I updated the Top 100 Prospects list today. This post goes through the pitchers and why they stack the way they do. Here’s a link directly to the list, and here’s a link to the post with a little more detail regarding farm system and prospect stuff and the trade deadline. It might be best for you to open a second tab and follow along, so here are the Top 100 pitchers isolated away from the bats. Let’s get to it.
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At last we reach the end of my annual series spotlighting the weakest positions on contenders. While still focusing upon teams that meet that loose definition of contenders (Playoff Odds of at least 9.5%), I have also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a look.

At the other positions in this series, I have used about 0.6 WAR or less thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — as my cutoff, but for the designated hitters, I’ve limited the list to the teams below zero, both to keep the length manageable and to account for the general spread of value. In the third full season of the universal DH, exactly half the teams in the majors have actually gotten 0.0 WAR or less from their DHs thus far, four are in the middle ground between 0.0 and 1.0, eight are between 1.0 and 2.0, and three are above 2.0. DHs as a group have hit .245/.321/.421 for a 109 wRC+; that last figure is up three points from last year, and seven points from the last time I did this list, via a slash line that’s virtually identical (the majors’ slugging percentage as a whole has dropped 17 points from last season).

This year, we’re seeing a greater number of teams invest more playing time in a single DH. Whereas each of the past two seasons saw three players reach the 500 plate appearance threshold as DHs, this year we’re on pace for five; similarly, 11 player are on pace to reach 400 PA as DHs, compared to eight last year. That said, many of the teams on this list are the ones that haven’t found that special someone to take the lion’s share of the plate appearances.

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Today, we turn our attention to the second base Killers. While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 9.5%), and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — I have also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin; as you can see by the table below, four of the six teams listed here project to receive more than a win from their current cast of second base options. Even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a look, and the incumbent may no longer appear to be the best option.

Particularly in light of those projections, I don’t expect every team to go out and track down an upgrade before the July 30 deadline, though I’ll note that some of the players cited within for their poor performance are themselves change-of-scenery candidates; one team’s problem may be another team’s solution, albeit not necessarily an ideal one. Either way, I’m less concerned with those solutions – many of which have more moving parts involved than a single trade — than I am with the problems. Unless otherwise indicated, all statistics are through Sunday.

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Josh Rojas has turned himself into a plus defender. My colleague Ben Clemens chronicled that advancement last month, citing the Mariners infielder’s improved ability to go to his left as a primary reason for his markedly-better metrics. Exactly what type of adjustments have allowed the 30-year-old third baseman to turn the proverbial corner with his glove? I happened to be in Cleveland when Seattle began a road series against the Guardians on the day Ben’s article ran, so was able to get the answer right from the horse’s mouth.

“It was a matter of adjusting what works best for me reacting to balls left and right,” Rojas told me. “It has to do with my preset. Not getting down too early, not getting down too late. Picking up contact points. Another thing that helps is knowing how the ball usually comes off guys’ bats when certain pitchers are throwing. There is constant communication between me, the pitching coaches, and Bone [infield coach Perry Hill] on what the plan is for the series.”

The preset is what I was most interested in, so I asked the erstwhile Arizona Diamondback — Rojas became a Mariner at last July’s trade deadline — if he could elaborate. Read the rest of this entry »

In a race for a playoff spot, every edge matters. Yet all too often, for reasons that extend beyond a player’s statistics, managers and general managers fail to make the moves that could improve their teams, allowing mediocre production to fester at the risk of smothering a club’s postseason hopes. In Baseball Prospectus’ 2007 book, It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over, I compiled a historical All-Star squad of ignominy, identifying players at each position whose performances had dragged their teams down in tight races: the Replacement-Level Killers. I’ve revisited the concept numerous times at multiple outlets and have adapted it at FanGraphs in an expanded format since 2018.

When it comes to defining replacement level play, we needn’t hew too closely to exactitude. Any team that’s gotten less than 0.6 WAR from a position to this point — prorating to 1.0 over a full season — is considered fair game. Sometimes, acceptable or even above-average defense (which may depend upon which metric one uses) coupled with total ineptitude on offense is enough to flag a team. Sometimes a club may be well ahead of replacement level but has lost a key contributor to injury; sometimes the reverse is true, but the team hasn’t yet climbed above that first-cut threshold. As with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of hardcore pornography, I know replacement level when I see it.

