FanGraphs was at the Futures Game in Arlington on Saturday. In total, 16 pitchers appeared in the seven-inning game. The following are some quick notes on every pitcher who toed the rubber during All-Star weekend’s premier prospect event. Obviously one game isn’t enough on its own to move the needle significantly for any of these guys — they all have a large body of work that can better inform our evaluations — but it’s useful to see whose stuff ticks up when they’re in an environment like the Futures Game and get to let it eat in a shorter burst than they’re accustomed to. Read the rest of this entry »

The Texas Rangers came into the season with every intention of competing for another World Series championship. While the team had a fairly low-key winter, the ZiPS projection system thought it would be legitimately competitive in the AL West, though not necessarily one of baseball’s top teams. Instead, with less than half the season’s slate of games remaining, Texas sits uncomfortably below .500 with the playoff math looking increasingly daunting.

When the season began, my understanding was the Rangers expected to struggle at times during the first half, especially in the rotation, and they were OK with that as long as they didn’t fall too far behind the other AL West contenders, the Houston Astros and Seattle Mariners. The organization was comfortable letting Jordan Montgomery walk in free agency because it felt the team had enough punch in the lineup to remain in the division race long enough for at least some of its injured pitchers to get healthy and reinforce the roster, which would be as good as acquiring a starter in a deadline trade.

For about a month, this scenario seemed to be playing out. The Astros limped miserably out of the gate, and the Mariners didn’t do much better. The Rangers spent most of April leading the AL West, but they didn’t build enough of a cushion. That came back to bite them when Seattle caught fire and Houston turned its season around. Simultaneously, Texas went in the other direction. Since May 1, the Rangers offense has put up a 92 wRC+, and that’s with the benefit of Corey Seager mashing after his early slump (.286/.367/.563 in that span) and Wyatt Langford hitting way better since coming off the IL in late May (.285/.339/.464). With the 17th-ranked ERA and 24th-ranked FIP since the start of May, the pitching staff hasn’t exactly made up for the offensive shortfall.

As of Thursday morning, ZiPS has the Rangers with a 10% chance to make the playoffs, far short of their projected 56% odds coming into the season. The projections still see the AL West as a race, but mostly between the Astros and Mariners, with Texas assuming the role of the third-place underdog.

Of course, 10% isn’t zero, but the Rangers certainly have their work cut out for them. ZiPS currently assumes that, on average, the Rangers will be a .500 team the rest of the season. Let’s make a different assumption, that ZiPS is very wrong, and on average, they will be a .530 team from here on out. That still only boosts their playoff probability to 17.8%. Simply playing better is no longer enough, and there is unlikely to be any kind of reasonable deadline addition that would help them flip the script.

At the same time, Texas is still positioned well for a run in 2025, so there’s no need to blow the whole team up. Looking at just the main contributors under team control, ZiPS generally sees brighter days ahead next season.

ZiPS projects this group of players to win six or seven more games in 2025 than they’re projected to this season. (The win total for 2024 is a combination of the team’s season-to-date and rest-of season projections.) That’s an impressive number in most circumstances, but even more so for a rather old team; the offense is slightly older than league average and the pitching staff is the oldest in the majors. This group already has a good case for contention in 2025.

So if this year’s a longshot and 2025 looks better, what’s the winning argument for not retooling with a focus toward improving the roster for next season? That’s not rhetorical; I don’t have a good one (and feel free to make one in the comments that my cold-stricken brain couldn’t conjure). Again, the Rangers won the World Series last fall, and having that ring already earned ought to give the team some room to maneuver without angering the fanbase. Now, the Rangers won’t be able to snag prospects on the level of Jackson Holliday or James Wood for the players they’d be willing to trade, but in swaps for their players on expiring contracts — Max Scherzer, Nathan Eovaldi, David Robertson, Andrew Heaney, José Leclerc, Kirby Yates, and Michael Lorenzen — I would think they could at least get some talent that could help them in the future, even if you assume Scherzer sticks to his stated preference that he won’t waive his no-trade clause.

Dropping out of a race when you’re the defending champ is a tough thing to do psychologically. But the Rangers are in a bad place right now, and by throwing in the towel, they could improve their chances to contend for another title in 2025.

