Having gone around the horn and then some to identify the strongest players at each position among the remaining contenders in the National and American Leagues, I’ve turned to the weakest ones, with the NL slate running yesterday. This is something of an offshoot of my annual Replacement Level Killers series, and in fact, even some confirmed October participants have spots that still fit the bill as true lineup sinkholes, only this time with no trade deadline to help fill them. For this, I’m considering full-season performance but with an eye to who’s best or worst now, with injuries and adjustments in mind. Unlike the Killers series, I’m also considering pitching, with the shortening of rotations and bullpens factoring into my deliberations.
Until now, the pool of teams I’ve considered has consisted of eight clubs in the American League and seven in the National League. On Thursday, we officially lost the Mariners, who were mathematically eliminated with wins by the Royals and Tigers. What’s more, the Twins stand on the brink of elimination — they own the head-to-head tiebreakers with both the Tigers and Royals, but are three games back with three to play — so I’ve opted to exclude them here.
For this installment, I’ll highlight the biggest trouble spots from among an AL field that still includes the Yankees (who clinched the AL East on Thursday), Guardians, Astros, Orioles, Royals, and Tigers. Read the rest of this entry »
With the playoff fields in both leagues nearly set, we here at FanGraphs are turning our focus to how teams set up for October. Jay Jaffe has covered the best playersat each position among the contenders, with a run down of the worst positions in each league still to come. Dan Szymborski looked into the particulars of playoff lineup construction. Inspired by Meg Rowley, I’m taking a different tack: I’m looking for the players, strategies, and matchups that could be the difference between success and failure for each team.
We already know who the best players in baseball are, and they will of course be hugely important in the postseason. But less heralded players frequently have a lot to say about who takes home the World Series trophy. Think Steve Pearce and David Freese lengthening their respective lineups to turn those offenses from good to great, or the Braves bullpen mowing down the opposition in 2021. (On the flip side, you don’t hear a lot about teams let down by their supporting casts, because they mostly lose early on.) The best players aren’t always the most pivotal. In that spirit, I went through each team and focused on one potential pivot point. I’m looking at the American League today, with the National League to follow tomorrow.
New York Yankees: Austin Wells, Jazz Chisholm Jr., and Giancarlo Stanton
It’s not hard to come up with a game plan against the Yankees offense. It involves putting giant red boxes around Aaron Judge and Juan Soto, who have been the two best hitters in baseball this year, and writing “don’t let these guys beat us” in bold lettering beneath those boxes. The Yankees have the best wRC+ in baseball, all while their non-Judge/non-Soto hitters have combined for a 93 wRC+, the rough equivalent of the Washington Nationals. Sure, every team would be worse without its two best hitters, but not this much worse. Every pitcher who faces New York will have spent the vast majority of their preparation time looking at Judge and Soto, and building everything around that.
The easiest way to overcome Soto and Judge is to avoid them. I don’t mean intentionally walking them every time, though I’m sure Judge will receive his fair share of free passes. But teams will try to get those two to chase and avoid giving in even when behind in the count against them, which will result in plenty of walks the natural way. There’s going to be a ton of traffic on the bases for the team’s number four hitter, either Austin Wells or Jazz Chisholm Jr./Giancarlo Stanton depending on the matchup.
Wells has hit a rookie wall in the last month, with an 18 wRC+ in the last 30 days. Righties have simplified their attack against him, hammering the zone with fastballs and then aiming sliders at his back foot. This feels like the kind of slump that’s part fatigue and part adjusting to the majors. Wells hasn’t been aggressive enough on early-count fastballs (his swing rate on in-zone fastballs in the first two pitches of an at-bat has fallen from 64% to 54%), and so pitchers are taking the invitation to get ahead. Given how many runners tend to be on base in front of him, that approach will probably continue. It’s up to him to make opposing pitchers reconsider.
Chisholm and Stanton have split reps as the Judge follower with a lefty on the mound, and I’m not sure who will end up with the job. Like Wells, Chisholm has been too passive on early-count fastballs in his protection role, and he’s getting some tough counts and chase pitches as a reward. Still, I’m more optimistic about his outlook than Wells’. Chisholm might be taking fewer swings at crushable pitches, but he’s laying off tough breaking balls too, so it feels like part of a coordinated approach designed to minimize bad swings, and I don’t see an obvious plan of attack here for opposing lefties.
Pitchers attack Stanton high in the zone, where he’s prone to swinging under well-located fastballs. It’s a carnival game, almost: hit the brass ring on the high inside corner, and you’ll win a strikeout. Miss low, and you might surrender a home run. I expect the Yankees to deploy Stanton against pitchers who are less comfortable up in the zone, while Chisholm gets the nod against four-seam specialists.
How these three are able to respond to opposing game plans will go a long way towards deciding the Yankees’ fate this October. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle, too; if these four-spot hitters struggle, teams will naturally become more and more cautious with Soto and Judge, giving more opportunities to the guys behind them. If the four-hole hitters start to click, avoiding the two in front of them becomes less palatable.
Cleveland Guardians: Joey Cantillo and Matthew Boyd
The Guardians have used a simple blueprint to storm to one of the best records in the AL: timely hitting, great defense, and a lockdown bullpen. That’s how you end up with 90-plus wins despite a bottom-five starting rotation, one that looked sketchy heading into the year and lost Shane Bieber almost immediately. Tanner Bibee has been great, and Alex Cobb has been effective when not injured, but the spots after that are up for grabs.
