Hello. While on paternity leave, I kept a journal about baseball and my daughter, who is not named Derek Jr., but who will henceforth be referred to as Derek Jr. You can read all of the entries here.

May 18
The summer after my wife and I moved in together, we had a mouse in our apartment. We set traps everywhere we could think to put them, but no matter what kind of traps or bait I used, the mouse wanted nothing to do with them. After a couple days, I got desperate. I wanted to figure out exactly where the mouse was getting in so that I could close up the gap to keep it out. Failing that, I wanted to figure out where it was going so that I could set traps in the right places. So I propped up an iPad against the arm of the couch with its camera pointed at the kitchen, called it on FaceTime from my laptop, and brought the laptop into the bedroom and closed the door. Then I sat quietly, stared at my kitchen from the other room, and waited for the mouse to show up. Even as I was setting everything up, I recognized it as an act of madness. But it worked.

I didn’t glean much that first day. If I recall correctly, the mouse did eventually show up, but it turned out that the iPad didn’t have a good angle on its movements. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from or where it was going, only that it crossed the kitchen a time or two. Convinced that the concept was sound and the execution could be improved upon, I tried it again the next day. My wife was off work, so I explained that I needed her to hole up in the bedroom with me. She recognized it as an act of madness too, but she found it hilarious. She dubbed it Mouse TV, and she understandably shrieked when the mouse finally showed up. We watched and stifled our laughter as it nosed around the kitchen. It took a couple more days of Mouse TV to figure out where the mouse was coming from, plug the hole, and make sure that the mouse wasn’t coming back. My wife was tickled the whole time. Whereas I felt embarrassed and vaguely unclean about having a rodent in my home, she’d tell the story of Mouse TV to anyone who could listen. It has, somehow, become a fond memory. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night, my wife’s friend Paula texted me to make sure I’d seen the below play. Paula moved back home to Minneapolis from Brooklyn a few years ago, and we head out to visit her each summer. We do jigsaw puzzles and go to Minnesota State Fair together. It is a lovely tradition. Paula is more of a basketball fan than a baseball fan, but sometimes she’ll reach out to me when the Twins do something surprising. It’s a sweet way of trying to connect with someone who’s important to her dear friend. Last night, however, she just needed to share what she’d seen, because, frankly, it was bit hard to believe. Here are the Royals turning a swinging bunt into a Little League home run via three errors and at least that many terrible decisions:

If you’ve seen this play, you have thoughts. You can’t help but have thoughts. That’s why Paula sent me the video in the first place. When you watch something like this, the thoughts start bubbling up inside you so rapidly that if you don’t find a safe place to vent them, your brain will explode. This play is the baseball equivalent of microwaving a potato. So let’s get to some thoughts.

1. Poor Seth Lugo.
Let us spare a thought today for Seth Lugo, who got dinged with an error and three unearned runs. This would not be Lugo’s finest outing. He would go on to give up six more runs, all of them earned, which means that both his ERA and his RA9 WAR took a beating. After starting his night like this, it’s hard to blame him. But I hold that Seth Lugo was nigh blameless on this play. I avow it with vigor. As such, please find below a list of things that Seth Lugo did right on this pitch:

• He got Carson Benge to chase a two-strike fastball that was a good six inches above the zone.
• He induced contact so weak that Statcast measured the ball as traveling 0 feet in the air with an indeterminate exit velocity.
• He sprang off the mound like a cat who knows how to field groundballs.
• He fielded the ball cleanly. Seriously, form this pure would make your Little League coach break down and cry:

• He made a quick, off-balance throw to first base. That throw was perfectly fine.
• Yeah, you heard me. It was a good throw. It bounced about 12 feet from the bag, giving Jac Caglianone plenty of time to adjust and catch the ball. It would have been easier to field had it been a foot or two farther to Caglianone’s right, but it was by no means offline. I understand that when the ball bounces, the first baseman is absolved from all blame, so the error has to go to Lugo, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be honest with ourselves.
• Yup, we’re still on the throw. I realize this bullet point and the last bullet point should be sub-bullet points, but I don’t want to format them that way, and more importantly, I don’t know how to format them that way. Point is, the throw was good! I watched it zoomed in on super slow-motion, so I can tell you that the throw actually brushed the tip of Caglianone’s glove. You could reasonably argue that Lugo should’ve eaten this ball, but his throw was more or less on target and it got there in plenty of time to beat the runner. Good throw. Do your worst, haters.
• When everything went pear-shaped, Lugo hustled back behind home plate to back up the play. That’s just good fundamental baseball in the midst of one of the least fundamentally-sound plays you’ll ever see.
• He tried to prevent the third error of the play. If you watch the video, you’ll see Lugo shouting and pointing, trying to get Nick Loftin to throw the ball to third base rather than home. I don’t know if that was necessarily the right call, but it certainly couldn’t have gone any worse than the throw to home.
• He kept his composure and ended the inning on the very next pitch. Sure, everything kept falling apart for him the rest of the night, but for at least one more moment, Lugo put his head down and retired the batter in front of him.

2. Poor Jac Caglianone.
I feel bad for Lugo because he did pretty much everything right here. I feel bad for Jac Caglianone for the opposite reason. While I stand by my assessment of Lugo’s throw, I don’t mean to say that it was an easy play for Caglianone. It was a tough throw to field cleanly. But he still made a couple tactical errors. He would have been better served waiting back for the hop rather than trying to stretch and pick this ball. He absolutely should have prioritized knocking the ball down over going for a clean catch. But regardless of who was to blame, everybody who’s ever played baseball knows what it’s like to have to turn around and chase down a ball that you failed to catch. It’s a lonely feeling, even when you’re being observed by 32,734 screeching New Yorkers. It can make you do some things you’ll regret. Speaking of which…

3. Where was Caglianone trying to throw the ball?
I’m not just asking for me. I’m asking for everyone on the internet too:

This ball traveled right between third base and home plate. In fact, it went right toward Lugo, backing up like a champ, except 10 feet over his head. Maybe Caglianone was trying to decide between third base and home plate, and he split the difference? Maybe this is just the major league translation of Caglianone’s 6.4 BB/9 as a collegiate pitcher. The most likely answer, though, is that Cags had no idea where he was throwing this ball either.

4. Or maybe Seth Lugo is a sleeper agent.
Hear me out. Lugo spent seven years with the Mets, and five more years in their minor league system. Maybe he engineered this play on purpose. Maybe Lugo has spent the past four years pitching well for the Padres and the Royals as part of a long-term mole operation, waiting all that time for this moment when he could hand the Mets a game on a silver platter. All it takes is one properly-timed, improperly-placed throw, plus six more earned runs. Will the Mets still lose the game? Of course they will.

5. Advertisements on the pitcher’s mound are a blight on the game.
The beauty of the playing field is one of the best things about baseball. That feeling of walking through the tunnel and emerging into a green cathedral is what makes even non-baseball fans keep coming back to the ballpark (well, that and the soft serve in the little souvenir helmets). Every square inch of the stadium is covered in advertisements. They put advertisements on the players’ jerseys. They put advertisements on the players’ heads. They will soon find a way to put advertisements on the players’ faces. That garish black gash on the back of the mound, the focal point of the entire field, is a slap in the face to anyone who cares about baseball.

6. Create your own luck?
While we’re complaining about the advertisements, let’s also note that the company advertising on the back of the mound has an ad behind home plate as well. I’d never heard of this company before, but everything I can find about them on the internet makes them sound like they treat their customers abysmally. But also, they seem to have repurposed the mantra of the villain in Titanic and made it their slogan. So that’s a choice.

7. Poor Keith Hernandez.
Hernandez was in the booth for SNY last night. It must be a unique form of torture for arguably the greatest defensive first baseman of all time, a guy who is constantly harping on the need for good fundamentals, to watch a play like this. Here are the two things Hernandez said during this debacle. He said, “Ohhhhh.” Then he said, “Oh my God.” He wasn’t wrong.

