In 1981, when a seven-week players’ strike split the season into two “halves,” and in 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic shortened the season to 60 games, teams with sub-.500 records snuck into the postseason via expanded playoff formats created to accommodate the unique and extraordinary circumstances. No team finishing below .500 over the course of a full schedule has received a playoff berth, but the possibility looms large this year. With five and a half weeks and about 35 games per team still to play, the American League has just five teams above .500, including one — the AL West-leading Astros — that entered Wednesday right at that mark before beating the Angels. It’s not out of the question that two sub-.500 teams could make the playoffs, but for all of the owners’ carping about a lack of competitive balance, messy free-for-alls such as this are just what Major League Baseball wants.
If the postseason were to start today, the Rays (76-50) would win the AL East by five games and White Sox (66-60) the AL Central by four games, with both earning first-round byes. The Yankees (71-55) and Red Sox (68-59) would qualify as the top two Wild Card winners; as the fourth and fifth seeds, they would square off in a best-of-three Wild Card Series as they did last season. But from there, things get ugly. The Astros (64-63) are currently clinging to a two-game lead over the Rangers (62-65) atop the AL West, but with a projected win total of 82 wins according to our Playoff Odds, they don’t have much margin for error when it comes to clearing the .500 bar, and could join or surpass the 2005 Padres (82-80) and 1973 Mets (82-79) in terms of mediocre division winners. The 1994 Rangers were a whopping 10 games below .500 at 52-62 but one game ahead of the A’s (51-63) when the players’ strike put them both out of their misery, though MLB does not consider any first-place teams from the shortened season to be official division winners. That’s how the Braves, who trailed the NL East-leading Expos by six games when the strike hit, are still considered to have won 14 consecutive division titles from 1991–2005 (an assertion I take issue with, but that’s an argument for another day). Read the rest of this entry »
Randy Arozarena is leading the Seattle Mariners with 3.2 WAR. He’s on pace for a career-high 4.5 WAR. He’s running a 138 wRC+, his best mark since the summer of 2020, when a steady diet of chicken, rice, and pushups turned him into the kid who only hit homers. He was an All-Star. But some of Arozarena’s underlying numbers are confusing. He’s on pace for 20 home runs, his standard year-end total. If you’ll forgive a digression, Arozarena has ended up with 20 homers in three of his five full seasons, which ties him for third on the all-time 20-homer-season leaderboard, behind only Bobby Abreu (five) and Harold Baines (four). But Arozarena’s bat speed is down by a huge margin, as is his launch angle. How is he going yard just as often while swinging softer and running a career-high groundball rate? Let’s try to figure out what’s going on here.
I always like to start with plate discipline, and that’s certainly a logical jumping off point, because the biggest change in Arozarena’s profile is in the strikeout column. He’s running a 20.7% strikeout rate this season. That’s an enormous six-point drop from last year, and it’s more than three points below his previous low. In fact, if you look at things from a certain angle, that drop is the entire reason that Arozarena is putting up his best season ever. If you ignore walks and strikeouts and just look at balls in play, Arozarena’s wOBAcon and xwOBAcon are nearly identical both to the numbers he put up last year and to his career averages:
Arozarena is getting the same results as ever when he puts the ball in play. Now, I know that he’s getting to those results in a different way, and we’re going to dive into those differences soon, but in that sense, the entirety of his wRC+ boost has come from the fact that he’s striking so much less. So let’s talk about why he’s striking out less. Read the rest of this entry »
Taylor Ward walked his way back across the country.
In a trade on Monday ahead of the 6 PM ET deadline, the Orioles sent Ward to the Mariners in exchange for Alex Hoppe and two minor league pitchers, Brock Moore and Harrison Kreiling. Ward leads the American League in walks (second in the majors only to James Wood) and satisfies Seattle’s need for a right-handed bat to even out a lopsided lineup. Baltimore in turn gets a trio of work-in-progress arms to aid in what appears to be a bit of a reset.
Ward has completely reinvented himself at the plate in 2026 after being traded to Baltimore over the offseason. For years in Anaheim, the outfielder profiled as a three-true-outcomes hitter, mixing slug-and-whiff with a discerning eye to produce at an unspectacular, but above-average clip. Last year, he mashed 36 homers and struck out 26.4% of the time, good for a 117 wRC+.
