Leading off the bottom of the first inning on Wednesday, Harrison Bader worked a full count against Eric Lauer and hit a single up the middle. In a matchup between two promising National League rookies, Bader appeared to have the upper hand. Tommy Pham stepped in and saw a first-pitch strike, and then the Cardinals TV broadcast said the following:

One thing to keep in mind — Lauer has a tremendous pickoff move. He has picked off four in four consecutive games.
[pause]
Now five.

That quickly, Bader was erased. Eric Lauer has picked off a runner five games in a row. This is just the fifth time that’s known to have happened in major-league history, and this active streak is a Padres franchise record. The major-league leader in pickoffs in 2016 had six. The major-league leader in pickoffs in 2017 had seven. Lauer already has seven in 2018. He’s two ahead of anyone else, even though he’s thrown just 45 innings. Sure, if you wanted to be critical, you could say that Lauer has given himself plenty of pickoff opportunities. But he’s been a baserunner-erasing machine. When Lauer is on the mound, every runner has to be careful.

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Juan Soto is 19 years old and has hit 19 home runs this season. Of those 19 dingers, 14 happened before Soto reached the majors, but two of the MLB homers were hit last night. Through 76 plate appearances, Soto is putting up a Mike Trout-like .344/.447/.641 slash line good for a 192 wRC+ and an intriguing nickname. Hitting so well for a month is great, but it isn’t out of this world. So far this season, there have been 12 players who have put up a monthly split worth a 190 wRC+ or higher. That list includes names like Trout, Mookie Betts, Jose Ramirez, Francisco Lindor, and Manny Machado, but it also includes names like Daniel Robertson, Christian Villanueva, Brandon Crawford, and Scooter Gennett. What that hot start has done is changed Soto’s outlook both for this season and his career.

Soto has already drastically changed his projections for the year. Here are the top 30 hitters in baseball going forward according to our Depth Chart projections.

The projections say that at 19 years old, Juan Soto is one of the top 15 hitters in the game. The list above is an impressive one. Look at some of the names after Soto: Jose Ramirez, Carlos Correa, Jose Altuve. These are the very best hitters in baseball, and Soto looks to be their peer. Soto rose so quickly in part because of how little time he spent in the minors. As Eric Longenhagen wrote when Soto was called up, in recent history, only Alex Rodriguez had less experience in the minors than Soto. An injury last season kept his game log to a minimum, and that meant he was a bit underrated as a prospect entering the season. He was ranked No. 45 here at FanGraphs, and no major service put him among the top-20 prospects in baseball.

The recent update to the top prospects list here put Soto at No. 9, but he seems unlikely to make the list next season as he exhausts his rookie eligibility in the coming months. It’s difficult to understate how rare Soto’s performance is thus far, as his presence alone in the majors makes him a historical oddity. When Ronald Acuña was called up at just 20 years old earlier this season, Jay Jaffe conducted an analysis on debuts and the Hall of Fame. He found that of the 238 retired players to take a single plate appearance in the majors at 19 years old, 25 made the Hall of Fame, a roughly one-in-ten shot. Jaffe went a bit further and found that only 59 players in history took 100 plate appearances at Soto’s age, and of the 54 retired players, 13 went on to become Hall of Famers.

To try and put Soto’s season in context, I went back to 1905 and looked for players with at least 50 plate appearances at 19 years old or below. Soto already appears on the first page of the WAR leaderboards.

Of the 12 retired players above Soto, six are Hall of Famers. Three of the five players directly behind him are Hall of Famers, and the sixth player is Mike Trout. Also of interest, seven players have put up six-win seasons at age 20, and the only one not in the list above is Ted Williams. That list features nine of the best 13 age-20 seasons in history. Soto only has 76 plate appearances so far, but he’s also not done yet. For fun, let’s add two potential Sotos to the list above. One hypothetical Soto is completely unrealistic, but it shows what he would do with another 300 or so plate appearances if he kept up his torrid pace. The other version is more realistic, showing Soto’s rest-of-season projections combined with what he’s done so far.

Juan Soto is currently projected to have the sixth-best season by a 19-year-old since 1905 (and yes, I cherry-picked the year to get Ty Cobb in there). Of the six players to hit two wins in a season at Soto’s age, four are already in the Hall of Fame, a fifth is his teammate Bryce Harper, and the sixth, Edgar Renteria, put up 35 WAR in an underrated career. Refining the list a bit, here are the seasons of at least 300 plate appearances and a wRC+ of 100, a list Soto will crack after a couple-hundred plate appearances and a wRC+ above 70 the rest of the way.

Juan Soto’s season is special just because he made it to the major leagues. His season is spectacular due to his performance so far, and if history is any indication, he’s about to have a monstrous career.3

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Jordan Hicks once deserved our attention because he was the hardest-throwing pitcher in baseball. He later commanded more of our time because he couldn’t get any strikeouts despite that incredible velocity. Hicks is once again being highlighted at FanGraphs because he has appeared to resolve his previous issues. Over the last three weeks, in fact, he’s been the best reliever in baseball.

Hicks is still fascinating because he throws the ball really hard. His 99.7-mph average on his fastball still tops MLB with a healthy lead over Aroldis Chapman, per Baseball Savant. He’s thrown 180 pitches of at least 100 mph with Chapman’s 103 the only pitcher within 125 of him. He’s thrown more fastballs above 102 mph than below 97 mph this season as the graph below shows.

