The biggest story in baseball this week might be Jackson Holliday’s call-up. If it’s not that, it’s certainly the news that Ippei Mizuhara is set to be charged on allegations, which were detailed in a federal affidavit filed Thursday, that he stole more than $16 million from Shohei Ohtani. Each of those are huge topics, with impacts that will echo through the game far into the future. But a lot of other stuff happened in baseball too this week, so let’s talk about pitchers playing defense and crazy baserunning, shall we?

Welcome to another edition of Five Things, a weekly look into the most entertaining or downright weirdest stuff I saw while doing my day job: watching an ungodly amount of baseball. As always, a big shout out to ESPN’s Zach Lowe, who started writing a similar column years ago and forever changed the way I watch basketball. This is a long one, so let’s get right into it.

1. Elly, Obviously
I mean, did you think anyone else was leading off here? Elly De La Cruz is the kind of player you’d create in a video game, and he was up to his usual tricks this week. You’ve heard about this one already, I’m sure, but he hit the first inside-the-park homer of the year:

If triples are the most exciting play in baseball, what does that make this? Incidentally, that play is a triple for almost everyone. It’s just that De La Cruz is so dang fast. He went home to home in less than 15 seconds, which is absolutely ridiculous. Set a 15-second timer and try to do something around the house. You probably didn’t get very far into what you were doing in the time it took Elly to get around the bases. Just watching him in motion is a joy:

Elly De La Cruz just went home-to-home in 14.96 SECONDS! pic.twitter.com/pTgIYsbPgj

— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) April 9, 2024

In fact, De La Cruz is fourth in the majors in average sprint speed so far this year. I mean, obviously he is! Look at him go. The only guys ahead of him are true burners: Trea Turner, currently chasing the record for most consecutive steals; Victor Scott II, who stole 94 bases in the minors last year; and Bobby Witt Jr., one of the best athletes in the majors. Of course, De La Cruz has way more power than that trio, with only Witt coming anywhere near Elly’s level of power.

Oh, right. He hit a massive bomb in this game too:

That’s what 70-grade power looks like: 450 feet, dead center. And I hope the Reds have home insurance because that wall probably needs fixing now. Pitchers are challenging him more this year because he cut down on his swing rate significantly at the end of last season, and he hasn’t yet adjusted by getting aggressive in the strike zone. When he does offer at something, though, he’s making it count. I’m not sure if his approach can stick, but I’m also not sure if opposing teams are going to keep letting him hit mammoth blasts while they find out whether their plan is sustainable. It’s pretty demoralizing to throw strikes to a guy who can casually swat them out of any park in baseball.

Oh yeah, he did this a few days later:

I’m almost at a loss for words on that one. He absolutely destroyed that ball to the opposite field. Across the majors last year, there were fewer than 40 line drives hit harder the opposite way, pretty much all by household names like Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, and Giancarlo Stanton. This one was hit by the fourth-fastest man in the game. It feels vaguely unfair.

To be clear, it’s still not clear how well this will translate into long-term baseball value. De La Cruz is absolutely mashing so far this year, to the tune of a .318/.375/.659 slash line and a 171 wRC+ entering Friday, but he’s also striking out 35.4% of the time, with his line held up by a .458 BABIP. He looks worse defensively at shortstop than he did last year. But he’s only 22, and he just did all those things up above. I’m pretty excited to watch him try to put it all together.

2. Lamonte Wade, Grinding
Most of the plays that catch my eye in baseball are, by definition, eye-catching. They’re Elly at full speed, or defenders making diving stops, or anything else that makes you stop and stare for a while. But most of baseball isn’t those plays. It’s a long season, and most of it takes place without the bases juiced and the game on the line.

Monday night’s Giants-Nationals clash was one of those quiet times. The Nats put together a three-run inning early against Blake Snell and then piled on against the San Francisco bullpen. Washington took a 6-1 lead into the bottom of the sixth inning, with LaMonte Wade Jr. due up first for the Giants. This was squarely into garbage time; per our win probability odds, the Nats had a 95% chance of hanging on.

There’s not a lot of glory to be found when you’re trailing by five runs late. It still counts, though, and Wade never takes a play off. He faced Derek Law, one of those classic “oh he plays where now?” relievers who sticks around thanks to his excellent stuff but keeps bouncing between teams because of his inability to consistently locate it.

