One of the fun things about baseball (that’s also one of the fun things about life in general) is that at any moment you can look for and find something that you alone are seeing, that you alone are paying enough attention to notice, that you alone care about. Last Wednesday, the Twins finally lost to the White Sox. The Twins had won their first eight matchups with the South Siders, and they would beat the Sox again later that day. In fact, if not for the opportunity to pummel the White Sox at frequent intervals, Minnesota’s first half would look much different and much darker. But just this once, in the first game of Wednesday’s doubleheader, the Twins lost to the White Sox.

The bird showed up sometime during the first inning. It wasn’t there when Carlos Correa slapped the 11th pitch of the game through the right side for a single, but in the bottom of the inning, when Andrew Vaughn grounded into a 5-4-3 double play and the camera whipped around the horn to follow the ball, there it was — perched on a steel cable right above the on-deck circle as if it had been there forever.

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Royce Lewis is one of the most intriguing hitters in the game right now. Despite how fantastic he has been on a rate basis, it’s hard to fully evaluate his overall value as a hitter because of how little he has played. He has amassed 4.1 WAR and a 159 wRC+ across 93 career games, but as is well known, he’s been limited due to a series of injuries that includes two ACL tears, quadricep and hamstring issues, and an oblique strain.

This season, his explosive performance has added some confidence in what he can be as a hitter. Despite suffering a quad injury on Opening Day that kept him out of the lineup for two months, he’s clobbered 10 home runs in 23 games, showing that he doesn’t need a bunch of plate appearances to shake the rust off his swing before catching fire. His raw talent has never been in question, but there’s one part of his game throughout his power surge that seems to defy logic and is worth keeping an eye on moving forward: His xwOBACON sat at .473 entering play Sunday. If he were a qualified hitter, that would rank in the top decile. Given what we’ve seen from Lewis, that isn’t all too shocking – he can really put a charge into the ball. But when zooming in a bit on a particular detail of his swing, it becomes a bit surprising. Here are the leaders in xwOBACON to date in 2024:

I’ve included Vertical Bat Angle (VBA) here because, except for Juan Soto, Lewis has the lowest average VBA of all hitters on this list. After Lewis, the hitter with the next-lowest VBA is Giancarlo Stanton, who generates so much power and bat speed that it would be nearly impossible for him not to have a top-of-the-line xwOBACON, even with such an unorthodox swing. How Soto can impact the baseball with ferocity despite having one of the flattest swings in the entire game is a bit more complex. The simplest explanation is he has incredible upper body athleticism, which allows him to let the ball get extremely deep in the hitting zone and still adjust his bat path to get on plane with the pitch.

Otherwise, though, hitters hardly ever generate this level of contact quality with these types of VBAs. So it’s remarkable that Lewis is among the exceptions. For the rest of this piece, let’s ignore Stanton because he is, in the words of Yankees manager Aaron Boone, a “weirdo” and what he does with his violent, choppy swing is almost certainly impossible to replicate. Soto is also a singular hitter; the difference is that what he does — using his flatter bat path to make more consistent contact while still having the strength to do damage, and pairing that hit tool with 80-grade swing decisions — would be worth emulating if anyone were talented enough to do it. At a glance, it seems Lewis might have the skills to follow a somewhat similar recipe. So far this season, Lewis has a 98th percentile SEAGER, a metric from Robert Orr that weighs how selective hitter are and the rate at which they attack hittable pitches. It’s especially encouraging that Lewis lets only 28.2% of hittable pitches pass him by, meaning that when he gets a pitch he can crush, he’s attacks it. That’s a great foundation to have.

To better understand his swing, I’ll refer you all to the third hitting installment from Tess Taruskin’s invaluable video scouting series, specifically the part where she compares grooved and adjustable swings. Because Lewis is a hitter with such a flat swing, my initial hunch was that most of his damage comes against pitches down the middle or in top half of the zone, leaving a hole for pitchers to target at the bottom of the zone. This would indicate that Lewis would have a grooved swing, one that repeats a specific swing path over and over, leading to a limited space for barrels. Although Lewis’ sample size is still hardly significant this year, it’s worth looking at where his best swings in terms of contact quality have been located. Here are his 10 home runs this season:

Interesting. All of Lewis’ homers have come from the middle of the zone. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – the best hitters in baseball are the ones who crush mistakes the most often. And as we saw from his SEAGER, he is great at attacking pitches in hittable zones. Basically, we can’t just knock him simply because his homers come from meatballs. However, it’s relevant context to the conversation around distinguishing whether his swing is grooved or adjustable. To go a bit further than just his pitch chart on home runs, we can look at his performance by zone to see if he’s had a hole below the zone.

