Do you remember the scene from The Benchwarmers when Clark is up to bat, except that he is absolutely nowhere near the plate? Back when I used to catch and would see hitters set up way off the plate, that was always the image that popped into my head. After an internal laugh, I’d give my sign, then take one big side step to the opposite side of where the hitter was standing to make sure my pitcher didn’t come close to fixating on the inner half. Unless you’re swinging a 40-inch bat and simultaneously have the strength of Giancarlo Stanton, you’re not making good contact on anything away. Gabriel Arias is a prime example of this.

In 2025, there hasn’t been a single hitter who stands farther from the plate than Arias. This is a relatively new extreme. Since 2023, Arias has moved farther and farther from the plate, starting at 31.9 inches in 2023, to 33.0 in 2024, to a league-leading 35.4 this season. For context, let’s take a snapshot of the 2025 leaders:

Most of these players are on the very tall side. That’s not to say you have to be tall to stand off the plate, but if the goal is to make sure your barrel aligns with the heart of the plate, it would make sense that the taller players are the ones who, generally, would benefit from having more space between the plate and where they set up. Conversely, when shorter players set up far off the plate, they increase the area they need to cover with their swings while lacking the length to do so.

That seems to be what’s happening with Arias, who despite being among the shorter players on this list, is standing nearly two more inches off the plate than the next guy, Paul Goldschmidt, and nearly three more inches off it than Aaron Judge, who is six inches taller than the Guardians infielder. How can Arias possibly reach pitches on the outer third of the plate? Here is an example from a game last week:

If I had any video editing skills, I’d overlay Clark as a comparison to highlight just how far this is. It’s an interesting strategy that needs to be reasoned out. Despite his power potential, Arias entered 2025 with a career 74 wRC+, so it’s understandable he would want to make some changes. Setting up even farther away, though, seemed like a bizarre choice, given his average height for a ballplayer and the way it would expose him to outside pitches. Initially, I thought the new setup would hurt him more than it would help. I mean, why would pitchers ever throw him a pitch over the inner third? But then I noticed Arias’ wRC+ is higher this season than it was in 2023 and 2024, up to 88 as of Thursday morning, which is still quite bad but represents a sizable improvement nonetheless. Maybe he was on to something after all.

To see what’s going on here, let’s first zoom in on how this change is playing out on a zone-by-zone basis. In 2023 and 2024, Arias’ xwOBA against pitches on the outer third was .224 and .248, respectively, putting him near the bottom of the league. That number is nearly the same this year, at .235. I’m surprised it hasn’t gotten worse. Where he’s standing, the outside corner might as well be Narnia.

My best guess for why he’s setting up farther away is he wanted to have a better shot at damaging inside pitches. Perhaps he often felt handcuffed and thought moving off the plate would give him more space to get his barrel on plane and make it easier for him to elevate pitches. How’s that working out for him?

OK, now we’re talking. In his previous two seasons, he was not competitive against pitches on the inner third. He was both whiffing a lot and not balancing it out with a ton of hard-hit balls. This year, he’s flipped the script by whiffing less and hitting the ball hard more often.

On top of that, he’s making sweet-spot contact at an impressive rate, helping him pull off a .436 xwOBACON on the inner third. Of course, that only accounts for his performance against pitches to one-third of the zone, but it’s still an improvement that has propelled his offensive performance from unplayable to bearable.

At some point, though, pitchers are going to have adjust, right? They can no longer beat him inside like they did before, but there’s a large chunk of the zone still available to them. And that area might be larger than just the outer third. Because Arias is standing so far off the plate and looking to turn on inside pitches, he might also have a tough time covering at least some pitches over the middle, too.

Hitters who shift farther away from the plate should still be able to crush middle-middle pitches, but depending on how their swing works, it could be difficult for them to reach either high or low pitches over the middle. Before diving into how Arias’ swing works, let’s see if the data tell us a bit more about that:

As expected, Arias’ new location in the box has created another hole over the middle third of the plate. His .053 wOBA and .182 xwOBA up top are absolutely brutal under any circumstances, but they’re especially jarring compared to his .366/.394 from last season. The drop-off alone isn’t entirely uncommon because of the small sample sizes when looking at one-ninth of the zone, but to go from above average to fourth worst in baseball is tough. His numbers have also declined on middle-middle pitches. The .123 margin between his wOBA and xwOBA says bad luck may be involved, but there are many hitters with much wider gaps between their actual numbers and their expected one. However, it’s also interesting to see Arias’ improvement on low-middle pitches. He’s always been good against these pitches, but now he’s demolishing them far more frequently than before.

