Carlos Carrasco will be coming off of his best start of the season when he takes the mound tonight for the Cleveland Guardians against the Baltimore Orioles. Last Friday, the 37-year-old right-hander surrendered a lone run while logging seven strikeouts and allowing just four baserunners across six innings in a 7-1 win over the Toronto Blue Jays. His overall campaign, though, has been uninspiring. All told, Carrasco has a 5.40 ERA and a 4.78 FIP over 65 innings, and his 18.1% strikeout rate ranks in the 23rd percentile.

His 2023 season was likewise lackluster. Showing signs of a career in decline as he settled into the back half of his 30s, Carrasco put up worse numbers last year than he has so far this season. Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Time and tide waits for no man” remains true six centuries later; now a veteran in his 15th big league season, Carrasco is seemingly at a crossroads. A return to his 2015-18 glory years — a span in which he went 60-36 with a 3.40 ERA and a 3.12 FIP — is highly unlikely, but as his last outing suggests, Cookie could conceivably reestablish himself as a reliable contributor to Cleveland’s rotation. The right-hander feels he has gas left in the tank, though how much gas — and how long it will last — is uncertain.

Prior to a recent game at Cleveland’s Progressive Field, Carrasco talked about his evolution as a pitcher and his belief that he can still get hitters out.

———

David Laurila: How much have you changed as a pitcher over your many years in the big leagues?

Carlos Carrasco: “I’m pretty much the same guy. The only difference is that I don’t throw 95-97 anymore. I’m 92, 94 sometimes. Everything is still the same from back in the day except the velo.”

Laurila: Less velocity presumably impacts how you need to go after hitters… Read the rest of this entry »

The two of us were part of the FanGraphs contingent in Phoenix for the 2024 MLB Draft Combine last week. The first half of the week consisted of showcase events like batting practice, infield and outfield drills, and a game featuring many of the high schoolers in attendance. The back half of the week consisted of athletic and biometric testing, including the 30-yard dash.

Below are scouting notes for some of our favorite hitters from the event. Major League Baseball distributes a list of the top performers in several of the athletic tests to the media, but doesn’t share complete data. Eric recorded the electronic 30-yard times by hand as they unfolded; at the very bottom of the post is a complete list of those times, save for the couple he missed while he was schmoozing, eating, etc. (Update: Arnold Abernathy’s time has been added) We’ll have a post highlighting Combine pitchers, as well as a draft ranking update, to follow. The players aren’t listed in any particular order; our initials appear at the end of the blurbs we wrote. Read the rest of this entry »

As of this writing, Mason Miller leads all relief pitchers in K% and K-BB%. You’ve heard of him. He’s one of this season’s breakout stars. He’s so good, he’s convinced people who should know better that years of team control for a relief pitcher ought to be worth a lot in the trade market. High praise, indeed.

No. 2 is Jeremiah Estrada, a small (6-foot-1) right-hander whom the Padres plucked off the waiver wire last November. In his previous MLB experience — 16 1/3 innings over parts of two seasons with the Cubs — Estrada struck out 21 batters and walked 15 while allowing 10 earned runs, including five home runs. This year, Estrada has 48 strikeouts against 10 walks in 26 1/3 innings. His 43.6 K% is not only second in the league this year, it would be one of the 20 best all-time if he keeps it up for the rest of the season.

It’s like he’s not the same pitcher. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Edwin Díaz’s sticky-stuff suspension, a new name for the internal brace alternative to Tommy John surgery, Blake Snell’s latest setback, the success and extension of Cristopher Sánchez (and the Phillies’ excellence), Shota Imanaga’s regression and Meg’s preseason prediction about Imanaga vs. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Kyle Finnegan’s first-of-its-kind clockoff, the respective impressiveness of starts by Bailey Ober and Pablo López, a follow-up Steven Kwan-versation, the much-improved Guardians offense, an incredible catch by a Baltimore fan, the latest slow start by Julio Rodríguez, and (1:27:17) Ben’s pedantic report about brand-new baseball movie Ultraman: Rising.