Lewis has actually been quite successful in the bottom of third of the zone, with a .380 wOBA and .355 xwOBA on pitches in this location. (I included both 2023 and 2024 to increase the sample size a bit.) That’s pretty impressive for a hitter with such a flat swing. Soto’s wOBA/xwOBA line in that span is .264/.260, though his sample is much larger. Lewis’ contact quality on lower-third pitches is also quite strong.

Looking at video, it becomes clear how Lewis is succeeding against lower-third pitches, and this is where he is different from Soto. Remember, it is Soto’s upper body flexibility that propels him to impact pitches that get deep in the zone against him. Lewis, on the other hand, uses his lower body to get down in the zone and do damage on pitches in the bottom third:

If you focus on where Lewis’ head starts on these swings versus where it finishes, you can see the angles he can create with his lower body to get his barrel to the lower third despite his flat swing. It’s reminiscent of Fernando Tatis Jr. The hands start high and stay high, but the lower body creates space for the barrel to still maintain a positive attack angle – the angle of the bat path at contact relative to the ground – at the bottom of the zone. It’s a difficult move to make, but when your swing is this adjustable, you can rely on it from time to time when you identify pitches correctly.

The contrast between Lewis and Soto is a great reminder of how different hitters can be, even when a key trait in their swings is similar. Lewis’ superpower lies in his lower body. Whether the pitch is inside, outside, or in the middle of the zone, he uses his legs and hips to go down and get pitches.

Now, if I were an opposing pitcher, I’d challenge Lewis to make these moves over and over again and prove he can still elevate pitches down in the zone. Like I’ve said, we’re dealing with a limited sample. However, based on what we’ve seen so far, there is reason to believe Lewis has the skills needed to continue producing elite contact with his flat swing.

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Minnesota Twins. 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 »

Of all 193 relief pitchers with at least 20 innings pitched this season, exactly three have thrown four distinct types of fastballs a minimum of 20 times each: Reed Garrett, Chris Martin, and Cole Sands. They all have one non-fastball offering, but none of them throw it more than a quarter of the time. Justin Choi wrote recently about the strategic options available to pitchers with more than one fastball, but four? Four whole fastballs? These guys feel like doomsday preppers getting ready for some apocalyptic scenario where money is now worthless and fastballs are the new currency.

But anytime a new strategy pops up in baseball, it’s worth checking to see if the outliers are onto something others should attempt, or if their “one weird trick” to pitching works only for them. Shoot, maybe it doesn’t even work for them all that well. Regardless, we’re gonna get to the bottom of what’s going on with these pitchers and all the fastballs they’re hoarding.

Reed Garrett

Garrett has thrown 34.2 innings for the Mets so far this season, posting a 3.12 ERA and a 3.17 FIP. He’s struck out 37% of the batters he’s faced and walked 12%. His performance this year has earned him an ERA- of 81, firmly better than average. What the averages aren’t telling you is that Garrett started the season with a 0.57 ERA in March and April, a ridiculous run that earned him a full breakdown on his evolution from last season by Ben Clemens on April 23. But that April ERA had to buy new pants after swelling to 6.08 in May. His performance has regressed somewhat in June, settling somewhere between those extremes. The current version of Garrett is probably more representative of what the Mets should expect from him moving forward.

The table below shows a breakdown of Garrett’s pitch repertoire with the usage and a few metrics for evaluating each offering (run value per 100 pitches thrown, xwOBA, Stuff+, and Location+). The two most common fastball types (four-seamers, sinkers) that most pitchers feature at the center of their arsenals are the pitches he throws the least. But the metrics linked to Garrett’s outcomes — either actual outcomes (RV100) or expectations based on the characteristics of the outcomes (xwOBA) — agree with his decision to de-emphasizing those pitches. They like Garrett’s four-seamer the least, even though it has his highest velocity and second best Stuff+. The pitch’s Location+ score reveals its critical flaw: a lack of command. Stuff+, RV100, and xwOBA agree that his sweeper and splitter are his two best pitches. Based on usage, Garrett agrees with that assessment.

His pitches mostly hover around league average in terms of individual characteristics, but the sweeper and splitter are both a tick or two harder than average and generate a bit more spin leading to more horizontal break, which is likely why Stuff+ likes them more than the rest of Garrett’s arsenal.