For this series, I’ll go around the diamond, pointing out the most egregious examples of potential Killers at each position among contenders, which I’ll define as teams that are above .500 or have Playoff Odds of at least 9.5%. That definition covers 20 teams, down from 22 last year. I’ll include the rest-of-season projections from our Depth Charts, and while I may mention potential trade targets, I’m less focused on these teams’ solutions than I am the problems, because hey, human nature. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

The Red Sox have had quite the auspicious last few weeks. Their 16-6 record since June 12 is the best in baseball, and they’ve elevated their playoff odds to a season-high 48.0%, an excellent performance for a team that entered the year with a sub-.500 projection. In a tight AL Wild Card race, they’ve needed every single one of these recent victories, as Dan Szymborski recently found that Boston’s playoff hopes are more sensitive to small changes in the standings than those of any other team. As the trade deadline approaches, the Red Sox may find themselves in the running for big names. Much of their current success, though, is thanks to major improvements from players currently on the roster, such as pitchers Tanner Houck and Kutter Crawford and catcher Connor Wong, whom Jay Jaffe wrote about yesterday. And no Red Sox player has leveled up his game more than the current team leader in plate appearances, runs scored, and WAR: Jarren Duran.

Duran’s breakout has come during his first season of full-time play; after cups of coffee in 2021 and ’22, he served as the strong side of a platoon last season, amassing a 120 wRC+ across 362 plate appearances. But there were some signs of future regression, as he outperformed his xwOBA by 35 points and relied on a .381 BABIP to slash .295/.346/.482. And while those raw numbers from 2023 have actually declined this season, to .275/.337/.473, Duran has put up a nearly identical 121 wRC+. Most encouragingly, he has much stronger peripherals backing up his slash line this year, indicating that his current production is sustainable.

The biggest change we’ve seen from Duran in 2024 is in his approach at the plate. Previously, it seemed as though his goal was to swing at anything near the strike zone and put the ball in play; he offered at the first pitch nearly 40% of the time. And while this strategy worked for him because he made a lot of contact, frequently on a line, his success depended on well-placed balls in play and didn’t make the most of his strength. Instead, it often felt like he sacrificed damage for contact, an unnecessary tradeoff given his solid bat-to-ball skills, especially on pitches in the strike zone. His power numbers last year – a 20th percentile barrel rate and 35th percentile xSLG – were far from what he was capable of.

Although Duran doesn’t look like the most physically imposing player on the field, he has excellent raw power, with maximum exit velocities over 112.5 mph in each of the past two seasons. He’s especially lethal against pitches down and in, where his bat speed, exit velocity, and overall production are all elite. Comparatively, he’s generated negative run values against pitches on the outer third or top of the zone, as his relatively long swing isn’t able to cover the needed distance in time. Understanding this, Duran has become more selective. He’s cut his first-pitch swing rate nearly in half, watching such offerings go by at nearly Mike Trout levels. He’s dropped his swing rate on strikes in his cold zones by nine points, in addition to a reduction in chase rate. The results of these adjustments has been staggering, and Duran has looked like a brand new hitter this year. Even without an increase in raw strength, Duran’s focus on swinging only at the best pitches have vaulted his barrel rate above the league average, along with his xSLG and xwOBA. Additionally, his taking more called strikes has aided more than just his power numbers: His strikeout and walk rates have actually improved with his new approach.

Remarkably, Duran legged out 34 doubles last year, 10 more two-baggers than he’s hit across 50 more trips to the plate this season. As we know, as many young players gain more experience, they learn how to turn those two-base hits into home runs — or as Kiri Oler dubbed this development, “summiting Doubles to Dingers Mountain” — so it’s not all that surprising that Duran is hitting fewer doubles as he’s added power. Except, well, he’s launching home runs at nearly the same pace as he did last year, in 2.4% of his plate appearances this season, up slightly from 2.2%. Instead, he’s managed to one-up his power production in a far less common way: He’s hitting way more triples. He’s still racking up plenty of doubles (24, tied for the fifth most in baseball), but he leads the majors with 10 triples, eight more than he hit last season. Altogether, he ranks fifth in the majors with 44 extra-base hits. He’s taking full advantage of the dimensions of his home stadium, as Fenway’s deep right-center field gap and the Green Monster in left make it the most doubles-friendly ballpark in the majors, especially for left-handed hitters, and the fifth-most triples-friendly park. This season, Duran has 18 doubles in just 133 balls in play at home. More specifically, Duran’s ability to smack balls off the Monster is absolutely unparalleled. I looked at spray charts of other prolific Red Sox hitters in recent memory – Rafael Devers, Xander Bogaerts, Mookie Betts – and none took advantage of their ballpark’s defining feature anywhere close to as frequently as Duran has in 2024.

