2:03

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to another one of my Tuesday chats. This one is from the field office in Wellfleet, where I’m stationed for two weeks with my family — working this week, off next is the plan. Not long ago, my piece on Jack Flaherty’s bounceback went up (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-change-of-scenery-has-worked-well-for-ja…), and yesterday I looked at the injuries to the Dodgers’ Mookie Betts and Yoshinobu Yamamoto (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/dodgers-double-whammy-as-yamamoto-and-bett…)

2:04	Jay Jaffe: Tomorrow I’ll have something on the Yankees and Anthony Rizzo’s broken arm. Injuries have cut into my list of players I was planning on checking into; some of those might have to wait until after I return. We’ll see

2:06

Jay Jaffe: Kelenic is 24 years old, and while that’s too young to write off, a quick look at his splits and trends tells me not to get very excited about two hot weeks. Yes, he’s hitting the ball harder but not that hard, he’s also chasing more than you’d like, and unlike last year, he’s really struggling against lefties.

2:08	Jay Jaffe: Assuming they don’t secede from Major League Baseball, I would think so, but I don’t make the schedule. I imagine they’re coming soon – obviously, it’s a deep system with lots of interesting players who are becoming more relevant as the July 30 deadline approaches.

Read the rest of this entry »

While Tarik Skubal has pitched his way into the Cy Young conversation, Jack Flaherty has done his share of the heavy lifting when it comes to helping the Tigers toward respectability. After years of battling injuries, capped by a rough campaign that included a mid-year change of address, the 28-year-old righty is in the middle of his best season in half a decade thanks to another change of scenery. He also should generate plenty of interest ahead of the July 30 trade deadline. On Saturday, Flaherty turned in five shutout innings in a blowout of the Astros, his third consecutive scoreless outing.

Flaherty’s 16.2-inning scoreless streak hasn’t gone entirely smoothly, but it began in impressive fashion. On May 30, he no-hit the Red Sox for 6.1 innings before allowing a single to Rob Refsnyder, then retired one more hitter before departing. On June 4, he threw five shutout innings against the Rangers, allowing two hits and no walks, but exited after 60 pitches due to lower back tightness. At the time, he described the early exit as “more precautionary than anything,” having pitched through a bout of tightness he felt prior to taking the mound. Instead of taking his next turn, he received an injection of some kind (not cortisone) on June 10, and recovered well enough to take the mound this past Saturday. He pitched well, allowing just three hits (including a double and a triple) and a walk, and striking out six. He exited after throwing just 73 pitches, in part because the Tigers led 10-0 at that point; he had struggled to find a rhythm due to the long delays between innings as Detroit pummeled Houston starter Spencer Arrighetti and reliever Shawn Dubin in what ended as a 13-5 rout.

Though Flaherty’s four-seam fastball averaged just 92.2 mph, down 1.4 mph from his seasonal average, he generated five of his six strikeouts with the pitch, four via called strikes; his CSW% (called strike and walk rate) for the pitch was 38%. He struck out Jose Altuve twice, once chasing a knuckle curve and once looking at a 95.3-mph fastball; the latter was his fastest pitch of the game as well as his final one. Read the rest of this entry »

Triston Casas — as evidenced by his Talks Hitting interview last summer — has a thoughtful approach to his craft. The 24-year-old Boston Red Sox slugger, who is currently on the injured list with torn rib cartilage, is not afraid to be himself, as many fans experienced during his in-game interview with ESPN on Sunday Night Baseball on Father’s Day. Call him quirky or what you will, but when it comes to damaging baseballs, Casas knows his stuff. Over 687 career plate appearances, he has 35 home runs and a 128 wRC+.

Casas talked about his preparation process prior to a recent game at Fenway Park.

———

David Laurila: How do you train for hitting?

Triston Casas: “When you say hitting, I’m assuming that you mean striking the ball. There is so much that goes into the striking of the baseball. There are a lot of moving parts mechanically [and] mentally that culminate into the perfect storm of creating that compression between the barrel of the bat and the ball. How do I train that? It has a lot to do with my weight room routine. I try to think of the swing as my most athletic move. I don’t want it to be mechanical, rigid, or thought about. I just want it to be fluid. Effortless.”

Laurila: And reactional, I would assume…

Casas: “For sure. If you think about how difficult it is to hit a baseball… I mean, the plate is seven balls wide and, generously, about 10 balls high. You’ve got to cover a range of about 30 miles an hour, between 70 and 100 — that’s typically the normal range of speeds — and then there is a pitch that moves to every direction at the bottom side of a clock. So, you multiply 30 times 70 times about six, generously — maybe seven or eight — and it is a lot of possibilities. Not to mention that every single pitcher is a different height. They all have different dimensions in terms of their wingspans. They all get out to a different extension point or release height.

“There can be two 80 mph curveballs that… I mean, I can go look back at my at-bats and there can be two 80-mph curveballs right down the middle, and they’re still not the same pitch. They’re coming from different release heights. The rpms are different. The metrics on them are all different. So, it’s not just as easy as ‘Oh, let me look at two swings side by side of the same exact pitch,’ because conditions might be different. Defensive positioning might be different. My setup should have been different. And my thought process, my approach… all those things factor into how I stand in the box, and the in-at-bat adjustments that I’m making throughout the season.