He makes the most of middling pitches by playing them off one another. The sweeper and cutter mirror the spin direction of the sinker and the splitter. As a result the pitches look similar out of the hand but fork in four different directions as they approach the plate to keep the hitter guessing (see movement plot below). So even if hitters guess the horizontal direction correctly, they’ve still got two similarly spinning pitches that fan out vertically as they approach the plate.

Garrett deploys all of his pitches no matter the handedness of the hitter, but he does vary the flavor of his approach. To lefties, Garrett likes to fill the zone with his cutter and dangle the splitter down and away when looking for a chase. To righties, he keeps the hitter off balance by throwing the sweeper to a variety of locations, but then comes down and inside at varying speeds with the splitter and the sinker.

The flowchart below gives us an idea of Garrett’s sequencing habits. He tends to start hitters with a cutter or sweeper. Once ahead in the count, he’s more likely to play around on the periphery of the zone with his sweeper and splitter, whereas while behind in the count he rolls with the four-seamer and cutter as more zone-friendly options. The wOBA values for plate appearances passing through each given count indicate the approach works well in early counts and with two strikes, but not as well when the count forces him back into the zone, in part because his four-seam command limits his ability to actually hit the zone with that pitch when circumstances demand it.

Here’s a representative example of how hitters respond to Garrett’s two-strike splitter.

Looking at swing metrics by pitch type, each pitch adds a valuable tool to his kit. The splitter is Garrett’s best combo play for inducing swings (56% swing rate) without courting disaster. The pitch owns his best swinging-strike rate (30%) and second lowest hard-hit rate (20%) when batters do connect. He gets batters to swing at 74% of the sinkers he throws in the zone, he uses the sweeper to induce weak contact (17% hard-hit rate), and turns to the cutter to mix things up. The four-seamer is the weak link in the chain so long as it keeps taking the scenic route to the catcher’s mitt.

Chris Martin

Martin has thrown 21.1 innings for the Red Sox in 2024, logging a 4.22 ERA with a 3.90 FIP. He’s struck out 28.2% of the batters he’s faced while walking just 2.4% of them. He has been on the IL since June 5 while proactively seeking help with anxiety.

Again, we’ll start with a synopsis of each pitch he throws according to the value metrics. Stuff+, RV100, and xwOBA all like his splitter best. The pitch is very similar to Garrett’s splitter from a velo/movement/spin perspective, but he doesn’t throw it nearly as much. His four-seamer is his next best pitch by RV100 and xwOBA, but fourth best by Stuff+. However, he locates it well enough to still get results. Martin’s cutter is his consensus third-best pitch, striking a balance between stuff and command to get the job done. Like Garrett, Martin’s non-fastball pitch is a sweeper, but unlike Garrett, he throws it so infrequently that it’s hardly worth discussing.

His pitch characteristics all hover around average, thrown maybe a tick or two harder, but with slightly less spin and therefore less movement. What helps overcome somewhat middling profiles is a distinct release point created by his long levers. Though his delivery is composed of a pretty standard three-quarters-ish arm slot, the arm attached to his 6’8” frame allows him to release the ball several inches higher and farther to his right than other pitchers throwing from a similar slot.

Rather than mirroring the spin on his offerings like Garrett, Martin takes a different approach to cultivating deceit. The puzzle for his hitters is more akin to spotting the difference between two nearly identical photos. All of Martin’s pitches spin in a similar direction, and his four-seamer, sinker, and cutter do so at almost the same spin rates. Where they differ is in the amount of active spin, or the amount of spin contributing to the pitch’s movement. The four-seamer, as one might expect, has the most active spin and the most rise. The sinker has a little less active spin and creates more horizontal break and more drop. The cutter drops in a comparable fashion to the sinker, but refuses to follow his fellow fastballs and break toward the third base side. Then there’s the splitter that spins at a much slower rate and with less active spin, which translates to roughly the same amount of horizontal movement as his four-seamer, but with even more drop than the sinker. Yet another carbon copy, but with a small but crucial edit.

Martin uses the same theory to guide his approach to both righties and lefties: Fill the zone with the primary fastball(s), use one of the secondary fastballs as a threat inside, and pepper the bottom of the zone with splitters. Against right-handers the four-seamer and cutter are the pitches he consistently throws to all parts of the zone and the sinker backs the hitter off the inner half of the plate. Against left-handers, Martin stays away from the sinker, so the cutter becomes the weapon he aims inside, while the four-seamer and the splitter maintain their existing roles.

The job of each fastball is further etched in stone by Martin’s sequencing, visualized below. He starts an overwhelming majority of hitters with the four-seamer or cutter and sticks to those zone-friendly pitches if he falls behind in the count. But if he gets ahead, Martin starts mixing in the splitter and sinker. His results tend to be better if he gets to those splitter/sinker counts, but it’s unclear whether that’s because of the effectiveness of those pitches or because he gets too predictable in unfavorable counts.