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the defending World Series champion Texas Rangers. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fourth 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 »

The Guardians rate as one of baseball’s bigger surprises. After finishing 76-86 last year — their worst record since 2012 — they’ve rebounded to go 57-33 thus far, and entered Wednesday with the AL’s best record. Their offense is much more potent than it was last year, and despite losing ace Shane Bieber for the season due to Tommy John surgery, they rank second in the league in run prevention at 3.87 runs per game.

While Cleveland’s staff owns the AL’s second-highest strikeout rate (24.2%), a good amount of credit for the team’s run prevention belongs to its defense. By my evaluation of a handful of the major defensive metrics — Defensive Runs Saved, Ultimate Zone Rating, Statcast’s Fielding Run Value (FRV), and our catcher framing metric (hereafter abbreviated as FRM, as it is on our stat pages) — the Guardians rate as the majors’ second-best defensive team thus far this season. The Yankees, who spent much of the first half atop the AL East before a 5-16 slide knocked them into second place, are the only team ahead of them.

On an individual level, even a full season of data isn’t enough to get the clearest picture of a player’s defense, and it’s not at all surprising that a 600-inning sample produces divergent values across the major metrics. After all, they’re based on differing methodologies that produce varying spreads in runs from top to bottom, spreads that owe something to what they don’t measure, as well as how much regression is built into their systems. Pitchers don’t have UZRs or FRVs, catchers don’t have UZRs, and DRS tends to produce the most extreme ratings. Still, within this aggregation I do think we get enough signal at this point in the season to make it worth checking in; I don’t proclaim this to be a bulletproof methodology so much as a good point of entry into a broad topic. Read the rest of this entry »

A friend of mine is a huge Cleveland Guardians fan, and the other night we were discussing the awards chances for some of their top players. He pitched Emmanuel Clase as a Cy Young candidate — which, side note: Have you seen his ERA and Cleveland’s record when leading after eight innings this year? — but I was more interested in where José Ramírez and Steven Kwan might finish in the MVP race. I pulled up our leaderboards to see where they stood and was greeted with a surprise that had nothing to do with the Guards:

Huh? Josh Smith? The same Josh Smith who batted below the Mendoza Line in each of his first two major league seasons? The one who didn’t get a single postseason plate appearance last year? The one who barely made the Opening Day roster this season? Somehow, yes.

Through the first half of the 2024 campaign, that Josh Smith has been the most productive hitter in a loaded Texas Rangers lineup. Of course, that doesn’t quite capture how great the 26-year-old has been this season — after all, that loaded lineup is hurt and underperforming — but you could shave 25 points off his wRC+ and he’d still be their best hitter. Fortunately, the Yankees included Smith in their 2021 trade for Joey Gallo, so no shaving is required.

More to the point, Smith isn’t just excellent relative to the Rangers’ band of bangless bangers. Rather, his status as a great hitter this season is indisputable. Here’s where Smith ranks among qualified American League batters:

So what’s behind Smith’s surge? The most obvious thing to point to is his stance. According to Shawn McFarland of the Dallas Morning News, Smith changed his setup and load over the offseason while working out at Texas’ Globe Life Field with Seth Conner, the team’s assistant hitting coach. Smith stands more narrow now than he did last year, and he has gone to a “stacked” load — meaning he keeps his head stacked over the center of his body through his swing to the point of contact. The purpose of these adjustments was to cut down on strikeouts and fly balls, hit more line drives, and get back to the contact-oriented approach that made him a Top 100 prospect a few years ago.

“I decided to change it because I was hitting like a buck fifty,” Smith told McFarland in April. “That was kind of annoying, so I decided to make some changes.”

His actual batting average last year (.185) wasn’t quite that bad, but regardless, if you want to hike up your average, striking out less and hitting more line drives is a good place to start.