This year, Ward has an identical 117 wRC+ but has gotten there in a fundamentally different way. His walk rate has leapt from an already strong 11.3% last year to 17.2% this year — fourth best in the majors. He also cut his strikeout rate to 20%, giving him one of the best BB/K ratios in the majors at 0.84. The tradeoff has been a massive drop in ISO, to a career-low .100. A year after slugging 36 homers, Ward is pacing for 10.
Back in June, Ben Clemens wrote a great piece outlining the how and why for Ward’s changes in 2026. The how is he’s simply stopped swinging. Ward has always had a great eye, but this year he’s combined it with an aggressive form of discipline. His 34.3% swing rate is among the lowest in the league. He doesn’t swing at balls (15.3% is the lowest in the majors), and he doesn’t swing at strikes (51.8% is second lowest). He doesn’t swing when ahead in counts or behind. He doesn’t swing at the slow and bendy stuff, and he doesn’t even swing at middle-middle fastballs. Pitchers have yet to figure out how to throw him strikes consistently, and Ward has forced them into deep counts that have generally worked in his favor.
The why is Ward is swinging much slower this year. His 68.4-mph average bat speed ranks in the bottom 10% of the majors and is down from an already-slow 69.5-mph average swing last year — one of the largest drops of 2026. As Ben notes, this slower swing has meant being later on fastballs and less likely to pull the ball in the air. That’s capped Ward’s power potential and forced him toward this new, extreme approach. It’s not all bad, though. This slower swing has kept Ward from whiffing, and his 5.9% swinging strike rate is a career low, helping him spoil pitches in those deep counts. He’s also squaring up the ball at a career-best 34.2% of swings. He’s hitting a lot more high-quality low line drives to all fields and supplementing his walks with a .310 BABIP (compared to .257 in 2025).
Ward is an ideal fit for the Mariners. Their lineup has been mediocre in 2026, with a 101 wRC+ a year after finishing second in the majors with a 113 wRC+. While they’ve hit better and worse depending on the month (definitively “worse” the last six weeks), they’ve always struggled to hit lefties. Their 91 wRC+ against southpaws is 25th in the majors. They seemed to identify this as a weakness in the offseason, bringing in one of the game’s great lefty mashers in Rob Refsnyder. But Refsnyder has a 33 wRC+ and -1.0 WAR this year while battling a pair of knee injuries. Between that performance, the cratering of Cal Raleigh, and a generally lefty-heavy lineup, the Mariners have been highly susceptible to aggressive bullpening from opposing managers. More than a few teams have reworked their pitcher schedules to force the Mariners onto the weak side of their platoon.
Enter Ward: He has a 141 wRC+ against lefties this year and a 130 wRC+ for his career. He’s walked in 20.3% of his plate appearances against lefties in 2026 while only striking out in 18.8% of them. He’s not limited to a strict platoon, with a 108 wRC+ against righties both this year and for his career. This gives the Mariners an ideal mix of an everyday bat while also someone they can slot into the top of their lineup — likely the very top of their lineup — against lefties.
It’s not quite clear where Ward will play defensively. He’s been a left fielder exclusively since 2022, but the Mariners already have Randy Arozarena playing left in the midst of a career-best season, and they have Dominic Canzone in right, also having a career year. Neither is particularly good defensively, though Ward doesn’t represent a clear upgrade himself, with -1 OAA in 2026 and -3 OAA going back to last year. My sense is Ward will do a good amount of DHing while occasionally spelling Arozarena and Canzone in the corners.
With this trade, the Mariners are signaling that the 2026 season is not lost yet, which wasn’t quite clear after they dealt starting pitcher Luis Castillo to the White Sox over the weekend. “Disappointing” is an understatement for their season to date, one they began as arguable favorites in the American League. They’ve reached the deadline at 55-58, having already fired a hitting coach and with fans clamoring for more heads to fall.
Still, they remain just three back in the league’s worst division and two back of the Wild Card. I wrote just last week that the Rangers had taken over the top odds to win the AL West, then proceeded to get swept over the weekend by the Astros, who have snatched the top odds for themselves. Neither team is too formidable, with the Astros having one of the worst pitching staffs in the league and the Rangers displaying a more general mediocrity. The Mariners have far and away the best Pythagorean record in the division at a mere +3 run differential. A week or two of hot play is all it would take to make them favorites again. That seems likelier now with Ward in the lineup.