In the past month or so, Joey Cantillo and Matthew Boyd have been the best options. Cantillo, in particular, has shown huge swing-and-miss upside, and he’s done it by using his best pitch, a changeup, more than a third of the time. He still has a fastball-heavy approach, and that pitch is probably his worst, but I expect that to change somewhat in the playoffs. With more off days and more bullpen availability overall, I think the Guardians will ask Cantillo to focus on his changeup and curveball, cut down on fastballs, and pitch twice through the order at max effort. He’s been intermittently great at doing just that, and when he’s on, the Guardians might not need to score much to win.
Boyd joined the Guardians when they were desperate for innings, and he’s been a pleasant second-half surprise. Still, I’m a lot less convinced by his performance than Cantillo’s. Call it the “new is always better” effect, because I’ve seen plenty of Boyd starts over the years and feel like I know what I’m getting at this point. That said, if he can put up average results in a five-and-dive role, the Guardians’ outlook will improve greatly. Their biggest weakness is always going to be the rotation, but Boyd and Cantillo have been great of late, and the rotation has actually been in the top half of baseball in the last month. For one of the weakest offenses in the AL field, improved run prevention would be a huge boon.
Houston Astros: Framber Valdez
The Astros look like a mirror image of the Guardians in a lot of ways. Despite adding Josh Hader, their bullpen has been a weakness thanks to a combination of injuries and regression. The defense isn’t great. But between resurgent bats and a few great starters, they’re putting up early runs and giving their bullpen enough cushion to make things work. Their second-half surge has been keyed by starting pitching in general, and by Framber Valdez in particular.
Valdez had been quietly bad for about a year by the time this All-Star break rolled around. From July 15, 2023 through July 15, 2024, he compiled a 4.13 ERA and 4.01 FIP. He’s always relied on producing a huge number of grounders, but changes in his fastball shape eroded that edge last summer, and it took him quite a while to adjust his game accordingly. His solution has been simple: use his best pitch more frequently. Valdez’s curveball is one of the best in the game, and he’s leaning on it:
More curveballs, more whiffs, more strikeouts, plummeting ERA — he looks like a whole new Valdez. He’s even getting more grounders again, at least partially because hitters are forced to look for the curveball more often and take emergency swings against sinkers. He’s been one of the best starters in the game over the past few months. That’s mostly what people already thought of Valdez – the top starter on a top team – but for a minute there, it wasn’t quite true. Now he looks dominant again, and he’s pitching deep into games too; he’s pitched into the seventh inning in six of his last 10 starts. The Astros could use that combination of length and quality, because if they’re going deep into their bullpen, things could get ugly.
Baltimore Orioles: Jordan Westburg
These don’t all have to be complicated. When Jordan Westburg broke his hand on July 31, the Orioles were a game back of the best record in baseball. Since then, they’ve gone 22-26, and his replacements haven’t impressed. Jackson Holliday hasn’t exactly replicated his nightmare April call-up, but he has a 70 wRC+ since returning to the majors. Emmanuel Rivera has been hitting well, but he’s more of a utility infielder/platoon piece than an everyday starter. Westburg’s presence means that Baltimore’s lineup makes sense; it felt stretched when he was out.
Broken hands are notoriously difficult injuries to forecast. Sometimes recovery is swift and complete. Sometimes power is slow to come back even as everything else rebounds. There’s no strict timeline; we simply don’t know how he’ll look. There’s also the matter of rust. After a brief rehab stint, the O’s activated Westburg over the weekend, but that still means only having about a week to get back up to major league conditioning and form before the games start to count.
Plenty of Baltimore’s hitters have had power outages in the second half — it’s not like you can pin the team’s entire swoon on Westburg’s absence. Adley Rutschman, in particular, looks worn down to me, and Anthony Santander and Ryan O’Hearn have cooled off. But Westburg’s return is a huge potential boost. If he’s back to his former self, the lineup gets scary to navigate. If he’s still not 100%, the other options aren’t amazing. Keep your eyes out to see how he handles inside fastballs, often a tough pitch to deal with if your hand is still hurt.
Detroit Tigers: Performance Against Good Fastballs
The Tigers seem to have worked out a good plan on the pitching front: Let Tarik Skubal cook, and fill in everything else with bullpen innings. But that’s only half the equation. They need to score runs, too, and that’s been a challenge this year. They’ve scored the fewest runs of any potential playoff team, and it’s not fluky; they have the worst wRC+ of the bunch, and they’re in the middle of the pack when it comes to baserunning.
To make matters worse, the Tigers have been especially weak against good fastballs. Only five teams in baseball have done worse against fastballs 96 mph and above this year: the Rockies, White Sox, Blue Jays, Marlins, and Rays. (They’re also bad against fastballs 95 and above, to be clear – 96 just feels like the new definition of “hard fastball” as velo keeps creeping up.) That’s not good company to keep, and the playoffs are chock full of hard fastballs. In the 2023 regular season, 10.4% of all pitches were fastballs thrown 96 mph or harder. In the playoffs, that crept up to 15.5%. Teams with hard-throwing relievers make the playoffs more often, and they also use their best relievers more while asking their starters to throw harder in shorter bursts in October. If you’re weak against velocity, teams will come after you.
Spencer Torkelson has had well-publicized struggles against hard stuff. Matt Vierling, Jace Jung, and Trey Sweeney, all of whom will start plenty in the playoffs, have looked overmatched this year against very good heaters. Kerry Carpenter and Colt Keith are doing damage against them, so look for opponents to attack the lefty-heavy heart of the Detroit lineup (Carpenter, Keith, and Riley Greene) with secondary-heavy lefties and then bring the thunder against everyone else. The Tigers are going to see a lot of fast pitches in the strike zone. If they can’t handle them, it might make for a short October run. If they can, their offense will surprise to the upside.
