When the Royals traded for Isaac Collins in December, I praised the move. I understand that there are limitations to a 5-foot-8 corner outfielder who showed his first signs of major league life at age 27, but the man hit .263/.368/.411 last year, and the Royals — a team traditionally in dire need of live bats — only gave up a middle reliever to get him.

A Royals fan on Bluesky asked me how to feel about that move when it happened, and I answered thusly: “I think it’s a steal, as long as you make your peace with the small but non-trivial possibility that the Brewers turn Angel Zerpa into Josh Hader.” Read the rest of this entry »

Content warning: This piece contains historical photographs of a racist effigy being hung from a school building. They may be upsetting to readers.

The Rangers host the Royals for a two-game series starting on March 23. It’s their final tuneup before Opening Day, and the first time Rangers fans will enter Globe Life Field this year. Those who filter into the ballpark through the TXE Energy North entrance will encounter a 12-foot-tall bronze statue of a Texas Ranger – not a ballplayer, but a lawman – in the left field concourse, his extended left hand instructing them to calm down, his right hand hovering next to his pistol. The Ranger stands atop a red stone base engraved with the agency’s logo and the words:

TEXAS RANGER OF 1960
“ONE RIOT – ONE RANGER”

The team has been unusually quiet about the statue, offering little context about its provenance or significance. An unveiling ceremony was held the morning of Monday, March 2, but reporters weren’t informed about it until the night before, and they weren’t invited to ask questions. Majority owner Ray Davis’ remarks were brief and vague. Posts on the team’s social media accounts showed only a picture of the statue beneath the text, “New addition to the concourse.” A press release revealed some details about the statue, the name of the sculptor and where it once stood, but it said nothing about how the statue ended up at the ballpark.

This is the story of how the statue arrived at Globe Life Field, but it’s not the story of why the team decided that it belongs there. Only the team can tell that story, and it is not interested in doing so. Last week, in response to an emailed list of questions, a club spokesman referred FanGraphs to the team’s initial press release.

“One Work That Will Really Live Down Through the Ages”

Though often referred to as “One Riot, One Ranger,” the name of the statue is “Texas Ranger of Today,” and it was created by prominent San Antonio sculptor Waldine Amanda Tauch. It was commissioned in 1959 by the Dallas Historical Monuments Commission and paid for with a $25,000 donation (made anonymously at the time) from restaurateur Earle Wyatt. Tauch’s design beat out those of three other artists. “He will be a two-gun man — with one hand on his gun — who is entering the scene of a fight,” she told reporters. “He will be a man that everyone respects and trustfully looks upon as law and order.” Tauch had ambitions for the statue, saying, “I would like to leave some one work that will really live down through the ages.” Oddly, the Ranger is posed nearly identically to Tauch’s 1969 sculpture of General Douglas MacArthur. On April 30, 1961, the statue was dedicated at Dallas Love Field Airport. Apart from temporary stints at Union Station and the Frontiers of Flight Museum, it stayed at Love Field until 2020, when professor Doug Swanson published a book called Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers.

The book was an attempt to tell the story of the Rangers, separating truth from myth without shying away from the darkest chapters of the organization’s history, such as the atrocities committed during the Mexican revolution. According to the Bullock Texas State History Museum’s account of the Porvenir Massacre, “Texas Rangers were sent to patrol the border, but rather than enforcing the law impartially, they participated in and often instigated the killing of hundreds of ethnic Mexicans between 1914 and 1919.”

The phrase “One Riot, One Ranger,” has become an unofficial motto for the Texas Rangers Division. There are differing accounts of its origin. The most famous references an incident from 1896, when Captain Bill McDonald was charged with breaking up an illegal prizefight. Local officials were dismayed that only one Ranger arrived to deal with the unrest. Replied the Ranger, “You only have one riot, don’t you?” In a phone interview, Swanson tried to explain how the Rangers acquired their larger-than-life reputation. “In part, it’s because they helped make Texas what Texas is,” he said. “They helped settle Texas, for lack of a better word. They were the people who fought the Native Americans; they were people who fought outlaws. They fought in the Mexican-American War, all of that. They had this long history. At the same time, they’ve been really good at promoting themselves as these superhuman lawmen who do nothing except engage in justice and honorable behavior and fight on the side of right – which they have in many cases, but which they haven’t in many cases.”

A Pulitzer Prize finalist, Swanson spent 34 years at the Dallas Morning News. He was also “a huge Rangers fan” who got engaged at Arlington Stadium during a Rangers-Yankees game. In 2016, after stints at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of North Texas, he began teaching journalism at the University of Pittsburgh. “You know, the Pirates may have a team this year,” he said. “That should be your story.”

Cult of Glory wasn’t the first book to document the Rangers’ past atrocities, but it arrived at a moment of national reckoning over police brutality, particularly as it affected communities of color. It was published on June 9, 2020, 15 days after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, an unarmed Black man; the killing was captured on video and prompted protests of police violence across the country. On June 4, D Magazine ran an excerpt from the book that began with a section on the statue. It identified the model for the statue as former Texas Ranger Captain E.J. Banks, known as Jay, and it ran under the headline, “The Horrible Truth of Love Field’s Ranger Statue.” The statue was removed later that day. “Protests at an airport present too much risk,” said then-aviation director Mark Duebner. The statue went into storage at Hensley Field, a former Naval Air Station, and news outlets ran pictures of the Ranger lying horizontally on a dolly – his calming left hand now pointed straight up toward the ceiling – as workers in hard hats wheeled him out of the airport.

“He Could Hit Harder Than Any Man I Ever Saw”

Born in 1912, Banks spent nine years as a highway patrolman and served in the Coast Guard during World War II. He joined the Rangers in 1947 and became a legend for his toughness during a time of gang wars. Said one of his subordinates, “I don’t want to make a folk hero of the man, but he was formidable. He was big and powerful. He could hit harder than any other man I ever saw.” Banks’ most celebrated accomplishment was a 1957 car chase and shootout in which he killed notorious murderer Gene Paul Norris and accomplice Carl Humphrey, reportedly shooting Norris 23 times.