On this particular night, Law was on. He started Wade off with the kitchen sink, a cutter/fastball/changeup combo that ran the count to 1-2 in a hurry:

That’s a tough spot for a hitter, but Wade isn’t the type to give anything up. He switched into defensive mode and fought off Law’s next offering, a surprisingly aggressive fastball:

Wade’s game is heavy on batting eye and patience, built to take advantage of lapses in command from the opposition. That paid off as Law briefly lost command of the zone:

That said, the job wasn’t done. Law regained the strike zone and started attacking the upper third again:

And again:

And again:

Fouling these pitches off matters. Even that last one was too close for comfort. If you want to draw walks and stay in counts, you have to do it. But it’s not glamorous, particularly when the pitcher is hitting his spots. Wade is a great fastball hitter, but part of being a great fastball hitter is staying alive when you don’t catch them clean. Surely, Law would eventually break. And indeed he did, on the 10th pitch of the at-bat:

Hitting is hard! Most of what you do is drudge work. No one wants to foul off a bucketful of 95 mph fastballs when their team is headed for near-certain defeat. But if you want to succeed the way Wade does, by controlling the strike zone and ambushing occasional pitches with power, you can’t take an at-bat off. Law would have beaten plenty of batters on an earlier pitch, but he eventually threw a pretty bad one, 91 mph and with far too much plate. That’ll happen when you have to throw 10 pitches to the same guy.

That at-bat didn’t affect the outcome of the game even a little bit. Law retired the next three batters in order, two via strikeout. He threw another scoreless inning after that for good measure. The Nationals won comfortably, 8-1; no Giants so much as reached second base after Wade’s double. But even though this at-bat didn’t matter in the short run, playing like this in the long run is why Wade has been so successful in the majors. When the game is on the line, he’s Late Night LaMonte. When it’s the lowest-leverage situation you can imagine – down huge to a bad team on a Monday night in April – he’s still working as hard as ever. He’s a joy to watch in good times and bad.

3. The Duality of Corbin Burnes
If you watch Corbin Burnes’ mannerisms, you’re liable to get the impression that he’s a great fielder. This smooth catch against the Red Sox last Tuesday was a great, reflexive play:

His celebration was absolutely wonderful: He completely no-sold it. “Oh, me, catching baseballs? Yeah, that’s just normal, I catch ones like that all the time.” This is the self-assured strut of someone who habitually robs hits:

Burnes is a pitcher, though. They aren’t exactly known for their elite glovework. As best as I can tell, he’s somewhere in the middle of the league defensively. Pitcher defense isn’t particularly well quantified, but he looks average by those metrics, average to my eye, and a Google search for “Corbin Burnes defense” turns up a lot of people writing defenses of his pitching and no one talking about his fielding prowess. He was a Gold Glove finalist once, but didn’t win, and I’m not exactly sure how those awards work anyway.

Does he just act cooler than he is, so to speak? That was my impression after seeing that play; maybe he was just feeling particularly good that day and wanted to have some fun with it. I chuckled a little bit at the play – pitchers, what a funny group! – and went back to watching the game without giving it much thought.

But a few innings later, the ball found Burnes again in a much funnier way. This time, it all started with what looked like an innocent popup to second:

The sun was absolutely blinding at Fenway that afternoon, however. As it turns out, Tony Kemp had been completely bamboozled. The ball was actually making a beeline for Burnes as he stood unawares at the side of the mound. Even as Ryan Mountcastle and Gunnar Henderson turned toward the mound, Burnes sat there coolly. But then the ball got too close:

There was no audible conversation on the field on either broadcast, but I like to imagine Burnes giving a yelp as he got out of the way. It’s so classic. The ball finds you when you’re trying to hide, or trying to look more comfortable than you are. The guy who snags the line drive nonchalantly is also the one ducking away from a harmless popup that he lost track of. Also, he’s maybe the best pitcher in the game. Delightful.

4. On The Other Hand…
I know that I just got finished poking fun at a pitcher’s defensive chops, but we’re going to do another pitcher defense item. Why? Because Bryce Jarvis did this on Wednesday, that’s why:

Jarvis is the very definition of an up-and-down arm. He broke into the majors last year with the Diamondbacks as a long man, throwing 23.2 innings in 11 games. He’s back for more of the same so far this year – eight innings in four appearances. He’s not a star, nor does he ever look likely to be one, despite being a first-round draft pick, ahead of both Slade Cecconi and Brandon Pfaadt on the Arizona board.

Draft picks turn into guys like that all the time. You can’t run a big league organization without the Jarvises of the world, in fact. Those innings aren’t going to fill themselves. The teams who develop C-level guys instead of D-level guys just do better in the long grind of the season.

