I think everyone has moments where they wonder just what the hell they’ve done with their lives. I’ve been blessed with the divine spark of human consciousness, and a body to tote those thoughts around in, and what have I accomplished? I had one of those moments recently while I was holding a friend’s baby, trying to make her laugh. What a delightful and important but most of all profound thing, to create a whole other person and cultivate her — from scratch — into a happy adult.

Or the next best thing, creating art. I’ll speak to what I know: music. I’m left in awe of songs that, through dynamic contrast and precision of rhythm and density of countermelody, seem to be carrying that divine spark themselves — the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th symphony, or Typhoon’s “Prosthetic Love.” So much care and emotion went into such composition that it’s hard not to be bowled over by the emotional transference of the artistic process even as you’re astounded by how precisely the pieces have been crafted and how seamlessly they fit together.

Again: What am I doing with my life to show that I value this gift? How am I using this spark to shape the world into a better place? How am I passing this light on to others? This thought burst out and grabbed me recently when I was poking around our site’s pitcher defense leaderboards and noticed something interesting about Josh Fleming. Read the rest of this entry »

Before the start of the season, the Atlanta Braves were the consensus pick to win the NL East. While it wasn’t unanimous – try getting a few dozen writers to fully agree on something – 22 of 25 FanGraphs writers predicted the Braves to win the division for the seventh straight season. Sportsbooks offered odds on Atlanta that had an implied probability of 75-80% for winning the division. ZiPS projected the Braves to win the most games in the majors and gave them a 63% chance to take the NL East crown. But as we approach the end of the first third of the season, it’s the Philadelphia Phillies who are on top of the division with the best record in baseball. The team’s six-game lead over Atlanta isn’t an insurmountable barrier, but it’s still a comfortable cushion for this point of the season. So, how concerned should the Braves be? And how long do they have to overcome their rivals and keep their division streak alive?

Frequently, when I discuss surprise first-place teams at this point of the season, I compare the situation to a hypothetical foot race between Usain Bolt and me. It goes without saying that Bolt is a much faster runner than I am, to the degree that he’d probably beat me in a race hopping on one foot. But what if he gave me a head start so I could get a sufficient lead? How far ahead would I have to be to have a chance to hold off the world’s fastest man? Uhhh, 10 steps from the finish line by the time he starts running might get it done. Obviously, this isn’t the perfect analogy, because even if Bolt is the Braves of running, I certainly am not the Phillies. But you get the idea: At some point in the season, a division race becomes a question of time, not talent.

First things first, let’s take a look at the current simulated ZiPS projected standings, through Thursday night’s games.

Well, at least if you go by the ZiPS projections, Atlanta fans aren’t getting the happiest version of this tale. ZiPS still thinks the Braves are the better team, but the margin has narrowed considerably. What was a 10-win gap in March has thinned to just a hair over a three-win separation per 162 games (20 points of winning percentage, to be exact). In fact, the Phillies are now projected to have an almost identical probability of winning the division as the Braves did at the start of the season, despite Atlanta’s aforementioned 10-game edge; as I remind people, the future is almost always far more uncertain than you think.

This is actually an impressively durable change, which further complicates matters for the Braves. Projections for teams don’t usually move quickly because, well, baseball history says they shouldn’t. ZiPS has been doing team projections since 2005. If all you had to go on to project the last two-thirds of a season was a team’s preseason projection in ZiPS and the team’s actual record for the first-third of the season, the best mix based on two decades of projections is about two-thirds ZiPS and one-third actual record.

The offenses tell much of the story, so let’s start with Philadelphia’s offense. Here are the differences between ZiPS preseason WAR and the current projected final WAR. The latter consists of the WAR already on the books and the rest-of-season projections. Remember, this already includes all those grumpy old regressions toward the mean.

That’s eight players projected to finish with at least a half-win more than at the start of the season. Castellanos is the only Phillies player whose projected WAR is now a half-win worse, but the projection systems didn’t expect much from him going into the season anyway. None of the hitters who are smashing the ball right now are expected to turn into midnight pumpkins. Even Bohm, the infielder ZiPS was most suspicious of, is now in the top 10 for most projected WAR added for 2025. And it’s not shocking that Harper, Realmuto, Turner (who is currently on the IL), and Stott are projected to maintain their strong starts.