Kansas City Royals: GB/FB Ratio Allowed
The Royals are one of the best defensive teams in baseball, and the eye test and defensive models agree. But while the Bobby Witt Jr.-led infield is outstanding, the outfield is more of a mixed bag. Center fielder Kyle Isbel has been great in 2024, but he’s not getting much help. Tommy Pham is a hair below average in right, hardly surprising given that he’s 36. MJ Melendez is one of the worst defensive outfielders in baseball. Isbel covers so much ground that he can make up for some shortcomings, but one man can only run so fast. Think of it this way: Per Statcast, Kansas City’s infield defense has been 31 outs above average. Their outfielders have been three outs above average, and that’s with Garrett Hampson putting in solid work in left when Melendez isn’t available. The Royals’ preferred lineup is light on outfield defense, in other words.
The Royals pitching staff isn’t particularly focused on grounders, though. They’re in the middle of the pack when it comes to GB/FB ratio, and Brady Singer is the only one of their playoff starters who effectively keeps the ball on the ground. Opposing teams will be looking to elevate against the Royals, keeping the ball away from Witt’s all-encompassing glove. That might go double in Kansas City, where Kauffman Stadium’s cavernous confines mean that balls in the gap can travel a long way. Isbel is so good that he can cover for some of the corner deficiencies, but if the Royals’ opponents can pepper the pull side in the air, Kansas City’s defensive excellence will be blunted.
Minnesota Twins: Bridge Relievers
Let’s throw in the Twins as a bonus, even though they’re out of playoff position at the moment. They’re two back in the loss column with four left to play, which doesn’t leave them much margin for error. On the bright side, though, they hold the tiebreaker over both the Royals and Tigers, which gives them an outside chance at sneaking into the field if either of their divisional rivals hits a banana peel in the last series of the year. We give them a 22.8% chance of making the playoffs, which feels like enough of a shot to include in this article.
The business end of the Minnesota bullpen is fearsome. Jhoan Duran isn’t having his best season, but he’s clearly one of the better closers in the game. Griffin Jax has been outstanding. He has five plus pitches and is commanding them well, absolutely overwhelming opponents in the process. He might end up as the most valuable reliever in baseball this year when you consider volume, leverage, and results.
Should the Twins make the postseason, Duran and Jax are going to be very busy. But they can’t pitch all of the relief innings, and the guys behind them are question marks. Louie Varland has a 5.79 FIP (don’t even ask about the ERA, it’s ugly) and is coming into bigger spots than any Minnesota reliever aside from the top duo. Cole Sands has had an up-and-down season, and we consider him their secondary setup man after Jax. Scott Blewett and Ronny Henriquez have seen their strikeout rates plummet to borderline unplayable levels. Caleb Thielbar is dancing on a knife’s edge between effectively wild and unable to find the zone.
To be clear, this isn’t a case of an unfixably bad unit. I think Thielbar is an impact lefty when he’s right. Varland has premium stuff. Henriquez’s changeup is a weapon. Starting with Duran and Jax is a huge tailwind. It isn’t hard to imagine a world where some of the bullpen options pop and the Twins suddenly have a dominant relief corps.
But that hasn’t happened this year. Minnesota’s bullpen is playing its worst baseball of the season over the past few weeks – they have a 4.80 ERA even with the two top options taken into account, and a 5.33 without them. The middle innings are feeling shakier than ever, and that’s particularly concerning given that the starting rotation has been covering fewer innings since Joe Ryan hit the IL. If this group rises to the occasion, the Twins will look like a completely different team than they have so far this September. But, uh, that’s kind of the problem: Right now they don’t look very good.
With just 10 days left to go in the regular season, four teams — the Brewers, Dodgers, Guardians, and Yankees — have clinched playoff berths, and while just one division race has been decided, only two others have even a faint pulse. There’s still plenty of drama to be had with regards to the Wild Card races, which essentially boil down to a pair of four-to-make-three scenarios; Seattle might have been a stronger fifth in the AL if certain Mariners who reached third base didn’t insist upon taking very strangewalkabouts. Beyond that, it’s also worth checking in on the jockeying for position to claim the first-round byes that go to the top two teams in each league.
Once upon a time, this space would be filled with my reintroducing readers to the concept of Team Entropy, but through the 2022 Collective Bargaining Agreement, Major League Baseball and the players’ union traded the potential excitement and scheduling mayhem created by on-field tiebreakers and sudden-death games in exchange for a larger inventory of playoff games. The 12-team, two-bye format was designed to reward the top two teams by allowing them to bypass the possibility of being eliminated in best-of-three series. So far, however, things haven’t worked out that way, because outcomes in a best-of-five series are only slightly more predictable than those of a best-of-three.
In fact, the National League teams who have received byes under the newish system have lost all four Division Series since, two apiece by the Dodgers and Braves. The 111-win Dodgers were ousted by an 89-win Padres team in 2022, and then last year’s 100-win team was knocked off by the 84-win Diamondbacks. In 2022, the 101-win Braves fell to an 87-win Phillies team, and last year, after winning 104 games in the regular season, Atlanta once again was eliminated by a Philadelphia club that had finished 14 games behind the Braves in the standings. American League bye teams have had more success, going 3-1, with last year’s 90-win Rangers beating the 101-win Orioles for the lone upset. The Astros have taken care of business in both years, with their 106-win club sweeping the 90-win Mariners in 2022 and their 90-win team beating the 87-win Twins last year. 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.