“Training hitting is about an innate ability to just go out there and compete. In my opinion, there aren’t a lot of mechanical drills that you can do. Yeah, there are certain cues that you can give yourself mentally to try to get yourself in a good position, or put yourself in a good powerful contact position — the balanced one. There are definitely a lot of characteristics that great hitters have in common, but ultimately it’s about being able to make a decision after the ball is released. That’s one of the things I talk about a lot with the hitters here. Trying to be anticipative and beat the ball to a spot is not a good recipe for success. Yeah, it might create a result, but it’s one that’s falsified. It’s happy-go-lucky. But to create a long sustainable amount of success, I feel like there has to be a reactionary, involuntary, timed… a war, almost. It’s a war in your body and in your mind.

“That’s how I train hitting, by not overcomplicating the mechanics. It’s about understanding that, for me, it’s a lot about having feel within the box. It’s about going out there trying to execute a game plan.”

Laurila: With no two pitches being exactly the same in mind, do you train with a Trajekt? That individualizes a pitcher’s velocity, movement, and slot. Correct?

Casas: “Yes, they are individualizing the release points, and all that, but it’s not simulating how the pitcher tips the curveball. Even though it’s a projection of a pitcher, every pitcher out there on the mound — whether they think it or not, or whether anybody else does — tips the pitch, because they have to do something differently to throw a curveball than a fastball. Within that pitch, or him coming down the mound, there is an adjustment that he has to make to take off the velocity and add spin. A Trajekt doesn’t necessarily project that.

“I do see how the Trajekt can benefit some hitters. I actually do like to use the Trajekt — I can’t speak for anybody else — but it’s mostly just for the timing of his motion. It’s a little bit better of a gauge than to just do it off of video from the back, per se. Getting his timing off just scouting-report videos would be a little tough. Getting a projected image, so that I can kind of sync in my dance with the pitcher, is where I can see the Trajekt to be most beneficial.

“In terms of trying to develop a game plan because of his plot chart, and his pitch characteristics, and the metrics of his slider — or breaking balls compared to one another — it’s not that accurate to where I can really be, ‘Yeah, that looks exactly like it does out there.’ That said, the Trajekt is a great tool. I’ve been using it a lot in my rehabilitation process, just in terms of tracking and trying to stay sharp with my reaction times.

“It’s something that I want to incorporate into my game-day routine. I haven’t done so up to now, I’ve just taken a few swings off a regular machine and then let it rip come game time.”

Laurila: Why haven’t you used it for game-day prep up to this point?

Casas: “It’s something I had never really done before this level, so I tried to not overcomplicate things and add to something that I didn’t feel needed adjusting in my routine.”

Laurila: Do the Red Sox have Trajekt in the minors?

Casas: “They have it now in Triple-A, but when I was in Triple-A in 2022 they did not. Then, last year, in 2023, they were still fine-tuning it. I haven’t found a way to buy into it yet, but I’m really starting to like it. Even if it’s just for something as simple as tracking, or even bunting, just trying to get that reaction time back in my favor.”

Laurila: What do you mean by bunting?

Csasas: “Literally standing in there and tracking the ball all the way to the barrel and trying to manipulate the contact point to whichever side of the field I want. Bunting is such a powerful tool and skill to display out there. But just to be able to do it in a controlled environment… like, the Trajekt is still tough. I feel like it can help you slow down the ball, which is everything in hitting — being able to try to make a 98-mph fastball look like an 88-mph fastball. That’s what great hitters do. They have quiet heads and balanced positions. They make the game look slower than than it actually is.”

Laurila: Training for high velocity, say an Ohtani fastball, can only help…

Casas: “I’ve asked for exaggerated characteristics on the Trajekt, because I want it to seem a little unrealistic. Some people like it a little more toned down, because they want to feel confident going into the game. I prefer my practice to be a little more challenging. I’ve asked for verticals of 27-28. I’ve asked for horizontals that are unrealistic. I like the challenge. So yeah, I could definitely see myself using it more.”

Laurila: Is there anything else, preparation-wise, that we should be touching on? I know that you’re big on meditation and visualization…

Casas: “Of course. They’re such a big part of my routine. You can make anything look like you want to in your head. Whoever I’m facing that day, or for the at-bat, I can adjust anything that I want. If I close my eyes and imagine a pitcher vividly enough, I can make his characteristics jump off the page. I can make his breaking ball so sharp. I can make his two-seam run from my mid-back to the inside corner. I can picture his pitches doing what they do.

“Even when I do my tracking in the bullpen… the eyes are such an underrated part of the body and part of training. There are muscles within eyes that are underdeveloped if you don’t really progress them. The eyes are the most important thing in hitting. Anybody will tell you that. It’s such an undertrained tool. The eyes and ability to have depth perception — it’s such an underappreciated, under-talked-about skill to be able to look at the space in front of the ball. It’s not just looking at the ball. It’s being able to anticipate the ball’s movement, the rotation, based off whatever tips the pitcher may be allowing you to have. That all goes into my process and preparation.”