Even so, that leaves a massive area for opposing pitchers to target, and their pitch mix to get Arias out should be fairly simple: Overwhelm him with heaters up, then put him away with soft stuff outside. He has a .177 xwOBA against offspeed pitches and a .234 xwOBA against breaking balls this season. Those numbers are even worse on the outer third, with a .127 xwOBA against offspeed and a .128 xwOBA against breakers. So far, pitchers don’t seem to be giving him a noticeably different pitch mix compared to how they attacked him in other seasons, or even earlier this year, but they are definitely starting to throw more offspeed pitches to locations that are farther away. Maybe they’re catching on, maybe not. Time will tell.

Here is some video of swings he’s taken against outer-third pitches:

Almost everything is off the end of the bat. Any right-handed pitcher that can locate away is going to have a good shot at beating Arias. In almost all of these clips, he’s making contact off the end of the bat and/or swinging off balance. His closed stride helps him cover pitches that are closer to the middle — like the one from Carlos Rodón in the final GIF above — because his swing path is moving more toward the heart of the plate, but his barrel doesn’t stay in the hitting zone on an upward trajectory long enough to have much room for error. So unless he perfectly times his swing to connect with these pitches over the middle, he’s either not going to square them up or he’ll miss them altogether.

It’s clear Arias is trying to maximize his strengths, damaging inner-third and low-middle pitches, even if it means making his weaknesses even worse. So far, that trade-off is working for him. Although he remains below average at the plate, he’s a better hitter now than he was before; that improvement is enough for him to be a valuable player overall because he’s a good defender at multiple infield positions and he runs the bases well. But we’re only a third of the way through the season, and I have my doubts about how sustainable this will be for him. The holes in his plate coverage should be large enough for major league pitchers to exploit. If (read: when) that happens, Arias is going to have to punish every location mistake they make, which is difficult for even the most talented of hitters, or he’s going to have to continue to refine his game. Maybe that means closing off his stride even more to get to more pitches over the middle, or altering his swing to remain on an upward trajectory through the zone for a longer period of time. If his current setup proves to be too extreme, he can always slide ever so slightly closer to the plate. Not too much, just enough to cover a bit more of the zone without compromising his ability to turn on inner-third pitches.

But we’re not there yet. The most important thing to take away from this is Arias has shown he can make a fairly drastic adjustment and have it work as intended. So when pitchers inevitably adjust to him, perhaps he can do it again.

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Seattle Mariners. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fifth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2023, Mets left-hander David Peterson struck out 128 batters in 111 innings. Peterson’s strikeout rate that year, 26.0%, was 27th in the league out of 127 pitchers who threw 100 or more innings. He was tied with Zac Gallen, not far behind Luis Castillo, Gerrit Cole, and Zack Wheeler.

The next year, Peterson’s strikeout rate dropped by more than six points, to 19.8%, but he shaved three-quarters of a run off his FIP, and more than two runs off his ERA. This year, Peterson is striking out 21.5% of opponents, and after Wednesday night’s complete-game shutout of the Nationals, his ERA is 2.49, which is 14th among qualified starters.

But I thought striking batters out was good! How did Peterson turn into this unhittable monster while running a lower strikeout rate than Shane Baz? Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Olson is having an outstanding career. Since breaking into the big leagues late in the 2016 season, the 31-year-old first baseman has blasted 273 home runs — including 54 in 2023 — while logging a 132 wRC+. A left-handed hitter, he’s garnered two All-Star nods, two Gold Gloves, and one Silver Slugger award. Originally with the Oakland Athletics, Olson has worn an Atlanta Braves uniform since they acquired him via trade in March 2022.

He was a promising-yet-polarizing prospect when Kiley McDaniel ranked him second behind Franklin Barreto on our 2015 Athletics Top Prospect list. Olson’s raw power was obvious, but there were also question marks. While some scouts were bullish on his future, others had their reservations. Drafted 47th overall in 2012 out of Parkview High School in Lilburn, Georgia, Olson had a degree of boom-or-bust in his profile.