Tight playoff races, milestone and award chases, and looking ahead to the offseason — these are the things I love about September baseball. One of the first decisions to be made after the World Series is determining who will receive qualifying offers, which currently projects to be valued at $21.2 million.
As a quick reminder before we continue, the qualifying offer is set at a price of the mean average annual value of the 125 highest-AAV players in the league. Once it’s offered to a player, he has 10 days to decide whether to accept or decline the offer. If the player accepts, he’s locked into 2025 at that salary, though he can always negotiate a contract extension that may override the qualifying offer. If the player declines and signs with a new team, his new team will forfeit at least one 2025 draft pick, and his old team will receive exactly one ’25 draft pick.
With less than three weeks left in the regular season, let’s run through which pending free agents could be getting qualifying offers come November.
Paul Goldschmidt is a tough act to follow, but Christian Walker has done well since taking over for him after the Diamondbacks traded Goldschmidt to the Cardinals in December 2018. Walker has been especially great the last three years, with 10.9 WAR, a 122 wRC+, and excellent defense at first base. He’s not spectacular, but he’s very good, and if the Diamondbacks are fine with running a record payroll again, they’d be wise to keep him around.
Walker’s got one big drawback, though: his age. Next year will be his age-34 season, and while he’d certainly like to earn a multi-year deal in free agency, the qualifying offer might tamp down his market to the point that accepting it would net him more money in 2025. He also might not want to risk rejecting it, hanging out on the open market for months, and then having to sign a prove-it deal. He’s a core member of a team that went to the World Series last year, is almost certainly going to return to the playoffs again this season, and is built to contend next year, too. Additionally, he seems comfortable in the desert. For all of these reasons, he is probably the player most likely to return to his team on a qualifying offer.
Likely to Receive, Likely to Reject
Tyler O’Neill has popped 30 home runs in his best and healthiest season since 2021, with his wRC+ just one point away from tying that career year. On the surface, that makes him seem like a slam dunk to receive the qualifying offer, and a slam dunk to reject it. He’s entering his age-30 season, and coming off his strong performance this year, he could look to get a three- or four-year deal on the open market. The one thing that gives me pause, though, is O’Neill’s injury history and how that might influence teams’ willingness to offer him a multi-year deal worth an average annual value of roughly $20 million. Understanding this, if the Red Sox give O’Neill the qualifying offer, he could decide it’s in his best interest to accept it. Meanwhile, Boston might not want to pay him $22.1 million next year, instead opting to use that money to bolster other areas of its roster. I still think the Red Sox will extend him a qualifying offer, and that he will turn it down, but it’s not a sure thing.
There’s an argument to be made that Michael Wacha is having the best season of his career; it’s definitely his healthiest since 2017. Provided he avoids injury the rest of the way, he’ll eschew his $16 million player option in favor of hitting the open market once again, leaving the Royals with a tough decision. On the one hand, this version of Wacha is worth $22.1 million; on the other, the injury concerns don’t just go away just because he’s been mostly healthy this year. As unlikely as Wacha would be to accept, the Royals might also prefer to eliminate any chance that he’d do so and instead allocate that money to lengthen their lineup. Having a rotation anchored by Cole Ragans and Seth Lugo would make losing Wacha an easier pill to swallow.
Total Toss-Ups
If Ha-Seong Kim had reached free agency before this season instead of after it, he probably would have earned a deal of at least $100 million following his 4.3 WAR, 110 wRC+ campaign in 2023. But right shoulder inflammation could keep him on the sidelines for the rest of the season, and his run values as a hitter, fielder, and baserunner have all gone down considerably in 2024. That said, even in this down year, he’s put up 2.6 WAR and is still only 28; that is probably worth $22.1 million. However, considering the Padres have a glut of infielders already, they may not want to give Kim the option to accept a qualifying offer.
Luis Severino is having his healthiest season since 2018, when he put up 5.4 WAR across 191 1/3 innings, made the All-Star team, and received Cy Young votes as the ace of the Yankees. But he’s a completely different pitcher now than he was then. His velocity is still there, but he no longer has the swing-and-miss stuff to anchor a rotation. Even with the Mets expected to lose two other starters to free agency, I don’t think they’d want to pay him the salary of a no. 2 starter when, at this point, he profiles more like a no. 3 or 4.
There may be no starter in the league more enigmatic than Nick Pivetta. The stuff has always been great, but the command has been … less so. I’m of the opinion that he’d do surprisingly well on the open market, and in my head I’m comparing him to Yusei Kikuchi, who got three years and $36 million from the Blue Jays coming off a similarly uneven (and probably worse) few years. But the Red Sox already have Brayan Bello, Tanner Houck, Kutter Crawford, and Lucas Giolito (assuming he recovers well from internal brace surgery) locked into next year’s rotation, and they may invest the $22.1 million elsewhere.
Unlikely to Receive
For other teams, I’d say that it would be a no-brainer to extend Shane Bieber a qualifying offer, but $22.1 million is a lot of money for the Guardians. If Bieber were to accept it, he could represent 20% or more of their payroll for 2025, and he might not be available until the second half of the season anyway after undergoing Tommy John surgery in April. Considering his track record and how well he pitched in his first couple starts of the season, a multi-year deal at a lower average annual value — with the cash backloaded pretty heavily — should be easy for Bieber to secure.