As for the pitching, we projected the Phillies to have the second-best rotation in baseball, so their awesomeness is hardly surprising. Philadelphia’s stars have more than balanced out some of the outfield question marks and its depth hasn’t truly been tested yet, except for Turner’s injury — and as Jon Becker noted in his morning column on Tuesday, Turner’s replacements in the lineup, Sosa and Kody Clemens, have excelled in his absence.

As for the Braves, their vaunted offense has come out rather impotent. They rank seventh in the NL in runs scored, which isn’t disaster territory, but Ronald Acuña Jr., Matt Olson, and Austin Riley have all been just barely above league-average hitters this year. Sean Murphy has been out with an oblique injury that he suffered on Opening Day, but that’s been less of an impact because Travis d’Arnaud has been solid as the everyday backstop. Things might be a lot worse right now if not for the performances of d’Arnaud and Marcell Ozuna.

Atlanta’s current place in the standings is the fault of its underperforming stars, not its complementary talent. And that’s what makes it tough for the Braves to turn things around with a few trades, as they did in 2021 before surging to win the World Series. It’d be one thing if the problem were someone like Orlando Arcia, because the Braves wouldn’t think twice about benching or trading him to acquire a better shortstop. But when it comes to Acuña, Olson, and Riley, all Atlanta can do is wait for them to catch fire. What adds to this general feeling of helplessness is that the team’s biggest problem on the pitching side is Spencer Strider’s season-ending UCL injury. Even if the Braves were to try and swing a trade, their farm system is one of the weakest in baseball right now and only a few teams are currently out of contention. Major reinforcements aren’t on the way anytime soon.

The good news for Atlanta is that its stars are capable of breaking out of their funks at any moment, but the longer it takes them to turn things around, the more time the Phillies have to pull away. To get an idea of how much time the Braves have left, I took the current projected standings and had ZiPS simulate the rest of the season with both teams posting the same record going forward (for the sake of the example, I’m going with a 94-win pace) to see how quickly the divisional probabilities would change. Without picking up ground but also not losing any, Atlanta would slip to two-to-one divisional underdogs by June 10, and hit the three-to-one spot on the last day of the month. If this continues to the morning of the trade deadline, the Braves would find themselves with only an 18% projected chance to win the NL East, while the Phillies’ divisional odds would climb to 81%. (The Mets would still retain a few tenths of a percentage point.)

Let’s be clear: Despite the relatively gloomy outlook for Atlanta, a six-game deficit heading into Memorial Day Weekend is not insurmountable. In fact, the Phillies have the same divisional odds now as the Braves did two months ago. That said, for the first time since 2011, the NL East is the Philadelphia’s division to lose.

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

Losing your starting shortstop and no. 2 hitter all at once is one of the worst things that can happen to a team, but somehow, the Phillies have weathered the absence of Trea Turner better than anyone could have hoped. The All-Star departed Philadelphia’s May 3 game against the Giants (in which he also scored from second on a wild pitch!) with a strained hamstring; at the time, he was expected to miss about six weeks, though he is “progressing at a surprising pace given the original timetable,” as Matt Gelb of The Athletic recently reported.

Obviously, the Phillies would love to have Turner back ahead of schedule, but they have more than held their own without him. They are 12-3 in their 15 games since May 4, their first following Turner’s injury, and their 123 wRC+ is the second-best mark in the majors during that stretch, behind only the Yankees. Philadelphia’s success isn’t due to the other positions carrying the load; though they’ve certainly been playing well, too. Rather, Philadelphia’s shortstop platoon of Bryson Stott and Edmundo Sosa has combined for a 163 wRC+ over that 15-game span; that’s better than every other NL team’s shortstop production. Only the Orioles, led by Gunnar Henderson, have gotten more offense at short.