Audio intro: Tom Rhoads, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Daniel Leckie, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Díaz incident
Link to X-Files episode
Link to UCL surgery sheet
Link to internal brace explainer
Link to Snell comments
Link to “slapdick” story
Link to Giants depth chart
Link to P fWAR since 5/11
Link to Dombrowski comments
Link to Dan S. on the extension
Link to MLBTR on the extension
Link to preseason predictions pods
Link to Finnegan play
Link to Finnegans Wake wiki
Link to violations leaderboard
Link to clockoff game log
Link to clockoff gamer
Link to shrimp post
Link to Sam on walk-off errors
Link to Sam on walk-off strikeouts
Link to Langs pitch-count stat
Link to Stathead on Ober games
Link to first Kwanconversation
Link to article on Guardians whiffs
Link to recent Kwan profile
Link to Cleveland wind tunnel
Link to fan’s catch
Link to Julio’s splits
Link to Julio’s swing changes
Link to Neil on Julio’s starts
Link to wOBA-xWOBA
Link to Ultraman wiki
Link to Ultraman: Rising wiki
Link to Ken’s stats screenshot
Link to 400+ HR sheet
Link to .500-est teams
Link to Turner’s helmet play
Link to Sam on helmets
Link to ballpark meetup forms
Link to meetup organizer form

 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
 Twitter Account
 EW Subreddit
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Julio Rodríguez is having a down year with the bat. Three months into the season, the 23-year-old Seattle Mariners center fielder is slashing just .257/.308/.343 with seven home runs and a 92 wRC+, numbers that are well below the .279/.338/.495 with a 135 wRC+ and 60 home runs he put up over his first two big league campaigns. There are a pair of silver linings, though. One is that Rodríguez was markedly better in the second half of the 2023 season (a .942 OPS) than he’d been in the first half (.721). The other is Seattle’s record. Even with the superstar performing at less than his usual standards, the Mariners are 45-36 and sitting atop the AL West standings. If Rodríguez were to repeat last season’s second-half resurgence — something you might not want to bet against — that surely would go a long way toward helping propel Seattle’s postseason push.

In the 104th installment of our Talks Hitting series, Rodríguez discussed his early development as a hitter, how he balances staying the course with a need for change, and the perspective he takes when looking at his stat sheet.

———

David Laurila: How did you first learn to hit?

Julio Rodríguez: “Little League. I just picked up a bat with my dad and started swinging it.”

Laurila: Do you consider yourself a natural hitter?

Rodríguez: “Kind of, yeah. I could say that. In Little League, I had my coach and all that, but my dad was a big part of it too. There was a point where he was kind of my coach before I went to this academy in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic. He, as well as some other coaches, helped me out.”

Laurila: What is your father’s baseball background?

Rodríguez: “He just played amateur — he didn’t do professional — but he loved the game. That’s why I started playing.”

Laurila: What about hitting instruction when you went to the academy? Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Minnesota Twins. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the fourth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. 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.

The Mariners are in the driver’s seat in the AL West, with a 5.5-game lead over the Astros, and an 80% chance of making it back to the playoffs after narrowly falling short last season. And considering that they just played their 81st game last night, a tough 4-3 loss to the Rays in which they led 3-1 entering the eighth, now seems like a good time to evaluate what moves president of baseball operations — and notorious trader — Jerry Dipoto should make between now and the July 30 trade deadline.

Seattle’s success has been driven by its pitching, especially its starting five. Only the Phillies, Yankees, and Orioles have gotten lower ERAs out of their rotation, and after play concluded on Sunday, Mariners starters had pitched 23 more innings than Yankees starters in the same number of games. The M’s arguably have three aces in Luis Castillo, George Kirby, and Logan Gilbert; their fourth and fifth starters, Bryce Miller and Bryan Woo, aren’t too shabby either. Woo’s innings will probably have to be managed carefully down the stretch after he began the season on the IL due to forearm issues, which also have caused him to leave a few starts early. He was removed in the fourth inning of Monday’s game with right hamstring tightness, though it’s unclear yet how much time, if any, he will miss. Either way, the Mariners can withstand a limited or absent Woo because of how many innings the front three are able to cover.

