FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag: March 28, 2026
We did it everyone! We made it through the long offseason. Regular season baseball is back, and it has already delivered the goods. I attended Mets-Pirates at Citi Field on Opening Day to witness the highly anticipated pitching matchup between reigning NL Cy Young winner Paul Skenes and new New York ace Freddy Peralta. Naturally, Skenes had the worst game of his career thus far, failing to make it through the first inning, and Peralta didn’t pitch well either. The two teams combined for 18 runs in the 8 1/2 innings of play. I wrote about the Skenes start, the two defensive blunders by Oneil Cruz in center field that contributed to Pittsburgh’s first-inning fiasco, and the lineup’s surprisingly strong showing. You can read that here.
Because I was covering that contest, I didn’t get a chance to watch any of the other early games and saw only a portion of the later ones. That means I missed White Sox catcher Edgar Quero successfully challenge three ball calls in the first two innings before finally getting one wrong in the sixth inning. In that same game, which the Brewers won 14-2, Jacob Misiorowski struck out 11 Chicago batters. I also didn’t catch the pitcher’s duel between Orioles lefty Trevor Rogers and Twins righty Joe Ryan; Baltimore won, 2-1, and Adley Rutschman, not to be confused with Badley, went 2-for-4, though Tyler O’Neill’s Opening Day home run streak was snapped at six. In the later afternoon games, the Cardinals scored eight runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to secure a comeback win over the Rays, after allowing Tampa Bay to plate six runs in the top of the frame. JJ Wetherholt, who went 1-for-4 with a home run and two RBI in that game, was one of a number of prospects who shined in their big league debuts. Kevin McGonigle had four hits in the Tigers’ 8-2 win over the Padres, and Justin Crawford went 2-for-4 in the Phillies’ win over the Rangers. I actually got to see Mets right fielder Carson Benge blast his first homer, this after a dead bird had fallen in front of him in right field. It wasn’t technically his first major league game because he debuted in the postseason last year, but Cleveland’s Chase DeLauter bopped two home runs in a 6-4 win over the Mariners.
I ran through all those games up top because that’s the last we’ll be covering the Opening Day action in this week’s mailbag. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions about Matt McLain’s strong spring, Aaron Judge’s low squared-up rate, players who might benefit the most from ABS, and Tony Vitello. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.
Matt is the associate editor of FanGraphs. Previously, he was the baseball editor at Sports Illustrated. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Men’s Health, Baseball Prospectus, and Lindy’s Sports Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @ByMattMartell and Blue Sky @mattmartell.bsky.social.
Leave it to Major League Baseball to introduce a system that not only fails to reduce framing’s importance but that actually makes it *more* important instead.
It also looks like hitters are much worse at challenging than catchers, so that would seem to increase the framing advantage as well. That said, I like the challenge system just because egregious calls can get overturned, even if they tend to be rare.
It makes perfect sense to me that batters would challenge more against strong framers, but I have no idea what to make of them failing 89% of the time against Hedges. It’s entirely possible it’s just small sample, spring training, testing the new system randomness, but 1/9 feels a little more than just random. I guess we’ll see how it plays it out in the regular season.
It’s going to be really funny if the best framers are so good they’re fooling the machines.
Prosaically, one of the claims good framers make is that they’re often getting calls on the edge of the regulation zone.
I guess if the machine zone is bigger in spots than the zone that usually gets called, the framers would get those strikes, and batters would be more likely to challenge them if they’re balls.
…Keibert Ruiz being in second might suggest that the effect also works the opposite way, if he’s using ABS to bail himself out of his bad framing.
I didn’t know that reducing framing’s importance was the goal? In fact, the fact that they went to a challenge system (instead of full ABS) was supposedly in part because they wanted to continue to reward catchers who had developed that skill. Seems like it’s working!
I don’t know why MLB decided to do it, and I am not sure they did either. The generous interpretation is that they were tired of Angel Hernandez blowing calls and having to answer questions about it. The less generous interpretation is that they did because it feels like something sports leagues should do. But who knows, maybe it will be good?
C.B. Bucknor had 6 calls overturned today.
Do I get a prize Davy? (Ref to opening day chat)
I don’t know that Vitello’s detractors would call him a red ass or rah rah guy as much as he seems (I am biased; I hate the Vols) as a big time “look at me” guy that kind of seems to try to always take the spotlight. But if his players love him, and I don’t think it’s some grand conspiracy where they all secretly hate him, then I don’t know that it’ll be a problem. My feeling is the most important tactical skill for managers is to manage the bullpen, and then to otherwise stay out of the way.
I would argue that, especially with college players, making it all about you is objectively the best managerial ethos. It really shields your players from criticism by acting like a lightning rod for it.
I’ve always thought the same is somewhat true in the majors. Historically a number of the best managers of all time are very outspoken. In a world that is more outwardly critical of athlete performance than ever before I would think that skill set would have some value.
Of course major leaguers are generally better at ignoring critics but we know that isn’t true universally.
I think the best take as much blame or criticism as possible, but try to confer the praise onto the players.
Thanks for this. I now know not to even glance at “squared up %” going forward.
It’s not quite as bad as the “Clutch” stat but it is like it where the denominator makes it not useful for anything we would care about.
The real Tony V question can’t be answered until the Giants first roadtrip; will he and his assistants run a strip of painters tape across the players hotel room doors to know whether they snuck out past curfew?