The National League Wild Card race is wide open, with eight of the league’s 15 teams separated by a grand total of four and a half games in the standings. Five of those teams are currently below .500, their flaws on display on a daily basis — and some of those teams are at a particular disadvantage when it comes to their defenses.

On Wednesday, I investigated what 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) — told us about the teams with the best defenses. Some of them appear to be playoff-bound, while others are barely hanging onto hope thanks in part to those defenses, among them the Diamondbacks. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a bounce-back season for Yandy Díaz, and not in a good way. After two straight seasons with a wRC+ above 145, the Rays first baseman is at 106 so far in 2024. When Jay Jaffe checked in on him on June 13, Díaz had just climbed out of a hole. Through May 10, Díaz was running a wRC+ of just 77 with a 90.9 mph average exit velocity. Since that date, he’s been at 128, and his exit velocity has jumped all the way to 93.7 mph. Even more important, he was running a 60.3% groundball rate on May 10, but has run a 53.3% groundball rate after that point. For the season, that still leaves him at 56.4%, highest among all qualified players, but for Díaz, that handful of percentage points has always been the difference between being a good hitter and being one of the best in baseball. When his groundball rate is up, his wRC+ is down, and vice versa. The relationship is plain to see:

MLB’s new bat tracking data put the issue in stark relief. Blasts are a combination of two metrics: fast swings and squared up swings. The official definitions are here, but if you swing hard and you barrel the ball up, you’ll end up with a blast. That’s a good thing, because so far this season, blasts have a wOBA of .731, and a barrel rate of 27.7%. For Díaz, however, those numbers are .423 and 16.0%. He’s tied with Gunnar Henderson for fourth in baseball with 100 blasts, but just five of those blasts have turned into home runs. Of the 260 players who have hit at least 25 blasts this season, that 5.0% home run rate puts him in 248th place. Why? You know why. He has a launch angle of 1 on his blasts, tied for 259th out of 260. On the left, with the infield dirt almost completely obscured by dots, is Díaz’s spray chart on blasts. On the right, with home runs sprinkled liberally on top, is Henderson’s. Read the rest of this entry »

Last summer, I wrote about how Aaron Civale “King Ralph-ed” his way into an exciting postseason race. The Rays entered the 2023 season with five playoff-caliber starting pitchers at the top of their depth chart and a star pitching prospect waiting in the wings. Yet after several major elbow injuries, they were forced to send a Top 100 prospect to Cleveland in exchange for Civale at the deadline. By August, the right-hander was Tampa Bay’s no. 3 starter. The beneficiary of so many others’ misfortunes, Civale went from a scuffling Guardians club to one of the best teams in the league.

Conversely, Civale probably would have preferred to be back in Cleveland this season. As of today, it’s the Guardians, not the Rays, who are competing with the Orioles for the best record in the American League. Meanwhile, it’s the Rays, not the Guardians, who are struggling to stay above .500 with the trade deadline fast approaching. Thus, I have no choice but to go back to the King Ralph parallel. At the end of the movie, Ralph decides he’d rather return to his old life and abdicates the throne. However, when Ralph abdicates, his aging and childless successor, Sir Cedric, warns him that he might have to be king again once Cedric dies, leaving open the possibility for a sequel. King Ralph never got a second chapter, but as luck would have it, Civale just King Ralph-ed all over again. The rules of the CBA prevent him from simply packing up and heading back to Cleveland, but he’s just taken his place in a new Midwestern court. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Tampa Bay Rays. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our 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 »

Surely this is just some piece of cosmic performance art. If you’re looking for proof that we live in a simulation, Isaac Paredes’ spray chart is strong evidence. Sure, you’ve heard of pull hitters. What about only-right-at-the-foul-pole hitters, though?

Paredes is doing the same thing he always seems to. Through 259 plate appearances this season, he has the best wRC+ of his career at 147. Think it’s all about his one simple trick for hitting homers? He’s 16th in baseball in on-base percentage. He’s still walking roughly 10% of the time and striking out far less frequently than average. None of it makes sense, and yet it keeps happening.

The “Paredes approach” has been endlessly rehashed at this point. He puts the ball in the air. He pulls the ball in the air. He makes a tremendous amount of contact, and he cuts down on his swing to do so. His bat speed and exit velocity numbers are unimpressive, and he hits a ton of fly balls that would be outs if they went anywhere other than the left field corner. But, well, they keep going to the left field corner, as we’ve already covered.

Let’s put it this way: Here’s a list of pull rate on fly balls for all hitters, from Paredes’ debut in 2020 through the end of last season:

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

On Tuesday, I wrote about how the Brewers have been able to leverage largely unheralded depth into an excellent start to their season. In a conversation about the column with one of my friends the following day, I referred to the Brewers as “Rays North” for their ability to extract the most out of players and pile up wins. But really, the Brewers are paving their own trail and the Rays are at something of a crossroads.