Hoppe is the most imminently relevant pitcher in the deal. He’s posted a 5.79 ERA as a rookie out of the Seattle bullpen this year while bouncing back and forth between Triple-A. There is some clear upside, as he has a 2.88 FIP with a solid 27.6% strikeout rate, and he’s also allowing just 0.64 HR/9. He throws a four-seamer that averages 97.9 mph and an impressive, biting slider that’s generated whiffs on 41% of swings this year. At 6-foot-6 with over the top arm action, Hoppe often looks the part of a future bullpen ace, even if his command has limited him to a fringe big leaguer thus far.
Moore, 26, is a righty reliever who dominated Single-A hitters this year with a 58.2% strikeout rate and a 5.5% walk rate in 16 innings. Since being promoted to Double-A, however, his long-standing issues with command have returned, now with a less impressive 33.7% strikeout rate and a 16.3% walk rate. Brendan Gawlowski noted Moore’s boom-or-bust potential in our Mariners Top 25 Prospects List this year:
“Moore touches triple digits and his slider flashes plus, but he’s a stiff athlete with a big head whack and bigger control problems.”
Kreiling, 24, was a 17th-round pick by the Mariners out of Nebraska in 2024, and he underwent Tommy John surgery before making an appearance professionally. He returned to the field this year and has made four starts, with 16 strikeouts and one walk in 10 2/3 innings. His fastball sits between 94-96 mph from a clean, moderate-effort but repeatable delivery. He also throws a cutter, a changeup, and a projectable slider. Brendan notes that Kreiling, who went unranked on the preseason prospects list, will likely receive a 35+ grade in the future, though he profiles as a reliever going forward.
It’s an ultimately a fine deal for a decent rental bat. The Mariners help even out their lineup while dealing from their strength of fringy arms with great stuff. And the Orioles get some fringy arms who could help them now and later.
Pre-deadline trades generally follow a template, with contenders filling needs by acquiring players from teams outside of the playoff races. Not every late July or early August deal fits into that pattern, however, and Saturday night brought a less common variety of trade, one between two American League teams striving for spots in the postseason field. The Mariners, who spent most of June atop the AL West but are now trying to claw their way back to the top of the division or at worst into a Wild Card slot, sent right-hander Luis Castillo to the AL Central-leading White Sox in exchange for reliever Seranthony Domínguez, outfielder Nolan Jones, and catching prospect Boston Smith.
While the players switching teams in this deal might fill some clear needs in their new locations, none of them offers a strong guarantee. Domínguez and Castillo both have high ERAs and messy peripherals this season, and Jones has been stashed in Triple-A all year after sub-replacement level performances in 2024 and ’25. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this deal is that the White Sox are absorbing all of the money remaining on Castillo’s contract, which runs through the end of next season. The Mariners not only freed up some cash, which they may very well reallocate in the coming days, but they potentially opened up a spot in their rotation for Kade Anderson, the top pitcher on our recently updated Top 100 Prospects list, and added a prospect to their system. The ability to do so, while leaving behind an all-homegrown rotation that already includes three former first-round picks, speaks well of their vaunted pitching development program.
That said, it’s not hard to understand why Mariners fans might view this deal with some amount of cynicism and disappointment. After coming within one win of the franchise’s first trip to the World Series last October, the Mariners are 54-58, third in the AL West, three games behind the Astros (57-55), a game and a half behind the Rangers (55-56), and two games out of the third AL Wild Card spot, where seven teams — including the Tigers, who tradedTarik Skubal to the Dodgers on Saturday night — are within three and a half games. Our Playoff Odds put them at 47.7% at this writing, but if they don’t repurpose some of the savings from offloading Castillo’s salary, or come away from the deadline without something more exciting than middle relief and a prospect for their trouble, this will be remembered as a salary dump or even a white flag, not to mention an abrupt and bitter finish to a stretch in which the Mariners finally ended their postseason drought. The Mariners acquired Castillo from the Reds in a five-player blockbuster ahead of the 2022 traded deadline, and he not only helped them reach the playoffs after a 21-year absence but signed a a five-year, $108 million extension that was supposed to bring more glory than just one more trip to October. Read the rest of this entry »
We have some movement in the race between immovable objects.