At first glance, Josh Rojas and Derek Zoolander don’t have a lot in common. Rojas is a third baseman, while Zoolander is a fictional male model. Rojas is from Arizona, while Zoolander is from an unnamed coal mining town in Appalachia. They have different jobs, different lives, and again, one is a fictional character. But one thing unites the two: Their careers took off when they learned how to go left.

In 2022, Rojas settled into a role as an everyday third baseman after years of bouncing between positions. Just one problem: He was one of the worst defenders in the major leagues at the hot corner. That was the consensus of scouts when he was a prospect, and defensive metrics bore it out. He particularly struggled ranging towards second base. Statcast breaks defensive opportunities up based on which direction a player has to move to make the play. When Rojas was moving to his right, forward, or backward, he was one run above average defensively. When he went left, he was seven runs below average. 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.

No division race is tighter than the AL East, with the Yankees leading the Orioles by just 1.5 games ahead of their three-game matchup that begins tonight in the Bronx. Both teams are virtual locks to make the playoffs, but securing the division title is crucial because of the almost-certain bye that would come with it. This is a fierce race that looks like it’ll go down to the wire, but these head-to-head games might not be as important for their divisional hopes as their off-the-field showdown leading up to the trade deadline.

While the Orioles and Yankees won’t have much overlap in terms of trade needs — and as such won’t be competing for many of the same players — they’re obviously competing to get better and build more complete rosters so they can outlast the other and make a deep October run. The thing is, considering there are only five teams right now that are out of the playoff picture — the White Sox, Marlins, Athletics, Rockies, and Angels — actual upgrades available on the trading block might be in short supply. That means the Yankees and Orioles will need to capitalize on whatever improvements they can make. This environment could set the stage for New York and Baltimore to be among the most active teams over the next month and a half.

The Yankees have arguably the two best hitters in the entire league in Aaron Judge and Juan Soto, and though the rest of the lineup is good, it doesn’t inspire nearly as much confidence. Anthony Volpe’s flattened swing path has helped him cut down on his strikeout rate and spray more hits to the opposite field, but this month his strikeout rate is back up to 27% and he hasn’t walked since May 30. Alex Verdugo has been solidly above average and stabilized left field, which had a cavalcade of players come through last year, and Giancarlo Stanton’s streakiness has worked itself out to a 121 wRC+ and 17 homers, even though his on-base percentage is below .300. The catching duo of Jose Trevino and Austin Wells has come around too, though Trevino’s throwing issues were firmly on display on Sunday, when the Red Sox stole nine (!) bases against him.

And then there’s the triumvirate of underperforming infielders: Anthony Rizzo, Gleyber Torres, and DJ LeMahieu. I’d be shocked if Torres didn’t keep his job; after an anemic start, his bat has started to come around (112 wRC+ since May 12). But LeMahieu hasn’t hit much at all since signing his six-year deal before the 2021 season, and Rizzo has struggled for a full calendar year now, though at least some of his 2023 woes can be attributed to the post-concussion syndrome that caused him to miss the final two months of last season. Further complicating matters is Rizzo’s latest injury, a fractured right arm that won’t require surgery but will keep him out for an estimated four to six weeks, according to The Athletic. In the short-term, the Yankees are expected to play Oswaldo Cabrera at third and LeMahieu at first, with catcher/first baseman Ben Rice likely to replace Rizzo on the roster. A bat like Rockies third baseman Ryan McMahon would go a long way toward lengthening the lineup while also improving the defense.

The Orioles, on the other hand, have gotten strong production up and down the lineup, with the exception of Cedric Mullins, who has made up for his offensive struggles with excellent defense. But their pitching — widely viewed as a strength coming into the offseason — has been hammered by injuries.

The Yankees weathered the loss of Gerrit Cole with aplomb — so much so that I’m not sure they’ll need to be in the market for starting pitching, even as Clarke Schmidt is expected to be out for a while with a lat strain. Cole is slated to be activated and make his season debut tomorrow night. Meanwhile, the sheer quantity of Orioles starters on the IL all but necessitates making an acquisition on that front. Dean Kremer will be back soon from triceps tightness, but Tyler Wells and John Means are out for the year, and Kyle Bradish could be destined for the same fate. He recently landed on the IL for a second time this year with a sprained UCL in his elbow. That leaves AL Cy Young frontrunner Corbin Burnes, Grayson Rodriguez, and Kremer as the top three starters of a playoff rotation, with the revelatory Albert Suárez and Cole Irvin right behind and rookie Cade Povich potentially pushing for a spot as well.

There would certainly be worse playoff rotations around the league, but the O’s would be doing a disservice to their deep offense if they neglected to improve their starting pitching, especially after they failed to address last year’s rotation before the deadline and then were pounded by the Rangers and swept out of the ALDS. Their wealth of position player depth in the minor leagues should allow them to add at least one or two of the top available starters: Garrett Crochet, Erick Fedde, Tyler Anderson, Cal Quantrill, and Jesús Luzardo.