Banks gained national fame in 1956, when the country was mired in a battle over segregation. Two years after Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, state police and federal troops forcibly integrated schools across the South. In Texas, Governor Allan Shivers twice sent in the Rangers to make sure the schools stayed segregated. He’d campaigned on segregation, and even after more than 100 school districts had integrated, he continued to fight it. Striking a tone that’s all too familiar today, he blamed the turmoil on “paid agitators.”

On Friday, August 31, after a federal court refused to stay the decision to integrate the Mansfield Independent School District, a mob of 400 people descended upon Mansfield High School to prevent Black students from registering. They blocked the doors. They hung effigies. They brought hunting dogs. They smashed the cameras of out-of-town reporters. A lawyer representing three Black students tried to register them by telegram, but superintendent R.L. Huffman refused to accept the proxy registration. “Now you guys know I’m with you,” he assured the mob, before making sure they hadn’t overlooked two doors around the back.

Shivers sent his own telegram to the Mansfield trustees, instructing them to transfer to another district any students “who might be the cause of difficulties.” To enforce this directive, he dispatched Banks and fellow Ranger Lewis Rigler. The telegram also served as a photo opportunity. On the front page of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, a highway patrolman hands the telegram to the president of the Mansfield school board. Between them stands Banks.

On September 4, Reverend D.W. Clark of St. Timothy’s Church in Fort Worth admonished the demonstrators, telling them to love their neighbors. The incensed crowd surrounded him, screaming. A widely circulated AP report described Banks’ extrication of Clark in heroic terms: “Banks came through the crowd very quietly, took the priest gently by the arm, and said, ‘I think we’d better go.’ He led the priest off the school grounds.” The article was often accompanied by a photo of a smiling Banks leaning against a tree, surrounded by adoring high school girls. A photo taken from another angle, which didn’t make it into newspapers, shows that the cheerful gathering took place on the front lawn of the school, in the shadow of an effigy hanging from the entrance to the school. Another picture showed Banks and the girls laughing as he playfully handcuffed two of them together.

The next week, Banks and three other Rangers were sent to Texarkana College, a community college. On September 10, a mob estimated at 300 people assembled to physically block Black students from entering. People started arriving at 7:00 AM. They brought signs: “No NAACP Goons” and “Go North, N*****.” Two Black students arrived, 17-year-old Steve Poster and 18-year-old Jessalyn Gray. The crowd screamed epithets as the teenagers tried to find a way in. They separated Poster and Gray, kicking him and throwing gravel at her. The two left, but a few minutes later, they returned and asked the Rangers to escort them into the college. Banks refused, and relayed to reporters what he said to the teenagers: “Our orders are to maintain order and keep down violence. We are to take no part in the integration dispute and we are not going to escort anyone in or out of the college.” Wrote Swanson, “The local White Citizens Council was so happy with the Rangers’ actions they treated Banks to a chicken dinner.”

Photographs played an important role in how the narrative unfolded across the country. They also raised Banks’ profile. That September, Life magazine ran a series of articles on the skirmishes across the South. The September 17 and September 24 issues contained photos from Mansfield and Texarkana. One showed an effigy that had been hanging over Main Street in Mansfield. It was covered in blood-red paint and accompanied by two signs. The first read, “THIS NEGRO TRIED TO ENTER WHITE SCHOOL.” The second read, “THIS WOULD BE A HORRIBLE WAY TO DIE.”

The defining picture of the incidents also came from Mansfield. In the foreground, in the left of the frame, Banks leans calmly against a tree, his thumb tucked into the waistband of his holster. Banks is in perfect profile, facing to the right and drawing the viewer’s attention to the center of the picture. The dramatic brick façade of the school commands the background. In the center, the high, gabled main entrance juts out from the surrounding wall. The door to the school, set in a sweeping arch, is patrolled by nine high school boys, their hands on their hips. Some 30 feet above them, at the peak of the gable, an effigy with a noose around its neck hangs from a light standard.

The picture appeared in Time magazine. “Banks became for a while the face of uniformed, armed, and officially sanctioned white resistance to court-ordered civil rights,” wrote Swanson. Less than two weeks later, Banks was promoted from sergeant to captain. His rising celebrity earned him appearances on the “Today” show, “Name That Tune,” and “What’s My Line?” Wrote the Dallas Morning News, “Whenever they needed a big, handsome guy to trot before the public, whether on network TV or at a beauty pageant, they called on Banks.” In some respects, Banks makes a fitting avatar for the Rangers. He killed men and committed acts both heroic and despicable. He earned a reputation for toughness, and he excelled at parlaying it into widespread fame.

“I Always Thought Models Were Kind of Sissy”

Ray Davis wasn’t the only speaker at the unveiling last week. Russell S. Molina, a businessman and board member of the Texas Ranger Association Foundation (TRAF), said, “This statue represents all Texas Rangers, not any single individual.” Asked in a phone interview whether his remarks were intended to imply that the statue was not modeled on Banks, Molina was more direct. “It is not,” he said. When informed that the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum lists Banks as the model for the statue, he conceded that Banks was “one model of many models… But that is not a model of him. That is not about a singular individual.” This contention feels disingenuous. The statue’s history is inextricably tied to its model, and the relationship between the two is well documented.

“The artist used one ranger who posed for her,” read a 1960 profile of Tauch in the San Antonio Light. Because the statue was intended to be a composite of all Rangers, “She promised authorities that she would not reveal his name.” An article in the Brady Herald, supplied to FanGraphs by Molina, told the same story of a single model: “Dr. Tauch used a model in doing the work but he will remain anonymous so the statue will be a tribute to all ‘Texas Rangers of Today.’” It was Banks who revealed that he was the model for the statue. “I don’t mind admitting I enjoy remembering the statue,” he told the Longview Daily News in 1976. “It did me some good posing for it. Until I did, I always thought models were kind of sissy.”