The swing metrics indicate Martin’s cutter is his best option for getting swings (55% swing rate) that lead to either strikes (13% swinging-strike rate) or weak contact (27% hard-hit rate). The splitter is his overall best bet for a swinging strike (19%), but when hitters do make contact, it yields the highest hard-hit rate (70%). The sinker is most effective when thrown in the zone because it has the lowest out-of-zone swing rate (18%) and in-zone contact rate (78%) compared to Martin’s other offerings. And avoiding contact is key, since the sinker has the second highest hard-hit rate (67%) of the bunch.

Cole Sands

Sands has pitched 32 innings for the Twins this season. Those innings have amounted to a 4.22 ERA and a 3.30 FIP. His strikeout rate sits at 28% and his walk rate is a measly 3%. Sands’ season trajectory mimics Garrett’s: on a rocket to the moon in April, a crash landing in May, and now back up and cruising at altitude in June. At his peak, Sands was striking out Shohei Ohtani on three pitches, and Minnesota was considering stretching him out to start while managing injuries in the rotation; now he’s settled into a multi-inning relief role.

Digging into Sands’ repertoire via the pitch evaluation metrics, his cutter, curveball, and splitter all clock in right around average according to Stuff+, but RV100 favors the four-seamer and hates the curve and split. Comparing the curveball’s xwOBA (.305) to its wOBA (.372) suggests the pitch’s actual outcomes have been a bit unlucky compared to what’s expected based on the batted ball characteristics, which in turn is likely deflating its RV100. Meanwhile the four-seamer and sinker both have better wOBAs when compared to their xwOBAs, suggesting some good luck has swung their way and their RV100s might be a little full of themselves. Luck doesn’t explain the metrics’ diverging opinions on the splitter, suggesting something is amiss with Sands’ execution. Hopefully, this contradiction will untangle itself as we proceed.

In terms of the movement profile broken down in the table below, Sands, like Garrett, mirrors the spin of his breaking ball relative to the four-seamer, sinker, and splitter in an attempt to disguise their true identities until it’s too late for the hitter to react. And concealing those identities is necessary because, as with the other two pitchers, Sands’ pitch characteristics are far more average than overpowering. The furthest he deviates from average is with his extension, but unfortunately he deviates in the wrong direction. His 5.8-foot extension puts Sands roughly six to eight inches below league average. Releasing the ball farther from home plate gives the hitter more of a chance to identify the pitch’s trajectory, which likely explains the lower Stuff+ scores relative to what Garrett and Martin receive for comparable pitches. And while we’re talking pitch trajectory, the extra couple inches of drop on his splitter relative to an average right-handed offering of the pitch might be too much of a good thing; at times it dives too far, too quickly to really tempt hitters.

How the pitches move relative to one another is basically a hybrid of what we’ve seen so far from Garrett and Martin. The fastballs land on the movement plot in roughly the same orientation as the other two, aside from being stretched more vertically. Sands’ curveball operates similarly to Garrett’s sweeper, just with more drop.

Like Martin, Sands doesn’t throw his sinker to lefties, but beyond that omission, Sands attacks hitters in the exact same manner regardless of handedness. He aims to fill up the zone with his four-seamer, works arm side with the cutter and sinker, and keeps the ball down and/or to the glove side with the splitter and curve.

Sands mostly sticks to the standard sequencing playbook, but he’ll reach for any of his non-splitter offerings to begin a plate appearance. If he gets ahead, expect a heavy mix of splitters and curveballs; if he falls behind, expect him to thrown mostly cutters and four-seamers. His adequate command keeps him competitive, since even after falling behind, the average outcomes remain respectable and in line with the more favorable counts.

The swing metrics suggest Sands’ cutter is his best option for inducing weak contact (51% swing rate, 32% hard-hit rate), the four-seamer has the lowest in-zone contact rate (80%) to pair with the second highest in-zone swing rate (71%), and the curveball is best for forcing swings out of the zone (35%) that lead to either a strike (14% swinging-strike rate) or weak contact (25% hard-hit rate).

