Josh Bell has hit 200 home runs since reaching the majors in 2016, with 198 of them coming in the regular season and the other two coming in October. Which of them is the most memorable? I asked the Minnesota Twins first baseman/DH that question prior to a recent game at Fenway Park.
“The first one [on July 9, 2016] is probably my favorite,” replied Bell, who spent his first five seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates. “The grand slam. It was my second day in the big leagues, and I’d gotten a hit the night before, pinch-hitting, so I was batting 1.000. Bases loaded, Adam Warren [on the mound], a Cubs-Pirates rivalry game at PNC on a Saturday night. The place was packed. The ball leaves my bat and I know that it’s gone. My parents were there, too — I gave them the ball — so that one was definitely special. It’s something I’ll never forget.”
A first home run, be it a grand slam or a solo shot, is going to be a favorite for most players. But there will be others that stand out as well, and in Bell’s case, a few of them are Statcast outliers. We’ll get to those in a moment. Read the rest of this entry »
Mike Stanley was C.J. Nitkowsk’s biggest nemesis. In seven career plate appearances versus the now-Atlanta Braves broadcaster, Stanley homered twice, hammered a double, and walked four times. That added up to a 4.333 OPS. Of the 592 batters Nitkowski faced over 10 big-league seasons, no one was more injurious to his stat sheet.
Somewhat surprisingly, the pair of gophers — one at Tiger Stadium in 1996, the other at Fenway Park in 2000 — aren’t what the southpaw most remembers about his matchups with the slugging catcher/first baseman. What stands out is the two-bagger.
“I have a story about Mike Stanley,” explained Nitkowski, who made 336 MLB appearances, 213 of them with Detroit, while pitching for eight teams from 1995-2005. “As a kid who grew up in New York and was a Yankees fan, I always knew who he was. He was a Yankee when I was in high school. When I got drafted and went down to Orlando for my first spring training [with the Cincinnati Reds in 1995] — I went early to get out of the cold — I was working out with Chad Mottola, who is now the hitting coach for the Rays. He was my first roommate in professional baseball.
“Chad lived down there,” continued Nitkowski. “Mike Stanley happened to live in the same neighborhood, and they worked out together once in awhile, so I met him. I was 21 or 22 years old, so it was a big deal. You meet a big-leaguer and are trying to play it cool — you’re a professional now — but it was Mike Stanley. That’s cool. I thought it was kind of a big deal. I got to know him a little bit.”
Fast forward to August 12, 2000. Stanley was playing for the Oakland Athletics, while Nitkowski was pitching in relief for the Tigers. A request was made in the dugout during the sixth inning. Read the rest of this entry »
Joe Ryan is about as steady a pitcher as you’ll find in the big leagues. Since his first full season in the majors, 2022, Ryan has never made fewer than 23 starts. He’s never thrown fewer than 135 innings nor more than 171, and his season-by-season WAR has stayed between 2.2 and 3.1. He hasn’t been a front-end starter, but he’s making just $6.2 million, which is a tremendous bargain. He was a hot commodity who somehow stayed put during the Twins’ fire sale last summer; if Minnesota is out of contention again, you’ll probably hear his name come up at this coming deadline, as well.
It also helps that Ryan is having a career year at the right time. He’s already at 2.1 WAR on the season, and we’re only about a third of the way through the calendar. That puts him fifth in the league. He’s also sixth in FIP, 12th in strikeouts, and 10th among qualified starters in K-BB%. Read the rest of this entry »
Austin Martin appears to be coming into his own. Playing in what is shaping up to be his first full major league season, the 27-year-old Minnesota Twins outfielder is slashing .289/.396/.394 with a pair of home runs and a 130 wRC+ over 169 plate appearances. His track record coming into the campaign was somewhat spotty. Hampered by injuries — hamstring and oblique strains among them — he’d played in just 143 big league games, 93 as a rookie in 2024, and 50 last year. Moreover, while his .698 OPS and 101 wRC+ were credible, they fell short of what is expected from a player with his pedigree. Martin was drafted fifth overall in 2020 by the Toronto Blue Jays out of Vanderbilt University.