The one mutual need for the Yankees and Orioles is where all teams overlap at the deadline: the bullpen. Both teams have excellent back-end duos — Baltimore has Craig Kimbrel and Yennier Cano, while New York boasts Clay Holmes and Luke Weaver — but there’s a steep dropoff after that. The shallow seller’s market ought to create a lesser supply of available relief arms, which would likely inflate the cost that teams would ask for in return. This is where the strength of the New York and Baltimore farm systems (both of which are excellent) really come into play. These two organizations can afford to overpay for a third high-octane reliever — such as Carlos Estévez, Tanner Scott, Michael Kopech, and perhaps even Mason Miller — without sacrificing their long-term outlook.

The final distinction is the two teams’ disparate payroll situations. While it doesn’t appear as if the Yankees have any restrictions for this season — and the pursuit of keeping Soto surely will be unaffected — owner Hal Steinbrenner certainly sounds like a man who wants to decrease payroll from the $302 million it’s at this season. Next year’s payroll is already at $182 million, and that’s before factoring in arbitration raises to key players like Trevino, Schmidt, and Nestor Cortes — not to mention the exorbitant price that’ll be required to re-sign Soto. Torres and Verdugo are also set to hit free agency this offseason, and the current payroll figure for 2025 doesn’t include what it will cost either to bring them back or backfill their positions. That could make them less interested in trading for players on guaranteed contracts beyond this season, even those who would fit well, like McMahon.

On the flip side, the Orioles have an extraordinary amount of flexibility under new owner David Rubenstein, who hasn’t publicly commented on specific payroll plans but essentially can’t do anything but spend more than the Angelos family did in the last several years of its ownership. Huge raises are coming for Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, Ryan Mountcastle, Bradish, and others, but Baltimore has a paltry $2 million committed to next season. That should give GM Mike Elias carte blanche to acquire anyone he wants at the deadline no matter how many years of club control the player has remaining, provided he’s willing to give up the necessary prospects.

All of this will play out over the next six weeks before the deadline. In the meantime, the battle for the AL East begins in earnest tonight.

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about whether Nike’s City Connect uniforms have run their course, the Dodgers’ double whammy of injuries to Mookie Betts and Yoshinobu Yamamoto (and Kyle Bradish going back on the IL), the approaching returns of Gerrit Cole, Max Scherzer, and Clayton Kershaw, Carlos Correa’s hot streak, Elly De La Cruz and the excitement of scoring unexpectedly, a better way to handle a hypothetical hitter who only hits grand slams, David Fletcher’s strange season and transition to true two-way play, the potential fallout from umpire Pat Hoberg’s gambling scandal, a dead ball in NPB, and how pitching phenom Roki Sasaki’s lack of durability could affect his future free agency.

Audio intro: The Shirey Brothers, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Ian Phillips, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Meg’s tweet
Link to Facebook post
Link to Dodgers uni
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Link to City Connect wiki
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Link to MLBTR on Mookie
Link to combined WAR leaders
Link to hamate study 1
Link to hamate study 2
Link to MLBTR on Yamamoto
Link to Passan on Yamamoto
Link to MLBTR on Bradish
Link to MLBTR on Cole
Link to MLBTR on Scherzer
Link to MLBTR on Miller/Kershaw
Link to EW on Kershaw book
Link to Elly play
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Link to Vieira intentional balk
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Link to Sam on balks
Link to Bois on balks
Link to WaPo on Fletcher
Link to Fletcher batting game log
Link to Fletcher pitching game log
Link to Cosart fine info
Link to MLBTR on Waldrep
Link to MLBTR on Hoberg
Link to EW episode on Hoberg
Link to NPB ball scandal
Link to Allen on old ball scandal
Link to Allen on Sasaki
Link to Allen’s tweet
Link to Ben on NPB pitchers
Link to WaPo on Sasaki
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This has not been the year for the AL West. With the reigning World Series champion Rangers sitting below .500 amid a string of injuries, the Astros’ core succumbing to age, and the Angels and A’s sitting at rock bottom, one of baseball’s stronger divisions over the past few years has become its weakest. Just one team has a winning record: the Seattle Mariners. At 43-31, the Mariners hold an 8.5-game lead in the West, even as some of the underlying numbers indicate the team isn’t as good as its record suggests. Seattle has overperformed its Pythagorean record by four wins and its BaseRuns record by two, and its run differential is by far the worst among division leaders. But this kind of thing is nothing new for this organization.

The Mariners are currently enjoying their fourth consecutive year of contention, falling short of a Wild Card spot in 2021 and ’23 and snapping their two-decade playoff drought in ’22. In each of these seasons, they’ve pulled out wins in close games like no other club, and manager Scott Servais has pointed to the poise and experience with which his team handles tight matchups. Famously, after a 2021 road trip where the Mariners went 6-2 despite being outscored by their opponents, Servais introduced the term “fun differential” to evaluate the team rather than its relatively poor run differential. Three years later, with a new group of players, the fun differential is still elite.

