on the open market. The one thing that gives me pause, though, is O’Neill’s injury history and how that might influence teams’ willingness to offer him a multi-year deal worth an average annual value of roughly $20 million. Understanding this, if the Red Sox give O’Neill the qualifying offer, he could decide it’s in his best interest to accept it. Meanwhile, Boston might not want to pay him $22.1 million next year, instead opting to use that money to bolster other areas of its roster. I still think the Red Sox will extend him a qualifying offer, and that he will turn it down, but it’s not a sure thing.

There’s an argument to be made that Michael Wacha is having the best season of his career; it’s definitely his healthiest since 2017. Provided he avoids injury the rest of the way, he’ll eschew his $16 million player option in favor of hitting the open market once again, leaving the Royals with a tough decision. On the one hand, this version of Wacha is worth $22.1 million; on the other, the injury concerns don’t just go away just because he’s been mostly healthy this year. As unlikely as Wacha would be to accept, the Royals might also prefer to eliminate any chance that he’d do so and instead allocate that money to lengthen their lineup. Having a rotation anchored by Cole Ragans and Seth Lugo would make losing Wacha an easier pill to swallow.

Total Toss-Ups

If Ha-Seong Kim had reached free agency before this season instead of after it, he probably would have earned a deal of at least $100 million following his 4.3 WAR, 110 wRC+ campaign in 2023. But right shoulder inflammation could keep him on the sidelines for the rest of the season, and his run values as a hitter, fielder, and baserunner have all gone down considerably in 2024. That said, even in this down year, he’s put up 2.6 WAR and is still only 28; that is probably worth $22.1 million. However, considering the Padres have a glut of infielders already, they may not want to give Kim the option to accept a qualifying offer.

Luis Severino is having his healthiest season since 2018, when he put up 5.4 WAR across 191 1/3 innings, made the All-Star team, and received Cy Young votes as the ace of the Yankees. But he’s a completely different pitcher now than he was then. His velocity is still there, but he no longer has the swing-and-miss stuff to anchor a rotation. Even with the Mets expected to lose two other starters to free agency, I don’t think they’d want to pay him the salary of a no. 2 starter when, at this point, he profiles more like a no. 3 or 4.

There may be no starter in the league more enigmatic than Nick Pivetta. The stuff has always been great, but the command has been … less so. I’m of the opinion that he’d do surprisingly well on the open market, and in my head I’m comparing him to Yusei Kikuchi, who got three years and $36 million from the Blue Jays coming off a similarly uneven (and probably worse) few years. But the Red Sox already have Brayan Bello, Tanner Houck, Kutter Crawford, and Lucas Giolito (assuming he recovers well from internal brace surgery) locked into next year’s rotation, and they may invest the $22.1 million elsewhere.

Unlikely to Receive

For other teams, I’d say that it would be a no-brainer to extend Shane Bieber a qualifying offer, but $22.1 million is a lot of money for the Guardians. If Bieber were to accept it, he could represent 20% or more of their payroll for 2025, and he might not be available until the second half of the season anyway after undergoing Tommy John surgery in April. Considering his track record and how well he pitched in his first couple starts of the season, a multi-year deal at a lower average annual value — with the cash backloaded pretty heavily — should be easy for Bieber to secure.

There aren’t any pending free agent relievers with the pedigree of Josh Hader, who was an obvious qualifying offer recipient and rejector last offseason. Clay Holmes started his season pitching like he’d end up receiving one, but he’s lost his closer job and has probably worn out his welcome in New York, frankly. On the other side of the coin is Jeff Hoffman, who’s been nothing short of excellent for two seasons in Philadelphia. But he’s entering his age-32 season and doesn’t have nearly the track record of other relievers who have received qualifying offers in the past. I’d be shocked if he gets one.

Ineligible to Receive

As a reminder, players who’ve appeared for multiple teams in the same season are ineligible to be tendered a qualifying offer. That eliminates Kikuchi and Jack Flaherty. Also ineligible are players who’ve received one in the past, so that rules out Joc Pederson, Max Scherzer, Nathan Eovaldi (assuming he declines his player option), Cody Bellinger (ditto), and, should he opt out, Gerrit Cole.

Jaden Hamm was surprised when he was selected by the Detroit Tigers in last year’s draft. That it happened in the fifth round wasn’t unexpected — he’d been projected to go in the three-to-five range — but the organization he would soon ink a professional contract with certainly was. The right-hander out of Middle Tennessee State explained it this way when I talked to him prior to a game at West Michigan’s LMCU Ballpark last month:

“I get a call [from my agent] and he’s like, ‘The Tigers are you taking you in the fifth,’” Hamm recalled. “ I was like, ‘What?’ He was like, ‘The Tigers.’ I was like, ‘I know who you said, but I didn’t expect that.’”