The Rangers on Monday capped a four-game, wraparound series win over the Mariners to take what feels like a commanding 2 1/2-game lead over them and a two-game lead over the Astros in the AL West. Texas followed that up by dropping a series to the AL-best Rays, while Seattle dropped a series from the NL-best Dodgers and Houston swept the Angels. Entering Friday’s action, the Rangers lead the Astros by a half game and the Mariners by 2 1/2 games. That’s how it’s gone for the league’s most languid division in 2026.
Monday’s win gave the Rangers a 7-3 record against the Mariners on the year, securing Texas the tiebreaker should that become relevant in late September. Meanwhile, the Rangers head to Houston this weekend for a three-game set with the Astros currently holding the tiebreaker, 6-4. A Texas sweep in the road series would give it the head-to-head advantage against both of its AL West rivals. If not, things could get even more interesting come the final week of the season.
Even so, our Playoff Odds aren’t expecting the Texas-Houston tiebreaker to matter too much. That’s because, for the first time in 2026, the 55-54 Rangers look like the favorites to win the division.
Troy Melton has excelled since returning to the mound in late May. Over nine starts comprising 55 innings, the 25-year-old Detroit Tigers right-hander has won five of six decisions while logging a 1.80 ERA and a 3.86 FIP. Sidelined for the initial two months of the season due to elbow inflammation, he is back to being one of baseball’s most-promising young pitchers.
What most stands out about Melton’s campaign to date? From an arsenal perspective, the answer has to be his cutter. Last season, he threw the pitch at a 10.8% clip to the tune of a .368 BAA and a 12.8% whiff rate. This year, the offering has elicited a .083 BAA and a 26.0% whiff rate while being thrown at a nearly-double 20.5% clip.
Why the increased reliance on his cutter, and why has it been so effective?
“I didn’t really change anything, which is the weirdest part,” Melton told me in the days leading up to the All-Star break. “I’ve just been throwing it way, way harder and getting a lot of swing-and-miss. I’ve been throwing my slider harder, too. I got one up to 91 [mph] in my last start, which is well above what I’d been doing previously.
“It’s definitely interesting,” the second-year big-leaguer continued. “It’s not even something I consciously changed, it’s just that I’ve had a little bit more intent. I realized that my intent wasn’t high enough, so I literally started trying to throw harder, and that didn’t sacrifice any execution. I’ve been executing just as good, if not better. My cutter has been kind of been the leading beneficiary of that.”
In terms of velocity, Melton’s cutter is averaging 92.2 mph, up from 90.9 mph in his rookie campaign. Locating the pitch better has likewise been a factor in its success, as has its role in his attack plan. Read the rest of this entry »
Today, it’s another Killers two-fer, covering the left 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 merits a closer a look. All statistics are through July 12.
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.
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 »
It has not been a good season for Trea Turner. The two-time batting champion is in the midst of a career-worst season at the plate, hitting for a 79 wRC+ (.239/.287/.368) even after homering in three straight games, including a three-run shot off Pirates ace Paul Skenes on Wednesday night. What’s more, after breaking a streak of three straight below-average seasons at shortstop according to both Defensive Runs Saved and Fielding Run Value last year, he’s not only back in the red, but is tied for last at the position with -8 DRS, while being tied for fifth-worst with -5 FRV. All of which once again marks Turner as a fairly typical Phillies player.
Indeed, through ups and downs that have included four postseason appearances, one trip to the World Series, and two in-season managerial firings, one constant of the Dave Dombrowski era of Phillies baseball has been lousy defense. Since the start of the 2021 season, the team is 100 runs below average according to FRV (the majors’ seventh-lowest mark) and 127 below average according to DRS (fifth-lowest). It hasn’t stopped the Phillies from being competitive — or highly entertaining — though it may have cost them seeding here and there, to say nothing of the way last year’s Division Series against the Dodgers ended. But given the choice between good hitters with questionable gloves and slick fielders with subpar bats, the team has generally gone for the offensive boost and lived or died with the consequences.
Thus it was hardly a surprise that the Phillies ranked second-to-last in my recent aggregation of team defensive metrics, even with right fielder Nick Castellanos — who contributed -41 DRS and -45 FRV from 2022–25 before being released in February — no longer on the team, and Kyle Schwarber more or less a full-time designated hitter. The Phillies’ .672 Defensive Efficiency, the rate at which a team turns batted balls into outs, is lower than all but the Rockies (.669), while their -29 DRS is lower than all but the Twins’ -32. Read the rest of this entry »