Naturally, in order to win a lot of one-run games, you need to play in a lot of one-run games. One of the best ways to do that is to play plenty of low-scoring affairs, when neither team scores enough runs to pull away from its opponent. And indeed, the Mariners rank in the bottom third of the majors in both runs scored and allowed. The first factor that puts them in so many tight games is the strength of their starting rotation, which has been among the best in baseball by both volume and efficiency. As a squad, they rank eighth in ERA- and FIP-, and second in innings per start; they’re one of just two teams to convert quality starts over half the time. While none of their starters are individually dominating the leaderboards, the depth they have is nearly unmatched. The Mariners are one of three teams (along with the Phillies and Yankees) with four qualified starters with an ERA- of 95 or lower, and even Seattle’s fifth slot (with starts made by Emerson Hancock, Bryan Woo, and Jhonathan Diaz) has pitched to a 3.25 ERA. In short, they’re the only team in the league that can expect to have good starting pitching every single night.

On the flip side, Seattle’s offense has taken a significant hit from last year. Lineup mainstays like J.P. Crawford, Julio Rodríguez, and Cal Raleigh have regressed this season, though Rodríguez has turned things around over the past month. Many of the hitters Seattle added during the offseason have underperformed as well. Returning fan favorite Mitch Haniger has been below replacement level, and Jorge Polanco and Mitch Garver are each hitting below the Mendoza line.

With an excellent rotation and below-average hitting, the Mariners have the recipe for low-scoring games, but there’s another factor here as well: their home field. T-Mobile Park has been regarded as a pitcher’s paradise since its opening 25 years ago, but it’s been even more unfavorable for hitters in 2024 than in previous years. Statcast’s single-season park factors view it as, by far, this season’s most pitcher-friendly park, with a factor of 87; it has had scores between 92 and 96 for the past half-decade. The end result is that nearly a third of Mariners games have been decided by a single run, one of the highest marks in the league.

Playing in a lot of one-run games is one thing, but winning them is another. The Cubs and Athletics, the only teams with more one-run contests, each have losing records in such games. But the Mariners combine quantity with quality, having the most one-run wins while placing second to the Rays in one-run winning percentage. In contests decided by multiple runs, the Mariners are 26-24 — their .520 win percentage in such games is shockingly close to their .527 Pythagorean record — but one-run wins have vaulted them to a dozen games above .500. Some of these wins have come in dramatic fashion, as their five walk-offs are tied for the league lead. The Mariners have been far from an offensive powerhouse, but all year the bats have come alive when it matters most.

These splits are staggering. In low leverage, the Mariners are one of worst-hitting teams in the league. But when the stakes are highest, they collectively produce like a top-15 hitter in baseball. However, the eye-popping 144 wRC+ figure in high-leverage spots comes with a .377 BABIP – more than 40 points higher than any other team in that split. Come year’s end, that number will certainly be lower than it is now, but looking underneath the hood, Seattle batsmen have still been hitting better in high leverage than low leverage. Their walk rate is three points higher and strikeout rate three points lower in such situations, and their hard-hit rate is also modestly higher.

While Mariners hitters might not be able to forever continue their dominance in dramatic moments, the production they are getting from their bullpen, the other component of their success in one-run games, is far more sustainable. Despite some confusing trades, strong relief pitching has been a strength of recent Seattle squads. The organization has a knack for finding, acquiring, and developing under-the-radar relievers.

Andrés Muñoz is enjoying his first full season as Mariners closer, but he hasn’t been deployed solely in ninth-inning save situations. In fact, only half of his appearances have begun at the start of the ninth inning. He’s been called upon for a couple of extra-inning appearances, but his most notable work has come when he’s inherited a dirty eighth inning and converted a four- or five-out save. Muñoz has recorded more than three outs in seven games, second to Mason Miller among full-time closers, and in those games, he hasn’t surrendered a single run. Servais has consistently picked the right time to get his relief ace onto the mound, as Muñoz has the highest average entrance leverage index in the league.

Veteran reliever Ryne Stanek and 31-year old breakout Tayler Saucedo, who each rank above some closers on the leverage index leaderboard, have mostly handled set-up duties ahead of Muñoz. The two of them complement each other well, as both Stanek, a righty, and Saucedo, a lefty, have significant platoon splits, and Servais shrewdly deploys them based on matchups.

Among Seattle’s lower-leverage options, former starters Austin Voth and Trent Thornton have hit their stride coming out of the bullpen; the pair lead the staff in relief innings while effectively keeping runs off the board.

It would be easy to chalk all of this up to luck, even within the context of the other recent Mariners teams. Their offense has less thump than it has in previous years, and their bullpen is more reliant on high-leverage studs than an entire stable of them. Yet, they still have the ingredients that have made them so successful in tight games, even if the recipe is a bit different. Besides, maybe a slight variation is a good thing. After all, in recent years the best the Mariners could do was secure one AL Wild Card berth. Now, for the first time in their fun differential era, they are in position to ride their recipe for success all the way to a division crown.

Read the rest of this entry »

The National League playoff picture continues to grow each week. There are now nine teams within two games of each other at the back of the Wild Card race and just two teams in the entire league who can convincingly be considered out of the race entirely. That has all the ingredients for a dramatic playoff chase this summer.

