Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. As always, thanks to Zach Lowe for coming up with the idea for the column, because it’s a great excuse to watch a ton of baseball and write about plays that make me smile. This week had a little bit of everything: close and fun games, lopsided and fun games, idiosyncratic batter behavior, and even an all-time major league record (nope, not a good one). Let’s get started. One quick note: Five Things is taking a week off next week for workload management. No word on whether I’ll be assigned to FanGraphs Triple-A to keep my typing arm fresh, but the column will return a week from Friday.

1. High-Stakes Games in April
Two division leaders faced off in Seattle on Monday night. The juggernaut Braves need no introduction; they have the best record in baseball and won 104 games last year. The Mariners have ridden a dominant rotation to the top of the AL West despite a sputtering offense. The first game of the series pitted Bryce Miller against Max Fried, and while neither was projected as their team’s ace coming into the season, they both looked the part in this game.

Miller started things off with his customary dominant fastball. He got Ronald Acuña Jr. looking and Ozzie Albies swinging in the first inning, and kept going from there. When Miller’s fastball is cooking, it’s hard to imagine making contact against him, never mind getting a hit:

Fried got off to a slow start this year after missing half of last season with injury, but he’d just thrown a three-hitter against the Marlins, and he picked up right where he left off. He baffled the Mariners with an array of fastballs, sliders, and delightful slow curves:

These two battled long into the night, exchanging scoreless innings and confident struts. One thing they didn’t exchange was baserunners; through six innings, they combined for three walks and no hits allowed. They traded strikeouts – 10 for Miller, seven for Fried – and made every 2-1 count feel like a rally.

The Braves lineup is too good to hold down forever. Acuña recorded the first hit of the game with a smashed groundball single in the seventh. Then he stole second. Then he stole third. Then Albies cracked a ground-rule double to bring him home. Miller recovered to escape the inning with no further damage, but Fried and the relievers that followed him could work with that. They made it through eight innings without any damage, setting up a dramatic clash between Atlanta closer A.J. Minter, trying to protect that one-run lead, and the two goats of the Seattle offense so far, Jorge Polanco and Mitch Garver. Polanco led off the bottom of the ninth with a single through the six hole before Garver clobbered a walk-off blast:

More games like this in April, please. More games like it in May and June. I like whimsical baseball just as much as the next person – probably more, in fact. But when games are this well played and this tight, it’s like a little piece of the playoffs escaped October and landed in my living room. My heart couldn’t handle every game being like this, but getting one every once in a while is a delight.

2. Wyatt Langford in Space
Wyatt Langford’s debut has been uneven, to be kind. He’s hitting .239/.311/.312, not exactly the offensive juggernaut Rangers fans expected after he tore up the minors last year. He has top-of-the-scale power; he hit six homers in spring training this year, and 10 in fewer than 200 minor league plate appearances last season. So far, that power hasn’t shown up. He only has a single home run in the majors this year. But oh boy, was that home run fun:

It feels weird for a power hitting DH to have an inside-the-park home run and no regular ones, but Langford is a strange DH. The fact that he isn’t a plus corner outfielder is surprising, because he can absolutely fly. Statcast clocks his average sprint speed so far this year at 29.6 ft/sec, one of the fastest marks in the sport. That somehow hasn’t translated to defense yet, but on offense? The man can move.

For a lot of players, this would be a triple. I clocked him at just under 15 seconds around the bases, and that could have been even faster if he didn’t think he hit a homer at first:

Now, did the Reds defense help out? Sure. Jake Fraley didn’t play the carom well at all; if he’d simply been less aggressive chasing the ball into that corner, this would have been a double or triple at most. But that one mistake is all it took (and for the Sam Miller enthusiasts out there, note Elly De La Cruz taking the cutoff throw from right field). But even accounting for the defensive miscue, Langford’s speed is what made this play happen.

Langford doesn’t seem like a track star to me, though I’m not sure how much of that is because I keep seeing “DH” next to his name. (He was playing left field in this game, for what it’s worth.) But watching him round the bases, you can’t miss it:

I particularly liked this close-up angle the Rangers posted:

Maybe it’s the red gloves. Maybe it’s the stride length. There’s just something simultaneously soothing and surprising about seeing him round the bases. He’s a large man with flailing arms, but there’s a grace to it too; his torso and head barely bounce around even as he accelerates to full speed. It’s a joy to watch, is my point. And Adolis García loved it just as much as I did:

3. Walk Offs
It all started with a mistake. In the bottom of the first inning last Thursday, Yoshinobu Yamamoto missed just low to Joey Meneses in a full count. Umpire Brian Walsh didn’t see it that way:

You can see Meneses at the edge of the frame looking back in shock. That was a ball! But the game moved on. The next three-ball pitch Yamamoto threw was a walk to Joey Gallo. The next one after that? Another one to Gallo with a different result:

I do think that one was a strike, but Gallo clearly didn’t. And now the battle lines were set: The Nationals were walking to first on every three-ball pitch they saw. Jacob Young got the memo:

And then on 3-2, he got the memo again:

Jesse Winker looked to me like he was ready to trot off – but Yamamoto’s 3-2 curveball caught so much of the plate that he instead pivoted around and marched back to the dugout:

Yamamoto was commanding the edges of the plate masterfully, and getting some help there to boot. But I loved Washington’s strategy. Just trot down to first base if it’s close. Maybe you’ll influence the umpire. Yamamoto threw eight pitches in three-ball counts in the game. The Nats swung at one and ran down toward first on five. That’s aspirational living right there. Maybe Mike Rizzo should put up a sign that says “no one cares how fast you run down to first base on strike three.” Or maybe he shouldn’t – I had a lot of fun watching them do it.

4. Revenge
You can only pull off this play when a catcher is hitting:

Don’t get me wrong, José Ramírez is a great defender. That was a heck of a play, a difficult barehanded scoop and an impressive off-platform throw. Not many third basemen can combine those two so smoothly. But if pretty much anyone else on the Braves were running, that would have been a single. Travis d’Arnaud is a 35-year-old catcher, and he moves like one, with 18th percentile sprint speed and 10th percentile home-to-first splits.