The article was adapted for syndication by the Associated Press and ran in at least 10 different newspapers. Tauch acknowledged her instructions to avoid making the likeness any one Ranger, but said she only made “a few minor changes,” and that the statue looked so like Banks that many called it simply “the Jay Banks statue.” In another interview, she said Banks was “exactly my idea of what a Ranger ought to look like.” According to the 2010 book Time of the Rangers, Banks lent Tauch his hat, boots, pistols, and holsters, which explains why the statue’s holsters bear a similar design to the ornately tooled leaf pattern of Banks’ actual holsters. They were sold at auction in 2012, accompanied by a notarized letter of provenance that read, “these are the holsters that he was wearing when he posed for the statue.”

Just as relevant, Banks has existed in the public consciousness as the model for the statue for 50 years now. Long before Swanson’s book, he was identified as such by the Public Art Archive, many dozens of articles in newspapers and magazines, TV broadcasts, and books about Ranger history. A 1982 biography, authorized by Banks, was titled Legend in Bronze. He posed for pictures in front of the statue. It wasn’t just the first line of his obituary; it was the headline. And, of course, in 2020, the statue was taken down specifically because of its connection to him. At this point, it isn’t possible to tell the full story of the statue without including Banks and his role in defending segregation.

For Failure To Perform His Duty

When asked whether, hypothetically, his opinion of the statue would change if he knew definitively that it was modeled on Banks, Molina responded with a question: “Do you think one picture should define a man’s legacy?” He cited Banks’ relationship with Earl Ray Peterson, who went on to become the first Black chief of the Rangers, as proof of his character. Said Molina, “He was there at Mansfield doing a job that the governor told him very specifically what to do, and he was very successful at that.” It’s a familiar argument. “As modern Rangers still must, mid-20th-century Rangers followed orders,” wrote Mike Cox for True West Magazine. “They didn’t unilaterally set state policy. Wrong as what happened in Mansfield was, Banks and other Rangers would have been out of a job had they not done what Gov. Allan Shivers sent them to do.”

Banks soon found out how true this was. In March 1960, before the statue was even finished, he was fired from the Rangers. When Banks claimed he’d resigned rather than been fired, Colonel Homer Garrison Jr. held a news conference to explain that for “practically a year,” he had repeatedly ordered Banks to raid illegal gambling establishments in Tarrant County. “For failure to carry out department orders,” Garrison said, “Captain Banks has been relieved of his command and dismissed.”

Following his dismissal, Banks was hired as chief of police in Big Spring, Texas. In June 1971, the city fired him after complaints that included refusal to cooperate with other law enforcement agencies that sought to investigate theft within his department, refusal to fire incompetent officers, and discrimination in enforcing ordinances on the sale of beer and pornography. Twice, Banks’ refusal to follow orders cost him his job. In Mansfield and Texarkana, he did what he was told. He later wrote that the mobs “were just ‘salt of the earth’ citizens. They were concerned because they were convinced that someone was trying to interfere with their way of life.”

Another photograph from Mansfield – one that didn’t make it into the newspapers – tells the story in an entirely different way. The lighting is no longer crisp. The composition is purposefully amateurish. Where the photograph that has threatened to define Banks was ambiguous and poignant, this one is so on the nose that it borders on caricature. In it, Banks is no longer leaning against the tree out on the front lawn. He’s right on the steps of the high school, posing next to Rigler. The photograph is taken from below, and it cuts the men off at the waist. That’s done intentionally, so the top of the frame will capture the effigy directly above their heads. The two Rangers wear big smiles for the camera.

This is the context behind the statue. This is the reason why, at a time of heightened scrutiny of law enforcement, it was removed from Love Field the moment that context was brought back into public consciousness. Swanson had no idea his work would result in the removal of the statue. He wasn’t necessarily in favor of the decision. “I thought at the time,” he said, “and I still think it would have been better if they could add some context to it, to explain what the statue represented, both good and bad, and explore some of the history related to it. And maybe a few people would stop and read it and maybe understand a little bit more about it. That’s the point I was trying to make.”

At the time, Dr. Sonia Hernández, the George T. & Gladys H. Abell Professor of Liberal Arts II at Texas A&M’s history department, was more hopeful about the removal of the statue. In a phone interview earlier this month (during which she clarified that she was speaking only for herself, and not on behalf of Texas A&M), she explained, “Removing a statue doesn’t necessarily lead to justice or a more equitable society. However, it is a recognition, especially on the part of authorities or the state… We are paying attention and we need to be mindful of the kinds of stories that we value.”

Hernández hesitated to put all the focus on Banks. “It’s a Ranger and it’s the larger context. You get at the Rangers through one individual, through an agent. And I go back to the larger culture of impunity.” To some, recognition of the statue’s significance felt like a culmination of years of research and scholarship to acknowledge the full truth about the Rangers, starting with the Canales Hearings in 1919 and Américo Paredes’s 1958 book, With His Pistol in His Hand.

“I Mean, Who Wants Bad Publicity?”

Molina explained that he himself spearheaded the effort to return the statue to public display. “I wanted to make sure that the truth got told and that the statue was put back up,” he said. He started negotiating with the city in 2021 or 2022. In February 2023, he arranged for the Office of Cultural Affairs to loan the statue to TRAF, which would be responsible for finding it a new home. Administrative Action 235385, which made the loan official, says the contract expires on December 30, 2027.

The original agreement was to place the statue at a brand new museum and Hall of Fame devoted to the law enforcement agency, said Molina, but that project has been delayed. “I’ve always thought Texas Ranger baseball was the ideal place, and it just so happened that I had a conversation with a friend of mine who knew somebody there.” He estimated that it took six to nine months to go from that initial conversation to the unveiling earlier this month.

The only public mention of the new destination came at a Public Art Committee meeting on February 3. The move had already been decided. “He – ‘One Riot, One Ranger’ – will be moved to the museum-like setting at the Texas Ranger ballpark,” said the Committee’s Lynn Rushton-Reed. “He will be part of that museum that tells the story of the Rangers and how the Rangers baseball team got their name, so back in a museum-like setting.”

Last week, the Arlington branch of the NAACP issued a statement expressing “deep disappointment” in the team’s decision to host the statue just 14 miles from Mansfield. After the Public Art Committee meeting, the NAACP had “reached out to representatives of the Texas Rangers organization to express our concerns about honoring a historical figure connected to events that undermined civil rights and educational progress in our region. Despite those concerns being raised, the organization ultimately chose to move forward with the statue’s installation.”