There aren’t any pending free agent relievers with the pedigree of Josh Hader, who was an obvious qualifying offer recipient and rejector last offseason. Clay Holmes started his season pitching like he’d end up receiving one, but he’s lost his closer job and has probably worn out his welcome in New York, frankly. On the other side of the coin is Jeff Hoffman, who’s been nothing short of excellent for two seasons in Philadelphia. But he’s entering his age-32 season and doesn’t have nearly the track record of other relievers who have received qualifying offers in the past. I’d be shocked if he gets one.
Ineligible to Receive
As a reminder, players who’ve appeared for multiple teams in the same season are ineligible to be tendered a qualifying offer. That eliminates Kikuchi and Jack Flaherty. Also ineligible are players who’ve received one in the past, so that rules out Joc Pederson, Max Scherzer, Nathan Eovaldi (assuming he declines his player option), Cody Bellinger (ditto), and, should he opt out, Gerrit Cole.
On Tuesday night, while much of the country tuned in to see Kamala Harris debate Donald Trump, I watched an even more lopsided performance from the upper deck at Yankee Stadium, where the Royals’ Seth Lugo utterly dominated the Yankees, holding them to just three hits, walking none and striking out 10 over seven innings in a 5-0 Kansas City win. Through six innings, the only Yankee to reach base was Gleyber Torres, who blooped soft singles into center field on Lugo’s fifth pitch of the game and then, roughly an hour and 20 minutes later, on his 86th pitch; in between, Lugo retired 17 straight hitters. It was the latest in a season full of great outings from the righty, who at 34 years old is having a career year while pushing the Royals toward their first postseason berth since 2015.
Lugo’s seven scoreless frames ran his total to a major league-leading 193 innings while lowering his ERA to 2.94, second in the AL behind only Tarik Skubal. Meanwhile, he’s third in WAR with 4.4, 0.2 behind teammate Cole Ragans, fifth in FIP (3.27), seventh in walk rate (5.8%), and eighth in strikeouts (169) despite punching out hitters at a modest 21.7% rate. He’s also tied with Skubal for the league lead in wins (16), and so by our Cy Young Projection model and its multiple variants, his suite of stats puts him second in the AL to Skubal and a comfortable margin ahead of Ragans, Logan Gilbert, and Framber Valdez. All of this is happening in the first year of a three-year, $45 million contract he signed with the Royals last December, and in just his third season as a starter after largely being typecast as a workhorse reliever during his seven seasons with the Mets (2016–22).
Knocking back a couple of beers from my partial season ticket group’s usual perch in Section 422 affords a different perspective than in the press box or at home. So when Sports Reference’s Katie Sharp noted that the game was the first time the Yankees had ever been held to zero walks and zero extra-base hits while striking out at least 14 times, I decided to take a closer look at Lugo’s night to gain a fuller appreciation of what’s made him so successful lately. 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.
The final stretch of the season is now upon us, and it sure is going to be fun. The Orioles and Yankees are jockeying for the AL East title, with a first-round bye almost certainly going to the winner. The NL Wild Card is a beautiful mess, with four teams fighting for the three spots and two other clubs, the Cubs and Cardinals, still lurking in the distance. And the under-the-radar Tigers are roaring, trying to pull out a last-minute postseason berth after selling at the trade deadline.
Last month, when I wrote about the players who were added off the waiver wire, I mentioned that another batch of waiver claims would come at the end of August, after more teams fell out of contention. So now that we’re well into September, let’s take a look at some of the notable players who’ve switched teams over the last few weeks.
By this time a year ago, the Yankees were simply playing out the string, battling to avoid their first losing season since 1992. Their September was briefly enlivened by the arrival of Jasson Domínguez, a switch-hitting 20-year-old center fielder who homered off Justin Verlander in his first plate appearance, but “The Martian” — so named for his otherworldly collection of tools — tore his right ulnar collateral ligament after playing just eight games. His Tommy John surgery and projected lack of availability early this season led the Yankees to trade for Alex Verdugo, whom they’ve stuck with as their everyday left fielder despite his increasingly conspicuous lack of production. As they run neck-and-neck with the Orioles in the AL East race, they’ve bypassed a golden opportunity to upgrade their lineup.
On Tuesday night in Arlington, the Yankees blew a 4-0 eighth-inning lead, losing 7-4 when closer Clay Holmes blew his major league-leading 11th save by retiring just one of the five batters he faced, capped by a walk-off grand slam by Wyatt Langford. The loss, the Yankees’ fifth in seven games, knocked them out of first place for the first time since August 20; at 80-59, they’re now half a game behind the Orioles (81-59). While the Holmes saga is a story for another day, it shares with the Verdugo/Domínguez situation the Yankees’ stubborn refusal to change what isn’t working in the midst of a playoff race, one where a first-round bye is at stake. In both cases — and in others throughout his seven-year tenure — manager Aaron Boone has publicly avoided acknowledging players’ struggles, sounding notes of Pollyanna-ish optimism that may have earned him loyalty within the Yankees’ clubhouse (and apparently the rest of the organization), but too often appear divorced from reality.