I’m probably digressing too much, though. Jarvis’ story isn’t particularly remarkable; first-round draft picks don’t pan out as often as you’d think. His athletic talents, on the other hand? They were on full display here. Elehuris Montero’s grounder was hit so softly that Jarvis had to be on a full charge to get to the ball at all:

But getting to the ball was only part of the problem here. It’s not like Montero can fly, but he’s not the slowest runner around either. He could smell an infield hit, too; those weak-contact grounders trigger something in hitter’s brains that says, “Get down the line and claim your luck.” Jarvis had to smoothly pivot from a mad dash for the ball into a throw. Or, well, that’s the theory, at least. In practice, Jarvis ended up with what I like to call falling-backwards-shotput form:

Pitchers miss these throws all the time. They miss them more often than not. Managers would prefer pitchers to hold onto the ball there, if I had to guess. An error seems more likely than an out there, and an injury – hamstrings are tricky beasts – is definitely an option as well. Jarvis is living on the fringes of the majors, though. Every game is a chance to prove himself or be found wanting. Every out makes an extended major league career more likely. Some of them are simply more spectacular than others. And while I’m on the subject, Jarvis should probably buy Christian Walker a drink after he absolutely flattened himself receiving the ball at first base.

5. Tim Anderson, Agent of Chaos
Housing costs in Manhattan are ridiculous these days. Whether you’re looking to lease or own, you’re looking at paying double the national average or more. In price per square foot, it gets even wilder. It’s not a problem for Tim Anderson, though, because he’s living rent free in the Yankees’ heads after Wednesday night.

Anderson didn’t figure into the early parts of Miami’s offensive attack; when he came to the plate in the ninth inning, he was hitless but the team was up 4-2. He led off the inning with an innocuous single to right. Then the fun started. The Yankees decided that Anderson was going to run. He’d swiped a base early the previous night, and this was his first opportunity to double up since then. Dennis Santana checked on him almost right away:

Two pitches later, Jose Trevino followed suit:

Bryan De La Cruz flied out on the next pitch, but the Yankees were still shook. Before the first pitch to Nick Gordon, Santana threw over again:

Then Trevino faked a back-pick:

Then Santana threw over again:

Now Anderson had the upper hand, but he didn’t take off. In fact, he almost got stuck in between, with enough of a secondary lead that Trevino took yet another bite at the apple:

That was almost a disaster for the Marlins. Anderson was just hanging out pretty far off the base, and only beat the throw due to a combination of a good slide and a missed tag:

Meanwhile, Santana completely lost track of what was going on at home plate. He walked Gordon on the next pitch, an uncompetitive fastball low. To make matters worse, Anderson got such a good jump that he would have stolen second easily even if the pitch had been a strike.

Now he was feeling frisky, and started dancing off of the base in Santana’s line of sight. It nearly led to a balk:

Anderson finally got a clean jump for a steal. At first, it looked like it might not matter:

But as it turns out, Anderson’s speed drove the Yankees over the edge. Take a second and watch Anderson, and you’ll realize that he took a hard turn around third. He was thinking about more than a single base, and when Anthony Volpe didn’t look him back, he went for it:

From an overhead view, things get even clearer. When Anderson took off, Anthony Rizzo realized he had to make a phenomenal scoop and also fire the ball home in a single motion. He went for it, but failed. Anderson had essentially conjured a run out of thin air:

Anderson is off to a pretty miserable start to the season. He was downright awful last year. But wow, he’s fun to watch, whether at the plate, in the field, or on the basepaths. I hope he continues to terrify opposing defenses for years to come.

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

In one of the quicker conclusions to a headline-grabbing baseball story I can think of, Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, is set to be charged with bank fraud; he’ll reportedly surrender to authorities on Friday, with an arraignment date still to be scheduled.

Mizuhara’s alleged transgressions, which were detailed in a federal affidavit filed Thursday, were even more extensive than had previously been reported. According to the complaint, federal investigators claim that Mizuhara stole more than $16 million from Ohtani (or “Victim A,” as he’s referred to in the document), rather than the initially reported $4.5 million. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley react to news about Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter Ippei Mizuhara being charged with bank fraud, discuss the revelations in the government’s stunning, detailed complaint, and assess the implications for Ohtani and MLB. Then (1:06:58) they banter about Jordan Montgomery changing agencies after his offseason Boras debacle, a Juan Soto fan-pandering update, Jackson Holliday’s Orioles debut, Tyler Glasnow and the allure of a 21-strikeout game, a Driveline quote about training for velocity, and an A’s giveaway (and dubious pledge to spend more on players), plus (1:35:15) a few follow-ups.

