On April 29, 2021, Matt Olson hit himself in the face with a baseball in the batting cage at Tropicana Field. A freak bounce off the L-screen left him with the kind of shiner an athlete can usually only acquire by going 12 rounds with Marvin Hagler, but fortunately no lasting damage. By May 2, Olson was well enough to return to the lineup, and he hasn’t missed a game since.

Olson’s consecutive games streak now stands at 820; not only is this the longest active run in baseball, he recently passed Nellie Fox for the 11th-longest streak in MLB history. Assuming he avoids any further batting practice mishaps, Olson will end the season with the eighth-longest streak ever. Only seven players in MLB history — and 10 in all of North American top-level sports — have ever played in 1,000 straight games. Olson is due to become the 11th before the All-Star break next year. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) In Baseball This Week. Actually, this is a slightly different column: Five Nico Hoerner Throws From Shallow Right Field I’ve Liked This Year Plus Assorted Veteran Cubs Defenders. That’s a little bit less catchy, though, and it’s at least vaguely Five Things formatted, so I’m counting it. Does “plays a single second baseman has made in one area of the field in one month of play” sound like too narrow a topic for not just one article, but five vignettes? It sure does – until you watch Hoerner play. When I voted for him in the Fielding Bible Awards last year, I wrote this: “I actually spent a while reviewing his defense on video. That wasn’t because I seriously considered anyone else for the top spot; it’s just that satisfying to watch him play.” Today, you can be a video reviewer alongside me. Try not to spit out your drink. And of course, what introduction could be complete without credit to Zach Lowe of The Ringer, the inspiration for this column?

1. Calmness Under Pressure
When you’re on the baseball diamond, things won’t always go right. At the big league level, the margins are razor thin. The other guy lives in a big house, too. Half a second late, and there’s no chance for an out. Throw to the wrong base? That’s often going to cost you. But the Chicago infield is packed to the gills with defenders who can tilt the playing field with guile, clawing that razor-thin margin back. A freakishly high chopper, off the bat of Joey Wiemer, gave baserunner Andrés Chaparro a good opportunity to take an extra base on an infield single. Hoerner probably shouldn’t have even attempted to throw him out, but he went for it:

Read the rest of this entry »

Luke Raley took a big hack. Then he took another.

Raley has struck out 36.6% of the time to begin 2026, third most among batters with at least 100 plate appearances. He’s walked just 5.9% of the time, well below the median. His 0.16 K/BB ratio is one of the 10 worst in baseball this year. That’s typically not a recipe for success.

But this is:

Raley has six homers so far in 2026, carrying him to a 132 wRC+. He’s hitting the ball hard (51.8%), to the pull side (50.0%), and in the air (60.7%). His .595 xwOBA on contact is third in the majors. The only batters who have made better contact are Aaron Judge and James Wood, putting Raley ahead of Ben Rice, Munetaka Murakami, Mike Trout, and Yordan Alvarez. It’s impressive company to keep. Read the rest of this entry »

Not all splitters are the same. Hybrids are common — think “splinkers” and split-changes — hence the variations seen in both velocity and movement. The human element is also at play. Regardless of the grip, one pitcher’s split isn’t necessarily going to behave exactly like another pitcher’s. From finger dexterity to arm action, and whatever else might factor in, differences are inevitable.

And then there is spin. Per Statcast, pitches classified as splitters currently range from 508 rpm (Cade Smith) to 2,105 rpm (Joe Boyle). Fifteen of the 71 pitchers who have thrown a splitter this year (minimum 10 innings pitched) are averaging fewer than 1,000 rpm, with Smith being one of seven under 800 rpm, the others being Logan Gilbert (687), Hunter Barco (689), Mark Leiter Jr. (689), Fernando Cruz (774), and Roki Sasaki (776).

Watching a recent game where a splitter acted almost like a knuckleball got me thinking about low spin, and what better way to learn about the subject than talking to someone in the know? Previously with Driveline and Prime Sports Performance, Spencer Medick is now the pitching coach for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RoughRiders, the Triple-A affiliate of the New York Yankees.

I began by asking Medick if anyone on his current club throws a splitter. Read the rest of this entry »

In my free time, I write a newsletter about professional cycling, because my idea of a hobby is “my day job, but on wheels.” (It’s called Wheelysports, you can find it on Medium or sign up here to get it by email. It’s free, it comes out once a week. The last edition was about a guy who had to drop out of a race because of a perineal cyst. It’s fun.)