Subterfuge played a role in the surprise. Hamm had talked to Detroit’s area scout only a handful of times during his junior season, and while he went to the draft combine and had meetings with teams. the Tigers weren’t one of them. His best guess was that he was going to be drafted by the Arizona Diamondbacks, Atlanta Braves, or Houston Astros. That none of them — nor any other team — pulled the trigger in time has turned out well for the Tabbies. Hamm has emerged as the second-best pitching prospect in Detroit’s system, behind only shooting star Jackson Jobe.

The numbers tell a big part of the story. In 99 innings with West Michigan, the 22-year-old (as of earlier this week) Hamm has overpowered High-A hitters to the tune of a 2.64 ERA, a 3.10 FIP, a 30.6% strikeout rate, and just 73 hits allowed.

Another part of the story are Hamm’s metrics, which include 20-21 inches of vertical ride on his low-to-mid 90s four-seamer. Learning how best to employ his heater is yet another part of how he’s gone from relatively unknown to a breakout prospect. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s get one thing straight off the top: If all the Guardians got out of Jhonkensy Noel was the nickname, he’d be worth the roster spot.

The heyday of baseball was the early- to mid-20th century, a period which overlapped with what I assume was a New Deal policy where the government issued everyone a catchy nickname on their 10th birthday. It was not a perfect time; we’re better off having left the likes of “Chief” and “Fat Freddie” in the past, and let’s not act like it was the hallmark of a clever generation that every left-handed pitcher was called “Lefty” and every player with blonde hair was called “Whitey.”

In 2024, I’d give a kidney for a Joltin’ Joe or a Splendid Splinter. It’s a minor miracle that, in a few years, I won’t be checking off Markus Betts or Gerald Posey on a Hall of Fame ballot. Read the rest of this entry »

While Shohei Ohtani hasn’t pitched this year after undergoing UCL reconstruction surgery last fall, he has found another area of the game in which he could excel while terrorizing opposing pitchers. The 30-year-old superstar blew past his previous career high in stolen bases in late July, and on Friday night against the Rays he swiped his 40th bag of the year. Five innings later, he collected his 40th home run to join the 40-40 club in spectacular style, when he clobbered a first-pitch, walk-off grand slam. Unfortunately, Ronald Acuña Jr.’s torn ACL deprived him of a chance to follow up last year’s unprecedented combination of 41 homers and 73 steals, but it’s not out of the question we could have another 40-40 player this season, namely José Ramírez, and at least a couple more 30-30 ones.

I’ll get to those, but first, it’s Sho time. Prior to this year, Ohtani had reached 40 homers twice (46 in 2021 and a league-leading 44 last year) but had stolen just 20 bases or more twice (26 in 2021 and 20 last year). Unburdened by the demands of pitching this year, and playing for a new team with much higher aspirations than the Angels, he’s been able to withstand more wear and tear on his legs, has had more time to study opposing pitchers, and has come to appreciate the extra dimension he can add to his new team.

“I think he has bought into stealing bases, understands the value of the stolen base, getting 90 feet,” manager Dave Roberts told The Athletic earlier this month. “He’s in a pennant race now. And I don’t think he’s been in a pennant race in his big-league career. So his enhanced focus is not a surprise to me.” Read the rest of this entry »

Pedro Avila might not strike you as exceptional. He’s mostly on mop-up duty in the Guardians bullpen, hoovering up low-leverage innings. His sinker was deemed the “most normal” in baseball by Leo Morgenstern earlier this year. And his 3.60 ERA and 3.92 FIP is right around average for major league relievers.

But behind this veneer of normalcy lies the weirdest changeup in baseball.

Below is a plot of the average vertical and horizontal moment of every pitcher’s changeup during the 2024 season (minimum 50 changeups, data as of August 15, vertical movement measured without gravity). You have a 50/50 shot of guessing which one is Avila’s:

The brown dot on the left of my beautifully drawn circle is Logan Allen’s changeup, Avila’s erstwhile teammate. Michael Baumann wrote about Allen’s “weird-ass changeup” last July, noting that the pitch had the least horizontal movement of any major league changeup in the 2023 season. (Unfortunately, despite Michael’s request, no “Weird-Ass Changeup World Tour” tag has since been added to the CMS.) The purple dot on the right is Avila’s changeup, which is averaging even less horizontal movement than Allen’s.

But the average movement profile doesn’t fully capture what’s weird about Avila’s changeup. To truly appreciate the weirdness, it is necessary to take a look at why it moves like that.

It starts with his crazy grip. Look at this grip!

He aligns his thumb and pointer finger in a quasi-circle-change grip while pressing on the exact opposite side of the ball with his other three fingers. The funky grip — a circle-change/splitter/forkball/vulcan-change hybrid — informs the way the ball comes out of his hand.