Audio intro: Daniel Leckie, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Xavier LeBlanc, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Greene pants seam tear
Link to U.S. Attorney’s Office press release
Link to criminal complaint
Link to NYT report
Link to MLB statement
Link to @Yankees betting tweet
Link to Ippei surrendering tweet
Link to Baumann on gambling scandals
Link to MLBTR on Montgomery
Link to Soto spikes
Link to Glasnow game
Link to Sam on a 21-strikeout game
Link to MLBTR on Holliday
Link to Dan S. on the Tides
Link to Olney tweet story
Link to video of young Holliday
Link to Twins kiss
Link to 2023 Albies/Arcia kiss
Link to 2024 Albies/Arcia kiss
Link to Adler pitcher injuries article
Link to A’s giveaway tweet
Link to Rosenthal on A’s spending
Link to ESPN on the A’s move
Link to Belt on chicken tenders
Link to hitting at Rogers Centre
Link to ballpark meetup forms
Link to meetup organizer form

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On Thursday, we finally got something approaching an official account of the biggest story in baseball. The details are, somehow, outrageous and astounding, while still presenting a version of events that follows the least salacious plausible narrative.

According to an affidavit filed by an IRS investigator in federal court, Ippei Mizuhara — until recently Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter, confidant, and right-hand man — stole some $16 million from the Dodgers superstar to cover sports gambling losses. It makes the case that the 39-year-old Mizuhara should be arrested for, and charged with, bank fraud. The day before the affidavit began circulating publicly, The New York Times reported that Mizuhara is negotiating a guilty plea to that charge, which carries a statutory maximum of 30 years’ jail time. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re two weeks into the 2024 season — Seoul Series excepted — so it’s difficult to take any hot start too seriously. Still, it’s a surprise that the Pirates entered Thursday with the National League’s highest winning percentage (.750, on the back of a 9-3 record), despite losing to the Tigers 5-3 on Tuesday afternoon in Pittsburgh. Since this isn’t the kind of condition that has tended to prevail after April in recent years, we’ll zoom in for a closer look.

The Pirates entered 2024 having finished below .500 in five straight seasons and seven out of the past eight, with an 82-79 record in 2018 constituting the lone exception; last year’s 76-86 record was their best since then, a 14-win improvement over 2022. While they did not have a particularly auspicious winter, they didn’t sit still, with general manager Ben Cherington signing half a dozen players — including four former All-Stars (Aroldis Chapman, Yasmani Grandal, Martín Pérez, and Andrew McCutchen, the last of them re-upping) and a Gold Glove winner (Michael A. Taylor) — to one-year contracts worth anywhere from $2.5 million to $10 million, with a couple notable minor league deals as well (Domingo Germán and Eric Lauer). Cherington also made a handful of trades, most notably adding Marco Gonzales and Edward Olivares. The team’s biggest move was inking top starter Mitch Keller to a five-year, $77 million extension that suggests he’ll outlast all of the newcomers. Read the rest of this entry »

Shelby Miller was already evolving when I talked to him for FanGraphs prior to the 2016 season. As addressed in that interview, the right-hander had markedly altered his pitch usage in 2015, a season in which he logged a 3.02 ERA over 205 1/3 innings in his lone campaign with the Atlanta Braves. Little could he have imagined how many more changes were coming.

Originally drafted 19th overall by the Cardinals out of a Texas high school, Miller spent parts of three seasons with St. Louis, placing third in the NL Rookie of the Year voting in 2013, before he was the main return for Atlanta in the Jason Heyward trade in November of 2014. When we spoke for that earlier post, he was ramping up for his first season with the Arizona Diamondbacks, who a few months earlier had acquired him in the Dansby Swanson trade.

Now, eight organizations later (11 total for those keeping score at home), Miller is 33 and recording high-leverage outs with the Detroit Tigers, who in December signed him to a one-year, $3.25 million deal with a club option for 2025. And not only have his repertoire and usage continued to evolve over the years — last season with the Los Angeles Dodgers was especially notable — but they’re currently in flux. The mix that Miller has employed this season over five relief outings comprising seven scoreless innings may not be what you see the next time he takes the mound. More on that in a moment. Read the rest of this entry »

12:00

Dan Szymborski: It’s a chat!