What did Olson’s February 2015 FanGraphs scouting report look like? Moreover, what does he think about it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what McDaniel wrote and asked Olson to respond to it.

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“Olson has some pedigree as a former sandwich pick out of an Atlanta-area high school.”

“Once you get into pro ball it doesn’t matter too much,” Olson said. “At the same time, organizationally they kind of care more about the investment that is put into a guy than the player actually playing the game. As far as [having signed out of high school], you’re only playing 50 games in college, as opposed to 140 in the minors. As a hitter, I think it can be beneficial to get out there and get the day in, day out a little bit sooner.”

“He had a huge year in the Cal league last year and he has some big tools, headlined by easy plus power from the left side.” Read the rest of this entry »

Though the Padres have largely been treading water for the past six weeks while using a rather makeshift rotation — a situation not unlike that of the Dodgers, albeit with fewer ex-Rays (and probably X-rays) — that description does not extend to Manny Machado. The 32-year-old third baseman, who went 3-for-5 while driving in five runs during an 11-1 romp over the Dodgers on Tuesday, has been red-hot lately. Indeed, he’s putting together one of the best seasons of his 14-year career while doing his best to keep the NL West race a tight one.

Admittedly, Machado did not face the Dodgers’ best pitching on Tuesday. The Padres’ NL West rivals are without starters Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Roki Sasaki, and Tony Gonsolin, the last of whom landed on the injured list earlier this week due to discomfort in his surgically repaired elbow. On Tuesday, they used an opener, Lou Trivino, who retired Machado on a routine grounder in the first inning. In Machado’s next three trips to the plate, he faced bulk guy Matt Sauer, against whom he connected for RBI singles in the third (88 mph) and fifth (77.8 mph). Sauer, a thrice-optioned righty who was forced to Wear One on behalf of a gassed staff — he gave up 13 hits and nine runs in 4 2/3 innings — finally retired Machado on a grounder in the sixth, but even that drove in a run to give the Padres a 7-0 lead. Read the rest of this entry »

Something weird is happening with Alejandro Kirk. It’s not that he’s having a great season. That’s not weird at all. Kirk ranks third among catchers with 2.4 WAR and 21st among all players. He’s also hitting much better than he has in the past two seasons, but that’s not necessarily weird either. After combining for a wRC+ of 95 in 2023 and 2024, Kirk has a 129 wRC+ this season, the same as he ran in 2022, when he was an All-Star and won the Silver Slugger. He’s always been great with the glove, and it now looks like his bat is back. His .370 xwOBA and 119 DRC+ are also his best since 2022.

What’s weird is that he’s hitting the ball harder – much, much harder – but he’s not necessarily hitting for more power. Let me show you what I mean with a table. Below are a bunch of contact-quality metrics for the five full seasons of Kirk’s career. On the far right is his isolated power. Usually, contact quality and power are pretty much synonymous. If you hit the ball hard, you’re going to end up with doubles, triples, and homers. Usually.

This season, Kirk is running the highest average exit velocity, 90th percentile exit velocity, hard-hit rate, and slugging percentage of his entire career, and not by a little bit. These are huge jumps. Everyone’s favorite 5’8” catcher is in the 97th percentile in hard-hit rate! Yet his ISO is merely the third best of his career, a mere nine points above last season’s mark. I’m curious about why Kirk is hitting the ball so much harder all of a sudden, and I’m curious about why it’s not resulting in a massive power spike. Read the rest of this entry »

I thought the other shoe was dropping on Andrew Abbott when the Brewers knocked him around last week. If your worst start of the season is five runs on seven hits in six innings, that means you’re having a damn good season, but I didn’t expect Abbott to keep rocking an ERA in the 1.50s all year. Surely some regression was coming.

A week later, it seems the other shoe remains aloft. Abbott followed up that rough day at the office with a shutout of the Guardians on Tuesday, his first career complete game. It was his fourth scoreless start of five innings or more this season, and the ninth time (out of 11) that he’s surrendered one run or less.

How’s he doing it? Well, a few weeks ago Jake Mailhot called Abbott a “contact-suppression monster,” owing to his funky fastball movement and some offseason tweaks to his changeup. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the many common themes in mythology, across myriad cultures, is the tragic tale of a protagonist who is undermined and ultimately defeated by the original source of their strength. Oedipus was brought down by his search for truth, Karna by his generosity, and Cú Chulainn by his obligations to his code of honor. Luis Arraez isn’t the hero in an ancient tale, but his ability to hit baseballs at will is the stuff of a modern baseball legend. And like those heroes and heroines in lore, his greatest strength is contributing to his downfall.