Scott Firth, a former performance coordinator at Tread Athletics, described Avila’s grip in a tweet from January 2023 and the movement profile that results from it.

“Looks like fosh/modified box grip, some guys will cut it hard with 3 fingers on outer part of ball,” Firth wrote. “Low spin low efficiency could catch ssw [seam-shifted wake] either direction depending on cw [clockwise] or ccw gyro.”

The contradictory forces of fade from the pronation and cut from the pressure of his three fingers results in chaos; because of that grip, the ball comes off the pointer finger and middle finger simultaneously, sending the pitch downward:

Avila’s changeup almost imitates a knuckleball in the randomness of its spin axis. A helpful way to understand this is by looking at Avila’s spin-based movement and observed movement. The spin-based movement is the orientation directly after release; the observed movement is the implied axis based on the movement of the pitch. (When the spin-based orientation does not match the observed orientation, it is generally assumed that “seam-shifted wake” is responsible. More on that later.)

The observed spin axis on Avila’s changeup nearly goes around the entire clock. Check out the green bars on the graphic below:

Avila’s changeup might ultimately move similarly to Allen’s from a “shape” perspective, but the aesthetic experience from the hitter’s vantage point is distinct. It’s a complete outlier from the perspective of spin efficiency, defined as the percentage of spin that is either sidespin or backspin/topspin. The median changeup is 95% spin efficient. Allen’s changeup has 72% spin efficiency, one of the lowest marks in baseball. Avila’s changeup checks in at 24% (!!) spin efficiency, which is more like a typical gyro slider than any changeup.

The Guardians broadcast picked up on this following a slow-motion replay of an Avila changeup. After watching the replay, Guardians color commentator Rick Manning remarked that “It’s almost like a forkball but he spins it like a slider.”

Perhaps it goes without saying, but this is not the traditional way to throw a changeup. Driveline, for instance, published an article showing five different grips for aspiring changeup-throwers to try; none of them resemble Avila’s.

The classic changeup is thrown with heavy pronation. Think Logan Webb’s changeup fading down and away from a left-handed hitter:

Logan Webb, Nasty 87mph Changeup. ?

7th K pic.twitter.com/TGSkcD98Pu

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) August 15, 2024

Some pitchers struggle to throw a changeup with heavy pronation. One key reason, as Noah Woodward pointed out in a March 2023 post, is that the act of “turning over” the ball is awkward for pitchers who don’t throw another pitch that requires turning over their wrist in the manner required of a Webb-esque changeup.

For pitchers like Tarik Skubal or Matthew Boyd with more of an inherent supination bias, the seam-shifted wake changeup is a way to throw an offspeed pitch without contorting their arms in uncomfortable directions.

“I throw a changeup just like a slider now, but using essentially the smooth part of the baseball to create no drag on one side, but seam is on the other side,” Boyd told MLB.com’s Jason Beck in March 2023. “And because of that, I get more movement than I did before, but the pattern of how my wrist is moving is like the other pitches. So it allows for the other pitches to be more consistent.”

Avila’s changeup does not fit neatly in either of these categories. It is, somehow, a pronated seam-shifted wake changeup. That explains why Avila leads the league in the gap between his changeup’s spin-based axis and his observed axis.

But that gap doesn’t tell the whole story. Most other pitchers have a similar pattern when their actual spin orientation deviates significantly from the “spin-based” orientation: It shifts to the left (or right) in a predictable pattern. Take Skubal’s seam-shifted wake changeup, for example. The “observed spin” is shifted to the left of the spin-based movement.

Avila’s changeup is not like that. Because of the heavy gyro spin that his grip produces, the pitch leaves the hand at somewhat random orientations and can either fade or cut, as the movement map of all his changeups in 2024 shows. Notice how the green dots (his changeups) can end up on either side of the pitch plot:

So Avila’s changeup is definitely weird, but is it good? It certainly produces some bizarre swings, even when it’s poorly located. Heliot Ramos, for one, looked flummoxed after whiffing on one middle-middle Avila changeup:

Avila’s changeup gets a lot of whiffs — among changeups thrown at least 100 times, his ranks in the 85th percentile in swinging strike percentage and the 78th percentile in whiffs per swing. On the other hand, he throws one out of every six changeups in the “waste” zone, which sort of makes sense to me — that grip feels prone to misfires. (Shout out to Alex Chamberlain’s pitch leaderboard for these stats.)

While Avila’s changeup has graded out as basically average from a run value perspective, I’m not always sure that run value is the best way to evaluate the quality of a given pitch. There are interaction effects between pitches — in other words, the thought of the changeup in the batter’s mind might improve the quality of his fastball — and Avila is using the changeup as his primary out-pitch and getting pretty good results.

Given that the Padres DFA’d Avila in April, this season looks like a success for him, and the changeup is without question a big part of all that. As always with pitching, weird is where you want to be.