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Entering play today, four American League teams have better than a 94% chance of making the playoffs. You are probably aware that those teams are the Yankees, Red Sox, Indians, and Astros. The Yankees (99.9%), Red Sox (99.6%), and Astros (99.8%) are projected as locks for the postseason barring a series of catastrophes. The Astros (+138), Red Sox (+103), and Yankees (+91) also rank Nos. 1-2-3 in the majors in run differential. In 2016, only five clubs in baseball produced 100-plus run differentials. In 2015 and 2014? Only four.

The only postseason races that appear likely to provide compelling theatre later this summer are the battle for the AL East crown (the Yankees and Red Sox ought to be aggressive buyers) and the second Wild Card. But with Shohei Ohtani’s right UCL apparently hanging on by a thread, and Andrelton Simmons also on the DL, the Mariners are in a seemingly strong position to capture the second Wild Card — though their modest run differential (+27) casts some doubt over their staying power, leaving open the door open for the Twins and Angels. The Mariners, with what remains of the farm system, also ought to try and strengthen their grasp of a playoff position.

Still, the Mariners (73.5%) are the only other AL team with better than coin-flip odds of making the postseason. In fact, the Mariners and Angels are the only other two teams with double-digit odds of making the playoffs.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the end of Steven Brault‘s strikeout streak, Brandon Nimmo‘s non-HBP, Jacob deGrom‘s and Mike Trout’s latest futile heroics, the Mariners’ luck, leaked umpire audio, Hank Aaron on bottle boning, the new-and-improved Jordan Hicks, Miguel Cabrera being done for the year, post-substitution ejections, and a clever college play, then answer listener emails about Manny Margot, lineup loopholes, technical fouls, LeBron James, and Steph Curry, a league of John Jasos, strikeout-free shutouts, doubleheader hangovers and the AL East, and AL fans vs. NL fans, plus Stat Blasts about players per team, teams with the most impending retirees, and MLB fathers vs. MLB sons, two more J.R Smith analogs, and two more DH updates.

Audio intro: The Drifters, "Jackpot"
Audio outro: Jon Auer, "Bottom of the Bottle"

Link to Jeff’s Brandon Nimmo post
Link to Ben’s article about the Mariners’ luck
Link to linked umpire audio
Link to the Gators’ trick play
Link to Ben’s Jordan Hicks article
Link to research on doubleheader hangovers
Link to research about player fatigue effects
Link to data on players per team
Link to data teams with the most swan songs
Link to data on father-son WAR totals

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The Rangers’ two-game visit to Chavez Ravine wasn’t just a chance for Dodgers fans to watch a relatively unfamiliar team, it was an opportunity to see a future Hall of Famer (and former Dodger) claim one more slice of history. With two hits on Tuesday night and then three more on Wednesday, Adrian Beltre tied and then surpassed the recently retired (?) Ichiro Suzuki for the most hits by a player born outside the United States. Back on April 5, Beltre surpassed Rod Carew (3.054) for the most hits by a Latin America-born player. With Wednesday’s binge, he’s up to 3,092.

Here’s the go-ahead hit, a fourth-inning double to right-center field off Kenta Maeda:

https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/UnfoldedGregariousBighornedsheep

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Recently, I wrote an article about the very surprising Max Muncy. That was published on June 4, which is only about a week and a half ago. The way this tends to work, we write articles about players when we can’t ignore their hot streaks anymore, and then, invariably, regression sets in. Not so, in this case. At least, not yet. Since June 4, Muncy has batted 31 times. He has eight walks and ten hits, four of which have left the yard. Muncy has actually gone deep four games in a row.

Muncy didn’t even figure into our preseason Dodgers depth chart. I doubt the Dodgers were thinking too much about him, either. Muncy was projected by both Steamer and ZiPS as a below-replacement player. Well, he’s come to the plate 157 times, and out of everyone with 150 plate appearances, Muncy ranks third in baseball in wRC+, behind only Mookie Betts and Mike Trout. The picture, according to expected wOBA, is only a little bit different — within the same player pool, Muncy ranks fifth, between Freddie Freeman and Joey Votto. The numbers are spectacular, and the size of the sample is only growing.

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The rebuilding Tigers weren’t headed anywhere in particular, quickly or slowly, in 2018, but whatever their eventual destination, Miguel Cabrera won’t be going with them. In the third inning of Tuesday night’s game game against the Twins, the 35-year-old slugger ruptured his left biceps tendon while swinging a bat. He had to be replaced mid-plate appearance, underwent an MRI while the game was still in progress, and was discovered to need season-ending surgery. It’s just the latest frustrating turn in a Hall-of-Fame career that, alas, hasn’t lacked for bum notes in recent years.

Cabrera suffered the injury while whiffing at strike two against Jake Odorizzi. He immediately doubled over in pain, grabbed his left arm and headed towards the Tigers’ dugout:

https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/UnawareSlipperyHartebeest

“He took a swing, missed the ball, and the thing popped. It’s pretty sad,” said manager Ron Gardenhire.

This is Cabrera’s second issue involving his left biceps this year and his second trip to the disabled list. He missed three games in late April and early May due to a biceps muscle spasm, then played in just six innings of the Tigers’ May 3 game before leaving with a right hamstring strain that sidelined him for four weeks. Despite the injuries, he had been productive if not his dominant in his 38 games, hitting .299/.395/.448 with a 123 wRC+, 0.8 WAR, and a modest three homers.

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