In the cycling world, there’s a little Slovenian guy named Tadej Pogačar who’s laying waste to all and sundry. The headline figure is that he’s won the Tour de France four times and is going for a record-tying fifth title this summer at age 28, but that undersells how dominant he’s been over the past few years. I don’t think there’s an argument anymore, he’s the best to ever do it.

And it’s not just that Pogačar is the best bike racer in the world; he’s the best at every component of the sport, which is incredibly rare. That level of versatility is basically unheard of since the days of Eddy Merckx, who is the Babe Ruth of cycling.

Pogačar’s feats are awe-inspiring, and every week it seems like he sets a new record or does something historic, but after years of writing about him, I’m starting to run out of things to say. There are no more superlatives left to lavish upon so great an athlete.

Sound like anyone you know? Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — “He brought that New York theater to the ballpark,” said Aaron Judge about John Sterling before Monday’s game, offering a perfect summation of the approach of the longtime Yankees broadcaster, who died earlier that day at the age of 87 in Englewood, New Jersey. Dressed in a suit and tie even though listeners couldn’t see him, prone to dropping a reference to a midcentury Broadway musical while celebrating a Yankees home run, and delivering his lines with a booming baritone capable of reaching the cheap seats, Sterling brought a unique and dramatic flair to the job.

His grandiloquent style could be polarizing, his puns agonizing. His personalized calls for each Yankee player’s home runs — from “Bernie goes boom! Bern, baby, Bern!” for Bernie Williams to “Robbie Cano, don’t ya know?” for Robinson Canó to “He sends a Tex message!” for Mark Teixeira — could sound a bit corny at times, his stentorian elongation of the word “the,” as in his oft-imitated “Thuuuuuuuuh Yankees win!” a hammy flourish.

When you root for a team, though, calls like Sterling’s punctuate the high points of fandom and the thrill of victory. Sterling never failed to convey the excitement of the ballpark with his triumphant blasts, but he easily downshifted into a calmer cadence with his partners, most notably Michael Kay and Suzyn Waldman, during more mundane moments. Such conversations are the comforting stuff of summers past, and such enduring presences in the booth offer us yardsticks by which we can measure our lives. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday night, the Astros came away with a big win against the Dodgers, but they suffered an even bigger loss, as an ankle injury in batting practice resulted in Carlos Correa being pulled before the game. The exact extent of the injury was not initially known, with the shortstop/third baseman scheduled to visit a specialist today, but Brian McTaggart of MLB.com reported late this morning that Correa will have surgery and miss the rest of the 2026 season:

Astros source: Carlos Correa will have surgery on his left ankle and will be out for the season. A devastating injury blow for the Astros.

— Brian McTaggart (@brianmctaggart) May 6, 2026

This didn’t seem like the sort of mild sprain that’s healed by a bag of ice and a weekend spent watching old episodes of Top Chef with your foot elevated. Indeed, the initial returns Tuesday night were already pretty concerning, with McTaggart reporting that “the expectation was that Correa would be sidelined indefinitely.” Correa’s injury is to his left ankle, not his right, which appears to have been the source of worry when both the Mets and Giants put the kibosh on signing him in 2022 following team physicals. Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve probably heard of Davis Martin, or someone like him. Martin is a 6-foot-2 right-handed pitcher out of Texas Tech. But he’s not Tyler Davis, a 6-foot-2 right-hander who played at Sam Houston State. Davis is Martin’s teammate. Neither is he Corbin Martin, a 6-foot-2 right-hander out of Texas A&M. Corbin Martin plays for the other Chicago team.

Davis Martin is also not Caleb Kilian, his college teammate, who stands 6-foot-4 and plays for the Giants. Kilian played at Texas Tech with 6-foot-2 right-hander Clayton Beeter, now of the Nationals, and 6-foot-1 right-hander Caleb Freeman. Freeman and Davis Martin both pitched for the White Sox last year, but they’re not the same guy. Chris Martin is easier to remember: Texan and right-handed, but too tall and too old. Austin Davis is a lefty. Austin Martin is a position player. OK, I think we’re out of the woods now. Read the rest of this entry »

To start things off, here’s a riddle for you. Which of these two batting lines would you prefer?

They’re similar, no doubt. I’m pretty sure you’d pick Batter B, though. He walks a lot more and hits more line drives. He also hits the ball hard more frequently while swinging and missing less frequently. Batter A is Nick Kurtz’s spectacular 2025 season (.290/.383/.619, 170 wRC+). Batter B? Nick Kurtz’s slow start to 2026 (.244/.412/.412, 130 wRC+). Huh?

