Today, we’re here to talk about Ryan McMahon, but before we can do that, we need to talk about Joe Kutina. Joe Kutina didn’t steal any bases in 1912. A 6-foot-2, power-hitting first baseman in his second season with the St. Louis Browns, that wasn’t necessarily his job. Kutina earned his spot in 1911, batting .374 with a .589 slugging percentage for the Saginaw Krazy Kats of the Class-C Southern Michigan League. He joined St. Louis at the end of the season, putting up a 96 wRC+ with three home runs in 26 games with the Browns. In 1912, his wRC+ dropped to 59 and he launched just one homer in 69 games. He also got caught stealing seven times.

I know that getting caught stealing seven times sounds like a lot, but things were a little different back then. In the 1912 season, 73 players got caught stealing at least seven times. Ty Cobb led the league with 34 unsuccessful steal attempts, and three other players also got nabbed at least 30 times. The difference is that Cobb and those three others combined for 203 successful steals. Kutina, once again, stole zero bases. That made him the first player in AL/NL history to get caught stealing at least four times without successfully stealing a single base in a season — or at least to be recorded doing so in that era of spottier record keeping. According to Stathead, over the last 112 years, just 216 players have replicated Kutina’s dubious accomplishment. Although that averages out to a bit below two per season, the distribution isn’t exactly even.

We’re only third of the way into this decade, but unless the pace picks up dramatically, we’ll end with the lowest total since the days when Joe Kutina was lumbering around the bases with reckless abandon. As it turns out, one of the changes wrought by the data revolution was an unwillingness to let players who were incapable of stealing a base keep trying and failing over and over again. This is why people don’t like analytics. Read the rest of this entry »

The Portland Sea Dogs roster includes three Top 100 prospects, but neither Roman Anthony (15), Marcelo Mayer (42), nor Kyle Teel (83) has been the Double-A affiliate’s best player so far this season. That distinction belongs to a 23-year-old, shortstop-turned-left-fielder whom the Boston Red Sox drafted 69th overall in 2019 out of the Carlos Beltran Baseball Academy. Along with playing stellar defense at a new position, Matthew Lugo is slashing .306/.404/.653 with 10 home runs and an Eastern League-best 191 wRC+.

Markedly-improved plate discipline has played a big role in his breakout. Last year, Lugo logged a 5.9% walk rate and a 27.6% strikeout rate. This year those numbers are 13.4% and 22.5%.

The key to his newfound ability to dominate the strike zone?

“Timing,” explained Lugo, who takes his cuts from the right side. “Last year, I had a lot of movement with my hands, which made me inconsistent being on time with the pitcher. My hands were very low, and then when I got to the launch position they were very high; there was a lot of distance for my hands to go through. This year, I’m closer to my launch position before I swing. I also had a [bat] wiggle and this year I just get to my spot with no wiggle. I’m getting into my spot early and have more time to see the pitch, so I’m making better swing decisions.”

The decision to move Lugo off of his natural position and into an outfield corner wasn’t based on defensive shortcomings, but rather on the arrival of Mayer. The high-ceiling shortstop was promoted to Portland last year on Memorial Day weekend, and given his first-round pedigree, he wasn’t going to be the one moving. Read the rest of this entry »

On the first knuckleball thrown at Coors Field in 16 years, Matt Waldron hit home plate umpire Bill Miller right in the nuts.

Nobody — not Waldron, not his catcher Kyle Higashioka, not Miller — appeared to know where the ball was going. Despite Higashioka frequently (and understandably) struggling to track the flight of the ball throughout the rest of the night, Waldron delivered a career-best performance, allowing just one run over six innings.

Perhaps the most surprising part of his performance was the setting. Since 2008, knuckleballers have dodged outings at Coors Field, which sits 5,200 feet above sea level. Conventional wisdom dictates that knuckleballs at altitude are a bad idea, as Cy Young-winning knuckleballer R.A. Dickey told Dave Krieger back in 2012. 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.