United States Congressman Marc Veasey, whose district includes parts of Arlington less than two miles from Globe Life Field, has also come out against the statue. In a letter to Rob Manfred, Ray Davis, and team co-chairman Bob Simpson, Veasey wrote, “It sends a chilling message about which parts of history are being elevated and which sacrifices are being forgotten. Ballparks should be places where families gather, where children fall in love with the game, and where fans of every race, faith, and background feel welcome. Honoring a figure tied to resisting school integration — and doing so with imagery that evokes racist violence — sends exactly the wrong message about who belongs in that space.”

As a historian, Hernández is well-equipped to put the reemergence of the statue in context. “I was disappointed,” she said, “and perhaps not entirely shocked, given the developments in the last couple of years – widespread assaults on anything that is accurate, critical history, American history – and what’s been happening across institutions of higher education.” Still, she couldn’t help but express some surprise at the team’s decision, saying, “I mean, who wants bad publicity? Nobody wants bad publicity.” Swanson echoed her thoughts: “It’s a curious choice, this statue, I guess is what I would say in the end. I don’t know why they would want to associate themselves with a statue that has such a problematic history.”

“I Don’t Know How They Would Handle That”

In conversation, Molina stressed the need to look at the big picture. “The full context is really what is critical,” he said. “Because you’ve got to know what was happening the day before, the week before, the month before, a year before. And then, more importantly, what happened the day after, the week after, the month after, and years after.” When asked whether the Rangers planned on providing any additional context to the statue at the ballpark, Molina replied, “Well, that’s a good question. Not to my knowledge. I don’t think Texas Ranger baseball has any plans on that. But I may be speaking out of turn. I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know.”

Swanson and Hernández both echoed the need for context. “I wish there was more information,” said Swanson. “I wish there was more context. I wish we could embrace the history of it, both good and bad.” Hernández gave the historian’s perspective on the danger of presenting the past through a “noncritical” lens: “Up through the late 20th century and into the 21st century, there’s been evidence-based scholarship on the dark chapters associated with this elite law enforcement unit…. There’s certainly great things about Texas. I am a Texan. But I think it’s also important to tell it like it is. And when you obscure or gloss over the not-so-great things about any historical figure, any historical site, any historical development, you’re doing a disservice to the greater American public.” The NAACP’s statement ended by “calling on the Texas Rangers organization and ballpark leadership to engage in constructive dialogue with community stakeholders regarding how history is represented.”

Despite the agreement that the statue should be part of a larger conversation, few seem to think it’s possible to provide the appropriate context for the statue at Globe Life Field. “I don’t know where you would do it,” said Molina. Said Hernández, “It is really difficult to complicate that history at that place. People are coming and going, especially children, young people, visitors. It’s going to be difficult to do that in a place like that… Can you separate history from heritage and have those deep, impactful conversations where people dialogue? Can you do that at a stadium or at an airport? I don’t think so.” Swanson put it more bluntly: “I mean, are they going to put up a plaque over by the beer stand that tells the rest of the story? I don’t know how they would handle that.”

“It’s not about being politically correct,” said Hernández. “It’s not about supporting one group over another. It’s the kind of nation that we can have, built on trust and honesty and respect for one another. And that’s a really basic way to put it, but I think it’s really important. You ask yourself, ‘By doing this one thing or by supporting this one thing, am I living up to that standard? Is this the kind of world that we want to promote?’ Really thinking about the next generation, especially at a ballpark where you take your kids.”

For now, at least, the point is moot. The ballclub has given no indication it will provide any additional context about the statue to the more than two million fans who attend home games each year. At D Magazine, sports editor Mike Piellucci described the unusually collapsed timeline of the unveiling. The team announced the 10:00 AM ceremony in an email sent at 6:01 PM the night before, saying only that it concerned “a new permanent non-baseball addition to the left field concourse,” and that reporters would be expected to leave by 10:30. No one would have time to do research or prepare questions. No one would get to ask questions anyway. Wrote Piellucci, “The organization concealed what it was unveiling because it knew what the reaction would be.”

Fans will necessarily view this most recent development within the larger context of the club’s other actions. The Rangers are the only major league team without a Pride night. The Rangers are one of just two teams that don’t provide paid maternity leave to employees. They have now installed this statue while taking great pains to avoid any discussion of its significance. Reasonable observers might deduce that the through line connecting these decisions is a disregard for marginalized groups.

“We recognize that the history of the Texas Rangers, like that of our state and nation, includes moments that must be confronted honestly,” said Molina at the unveiling. But no one can force the ballclub to explain why a statue so objectionable that it spent six years in storage is now an appropriate addition to Globe Life Field. Through its actions, the team has made it clear that it would prefer to sidestep the conversation entirely, and that it believes it can do so. When fans arrive on March 23, they will be armed only with what they already know and believe about the statue and the organization it represents. No doubt, many will see the statue the way the artist intended, as “a man that everyone respects and trustfully looks upon as law and order.”

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this piece erroneously identified Robert Wilonsky as Dallas’ aviation director at the time of the statue’s removal from Love Field. It has been updated to reflect that Mark Duebner held that role.

Chase Lee is now a Blue Jay after enjoying a mostly successful 2025 rookie season as a Tiger. The 27-year-old, sidewinding right-hander made 32 relief appearances with Detroit, logging a 4.10 ERA, a 24.3% strikeout rate, and a 6.1% walk rate over 37-and-a-third innings. He allowed 32 hits, seven of which left the yard, and was on the winning end of four of five decisions. Toronto acquired him in exchange for 24-year-old farmhand Johan Simon in mid-December

He was originally in the Rangers system. Texas took Lee in the sixth round of the 2021 draft out of the University of Alabama, only to move him to Motown at the 2024 trade deadline as part of the Andrew Chafin deal. Lee then headed into last season with Eric Longenhagen calling him a “a sinker/slider sidearmer who has posted strikeout rates up around 30% his entire minor league career… a high-probability up/down look reliever.” That proved accurate. Lee rode the Detroit-Toledo shuttle multiple times, making 23 appearances as a Mud Hen.