Kurtz’s early-season power outage is hard to understand. His process statistics all look phenomenal. His xwOBA is up year over year. He’s already posted a higher maximum exit velocity, and his average and 90th-percentile exit velocities are both in the top five in baseball. But they don’t play the game in a Statcast spreadsheet, and Kurtz’s results have dipped meaningfully. In 2025, he hit a homer every 13 plate appearances. This year, that number is above 30. His ISO is down from .329 to .168. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t think many would quibble with me too harshly if I characterized the last two seasons for the Atlanta Braves as dreary disappointments. In 2024, the Braves were generally believed to challenge the Dodgers for the title of best team in baseball. This held true for about six weeks, but for the rest of the season, they suffered myriad injuries and played .500 ball, barely hanging onto a wild card spot before quickly being dispatched by the Padres. Going into 2025 with the hope for a healthier, bounce-back season, nothing of the sort happened. Atlanta finished at 76-86, the franchise’s first losing season since 2017. Expectations coming into this season were more muted. While the Braves were expected to be competitive (the FanGraphs projections were more optimistic than ZiPS), the excitement was certainly dampened compared to the previous two years.

So far in 2026, the Braves have defied the pundits and computers, dominating the NL East and sporting the best record in baseball, at 25-11. Their 8 1/2-game lead in the NL East isn’t an insurmountable one, but it’s quite impressive for this point in the season. No other division leader has more than a two-game lead right now! As crucially, the two teams expected to be Atlanta’s fiercest competition, the Phillies and Mets, are a bit farther behind, at 9 1/2 and 11 1/2 games back, respectively. Naturally, the success of the Braves and the struggles of Philadelphia and New York have changed how the final standings project to shake out.

That’s quite a sea change from the start of the season. Of course, Atlanta isn’t projected to keep playing this well the rest of the way. We’re only a little over a month into the season, and we should expect some regression from the Braves as they play more games.

But just because things will normalize some does not mean that nothing has changed. I’m not convinced that Dominic Smith is a 157 wRC+ guy, or that Martín Pérez is the first person in history to figure out the secret to maintaining a sub-.200 BABIP, but there are other things about this team that I’m quite ready to believe. Matt Olson has had very big seasons before, and when healthy, Chris Sale is one of the best pitchers in baseball. Ozzie Albies isn’t going to hit .330 for the season, but he did amass the second-most WAR as a second baseman from 2018 to 2023, behind only Jose Altuve, so we have seen enough from him in the past to believe this is a true comeback campaign rather than an early-season mirage.

To get a better idea of what’s real and what’s fake, here are the ZiPS projections for the hitters currently on Atlanta’s Depth Charts roster, compared to their preseason projections.

Even being skeptical of a few players, there are a lot more advancers than decliners here. Of all major league hitters currently projected to get plate appearances over the rest of the season, the Braves have nine of the top 100, more than you would expect from random chance. Only three players — Austin Riley, Ronald Acuña Jr., and Mike Yastrzemski — have taken big hits, but they are still projected to be real contributors, though I’m a bit worried about Riley personally.

How does that compare to other teams? Using the rest-of-season Depth Charts playing time projections and applying both the up-to-date projections and the preseason ones to that projected playing time, we can get an idea of which teams have had something change and which teams have not.

Atlanta’s offensive projection has improved more than that of any other team, so it isn’t just smoke and mirrors producing these results. At the risk of veering off topic, the 14-22 Astros’ having the second-most improved offensive projection is quite an awkward data point for the team’s struggling pitching staff. Conversely, even if you’re generally confident that the Phillies and Mets (and Red Sox) will right the ship, the projections are less optimistic than they were in March.

Let’s repeat the exercise with the pitchers:

ZiPS is confident that Atlanta’s offensive improvements are legitimate, but it’s considerably less so when it comes to the pitching staff. I’ve already made a crack about Pérez, but ZiPS is also skeptical about Bryce Elder’s strides. Overall, it still sees the rotation as risky, though it is more bullish on several of the team’s relievers.

(For those curious, the most improved hitter and pitcher in baseball, from a projection standpoint, is Chase DeLauter and Mason Miller, respectively.)

It’s kind of funny to see the Phillies so high up on this list, but they have allowed a .349 BABIP over 35 games, a freakishly high number that can’t possibly be sustained. One can see why the Yankees and Padres have been so strong in the early going, though their success is a story for another day.

Is the NL East race actually over? The projections and Betteridge’s law of headlines say no. But it is true that the Braves have flipped the script. It’s not as over for the Mets or Phillies as the vibes indicate, but if they are going to mount a comeback, they better start fairly soon. If not, they’ll quickly run out of calendar.