Since Turner went down, Stott leads the Phillies with a 230 wRC+ and ranks fourth in the majors among players with at least 50 plate appearances in that span. Meanwhile, Sosa’s 167 wRC+ as a shortstop is the second-best mark since May 4, behind Henderson (187). Catcher J.T. Realmuto (153), first baseman Bryce Harper (180), and DH Kyle Schwarber (129) have also propelled the offense over these last 15 games. Additionally, the Phillies have received surprising contributions from utilityman Kody Clemens, who’s popped a couple of homers and has a 183 wRC+ across his 25 plate appearances since he was recalled to replace Turner on the roster. Even right fielder Nick Castellanos has woken up a bit, mustering a respectable 117 wRC+ during the 15 games without Turner after having posted a woeful 42 wRC+ from Opening Day through May 3.

On the other side of the ball, Phillies pitchers have kept up their end of the bargain for pretty much the whole season, and they’ve continued to perform well over the last 15 games, ranking fifth in ERA (2.78) and third in FIP (3.22).

All in all, even without Turner, everything’s clicking for the Phillies this season. They enter play Tuesday with a five-game lead over the Braves in the NL East, with the highest scoring offense (5.33 runs per game) and by far the most valuable pitching staff (9.3 WAR) in the majors. As Jake Mailhot noted in yesterday’s Power Rankings, Philadelphia has played the weakest schedule in baseball so far this season, so perhaps the team won’t maintain its .708 winning percentage the rest of the way. Even so, the Phillies have been winning at an .800 clip without their superstar shortstop. That is certainly encouraging.

Quick Hits

Let’s run through some other notable things from the past few days of games:

• The Yankees’ seven-game winning streak was snapped Monday night in heartbreaking fashion, when closer Clay Holmes allowed his first four earned runs of the season to blow a 4-1 ninth-inning lead against the Mariners in an eventual 5-4 Seattle win. Nevertheless, New York is playing its best baseball of the year right now. Aaron Judge has continued his reign of terror on opposing pitchers, going his 14-for-28 with 10 extra-base hits, including four homers, in his last eight games, and after a mini-slump, Juan Soto is catching fire again; over his last four games, he is 7-for-15 (.467) with two homers. Luis Gil, who wouldn’t have made the rotation if not for Gerrit Cole’s injury, struck out 14 in his start on Saturday. The Orioles lost on Monday as well, keeping the Yankees’ division lead at two games. The two sides don’t meet again until June 18.

• Like the Yankees, the Astros also coughed up an early lead on Monday night after a recent stretch of excellence. Houston led 6-1 before the Angels scored seven runs in the top of the fifth inning in what ended up as a 9-7 Astros loss. Still, the Astros have won each of their previous three series and jumped back into the AL West race after their dreadful start. They enter play Tuesday 4.5 games behind the first-place Mariners. Less than two weeks ago, on May 8, they were 8.5 games back. Yordan Alvarez still isn’t hitting anywhere near his abilities — though perhaps a double, single, and walk on Monday portends the start of a hot streak — but Alex Bregman has woken up and Kyle Tucker is playing like an MVP.

• Red Sox third baseman Rafael Devers set a franchise record Monday night when he homered in his sixth consecutive game. His home run, a two-run blast, came in the fourth inning off Rays righty Taj Bradley and extended Boston’s lead in its 5-0 win. Over his last six games, Devers is 7-for-24, his only non-homer hit being a single, with a 1.042 slugging percentage. With his home run Monday night, Devers surpassed the six other players who went yard in five straight games with the Red Sox: Bobby Dalbec (2020), Jose Canseco (1995), George Scott (1977), Dick Stuart (1963), Ted Williams (1957), and Jimmie Foxx (1940). The major league record for consecutive games with a home run is eight, shared by Dale Long (1956), Don Mattingly (1987), and Ken Griffey Jr. (1993).

We’re far enough into the 2024 regular season that a lot of the extreme flukes and outliers have tumbled back to Earth. Mookie Betts leads the league in position player WAR; Shohei Ohtani leads in wRC+; Patrick Corbin doesn’t quite lead the league in earned runs allowed, but he’s close, and everyone ahead of him on the leaderboard has made more starts.