Midway through this season, Smith’s changes have worked as intended. His strikeout rate has dropped from 23.7% last year to 19.2% this year, and his 34.9% fly ball rate is down from last year’s 40.4%. Meanwhile, he’s increased his line drive rate by 10.4 percentage points (25.3%, up from 14.9%). That’s the biggest jump among the 188 players who recorded at least 200 plate appearances in both 2023 and ’24:

Smith has said that in his first two seasons, he got caught up in the push for power. He was chasing fly balls because he thought that was the way to stick in the big leagues. In some ways, he achieved what he was going for last year: He dramatically increased his barrel rate (10.5%, up from 2.4% in 2022) and his average exit velocity (88.5 mph, up from 87.0). And last year was an improvement at the plate from his woeful rookie campaign, but that’s like saying the 1963 Mets were better than the ’62 Mets — they were better, but only because they couldn’t get any worse:

During the offseason, in the afterglow of winning the World Series, Smith concluded that he wasn’t going to cut it as a slugger. At 5-foot-10 and 172 pounds, he couldn’t generate enough power to make his 2023 approach worthwhile. So he started working out with Conner and the early returns were promising, as Smith had a good spring training (154 wRC+ in 49 plate appearances). He made the Opening Day roster mainly because of his positional versatility, but he was a backup and playing time wasn’t guaranteed.

That is, until third baseman Josh Jung broke his wrist in the fourth game of the season, requiring surgery. Smith replaced him as the strong side of a platoon but quickly hit his way into the everyday lineup. Beginning with his first start on April 2 through the end of that month, Smith hit .321/.415/.506 across 94 plate appearances, good for a 163 wRC+. He hasn’t looked back since, climbing up the batting order and settling into the no. 3 hole. Even with Jung nearing his return to the lineup, manager Bruce Bochy has said Smith has earned a starting role, though where he plays in the field will depend on the day.

Narrowing his stance and stacking his load have helped Smith get into a better position to hit, but being in a good position to hit and actually doing it are two different things. That brings us to the driving force behind Smith’s success: He’s making much better swing decisions.

Inspired by teammate Corey Seager, Smith has started hunting pitches over the heart of the plate. Sounds obvious, right? Swing at the most hittable pitches. Duh! But that’s easier said than done when you’re in the box and trying to gear up for 100-mph heaters while also worrying about nasty breaking pitches. In Seager, Smith saw the benefits of a selectively aggressive approach and realized he’d been overthinking things in the box.

Now he’s stripped hitting down to its most basic elements to such a degree that I’m cringing while typing this because it sounds like I went to the Crash Davis School of Baseball Clichés: Swing at good pitches, don’t try to do too much, hit line drives. But this really is what Smith is doing. Check this out:

Smith has been especially great at hunting first pitches in the Heart Zone:

This season, nestled in the lineup between Seager and Adolis García most games, Smith is seeing first pitches in the Heart Zone at a much higher rate, and when he does, he’s hacking at and ripping them.

There are some questions about the sustainability of Smith’s breakout. He is greatly outperforming his expected stats (.244 xBA, .350 xSLG, .314 xwOBA), and it seems unlikely that pitchers will keep grooving him this many pitches. But, even if a regression is coming, it’s hard to image that Smith will be as bad as he was in his first two seasons. With his new setup and approach, his foundation as a line drive hitter should help him limit his slumps and produce as a solid lineup contributor, if not the surprising offensive force he’s been this season.

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.

It’s not exactly uncommon for league champions to struggle the following year. The most extreme versions of this are the Marlins, who sold off just about all of their good players after winning the World Series in 1997 and in 2003. The Nationals, who still haven’t had a winning season since their World Series title in 2019, are a more recent example. But, usually, at least one of the two teams to play in the previous World Series has a strong follow-up season. In fact, over the first 29 seasons of the Wild Card era, only twice have both league champs from the same year missed the playoffs the next season; interestingly, those two years came back to back, in 2006 (White Sox and Astros) and 2007 (Cardinals and Tigers). That’s why it’s quite jarring to see both the Rangers and Diamondbacks under .500 entering play this weekend.

While both teams won on Thursday, they’re not in great position right now. The Diamondbacks are 8.5 games out of first place with a 33-36 record (though they’re just a game out of the final NL Wild Card spot); the Rangers’ 33-35 record has them five games behind the first place Mariners and 3.5 games away from a wild card berth. The sluggish start gave the reigning world champs just a 19.2% chance of making the playoffs entering Thursday; Arizona’s odds weren’t that much better, at 27.9%.