Uneven performances down on the farm are also part of his backstory. Trying to be something he’s not is one of the reasons why. Acquired by the Twins in the 2021 trade deadline deal that sent José Berríos to Toronto, Martin attempted to hit for more power than what his natural skillset suggests he should. Subsequently returning to his roots has helped fuel his long-awaited breakthrough.
“Being healthy is part of it, but more than anything, I reverted back to the player I was in college,” explained Martin, who was an OBP machine (.474) over his three seasons as a Commodore. “When I got to professional baseball, I started trying to play the numbers game instead of playing the game itself. I got too far away from myself in terms of trying to pull the ball in the air, doing more damage, getting higher [exit] velocities. That’s never been the type of player I am. I’m just a baseball player. I don’t do anything that will jump at you. I’m more of a consistency, play-the-game-the-right-way sort of guy.”
I asked the DeLand, Florida native if the attempts to up his pop were largely org-driven, or more something that he aspired to do on his own. Read the rest of this entry »
Expectations were generally quite low for the Minnesota Twins coming into the 2026 season after last summer’s fire sale that resulted in the departure of seven players from the 26-man roster, including Carlos Correa and half the bullpen. To defy those expectations this year, the Twins needed to wring as much performance as they could out of the talent that remained. In the early going, Ryan Jeffers did more than meet his projection, hitting .295/.408/.541 for a sterling 165 wRC+. At 1.7 WAR in just under two months, he was already nearing his career-best 2.3 WAR from 2023. Now, a broken left hamate bone will likely knock him out for four to six weeks, resulting in a lot more Victor Caratini in the lineup than anyone wants to see.
The Twins also held onto third baseman Royce Lewis last summer. Part of that was because he was affordable and under club control through the 2028 season, but it was also because he took a major step backward last year and wouldn’t have fetched them much in a trade. The oft-injured Lewis was a crucial part of the last Minnesota team to make the postseason in 2023, and the hope was that he would bounce back this season. Instead, a .539 OPS and some fairly extreme struggles with contact earned him a trip to Triple-A St. Paul.
Neither player’s stat line in 2026 looks like a fluke. Jeffers has shown continual improvement in his plate discipline over the last few years, and his walk rate was higher than ever in 2026. After debuting with a contact rate hovering around the 70% mark in 2020-2021 and running a 77.0% rate across 2022-2024, Jeffers increased his contact rate to 80.7% last year, and he was making contact at an 85.5% clip in 2026 before his injury. While he’s not going to absolutely destroy baseballs like Giancarlo Stanton or Oneil Cruz, Jeffers makes enough meaningful contact to do damage, especially for a catcher.
Caratini is a serviceable enough backup, but he’s a bit stretched as a starter, and six weeks of him in the lineup versus Jeffers does shrink Minnesota’s playoff odds a bit. With an uninjured Jeffers, ZiPS projected the Twins to have a 23.1% chance of making the playoffs this year. With the injury, though, their probability is down to 20.5%. That’s not a crazy-large gap, but it’s a major hit to take just from losing a single player for a quarter of a season.