When I think about openers, I think about Ryne Stanek. His statistics as a Ray in 2018 and 2019 were comical: Before he was traded to the Marlins in 2019, he made 100 appearances over those two seasons; 59 of them were “starts.” In those opening appearances, he never threw more than 37 pitches, recorded more than six outs, or faced more than nine hitters. But since leaving the Rays, despite appearing in 234 games, he’s pitched for more teams (three) than he’s made starts (zero). In fact, he’s averaging less than one inning per appearance.

I searched my brain to figure out who is today’s version of Stanek circa 2018-19, only to realize that there isn’t one. I turned to Stathead and confirmed my inkling: The opener has gone by the wayside in 2024.

In my query, I set a couple of filters as guardrails. First, I limited my search to pitchers who were on, at most, three days of rest. That way, I could eliminate the true starters who got hurt or blitzed out of games from this sample. I also capped the number of batters faced at nine. Facing the leadoff man twice goes against the spirit of the opener, where the aim is to prevent batters from seeing any one pitcher too many times.

It doesn’t take a math degree to know that nine is far fewer than 154. But it’s not quite that simple. Remember, we’re only a quarter of the way through the season, and there will almost certainly be more openers used the rest of the way. That said, baseball is on pace to use 33 openers in 2024, which would be the fewest since the opener was first utilized in 2018 — yes, that includes the shortened 2020 campaign. It’s worth noting that only 12 openers were used at this point in 2023, so we could see opener usage ramp up as this season progresses, too. Even so, it’s clear that something has changed.

I don’t really have a take on whether or not the opener is a good strategy in today’s game. I also don’t think there’s an obvious explanation for why the fall of the opener is happening. Some of it may just be circumstance. Gabe Kapler’s Giants frequently used openers, and he’s no longer managing. The 2018-19 Rays had Blake Snell and Charlie Morton, but they also had plenty of pitchers who were best deployed in short outings. This season, the Rays feature a deeper group of pitchers who are capable of carrying a starter’s workload. Five years ago, Tampa Bay turned to openers out of necessity; now, that’s no longer necessary.

What To Look Forward to This Weekend

• The Mariners have played great baseball of late, winning eight of their last nine series, bringing their record to 24-20, and entering play Friday in first place in the AL West. But they’ve got a big test coming up, with three games in Baltimore followed by three games in the Bronx, two exciting series that will give the Mariners ample opportunity to show the league they’re for real. George Kirby and Corbin Burnes face off in a marquee pitching matchup on Sunday.

• The Rockies are looking to extend their winning streak that currently sits at seven games, beginning tonight in San Francisco. Colorado started out its streak last week with a win against the Giants, scoring seven runs off Keaton Winn, who is set to start for the Giants on Sunday. Whether or not the Rockies will be riding a nine-game streak at that point will depend on San Francisco starters Kyle Harrison and Jordan Hicks, as well as a piecemeal Giants lineup that’s without Patrick Bailey, Michael Conforto, Jung Hoo Lee, and Jorge Soler.

• Although they’re still the league’s worst team, the White Sox have played less embarrassingly of late, going 8-4 over their last 12 games. This weekend, though, they head to the Bronx to face the first-place Yankees. Led by a ridiculously hot Aaron Judge, New York has won four straight games and 10 of its last 12. During the Yankees’ three-game sweep of the Twins in Minnesota, Judge went 7-for-11 (.636) with five doubles and two home runs. On the season, he’s slashing .262/.393/.555 with 11 homers and a 169 wRC+, which is remarkable considering how much he struggled in April.

Lastly, a quick programming note. Beginning next week, we’ll be shifting Top of the Order to a twice-weekly schedule, running on Tuesday and Friday mornings. See you then!

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.

The Kansas City Royals’ strong start has been one of the most surprising stories of the season thus far. With a comeback win over the Mariners last night, the Royals raised their record to 26-18 and pulled into second place in the AL Central, just a game and a half behind the Guardians for the division lead. Bobby Witt Jr. is playing like a legitimate MVP candidate, Salvador Perez is walking more and striking out less than ever (at age 34!), and Seth Lugo is pitching like he wants a Cy Young award in his trophy case.