Talking to him Jays camp on Friday, I learned that the well-educated hurler places a high value on the information he gets from hitters.

“That’s where pitchers get a lot of their information,” the Alabama graduate told me. “When I’m working on new pitches, new shapes, new locations — whatever it may be — I normally go to the hitting coaches. It’s like, ‘Hey, if your team were to face me, what would the plan be?’ I take that, then it’s, ‘OK, how can I mess up that plan?’

“I did this the other day,” the former walk-on to the Crimson Tide baseball team added. “I talked to Cody Atkinson, who is one of our hitting coaches here. I knew Cody in [the Texas Rangers organization]. I asked him to write me a 30-second report on what he would tell hitters to do if we were on different teams and I was coming into a game. He said he would tell them to look in a certain location, for these two pitches. If I were to instead throw a fastball up, or a fastball in, that would ruin the entire plan.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about speedster Braiden Ward’s record spring, whether there’s a baseball equivalent of Bam Adebayo’s 83-point game, and Paradise being a baseball show, then preview the 2026 Atlanta Braves (38:00) with From the Diamond’s Grant McAuley, and the 2026 Chicago White Sox (1:29:45) with Sox Machine’s James Fegan.

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I’ve covered Red October playoff games in Philadelphia, and white out football games at Penn State. I’ve also attended professional games in Panama and covered plenty of Little League World Series games, giving me a taste of how different cultures enjoy baseball. But I have never witnessed a sporting event quite like Wednesday night’s World Baseball Classic game between the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

It wasn’t just the chanting, the instruments blaring, or the dancing that made for such an exhilarating experience; all of those things were also a part of the previous Pool D games played by the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. I know what passionate fandom looks and sounds like, and this was something altogether different. Venezuelan and Dominican fans don’t merely watch baseball; they participate in it. It’s kinetic, and when the force of their fandom collided under the closed roof of loanDepot park, it created a unique, unforgettable energy. I hope all of you reading this can experience something like it at some point in your life, because getting to feel that power pulsing through the stadium is one of the great privileges of this job.

That’s the last we’ll talk about the WBC in this week’s mailbag. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions on how baseball would change if it were played exclusively left-handed, how often we might see an Ultimate ABS Challenge, and whether the 2026 Angels roster would’ve been a playoff team in 2024. 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.

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How would baseball change if there was no such thing as right-hand dominance? All hitters and pitchers from the game’s inception to the present performed exactly the same, except now all as left-handed throwers and hitters, exclusively?

From,
“Transmission”

Michael Baumann: I’d like to begin by saluting you, Transmission — I’m gonna call you Mish for short — for submitting the best mailbag question I’ve ever received. Better than the dog first baseman one, better than the one about why God hates the Reds. Nothing’s even close.

The first thing that comes to mind is that if everyone in the world were left-handed we would absolutely be running the bases the other way. Most obviously because of the way the infield is oriented now, three of the toughest defensive positions are incredibly awkward to play as a left-handed fielder. So much so that you never see it past the dandelion-picking levels of Little League.

I know that lefties get an advantage over righties by being closer to first base, but there’s a logic in having the batter run to the base he’s facing. The big question is whether baseball’s founding fathers would have bothered to create a right-handed batter’s box at all. And conversely, would an all-right-handed baseball league have created a left-handed batter’s box? (For what it’s worth, if everyone threw with the same hand, I don’t think it’d matter which hand it was; all-lefty baseball would look the same as all-righty baseball, just in reverse.)

But if everyone in baseball hit from the same side of the plate, pitching strategy would be enormously different than it is in our ambidextrous world. The value of the platoon advantage was understood very early on in the history of the game; switch-hitters came into existence around the same time as the baseball glove, in the 1870s.

If every player in the league were left-handed, and it was understood that hitters fared better against breaking pitches that moved toward them, would anyone have ever developed the sinker or the changeup? Probably — even now, you see pitchers whose offspeed pitches are dominant enough to be effective against same-handed hitters — but the shape and deployment would probably be different. Creating screwball action would take a backseat to deception; for that matter, maybe breaking pitches would have developed on a continuum of shape and speed, rather than being distinct, the way we separate sliders and curveballs now.

But if I had to guess, I’d say that entirely left-handed baseball would have developed symmetrical batting positions, as ambidextrous baseball has in real life. I’m not aware of a stick-and-ball sport that forces the player to address the ball from a specific side — then again, we live in a world where right-handed people exist, which would not be the case in Mish’s hypothetical.

A left-handed grip on a baseball bat — which is to say, left hand on top, right hand on the bottom — is also a left-handed grip on a variety of tools that would’ve been familiar to 19th Century Americans: axes, brooms, shovels, even swords. It stands to reason that baseball would’ve evolved along those lines.

But maybe not universally so.

When I was growing up, the kids in my neighborhood would play street hockey every afternoon, from when school got out to when it got dark. Hockey has left- and right-handed shooting positions that correspond with the batting positions of the same name. I write right-handed, I throw and hit right-handed, and I play hockey right-handed. Most of the kids I grew up with were also right-handed and played baseball right-handed, but in hockey they shot lefty.

In both baseball and hockey, the fine control of the bat or stick is done with the top hand — that’s where you want your dominant hand. But because the baseball bat is held up, the top hand is further from the knob, while the hockey stick — held close to the ground — has the top hand at the knob. In order to put the dominant hand in control of the stick, a right-handed hockey player would have to shoot lefty.

Most of my left-handed-shooting friends learned how to play hockey before they learned how to play baseball, so if they were right-handed they were taught to shoot lefty. I came to hockey later, after already having committed to a right-hand-over-left baseball grip, so I played hockey with the same hand position.

The point is, it’s easier to hit right-handed if you’re naturally right-hand dominant, but not by much. It can be learned or unlearned fairly quickly; plenty of high-level ballplayers who don’t switch-hit in games will switch-hit in practice for their own amusement.

