The Baltimore Orioles will be different in 2026, and not just because of roster additions that already include Pete Alonso and Taylor Ward, with more almost certain to follow. They’ve hired a new manager (Craig Albernaz), replaced a few coaches, and done some reshuffling at the executive level. In a sport where remaining stagnant can be deleterious, the O’s are moving forward on the heels of a disappointing 2025 season.

A precipitous dip in the win column — 91 in 2024, just 75 last year — accentuated the need for changes, but that isn’t the only reason. According to Mike Elias, progress is an ongoing endeavor.

“We’re constantly evolving, having to respond to other teams’ getting better in areas,” Baltimore’s president of baseball operations told me during last month’s GM Meetings. “We make changes every year. We’re actually undergoing quite an overhaul at the major league level right now with our staff. We’ve done some reformatting in the front office, although certainly not to the degree we did when we came in.”

Things changed markedly after Elias arrived in November 2018 and began rebuilding the organization. Analytics — an area in which the Orioles had been well behind the times —- was of course a major focus. But while giant strides have been made, there is no finish line to reach. Moreover, an old Satchel Paige adage applies: “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” Read the rest of this entry »

Many were surprised when Zach McKinstry outpolled Kansas City’s Maikel Garcia and New York’s Ben Rice to win this year’s American League Silver Slugger Award at the utility position. That’s understandable — McKinstry’s numbers weren’t as good as those put up by his co-finalists — but the honor was nonetheless deserved. For one thing, he was a true utility player. Not only did McKinstry start 20 or more games for Detroit at each of third base (69), shortstop (27), and right field (20), he was stationed everywhere besides center field and catcher. Conversely, Garcia started just 21 games at positions other than third base, while Rice’s only action came as a catcher and a first baseman.

And it’s not as though the Tiger didn’t have solid numbers of his own. Over 511 plate appearances, McKinstry slashed .259/.333/.438 with a 114 wRC+. Moreover, he logged 23 doubles, 11 triples, 12 home runs, and 19 stolen bases. Amid little fanfare, the 30-year-old erstwhile Central Michigan University Chippewa was one of the more valuable players on a team that went on to play October baseball.

By most accounts, McKinstry is an overachiever. Exactly one thousand players were chosen before him in the 2016 draft, and he ranked as just the 28th-best prospect in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization when he made his MLB debut in 2020. When the Tigers subsequently traded for him in March 2023 — he was by then a Chicago Cub — he had appeared in 121 big-league games to the tune of a 79 wRC+ and 0.8 WAR. Read the rest of this entry »

This week, the baseball world turns its attention to the first round of the playoffs. It’s what we’ve spent the past six months waiting for. Nevertheless, the past 48 hours or so have brought a flurry of news events involving people and teams that (cue sad trombone sound effect) will not be taking part. Since the season ended on Sunday, seven teams made announcements about managers who were on the hot seat and/or wobbly chair:

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I’m not going to act like Byron Buxton has been healthy all year or anything. He’s already had two IL stints this season for two unrelated injuries, and just this week he missed a game after being hit in the thigh with a pitch. This isn’t a single nagging, career-altering injury; this is a man who just can’t catch a break. Or who can’t catch without breaking, rather.

But this is about as close to a healthy Byron Buxton season as we’re likely to see. The 31-year-old has figured in 109 of Minnesota’s first 144 games and collected 467 plate appearances in those games, putting him on pace to qualify for the batting title for just the second time in 11 big league seasons. And he’s made the most of that extended run of playing time: .271/.332/.562 with 30 dingers and 21 steals. That comes out to a wRC+ of 140 (tied for 10th among qualified hitters) and 4.7 WAR.

For all intents and purposes, this is a full season. Which is not something you can take for granted where Buxton is concerned. Read the rest of this entry »

Watch this play. What do you notice?

Here’s what I see: Brooks Lee lofts a soft fly ball 248 feet from home plate. Chandler Simpson circles it but loses a bit of momentum by the time it lands in his glove. Twins third base coach Tommy Watkins sends the not-particularly-fast Trevor Larnach (18th-percentile sprint speed). Shallow fly ball, slow runner, close play at the plate — Larnach slides in just ahead of the throw. It’s an exciting sequence, and I’ve missed an important part of it. Read the rest of this entry »

Lake Bachar was a kicker at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater before turning his full attention to baseball. He had a good leg. An all-conference performer, Bachar booted three field goals in the 2014 NCAA Division III championship game, a 43-34 Warhawks win over the Mount Union Raiders. Along with being a place kicker, he served as the team’s punter and kickoff specialist across his three collegiate seasons on the gridiron.

How good was he in his other sport?

“I was decent,” said Bachar, who now pitches out of the bullpen for the Miami Marlins. “I don’t know about NFL kicker, but at that time I was going to try do whatever I could to at least go to a [tryout] camp. The longest field goal I kicked in practice was 68 [yards] — good conditions, and all that — and the longest in a game was either high 40s or low 50s.”

Baseball has turned out to be a good career choice, although it took him awhile to reach the majors. Drafted by the San Diego Padres in 2016, the fifth-rounder was 29 years old when he debuted with the Marlins last September. His first full big-league season has been impressive. Over 43 relief appearances, the right-hander has a 5-1 record and a pair of saves to go with his 3.39 ERA and 3.77 FIP over 58-and-a-third innings. His strikeout rate is a solid 26.7%.