A series of unlikely events needs to happen for that to be such an unlucky out. Replace Ramírez with a slightly worse defender and it’s a hit. Replace d’Arnaud with a slightly faster runner and it’s a hit. Take a mile per hour off of the contact, or move it just a bit more away from Ramírez’s path, and it’s a hit. Part of being a good defender is making a lot of these edge-case plays, but I’m sure d’Arnaud was unhappy about losing a hit that way.

It’s OK, though, because he got his revenge two nights later. With two out and no one on in the top of the 10th, Ramírez singled off of A.J. Minter. He got a huge jump on the second pitch of the next at-bat and stole second standing up. Or at least, he thought he did:

Blink and you’ll miss it. Orlando Arcia’s swipe tag was way late, and it didn’t even make contact. A reverse angle is even more confusing. I have no idea why Ramírez didn’t slide, but he looks pretty clearly safe on this one:

Surely replay would fix this, right? Wrong:

What a remarkably perfect throw. Without meaning to, d’Arnaud hit Ramírez’s back pocket batting gloves from 130 feet away. Ramírez was out the moment Arcia caught the ball. The after-the-fact swipe was just instinctual, because Arcia has caught thousands of throws like that in his life but probably never received one that precise. I’ve heard of letting the ball do the work on a tag, but this takes that to a new level.

If Ramírez had been faster, there would be no play. If he’d been slower, he probably would have slid – honestly, he should have anyway. If the throw had been three inches off in either direction, the tag wouldn’t have been there. Ramírez stole one from d’Arnaud thanks to a series of just-so events. It’s only fair that d’Arnaud did the same to him.

5. Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory
With their loss to the Astros on Sunday, the Rockies fell to 7-21 in their first 28 games, which is bad enough. Even worse, they trailed at some point in each of those games. That tied a “record” set by the 1910 St. Louis Browns for most consecutive games trailing to start a season. Any time you’re tying a record set by the Browns, something has gone wrong.

Luckily for them, the next game, on Tuesday, offered a quick reprieve. They ambushed the Marlins with five runs in the top of the first, and Ryan Feltner was absolutely dealing. He faced the minimum number of batters through six innings, with the two singles he allowed quickly erased by a double play and a caught stealing, respectively. He needed only 79 pitches to get through eight scoreless innings. Bud Black sent him back out for the ninth to try for his first career complete game, a shutout to boot.

Things started to go wrong right away. Vidal Bruján snuck a single through the infield, Feltner hit Christian Bethancourt to add another baserunner, and then Luis Arraez doubled Bruján home to open the scoring ledger for Miami. Feltner’s first complete game would have to wait, because the Rockies needed this win. Closer Justin Lawrence came in to slam the door. But uh… he walked Bryan De La Cruz, and then Dane Myers (in the game because Jazz Chisholm Jr. got ejected for arguing balls and strikes) singled home two runs, and then Josh Bell singled to load the bases, and then Lawrence hit Jesús Sánchez to make it 5-4, and then… well, you get the idea. By the time Jalen Beeks came in to replace Lawrence, the game was tied and there was still only one out. But Beeks wriggled out of the jam without conceding anything further. The Rockies still had a chance to bury this accursed streak – they hadn’t trailed at any point in this game.

They scored a run in the top of the 10th when Ryan McMahon stroked a two-out double. But it wasn’t to be. De La Cruz doubled in the bottom of the inning to even the score. Then Myers – c’mon, the guy who wasn’t even supposed to be in the game! – won it for Miami with a seeing-eye single. Or maybe De La Cruz won it by remembering to touch home. Or maybe catcher Elias Díaz lost it with a bobble:

Oh boy, that one’s gonna sting. The Rockies can’t get out of their own way. They’ve trailed in the two games they’ve played since this collapse, too, extending the record to an outrageous 31 straight games trailing to start the season. Include the end of last year, and it’s 37 straight games trailing. I’m sorry for the Rockies fans enduring this, and for Patrick Dubuque for choosing to live the Rockies fan life for a year in this year of all years. At this point, there’s not much you can do other than stare, like rubbernecking but for sports.

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.

Blake Snell’s Giants tenure couldn’t be going much worse. In three starts spanning just 11.2 innings, he’s allowed 15 runs — nearly a third of last year’s total in only 6.5% of the innings — with a hard-hit rate that’s up nearly six percentage points from last year. Some of his woes can be attributed to small samples and bad luck — his 11.57 ERA is much higher than his 4.05 xERA — but this clearly isn’t how he and San Francisco drew it up. And that was before news broke Wednesday that the Giants were placing Snell on the 15-day injured list with an adductor muscle strain in his groin area. He has dealt with this injury twice before in his career, though he doesn’t seem worried that it’ll a long-term issue:

Snell had the same injury in 21 and 22, says he caught it early and is hopeful he misses minimal time. Maybe just slightly more than the 15 day minimum.

— Susan Slusser (@susanslusser) April 24, 2024

After his disappointing free agency, Snell could at least look forward to the possibility that he’d earn $32 million this year and pitch well enough to opt out and seek a more lucrative deal after the season. But now that he is going to miss at least three starts, following his three clunkers, it appears unlikely that he’ll be in a position to risk the $30 million he’s set to make next year if he stays.

The more immediate concern for the Giants, though, is how they’ll fill Snell’s spot in the rotation. Logan Webb is on a roll (29 innings in his last four starts, with just three runs allowed), and Jordan Hicks is pitching quite nicely, with a 1.61 ERA in five starts. Keaton Winn (3.54 ERA) is also chipping in on the back end, and while top prospect Kyle Harrison has struggled to a 5.00 ERA so far, there’s certainly room for him to get better. The fifth spot, however, looks like something of a mess.

The Giants had hoped Alex Cobb would be in the rotation by now after he recovered from hip surgery more quickly than expected, but he strained his elbow as he ramped up and was transferred to the 60-day IL instead. That leaves the Giants with two options: go with bullpen games, as they did in a pinch on Wednesday when Snell was scratched, or bring up someone from Triple-A. The latter feels far more likely, especially with Mason Black (1.53 ERA in four starts) pitching very well with Sacramento. Black hasn’t thrown more than five innings or 70 pitches in a start this year, so he won’t exactly take the load off San Francisco relievers, who have the second-highest bullpen ERA in the majors. Still, promoting Black appears to be the best way through this unfortunate situation.