If a right-handed batter’s box were available by rule, it would take about 10 seconds for someone to try to figure out how to gain an advantage by using it. It would start with the kind of jailbreak swing you see from left-handed fast-pitch softball players. (Remember, we’re running the bases clockwise in this hypothetical.) Before too long, an enterprising switch-hitter would realize that he was having an easier time seeing left-handed breaking pitches and commit to hitting righty full-time.

Eventually, the entire league would follow suit. If every pitcher you face is left-handed, why would you ever subject yourself to a platoon disadvantage if you could avoid it? So eventually, some left-handed pitchers would experiment with throwing righty, which would be awkward but not impossible. Remember, Billy Wagner is naturally right-handed. (So is Michael Vick, if you want a non-baseball example.)

From the start of the National League in 1876, it took 119 years for Greg Harris to come along and pitch with both arms in a single game. That was a novelty act from a pitcher on the verge of retirement; it’d be another 20 years before Pat Venditte reached the majors. Soon, Jurrangelo Cijntje will come to the majors with conventional big league-quality stuff from both sides.

In a world where every pitcher throws left-handed and every hitter is left-handed but bats righty, the evolution toward non-dominant-hand pitching would not take nearly that long. Eventually, we’d see a mix of switch-pitching and switch-hitting players, and maybe even right-handed-throwing first basemen.

From there, how long until baseball players start trying to write with their non-dominant hand, too? Would baseball bring an end to this wholly left-handed world? Is this thought experiment inherently self-negating? Fascinating stuff.

__

Dear Mailbag,

Thanks!
Andrew

Ben Clemens: What an incredibly specific query! The answer is that this is probably going to happen almost never. Forget the distance from the borders of the strike zone. From 2021 to 2025, there were exactly 23 pitches that meet the rest of your criteria: bases loaded, bottom of the ninth or later, full count, two outs, taken for a strike or ball. Here’s a Baseball Savant search string for that.

Out of those 23 pitches, 15 were taken for balls. Those balls were all pretty far outside the strike zone. The closest one was 1.7 inches off the plate, and that’s grading generously. Statcast measures the location of the center of the ball; I, of course, included the radius of the ball in my calculations. Sure, the Cardinals would have challenged that one, but I don’t think there’d be much drama. No one on either team thought that it was a strike.

Out of the eight pitches taken for a strike, only one had a location within 1.5 inches of being overturned on a challenge. That’s this bending changeup from Tyler Holton, and it would have been overturned. The closest among the others was this slider from J.B. Bukauskas that dotted the inside corner. I’m sure Amed Rosario would have challenged it, but the truth is that it was in the zone by a lot. It’s a strike if any part of the ball clips the zone, and the center of this one was in the zone. The inside edge of this pitch was nearly two inches into the strike zone; it wouldn’t have been close to getting overturned.

In other words, you might get a few challenges – five pitches in the last five years within two inches, for example – but probably not that many overturns. Maybe zero overturns, in fact. Batters don’t get into this situation — bases loaded, 3-2 count, two outs, bottom of the ninth — very often in the first place. And I doubt they’re going to suddenly start taking more pitches either. When batters swing at close pitches in these situations, it’s not because they’re worried the ump will botch the call. Rather, it’s because they’re tracking a spinning projectile in flight, making a swing decision well before they see where it ends up, and trying to approximate a trajectory. They don’t even know exactly where the strike zone border is. I don’t think this behavior will change much at all. No one’s that good at knowing where a pitch will end up before they swing; even Juan Soto chases. I hope that we see at least a few, but I’m glad that they’ll happen pretty rarely.

__

The Angels are accumulating a large number of players who were good roughly a few years ago, mostly in 2023. Some are declining vets like Jorge Soler and Mike Trout. Some are young enough guys that only had one really good year, like Josh Lowe and Alek Manoah. Some probably had really good projections some spring but never launched, like Grayson Rodriguez and Vaughn Grissom and Oswald Peraza. Some blew out their arms, like Jordan Romano and Robert Stephenson. If you took the best preseason projections in the 2022-2024 period for each player you probably have a playoff team. Could you run the projections to see if my theory is true? — Jason

Dan Szymborski: Hi, Jason, I always appreciate an attempt to make the 2026 Angels seem like an interesting team. We elected to do this exercise for the current Angels roster with their projections entering the 2024 season. You’ll see why in a moment.

The time machine 2024 Angels, in a ZiPS simulation, continue to struggle in the current AL West, though they do improve. You get better projections from Mike Trout, Logan O’Hoppe, Jorge Soler, and Nolan Schanuel, but you also lose Zach Neto’s breakout. Alek Manoah gets a bit of a boost, but both Yusei Kikuchi and José Soriano lose some of their current projected value.

In the end, it’s enough to bump the Angels from what is currently a 69-win projection to a 73-win projection, and their playoff probability from 2.9% to 9.1%, but it’s a team that would still need an awful lot of things to go right.

However, since we’re already using a time machine to violate baseball’s rules, and possibly physical laws of the universe, how about we take the approach of “in for a penny, in for a pound” and also purloin Shohei Ohtani himself entering the 2024 campaign? After all, as Tom Verducci reported in a March 2024 Sports Illustrated cover story, that might’ve happened if Arte Moreno had been willing to match the offer Ohtani got from the Dodgers, deferrals and all.

Now, with Ohtani and the pre-2024 projections, the Angels project as an 81-win team with a 32% chance of making the playoffs in 2026. If that still feels a little disappointing, you have to remember that this is a team that could give a TED Talk about how not to build a good baseball team while employing both Trout and Ohtani, which is a little like losing the Tour de France despite being allowed to use a motorcycle.

__

As someone fascinated by baseball player birthdays, I loved Ben’s response last week about birthday and WAR. It reminded me that a few years ago, I noticed that then-Diamondback teammates David Peralta and Jeremy Hazelbaker were born on exactly the same day (8/14/1987). They, in fact, batted back-to-back one game. It got me to wondering if – besides twins like the O’Briens or Rogers – what other teammates born the same day ever played in the same game as teammates?