Nevertheless, we do have a few surprises hanging around at or near the top of various leaderboards. I’d like to take a moment to highlight a few before they disappear. These (mostly) aren’t surprising rookies; rather, they’re players you’ve probably heard of, but might have forgotten about in the past few years while they sorted some stuff out. Read the rest of this entry »

First base defense is complicated. It isn’t one of the most difficult positions, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its own challenges. Players in the latter half of their careers who have lost athleticism sometimes adopt the position as their new home, which is interesting because it is much more difficult to learn a new position when you’re past your athletic prime. But because first base doesn’t require top tier athleticism, it’s not uncommon for that to happen. Bryce Harper’s case is a perfect example of this.

Between Philadelphia’s crowded outfield and its interest in keeping its star healthy as he ages through his 30s, first base became a viable option for the former MVP when the position opened up and he was returning from Tommy John surgery in record time. Last year, he handled it well — even if he at times ventured too far off the bag for grounders in the hole, as if he were back in right field trying to cut the ball off in the gap — given that he was learning the position on the fly.

It was a bet on Harper’s baseball skills and IQ that seems to have worked out well. His defensive metrics looked solid in 2023 (+3 OAA); of course, considering the small sample, we shouldn’t take these numbers as bond, but they were encouraging nonetheless. Now, with a full offseason of learning the position and a month’s worth of plays, we have a better idea of what his true talent is at the position. Later in this article, we’ll watch some video of Harper playing first to evaluate where he stands. But first, let’s take a look at the numbers.

So far in his first base career, Harper has a +6 OAA and a Success Rate Added between three and four percent. His OAA this season is +3, which is the highest among first basemen. Basically, the numbers indicated that Harper had a solid foundation already, and with more experience, he’s become one of the top defenders at his position.

For the rest of this piece, we’ll use video to break down Harper’s handling of three fundamental facets of the position: his footwork on groundballs that he takes unassisted, his feeds and feel for flipping to pitchers, and his opportunities to make outs at second. There are other aspects that go into first base defense — such as catching pickoff attempts, securing scoops, and receiving cutoffs before delivering relays — but I’m most interested in his skills fielding groundballs. With that said, let’s start by looking at grounders hit close enough to the bag for Harper to make an unassisted putout:

Unassisted Groundballs

Two things stick out to me right away: Harper is good at working from the ground up, and he almost always keeps his body moving in the right direction. Any shortstop would tell you that progressively moving your feet and body weight toward your target as you field the ball is crucial. The same premise holds for first baseman.

With a slow chopper, you have to stagger your feet to make sure you stay under control and don’t overplay the baseball and get a bad hop. When working toward the first base line, as Harper has done so well, you balance how hard the ball was hit with the angle you take to it; on harder hit balls, you put your body on the line to protect against a double, whereas when a deep chopper comes, you reorient your center of mass toward the bag to make sure you’re ready for a race with the runner or to throw to the pitcher. Harper looks very comfortable making these decisions. I snuck the liner from Matt Olson in there to show how quick he can be on his feet. Not every first baseman can move like that. Now, let’s move on to a more complicated task: flipping to the pitcher.

Flips to Pitcher

Harper has done well sticking to the fundamentals here. He has a rhythm established with Zack Wheeler in particular, but his execution of leading each pitcher to the bag is on point. He maintains composure throughout each of the throws, even when the batter-runner is a speedster like Elly De La Cruz. Urgency and pace are important aspects of fielding grounders at first because you can get caught in a foot race with a runner. But if you’re consistent with your delivery and have a good feel for speeding up your arm when necessary, there is no need to rush your feet.

I’m impressed by Harper’s ability to make plays moving to his right. He uses his right foot to plant or pivot very well. That has a lot to do with his athleticism. He gets into good positions to stay under the baseball and make reads with his hands. The next clips highlight that even more:

Potential Plays to Second

There are three different moves that you can make as a right-handed thrower when deciding to deliver a fire to second from the various first base positions (shallow, medium, deep) — you can pivot toward your throwing shoulder to square your body to the bag, you can spin toward your forehand and non-throwing shoulder to square your body, or you can make the throw on the run. Harper clearly has a feel those three moves.