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On the opposite coast, the Red Sox placed Opening Day starter Brayan Bello on the IL with lat tightness, joining fellow starters Lucas Giolito, Nick Pivetta, and Garrett Whitlock. As with Snell’s injury, Bello seems to have avoided serious injury, but in the best division in baseball, Boston can hardly afford to miss its no. 1 starter for even the minimum 15 days.

Rather amazingly, despite all those injuries, the Red Sox have the lowest ERA and FIP in the majors, with Kutter Crawford leading the way with a 0.66 ERA (two earned runs in 27.1 innings) that’s backed up by an also excellent 2.28 FIP. Tanner Houck (1.65 ERA/2.24 FIP) has become indispensable as well.

But things get dicey after that. The rest of the rotation now consists of Cooper Criswell, Josh Winckowski, and Chase Anderson, and because the latter two opened the season as relievers and aren’t stretched out to start just yet, their outings have turned into bullpen games.

This creates an awfully precarious position for the Red Sox bullpen, which has performed well thus far but doesn’t have the depth to cover an extended workload. Boston has already tapped into its pitching pipeline by calling up Criswell, and none of its other Triple-A pitchers are performing well enough to warrant a promotion to the majors. Moving Winckowski and Anderson to the rotation, then, has the compounding effect of weakening the bullpen, especially since Winckowski had pitched in high leverage situations.

Checking in on Wyatt Langford

Things certainly haven’t been rosy for Rangers rookie Wyatt Langford, who is batting .253/.337/.308 (89 wRC+) with no home runs across 104 plate appearances.

The 22-year-old has excellent raw power but just hasn’t tapped into it in the majors yet. His average exit velocity and hard-hit rate are both well below league average, with his barrel and sweet spot rates just barely above it.

It’s not all bad for Langford; he has elite speed that’s allowed him to beat out some infield hits, and his swing decisions are generally good, with chase and contact rates both well better than major league averages. But having great plate discipline can sometimes handcuff batters when they’re scuffling, and that seems to be the case with Langford. He’s talking too many pitches over the heart of the plate.

Pitch selectivity is a skill that depends just as much on swinging at the right pitches as it does laying off the wrong ones. A hitter may not get his ideal pitch during an entire game, let alone a single plate appearance, and taking too many hittable pitches leads to a lot of pitcher’s counts. It appears Langford would be much better off swinging more and using his quick hands and raw talent to make the most out of the pitches he gets over the plate rather than waiting around for the best possible one.

No manager defined the era of baseball marked by artificial turf and distant outfield fences as Whitey Herzog did. As the manager of the Royals (1975–79) and Cardinals (1980, ’81–90) — and for a short but impactful period, the latter club’s general manager as well — he assembled and led teams built around pitching, speed, and defense to six division titles, three pennants, and a world championship using an aggressive and exciting brand of baseball: Whiteyball. Gruff but not irascible, Herzog found ways to get the most out of players whose limitations had often prevented them from establishing themselves elsewhere.

“The three things you need to be a good manager,” he told Sports Illustrated’s Ron Fimrite in 1981, “are players, a sense of humor and, most important, a good bullpen. If I’ve got those three things, I assure you I’ll get along with the press and I guarantee you I’ll make the Hall of Fame.”

Herzog was finally elected to the Hall in 2010, an honor long overdue given that he was 20 years removed from the dugout and had never been on a ballot. He passed away on Monday in St. Louis at the age of 92. 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.

Craig Counsell’s new team has come out of the gate strong, sitting above .500 17 games in. However, 15 of those 17 games featured Seiya Suzuki, who the team will now be without for a significant period of time after Suzuki strained his right oblique during Sunday’s game against the Mariners. An injury to his opposite oblique kept Suzuki out six weeks in 2023, and it looks like this one will keep him out at least two-thirds as long.

The outfielder has improved every year he’s been in the majors, performing solidly as a rookie (116 wRC+) in 2022 before taking a step forward with a 126 wRC+ in 2023, including a 149 wRC+ in the second half. It looked as if he was building upon those second-half adjustments in the early going this year, with a 141 wRC+ through his first 68 plate appearances, including three home runs. Things looked great under the hood too, with a hard-hit rate above 50% (in the 92nd percentile), and an xwOBA, xBA, and xSLG all in the 70th percentile or higher.

Suzuki isn’t an easily replaceable player. Jed Hoyer and co. have built an enviably deep farm system, but the corresponding move was for post-prospect outfielder Alexander Canario. Pete Crow-Armstrong has struggled in Triple-A this season, especially since returning from elbow soreness, which isn’t exactly an encouraging follow-up to the center fielder looking overmatched in his first big league action last year. Fellow Top 100 prospect Owen Caissie is getting his first taste of the minors’ highest level, and Kevin Alcántara and Matt Shaw are both in Double-A for now.

Without a shiny prospect savior to fill in for Suzuki, Counsell will instead look to do what he does best: mix and match. Superutilityman Christopher Morel played every day even with Suzuki healthy, trading in his plethora of gloves for a time split between third base and DH in the hopes of making him more consistent at the hot corner. That hasn’t exactly come to pass, with Morel already worth -2 defensive runs saved, though obviously all sorts of small sample size caveats apply. More troubling is that he isn’t making up for it with the bat — he’s mired in a 1-for-21 slump since April 10, lowering his wRC+ to 86 after a very strong start.

That could lead to more playing time for lower-upside bats like Garrett Cooper, Mike Tauchman, and Nick Madrigal, and probably Canario, since it feels unlikely he was brought up just to ride the pine. Counsell mentioned in Seattle that Morel is dealing with a finger injury. If the Cubs think that injury timing up with his slump is more than a coincidental development, they can of course IL him as well, even if that puts even more of an onus on current stalwarts Ian Happ, Nico Hoerner, Dansby Swanson, Michael Busch, and Cody Bellinger. One x-factor could be Patrick Wisdom, who strikes out a ton but has prodigious power. He’s currently rehabbing a back injury in Triple-A and could be back any day now; he’s got flexibility to play all four corner positions.