8. Poor Some Other Guy.
The broadcast booth always houses a couple people whom we never see. Producers, researchers, stat people, I don’t know who they are. But they’re there to help out the people who narrate the game for us, and they normally keep quiet. Keeping quiet is part of the job. On this play, though, right when Loftin’s throw went awry, just before that “Ohhhhh” was forcibly torn from Hernandez’s thorax and/or soul, somebody else in the broadcast booth couldn’t help himself. He shouted, “Oh my—” and then remembered himself and cut the exclamation short. Who could blame him? (I suppose it’s possible that this was Hernandez himself, that he had his mic muted but could still be heard through play-by-play guy Gary Cohen’s microphone. But either way, this exclamation was not meant for public consumption.)

9. Poor Tyler Tolbert.
Statcast makes these cool diagrams where they track the movement of the ball and every player on the field. The moment I saw this play, I thought about the movement tracker. I tried to picture what it would look like in my mind’s eye. How far would the center fielder move on a play like this? Who ended up moving the most? I borrowed this one from Anthony DiComo’s MLB.com article about the play:

It’s a lot to take in. Caglianone ran every which way. Right fielder Tyler Tolbert hilariously ended up with the ball about 40 feet from home plate. Do you know how wrong things have to go for a tapper back to the pitcher to end up with your right fielder in foul territory, right near home plate, and in possession of the ball? Tolbert picked up the ball barehanded on the run like a third baseman charging a bunt. And then he realized it was too late. It was all over. There was nothing left to do but turn the ball over to the proper authorities and make the 200-foot jog back out to his natural habitat.

10. Poor Carter Jensen.
You know who moved the least? Catcher Carter Jensen. The rookie just had to stand there like a Walmart greeter as the Mets whipped by him. He stepped out in front of the plate when Benge tapped the ball back to Lugo. He moved to the left side of the plate when Caglianone’s throw went rogue. He stepped even farther out to give Loftin a clear throwing lane outside the base path. When Loftin decided that clear throwing lanes are for suckers and threw the ball directly at the runner, Jensen trotted 15 feet over toward the right side, then retreated back to home plate. But he never made it more than a step or two onto the grass in any direction. This whole play was an elaborate form of bear-baiting, and Jensen was the bear, staked to home plate, beset on all sides by jubilant Mets, with nothing to do but watch helplessly as wild throws zipped by him in every direction.

Each offseason, we fill up these pages with transaction analysis. We dive into trades and free agent signings, qualifying offers, DFAs, non-tenders, Rule 5 selections, and minor league deals, and we even spare some time for manager hirings and firings. Rarely do we devote much space to the comings and goings of coaches. Even the most-prominent, big-name hitting coaches, pitching coaches, and bench coaches do their work almost entirely out of the spotlight. It’s nearly impossible to know what effect they have, if any, and because their heads are the first to roll when things aren’t going right, they come and go with alarming frequency. So when the Mets let Antoan Richardson, their acclaimed first base coach, walk to the division rival Braves in November, I never wrote anything about it. I had thoughts about the development, but not enough analysis to fill a thousand-word article. I settled for a 10-word skeet, and I wrote about Salvador Perez’s contract extension instead. Now that the Mets have been without Richardson, and the Braves have been with him, for half a season, let’s remedy that oversight.

In 2025, the Mets were successful on 89% of their stolen base attempts. That wasn’t just the best mark in baseball. The difference between the Mets in first place and the Cubs in second place was bigger than the difference between the Cubs and the Astros, who finished in 25th. Four teams racked up more than New York’s 147 steals, but because the Mets almost never got caught, Baseball Prospectus still credits them with putting up more base-stealing value than any team in the game. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s generally bad process to evaluate a player based on a hot or cold streak. Everyone has them, and if you only look at a guy’s best or worst stretches, you’re liable to see things that aren’t really there. That’s just how baseball works; no one plays at the same level all the time. Sometimes the ball looks like a grapefruit, sometimes it looks like a grape. Sometimes pitchers dot the corners with aplomb; sometimes their 3-0 offerings fly wide. No one’s ever as good as they look when they’re on top, or as bad as they look when things aren’t landing. But just because hot streaks are resistant to analysis doesn’t mean they aren’t fun. And for my money, there’s no player who’s more enjoyable to watch when he’s firing on all cylinders than Juan Soto.