On the grounder hit by Olson, Harper’s footwork is fantastic as he spins, turns, and throws, and his delivery is to the correct side of second base. Then on a similar grounder (the third play), he realizes he doesn’t have a throwing lane and decides to take the sure out at first. On the hard groundball from Mike Trout, Harper switches his feet very quickly (like a catcher would) and delivers the ball right on top of the bag. The only hiccup comes in the final play in the clip, when he gets the groundball near the outfield and decides to hold it instead of making a spinning throw to second. If he fires to second instead, the Phillies have had a shot at an inning-ending double play. This is something to keep your eyes on as Harper continues to develop at the position. It’s the longest throw a first baseman will make and requires a quick decision. He’s clearly comfortable making the spinning throw from a shallow depth, but this last piece will help him become more complete at the position.

In general, I’m impressed with how comfortable the Phillies slugger looks at his new position. His fundamentals are on point. He can pop off the bag quickly after holding a runner on and get his feet in check to move in any direction. Even when he makes a mistake, it’s not because he isn’t prepared with his feet. This might not be a Mookie Betts-level position switch, but it’s still worth appreciating.

They don’t have a division lead to show for it, but the Phillies have been one of the top teams in baseball to start the year. Alec Bohm and Trea Turner have carried an above-average offense despite some slow starts from the other usual suspects, and the pitching staff has lived up to its projected excellence, sitting a full win ahead of the field entering play Tuesday. Philadelphia’s substantial investments — from the newly extended Zack Wheeler and the re-signed Aaron Nola to the army of high-leverage bullpen arms — are paying off with interest, with Wheeler leading all NL pitchers in WAR. But sitting just a hair behind him is a teammate who may be having an even finer season: Ranger Suárez.

Suárez first rose to prominence in 2021, a season in which his role transitioned from mop-up reliever to co-closer to the rotation over the course of just a few months. After he recorded a diminutive 1.36 ERA across 106 innings in his breakout year, he earned a permanent spot in the rotation entering 2022. Over his first two seasons as a full-time starter, he’s put up a 92 ERA-, making him a solid mid-rotation arm but a clear step below Wheeler and Nola.

That’s changed this year, as the emergence of Suárez has given the Phillies a third ace to follow up their dominant duo. Case in point: Suárez’s eight-inning, one-run gem on Saturday constituted his worst start in weeks, snapping a 32-inning scoreless streak that included a complete game against the Rockies on April 16. And a quick glance at the numbers shows his superb month was no fluke.

The previous version of Suárez possessed neither plus stuff nor control, instead thriving with a high groundball rate that limited extra-base damage on balls in play. As someone who doesn’t throw hard or spin a hammer breaking ball, improvements to his stuff would need to come from more subtle means than his raw pitch characteristics. If anything, PitchingBot and Stuff+ view his season thus far as a slight step back in that department. But while Suárez hasn’t added a tick to his fastball or learned a new pitch, stronger command and synergy of the pitches he already had have led to big results across the board.

Suárez has a kitchen-sink arsenal, throwing five pitch types with regularity and none more than a third of the time. He most commonly starts hitters off with his sinker, a tumbling seam-shifted wake offering with just 4.5 inches of induced vertical break, which is less than half the league average. It’s doesn’t miss bats, but it has enough run to miss barrels; it’s his best groundball pitch and has a negative average launch angle. It’s also a called-strike machine when Suárez lands it in the zone, which he does about two-thirds of the time.

After getting ahead in the count, Suárez likes to pivot to his curveball and changeup, the latter of which has elevated his performance the most this season. The synergy between any groundballer’s sinker and change is crucial to their success – hitters unsure of what’s coming are more likely to both swing over changeups that dip beneath the zone and watch meaty sinkers go by, both good outcomes for the pitcher. Previously, Suárez struggled to locate his changeup, amassing a -5 run value over his first two years in the rotation. But with a +4 value in just six starts in 2024, it’s clear he’s turned a corner with it.

You might not recognize one of the stats in the above table. JOtZ% doesn’t roll off the tongue like BABIP or xwOBAcon, but it stands for “Just Outside the Zone” percentage – a region I defined as outside the rulebook strike zone but in Statcast’s shadow region. The changeups that are thrown just a few inches off or below the plate are the ones most likely ones to draw chases, making JOtZ% a decent indicator of command. In 2022 and ’23, Suárez often missed too low when throwing changeups – directionally correct in hitting his spots, but so low that no hitters were fooled into thinking they were sinkers. By more consistently finding the few inches directly beneath the strike zone, his JOtZ% shot up, and the results followed.