Lewis hasn’t been completely healthy in 2026, but the sprained knee that sent him to the injured list last month isn’t really a satisfying explanation for what’s wrong with him. He’s been an absolute mess on offense, striking out in 31.1% of his plate appearances, nearly a 50% increase from his career strikeout rate. His contact rates have plummeted, suggesting that his inflated percentage of strikeouts is legitimate. His overall contact rate is down to 65.6%, well into the danger zone, and he’s making contact just 78.3% of the time when he swings at pitches in the zone, nearly five percentage points below his career mark. Meanwhile, his out-of-zone contact rate is a career-worst 44.0%, and he’s swinging at 32.8% of the pitches he sees outside the zone. Noticing all of this, pitchers are throwing 38.3% of their pitches to Lewis into the chase/waste zones compared to 29.8% last year. These numbers are highly concerning, especially because they tend to be quite meaningful in small sample sizes, enough to raise serious questions about Lewis’ future. Entering 2026, ZiPS saw him as a .730ish OPS guy over the next few years. That is no longer the case:
ZiPS Projection – Royce Lewis
Year
BA
OBP
SLG
AB
R
H
2B
3B
HR
RBI
BB
SO
SB
OPS+
WAR
2027
.234
.296
.411
367
45
86
17
0
16
54
32
93
9
94
1.1
2028
.235
.298
.406
362
44
85
17
0
15
53
32
90
8
93
1.0
2029
.231
.295
.394
355
42
82
16
0
14
51
32
88
7
89
0.7
To replace him, Minnesota is likely to go with some combination of Tristan Gray, Orlando Arcia, and Ryan Kreidler. With that trio, the Twins are projected to rank 30th out of the 30 major league teams in production from their third basemen. If they’re going to have any hope at the hot corner, they’re going to need Lewis to figure things out in the minors and then right the ship in the majors. Otherwise, ZiPS thinks their best option at third base is to sign 36-year-old free agent utilityman Jon Berti. That’s bleak.
To add insult (and… injury) to injury, the Twins also lost another possible bat this week when 23-year-old prospect Emmanuel Rodriguez suffered a torn UCL in his left thumb, which will require surgery to repair. Rodriguez’s power upside and ability to play center field are tantalizing, but this is yet another setback for him in a professional career in which he has never been able to get on the field for 100 games in a season. ZiPS evaluates him as a 110 wRC+ hitter in the majors, but his impressively varied array of injuries has prevented him from getting a chance to try and do that in the big leagues for real.
No AL Central team is a juggernaut, and hanging in the playoff race well into the summer could have done a lot to improve fan perceptions of the Twins, who entered this season with their smallest payroll in some time. According to Baseball Prospectus/Cot’s Contracts, Minnesota’s payroll this season is its lowest since 2014 (excluding 2020 payroll, which is only lower because of the 60-game season). Adjusted for inflation, this is the team’s tiniest payroll since 2009.
The 2026 Twins are not dead and buried, even with the Jeffers injury and Lewis’ offensive issues. After all, nobody in the AL Central is capable enough to dig them a very deep grave. But their margin of error has shrunk considerably, and unless they can conjure up a quick answer or two soon, the Twins may end up extending their fire sale into another summer.
The best team in baseball will be without its biggest star for a few weeks.
The Braves placed Ronald Acuña Jr. on the injured list Sunday with a strained left hamstring. Acuña exited Saturday’s game after pulling up in considerable pain while running out a groundout. Manager Walt Weisstold reporters that imaging revealed a Grade 1 strain, the least severe grade. According to MLB.com, Weiss said:
“It’s not going to be just a couple days. It’s gonna be more than that, so we need to put him on the IL, and hopefully it’ll be sooner than later. No idea with these soft tissue injuries how long they’re gonna take, but I think the silver lining is that the MRI showed it wasn’t too serious.”
While many players return from Grade 1 hamstring strains in just a couple weeks, or even following the 10-day minimum, this is an injury that can linger and delay a return.
This is, obviously, less than ideal for the Braves. Acuña is their best player and was projected in the preseason as the ninth-best position player in baseball with 5.4 WAR, according to our Depth Charts. Though his performance hasn’t been spectacular thus far, with a 111 wRC+ in 152 plate appearances, his .381 xwOBA and 12.2% barrel rate — along with strong strikeout and walk rates — suggest he hasn’t missed a beat this year, coming off his bounce-back 2025 season.