The Rangers’ Cavalcade of Returning Pitchers, Part One

He’s not Max Scherzer, Jacob deGrom or Tyler Mahle, but the Rangers got a big boost to their rotation when they activated last-minute free agent signee Michael Lorenzen from the IL on Monday. He’s a perfectly useful fourth or fifth starter, and he fit that bill in his first start of the year. He threw five shutout innings in the Rangers’ win, though he walked five and threw just 58% of his 79 pitches for strikes. Lorenzen and his $4.5 million contract aren’t really there to pitch exceedingly well, though; he’s there to raise the floor, give the Rangers a chance to win, and perhaps slide to the bullpen later in the season.

Joining Lorenzen in the majors will be Jack Leiter, who is set to make his big league debut on Thursday for at least a spot start and perhaps a more permanent role. The former Vanderbilt standout and second overall pick hasn’t had an easy path to the bigs, following up a 5.54 ERA in 2022 with a 5.19 mark in 2023, making just one rough start in Triple-A. That didn’t necessarily put Leiter in great position to be knocking on the door, but he finally got his control in order, slicing his previous walk rate almost in half as it dipped down to 5.3%.

With those two in the fray and Mahle and Scherzer both recovering well (Scherzer’s timeline, in fact, appears to be accelerated from what was anticipated this winter, and he could be back as soon as early next month), the Rangers rotation will soon theoretically transform from one that’s treading water into a real strength for the club. Assuming health, Nathan Eovaldi, Scherzer, Mahle, and Jon Gray should all have rotation spots locked in, with a spot left for one of Leiter, Lorenzen, Andrew Heaney, and Dane Dunning. Lorenzen, Heaney, and Dunning all have bullpen experience as recently as last year’s playoffs, so a transition for any or all of them wouldn’t be asking anything new of them and could turn the relief unit into a real strength. Any contributions from deGrom would be gravy; he told the New York Post’s Joel Sherman last October that he’s aiming to be ready for August, and no recent developments appear to have changed that plan.

Yelich’s Back Strikes Back

Christian Yelich landed on the injured list yesterday (his placement is retroactive to April 13) with back trouble. Back injuries are unfortunately nothing new for the Brewers’ left fielder, who hit the IL due to that ailment twice in 2021; his barking back also kept him out of action on a day-to-day basis in 2022 and 2023. The former MVP was enjoying an excellent start to 2024, with a 205 wRC+ backed up by a career-low strikeout rate and a barrel rate that trailed only his MVP runner-up season in 2019.

Yelich’s stint on the IL should mean more playing time for defensive standout Blake Perkins, who is playing well in his sophomore campaign; the switch-hitter entered Tuesday’s action with a 177 wRC+. Outside of Jackson Chourio, Pat Murphy will probably rotate through the other outfielders frequently, with Perkins joined by lefty Sal Frelick and righty Joey Wiemer. Owen Miller, Oliver Dunn, and Jake Bauers could also slide from the infield to the outfield if needed.

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.

Injuries are unfortunately nothing new in Josh Jung’s short major league career. The Rangers third baseman emerged during the first half of last season as one of baseball’s top young talents until a fractured thumb in early August kept him out of action for six weeks and limited him to 122 games. His overall numbers — 110 wRC+ and 2.5 WAR — were strong enough for him to finish fourth in the AL Rookie of the Year balloting despite a rough final stretch upon his return; he had a 38 wRC+ in his 54 plate appearances to close out the regular season. He rebounded just in time for the postseason, hitting three home runs and posting a 128 wRC+ in 70 plate appearances as he helped lead Texas to the franchise’s first World Series championship.

Despite missing almost all of spring training with a calf strain, Jung looked poised to take another step forward in 2024, coming out of the gates hot with a .412/.474/.941 batting line in his first 19 plate appearances. But regrettably, that potential breakout came to a crashing halt on Monday when Jung was hit by a pitch at which he swung and broke his wrist. The injury requires surgery that could keep him out of action for six to 10 weeks.

The Rangers, who over the last two offseasons decided not to significantly augment their offense through trades and free agency, have interesting internal options to fill in for Jung. Infielder Justin Foscue was called up from Triple-A earlier this week when Jung was placed on the injured list. Foscue, who can also play first and second, is not a premier prospect, but he grades out as a 70 hitter and has walked more than he’s struck out at Triple-A, making for a high-floor hitter who can slide in nicely at the bottom of the order. For now at least, it looks like he and Ezequiel Duran will be on the short side of platoons in the corner infield with first baseman Jared Walsh, who is filling in for the injured Nathaniel Lowe, and Josh Smith at third.

Jung’s injury is a big blow for a Texas team that was relying on its potent lineup to carry the load while four of its starting pitchers — Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer, Tyler Mahle, and Michael Lorenzen — work their way back from injuries of their own. That was never going to be easy in the competitive American League West, but the Rangers had the offensive talent to make it work. They were banking on Jung to build upon his solid rookie campaign, top prospect Wyatt Langford to make an immediate impact, and Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, and Adolis García to play up to their All-Star pedigrees. Instead, with Lowe and now Jung hurt, the Rangers are not at full strength on either side of the ball. Their margin for error in the playoff race, which was already expected to be thin, just got even smaller.

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The Mets have unmatched vibes thus far this season, and I don’t mean that in a good way. Fortunately for them, they scratched out a win in game two of their doubleheader against the Tigers on Thursday at Citi Field despite being no-hit into the eighth inning. But they’re still a 1-5 team that has been rained out three times already this year.

That said, I’m not here to talk about the Mets coming out of the gate colder than any team besides the Marlins; I’m here to talk about Julio Teheran. The veteran right-hander debuted in 2011, and since then he’s pitched in every major league season except for 2022. While he’ll probably always be best known for his nine seasons in Atlanta, he’s bounced around quite a bit after leaving the Braves. He pitched 10 atrocious games for the Angels in 2020, made one start for the Tigers in 2021 before going down with injury, and delivered 71.2 perfectly decent innings (0.3 WAR) with the Brewers last year.

With that underwhelming of a recent track record combined with his age (33) and lack of stuff (his sinker averaged under 90 mph last year), it was surprising to see the Mets sign him to a $2.5 million contract for the remainder of the season, even though he couldn’t make the Orioles out of spring training. With the Mets in the highest tax bracket, the $2.5 million contract will effectively cost them $5.25 million, assuming he’s a Met for the entire season.