Entering a huge four-game series against the Orioles on Friday, the Rays are 31-31, and 13 games back in the AL East. They’ve got 100 games left, so there’s no need to panic just yet, but they’re at risk of missing the playoffs for the first time since 2018, and for their first losing season since 2017.

The ever-present depth that has defined the Rays for much of Kevin Cash’s tenure just hasn’t been there, especially on the pitching side. The bullpen, which has been fodder for cheeky memes whenever the Rays pick a reliever up off waivers (I love tweeting “1.80 ERA coming” for every arm they snag off the scrap heap), has plunged to 29th in WAR, with the team simply not possessing the breadth of arms that it has in years past. The middle relievers have been especially troublesome; while Pete Fairbanks, Jason Adam, and Garrett Cleavinger have all been excellent once the ball has gotten to them in the late innings, the bridge to them is crumbling.

And their starters aren’t helping matters. Only Ryan Pepiot and Zack Littell have ERAs below 4.00, and Aaron Civale and Taj Bradley have been hit especially hard. Bradley has tantalizing potential and can carve through hitters with the best of them when he’s on — he struck out eight batters in his first three innings against the Red Sox two starts ago — but when he’s off for an inning or two he gets absolutely hammered. He’s allowed seven homers across five starts. That inconsistency has fueled a rotation that ranks 26th in WAR, and unlike in prior years, the Rays don’t have reinforcements on the way. Joe Rock is their only prospect pitching particularly well at Triple-A.

It’s a bit more encouraging — if not by much — that Tampa Bay sits 19th in the majors by position player WAR, and maybe that’s enough to conjure up some Rays magic. However, I’m just not sure this offense should even be this good. Isaac Paredes is almost singlehandedly carrying the bats, with last year’s core of Yandy Díaz (99 wRC+), Randy Arozarena (83 wRC+), and Josh Lowe (109 wRC+ in just 15 games thanks to a couple IL trips) failing to support him. I don’t think Díaz is suddenly an average bat; he won the batting title in 2023, continues to hit the ball hard, and still makes great swing decisions. Arozarena is a different story. His swing-and-miss issues and newfound inability to optimally hit the ball (his sweet-spot percentage is in the first percentile) don’t exactly give me hope that a turnaround is imminent.

So, where do the Rays go from here? Many other teams would be relieved if they still had a .500 record as plenty of their most important players underperformed; those clubs might bank on some positive regression and decide to upgrade their roster before the trade deadline. But that’s not how the Rays operate, especially in an extremely tough AL East.

Complicating matters is their payroll, which is currently at $97 million, by far the highest of the six years for which we have payroll data at RosterResource. While teams will never open the books and say exactly what a particular payroll means for financial losses and gains, owner Stuart Sternberg claimed before the season that the high payroll would lead to “real losses.” Sternberg added that he views those losses as worth it because he’d “like to keep [the successes] rolling,” and I have no real reason to doubt that he means that; the Rays have been good for years, and he’d surely like to have a talented team when the franchise’s new stadium ostensibly opens in 2028. What I’m not sure, though, is if augmenting this deeply flawed team to win this season is the best move. For the first time in a while, I could see the Rays going in the complete opposite direction.

The Rays are never ones to make huge additions at the deadline — it’s more complementary players like Nelson Cruz and Civale, and longer-term plays for untapped potential like Arozarena and Fairbanks — but that doesn’t mean they might not make huge subtractions. Tampa Bay is famous for never having untouchables, and despite his anemic performance, teams are apparently quite interested in Arozarena. He has the third-highest salary on the team, and I have no reason to believe the Rays also wouldn’t entertain offers for their two highest earners, Zach Eflin and Díaz, if the return is commensurate and the front office thinks that such a move would be the best path toward improving in 2025 and beyond. On a smaller scale, if the Rays are roughly .500 by the time the deadline rolls around, I’d be surprised to see Amed Rosario, Shawn Armstrong, Phil Maton, Chris Devenski, and Harold Ramírez still on the team.

As usual, what the Rays end up doing at the deadline might lead to some head-scratching; plenty of their moves during their stretch of success seemingly came out of nowhere, and some of those surprises hardly made sense at the time. But this is an organization that is always thinking about what’s next rather than pushing all its chips in for a single season. And there’s no reason to think that this won’t be a quick reset rather than a long rebuild. Next year, ace Shane McClanahan, Jeffrey Springs, and Drew Rasmussen are expected to return to the rotation after recovering from elbow injuries that will cost them most or all of this season. Also, the Rays should have über-prospect Junior Caminero, who is currently battling quad issues in Triple-A, healthy and ready to contribute in 2025. And don’t forget about Xavier Isaac, who’s tearing through the minors himself and could be an option for the big league club as soon as next year. Playing for next season is probably the smart move for the Rays at this point, and if that means trading away some talent from this year’s club, then so be it.