This season, we’ve revamped our power rankings. The old model wasn’t very reactive to the ups and downs of any given team’s performance throughout the season, and by September, it was giving far too much weight to a team’s full body of work without taking into account how the club had changed, improved, or declined since March. That’s why we’ve decided to build our power rankings model using a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings or FiveThirtyEight’s defunct sports section, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant solution that measures teams’ relative strength and is very reactive to recent performance.

To avoid overweighting recent results during the season, we weigh each team’s raw Elo rank using our coinflip playoff odds (specifically, we regress the playoff odds by 50% and weigh those against the raw Elo ranking, increasing in weight as the season progresses to a maximum of 25%). As the best and worst teams sort themselves out throughout the season, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise will remain reactive to hot streaks or cold snaps.

First up are the full rankings, presented in a sortable table. Below that, I’ve grouped the teams into tiers with comments on a handful of clubs. You’ll notice that the official ordinal rankings don’t always match the tiers — I’ve taken some editorial liberties when grouping teams together — but generally, the ordering is consistent. One thing to note: The playoff odds listed in the tables below are our standard Depth Charts odds, not the coin flip odds that are used in the ranking formula.

…

The Yankees lost their weekend series against the Red Sox, and even though they won three of four from the Royals earlier in the week, their lead in AL East was trimmed to just a game and a half. They’ll host the Orioles, the team chasing them, in a huge three-game set this week. They’re also expected to activate Gerrit Cole from the IL this week, giving them a major reinforcement in time for this tough stretch of games.

The Orioles managed to pull closer to the Yanks by winning their series last week against the Braves and the Phillies. They’ve gone 14-6 during one of the most difficult stretches of their schedule and have matchups with the Yankees, Astros, Guardians, Rangers, and Mariners still to come over the next few weeks.

Maybe the jet lag from their trip to London impacted the Phillies, as they lost both of their series last week, first against the Red Sox at Fenway and then to the Orioles in Baltimore over the weekend. To make matters worse, J.T. Realmuto finally decided to undergo knee surgery after dealing with nagging pain all season long. Because they have such a large lead in the NL East, they can afford to lose their starting catcher for a month or two with the long range view in mind. Thankfully, as one of their team leaders hits the IL, another — Trea Turner — is set to return on Monday.

The Dodgers had an absolutely terrible Sunday despite shutting out the Royals 3-0 to win their weekend series. First, Yoshinobu Yamamoto had to be removed from his start with a shoulder issue. Then, in the seventh inning, Mookie Betts took a fastball off his hand, fracturing it. It’s too early to tell when they will return, but they are expected to miss at least several weeks. Los Angeles has a commanding lead in the NL West but there’s suddenly an opportunity for any one of the Padres, Giants, or Diamondbacks to gain some ground.

The Mariners might have shut the door on the rest of the AL West this weekend after sweeping the Rangers to extend their division lead to 8.5 games, the largest in the majors. They’re now 17-5 against their division this year, the best intra-divisional record in baseball, and they’re also 27-12 at home. In those three games against Texas, Seattle’s starters allowed just two earned runs, both of which were scored in the first inning of the first game of the series on Friday. Luis Castillo, George Kirby, and Logan Gilbert were absolutely masterful, giving fans a taste of what this rotation could be capable of in a short playoff series.

The Guardians and Mariners meet for a big series this week that, although it’s early, could have some implications for AL playoff seeding. Cleveland has been cruising along atop the AL Central for pretty much the entire season, but it has a bit of a gauntlet coming over the next two weeks; the Guardians host Seattle and Toronto this week before heading off to Baltimore for a three-game set and then a big four-game series in Kansas City.

The Brewers continue to find ways to win despite their patchwork rotation that has been wracked by injuries. A big reason why they’ve been so successful is because of their shutdown bullpen, which is still missing its best member, Devin Williams. The rest of the NL Central is a pretty big mess of clubs sitting around .500, so Milwaukee shouldn’t have much trouble getting into the playoffs, but the team will need some sort of upgrade in the rotation if it wants to make some noise once it gets there.

On May 26, the Royals had an eight-game win streak snapped; they’ve gone 7-13 since then and have won just one series during that rough stretch. They couldn’t keep up with the Yankees and Dodgers last week, losing both of those series, and they’re now just a half-game ahead of the surging Twins. For their part, the Twins have won five straight, and Carlos Correa and Royce Lewis erupted for 27 hits and seven home runs between the two of them last week.

Speaking of offensive resurgences, the Braves have scored 28 runs over their last four games and might be looking a little closer to the powerhouse offense we all expected they would be this year. Austin Riley has homered in three straight games, and they blasted nine home runs off the Rays pitching staff last weekend.

This tier has grown enormous. These nine teams are hovering right around .500 and sitting within two games of each other, but only two of them will be able claim NL Wild Card spots — assuming Atlanta maintains its hold on this race.

The two teams who really launched themselves up the standings last week were the Nationals and Mets. Washington ended the week tied for the final Wild Card spot after winning a series against the Tigers and sweeping the Marlins. Expanding our lens a bit to underscore how well the Nats have been playing recently, they have the third-best record in the National League (14-9) since May 24, with six of those 14 wins coming in their eight games against the Braves.