But the Mets have the financial muscle to flex, and they’ll continue to make moves like this ad infinitum as long as Steve Cohen will sign the checks. Teheran is an entirely unsexy pitcher, but he gives the Mets something that teams need more and more desperately in each successive season: relatively high-floor innings. He’s probably not better than prospects like Christian Scott and José Buttó — and, frankly, I probably would have just gone with one of those two instead — but depth isn’t a bad thing, even if one has to overpay for it. (Teheran will cost the Mets more, including taxes, than the Rangers will pay Michael Lorenzen.) As the Mets look to rebound from a rough start without ace Kodai Senga, they’re taking the quantity approach to pitching, and pitchers like Teheran go a long way in solving the season-long innings puzzle.

Back when the Orioles signed Craig Kimbrel in December, Michael Baumann wrote something that has been rattling around my brain ever since: “But there are pitchers you need to get you through the regular season, and then there are pitchers who can win in the playoffs. And there is less overlap between the two than you might think.” Michael’s got a point. These days, there are super teams, super terrible teams, and fewer teams than ever in between. A league-average starting pitcher will do just fine most of the time. They’ll beat up on the White Sox and get beat up on by the Dodgers, and the universe will remain balanced. But if you ask a pitching staff without any true standouts to spend a whole playoff series silencing a lineup that starts off Acuña-Albies-Riley-Olson, you’re going to end up scooping them off the mound with a shovel.

This isn’t just the age of stratification; it’s also the age of the arm injury. Last year, both the Dodgers and Braves featured rotations that were among the best in baseball on paper, but real-life injuries proved to be their kryptonite. That’s why the hot new trend among super teams is rotational depth. Here’s what Ben Clemens said when the Braves traded for Chris Sale a few weeks after the Kimbrel deal: “If you’re looking at it exclusively through the lens of how Atlanta will line up in the 2024 playoffs, adding Sale starts to make more sense. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a full season out of him. The Braves are surely aware of that, though, and they have plenty of fifth starter types to fill in for him in the regular season.” Over at Baseball Prospectus, Craig Goldstein had the exact same thought: “the Braves are looking to have Sale healthy and effective at the right time of year, how much he misses on the way there is unlikely to matter much to them.” Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not a bold predictions kind of guy. Maybe it comes with the territory of writing so much: On average, my views are pretty down the middle because I just have so many views. There’s so much baseball bouncing around in my brain all the time that it tends toward the mean. Or maybe that’s just a cop out, a way to pre-excuse my lack of boldness. Because it’s time for my annual attempt at it. Here are five things I think will occur that hopefully will shock you a little – but not too much, because I’m hoping that at least two or three of these actually will transpire.

1. The Mets Will Lead Baseball in DH WAR
Our projections hate J.D. Martinez, and there’s a reason why: He’s 36 and squarely in the back half of his career. Over the past four years, he’s posted a 120 wRC+, which is great but not otherworldly, and he struck out 31.1% of the time in 2023. This kind of general trajectory is what projections feast on; they recognize early and commonly shared signs of decline and then extrapolate from there.

Doubting those projections wouldn’t really count as a bold claim in my book, though, because Martinez is a very good hitter. Also, the way that projections work means that he’ll exceed those numbers roughly 50% of the time even if they’re a good approximation of his true talent. We need to be much bolder than that. So let’s kick it up a notch and imagine how good Martinez could feasibly be.
Read the rest of this entry »

I want to stress how outrageous it is that Michael Lorenzen was not the first former Cal State Fullerton two-way player to sign a free agent contract this winter. The guy who beat him to the punch, J.D. Davis, played 144 games for the Giants last year, starting 116 of them at third base. He’d gone through arbitration. More to the point, on March 1 he was the presumptive starter for a team with playoff aspirations, and he was under contract on March 10.

Then Davis got cut in order to save a few bucks in the wake of the Matt Chapman signing, and he ended up signing for less than half of his original salary with the Oakland A’s. There, he’ll be managed by Mark Kotsay, a former Cal State Fullerton two-way player.

While all of that was happening, Lorenzen was sitting by the phone. Or more likely, given his physique, he was lifting the phone just to get a good pump in, even though the only sound on the other end was a dial tone. Finally, overnight just six days before his team’s first regular season game, Lorenzen has a deal with the Texas Rangers: One year, $4.5 million, with an additional $2.5 million possible in incentives. Read the rest of this entry »

With the start of the season just two weeks away, it’s time for one of my most beloved/hated/dreaded annual traditions: making my picks for breakouts and busts. For those of you who haven’t read one of these pieces in the past, these are my picks for the players who are the most likely to change the general consensus about them over the course of the 2024 season. And since we’re talking about generally low-probability outcomes — this isn’t a list of players with better or worse projections than last year — there’s no exercise with more potential to make me look super smart… or dumb. For every J.P. Crawford or Steven Kwan triumph, there’s an instance of Andrew Vaughn-induced shame.

As usual, let’s start with a quick table of the triumphs and humiliations of last year’s picks:

It was about an average year. Vaughn and Christian Walker were the biggest misses, and Jordan Walker’s lousy defense kept him from being a win. Now on to this year’s picks.

The Breakouts

Spencer Torkelson, Detroit Tigers
Spencer Torkelson’s .233/.313/.446 line certainly didn’t knock any socks off, but he was a (relative) beast over the last two months of the season, hitting .244/.329/.526 with 16 homers. Now, I always warn folks to not read too much into monthly splits because there’s a tendency to think that splits coinciding with a good explanation are enough to overcome the small sample size issues, and because the endpoints are selective. The two-month split, however, isn’t why Torkelson’s here. Rather, there was a lot of evidence to suggest that he was underperforming his peripherals for most of the season up until that point. From the beginning of the season through August 8, Torkelson was the biggest zStats underachiever with significant playing time. Using only Statcast data with no information as to actual results, ZiPS thought that in that span Tork should have been an .868 OPS hitter; his actual OPS was .688. His OPS after that day? .921! Remember, Torkelson was a top-five prospect in baseball entering his rookie season in 2022, so even though his first year was a disaster, he’s not some 31-year-old beer leaguer coming out of nowhere.