But take a look at Kansas City’s lineup and offensive statistics and it doesn’t exactly look like one of the best teams in the American League. Entering Tuesday, the Royals had a 94 wRC+ (22nd in the majors) and a .307 wOBA (16th); they also ranked 14th in average (.242), 20th in on-base percentage (.304), 14th in slugging (.390), and tied for 18th in home runs (40). That’s a middling offense at best and a bottom-third group at worst.

The easy explanation for Kansas City’s success this year is its pitching staff, which entering Tuesday ranked ninth in baseball with a 3.49 ERA and a 3.73 FIP. More specifically, the rotation has been one of the best in the majors. Royals starters have combined for a 3.26 ERA (5th), a 3.44 FIP (4th), and 4.6 WAR (2nd), again as of the start of play Tuesday.

But a great rotation alone doesn’t make a good team. If the season ended yesterday, the Royals would be in the playoffs right now because they are producing at the plate in the moments that matter.

That 94 wRC+ overall? Forget it. Their wRC+ was 132 with runners in scoring position, 131 with runners on, and 137 in their few dozen bases plate appearances with the bases loaded. They weren’t as excellent in high-leverage spots (101 wRC+), but that’s still notably better than their wRC+ in all other situations (94).

So, is this a skill? Eh, probably not, but if you’d like to re-litigate Esky Magic from 2014 and 2015 in the comments, have at it. More likely, it’s some combination of luck and random variation in a quarter-season sample. Players don’t suddenly become better or worse depending on the situation, they just perform better or worse. The statistics I shared above are merely what has happened; they’re not predictive of what the rest of the season will hold. Jeff Sullivan put it best back in 2018 when looking at “clutch” through a win probability lens: The most important thing about clutch is that you shouldn’t count on it continuing.

Now, this isn’t to say that the Royals are frauds, because the flip side of the above statement also holds true. Just because you shouldn’t count on clutch continuing doesn’t mean that it won’t. Also, Kansas City isn’t winning only because of its situational hitting. They’ve got Witt and Salvy and all that starting pitching! The Royals may not be this good, but they certainly aren’t bad. And when it’s all over, they might just be good enough. They’re a weird team in a weird division, and maybe they can ride that weirdness all the way into the postseason.

Quick Hits

• Bob Nightengale put it best: “Break up the Colorado Rockies!” Wednesday’s win over the Padres gave the Rockies their sixth straight win, and if five meant we should break them up, what are we supposed to do now? And they haven’t beaten bad teams either! The streak started with a win against the Giants, followed by a three-game sweep of the Rangers and a back-to-back victories against the Padres at Petco Park.

This strikes me as positive regression more than anything else (like the White Sox being above .500 since Tommy Pham joined the team), but Colorado’s sweep of the Rangers was quite the spoiler. Scoring just six runs across those three games, the vaunted Texas lineup was shut down by starting pitching luminaries Ryan Feltner, Austin Gomber, and Ty Blach. Even Dakota Hudson got in on the fun on Monday against the Padres. After going 0-6 in his first seven starts, he earned his first win of the season.

• You’re not a baseball writer if you don’t write a story that needs to be updated after it is published. So I would, of course, like to note that after I filed Monday’s column about how infrequently the Braves use their bench, Austin Riley left Sunday night’s game with an inflamed oblique. Riley isn’t expected to go on the IL, but he was kept out of Atlanta’s lineup on both Monday and Tuesday, allowing Zack Short to beef up those ghost bench statistics.

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.

In the ninth inning of Monday night’s game against the Phillies, Rockies catcher Elias Díaz doubled off Jeff Hoffman with two outs, nobody on, and the game tied 1-1. That put Rockies manager Bud Black in a bit of a pickle. With a runner on second, a single would score the go-ahead run, and Colorado’s best hitter — Nolan Jones — was at the plate. If a single were ever going to come, it would come now.