***

With the four-fastball approach to relief pitching now fully dissected on the lab table before us, I can’t truly say we’ve discovered the next big thing that pitchers everywhere will be rushing to replicate. Though Garrett, Martin, and Sands are the only three relievers doing this out of almost 200, their approach is not as novel as those numbers suggest. What they’re actually doing is leaning on all of the classic pitching fundamentals: changing the hitter’s eye level, attacking the zone to get ahead in the count and then make the hitter chase, varying speeds, varying locations, keeping the hitter off balance. Most relievers execute these fundamentals using one or two overpowering pitches, or in lieu of dominant stuff, they cobble together a few crafty junk pitches. Garrett, Martin, and Sands pitch as if they were junkballers, but instead of throwing knuckleballs or Bugs Bunny changeups, they take their collection of middling fastballs and deploy them as junkballs. They mix and match movement profiles and velocities so hitters can’t sit on certain pitches or locations. They do all the same stuff every pitcher does; they just dress it up a little different. Which in and of itself is novel enough to still be impactful. After all, 10 Things I Hate About You is a singularly great movie, but it’s also a classic Shakespeare play, just dressed up a little differently.

Baseball is big business and no team is infinitely patient with players who are struggling. While teams won’t generally describe it in such blunt terms, at the beginning of the season, every player has some unknown, invisible amount of leeway when it comes to poor performance. Established role players and fringe starters who just squeezed their way onto the big league roster in March may find themselves in the Pacific Coast or International League come late April or early May as they feel the heat of a poor start. As summer approaches, the names facing demotion become bigger, especially when those players are younger guys who still have minor league options remaining. On Sunday night, two of those bigger names ran out of rope, at least for now: Spencer Torkelson and Edouard Julien are headed to Triple-A to play for smaller crowds in smaller towns.

Before we examine what this pair of demotions means, I thought I’d put some numbers to the broader phenomena. I looked at the preseason ZiPS projections for players optioned during the season over the last 10 years. In nine of the 10 seasons, June was the month in which the players with the most combined projected WAR were sent to the minors. That holds true on a rate basis as well, with 0.75 projected WAR per June demoted player the highest monthly average. Naturally, demoted players tend to be worse performers than those who keep their jobs. To use last year as an example, of the 1,091 demotions, only 19 involved players projected for at least 2 WAR. Just one such player, Brayan Bello, was optioned in April, but starting on May 10 with Jose Miranda, bigger demotions started populating the list, with Miranda, David Villar, Oswald Peraza, Brandon Pfaadt, Alek Manoah, Josh Rojas, and Luis Urías all hitting the minors from mid-May through the end of June. Only four two-win players were demoted in July, with Manoah’s second demotion on August 11 the final one. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re far enough into the 2024 regular season that a lot of the extreme flukes and outliers have tumbled back to Earth. Mookie Betts leads the league in position player WAR; Shohei Ohtani leads in wRC+; Patrick Corbin doesn’t quite lead the league in earned runs allowed, but he’s close, and everyone ahead of him on the leaderboard has made more starts.

Nevertheless, we do have a few surprises hanging around at or near the top of various leaderboards. I’d like to take a moment to highlight a few before they disappear. These (mostly) aren’t surprising rookies; rather, they’re players you’ve probably heard of, but might have forgotten about in the past few years while they sorted some stuff out. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

It would be an overreaction to declare a good-on-paper team dead in the water after 20 games, but the Twins certainly weren’t doing themselves any favors with their 7-13 start. A few games before that, I wrote about their anemic offense, which at that point was third worst in the league overall, and second worst against right-handed pitching. But, as the Twins seemingly have figured out, the best way to recover is to simply not lose again.

Since their 6-1 loss to the Tigers on April 21, Minnesota has won all 10 of its games. That lineup that was so bad? Well, with the help of some summer sausage, the Twins have beefed up their offense, which leads the majors with a 167 wRC+ since the streak began.

Nearly every position player on their roster has contributed during the 10-game span, with five hitters posting a wRC+ above 200 since the losing stopped: Trevor Larnach (241), Ryan Jeffers (233), Willi Castro (229), Edouard Julien (218), and Jose Miranda (210). Meanwhile, after a dreadful start to his Twins tenure, veteran first baseman Carlos Santana has caught fire, too, blasting all four of his home runs this season during the winning streak.

Twins pitchers have been closer to good than great over these 10 games, with a 3.40 ERA and 3.56 FIP. They’ve kept opposing lineups in check despite some uncharacteristic struggles from ace Pablo López, who’s allowed seven runs combined over a total of nine innings in his last two starts. Flamethrowing closer Jhoan Duran, who returned from the IL with a scoreless inning on Tuesday in his first appearance of the season, should fortify the bullpen, and setup man Justin Topa is expected to be back soon.