In the case of the offense, the Yankees lead the AL in scoring (5.09 runs per game) and wRC+ (118), but that’s largely a reflection of the incredible, historic contributions of the majors’ top two hitters by wRC+, namely Aaron Judge (.324/.457/.706, 217 wRC+) and Juan Soto (.291/.419/.582, 181 wRC+). Only three other regulars have a wRC+ of 100 or better: Austin Wells, who’s doing about 60% of the catching work; Giancarlo Stanton, who missed over five weeks in June and July due to a left hamstring strain; and Jazz Chisholm Jr., who has played all of 25 games for the Yankees since being acquired on July 27. Besides Judge and Soto, their other three players with at least 561 plate appearances each have a wRC+ below 100, namely second baseman Gleyber Torres (96), shortstop Anthony Volpe (95 wRC+), and Verdugo (84 wRC+). Volpe’s defense is strong enough that he ranks third on the team with 3.6 WAR, Torres has hit for a 115 wRC+ in the second half, and Chisholm has shored up their once-dismal third base production, but first base has been an additional drag on the offense, with Anthony Rizzo, Ben Rice, DJ LeMahieuet al combining for just a 74 wRC+ and -1.3 WAR. Read the rest of this entry »
You might be a bit surprised to learn just how rare 3-0 counts are. As of Tuesday morning, there had been 155,045 plate appearances in the 2024 season, and just 5,852 of them, or 3.8%, had gone 3-0. That means that each team should expect to see a 3-0 count just 1.4 times per game. That’s a whole lot fewer than I expected. Because of that scarcity, if somebody comes to you with statistics about a batter’s splits in 3-0 counts, you can probably discount them as a small sample size aberration. That’s all the more true when you consider that, ignoring intentional walks, 3-0 counts turn into walks roughly 60% of the time (which in turns means that they account for roughly 29% of all walks). Once the batter gets ahead 3-0, there are very few actual at-bats taking place. So you don’t have to take this seriously if you don’t want to, but once he reaches a 3-0 count, Aaron Judge is putting together the greatest season in recorded history. I know that’s not exactly a shocking lede – Aaron Judge is good at something; film at eleven – but it’s fun, so hear me out.
In this case, recorded history starts in 1988. That’s the earliest year that Stathead lets you pull count-based splits. Those splits are slightly muddied by the fact that as far as Stathead is concerned, 3-0 counts include intentional walks. (That’s understandable, since until very recently, intentional walks still required pitchers to throw four actual balls. Still, it definitely skews the numbers; it doesn’t make a ton of sense to include PAs where the batter never saw a competitive pitch in count splits.) This season, Judge has been walked intentionally 18 times, but four of those passes only happened once the pitcher had fallen behind 3-0, so we’ll leave them and strip out the other 14.
That leaves Judge with 43 PAs that went to a 3-0 count, second in baseball behind Juan Soto, who has 54 (which also gives the Yankees far more 3-0 counts than any other team in baseball). In those PAs, Judge has walked 35 times, for a walk rate of 81.4%. That’s how terrifying Aaron Judge is: Even though he ranks second in this split by PAs, pitchers are so disinclined to throw him a strike that he’s tied for 75th in ABs. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. I’m going to keep the introduction short and sweet today so I can get back to my once-annual guilty pleasure: spending all day watching the US Open. But while I’m going full Jimmy Butler, plenty of baseball is happening, so I’ve got my eyes on that as well. You couldn’t watch a game this week without seeing something spectacular. We’ve got great baserunning, awful baserunning, and phenomenal catches. We’ve got teams misunderstanding risk and reward, and GMs touching hot stoves over and over again. It’s a great week to watch baseball, because it always is. Shout out to Zach Lowe of ESPN as always for the column idea, and one programming note: Five Things will be off next Friday. Let’s get to the baseball!
1. Anthony Volpe’s Disruptive Speed
Another year, another below-average season with the bat for the Yankees shortstop. That’s turning him into a lightning rod for controversy, because he’s a type of player who often gets overlooked (defense and speed) playing for a team where players often get overrated. The combination of the two leads to some confusing opinions. “He’s a good player who will make fewer All-Star teams than you think because defensive value is consistently underappreciated” isn’t exactly a strong argument if you’re talking to an acquaintance at a sports bar.
One thing that everyone can agree on, though: After he reaches base, Anthony Volpe is a problem. I tuned into Monday’s Nationals-Yankees game to see Dylan Crews in the majors and to watch Aaron Judge and Juan Soto, but I ended up just marveling at Volpe for a lot of the afternoon. He got on base three times (that’s the hard part for him, to be clear) and tilted the entire defense each time. He wasn’t even going on this play, and his vault lead still dragged Ildemaro Vargas out of position:
I’m not quite sure how to assign value for that play. The ball found a hole there, but DJ LeMahieu could just as easily have hit the ball straight to Vargas. I’m not saying that we need an advanced statistical reckoning about the value of a runner bluffing a fielder into motion, but that doesn’t change how cool it is to watch Volpe spook good veteran infielders just by standing around and bouncing.
Some of his baserunning value is of the straightforward, look-at-this-fast-human-being variety. You don’t need to hit the ball very deep to drive him home from third:
Some of the value is effort-based. Volpe’s always thinking about an extra base. Even when he hits a clean single, he’s got eyes on the play. An innocuous outfield bobble? He’ll take the base, thank you very much:
Of course, if you show someone taking a bouncing lead in the first GIF, you have to show them stealing a base in the fourth: Call it Volpe’s Run. That double led to a pitching change, and after two looks at Joe La Sorsa’s delivery, Volpe helped himself to third base:
Not every game is like this, but most of his times on base are. He’s never content to go station to station. His instincts are finely tuned, his speed blazing. I’m rooting for Volpe to improve at the plate, and it’s for selfish reasons: I love to watch great baserunning, and I want to see him get more chances to do it.