Rather, a single would score a normal runner from second. Unfortunately, Díaz is slow. He’s in the first percentile for sprint speed. He’s so slow, when he puts a pork shoulder in the crockpot it’s done cooking by the time he comes back from the pantry with the barbecue sauce.

If Black wanted to get that run in from second with a single, he had one of two options. First, call a cab. Second, call for a pinch-runner. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Colorado Rockies. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fourth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the triumphant return of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week, the longest-named column in baseball. Rogers Hornsby famously stared out his window all winter waiting for baseball to return. I can’t claim to have done the same, but I’m still overjoyed it’s back, and what better way to celebrate than by talking about some weird and delightful things that caught my eye while I soaked in baseball’s opening week? As always, this column is inspired by Zach Lowe’s basketball column of a similar name, which I read religiously.

1. Non-Elite Defenders Making Elite Defensive Plays
Great defenders make great plays. I’m sure you can picture Nolan Arenado making a do-or-die barehanded throw or Kevin Kiermaier tracking down a line drive at a full sprint. That’s why those guys are such storied defenders; they make the exceptional seem expected. There are plenty of other players in baseball, though, and many of them make the exceptional seem, well, exceptional. When someone you wouldn’t expect turns in a web gem, it feels all the better, and this week had a ton of them.

There’s the Juan Soto throw, of course:

That was brilliant, and it came at the perfect time. Plenty has already been written about it, but that doesn’t make it less impressive. Soto is at best an average outfielder and likely worse than that, and his arm is one of the weaker parts of his game. But he’s capable of brilliance out there from time to time, particularly when accuracy matters, and this one delivered.

But there were so many more! How about Brett Baty doing his best Arenado (or Ke’Bryan Hayes, shout out to the real best third base defender) impression on a tough grounder:

That’s phenomenal work. The combination of a weakly hit ball and fast runner meant that Baty had to make every instant count. Any wasted movement on a gather or pivot would’ve made Matt Vierling safe. This wasn’t your normal plant your feet and make a strong throw kind of out; Baty was either going to fire off balance or eat the ball. Check out his footwork, courtesy of the always-excellent SNY camera crew:

That throw came against his momentum and with his left leg completely airborne. As an added bonus, fellow lightly regarded defender Pete Alonso received the throw perfectly. Baty was a top prospect because of his hitting. If he keeps making plays like this, we might have to tear up that old scouting report.

Speaking of prospects who aren’t known for their fielding, Jordan Walker was one of the worst outfield defenders in baseball last year – understandable for a 21-year-old learning a new position in the major leagues. He’s fast and has a powerful throwing arm, so the building blocks are there, but the numbers don’t lie: He was out of his element in the outfield.

Maybe this year is different, though:

Simply put, that’s a great play. Jackson Merrill’s liner was headed toward the gap, which meant that Walker had to come in almost perpendicular to the ball to make a play. A bad step early in the route likely would’ve left him high and dry. But he got it right and turned a double into an out.

These guys won’t always make the right plays. In fact, they often won’t. That only makes it more fun when they nail it. Even bad major league defenders are capable of brilliance. Stars – they’re absolutely nothing like us!

2. Location, Location, Location
Pop ups are death for hitters. Infield pop ups are particularly so. Every other type of hit has some chance of finding a hole, but the combination of short distance and long hangtime mean that if you hit the ball straight up and it doesn’t go far, you’re going to be out. Batters hit .006/.006/.006 on infield fly balls from 2021 through 2023 – 12,583 pop ups led to 74 hits. You generally need some wild wind, a collision, or perhaps an overzealous pitcher trying to field for himself to have any shot at a hit. Mostly, though, it just turns into an out.