Of course, last year was a comeback campaign because Acuña missed most 2024 (and the early part of 2025) after tearing his ACL. He also missed chunks of 2021 and 2022 with a torn ACL in his other knee. In 2018, he missed about a month with a mild ACL sprain. That means Acuña’s hamstring strain is his fourth lower body injury requiring IL time in his career. Read the rest of this entry »
Entering the 2023 season, Taj Bradley was the no. 36 prospect in baseball, a 22-year-old ace who overmatched his opponents to such a degree that he forced himself to the majors for the back half of the year.
In 2025, Taj Bradley was traded straight up for Griffin Jax, a 31-year-old reliever who has accrued exactly zero wins above replacement for the Rays since that trade.
In 2026, Taj Bradley has been one of the best pitchers in the major leagues.
That’s some roller coaster. And while my first instinct is to take Bradley’s first four starts with a giant grain of salt, this isn’t your average “random dude has good stretch” story. Bradley truly is one of the most dynamic pitchers in the world. He’s electric on the mound. He wasn’t a 55-FV prospect by accident. So let’s take a look at what he’s changed, what he hasn’t changed, and whether this recent run of dominance looks like the portent of a new skill level or just a blip on the graph. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to a new season of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) In Baseball This Week. After a slow, veteran-who-signed-late-this-spring style warmup to the year, it’s time for another dive into the little details that catch my eye each week. It’s the perfect time of year for it. Beautiful weather, early-season optimism, overheard conversations about who should bat third and who’s a bum – it all fuses together to make this one of my favorite parts of the baseball calendar. And even though the WBC whetted my appetite for the spectacular somewhat, there’s really no replacing major league games for the sheer variety of entertainment. I’m sure that Zach Lowe of The Ringer, whose old NBA column format I’ve borrowed, would say the same thing about the basketball regular season. Let’s talk baseball.
1. Ricochets
If you share my baseball consumption habits, it might seem like every weekday offers a Royals game, a Guardians game, or a Royals-Guardians game. And I love it! I’ll take any excuse to watch Maikel Garcia continue his ascent from contact hitter to do-it-all superstar, a kind of modern-day José Ramírez. And I get to watch the actual José Ramírez too? And Bobby Witt Jr.? And Steven Kwan, Vinnie Pasquantino, Bo Naylor, and old favorite Michael Wacha? Both of these teams are sneaky fun, and their series this week didn’t disappoint. Witt might be having a slow start on offense, but he’s still a defensive genius:
Lots of shortstops – pretty much every other shortstop, even – would get only one out, somewhere, on that play. But two?! Ludicrous. When Garcia’s lunging attempt caromed toward Witt, he turned from interested observer to protagonist so smoothly that it looked like he was planning on doing it the whole time. It started with his feet. Instead of charging the ricochet, Witt timed his steps to hop to a stop and get his body in as good a throwing position as he could:
We know the steps to the annual spring dance by now: Pitcher appears for spring training, pitcher suffers minor injury or discomfort during practice, America holds its collective breath and hopes that barking elbow will just resolve itself.
Unfortunately, that hope is all too rarely vindicated, as imaging quickly confirms said pitcher has torn an essential bit of connective tissue.
The Twins speed-ran this dance this week with their no. 1 starter, Pablo López. The veteran right-hander cut short a bullpen session on Monday after feeling soreness in his elbow. Minnesota GM Jeremy Zoll announced Tuesday that López had torn an elbow ligament and that season-ending surgery was “very much on the table.” Read the rest of this entry »
Meg Rowley shares her euphoric reaction to the Seahawks’ Super Bowl win, while Ben Lindbergh largely listens and occasionally interjects with bits of baseball commentary. Then (29:14) they discuss Buck Martinez’s retirement, Terrance Gore’s untimely death, and a purported catching super-prospect, before previewing the 2026 Pittsburgh Pirates (44:23) with Roundtable Sports’ John Perrotto, and the 2026 Minnesota Twins (1:25:07) with The Athletic’s Aaron Gleeman.
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