Patrick Bailey’s Bat, San Francisco Giants
I can’t really call it a full breakout since Patrick Bailey already had an overall breakout season, thanks to defense that crushed even the loftiest of expectations. What puts him here is that people may be sleeping on his bat. No, I don’t think there’s any chance he starts hitting like Buster Posey, but Bailey’s otherworldly defense and lackluster bat (wRC+ of 78) appears to have pigeonholed him as a typical no-hit, all-glove backstop. I think that would be a mistake. Catchers have really weird developmental curves and I can’t stress enough how difficult it is for a catcher to nearly skip the high minors; he only played 28 games above A-ball before debuting in San Francisco. He hit .251/.351/.424 in the minors – again, not star quality but far from a total zero – and even without full developmental time offensively, he wasn’t completely destroyed by MLB pitching. In fact, he showed surprisingly solid plate discipline and power for a prospect with so little experience with the bat. Both ZiPS and our Depth Charts project Bailey to have an 82 wRC+, but I would not be shocked if he finished the season with a mark between 95 and 100, which, if his defense holds up, would make him an elite catcher overall.

Wyatt Langford, Texas Rangers
I don’t have a formal rule about it, but when ZiPS projects a player with little or no MLB experience to lead in a significant stat, I should take it very seriously since ZiPS doesn’t often go nuts about minor leaguers. The last player I can think of is Luis Arraez, who had a 21% chance of hitting .300 for his rookie season, according to ZiPS, which also projected him to have the highest batting average in baseball by 2020. ZiPS thinks Wyatt Langford is going to lead the majors in doubles and be one of the best offensive rookies in recent years. He was one of the few college hitters that ZiPS saw as nearly ready for the majors in 2023, and it liked him more than similarly advanced hitters Nolan Schanuel and Dylan Crews. Since ZiPS is my sidekick – or maybe it’s the other way around – I gotta have its back!

Anthony Volpe, New York Yankees
Anthony Volpe had a solid rookie season, but given his elite prospect status, it was a mild disappointment that he was only league average. Because of this, I think people are now underselling his offensive upside. He hit for a lot of power for a 22-year-old shortstop (21 home runs, .174 ISO). He also stole 24 bases on 29 tries, including successfully swiping each of his first 15 attempts, and was worth 3.5 base running runs. Two of his biggest problems were that he didn’t get on base enough (.283 OBP, 8.7 BB%) and struck out too much (27.8 K%), but these weren’t issues for him in the minors, and some of his fundamentals here are promising — he actually gets off to fewer 0-1 counts than most players with his strikeout rate. All of this suggests that he should figure things out with more major league experience. ZiPS also thinks he should have had a .312 BABIP given his Statcast data, instead of his actual mark of .259, which indicates that some of his woes were likely do to bad luck.

Keibert Ruiz, Washington Nationals
As with Volpe, I think Keibert Ruiz’s low BABIP, especially his .223 BABIP in the first half, made his season look a lot weaker than it was. ZiPS saw a .270 BABIP as a more reasonable number for him as a hitter in the first half, and that number continued to rise in the second half; he had a .285 zBABIP by the end of the season. Giving Ruiz back some of the batting average makes his actual .226/.279/.360 first-half line look a lot less abysmal and his .300/.342/.467 one in the second half look less like a fluke. In fact, except for a bit more power, most of the difference between his first half and second half was BABIP, so the halves weren’t quite as different as they appeared. Overall, his zStats line of .274/.330/.445 reflects a much more advanced hitter than we saw overall in 2023.

As I reminded people with Bailey, catchers tend to have a weird developmental pattern, and Ruiz has been no exception. Ruiz was a top prospect for a long time before hitting the Double-A wall, and his standing fell quite a bit in the eyes of prospect watchers. But he re-established himself as a top prospect to a degree that he was a huge part of Washington’s return when it traded Max Scherzer and Trea Turner to the Dodgers in 2021. I think people forget how young he still is at 25, and being older is not as big of a deal for a catching prospect than for someone at any other position.

Elly De La Cruz, Cincinnati Reds
Elly De La Cruz is a common breakout pick for obvious reasons, but I’m including him here specifically because his plate discipline wasn’t as bad as it looks from the raw stats. ZiPS actually thought, from his plate discipline data, that his strikeout rate should have been more like 27% instead of nearly 34%, enough to knock off 27 strikeouts. And given that he should be a high BABIP player, because he was the fastest man in baseball last year, putting more balls in play would benefit him more than it would most players. Overall, his zStats line last year was .273/.323/.449, compared to his actual line of .235/.300/.410, meaning the holes in his game aren’t quite as deep as his reputation would suggest.

And if you don’t buy that, he did show better plate discipline as the season progressed. I’ll again warn of the dangers of storylines that coincide with splits, but things like offensive swing percentage stabilize very quickly, mitigating some of the sample size issues. I don’t think it’s a stretch to look at the graph below and conclude that De La Cruz got caught up in the hype of his initial success and became too aggressive. As a result, he started struggling before coming to realize that he had gotten away from the approach that made him such a dynamic player in the first place.

Dominic Canzone, Seattle Mariners
One should be suspicious of Pacific Coast League stats, but Dominic Canzone’s .354/.431/.634 line last year was good even by PCL standards, enough for a 151 wRC+ in the league. However, that success didn’t follow him to the majors. He probably doesn’t have a lot of upside, but the rate of his improvement over the last couple of years suggests that there’s a chance he could have a nice little Geronimo Berroa-esque run.

Tucupita Marcano, San Diego Padres
This one is kind of a stretch because I don’t see an obvious path for Tucupita Marcano to get much playing time. He hasn’t hit at all in the majors yet, but he’s also had a weird minor league career; he’s still just coming off his age-23 season and has made some progress at translating his minor league plate discipline to the majors. ZiPS isn’t in on him, but Steamer is, and if he can managed his 94 wRC+ Steamer projection, along with a decent glove (though more at second base than short) and his speed, he’ll at least be interesting. Gotta have one out there pick, no?