In the aggregate, Soto is on track for another successful year, with numbers that look roughly in line with his career marks. His .414 OBP is a hair lower than his career number, but he’s hitting for a bit more power than normal, and striking out less, hence a .570 slugging percentage that would be one of the highest of his career. An early-season injury means he won’t hit his normal 700 plate appearances, and of course the Mets are a dumpster fire, but if I put a bunch of years of Soto’s rate statistics up, you’d struggle to separate this season’s numbers from the pack. That’s basically the idealized pitch for Soto: He can roll out of bed and post a 160 wRC+ with a .400 OBP.

That’s just in the aggregate, though. In the last 30 days, he’s batting .325/.472/.578, good for a 190 wRC+, and walking nearly three times as often as he strikes out. Are these arbitrary endpoints? Of course, and Soto’s not even the best hitter in baseball over that stretch. Batters can do almost anything for a month at a time. Pete Crow-Armstrong is slugging nearly .800 over the last 30 days. Heck, Soto is flanked by Luis García Jr. and Kyle Karros on the wRC+ leaderboard over the last month. It’s not about the raw production. But the way he does it? Man, I can’t get enough. Read the rest of this entry »

Across two decades that have produced just three pennant winners and one champion between New York’s two teams, the city’s sports media industrial complex has spent a fair bit of time calling for one manager’s head or another, or at least stoking that sentiment among fans. Still, it rated as a bit of a surprise on Friday when the Mets announced they had fired manager Carlos Mendoza — er, announced “the departure of” Mendoza, as if he were a flight leaving LaGuardia Airport — and named former Padres manager Andy Green, who’d been the Mets’ senior vice president of player development, to serve as interim manager for the remainder of the season. It was the first time that either the Mets or Yankees had changed skippers during a season since 2008, when the Mets canned Willie Randolph during a California road trip. While the team’s play this season, and indeed for over a year, made the case for a switch, Mendoza didn’t assemble this expensive band of underperformers. But like so many managers before him, he took the fall for someone else’s flawed blueprint.

The Mets were 34-47 when Mendoza was axed, exactly halfway through this season, and halfway through the five-year contract of president of baseball operations David Stearns, who hired Mendoza in November 2023, five weeks after leaving the Brewers to join the organization himself. At the time of the firing, the Mets were last in the NL East and had the league’s third-worst record, with just a two-game margin separating them from the major league-worst Rockies. They had lost six games in a row — their third losing streak of at least five games this season — while being outscored 54-22. In the nightcap of a doubleheader against the Cubs on Wednesday, the Mets’ infield combined to make six errors, with a player at each position making at least one in the same game for the first time since 1962. Amid that debacle, fans chanted the name of bygone slugger Pete Alonso, whose departure via free agency last December has come to symbolize a roster overhaul that went too far.

“Embarrassing,” Mendoza said after the six-error game and the doubleheader sweep. “Overall, the whole day. Two losses, but the way we played overall. That last game was unacceptable. Everybody’s pissed. Everybody’s frustrated.” Read the rest of this entry »

The first thing to know about the firing of Carlos Mendoza is that nobody in the Mets’ clubhouse believes their poor performance is the former manager’s fault. Not David Stearns, the president of baseball operations. Not Francisco Lindor, the franchise shortstop. Not Bo Bichette, the big offseason acquisition. Not Andy Green, the farm director-turned-interim manager. Mendoza did not lose the clubhouse, Stearns said at a press conference Friday afternoon, less than six hours after the team announced the dismissal, while Lindor said he and the players failed Mendoza.