So far, 2024 has had other ideas. In the first five days of games, two infield pop ups turned into singles. One even turned into a double. It’s silly season for bad contact, in other words. It all started with Eddie Rosario:

That’s one of the hardest-hit infield pop ups of the year, one of only two hit at 95 mph or harder. That meant that the Reds had all day to camp under it, but unfortunately for them, it was a windy day in Cincinnati on Saturday. Gameday reported 17 mph winds from right to left, and you can see Santiago Espinal and Christian Encarnacion-Strand struggle to track the ball. If your infield pop up is going to drop, that’s a common way for it to happen.

Another unlikely but possible option is to hit the ball extremely softly, as Matt Carpenter demonstrated on April Fool’s Day:

That was a pop up, but it didn’t go very far up. With the infield playing at medium depth and Graham Pauley guarding third base after an earlier bunt single (yeah, Carpenter had quite a day), there was just no time to get to it. Maybe Matt Waldron could have made a play, but pitchers generally stay out of the way on balls like those for good reason. Even then, it would have required going over the mound and making a running basket catch. Sometimes, your pop ups just land in the exact right spot.

But wait, there’s one more. This one was a real doozy by René Pinto, also on April 1:

This one is the last pop up hit archetype: a Trop ball. There’s no wind in Tampa Bay’s domed stadium, but there is a blindingly white roof. White, conveniently enough, is the color of a baseball. So when you really sky one, as the Rays catcher did here, things can get dicey.

How easy of a play was this? In some ways, it was phenomenally easy. After all, five different fielders had time to converge on the ball, and Corey Seager easily could have made it there if he weren’t covering third. That ball hung in the air for more than six seconds, plenty of time for everyone to judge it. It didn’t carry very far, and there was no pitcher’s mound to stumble on.

Leaguewide, hits like this are the least likely of any pop up to land. Even at the Trop, batters are hitting only .011/.011/.011 on them in the Statcast era. But in other ways, it’s not a probability but a binary. This was Jonah Heim’s ball, but he just plain couldn’t see it:

From there, it was academic. And the Rangers’ diligence in heading for the ball meant that no one was covering second, so Pinto got to jog an extra 90 feet with no one stopping him. That might be the slowest home to first time on an in-play double that I’ve ever seen. That screenshot up above was only a few seconds before the ball landed, and Pinto was still near home plate.

In the long run, these things will even out. Most infield fly balls get caught. But sometimes things get really weird – and weirdness can be sublime. Naturally, Yandy Díaz smoked the next pitch for a 331-foot frozen rope – and made the last out of the game. What a sport.

3. Oneil Cruz Is Chaotic, and Good
I watched Saturday’s Pirates-Marlins tilt closely to write about Jared Jones, but my eyes kept straying. Catch a Pittsburgh game, and I’m pretty sure you’ll feel the same way. Oneil Cruz isn’t always the best player on the field. Sometimes, in fact, he’s a hindrance for Pittsburgh’s chances. But one thing you can never say is that he’s boring.

When Cruz is on the basepaths, his speed means trouble. For who? It’s not always clear, because he’s aggressive to a fault. When he’s on third base and the ball is hit on the ground, you better believe he’s going home:

I think that was a good decision, but it’s close. A perfect throw from Josh Bell probably gets him there; Bell had already thrown out Michael A. Taylor at the plate on a similar play earlier in the game, for example. But the throw wasn’t quite perfect, and Christian Bethancourt couldn’t corral it anyway. Cruz would have been safe even if Bethancourt caught it cleanly, but the ball rolled to the backstop to bring in another run.

In the long run, pressure like that tends to pay off, at least in my opinion. Taylor would have been out at first if Cruz didn’t go for it, and the difference between second and third with two outs (Cruz stays) and first and third with two outs (Cruz tries for home and makes an out) isn’t particularly huge. Sure, it’s a chaotic play, but it’s a positive for the Pirates.

Cruz’s defense is a work in progress, but no one can doubt his tools. Sometimes he’ll make a mess of a play that should be easy:

I’m not in love with his decision to stay back on that ball, but Jesús Sánchez is slow enough that it all should have worked out anyway. But staying back meant Cruz had to crow hop and fire a laser to first. He has a huge arm, but it’s not the most accurate, as you can see here. A different setup would have made that play far easier.