The Busts

Cody Bellinger, Chicago Cubs
I don’t think Cody Bellinger will fall anywhere near the depths of his brutal 2021 season, but there are reasons to be suspicious of last year’s resurgence. He changed some of his mechanics and altered his approach, especially in two-strike counts, to make more contact, and those adjustments should be sustainable. It’s the power numbers that are a bit preposterous, to the degree I can’t think of any comparable player who managed to maintain this amount of power with mediocre-at-best exit velocity numbers. Statcast’s expected slugging percentage knocks 88 points off his actual one, and the ZiPS version (zSLG) is 20 points meaner than that.

J.T. Realmuto, Philadelphia Phillies
This one hurts, especially for a player ZiPS was so excited about in 2015-2016 before his breakout. But the decline in J.T. Realmuto’s offensive numbers in 2023 is supported by the drop in his peripheral numbers; he was just a bit worse at everything last year. He’s also a catcher entering his mid 30s. This is a gut thing more than a projection thing, but I suspect any kind of a leg injury would be a bigger deal for a surprisingly quick player like Realmuto, whose offensive stats already reflect his speed, than for your typical catcher.

Isaac Paredes, Tampa Bay Rays
Isaac Paredes is a good hitter, but is he really a 140 wRC+ guy? In both Statcast and ZiPS, Paredes had an even larger disparity between his actual power numbers and his peripherals than Bellinger. That said, there’s some good news, because unlike Bellinger, Paredes has done this before. There were 20 hitters in 2022 that hit at least five more homers than zHR expected, and 18 of them went on to hit fewer home runs in 2023. Paredes was one of the two who hit more (the other was Pete Alonso). Because Paredes has such a low hard-hit percentage, I’m not completely on board yet.

Lane Thomas, Washington Nationals
One thing about Cinderella stories is that people tend to overrate them after the ball. Most of these stories don’t involve permanent stardom; Joey Meneses and Frank Schwindel are two example of people getting too excited about an older breakout guy. Unlike Schwindel, Lane Thomas is probably still a league-average player, on the level of his 2021 and 2022 seasons, but I’d be shocked to see him hit 30 homers again. He’s probably a stopgap center fielder/fourth outfielder type, and I’m seeing him surprisingly high in some fantasy rankings.

Dominic Fletcher, Chicago White Sox
I was pretty shocked to see the White Sox trade Cristian Mena for Dominic Fletcher, even with the assumption that ZiPS is being too exuberant about Mena in ranking him at the back of the top 50 prospects. If you evaluate him the way our prospect team does, a fourth outfielder for a 45 FV prospect is quite a rich gain. And it’s looking like the Sox will give Fletcher a pretty good chance at getting the majority of the playing time in right field. It’s not as bad as the team’s irrational excitement about Oscar Colás last year, but there’s just not a lot of support for Fletcher’s maintaining his .301/.350/.441 line from his brief stint in the majors. That’s ridiculously higher than his zStats slash line of .249/.290/.376, which works out to a difference of 125 OPS points.

When free agent Matt Chapman signed with the Giants this past weekend, most of my analysis focused upon the ups and downs of his 2023 season and the nature of his contract, which looks comparatively team friendly. One thing I underplayed in the analysis was the extent to which San Francisco’s winter stands out relative to the competition. Even before the addition of Chapman, the Giants had spent more money on free agents than any other team besides the Dodgers, and likewise project to receive more WAR from those additions than any team besides their longtime rivals.

Based on the data in our Free Agent Tracker, the Giants have now committed $261.25 million in guaranteed salaries: $113 million to center fielder Jung Hoo Lee, $44 million to righty Jordan Hicks, $42 million to DH/outfielder Jorge Soler, and $8.25 million to catcher Tom Murphy; this accounting does not include the major league salaries that shortstop Nick Ahmed or lefty reliever Amir Garrett will get if they make the big league roster; last month, they each signed minor league deals as non-roster invitees. San Francisco’s additions may not be as eye-catching as signing either Carlos Correa or Aaron Judge would have been last offseason, and the team still projects for a middle-of-the-pack 82 wins after going 79-83 last year, but the Giants may not be done spending some of the money that was burning a hole in their pockets. They remain interested in Blake Snell, especially in the wake of injuries within their rotation.

Of course, the Dodgers blow the field away when it comes to spending, even if we stick to the adjusted salaries once deferred money is factored in, with a total of $853.2 million: $437.83 million to Shohei Ohtani (down from a sticker price of $700 million), $325 million to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, $20.434 million to outfielder Teoscar Hernández (down from $25 million), $10 million to Clayton Kershaw (with incentives that can increase the value significantly for both 2024 and ’25), $9 million apiece to Ryan Brasier and Jason Heyward, $8 million to Joe Kelly, $7 million to James Paxton, and $4 million to Enrique Hernández.

Here’s a look at the 30 teams’ free agent spending. Note that, as above, these figures factor in the applicable deferrals but not incentives, escalator clauses, or split-contract salaries from minor league deals:

As you can see, five teams committed less than $10 million each this winter, and of the bottom seven teams, four (the Orioles, Rays, Twins, and Marlins) made the playoffs last year. Free agency isn’t the only route to improve a team, but particularly with regards to the Orioles, one can empathize with fans who are disappointed that last year’s success hasn’t translated into a shopping spree to improve their odds of getting back to the postseason.

The 30 teams have committed a total of $2.74 billion to free agents so far, and even though that figure will increase once Snell and Jordan Montgomery sign, overall spending will still be lower this offseason than in recent ones. Based on the data at RosterResource, teams spent $4 billion last offseason ($2.22 billion on the top 12 free agents alone) and $3.22 billion in the lockout-interrupted offseason of 2021–22. For this winter, spending works out to an average of $91.38 million per team, but that figure is skewed by the top teams to such an extent that the median is just $49.25 million; only nine teams exceeded the mean.

Beyond the dollars, I thought it would be worth revisiting some free agent accounting we’ve done in the past, regarding WAR added and lost in free agency. This isn’t quite as straightforward as it sounds, as we’ll soon see.