But even the best of times can’t come without some heartbreak. Byron Buxton left Minnesota’s most recent win with soreness in his right knee, the same one he had two surgeries on last year. After entering camp healthy enough to play center field for the first time since 2022, he has appeared in all but two of the 30 Twins games so far this season, and was beginning to heat up at the plate following a slow start. They sent him for an MRI but have not yet announced the results. Buxton’s injury history is not encouraging, and depending on the MRI, he could join another often-hurt slugger, Royce Lewis, on the IL.

Things will get tougher for the Twins beginning Friday. Their winning streak has included a three-game sweep of the Angels sandwiched between two sweeps of the White Sox for the other seven wins — hardly stiff competition. Minnesota faces the Red Sox, Mariners, and Blue Jays for three games each before its next off day, and potentially having to continue the streak without Buxton could require even more creativity from manager Rocco Baldelli, who’s already using platoons at both corner outfield spots, second base, and DH. The hot-hitting Castro could see more time in the outfield if Buxton is out, and rookie Austin Martin, who was optioned when shortstop Carlos Correa returned from injury earlier this week, could come back up to carry some of the load.

Jacob Young and the Nationals’ Outfield Puzzle

When I played baseball, all I was good at doing was beating out infield grounders and bunting my way on so I could steal two bases and score on a hit. (I think I hit one ball in the air to the outfield in my whole playing “career”). North Chicago suburbs don’t exactly have a lot of catching depth in the youth ranks, nor could many infielders make a good enough throw to first to get me out, so I was a good player as long as I could actually make contact with pitches (which lasted until I was about 13). All of that to say: I love one-tool speedsters who don’t do much else on offense. I loved Tony Campana as a kid, was a Billy Hamilton believer for far too long, and now I’m hanging my hat on Nationals outfielder Jacob Young.

Young is 24 years old but comes with little pedigree; we’ve never ranked him as a top prospect within the Nationals organization since they drafted him in 2021 out of the University of Florida. He’s never been explosive with the bat: At Florida, he hit just eight home runs across 571 plate appearances with a metal bat. He had the same number of round-trippers in more than twice as many minor league plate appearances in the minors, and he’s still looking for his first major league dinger. But goodness, he can run.

Young was caught stealing for the first time in the majors on Wednesday, ending a 25-for-25 run to start his career. Those 25 steals came in just 54 games: a 75-steal pace over 162. His 98th-percentile sprint speed has buoyed his production, with a .306 average backed up by an xBA of .288. He doesn’t take walks, but he rarely strikes out, giving him enough of a floor perhaps to be a solid fourth outfielder.

When Victor Robles, Stone Garrett, Joey Gallo, and Lane Thomas return from injury (the first two are on rehab assignments), the Nationals will have some personnel decisions to make, but Young should stay for as long as he’s producing. Eddie Rosario has been absolutely awful (-19 wRC+); meanwhile, Alex Call has been great in limited time, but considering he was called up after Young, Call is probably behind Young on the depth chart. The rest of the puzzle may be harder to figure out without another injury, but it might be time for the feel-good Joey Meneses story to end when Gallo returns, and Gallo himself may have to perform better to keep his spot. All of that maneuvering could set up an outfield with Young, Robles, and Thomas, with Jesse Winker at DH and Gallo or Meneses playing first.

The Orioles Strike First

A four-game series this early in the season doesn’t tell us a whole lot about how a division race will turn out come October. So let’s not make any sweeping declarations about who will win the AL East just because the Orioles took three of their four games at home this week against the Yankees to move into first place. That said, the O’s looked like more complete team, though certainly the margin is tight.

Except for Thursday’s game, which Baltimore won 7-2, the pitching was excellent for both teams in this series. Interestingly enough, the only Orioles pitcher the Yankees beat was Corbin Burnes, who went six innings on Wednesday and whose only blemish was the two-run home run he allowed to Oswaldo Cabrera with two outs in the fifth. Those were the only runs scored in that game, as Luis Gil and the New York bullpen shut out the Baltimore bats. The score was flipped two nights earlier in the series opener, with the O’s shutting out the Yankees. In the second game of the series, Dean Kremer went seven innings and allowed two runs, both on solo home runs, in a 4-2 Baltimore win.

The biggest difference right now seems to be on offense, specifically that the Orioles have the more dynamic lineup. The two teams have produced about the same at the plate this season, based on wRC+, but the Yankees — as they’ve been for years — are more reliant on the home run. Five of New York’s six runs in the series came on homers, with only one dinger — the one Cabrera hit — coming with someone on base. Conversely, the O’s are better equipped to string hits together to score without the long ball.