Most hurlers of his archetype struggle to find an out pitch, but Suárez may have two lethal offerings in the bank. In addition to his better-commanded changeup, his already-good curveball creates an enviable package of secondary stuff. He most commonly uses his curve in 0-2 and 1-2 counts as he fishes for strikeouts, often throwing it in the dirt with success. While his changeup’s success relies on pinpoint accuracy, Suárez’ curveball indiscriminately takes down opponents regardless of location thanks to its excellent two-planed break, with over a full foot of drop and sweep compared to a pitch thrown without spin.

Across the league, Suárez is one of just four starters (along with Tanner Bibee, Jack Flaherty, and Jared Jones) with a 19% swinging strike rate or higher on two separate pitches, which makes it no wonder he’s on pace for a career-high strikeout rate. But Suárez gets his whiffs much differently than his competitors do. One of the best indicators of pure stuff is in-zone whiff rate, the number of hittable pitches that batters come up empty on. High-octane aces like Wheeler, Gerrit Cole, and Spencer Strider top the leaderboards over the past few seasons, as do Bibee, Flaherty, and Jones this year. But while his 27.8% strikeout rate is in the top quartile of pitchers, Suárez’s zone-whiff rate sits in just the 8th percentile.

You could look at Suárez’s struggles to earn whiffs on strikes as a sign that his numbers are unsustainable, but I disagree – because what he lacks in in-zone dominance he more than makes up for by controlling the area outside of it. Because most out-of-zone pitches are taken for balls, the median pitcher loses about two runs of value per 100 they throw. No wonder we consider pitches thrown outside the zone to be mistakes. Except, that’s not the case for Suárez.

Suárez is one of just two starting pitchers in the league to create positive value by throwing outside the strike zone. He uses his non-strikes purposefully, each one carefully placed in an attempt to generate a swing from the batter. Data-driven models are a fan of his approach, with his 108 Location+ ranking sixth in the league. So far, it’s worked wonders for his ability to induce weak contact, shattering his previous bests in wOBA, groundball rate, and barrel rate while leading qualified starters in xERA.

More importantly, Suárez’s out-of-zone pitches don’t just keep the ball on the ground; they also miss bats entirely. He throws his curveball and changeup — his two best pitches at getting swings and misses — in the zone just a third of the time; most offerings that earn so many swinging strikes land in the zone far more often than that. Out-of-zone whiff rate is often thought of as a consequence of good stuff rather than great command – the leaderboard over the past few seasons closely resembles the one for strikeouts – but better command can also boost it. Suárez has improved his out-of-zone whiff rate by five percentage points this season, a year-over-year improvement that ranks in the 91st percentile.

All these whiffs on pitches outside the zone are also allowing Suárez to pitch deeper into games. Over his first two years as a starter, he wasn’t exactly known for volume; he would often get into deep counts, which led to a high walk rate and an average of fewer than 5.5 innings per start. Six starts into the new season, he’s bumped that average to 6.8 innings per start without a significant change in pitch count in part because he’s getting more swings on pitches outside the zone. He’s increased his strike rate from 62% to 66% while slashing his walk rate by more than half. More length from him will be a welcome development on a roster that is, for now, rostering just seven (all single-inning) relievers to accommodate a six-man rotation.

We often think of the pitchers with the best command as the ones who dominate within the strike zone – those with the highest zone rate, those who can hit their spots within it, and those who can limit walks — but Suárez shows us that command is different than control (which is something Jon Becker pointed out in his Top of the Order column Monday). Command is about throwing pitches in the spots that induce weak contact, generate whiffs, and befuddle hitters into making poor swing decisions. Suárez’s improved command has taken him to the next level, and he’s done it with a new approach outside the zone.