Many of Duran’s 34 combined doubles and triples this year have resulted from his speed on the basepaths, fighting to take the extra bag at every opportunity. He’s always possessed plus-plus speed, and using Statcast’s new baserunning value leaderboard, we can see the run value of every single he’s stretched into a hustle double or base taken on a teammate’s hit. Duran ranks third in the league in such runs generated thanks to his aggression, and while a handful of speedsters have produced negative value from being overly cautious, Duran’s fearlessness has paid off. Aggressive baserunning has been an important part of Boston’s overall offensive improvements this year. The Red Sox have climbed to seventh in extra base taken rate compared to 25th a year ago. Statcast views them as the fourth-best baserunning team in baseball. When you combine this with Duran’s 21 steals on 24 attempts, the end result is one of the most valuable runners in the league; besides Duran, only Corbin Carroll and Elly De La Cruz are on pace to accrue 1 WAR from baserunning alone.

While Duran has solidified his approach at the plate and maintained his excellence on the basepaths, the area where he’s seen the most dramatic improvement this year is with his glove. Despite his 95th percentile sprint speed, Duran’s previous performance in the outfield, especially in center, left much to be desired; he totaled -5 FRV from 2021-23. Most of his poor plays occurred when he had to cover long distances on efficient routes; it was so bad that he made an appearance in a piece I wrote last year due to his awful route running. In that piece, I found there was a negative correlation between route efficiency and overall OAA, as an outfielder’s initial reaction and burst speed proved to be more important factors. Duran has been a key example of this: His routes are still rough, but the rest of his defensive game has improved tremendously. His +5 FRV ranks in the 89th percentile (though second to Ceddanne Rafaela in his own outfield), while only Daulton Varsho has more DRS than Duran’s 12 among outfielders.

Duran’s reactions and first steps have improved to the point where his routes haven’t impacted his ability to get to balls. Last year, he failed to make both of the difficult-but-possible plays that involved covering over 100 feet of ground to make the catch; this year he’s a perfect 4-for-4. However, the plays that have turned his defensive metrics from below average to excellent aren’t the long-distance runs but the line drives, where instincts and initial reactions are everything. In 2024, Duran has had 11 play opportunities on balls between 30 and 50 feet away from him with fewer than four seconds to make the catch. He’s converted 10 of them, contributing to half of his total OAA. While he was similarly successful at catching these hard liners in previous seasons, he had only a few such play opportunities. Duran isn’t doing anything different with his positioning this year, so it remains to be seen whether he’ll continue to get so many catch opportunities on these hard liners. Regardless, it’s safe to say that he’s made the most of the fielding chances he’s been given.

Nearing the All-Star break, the Red Sox have as close to coin-flip playoff odds as any other club, and the high stakes they’ve played under combined with their meteoric performance over the past few weeks have made them one of the most exciting teams in baseball to watch. And in the middle of it is the homegrown All-Star Duran, whose improvements have manifested in every single aspect of his game.

The Red Sox may never entirely live down the 2020 trade of Mookie Betts, but four years and change later, Boston’s last man standing from that deal is enjoying a breakout. Catcher Connor Wong just reeled off a 17-game hitting streak that spanned four weeks, and even made a case for a spot on the AL All-Star team, though he fell short on that front.

The 28-year-old Wong began his streak with a single off White Sox right-hander Jake Woodford on June 6, and added another single off Tim Hill later in the game. Despite taking a three-day paternity leave from June 24–27, he started 16 of Boston’s next 23 games, sprinkling in four other two-hit games.