12:00

Dan Szymborski: Heh

12:00

Dan Szymborski: Yup, I’m behind on my “April” responses since I was doing Career Day last week at at elementary/middle school

Read the rest of this entry »

Lance Lynn is my favorite player in baseball; I find it easier to just admit this up front and let readers view my work through that lens, instead of going through the trouble of trying to obfuscate this very obvious truth.

One of the things that drew me to the big man in the first place was his reliability. Lynn had been many things over his long and venerable big league career: A four-seam specialist, a sinkerballer, an ace, an innings eater, an underrated gem, a star, a national hero. But he’d never been bad before.

In 2023, Lynn still threw 183 2/3 innings, but he gave up about 183 2/3 home runs over that span. Not really, but the actual number — 44 — was so high I invoked the late Jose Lima when I wrote up Lynn’s signing in November. On a scale from zero to things you don’t want, it’s not what you want. Read the rest of this entry »

This time last year, baseball discussion was focused on one thing: steals. There they were, in great huge quantities for the first time in decades. With disengagements and therefore pickoff throws limited, men on base ran wild. They were successful at a huge clip, to boot. By year’s end, last season’s 3,503 stolen bases were the most in any campaign of the 21st century.

The wildest part about this statistic is that it felt like there still weren’t enough steals. Runners were successful at an 80.2% clip last year. That’s quite a bit higher than the breakeven rate of success, which bounces around the 75% mark based on game state; after all, not all steals are created equal. Russell Carleton dug into the data and noted that runners didn’t change their aggression at all until they had seen at least one pickoff throw.

Meanwhile, their success rate on the instances where the pitcher *didn’t* throw over ballooned to nearly 83%. You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out where this was going. In 2024, the thinking went, runners would have more experience with the new rules, and therefore would start taking off more frequently, pickoff throw or no pickoff throw. Naturally, new rules take a while to adjust to, but this adjustment seemed pretty likely to happen.

So far, though, it hasn’t. Here are stolen base attempts per game over the last six years. I threw in some old years for scale, but really I’m only concerned with 2023 and 2024:

Read the rest of this entry »

Tyler O’Neill didn’t take long to adapt to a new team. Traded to the Red Sox in December after spending six years with the Cardinals, O’Neill claimed sole possession of a major league record by homering on Opening Day for the fifth straight season. As we approach the two-week mark of the season — yes, it’s early — he finds himself atop major leaderboards and has helped Boston get off to a 7-4 start.

On Tuesday at Fenway Park, O’Neill launched a towering solo shot over the Green Monster off Orioles ace Corbin Burnes to put the Red Sox up 1-0 in the first inning:

The Statcast-estimated distance of 413 feet made that O’Neill’s longest of this season so far. It was his sixth homer, momentarily moving him out of a tie with Mookie Betts, Marcell Ozuna, and Mike Trout, though Trout countered with his sixth later on Tuesday night. Nonetheless, O’Neill has matched Fred Lynn’s hot 1979 start for the most homers by a Red Sox player in the team’s first 11 games of a season, doing so while making just nine starts and a pinch-hitting appearance. By comparison, last season O’Neill didn’t hit his sixth home run until August 11, and finished with just nine in 72 games.

O’Neill began the season by homering off Mariners reliever Cody Bolton on Opening Day in Seattle. In doing so, he broke a tie with Yogi Berra (1955–58), Gary Carter (1977–80) and Todd Hundley (1994–97) for the most consecutive Opening Day games with a home run. (And you thought you were glad baseball was back!) He closed out the Seattle series with a homer off Bryce Miller on March 31, took the Angels’ Griffin Canning and José Soriano deep on April 5, then added a dinger against Chase Silseth on April 7.

Unfortunately for the Red Sox, O’Neill’s blast on Tuesday was their only run of the day; they lost 7-1. And oddly enough, the 28-year-old left fielder hasn’t driven in anyone else despite his six home runs, which is more a commentary on his teammates than his own failings; he’s 1-for-3 with a pair of walks with runners in scoring position. Regardless of his RBI total, he’s swinging a very hot bat overall, hitting .344/.488/.906. It’s not every day you’re miles ahead of two future Hall of Famers for the major league lead in key categories, so we’ll note that his slugging percentage is 126 points ahead of the second-ranked Trout, and his 276 wRC+ is 32 points ahead of the second-ranked Betts. Meanwhile his on-base percentage merely leads the American League.