This is the most basic accounting, lumping together players signed to major league deals and those who had to settle for minor league ones; the latter inflates the counts of some of these teams well into double digits. It’s worth noting that where players spent time with multiple teams in 2023, I’ve only counted their WAR with their last team on the outgoing side, but their full-season WAR on the incoming side. Consider the case of Jeimer Candelario, who produced 3.1 WAR for the Nationals and then 0.2 WAR for the Cubs. To these eyes, crediting the Reds as adding a 3.3-WAR player properly conveys the impact of a substantial addition. The question is whether to count the Cubs as losing 3.3 WAR (via a player they acquired without intending to retain) or 0.2 WAR (reflecting the transient nature of a late-season addition). I went with the latter option.

The total number of outgoing free agents shown above (277) doesn’t include 11 additional players from the KBO and NPB, eight of whom have signed (all but Trevor Bauer, Adam Plutko, and Yasiel Puig), meaning that from among that total, 73 — about 25% — are unsigned. Most of the unsigned are fairly low impact players, in that just 13 produced at least 1.0 WAR last year, with Montgomery (4.3), Snell (4.1), Brandon Belt (2.3), Mike Clevinger (2.2) and J.D. Martinez (2.2) the only ones above 2.0. Meanwhile, 35 of them produced zero or negative WAR, though to be fair, that was often in limited opportunity.

While the eight foreign players who have signed are counted in the total number of signed free agents above, they didn’t produce any WAR within MLB. Thus, the fact that three teams outrank the Dodgers in terms of net free agent WAR comes with the caveat that the Los Angeles total doesn’t include Yamamoto.

I’ll come back to that issue, but first let’s note the teams at the extremes. Ahead of the Dodgers are three teams who had a bunch of players hit the open market, but who were at best minimally productive in 2023, and who all went out and made at least a few solid moves. Of the dozen Reds to test free agency, including the still-unsigned Joey Votto, only Harrison Bader produced even 1.0 WAR in 2023, and he nonetheless was 0.2 wins below replacement after being acquired from the Yankees. On the other side, in addition to Candelario, the team shored up its pitching by adding starters Nick Martinez and Frankie Montas, relievers Brent Suter and Emilio Pagán, and more — not big moves, but enough to put them at the top. The Cardinals shed five players, most notably Dakota Hudson, and overhauled their rotation by adding Sonny Gray, whose 5.3 WAR as a Twin tied Kevin Gausman for the AL lead, as well as Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn; they also added Keynan Middleton to the bullpen and staffed their bench with Brandon Crawford and Matt Carpenter. Of the eight Royals who became free agents, only Zack Greinke produced 1.0 WAR, but they beefed up their pitching, with starters Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha; their lineup, with Hunter Renfroe; and their bench, with Adam Frazier and Garrett Hampson to their bench. These moves won’t win them the division, but they’re at least proof of life.

The Dodgers’ figures on both sides of the ledger are inflated by their keeping Brasier, Enrique Hernández, Heyward, Kelly, and Kershaw, but they did shed the still-unsigned J.D. Martinez and Julio Urías, replacing them with the market’s two most expensive players. The Diamondbacks re-signed Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and didn’t lose anybody who produced at least 1.0 WAR for the team, while the only departing Giant to meet that threshold was Sean Manaea.

At the other end of the spectrum, it’s striking that the bottom five teams include three AL postseason participants plus one NL team that barely missed it. Whether they won it all or fell short, their offseasons have resulted in some downsizing of payrolls and perhaps expectations.

In the wake of last year’s $255 million flop, the uncertainty regarding their local broadcast deal, and the death of chairman Peter Seidler, the Padres gutted their pitching staff, with Snell, Lugo, Martinez, Wacha, and closer Josh Hader among those departing, along with catcher Gary Sánchez, whom they plucked off the scrapheap and who had his best season since 2019. Most of the money they’ve spent this offseason was on their bullpen, with Wandy Peralta, Japanese lefty Yuki Matsui and Korean righty Woo-Suk Go joining the fold. The Twins shed Gray, Kenta Maeda, and Tyler Mahle from their rotation, and both Donovan Solano and Michael A. Taylor remain unsigned but unlikely to return; meanwhile their most impactful addition is first baseman Carlos Santana. The Blue Jays let Chapman depart, along with Belt, Hicks and Whit Merrifield; they cobbled together a lower-cost third base solution, which includes the incoming Justin Turner and Isiah Kiner-Falefa, retained center fielderKevin Kiermaier, and took a flier on Cuban righty Yariel Rodriguez, who spent three seasons in NPB. The Rangers may still re-sign Montgomery, but for now he counts only on the outbound side, and they also shed relievers Aroldis Chapman, Chris Stratton, and Will Smith, plus catcher/DH Mitch Garver. Their rotation is full of question marks as they bank on Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer, and Mahle having strong returns from surgery. Veteran righty David Robertson should bolster the bullpen, and Garver’s departure is mitigated by the eventual arrival of top prospect Wyatt Langford.

Since the impact of the foreign free agents isn’t reflected in the table above, I took one more look at the landscape using projected WAR on the incoming side. Instead of taking it straight from our Free Agent Tracker — that uses Steamer, which is available in time for the opening bell of the offseason, but not ZiPS, which takes longer to prepare — I took the more labor-intensive route by swapping in our Depth Charts projections, which takes an average the two systems:

Despite accounting for Yamamoto, the Dodgers actually fall in the rankings due to known injuries (Ohtani won’t pitch in 2024, while Kershaw could be out until August) and regression (Brasier and Heyward, particularly), while the Giants surpass them with the addition of Lee. Also notable on the upper end are the Mets, mainly due to anticipated rebounds from Manaea, Bader, and Luis Severino. On the other side, the Orioles stand out more than in the previous table, mainly because the only free agent they signed to a major league deal, Craig Kimbrel, is projected to regress. Given that both Kyle Bradish and John Means have been sidelined with elbow injuries to start the season, it seems possible the O’s could add a low-cost starter who might boost their standing here a bit.

Thanks to our tools at FanGraphs, free agency is easy to track, even if I’ve made it more labor-intensive for this exercise. It’s hardly the only route by which teams improve, however. For example, the Orioles traded for Corbin Burnes, who may outproduce any of the starters who were signed. But in the big picture, the patterns I’ve illustrated offer us plenty of hints about what to expect from the upcoming season.