2. Whatever the Opposite of That Is
Oh Washington. The Nats are near the top of my watch list right now. Their assortment of young offensive standouts makes for fun games, and now that Crews has debuted, the top of their lineup looks legitimately excellent. You can see the future of the team even before they’re ready to contend, and that’s just cool. They might even be good already – they won the series against the Yankees this week, with Crews hitting his first big league homer in the deciding game. But uh, they’re not quite ready for prime time yet. Take a look at this laser beam double:
Boy, it sure looks fun to pour on the runs when you’re already winning. Wait, I misspoke. Take a look at this long fielder’s choice:
Somehow, Joey Gallo didn’t score on a jog on that one. He slammed on the brakes at third base and realized he couldn’t make it home. Then he got hung out to dry because everyone else in the play kept running like it was a clear double (it was). What a goof! That meant the only question was whether he’d be able to hold the rundown long enough to let everyone advance a base. The answer was a resounding yes – to everyone other than Juan Yepez:
I think his brain just short circuited there. He was standing on third with Gallo completely caught in a rundown. All you have to do to finish the play is stand still. But for whatever reason, he started side-shuffling in retreat toward second, another base currently occupied by a runner (!). While Jazz Chisholm Jr. tagged Gallo out, Yepez was busy hanging José Tena out to dry. Famously, you can’t have two runners on the same base. The rest of the play was academic:
I feel bad hanging Yepez out to dry, because some clearer communication would have made this play a run-scoring double. First, Gallo was overly cautious tagging up on the deep drive to center. Then, he got bamboozled. Watch the base coach hold Yepez, only for Gallo to see the sign and think it was intended for him:
Just a disaster all around. I can’t get enough of the Gameday description: “José Tena singles on a sharp line drive to center fielder Aaron Judge. Juan Yepez to 3rd. José Tena lines into a double play, center fielder Aaron Judge to shortstop Anthony Volpe to catcher Austin Wells to first baseman DJ LeMahieu to catcher Austin Wells to third baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. to second baseman Gleyber Torres. Joey Gallo out at home. Juan Yepez to 3rd. José Tena out at 2nd. Two Outs.”
Ah, yes, just your typical 8-6-2-3-2-5-4 double play. The Nationals are a lot of fun to watch – even when it’s at their expense.
3. We Get It, Rays
The whole never-trade-with-Tampa-Bay bit is overdone. The Rays lose plenty of trades. They win their fair share too, of course, but they are high volume operators in a business full of uncertainty. Sometimes, you get Isaac Paredes for almost nothing. Sometimes, you get Jonny DeLuca. When you churn your roster to the extent that they do, you can’t win them all, and that’s fine. But the Cardinals? Yeah, they should definitely not trade with the Rays.
First, in 2018, they sent Tommy Pham to Tampa Bay in exchange for some depth prospects, and Pham racked up 8 WAR in the next year and a half with the Rays. Then, before the 2020 season, the Cardinals swapped Randy Arozarena for Matthew Liberatore; Randy became the face of the postseason, and Libby turned into a long reliever. The most recent deal might not be the most damaging, but it’s an apt capper to a transaction trilogy.
Dylan Carlson was supposed to be the next big thing in St. Louis, but that ship had sailed long before the Cardinals jettisoned him at the deadline this year. His offensive game just broke down out of nowhere over the last two years, and he played himself out of St. Louis even as the team floundered for outfield depth this year. He had a 50 wRC+ in a part-time role when the team decided it was time to move on.
That’s fine, guys need changes of scenery all the time. But trading him to the Rays, of all teams, felt a little on the nose. The reliever they got back, Shawn Armstrong, is a perfectly good bullpen option. He made 11 appearances for the Redbirds and compiled a 2.84 ERA (2.78 FIP), a solid month’s work. But I’m using the past tense because they designated him for assignment earlier this week, hoping another team would pick up the balance of his contract and save them $350,000 or so. They’ve made a similar move with Pham, whom they also acquired at the deadline, since then. In Armstrong’s case, they also did it because he’d pitched two days in a row and they needed another fresh arm on the active roster; it was a messy situation all around.
We have their postseason odds at 1.1% after a desultory August, and they likely aren’t losing much of that value by moving on from Armstrong. It’s the signaling of it all, though: They traded for the guy, got exactly what they wanted from him, and still couldn’t keep him around for two months. Meanwhile, Carlson looks like a reasonable major leaguer again. He hasn’t been a world beater by any means, but he’s hitting the ball hard more frequently in a semi-platoon role that takes advantage of his ability to hit lefties. He already has three homers as a Ray after none all year as a Cardinal.
Carlson had to go, because something wasn’t working in St. Louis. Armstrong was a perfectly reasonable return, and he did exactly what the team hoped for when the Cardinals acquired him. The optics, though! They traded yet another pretty good outfielder who didn’t fit into the puzzle in St. Louis. Tampa Bay has two years to get the most out of him. As is customary, none of the players the Rays sent back to Missouri moved the needle. For appearances’ sake, if nothing else, the Cardinals can’t keep making these trades.
4. Outrageous Robberies
It feels weird that Jackson Chourio, a five-tool superstar with blazing footspeed, doesn’t play center. It seems like a knock on him, almost. Sure, this guy’s a prodigy, but he can’t handle the tough defensive position that you might expect him to play given his talent. Except, that’s not quite right. Why would you play him in center field when you currently have Spider-Man patrolling the grass? I mean…
Oh my goodness. I don’t even want to hear about catch probability on this one, because the difficulty of this play is the part where he gets over the wall in deep center. This isn’t one of those “robberies” where the fielder grazes the wall with his back and everyone celebrates. Blake Perkins can do those just fine – he has four robberies this year, and they weren’t all this hard – but he can also go the extra mile. He went all the way up and over to get this one:
That’s an 8-foot wall, so he probably got to the ball 9 or so feet in the air. He had to cover a ton of ground before getting there; 101 feet from his initial position, to be precise. He took a great route, which gave him time to decelerate and time the jump, but the ball kept carrying. In the end, he had to parkour up the wall a little bit to get enough height:
What more can I say? You can’t do it any better than that. Perkins reacted like he was shocked by his own play:
So no sweat, Jackson. You’re a pretty good outfielder too; you just can’t climb walls quite so nimbly. There’s no shame in second place when first place looks like that.