With his single off Trevor Rogers last Tuesday, Wong extended his streak to 17 games, the longest by any Red Sox player this season and tied for the seventh-longest of any player this year; Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto is one of three other players who also had a 17-gamer. The longest hitting streak ever for a catcher is 34 games, set by the Padres’ Benito Santiago in 1987. The closest any catcher has come to approaching Santiago in the last decade was in 2019, when the Mets’ Wilson Ramos went 23 games; all of the other hitting streaks by catchers of at least 20 games happened in 2003 or earlier. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2020s have been a quiet time for the Boston Red Sox. Since winning the 2018 World Series, their fourth in a 15-year period, Boston hasn’t looked much like one of the titans, ready to throw down with the Yankees or Astros in brutal warfare for baseball supremacy. Instead, as an organization, the Red Sox have taken on the character of a genial, pastorale retiree, gently reclining on the porch of an American Craftsman house, as if they were in a 1980s lemonade commercial.

On Independence Day in 2022, Boston was second in the AL East with the junior circuit’s third-best record, but in the space of a month, it had lost Nathan Eovaldi, Garrett Whitlock, Michael Wacha, and Rich Hill to injuries. It was the prime time to make trades, but the Red Sox did basically nothing that would have helped them maintain their playoff relevance; their pitching staff’s 6.30 ERA for July dropped them below .500 by the time the Sox made their pointless acquisition of Eric Hosmer at the trade deadline. At last year’s deadline, when they were just 3.5 games out of the final wild card spot, they decided the day was intolerably hot and they were content to sip the last of their sweet tea as they watched and waited for the fireflies to come out at the dying of the day. Once again, Boston is in contention during trade season, a half-game up on the Royals for the last AL playoff spot, and it’s time for them to get up off the porch. Read the rest of this entry »

Willie Mays was already a superstar by the time the Giants moved across the country following the 1957 season, yet the denizens of San Francisco did not exactly embrace him. They took much more quickly to Orlando Cepeda, who homered against the Dodgers in his major league debut on April 15, 1958, the team’s first game at Seals Stadium, its temporary new home. The slugging 20-year-old first baseman, nicknamed “The Baby Bull” — in deference to his father Pedro “The Bull” Cepeda, a star player in his own right in their native Puerto Rico — was a perfect fit for San Francisco and its culture. He helped to infuse excitement into what had been a sixth-place team the year before, winning NL Rookie of the Year honors in 1958 and kicking off a 17-year career that included an MVP award, a World Series championship, and an induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, not to mention a statue outside Oracle Park.

Sadly, 10 days after Mays’ death at the age of 93, the 86-year-old Cepeda passed away as well. The Giants and the Cepeda family announced his death on Friday night — fittingly, during a game against the Dodgers; fans at Oracle Park stood to observe a moment of silence. “Our beloved Orlando passed away peacefully at home this evening, listening to his favorite music and surrounded by his loved ones,” said Nydia Fernandez, his second of three wives, in the statement. No cause of death was provided.

As the second Black Puerto Rican to play in the AL or NL, after Roberto Clemente, Cepeda became a hero in his homeland as well as a favorite of Giants fans. He spent nine seasons with the Giants (1958-66) before trades to the Cardinals (1966–68) and Braves (1969–72), followed by brief stints with the A’s (1972), Red Sox (1973), and Royals (1974) at the tail end of his career. The 6-foot-2, 210-pound righty was a middle-of-the-lineup force on three pennant winners, including the 1967 champion Cardinals, and was selected for an All-Star team 11 times, including two per year from 1959–62; he was the first Puerto Rican player to start an All-Star Game in the first of those seasons. He was the first player to win both the Rookie of the Year and MVP awards unanimously; Albert Pujols is the only one to replicate that feat. Cepeda finished his career with 2,351 hits, 379 homers, 142 steals, and a lifetime batting line of .297/.350/.499 (133 OPS+).

Not everything came easily for Cepeda. If not for the pitcher-friendliness of the Giants’ home ballparks — first Seals Stadium and then Candlestick Park — as well as a series of knee injuries that led to 10 surgeries, he might have hit at least 500 home runs. His path to the Hall of Fame took an extreme detour due to a conviction for smuggling marijuana, which resulted in a 10-month stint in federal prison as well as a humiliating fall from grace in Puerto Rico. Only after his release and his conversion to Buddhism was he able to rehabilitate his image and work his way back into the game’s good graces, a process that culminated with his election to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 1999, 25 years after his final game. He was the second Puerto Rican player inducted, preceded only by Clemente. Read the rest of this entry »