On the other hand, sometimes he’ll make a mess out of a play, only to recover because of that cannon arm. This is definitely not how Tom Emanski would teach it:

Cruz handcuffed himself on the initial attempt; instead of being able to make a clean backhanded pick, he got stuck with the ball coming straight at him and flubbed the scoop. For most players, that would be the end of the play, even with a catcher running. But Cruz has a get out of jail free card: He can pick the ball up barehanded and then unleash havoc. The NL Central has a ton of big shortstop arms: Masyn Winn set the tracked record for an infield assist at the Futures Game last summer, and Elly De La Cruz is no slouch. But Cruz might have them both beat when he can set his feet and get into one. Even flat-footed, that throw got on Connor Joe in a hurry.

This game had a ton of Cruz action; not every Pirates game is like that. I watched Monday’s Pirates-Nats tilt hoping for an encore, but Cruz held onto a ball rather than attempt to turn an outrageous double play and was restrained on the basepaths. At the plate, he’s striking out so much that hard contact is barely keeping him on the right side of a 100 wRC+. His trajectory in the majors is still extremely uncertain. Still, I’m going to keep tuning in and hoping for some excitement. You never know what will happen next when Cruz is on the field.

4. The White Sox Get Feisty
It’s going to be a rough season on the south side. The White Sox are a bad team, they don’t have any obvious reinforcements in sight, and they got swept in the season-opening series against the Tigers. The Braves were due up next – after treating the White Sox like a de facto farm system over the winter – and Atlanta romped to a 9-0 rain-shortened victory Monday.

Tuesday promised more of the same. The temperature at game time was a miserable 44 degrees. Remarkably, 12,300 courageous fans showed up, but not all of them were there for the home team. After all, rooting for a club that seems likely to get battered by the best team in baseball on a frigid Tuesday night doesn’t sound particularly appealing, so a meaningful percentage of the audience was audibly cheering for Atlanta. Things were looking grim, in other words.

Something funny happened, though. The White Sox and their fans made a game out of it. Garrett Crochet spun an absolute gem in his second start of the season: seven innings, eight strikeouts, one walk, and one lone run on a Marcell Ozuna homer. When pinch hitter Paul DeJong smacked a solo shot of his own, it gave Chicago a 2-1 lead with only two frames left to play.

That set the stage for an explosive finish. Almost immediately, Atlanta threatened again. Jarred Kelenic worked a one-out walk in the top of the eighth, bringing Ronald Acuña Jr. to the plate. “MVP! MVP!” The Atlanta fans in attendance made their presence known as Acuña worked a walk to put the tying run in scoring position.

But Chicago’s fans, few though they might be, weren’t going quietly. They drowned out the MVP chant in a series of boos, then started a “Let’s go White Sox” cheer as a counter. After a sleepy start, the game suddenly had some juice.

Michael Kopech came in to relieve John Brebbia after that walk, and he promptly walked Ozzie Albies to load the bases. But Yoán Moncada turned a slick double play to keep the Pale Hose out in front. The dugout loved it:

The Sox tacked on an insurance run in the bottom of the eighth, and it turned out they needed it. Kopech had a tough time closing things out. Ozuna smashed his second solo shot to cut the lead to 3-2 before Kopech walked Michael Harris II after an extended plate appearance in which Harris fouled off a string of high fastballs and spit on a low slider. Orlando Arcia wouldn’t go down quietly, either. Kopech again missed with the one slider he threw, and Arcia eventually slapped a cutter through the infield to put the tying run in scoring position for the second inning in a row.

Was this fated to be a crushing loss? Kopech couldn’t find the zone against Travis d’Arnaud, falling behind 3-1 with four straight elevated fastballs. The slider was totally gone; perhaps the adrenaline that came with the potential for his first big league save was too much. The crowd and players were rowdy now, treating this early April game like one with huge implications. Boos rained down after not particularly close pitches got called balls. Braves fans tried to start their own cheers but got repeatedly drowned out by the Sox faithful.