The Mets’ surge has been even more improbable. They won their fifth straight game on Sunday to finish off a weekend sweep of the Padres and are now just a game and a half out in the Wild Card race. Closer Edwin Díaz recently returned from the IL to bolster their bullpen and their offense has been much better this month after a dismal May.

If the Mets and Nats are the teams trending up, it’s the Cubs who are on the way down. Their offense is in such desperate need of a spark that they bunted on three straight plays in a game last week and produced two runs through the effort — yet they wound up losing 3-2 after the bullpen blew the lead. They have the worst record in the NL since the calendar flipped to May and have scored just 3.55 runs per game during this extended slump.

Over in the American League, the playoff picture is a lot more settled. Below the top six teams in the league, the Red Sox and Blue Jays are barely hanging on in the Wild Card race. Both of those teams won statement series last weekend, with Boston beating the Yankees and Toronto surviving a series against the Guardians. The Sox and Jays are set to play each other six times over the next 10 days, each looking to sabotage the other’s summer hopes.

It looks like the Rangers will be getting Max Scherzer back this week from the IL, a stint that was prolonged when he hurt his finger while rehabbing from his back injury. His return couldn’t come soon enough. After getting swept over the weekend by the Mariners, Texas is now 8.5 games back in the AL West and 6.5 out of the final Wild Card spot. When the Rangers entered the season with Scherzer, Jacob deGrom, and Tyler Mahle all on the IL, they were taking a risk that something like this would happen without their rotation at full strength, but I don’t think they expected things to get this bad.

With Kris Bryant’s season — and possibly career — looking like a complete loss because of some unfortunate injury issues, the Rockies need to start focusing on their young building blocks. Luckily, Ezequiel Tovar and Brenton Doyle are showing plenty of life with their bats to compliment their already stellar glovework. Colorado also called up top prospect Adael Amador recently and activated Nolan Jones off the IL last week. The Rockies have an opportunity to play the part of pesky little brother to a beat-up Dodgers squad in a four-game series in Colorado this week.

The White Sox wound up losing three of four to the Mariners last week, but they really made Seattle work for each of those wins. Two of the losses were walk-offs, the third was given away in the seventh, and the lone Chicago victory came in extra innings. But make no mistake: This is a truly terrible team. The White Sox have fielded a roster of position players who have combined for -1.8 WAR this year, a full-season pace of -4.0 WAR. That would make them the least-valuable group of position players since the 1998 Twins (-4.5 WAR). No club has combined for -1.0 WAR from its hitters since the 2003 Tigers (-1.2), who finished 43-119 that season. On the bright side, Luis Robert Jr. has blasted five home runs in 12 games since being activated off the IL; yet fittingly for such a moribund franchise, Robert has struck out in almost half his plate appearances, too.

After a year of caressing hopes for a triumphant return of José Abreu’s salad days, the Astros released the veteran first baseman on Friday, ending his disappointing tenure in Houston. It would be an understatement to say the 37-year-old Abreu struggled this season; across 35 games, he batted .124/.167/.195 with two home runs, for an wRC+ of 2 and a WAR that I won’t repeat due to the possibility of children reading. The Astros still owe Abreu a hair under $31 million of the three-year deal he signed soon after the 2022 season, though they’ll be on the hook for slightly less than that if another team signs him for the pro-rated league minimum.

If David Ortiz’s magnificent final season represents the optimal scenario for a beloved veteran slugger to reach retirement, then Abreu’s time with the Astros exemplifies the other far end of the spectrum. During his nine years with the White Sox, from 2014-22, Abreu was one of the most consistent sluggers in baseball, batting .292/.354/.506 with 243 home runs, a 133 wRC+, and 28.3 WAR. He had five 30-homer seasons, and that doesn’t include the shortened 2020 campaign, when he smacked 19 longballs, a full-season pace of 51, en route to winning the AL MVP award. With Chicago, he also earned AL Rookie of the Year honors (2014), made three All-Star teams (’14, ’18, ’19), and won three Silver Sluggers (’14, ’18, ’20). When he became a free agent after his age-35 season and the White Sox didn’t show much interest in bringing him back, Abreu quickly signed with the Astros, who had won the World Series a few weeks earlier.

It seemed like the ideal destination for his three-year autumnal epilogue. Houston wasn’t counting on him to be the centerpiece of the lineup; rather, his role would be to shore up first base and/or designated hitter for a few years and support stars like Kyle Tucker, Yordan Alvarez, Jose Altuve, and Alex Bregman. With the Astros coming off a 106-win season and a World Series championship, with many of their core players returning, it certainly appeared that his new team would provide Abreu a better chance to win a ring than he would’ve had with the clearly fading White Sox. To get an idea of what the reasonable expectations were for Abreu when he signed with Houston, let’s look at his three-year ZiPS projections heading into the 2023 season:

While ZiPS was skeptical that Abreu would be an everyday starter for all three years in Houston, it broadly thought he would be an adequate average-ish option for a year or two. Abreu got off to a wretched start last year, hitting .214/.262/.253 with no home runs through May 14 while starting 39 of the team’s first 40 games. As I wrote last April, there wasn’t even a hint that his struggles were a fluke; his plate discipline had deteriorated and his power evaporated like a puddle after a July thunderstorm in Texas.