Selected off waivers by Miami shortly before his debut, Bachar attributes his late-bloomer breakthrough to “being in the right place at the right time,” as well as some fine-tuning of his pitches. A four-seamer that gets ride-run and a splitter that he’s thrown since 2020 comprise half of his arsenal. The other offerings are breakers new to this year. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. August is a great time for reflection in the baseball world. The trade deadline has passed, which means what you see is pretty much what you get roster-wise. The playoff picture is generally clear, but no one has clinched yet. It’s too early to think about postseason rotations, but too late to think about turning the year around. The urgency mostly isn’t there – unless you’re a Mets fan trying to ward off 25 years of ghosts, of course. But the downtime of the baseball season has its own small delights, and even when you aren’t watching the brightest stars on the biggest stage, baseball is awesome. So thanks as always to Zach Lowe of The Ringer for the column format, and let’s get going.

1. Opportunity
The Twins might have traded away a ton of their major league roster at the deadline, but that doesn’t mean they’re filling up the lineup with replacement players they found at a local tryout. Seven of the nine everyday position players on the current squad were drafted by Minnesota in the first two rounds. The other two, Alan Roden and Kody Clemens, aren’t exactly nobodies – they’re both third round draft picks the Twins acquired this year, and of course Clemens’ dad is famous too.

It’s tough sledding for Quad-A players looking for a major league shot. But while the starters still look like your average major leaguer when it comes to their amateur pedigree, the bench is another matter. Mickey Gasper was a 27th rounder who didn’t debut until he was 28. But he’s only the second-most improbable Twin. Ryan Fitzgerald went undrafted in 2016, didn’t reach Triple-A until he was 27, and finally got his major league break earlier this year as a 30-year-old. He went 0-3 in a single game as an injury replacement, pinch-ran in another, and got sent back down. Sometimes life in the bigs is nasty, brutish, and short.
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I owe Luke Keaschall an apology. Last night, the 22-year-old second baseman put up the first oh-fer of his brief and brilliant major league career, the predictable result of my decision to write about him today. In the series opener in the Bronx, the Yankees beat the Twins, 6-2, and Keaschall watched from the on-deck circle with an 11-game hitting streak on the line as Ryan Jeffers struck out to end the game. This is my fault. I knew that by pitching an article about Keaschall, I was condemning him to this fate. I really do feel bad about jinxing him, but it was time to highlight just how impressive his start has been. Keaschall will turn 23 on Friday, which makes him exactly three years older than FanGraphs.

Permit me to exclude Monday’s stats momentarily for the sake of painting a picture. Through the first 12 games of his career, Keaschall ran a 234 wRC+, slashing .415/.500/.707, homering twice, and stealing five bases. He’s one of just 10 players in the last 30 years – a list that also includes his manager, Rocco Baldelli – to start his career with an 11-game hitting streak. Keaschall also started his career with a 12-game on-base streak. Yes, that is possible; I’ll explain in a moment. With a nice round 1.0 WAR (which dropped to 0.9 on Monday; again, I’m so sorry, Luke), he ranks eighth among Minnesota’s position players. He has five multi-hit games. He was just named AL Player of the Week in his second week as a big leaguer. On Sunday, he achieved his first three-hit game with a walk-off homer against the Royals in the 11th inning. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that the deadline dust has settled – or at least, started to settle – it’s time to start making sense of it. The Padres, Twins, and Orioles were everywhere. Top relievers flew off the board. Both New York teams spent all day adding. But who did well? Who did poorly? Who was so frenetic that they probably belong in both categories more than once? I tried to sort things out a little bit. This isn’t an exhaustive list. There were 36 trades on deadline day, a new record, and more than a dozen before it. Nearly every team changed its trajectory at least a little, and this is just a brief look into the chaos. Here are the trends that most stood out to me.

Winner: Teams Trading Top Pitchers
This year’s crop of rental players was lighter than usual, but deadline activity didn’t slow. Instead, it simply spilled over into relievers under contract for a while. Mason Miller, Jhoan Duran, Griffin Jax, and David Bednar are under contract for a combined nine more years after 2025. That drove the prospect price up on all four. Having long-term control of relievers might be less valuable than at other positions, but it’s still valuable.

Most of the best prospects who swapped teams at the deadline were involved in a trade for top pitching. Leo De Vries, the consensus best player of the 2024 international signing period, was the big name here, but both the Phillies and Yankees offered up multiple good minor leaguers in exchange for Duran and Bednar. Taj Bradley, whom the Twins got back for Jax, is a former top prospect who won’t be a free agent until 2030. Read the rest of this entry »

For Twins fans, the Louis Varland deal was something like the final straw. Parting with Willi Castro could be forgiven — his contract was up at the end of this season. Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax — okay, they were under team control through 2027, but you could convince yourself that the deadline is the best time to part with a premium reliever, and look at the return. Dumping Carlos Correa and the majority of his contract on the Astros was definitely a feel-bad move, but it was also one that was requested by Correa himself after the Twins made clear that they were headed into a rebuilding phase, and the back half of that deal might look pretty bad from a production standpoint.

But giving up on Varland defied any reasonable explanation. He grew up in Minnesota, played his college ball there, and was brought into the Twins organization as a 15th rounder in the 2019 draft. From these humble hometown beginnings, he developed into a fire-breathing bullpen monster. Varland sits 98 mph on his four-seam fastball; he’s under team control until 2030, and wouldn’t even hit arbitration until 2027. If there was ever a perfect closer to bridge from one competitive Twins era to the next, it would’ve been Varland.

Instead, the front office sent him (along with Ty France) off to Toronto in exchange for outfielder Alan Roden and left-handed pitcher Kendry Rojas. On the merits, it’s a reasonable return; Roden can really rake, and Garcia is a legitimate pitching prospect close to the big leagues. Read the rest of this entry »