Enjoying all of the great work. — jds

Jon Becker: Fun question! Upon querying our game-by-game database, I was surprised to find that this has happened more often than I would have guessed. Teammates with the same birthday (including twins) have played in the same game 4,477 times, with 10 of the 187 distinct pairs doing so at least 100 times:

Same-birthday-teammate games occurred 84 times last year alone, mostly thanks to two pairs: Brandon Nimmo and Clay Holmes, and Matt McLain and Hunter Greene. Nimmo and Holmes are no longer teammates, of course, but McLain and Greene — who’ve shared the field for the Reds 24 times already — will keep moving up the list when Greene returns from his elbow injury around midseason.

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the New York Yankees. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the sixth 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 »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Team Italy’s triumphs (and good vibes) at the WBC, a tumultuous week for Team USA and Mark DeRosa, and where the tournament stands entering the quarterfinals, then preview the 2026 Philadelphia Phillies (39:21) with The Athletic’s Matt Gelb, and the 2026 Los Angeles Angels (1:21:00) with The Athletic’s Sam Blum, plus a postscript (2:09:08).

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I’ve now spent nearly a quarter of a century working with baseball projections, and in that time, I’ve always been struck by the certainty with which so many people view them. People are far more certain than they should be that great teams will be great, star players will be stars, and so on. However, one of the things that comes from working with projections for a big chunk of your life is that you develop a painful awareness of how much of the future cannot be known until it actually happens.

As in most seasons, we enter without a general conception of which teams will be the best. We may pretend everyone starts off with a clean slate, but absolutely nobody expects the Rockies to be better than the Dodgers. But even if that particular scenario is extremely unlikely, every one of the top teams has a scenario in which things fall apart. These clubs have a vested interest in protecting against that potential downside, as much as possible, so I thought it would be interesting to look at the doomsday scenario for some of the best teams in baseball.

To get an idea, I did a full seasonal simulation of the ZiPS projected standings, and instead of looking at the standings overall, I looked at the bottom 20% of outcomes to see what we could glean from the results. According to ZiPS, every team except the Dodgers misses the playoffs when it performs no better than its 20th-percentile win total.

Philadelphia Phillies: Rotation Depth

This almost seems counterintuitive given just how good the rotation projections are for the Phillies, but the projections are not enthusiastic about their depth here. And what makes that especially worrisome is that with so much uncertainty around the health of Zack Wheeler and the performance of Aaron Nola, Philadelphia is probably going to need that depth more than it did last year. This time around, the Phillies are missing Ranger Suarez, who signed with the Red Sox during the offseason. Andrew Painter was healthy in 2025, but one cannot ignore that he was rather middling against Triple-A hitting. The outfield looks like a problem, as well, but it generally has been, and ZiPS is a fan of Justin Crawford.

If Philadelphia adds one of the innings-eaters still available in free agency, ZiPS sees the team’s outlook improve, much more than I expected. Just having someone like Lucas Giolito, Tyler Anderson, or even Patrick Corbin around did a lot to alleviate the rotational downside. It may come down to which of these pitchers is open to a swing role or a minor league deal with an opt-out date. And yes, I do think it feels weird to suggest Corbin as an upgrade for a team in 2026.

New York Mets: Right Field

The Mets certainly don’t dominate in either the rotation or bullpen projections, but ZiPS is fairly confident that both of these units will hold up over the course of the season. Despite a solid projection for Carson Benge in right field, the range of outcomes is quite high, and in the simulations where Benge struggles, ZiPS has trouble competently filling in right field. Tyrone Taylor is an underwhelming option, and ZiPS thinks Brett Baty would have a tough time defensively in the outfield. With no particularly interesting outfielders available in free agency, the best solution might simply be making sure Jacob Reimer gets some time in the outfield. New York’s roster just isn’t really set up to get him time at third base, where he probably is most valuable. But he also represents the most tantalizing 2026 upside of any player the Mets have in the minors, so they ought to try and be open to promoting him aggressively, and getting a little weird with it, if need be.

New York Yankees: Injuries

The Yankees’ outcomes are weird, in that their bad seasons were mostly ones in which Aaron Judge, for whatever reason, ended up with fewer than 300 plate appearances, and only occasionally something else. Getting limited innings from Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodón was already baked into the cake, and ZiPS thinks there are enough fourth-starter types to patch up any rotation holes that might pop up. The problem is, just how do you replace Judge? I’m not sure there’s a scenario where the Yankees can do much to mitigate any risk there, for the simple reality that in a tightly projected division, suddenly losing six wins is likely to drop them out of the AL East divisional race. At the very least, the Yankees should hold off on shopping Spencer Jones for help elsewhere, but it wouldn’t fix a Judge loss.

Baltimore Orioles: Rotation Quality

Baltimore has potential aces in both Trevor Rogers and Kyle Bradish, but that word potential is an unpleasant adjective. Adding Pete Alonso and Taylor Ward really stabilizes the offense, which was a concern last year, but the rotation is an issue. The Orioles finished with a bottom five rotation in the ZiPS simulations more often than all other AL East teams combined. There’s nothing on the farm that helps this, and I think that with the Orioles increasingly pushing their chips in, they ought to be aggressive at taking the opportunity to loot struggling teams of their top pitching, even if the prospect hit would be tremendous. I think there are even scenarios, though not many, in which it might make sense for the O’s to trade either Adley Rutschman, assuming he has a bounce-back season, or Samuel Basallo.

Boston Red Sox: First Base

The good news is that ZiPS sees the Red Sox as the most stable of AL contenders, with the lowest percentage of sub-.500 seasons of any AL team. The rotation isn’t the best in baseball, but it may be the most bulletproof one, and that isn’t even counting on getting lots of innings from pitchers like Payton Tolle and Connelly Early, who would be Plan As in most rotations in baseball. In fact, when the Red Sox had their worst performance, it was almost entirely the offense that fell short, and not necessarily from the position you might expect.