There are some highly concerning issues in Abreu’s early-season profile this year that weren’t present in other early starts. When he struggles, he still generally hits the ball extremely hard. This year, his exit velocity has averaged 86.6 mph with an overall hard-hit rate of 36.7% — extremely low numbers for him. He was lousy last April, hitting .217/.308/.348, but he was still crushing pitches he connected with, resulting in a 94.6 mph average EV and a hard-hit rate of 59.6%. He also struggled in April 2021, hitting .213/.296/.394, but with a 92.1 mph EV and a 53.7% hard-hit rate — not quite as good as 2022, but worlds better than where those numbers currently stand. He got off to good starts in 2018 and ’19, so they’re not particularly helpful, and he crushed the ball in August of 2020 (I did not include any 2020 seasons in the April numbers, as the year was just too weird).

Abreu played somewhat better over the rest of the 2023 campaign, hitting .246/.309/.435 with 18 homers across 102 games and capping things off with four homers in the postseason. Rather than taking Abreu’s early-season woes as a warning that the end was near, the Astros proceeded to do very little to pick up another bat over the offseason; their biggest move to add some boom to the lineup came when they acquired Trey Cabbage from the Los Angeles Angels. Given Houston’s ALCS elimination at the hands of its cross-state rivals, the Texas Rangers, and its 90-72 record being its weakest since 2016, it’s hard to guess why the Astros took such a lackadaisical approach to a possible issue. Whether it has to do with the front office overhaul after James Click left is a topic for another day.

This season started off even worse for Abreu. He hit .111/.161/.123 with no homers, for an OPS (.284) that was even lower than the career OPS of Hall of Fame pitcher/extremely awkward hitter Randy Johnson (.305). His exit velocity numbers looked a lot like they did the previous April, and he failed to hit a single barrel. Things were so rough that Abreu agreed to be optioned to the minors to figure things out, leading to the rather odd sight of a former MVP debuting in the minors at age 37; he went straight to the majors 10 years ago after the White Sox signed him as an international free agent out of Cuba, and he never even played in the minors on an injury rehab assignment. Abreu did get back to Houston after a stint in Rookie-ball and a couple games with Triple-A Sugar Land, and he even hit two homers this month. But the writing was on the wall, and with the Mariners finally putting some space between them and the rest of the AL West, the Astros clearly could not afford to wait endlessly for another revival that may never come.

Over the short term, Jon Singleton is likely to continue to get the majority of the playing time at first base with Abreu out of the picture, but saying Singleton improves the team is damning with faint praise; while it was cool to see him come back to the majors after a decade away, he’s not really a productive major league bat. Singleton turns 33 later this year and is a .183/.294/.322 career hitter in the majors, with projections that rank from terrible (.214/.327/.388 in Steamer, .215/.324/.376 in ZiPS) to even more terrible (THE BAT at .193/.289/.343). Rookie Joey Loperfido would seem to be the obvious in-house solution to replace Abreu, but he’s primarily been an outfielder to this point and the organization hasn’t given him many starts at first base in Triple-A, which seems inconsistent with the idea that the Astros will offer him the next crack at the job. A big improvement here likely would require a larger trade, and I’m frankly not sure the decision-makers in Houston right now are equipped to move swiftly and deftly.

What’s next for Abreu? While the natural inclination would be a return to the White Sox, I think that would be a dreadful idea. Mal Tiempo doesn’t bring bad weather to opposing pitchers anymore, and I can’t help but feel that everything good he’ll be remembered for in Chicago is in the past. The Sox need to use their losing season more productively than a farewell tour for Abreu, and a bench bat with the Pale Hose won’t get Abreu one last run in the playoffs. Perhaps the Dodgers will sign him in July and he’ll slug .700 in 100 at-bats in a part-time role, because they’re the Dodgers.

A fun player for a long time and a great leader for the team and his city, Abreu’s almost certainly going to fall short of the Hall of Fame, perhaps even dropping off the ballot after his first year of eligibility. It would be shocking if he added much to his career 263 homers or 26.3 WAR (which is actually two wins less than it was when he left the White Sox), and we’ve yet to see the Hall of Fame voters credit foreign play to get a borderline player over the top. Ichiro Suzuki will easily make the Hall of Fame when he debuts on the ballot in the upcoming election, but that would be the case even if he had never played in Japan. I wrote a little about the possibility of including Abreu’s time in Cuba to evaluate his Hall of Fame case back in 2021, but that was more of a theoretical exercise than a serious expectation he’ll get votes.

No, Abreu is not going out on his best, but the cruelty of time in baseball isn’t that different from life. At some point, all of us will lose our ability to do the things we’re great at, the things we love, and eventually, anything at all. It’s just that as a ballplayer, his transition comes at a relatively younger age under very public scrutiny. I’ve always been a fan of the Orson Welles quote on the subject, and it’s one I’ve said that I’d like to have on my eventual epitaph: “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” If this is the melancholy final chapter of the story of Abreu’s baseball career, it was still a volume that was wonderful to read.