It would be easy to point to the embarrassing series the Mets just played against the Cubs at Citi Field, the low point coming in the second game of Wednesday’s doubleheader. Each of the four infielders made at least one error; that hadn’t happened since Sept. 8, 1962. New York recorded six defensive miscues in total. But the truth is, neither one game nor one series did Mendoza in. The only thing surprising about his firing is that it didn’t happen sooner. The Mets went 34-47 (.420) under Mendoza this season, making them the third-worst team in the National League. On June 12, 2025, the Mets held the best record in the majors. As of Friday morning, they had a record of 72-102 (.414) since that high-water mark. This is a team in free fall, and the descent has lasted for longer than a full calendar year. During the offseason, Stearns and the Mets cleaned house of most of their veteran players and brought in a new group of guys. That hasn’t worked through the first 81 games of the season, and so the next thing to do was fire the manager. Stearns said during his press conference on Friday that his own job is safe, that he has the support of ownership. The thing is, so did Mendoza — until he didn’t.

Jay Jaffe will take a more detailed look at Mendoza’s firing and the Mets in a story early next week, so that’s the last I’ll say about the news in this week’s mailbag. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions about the unwritten rules of ABS challenges, what would happen if a team were made up of nine Frank Thomases, the amount of money a player would make from spending just 24 hours on a big league roster, and more. 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 »

Through their ups and downs this season — a pair of 10-game winning streaks here, a 10-game losing streak there — the one constant for the Cubs has been injuries to their starting pitchers. On that front, this week brought a flurry of bad news. Not only did both Edward Cabrera and Ben Brown land on the injured list on Wednesday, bringing their current total of sidelined starters to six, but president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer announced that Justin Steele, who suffered a setback in late April while rehabbing from his second Tommy John surgery, isn’t likely to rejoin the rotation this season. In need of warm bodies to provide some innings, the team swung a trade with the Mets to acquire lefty David Peterson, a 2025 All-Star who has been getting lit up this year, but if the Cubs aspire to maintain their hold on a playoff spot, they’ll need significantly more help ahead of the August 3 trade deadline.

At this writing, seven of the 11 pitchers who have made at least one start for the team this season — including openers — have landed on the IL at least once, and that count doesn’t even include Steele. With Wednesday’s moves, five of the six pitchers forecast to throw the most innings for the team in our preseason Positional Power Rankings were out hurt, though Thursday’s scheduled activation of Opening Day starter Matthew Boyd from his second IL stint reduces that count. The Cubs rotation ranked 20th in projected WAR in our PPR, with a projected 4.03 ERA and a 4.15 FIP, but even that level of performance has been unattainable. Currently, Chicago is 26th in starting pitcher WAR (2.9), with a combined 4.64 ERA and a 4.79 FIP, and while the team’s use of the occasional opener fuzzes up those stats a bit, the bullpen (including bulk pitchers) has netted -0.3 WAR, with a 3.82 ERA and a 4.62 FIP. Don’t even ask about ready help from the minors, as the organization’s top upper-level pitching prospects — Jaxon Wiggins, Brody McCullough, Brandon Birdsell, Connor Noland — either are currently hurt or have been ineffective. It’s a bleak situation everywhere you look, at least at the moment. Read the rest of this entry »

Fireworks season came early to Citizens Bank Park, where on Saturday evening the Phillies collected 17 hits — 10 for extra bases, including four home runs — in a 15-3 win over the Mets. Kyle Schwarber launched three of those homers, with two traveling more than 450 feet in the third inning, and by the time the fifth inning ended, Bryce Harper had hit for the cycle for the first time in his major league career. At the wrong end of that onslaught was Freddy Peralta, who was tagged for 10 runs in 2 2/3 innings. It was the worst start of his nine-year career, as well as a reminder of just how poorly the team’s offseason acquisitions have panned out.