Considering this, let’s look at what has gone wrong for each team and determine how they can avoid becoming the third pair of league champions in three decades to each fall short of returning to the postseason in their follow-up campaigns. Read the rest of this entry »

Season one of One Tree Hill is a perfect season of television, and I will not be entertaining arguments to the contrary. In it we meet Nathan and Lucas Scott, the sons of hometown basketball hero, Dan Scott, who runs a local car dealership. Nathan was raised in the traditional nuclear family structure by Dan and his college sweetheart and wife. Lucas was raised in a single-parent household by his mother, Dan’s high school sweetheart. Despite sourcing their foundational genetic material from the same DNA pool, Nathan and Lucas are depicted at odds with one another in several key ways. Nathan is his father’s golden child and characterized as hyper competitive, entitled, and emotionally stunted; Lucas receives no acknowledgement from Dan and skews more intellectual, reserved, and empathetic. Both are super good at basketball and both crave the approval of their father. Nathan seemingly has it all, but presents as lonely and ill at ease in his environment. Lucas drew the short straw, but is mostly content and supported by several meaningful relationships.

The whole concept is a pretty straightforward exercise in nature vs. nurture, and if you haven’t seen One Tree Hill, don’t worry, I haven’t spoiled anything; this is all part of the show’s initial setup in the pilot episode. What the viewer is intended to puzzle out as the season unfolds is how much of Nathan’s arrogance and aggression is a reaction to his surroundings and how much is an inherent part of his character. And on the other hand, can Lucas, against his father’s wishes, learn to thrive in new surroundings as he steps into the spotlight of varsity basketball? Or is he more naturally suited to exist in the shadows?

I recently read almost six years of scouting reports, statistical breakdowns, and interviews covering two prospects from the 2018 MLB draft in an attempt to to understand the how and why of each player’s career arc. More on that later, but for now, I want to emphasize how much easier it is to analyze a teen soap opera. And it’s not that the scouting reports were unclear, or that the statistical analysis was misleading, or that the players misrepresented themselves in interviews. It’s that taking 18- to 22-year-olds and turning them into big leaguers is a hard thing to do under the best of circumstances. Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday afternoon, I sat down to watch the most important baseball game of the weekend: The Greenville Regional elimination game between East Carolina and Wake Forest. This game not only had NCAA Tournament survival on the line, it featured two of the top three college pitching prospects in this draft class: Wake’s Chase Burns and ECU’s Trey Yesavage.

In many respects, it mirrored last year’s College World Series semifinal between Wake and LSU, in which the two starting pitchers — Paul Skenes and Rhett Lowder — were the first two arms off the board in the draft. That was, for my money, the best baseball game played anywhere in 2023 and one of the best College World Series games of all time. Skenes and Lowder combined to allow five hits over 15 scoreless innings, and the only runs of the game were scored on the final play, a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 11th.

That was Mad Max: Fury Road, a bombastic, thrilling, and yet obviously virtuosic thriller that could not have been improved. ECU-Wake was more like Licorice Pizza: Clearly everyone involved was good at their craft, but the end result was weird and meandering and frustrating. Burns was a little disappointing; Yesavage was great, but after he was lifted in the eighth inning, ECU coach Cliff Godwin used seven pitchers to get the last five outs. In the meantime, Wake scored five runs in the top of the ninth to take a 6-4 lead, after which ECU struck back with five singles in the bottom of the ninth to walk it off. Read the rest of this entry »

Every major league player has great individual performances on his résumé, and that’s especially true when you include their time in the minors and amateur ball. From youth leagues on up, they’ve had games where they’ve stood out among their peers with epic displays at the plate and/or the mound. When you’re good enough to have advanced to the highest level of your profession, such showings come with the territory.

With this in mind, my colleague Michael Baumann and I recently asked a dozen players a straightforward question: “What has been the best game of your life?”

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Sal Frelick, Milwaukee Brewers outfielder: “I think I was part of one of the greatest college comebacks in NCAA history. We were down to Auburn 9-1 in the ninth inning, with two outs, and ended up coming back to win. I led off the ninth inning with a single, came around to score, then came back up as the tying run and hit a homer. We went into extras and won the game. This was in 2021 [with Boston College], my draft year. It was an absurd rally.

“I hit for the cycle one time in the Futures League. This was with my summer ball team, the North Shore Navigators. It was after my senior year of high school, before my freshman year at Boston College, and the game was in Worcester. I went strikeout, walk, double, triple, homer, single. A strikeout and a walk, then the cycle. That was crazy.”