5. Getting by With a Little Help
Austin Riley is on the IL right now, and 2024 has been a down year for him. That’s largely an offensive issue, though his defense isn’t quite up to previous years’ standards, either. That said, he can still turn an absolute gem out there. Take a look at this beauty from two weeks ago:
That’s the area where he’s improved the most. His arm is below average for third base, so he compensates by getting his feet planted and putting his entire body into the throw. That ball had to travel forever, and to be fair, it two-hopped Matt Olson, but that’s an accurate ball given where he caught it and how quickly he had to let it go. That’s very nice, but watch Jo Adell at the bag. What is he doing?!? That isn’t how you’re supposed to run out a bang-bang play. If he went straight in, he’d beat the throw comfortably. Instead, he curled his way into an out.
In his mind, I’m sure that ball was a double right out of the box. That’s reasonable! Look at where Riley made the play:
Riley’s plant foot ended up all the way into the grass in foul territory. Not many baseballs get fielded there, and Adell hit that one on a line, so when he started out of the box, he was surely considering his options in regards to second base. He came out of the box looking down the line and taking a direct, rather than rounded, route. But as you can see from the high angle replay, he started to bend his path to cut the bag and head for second, right around the same time that Riley rose and fired:
The closeup of Adell is definitely a bad look:
But take another look at those last two shots and you’ll get a better idea of what happened. Adell probably couldn’t see the ball in the corner cleanly. There was a lot of traffic: baserunners, umpires, Riley himself, the pitcher, and so on. About halfway down the baseline, he looked away from the play to pick up first base coach Bo Porter, exactly what you should do when you can’t find the ball on your own. But Porter just plain missed it. He was pinwheeling Adell toward second, imploring him to arc out for extra speed. He clearly thought the ball was in the outfield and that Adell going wide could give him a shot at an extra base.
I’d put more blame on Porter than on Adell in this situation, but there’s blame to go around for both. I’d give credit to Riley, too, of course. Base coaches and baserunners make mistakes sometimes, and they aren’t always punished by outstanding defensive plays like that. But this is an unforgivable mistake given the game situation.
Adell’s run was far less important than the two in front of him. If there was any question at all about his being safe or not, any question about whether Riley had fielded it, the correct play was to book it to first and completely forget about the double. Reaching first safely is worth more than a run: the runner scoring from third plus the first and third situation that would’ve result from it. Teams have scored 0.52 runs after first and third with two outs this year, and 0.59 runs after second and third with two outs. Meaning, if Adell had taken a straight line path, the Angels would’ve scored a run and had that 0.52 on top of it, so making an out at first base cost them an expected 1.52 runs. Advancing to second would have gained them another 0.07 expected runs, but only if that runner on third scored, which didn’t happen because Adell was out at first. They would’ve needed to successfully advance to second 96 times out of 100 to make the math work there. It’s worse than that, though: Going from a one-run lead to a two-run lead is worth astronomically more than stepping up from two to three. Take that into account, and we’re looking at a play where you’d need to be right 98 times out of 100.
The Angels mistook playing hard for playing smart. The winning baseball play there is to ensure the run. It didn’t end up costing them, but it could have. They never scored again, and the Braves put plenty of traffic on the bases the rest of the way. The funny thing is, I’m sure that Adell will get knocked for not hustling on this play, and I don’t think that’s what went wrong. He and Porter just got greedy aiming for a hustle double when the right choice was to nit it up (play extremely conservatively, for the non-poker-players out there). It’s a strange way to make a mistake – but it’s definitely still a mistake.
While Shohei Ohtani hasn’t pitched this year after undergoing UCL reconstruction surgery last fall, he has found another area of the game in which he could excel while terrorizing opposing pitchers. The 30-year-old superstar blew past his previous career high in stolen bases in late July, and on Friday night against the Rays he swiped his 40th bag of the year. Five innings later, he collected his 40th home run to join the 40-40 club in spectacular style, when he clobbered a first-pitch, walk-off grand slam. Unfortunately, Ronald Acuña Jr.’s torn ACL deprived him of a chance to follow up last year’s unprecedented combination of 41 homers and 73 steals, but it’s not out of the question we could have another 40-40 player this season, namely José Ramírez, and at least a couple more 30-30 ones.
I’ll get to those, but first, it’s Sho time. Prior to this year, Ohtani had reached 40 homers twice (46 in 2021 and a league-leading 44 last year) but had stolen just 20 bases or more twice (26 in 2021 and 20 last year). Unburdened by the demands of pitching this year, and playing for a new team with much higher aspirations than the Angels, he’s been able to withstand more wear and tear on his legs, has had more time to study opposing pitchers, and has come to appreciate the extra dimension he can add to his new team.
“I think he has bought into stealing bases, understands the value of the stolen base, getting 90 feet,” manager Dave RobertstoldThe Athletic earlier this month. “He’s in a pennant race now. And I don’t think he’s been in a pennant race in his big-league career. So his enhanced focus is not a surprise to me.” Read the rest of this entry »