With five hits in a three-game span against the Diamondbacks and Mets, Paul Goldschmidt finally got off the interstate — to use former All-Star-turned-broadcaster Ken Singleton’s memorable term for hitters with a batting average below .200 — but as the end of April approaches, the 36-year-old first baseman has nonetheless produced at a sub-replacement level thus far. It’s early, but he’s got some company in that department among former All-Stars, as well as some high-profile free agents both past and future.

Goldschmidt won the National League MVP award in 2022, hitting a robust .317/.404/.578 with 35 homers; he led the league in both slugging percentage and wRC+ (176) while totaling 6.9 WAR. His value slipped to about half of that last season (3.4 WAR) as he batted .268/.363/.447 (122 wRC+) with 25 homers — respectable by most standards, but the lowest slugging percentage of his 13-year career to that point. Right now, both he and the Cardinals would gladly settle for that batting line, as he’s hitting just .208/.304/.287 with two homers, a 74 wRC+, and -0.3 WAR.

Goldschmidt is hardly the Cardinals’ only hitter who is struggling. Last week, the team optioned Jordan Walker, who was carrying a .155/.239/.259 (44 wRC+) line, back to Triple-A Memphis, but that hasn’t exactly cleared up the problem. Nolan Gorman (77 wRC+) and Lars Nootbaar (81 wRC+) have been terrible as well, and their center fielders, Michael Siani and the since-demoted Victor Scott II, have combined to “hit” .095/.170/.131 (-7 wRC+) en route to a net -1.0 WAR. Small wonder the team is second-to-last in the NL in scoring at 3.57 runs per game. But this dive isn’t so much about the Cardinals as it is about Goldschmidt, whose offensive profile looks as though it has aged 10 years in the past two. After going 3-for-4 with a home run off the Dodgers’ Tyler Glasnow on Opening Day, he went 92 plate appearances (of which just 12 were hits) before collecting his second extra-base hit. He’s up to four now, having doubled both on Wednesday and Saturday. Read the rest of this entry »

I think Mitch Williams deserves at least some of the blame.

See, I’ve been contributing to ranked lists of ordered baseball players for most of my adult life, and in general, people like to see their favorite team ranked highly. Baseball fans are pretty solipsistic, like dog owners, and struggle to imagine a world in which their special attachment to a particular thing is not shared by every sapient being on the planet. How dare you say Clayton Kershaw is better than Aaron Harang, and other salutations.

When our positional power rankings declared the Phillies to have the best bullpen in baseball two weeks ago, I don’t want to say Phillies fans reacted badly. (Not least because I’m the last person on Earth who wants Phillies fans to be perceived as a monolith, to be judged by their noisiest members.) Rather than hostility, it was more like the bemused skepticism with which one greets a man who knocks on your door trying to sell you solar panels. Sure, it sounds nice… but what’s the catch? Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

Fun with small samples: Bryce Harper entered Tuesday hitting .000/.154/.000 over his first 13 plate appearances of the season, with five strikeouts. After his second career three-homer game on Tuesday, he’s now at .200/.294/.800, good for a WRC+ increase of 198 points (from -34 to 164).

Harper put the Phillies on his back in a 9-4 win over the Reds, driving in six runs with the three homers — one a grand slam — that combined for 1,209 feet of distance and left the bat at 108, 103, and 108 mph. The grand slam, a left-on-left blast against Brent Suter, made the score at the time 8-1 and allowed the Phillies to cruise to a win using just two pitchers — an important reprieve for an overworked bullpen. Not a bad day on the job, and a much-needed good one for a Philadelphia team that entered the day 1-3 on the young season.

There’s just something so aesthetically appealing about watching Harper hit homers, especially into the raucous crowd at Citizens Bank Park. His long balls aren’t the hardest hit in baseball, nor do they travel the farthest. But seeing his ferocious swing unload and send a ball deep into the Philadelphia night is an unmatched view across the sport. It’s the antithesis of my favorite right-handed home runs to watch: the liners that Giancarlo Stanton smokes. Stanton suddenly turns his hips, flicks his wrists, and launches absolute rockets with what looks like no effort whatsoever. Harper puts his entire body into every swing, hurling his bat into the path of the incoming projectile, torquing what feels like the weight of multiple people to send a ball into flight.