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.

Last month a piece titled “Player’s View: Tales From the Minor Leagues” ran here at FanGraphs. Comprising a collection of current and former major leaguers relating stories from their time on the farm, it was equal parts entertaining and informative of life below the big league level. What you’re reading now is a followup, albeit with a notable twist. The storytellers here are all broadcasters: two who picked up a microphone after their playing days were over, and three more who never played professionally. As was the case with the earlier piece, many of the stories will leave you laughing, if not shaking your head.

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Jeff Levering, Milwaukee Brewers broadcaster:

“There are a lot of great stories. One I’ll always remember is from when I was [broadcasting] with Springfield, in Double-A. We played a night game in Little Rock and needed to get to Tulsa for a game the next day. There was a torrential downpour — the worst rain I’ve seen in my life — and I was in charge of getting the movies for the bus. Our manager at the time was Pop Warner, who is now the third base coach for the St. Louis Cardinals, and he was staunch about no comedies. It was all horror movies, all the time, and the gorier the better — for him. Anyway, most of the guys were asleep in the back, but some of us were watching and it’s getting to be one of the scariest parts of the movie. This was in the middle of a torrential downpour in rural Arkansas.

“Up ahead we see a pair of headlights, but the headlights are sideways in the middle of the road. Our driver doesn’t see it until the last moment and we missed this car, which had spun out in the middle of the road, by a foot — no less than a foot. We ended up going into the left lane and down into the embankment, and right back up. That woke everybody up. From that point on everyone was awake. It was a really bad accident that could have happened but didn’t happen, and it was the middle of the night. Again, we were in the middle of Arkansas. No one would have found us until the next day. Read the rest of this entry »

Kevin Kelly is proving to be yet another diamond in the rough for the Tampa Bay Rays. Acquired from the Cleveland Guardians via the Colorado Rockies in the December 2022 Rule 5 draft, the 26-year-old right-hander has since logged a 3.14 ERA and a 3.24 FIP in 73 appearances out of the Rays bullpen. Attacking the strike zone from a low arm slot, Kelly has fanned 74 batters while allowing 70 hits and just 16 walks over 86 innings.

His prospect profile was modest at best. A 19th-round pick in the 2019 draft out of James Madison University, Kelly was unranked prior to changing organizations, and going into last year he was conservatively assigned a 40 FV and a no. 27 ranking on our Rays list. Which isn’t to say that Eric Longenhagen didn’t recognize Kelly’s potential. Pointing to the side-slinger’s east-west arsenal and ability to keep the ball out of the air, Longenhagen wrote that Kelly had a chance to stick on Tampa Bay’s roster and be “a great option out of the bullpen when you need a ground ball to get out of a jam.”

Inducing worm-killers is indeed one of Kelly’s greatest strengths. Per Statcast, his 48.2% ground ball rate ranked in the 78th percentile last season, and this year he’s currently in the 91st percentile at 55.6%. And it’s not as though he doesn’t miss a reasonable amount of bats. His strikeout rate might not be anything to write home about, but at 23.0% it dwells in middle of the pack of major league hurlers.

According to Tampa Bay pitching coach Kyle Snyder, the righty reliever’s success is based on multiple factors. Read the rest of this entry »

Jordan Weems was in his 10th professional season when he was featured here at FanGraphs for the first, and heretofore only, time in July 2020. His story was one of resilience, but also of change. Then 27 years old, Weems was a converted catcher soon to make his big-league debut as a pitcher for the Oakland Athletics. Drafted by the Boston Red Sox in 2011 out of Columbus (GA) High School in 2011, he moved to the mound five years later after dwelling in Mendoza-line territory while wearing the tools of ignorance.

Weems is now in his third season with the Washington Nationals, and by and large he’s forged a decent career as a reliever. The 6-foot-4 right-hander has made 118 appearances at baseball’s highest level, and his numbers include 140 strikeouts in 130 innings. The first of his Ks came against Trevor Story, the first batter he faced while toeing a big-league rubber.

I recently asked the personable hurler if he ever thinks about that initial punch out.

“Absolutely,” replied Weems, who has a 3.94 ERA over 16 innings in the current campaign. “You have to kind of stay where your feet are in this game — what you did in the past is in your past — but at the same time, if you’d have told me early on in my [professional] career that I’d be a pitcher in the big leagues, I would have laughed. Looking back, what I’ve done is pretty cool.” Read the rest of this entry »