Arraez is so fun because he defies an unfortunate aspect of today’s game, what I’ve referred to in the past as its “Anna Karenina problem.” Every lousy lineup seems incompetent in their own way, while most great lineups are nearly indistinguishable from the others. It certainly feels like there’s less run-scoring variety than there was when I was young, a concerningly long time ago. Nobody could possibly mistake Arraez for the greatest player in baseball, but he has won three straight batting titles despite being so very different than the type of player you would see on the cover of a Modern Hitter magazine. He doesn’t work counts to draw walks or pull a bunch of barrels into the stands. Instead, he can turn nearly any pitch into a line drive hit, leading to high batting averages in an era when that has become a relative rarity. In 2025, Arraez has struck out only five times; there are five players this season who have done that in a single game, including former MVP Jose Altuve and two young phenoms, Dylan Crews, Jackson Chourio.

Without boasting the traditional markers of a valuable offensive player, Arraez has nonetheless been one since he broke into the league with the Twins in 2019. He entered this season with a career 120 wRC+ across nearly 3,000 plate appearances, even though he’d hit just 28 home runs. Still, that doesn’t mean Arraez has maintained the same level of nonconformity throughout his career. He remains a contact extraordinaire without much power, but some of his defining characteristics have become more extreme as his career has progressed. With a 103 wRC+, Arraez is having his weakest offensive season, and it’s largely because his signature formula for success isn’t quite mixing the way it did before. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve been writing about Cal Raleigh a lot lately, as we should. He’s currently on pace for 9.9 WAR, which would constitute the greatest season of all time for a catcher. Although his defense has taken a step back from its previous heights, Raleigh is running an absurd 182 wRC+ and leading baseball with 26 home runs. He’ll have to come down to Earth at some point, but he’s all but certain to lead all catchers in home runs for the third straight season. He’s nearly doubled the second-place Logan O’Hoppe’s 14. Raleigh has a real shot to break Salvador Perez’s record of 48 home runs by a catcher – if he keeps up his current pace, he’ll break it by 16 homers!

On May 19, Ben Clemens wrote about how well Raleigh’s new, more selective approach was working out. Even though Raleigh was taking more pitches over the heart of the plate in hitter’s counts (a trend that has continued in the ensuing weeks), the patience has allowed him to get ahead more often and do damage. “Does all of this mean that Raleigh is going to maintain his 170 wRC+?” Ben asked. “No way.” That was the only answer he could have given. To suggest otherwise would have been sabermetric malpractice. But, uh, Raleigh didn’t exactly regress back to the mean from there on out. From May 20 to June 8, Raleigh was the best hitter in baseball, slashing .348/.427/.894 with 13 homers for a 267 wRC+. His average exit velocity was 97.2 mph! That’s what it takes to – barely – hit better than Aaron Judge. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I turned on the tail end of a Blue Jays-Phillies clash. I was hoping to get some notes for an article on Alec Bohm that didn’t really come together. The game was a complete laugher, with Philadelphia leading by five runs in the ninth. All I wanted was to see Bohm put a ball in play, but instead this happened:

Braydon Fisher came out firing in that low-leverage chance. He came out firing curveballs, to be specific – 12 of his 18 offerings in the inning. The Phillies swung at them like they were learning how physics works on the fly. But so what? Anyone can look that good for one game. Major league pitchers have good stuff, more at 11.

Then I started looking at Fisher’s prior games, and I started getting more intrigued. Wait, this guy almost never throws his upper-90s fastball? Wait, he has two different plus breaking balls? Wait, his walk rate was what in the minors last year (14.2%, and above 15% in Triple-A)? I started watching more at-bats and started getting interested. The slider? It’s nasty:

The key characteristic here is velocity. At 88 miles an hour, sliders don’t give opposing hitters much time to adjust. The tight gyro shape of the pitch means it works against lefties and righties alike. His over-the-top release gives the pitch a ton of downward plane, too: Though he doesn’t induce much break on the pitch, it seems to vanish downward when he locates it around the knees.
Read the rest of this entry »