Harper’s future Hall of Fame career has not been without its trials and tribulations. He’s always been a good or great hitter, but there have certainly been seasons where he was more the former than the latter. That’s an awfully high standard to hold him to, but when you’re a first-overall phenom, those are the breaks. Last year, two seasons removed from winning his second MVP award, it took him a few months to regain his power stroke after coming back from Tommy John surgery in record time, but once he did, we were privileged to watch him clobber 16 of his 21 dingers in August and September. And thankfully, this year we didn’t have to wait anywhere near as long for his thunderous bat to come alive.

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Seeing a team like the Pirates come out of the gates hot is always refreshing, though there’s obviously the context of playing the Marlins and Nationals, not exactly powerhouses. I’m not really convinced that they’re even a .500 team; most teams will have a five-game winning streak over the course of the season, and starting the season with one is no more indicative of a team’s talent level than ending the season with one to avoid 100 losses.

But while I’ll need a lot more time to gather thoughts for the team as a whole, I’ve really liked what I’ve seen so far from catcher Henry Davis. The former first overall pick struggled mightily in his debut last year, with a 76 wRC+ and -1.0 WAR in 62 games, almost exclusively playing right field instead of behind the dish. He was worth -9 defensive runs saved, and to my eye, the look matched the metrics: He has a very strong arm, but his reads were rough and he often had to be bailed out by the second baseman when a not-particularly-shallow fly ball was hit his way.

Back at his natural position, Davis looks more comfortable, grading out (in the very early going) as a scratch defender by DRS and very slightly above average as a framer. I also like how well he’s controlled the strike zone through his first 21 plate appearances, with as many strikeouts as walks; both rates are vastly improved from last season. Of course, all of that comes with a small-sample caveat, but you can’t fake exit velocity as a hitter, so it’s worth mentioning that he’s already hit a ball harder (111.5 mph) this year than he did all of last year (109.9 mph).

Tuesday night’s acquisition of Joey Bart should do nothing to unseat Davis’ position as the starting catcher, though perhaps it’s a little more pedigree breathing down his neck than Jason Delay and the currently injured Yasmani Grandal. It is an interesting “ships passing in the night” moment though for two catchers who were taken within the first two picks of their respective drafts.

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It’s too simple to say that Taylor Trammell is in for a breakout just because the Dodgers claimed him off waivers and should have playing time to offer him with Jason Heyward’s back troubles, but at the same time, there’s probably not a better fit for him. Hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc revitalized J.D. Martinez’s career a decade ago and also helped Chris Taylor break out, and it’s not implausible to think Trammell could be his next turnaround.

Trammell has a wRC+ of just 83 in his 351 career big league plate appearances, and at 26 years old and out of options, he’s at something of a crossroads. But he was our 61st-ranked prospect at the end of 2020, so it’s not as if the Dodgers have nothing to work with here. They’re hoping to do what the Reds, Padres, and Mariners all couldn’t: Turn Trammell into a quality major leaguer before moving on.

Enrique Bradfield Jr. has good wheels, and he can also hit a bit. Drafted 17th overall last year by the Baltimore Orioles out of Vanderbilt University, the 22-year-old outfielder not only slashed .311/.426/.447 over three collegiate seasons, his table-setter batting style translated smoothly to pro ball. In 110 plate appearances versus A-ball pitching, Bradfield batted .291 with a Bonds-esque .473 OBP.

The chances of Bradfield’s ever being comped to Barry Bonds are basically nonexistent. At 6-foot-1 and 170 pounds, the erstwhile Commodore is, in the words of our prospect co-analysts Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin, “a contact-oriented speedster who will also play plus defense.” Power isn’t a meaningful part of his game. Bradfield went deep just 15 times at Vandy, and not at all after inking a contract with the O’s.

He doesn’t expect that to change. When I asked him during spring training if he’s ever tried to tap into more power, Bradfield said that has never been a focus, adding that he’d “be going in the wrong direction if it was.” That seems a shrewd self-assessment. A line-drive hitter who swings from the left side, Bradfield will ultimately reach Baltimore by continuing to propel balls from foul pole to foul pole. Read the rest of this entry »