With Acuña on deck, walking d’Arnaud was unacceptable. Kopech tickled the strike zone on 3-1, which brought it all down to a full count pitch. He hit his spot perfectly, and d’Arnaud could only pop it up:

The crowd roared. The lights dimmed as fireworks went off. Kopech looked relieved more than excited as the team celebrated around him. For a day, at least, Chicago’s best was enough to hold off the best team in baseball.

This isn’t how the year will go for the White Sox. They’re headed straight into a rebuild with an unpopular ownership and front office group. I’m not sure that the fans will be able to muster up the same excitement for a July tilt against the Pirates. For a day, though, the atmosphere felt electric and the underdogs came up big. What a magical sport that lets us find moments of excitement even in seasons of despair.

5. Nolan Jones Tries To Do Too Much
Nolan Jones is one of my favorite young players to watch. He’s what you’d get if you took a garden variety power hitting outfielder and stapled a bazooka to his right arm. His outfield defense is below average if you ignore his throws, but you can’t ignore throws. Statcast has him in the 100th percentile for arm strength and runs saved with his arm; in other words, he’s a highlight reel waiting to happen when he picks the ball up. He had 19 outfield assists last year in less than 800 innings, leading baseball while playing 500 fewer innings than second place Lane Thomas.

This year, things haven’t gone quite so well. Jones already has more errors than he did in all of last season. One sequence against the Cubs summed up what I think is going wrong. Everyone knows Jones has a cannon, and so when Christopher Morel singled to left, Ian Happ wasn’t thinking about trying to score from second base:

That’s just smart baserunning. There’s no point in testing the best arm in the game when he’s running toward the ball from a shallow starting position. Only, did you see what happened out in left? Let’s zoom in:

Jones planned to come up firing. He absolutely didn’t need to; as we saw, Happ had already slammed on the brakes. But if you have the best arm in the game, every play probably feels like a chance to throw someone out, the old “every problem looks like a nail to a hammer” issue. He tried to make an infield-style scoop on the run and paid for it. That’s a particularly big error given the game state and location on the field; there’s no one backing Jones up there, and with only one out, it’s not *that* valuable to keep the runner at third anyway.

The ball rolled all the way to the wall, which was bad enough. Happ and trail runner Seiya Suzuki both scored easily. But Jones compounded the error. Let’s see what happened next from Morel’s perspective:

Like Happ, Morel slammed on the brakes as he got to third. After all, Jones has a huge arm and there’s still only one out, so trying to squeeze in the last 90 feet doesn’t make that much sense. Even with his eyes on the play the whole time, he decelerated to a stop. But Jones overcooked his relay throw:

I’m not quite clear about what happened there. That was a situation for a lollipop; the play was over, and all he had to do was return the ball to the infield. Maybe he got a bad grip on the ball, maybe he slipped as he was throwing it, but he just spiked it into the ground and Ryan McMahon couldn’t handle the wild carom.

This feels to me like a clear case of Jones trying to do too much. He appears to be pressing, trying to throw the world out after last year’s phenomenal performance. But part of having a huge arm is knowing when you don’t need to use it. That experience comes with time, and I’m confident that he’ll figure it out, but his aggression has hurt the Rockies so far. Oh, and those other errors? Sometimes you just miss one:

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley remind people to vote in their preseason predictions game, discuss the completion of the season preview series, and then (10:15) analyze Shohei Ohtani’s remarks from Monday and preview the rest of the 2024 Los Angeles Dodgers season with The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya, followed (1:15:31) by a 2024 Colorado Rockies preview with The Denver Gazette’s Luke Zahlmann, plus a postscript on the Diamondbacks signing Jordan Montgomery (1:55:50) and a recap of preview guests’ goals for each team this year (2:01:25).

Audio intro: El Warren, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial 1: Tom Rhoads, “What Did Shohei Ohtani Know?”
Audio interstitial 2: Justin Peters, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Daniel Leckie, “Effectively Wild Theme”

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