Most people have focused on third base because of the loss of Alex Bregman, but Caleb Durbin is actually a decent option. Plus, if Durbin struggles, Marcelo Mayer could very likely provide what the former isn’t. Where there is real downside risk is at first base. I liked the Willson Contreras acquisition, too, and he’s probably going to be at least solidly average in 2026, but he’s also going to be 34 in May. It’s an age where you look at the long left tails of the outcome distribution for non-elite first basemen, and there’s always a real risk of a very sudden plummet off a cliff. Triston Casas hasn’t played in a game since last May — and won’t even play in any spring training games this year — and he has a real mixed history.

What to do? That’s a lot trickier. Boston obviously isn’t going to replace Contreras before he has that downside year. But this team should be ready for that possibility, and if the surplus of pitching turns out to be real, the Sox will have a position of depth from which to trade.

Chicago Cubs: Rotation Quality

The outlook improved with the addition of Edward Cabrera, but ZiPS still has the Cubs with the weakest rotation of the 10 teams listed here. In the ZiPS simulations, the rotation was largely the source of the Cubs’ worst seasons. There aren’t really any exciting starters left out there in free agency, but I think I’d do what I suspect the Cubs are already thinking of doing: giving Ben Brown’s upside as a starting pitcher more serious consideration. He allowed too many home runs and had a high BABIP on a really good defensive team, but it’s guys like that who tend to come out of nowhere quickly (see Corbin Burnes in 2019). Brown has swing-and-miss stuff, and I think given the potential, I’d rather see him starting at Triple-A than pitching in relief in the majors.

Houston Astros: Outfield Corners

Not counting 2020, for obvious reasons, the 686 runs the Astros scored in 2025 represented their fewest since 2014. A full, healthy season of Yordan Alvarez would be incredibly helpful, but the team’s also not likely to wring another 135 wRC+ out of Jeremy Peña. Not helping matters is that Joey Loperfido and Cam Smith project as one of the weakest corner outfield tandems in the majors in 2026. Smith surprised many, including me, in the early months last year, but an OPS that fell shy of .500 in the second half is highly concerning. There’s a chance that the Astros get little from their outfield corners, which is a problem for a team with a middling offense that just lost ace Framber Valdez in free agency. In some 30% of simulations, the Astros got a sub-90 wRC+ out of their corner outfielders, and in those runs, they had a .475 winning percentage. If there’s a team that should aggressively go after either Jarren Duran or Wilyer Abreu, it’s Houston.

Toronto Blue Jays: Rotation Depth

Even with the loss of Anthony Santander to shoulder surgery, ZiPS still sees the Blue Jays’ rotation as their biggest pain point. There are simply a lot of question marks once you get past Dylan Cease and Kevin Gausman, something I mentioned a bit in Toronto’s ZiPS rundown in January. In a lot of the sims, the team got next to nothing out of any of Cody Ponce, José Berríos, Shane Bieber, and Max Scherzer, whether because of injury, decline, or general performance issues. If Sandy Alcantara looks anywhere near his old self with the Marlins in the early months, I think the Jays ought to be one of his suitors. At the very least, Alcantara would do well with an infield that has Andrés Giménez and Ernie Clement.

Seattle Mariners: Outfield Corners

As with the Astros, ZiPS sees Seattle’s corner outfield spots as having the most downside. Unlike the Astros, ZiPS doesn’t view it as truly a doomsday scenario. After the Red Sox and Dodgers, ZiPS considers the Mariners to be the contender with the least downside. Randy Arozarena’s projection distribution is pretty interesting, with the bottom falling out of him once you get under the 15th-percentile projection or so; while his 20th-percentile OPS+ is a non-disastrous 94, it drops to 70 for the 10th-percentile level. As for Victor Robles, he’s been all over the place in his career, and the Plan Bs in the organization are unimpressive. I think Seattle’s strong enough that it doesn’t necessarily have the same need to be aggressive as Houston does, but this is still a potential point of weakness that could pose an issue.

Los Angeles Dodgers: Black Swans

It’s really hard to kill the Dodgers. I argued after the 2024-2025 offseason, a very busy one, that the Dodgers weren’t really improving their average outcome so much as drastically raising their floor. I stand by it; they’ve added Kyle Tucker and Edwin Díaz while losing nobody who was crucial to the 2025 team. That doesn’t mean they’re going to be projected to win 105 games or anything, but it does mean that in most of their worst projected outcomes, they’re still a playoff contender. Their 10th-percentile projection, for example, is 86 wins. Their 2% chance of finishing below .500 is the smallest percentage I’ve ever projected, a record that now goes back more than 20 years. Doomsday for the Dodgers may require an actual doomsday scenario like societal collapse, nuclear war, or a vacuum metastability event. Since I do not know how to prevent any of those, there’s nothing more I can add.

The Angels haven’t changed. It’s Mike Trout who is worse.

The Angels are bad. It’s the truest thing about them. Their hitting is bad, their pitching is bad, their fielding is bad, and everything else is bad, too. This isn’t breaking news. They’ve finished below .500 each year since 2015, the only team not to make the postseason in that time. But expectations have reached a new low as we enter 2026:

I was initially skeptical of these figures, or at least the direction of them. How could the Angels possibly be going backwards? They don’t seem to be rebuilding, and their depth chart looks the same as ever: a few truly good players, a few players who would be good if they were playing a different position (or perhaps in a different organization), a few players who were drafted far too recently, a few aging veterans who were nearly All-Stars at one point, and Trout. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, the Reds sent Hunter Greene for imaging on his throwing elbow. Never a good sign for the no. 1 starter on a team that made the playoffs last season. In those situations, we on the outside are usually conditioned to fear the worst, or at least Tommy John surgery, recovery from which — while all but routine these days — takes more than a year.

Only in that context could Tuesday’s news be taken as positive: Greene will have surgery to remove bone chips from his elbow. (In fact, as you read this, he may have already undergone the procedure.) The recovery time is expected to be on the order of three to four months, but losing an ace until the trade deadline is much better than losing him until 2027.

This is a banner year for bone chips and loose bodies. The Braves alone have two starters — Hurston Waldrep and Spencer Schwellenbach — on the IL after receiving similar treatment. Actually, since we’re talking about bone chips, this feels like a good excuse to talk about Dazzy Vance. Read the rest of this entry »