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Riley Greene, Detroit Tigers outfielder: “I hit for the cycle at Hagerty High School [Oviedo, Florida]. I’m almost positive that it was the first cycle in school history. I could be wrong, but yeah, it was that game. I started off with a leadoff homer — I was hitting leadoff — and then I went single, double, triple. We were playing Edgewater High School and it was a pretty big game. We had a beef with that team, so it was pretty cool to do it against them in front of all my boys, who I’m still best friends with to this day.

“What probably stands out the most from here is my first homer, the walk-off homer [against the Royals in 2022] to win the game. That’s pretty special.”

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Kyle Finnegan, Washington Nationals pitcher: “I threw an immaculate inning in 2021, in the big leagues. I’d have to say that was my best inning. I struck out Austin Riley, Dansby Swanson, and William Contreras.

“The best game I’ve ever pitched in my life was in college [at Texas State University in 2012]. I was a starting pitcher. We were playing Notre Dame, who was really good at the time. And, here’s a fun fact about that weekend: In the three-game series we didn’t allow an opponent to reach third base. We were in the middle of one of the longest consecutive scoreless streak in modern NCAA history; we threw something like 50 scoreless innings. I pitched the Saturday game in that series and went seven innings with 12 strikeouts. I struck out the first seven guys that game.”

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Josh Lowe, Tampa Bay Rays infielder: “I had a three-homer game my senior year in high school. That would probably be the best game I can remember. It was early in the year and it was freezing cold. The temp was in the upper 20s and it was super windy. I grew up outside of Atlanta and while it doesn’t get that cold often, it does get cold.

“One game in Triple-A, I think I had five or six plate appearances and hit all five or six balls over 105 [mph]. I’d say that was a pretty good game. It was against Jacksonville. I don’t remember anything specific about it outside of having five or six at-bats and hitting the ball hard five or six times.”

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Christian Yelich, Milwaukee Brewers outfielder: “You’re a FanGraphs guy, so what’s better, a three-home run game — probably that one? — or 6-for-6 and hitting for the cycle? I don’t know if I’ll be able to beat [the latter]. Three home runs is pretty cool, but going 6-for-6 and hitting for the cycle is pretty cool, too.

“[Amateur ball], I can’t really remember. I’ve spent 12 years in the big leagues, so high school was a long time ago. I’m sure there were some decent ones back in the day, but everything that happens here is obviously more special for me.”

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Matt Vierling, Detroit Tigers infielder/outfielder: “The game the other day was pretty good [4-for-6 with two home runs, including a walk-off three-run homer, against the Toronto Blue Jays]. There have been a couple of them, but the best game of my life was probably in high school. We were in the state semifinals when I was a sophomore and I threw six innings [and allowed] no runs, and also hit two home runs. It was the most fans we’d had at a game — about 2,000, which was a ton for us in Missouri — and it got us to the state championship game.

“Another good one was when I was with the Phillies. I went 5-for-5 against the Blue Jays. This was in 2022, the year we went to the World Series, and we needed a couple of wins to keep things going. Along with the 5-for-5 — everything seemed to find a hole — I ended up hitting a walk-off single. It was a great game.”

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Jonny DeLuca, Tampa Bay Rays outfielder: “My senior year of high school, in the first game of the year, I went 6-for-6 with a grand slam, another home run, a triple, and three singles. It was a home game, and while I know we won, I don’t remember what the score was. I don’t think I’ve had a game that comes close to that one.

“In pro ball, last year was pretty cool when I made those two catches against Texas. I made a diving catch and then kind of robbed a home run. It’s up for debate if it would have been a homer or not, but yeah, that game last year.”

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Jordan Weems, Washington Nationals pitcher: “I had a game with five punchies when I was with Double-A Portland. That one really stood out, because I had really good stuff that night. In the big leagues it would have to be the one in Seattle where I had the bases loaded, got out of it, then came back for another inning to shut them down and we got the win.

“As a kid… I mean in 9- or 10-year-old All-Stars there was a game where I went something like 5-for-6 with two home runs. That was in a championship game to go the regionals. That was a pretty cool experience. Not trying to brag, but there were a lot of cool games in Little League, high school, and all that. I remember a playoff game, right before the state championship, I went 3-for-4 with two home runs. This was in high school.