Saturday’s start began inauspiciously enough, with Peralta allowing a two-out solo shot to Harper in the first inning. After falling behind 2-0, he threw a 93.9-mph four-seamer inside, but Harper was nonetheless able to extend his arms and lift a 37-degree blast. In the second inning, Peralta surrendered two more runs via the combination of an Alec Bohm single, a one-out J.T. Realmuto double, and a two-out Justin Crawford double.

At that point, the Mets were down 3-0, not a good start but hardly catastrophic, but Peralta began the third inning by serving up a 456-foot solo homer to Schwarber on a changeup at the bottom of the zone, and from there the floodgates opened. Harper doubled, Brandon Marsh singled and took second on a Marcus Semien throwing error, and after the first out, Bryson Stott and Realmuto hit back-to-back doubles. A strikeout, a Crawford walk, and a Trea Turner single later, and the Mets were down 7-0. Peralta was done for the evening, but the official scorer wasn’t quite done with him. Crawford and Turner scored when reliever Cionel Pérez left a middle-middle sinker for Schwarber to demolish, a 457-footer for his second home run of the inning, putting the Mets into an 11-0 hole. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets lost 12 games in a row earlier this month. You might’ve heard something about this. You also might be aware that the Mets were without their best player, Juan Soto, for that entire 12-game skid. Soto, who’d be the best player on most teams, was on the shelf with a strained calf.

Soto came back on April 22, and as if by literary contrivance, the Mets’ skid stopped immediately. One 3-2 win at home against the Twins, and the Mets were all set to try to dig themselves out of that hole.

Or so you’d think. Read the rest of this entry »

A question popped into my head as I edited Ryan Blake’s column on the Nationals Friday morning. In the piece, shortly after noting that James Wood ranked third in the majors with a 170 wRC+, Ryan mentioned that Wood’s teammate, CJ Abrams, was sixth with a mark of 168. Upon reading this, I pulled up our leaderboards to see if the Nationals were the only team to have two players in the top 10. Turns out that, yes, they are. I thought about that for all of two seconds before something else caught my eye. Just below Abrams on the list was Mike Trout, who also had a 168 wRC+. This prompted me to wonder: Can Trout return to form? Can he both stay healthy and produce this year?

I’m hardly the only one who spent the bulk of the 2020s dreaming on a fully healthy season from Trout, just as I’m not alone in having abandoned that hope as the injuries piled up. But after watching him blast home run after home run last week from the Yankee Stadium pressbox, I felt the pull of the past encroach upon the present, and perhaps against my better judgment, I started dreaming again. He sure looked as healthy as ever as his broad body barreled up baseballs and roamed center field. The best way to describe the way Trout moves — really, the way he has always moved — is that he lumbers and boulders; for all of his natural athleticism and breathtaking blend of speed and strength, he does not glide gracefully. I put that dream of a Trout renaissance on ice when the Angels left town, only for it to come back a week later. This time, though, I considered whether, at 34, he still has one more MVP season in him. He entered this weekend slashing .239/.417/.557 with eight home runs, and has posted 1.2 WAR in 25 games. He’s walking more than he’s striking out, and he’s already stolen four bases. His BABIP is a mere .228, 111 points below his career mark, so we should expect his batting average to see some positive regression. (Even if we know batting average isn’t all that indicative of player performance, it still matters for MVP voters.) His .483 xwOBA is second in the majors and 62 points above his wOBA. His defense has been below average so far, but if Trout keeps hitting like this, his glove won’t matter much for his MVP case. The narrative would certainly be in his favor.

I just answered two of my own questions from Friday in this mailbag, so I guess it’s time to get to yours. What if the Astros blow it all up? How might the Pirates benefit from a Houston fire sale? Why don’t teams develop bench players to be knuckleballers? What the heck was Austin Warren doing in the game with the bases loaded in the Mets’ 12th straight loss? We answer all these questions and more in this week’s mailbag. Plus, Jay Jaffe remembers Garret Anderson. 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 »