Anthony Volpe represents the only real base-stealing threat on the Yankees — though after swiping two bags Wednesday, Juan Soto has four steals already this season — and overall, they’re the second worse base-running team in the majors by BsR, with only three players (Volpe, Cabrera, and Gleyber Torres) grading out as above average. Meanwhile, the Orioles rank fourth in BsR, and Gunnar Henderson alone has been worth 2.4 runs on the bases. Relatedly, the Yankees have hit into more than four times as many as double plays as the Orioles have this year, killing potential rallies before they really have a chance to get started.

Three out of every four FanGraphs and RotoGraphs staff members picked the Twins to make the playoffs, with 18 of us predicting them to win the AL Central. (Yes, I was one of them.) And who could blame us? Sure, Minnesota lost Sonny Gray and Kenta Maeda from last year’s division-winning team, but the Twins would also get a full season of Chris Paddack, a revamped and improved bullpen, and — hopefully — a full year of Byron Buxton, Carlos Correa, and Royce Lewis anchoring what looked like a strong lineup.

So, naturally, those plans went awry almost right away. The bullpen has been ravaged by injuries, Lewis hurt himself on Opening Day and will be out for yet another extended stretch, and Correa, who was off to a strong start after recovering from his plantar fasciitis that bugged him all of last year, is now on the IL with a strained oblique. Not helping matters is that Buxton isn’t hitting, striking out 36.1% of the time with an anemic wRC+ of 51. The injuries to Lewis and Correa (not to mention Max Kepler, though his stay looks like it’ll be for the minimum 10 days) have eroded Minnesota’s depth, and Buxton’s poor performance is emblematic of the lack of production from the rest of the lineup.

Entering Thursday, the 6-11 Twins had the league’s third-worst wRC+, at 80, and that’s with Correa’s 165 wRC+ in 44 plate appearances. Young lefties Edouard Julien (99 wRC+) and Alex Kirilloff (151 wRC+) are doing their part, which may make you think (as I did when I started researching this column) that the Twins are awfully exposed against left-handed pitching. But they’re actually doing fine (95 wRC+) against southpaws, with both of those lefties beating up on same-handed pitching, albeit in small samples. Additionally, Buxton’s struggles have not carried over to his 13 plate appearances against lefties, and Ryan Jeffers and Manuel Margot are also hammering them.

You probably know where this is heading, then. The Twins are horrible against righties (76 wRC+). In fact, the bumbling White Sox (73 wRC+) are the only team that has been worse against righties than Minnesota. Buxton has a 31 wRC+ across 48 plate appearances vs. righties, and Willi Castro’s 50 wRC+ against righties would look good only in comparison to the marks of some of his teammates and because it is significantly better than his -24 wRC+ vs. lefties. Meanwhile, Margot, Christian Vázquez, and Kepler have all been essentially useless against righty pitching, with wRC+ numbers below zero.

So, what exactly can the Twins do? It’s an uninspiring answer, but not much. Correa and Lewis won’t be back anytime soon. Buxton is going to be given every chance to swing his way out of his slump, and as long as he stays healthy, the Twins should be cautiously optimistic that he’ll turn things around. Aside from that, their best hope is that Kepler will be much more productive when he returns from his knee contusion, which may well have affected his hitting. Matt Wallner was optioned to Triple-A after starting his season terribly (2-for-25 with 17 strikeouts), and surely there’s hope that he’ll come back looking more like the guy who had a 144 wRC+ in 254 plate appearances last year. Otherwise, there won’t really be any saviors rising up from within. Austin Martin is already up in the majors, and Brooks Lee hurt his back and has yet to play a minor league game this year. The Twins will have to make due with what they have until guys get healthy or they find a way to swing a trade or two sometime this summer. In the meantime, it’s not looking great.

Meet the Mets’ Breakout Reliever

Early season leaderboards are always fun, and in just about all cases they shouldn’t be viewed as indicative of what’s to come for the remaining 90% of the season. But that doesn’t mean we can’t take note of surprising players at or near the top of them. So, who leads all relievers in strikeout percentage? The resurgent Craig Kimbrel? The hellacious Mason Miller? Nope, atop the list is Reed Garrett, who didn’t even make the Mets’ Opening Day roster. He wasn’t even one of the last cuts; he was optioned on March 15, a full two weeks before the season started. But since getting the call on April 1 he’s been nearly unhittable, with a ridiculously low wOBA allowed of .177.