“Another time — I could go forever on these — we lost the first game [of a high school playoff series] to Matthew Crownover, a big lefty who went to Clemson but then had Tommy John and never really came back from it. He was throwing really hard and kind of shoved it up our butts, so we had to win the second game. We were down by a run going into the bottom of the seventh inning, and I led off with a double. Cody Walker, who went to Mississippi State as a catcher, had this great at-bat. He hit a ground ball up the middle and I scored to tie the game. I remember going crazy at home plate after sliding in safely. We ended winning to force a Game 3, then went on to win the state championship.”

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Grant Anderson, Texas Rangers pitcher:

“There were a couple of games in high school, but I’ve got to go with my [MLB] debut, which was in Detroit last year. I got called up and struck out seven out of nine guys. That’s pretty high up there in the best game I’ve ever played. Like, I didn’t really have any expectations. At the end of the day I just wanted to throw up some zeros, so the strikeouts were kind of like a cherry on top. To be honest, it was kind of an out-of-body experience to strike out that many guys. It was almost a blur. It was a pretty crazy experience.”

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Whit Merrifield, Philadelphia Phillies infielder: “The first thing that comes to mind is the College World Series [with the University of South Carolina, against UCLA, in 2010] — the walk-off World Series with the walk-off hit. I’ve had better individual games; I’ve had a couple five-hit games, multi-homer games, a six-RBI game, but I honestly can’t really remember the games [specifically]. I remember the World Series game like it was yesterday.

“[In the ninth inning] our leadoff guy walks. Evan Marzilli gets the bunt down — good bunt — the pitcher fields it and throws to first. Watching from my angle, I thought he had thrown it away, because he kind of short-hopped it. The guy made great play at first base to catch it.

“Trevor Bauer is warming up in the bullpen. I’m thinking that he’s going to come in to face me. I step up. The manager goes to the mound. I’m thinking he’s going to bring [Bauer] in, but he doesn’t. He walks back to the dugout and I’m thinking they’re going to walk me. Jackie Bradley, who’d had a great World Series, was behind me, and Christian Walker was behind him. Christian was a freshman, so I’m thinking they’re going to walk me and Jackie, and pitch to Christian with the bases loaded.

“I really don’t have any intention to hit. Catcher is standing up, then finally squats down. As soon as he squats down I get a rush of nerves and emotion. Balls one and two aren’t really close pitches. I’m thinking unintentional intentional walk; they’re going to try to get me to chase something. Guy takes awhile, shakes off some pitches. I end up calling time. Like I said, in my head I’m thinking they’re going to try to walk me. But I thought to myself, ‘You’ve got a chance to win the World Series here. If the ball is close, I’m swinging. I’m going to try to win the game.’ He threw a good pitch, a fastball down and away — not really a good 2-0 pitch for a hitter to go after — but I made a good swing and hit the ball to right. We won. I can’t believe it was 14 years ago.”

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Spencer Torkelson, Detroit Tigers first baseman: “Minor leagues, Double-A Erie, and it wasn’t one game; it was a doubleheader. In two seven-inning games, I went 7-for-7 with three home runs, a double, and [six] RBIs. I remember it felt like I was literally seeing a beachball for a whole day. It was amazing.

“I had a couple of two-homer games [as an amateur], but nothing crazy. I think my greatest [quality] growing up was just how consistent I was. It wasn’t like really high, really low, really high, really low; it was just being consistently good. I’m sure there were some really good days in travel ball, but I can’t really remember. There is no book on that.”

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Zack Littell, Tampa Bay Rays pitcher: “Off the top of my head, I don’t really know. Especially in pro ball, they all kind of run together. I don’t know that I have that kind of memory. I guess there was one in high school. I had a game in our conference championship where I had two home runs, a double, and a single. I went 4-for-4 and also threw seven innings. We won 3-1, or something like that. In terms of sheer everything, it would probably have to be that one.

“I’d had one home run all year, and then in our three-game conference tournament I had three, including two in the championship. And again, I pitched seven innings. I was Shohei Ohtani that day. That’s the way I like to think of it.”

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Thanks to Michael for procuring the quotes from Grant Anderson and Whit Merrifield.

At 21-16, the Texas Rangers are first in the AL West standings, but it hasn’t been an easy stroll so far. They have an entire rotation of quality starting pitchers on the injured list, and while their offense has remained relatively intact, it has not yet been at full strength. Third baseman Josh Jung had wrist surgery in early April, first baseman Nathaniel Lowe missed the first three weeks of the season with a sore oblique, and shortstop Corey Seager has started slow after a sports hernia surgery in January kept him out for most of spring training. And on Monday, rookie Wyatt Langford, a first-round pick last June who rocketed to the majors to start this season, landed on the IL with a right hamstring strain, retroactive to Sunday. He’s expected to miss three to four weeks, which should keep him out until the end of the month.