Of course, O’Neill has played just 10 games, the first nine of them against the Mariners, A’s, and Angels — all on the road — and there’s only so much we can take from that, but the number one thing is that he’s healthy, and that’s a big one, because save for his monster 2021 season and his brawny physique (“listed at 5-foot-11 and 200 pounds, of which about 198 pounds is biceps and quads,” wrote Michael Baumann), injuries have largely defined his career.

Drafted by the Mariners out of a British Columbia high school in the third round in 2013, O’Neill became a Cardinal in the Marco Gonzales trade four years later. He debuted in the majors on April 19, 2018, but spent much of that season and the next one bouncing back and forth between Triple-A and the majors, with five (!) trips to the injured list thrown in for good measure. After spending all of 2020 in the majors and on the active roster — and even winning his first Gold Glove, but hitting a miserable .173/.261/.360 — he finally got something close to a full-length season under his belt in 2021, hitting .286/.352/560 (143 wRC+) with 34 homers, 15 steals, and 5.3 WAR in just 136 games, but accompanying that with two more trips to the IL. He added a second Gold Glove that year, and finished eighth in the NL MVP voting, but since then he hasn’t come close to replicating that season, with injuries limiting him to just 168 games, 23 homers, a 98 wRC+ and 2.0 WAR across 2022–23, another two-year span that included five trips to the IL:

Thus the 28-year-old O’Neill entered this season having played more than 100 games in a major league season just once, and more than 72 just twice. Between his injuries, a crowded field of alternatives, his increasing price tag, and a spat with manager Oliver Marmol — who publicly questioned O’Neill’s effort running the bases during a heavy rain last April 4 in St. Louis, calling his effort “unacceptable” — O’Neill fell out of favor in St. Louis. On December 8, the Cardinals traded the pending free agent to the Red Sox in exchange for a pair of righty relievers, Nick Robertson and Victor Santos.

So far, the change of scenery seems to agree with him, though it’s worth noting that Tuesday’s game was his first at Fenway with the Red Sox. One game, one homer? That’s a pretty good rate!

In light of O’Neill’s long history of leg woes, it’s worth pointing out that as of now he’s hitting the ball harder than in the past two seasons. I present these stats while acknowledging that we don’t have enough data to draw strong conclusions about what’s happening yet; this is as much about his decline from 2021 as it is his torrid start:

Bear in mind that, as Baseball Prospectus’ Russell Carlton has noted, exit velocity stabilizes around 40 batted ball events, and barrel rate at 50 BBE, while groundball, fly ball, and hard-hit rates do so at 80 BBE. Within this small sample, this year’s exit velo and barrel rate at least look more like 2021 than ’22 or ’23. On a rolling basis of 25 plate appearances, both his xSLG and xwOBA show that his season-opening hot streak resembles only two or three stretches from the past two seasons, while he had a handful of such stretches in 2021:

The other thing to note about O’Neill is how much he’s tightened his approach so far. He’s a guy with a lot of swing-and-miss in his game, so much so that even as he ranked no. 61 on our Top 100 Prospects list in 2018, he had 30/40 grades (present/future) on his hit tool, and from 2018–23, he struck out 30% of the time, seventh among hitters with at least 1,500 PA in that span. Production-wise, he’s near the upper end among guys with strikeout rates in that neighborhood; of the hitters with the 30 highest strikeout rates over at least 1,000 PA within that span — everybody from 28.8% up — his 111 wRC+ ranks fourth, behind only Luke Voit (123), Giancarlo Stanton (122), and Teoscar Hernández (117).

Entering this season, O’Neill had swung at 72.5% of pitches within the strike zone, including 71% last year; so far this year, he’s cut that down to 50.8%. Similarly, his overall swing rate of 48.1% entering this year (44.9% last year) is down to 36%. His swinging strike rate of 15.4% (11.2% last year) is way down to 6.4%, and his strikeout rate, which was 25.2% last year, is at 19.5%. Mind you, none of these stats have stabilized — swing rate takes about 50 PA (he’s at 41) and strikeout rate requires roughly 60 PA — but those are at least promising trends.

We’re obviously still early enough in the season that any trend could be a mirage, a two-week heater or skid that might not merit closer scrutiny if it were located in mid-June or the dog days of August. Still, when combined with his hot streak, the health and change-of-scenery aspects of O’Neill’s situation are at least worth keeping an eye on. He’s not going to continue slugging .906, but for a team whose outfielders entered this season ranking 22nd in the majors with a combined 96 wRC+ since 2020 — i.e., the post-Betts era — this counts as a welcome development.