Garrett, 31, put up a 7.11 ERA in 44.1 MLB innings before this year, and there wasn’t really anything that we were publicly aware of that made anyone think a breakout was coming. But it’s not hard to see where Garrett’s success has come now that we’ve got the data. He’s deemphasizing his two fastballs, throwing his four-seamer and sinker a combined 26% of the time, with his sweeper, splitter, and slider giving hitters fits.

The splitter — which he’s nearly tripled in usage since 2022 — has been especially lethal, with two-thirds of swings against the pitch coming up empty. The radically different pitch mix makes for changes that look sticky and should allow Garrett to continue his rapid ascent up the bullpen hierarchy. Once viewed as an up-and-down pitcher by virtue of having an option remaining, he looks here to stay.

Leiter Gets Lit Up in Poor Debut

Well, not every MLB debut can go swimmingly. Jack Leiter’s first game as a Ranger started off well enough, with two strikeouts in a scoreless first. But the wheels came off soon after; he allowed four runs in the second and three more in the third and his day ended after just 11 outs.

To my eye, the stuff looked just fine, with his fastball up to 98 mph and averaging 96, but he just didn’t have feel for his offspeed pitches. Hitters really weren’t fooled overall. His 28% CSW rate was right at league average, but it was only 21% on his curveball, slider, and changeup, which made up 47 of his 85 pitches.

Whether Leiter sticks around in the rotation remains to be seen. The Rangers already have six healthy starters as it is, and Cody Bradford’s IL stay should be a short one. And let’s not forget that Tyler Mahle, Max Scherzer, and Jacob deGrom are all lurking for returns later in the season as well.

Adam Cimber is one of those pitchers that you notice, yet don’t spend too much time thinking about. The arm angle catches your attention, but at the same time, the side-slinging right-hander is neither overpowering nor a prolific ninth-inning arm. Working most often in the seventh and eight innings throughout his career, Cimber has a pedestrian mid-80s fastball and a meager 18.0% strikeout rate. Moreover, he’s been credited with just 23 wins and seven saves since debuting with the San Diego Padres in 2018.

Amid little fanfare, and with the exception of an injury-hampered 2023, he’s been one of the most reliable relievers in the game. Now 27 years old and with his fifth team — Cimber signed a free agent deal with the Los Angeles Angels over the winter — the University of Washington product has made 327 appearances, more than all but 13 hurlers during his big-league tenure. Killing a lot of worms along the way — his ground ball rate is north of 51% — he’s logged a 3.46 ERA and a 3.81 FIP over 304 innings.

Speaking to Cimber during spring training, I learned that he began throwing sidearm when he was 14 years old, this at the suggestion of his father, who felt he’d need to do something different if he hoped to make his high school team. Role models included Dan Quisenberry and Kent Tekulve — “my father grew up in that era of baseball, the 1970s and 1980s” — as well as a quartet of more-recent sidearmers and submariners.

“For the longest time it was Darren O’Day, Joe Smith, and Steve Cishek,” said Cimber, who has made four appearances this year and allowed one run in four-and-two-thirds innings. “But the pitcher I grew up watching that really helped me after I dropped down was Brad Ziegler. That was way back in the day. They’re all different in their own way — they went about it in a different way — but it’s always great to learn from guys that went before me.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Minnesota Twins had a strong start to the season, taking two of three games against the Kansas City Royals. But the positive results came with the unfortunate revelations that Royce Lewis will miss at least the next month, and likely longer, with a severe right quad strain, and right-hander Anthony DeSclafani will miss the entire season after undergoing flexor tendon surgery.

If you want to know why the Twins finally defused all the jokes last fall by winning their first playoff games in more than two decades, Lewis is one of the best answers. After nearly four years of injuries kept him mostly off the diamond, Lewis finally returned last May, though he landed on the IL twice more in 2023; an oblique strain in early July cost him about month and a half, and a hamstring strain in the middle of September prematurely ended his regular season. Still, he raked whenever he was healthy, slashing .309/.372/.548 with a 151 wRC+ and 2.4 WAR in just 58 games (239 plate appearances). His flow of pure, unadulterated awesomeness continued in the postseason as he hit four homers in six games.

With the preseason hope that Lewis would get 581 plate appearances (per our Depth Charts), that was enough to project the Twins to rank fifth at third base in our positional power rankings. He got through the spring healthy and was in the Opening Day lineup for the first time ever, batting third and playing third. His 2024 debut was his career in microcosm: He blasted a no-doubt dinger in his first plate appearance, lined a single his second time up, and got hurt before he had a chance to bat again; that injury occurred almost immediately, while he was rounding second when the next batter, Carlos Correa, hit a double. Read the rest of this entry »