Rangers will place Wyatt Langford on IL with a hamstring strain, slightly more severe than Grade 1, Bruce Bochy says. It will be 3-4 week absence

— Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) May 5, 2024

Langford started Saturday’s game, a 15-4 win over the Royals, in left field but was removed in the fifth inning with what was initially diagnosed as hamstring tightness; an MRI later revealed the strain. Texas called up infielder Jonathan Ornelas from Triple-A Round Rock to fill out the 26-man roster.

Mired in a 1-for-15 slump following his first major league homer, an inside-the-parker on April 28, Langford has a brutal 68 wRC+ over his first 31 big league games. Things were bad enough that it was fair to wonder if the Rangers would temporarily send him to the minors to work things out — as the Orioles did recently with Jackson Holliday — but despite Langford’s woes, Texas doesn’t exactly have a better option than him for its lineup.

The Rangers offense is so thin that when Lowe missed the start of the season, the best player they could replace him with at first base was Jared Walsh, last seen hitting .125/.216/.279 for the Angels in 39 games in 2023. Before Ornelas was called up, the Rangers had only three hitters in the organization who were on the 40-man roster and not in the majors; Ornelas, catcher Sam Huff, and outfielder Dustin Harris, who currently sports a 79 wRC+ with Round Rock. Realistically, Langford was the team’s only viable option at DH.

That said, he definitely deserved his place in the Opening Day lineup. Langford was an advanced college hitter when the Rangers drafted him, probably doing so with the expectation that it wouldn’t be long before he reached the majors. He spent just three games at Rookie Ball last year, climbed to Double-A a month later, and after another two weeks, he finished the season at Round Rock. His .349/.479/.657 line across four levels of the minors comes out to a spicy 199 wRC+, basically meaning that Langford did as much damage to minor league pitchers last year as Mookie Betts is inflicting upon major leaguers so far this season. Hitting .365/.423/.714 in spring training did nothing to dissuade the Rangers of the notion that he was ready to play in the majors less than a year out of college.

Nor were the Rangers alone — 16 of the 25 FanGraphs staffers and contributors who made preseason picks predicted that Langford would win the AL Rookie of the Year, myself included. Those of us of fleshy construct were joined by the computers; entering the season, ZiPS projected him to post a 118 wRC+ this year, and Steamer was more bullish, at 125. Even the biggest Langford skeptic around, THE BAT overestimated him with its 92 wRC+ forecast. The betting world was in on him as well, with most books giving Langford the third-best preseason odds to win the ROY, behind teammate Evan Carter and Holliday.

Despite all this doom and gloom, there are some positive nuggets buried within Langford’s rough start. His plate discipline has remained intact; he was still better than league average at not chasing, making contact, and getting to 1-0 counts. His hard-hit percentage (38.6%) is a close enough neighbor to league average (44th percentile) that it could be borrowing its lawn mower. And although his .388 xSLG, per Statcast, is a number that would thrill few players other than Nick Madrigal, it is a huge leap from Langford’s actual mark of .293.

Running the xStats equivalent in ZiPS (zStats), you get an estimated line of .237/.326/.378 with four homers from his Statcast, plate discipline, pull/spray, and speed data. That is hardly good, but it looks like merely mediocre rather than disastrous.

What effect does his sluggish start have on his long-term outlook? I fired up the full ZiPS model to get an idea about how his 2024 so far has impacted his projections for the next six seasons.

Those projections are a good bit lower than his preseason ones, which had his WAR from 2025 to 2027 at 3.5, 3.8, and 3.6, respectively. This is unsurprising; Langford’s professional stats history was far shorter than most players and ZiPS had to use the much less accurate college translations as part of his projections, so these were always going to be more sensitive to 2024 play than they would’ve been for other major leaguers. Even so, Langford still projects as a solidly above-average bat who ought to be a long-term fixture in the Rangers’ lineup.

Langford’s breakout has been delayed by his struggles and now his injury, but his day is still coming. That’s encouraging for him, and it certainly bodes well for a Rangers offense that sure could use him.