Their relievers are generally doing their jobs as well, with the group ranking 13th in bullpen ERA entering Monday, and co-closers Andrés Muñoz and Ryne Stanek have done a solid job finishing off games. The depth of the bullpen was supposed to be a strength entering the season, but with Matt Brash and Jackson Kowar out for the season and Gregory Santos yet to throw a pitch this year, the Mariners are a little thin in the middle innings. Still, Santos is expected to start a rehab assignment soon, and the lower-level bullpen issues ought to be easy to address with minor moves between now and the trade deadline.

Seattle’s tepid offense, on the other hand, won’t be such a simple fix. Its 97 wRC+ ranked 17th entering this week, and the guys who were supposed to be carrying the lineup (Julio Rodríguez, J.P. Crawford, Cal Raleigh, and offseason additions Mitch Garver and Jorge Polanco) have all been below average over the first half of the season. Strong contributions from Luke Raley, Dominic Canzone, Dylan Moore, and Josh Rojas — along with a resurgence from Ty France — have kept the offense from being even more disappointing, but this lineup still isn’t good enough for the Mariners to make a deep playoff run.

Raleigh is the only Mariners player with at least 10 home runs at the halfway point of the season; he’s pacing for 26 homers, four fewer than last year. Rodríguez’s power is also down this season. He’s launched just seven home runs after putting up his first 30-homer campaign last year. It’s worth noting that Rodríguez struggled through the first half of 2023 as well. At this point last year, he had 13 home runs and a 104 wRC+ before exploding for 19 dingers and a 145 wRC+ the rest of the way, so the Mariners should be confident that the 23-year-old phenom will turn things around. However, even with Julio at his best, Seattle needs more offense.

There will, as always, be rental bats available. Guys like Tommy Pham or Josh Bell (especially if he’s on one of his yearly hot streaks) would certainly help the Mariners add depth and lengthen their lineup, but they need a game-changer, someone to make pitchers sweat, and nobody like that exists on the rental market unless the Mets are willing to trade Pete Alonso. So Dipoto might have to go big, even if he has to give up Miller or Woo or a top prospect like Harry Ford or Cole Young in such a move. Here are some of the players the Mariners should target in a trade:

Risky Rooker

Brent Rooker is good at one thing: hitting the crap out of the ball. He’s best suited as the DH instead of playing the outfield. He also walks at a solid clip and strikes out a ton. But when he does connect, few hitters in the league make more optimal contact. Rooker is above the 90th percentile for xSLG, barrel rate, hard-hit rate, and sweet-spot percentage (he’s better than Luis Arraez there!), helping him pop 43 homers since the start of 2023 after being claimed off waivers by the A’s in the 2022-23 offseason. Most importantly, his power plays anywhere: He’s got 13 home runs this year, and he’d actually have a couple more if all of his batted balls were in Seattle, per Statcast.

The thing about Rooker is he’s streaky. Last year, he had a bonkers 232 wRC+ in March/April and then posted monthly marks, in order, of 77, 74, 144, 94, and 159 the rest of the way. This season has been a similar story. He had a 122 wRC+ over the first month and a 185 mark in May, but he’s down to 84 in June. Still, even a streaky Rooker would benefit the Mariners, especially because he’s under club control through the 2027 season.

Trading With A Familiar Team

The Rays are never ones to shy away from trading off their big league roster, even when they’re in contention for a playoff spot. And they’re certainly never ones to shy away from trading with the Mariners, with last offseason’s José Caballero-for-Luke Raley deal the most recent example in a long line of swaps between the two teams.

While the Mariners were interested in Rays third baseman Isaac Paredes last offseason, I’d argue that acquiring him wouldn’t work out well. Paredes has made a name for himself with his signature pull-side power, but that approach wouldn’t be as beneficial if he were playing his home games in Seattle. According to Statcast, only six of Parades’ 11 home runs this season would’ve been gone at T-Mobile Park, which has extremely hitter-unfriendly park factors; this year, the environment is reducing batted ball distance by an average of six feet, not good for a hitter like Paredes who relies on optimal horizontal spray angle.

Randy Arozarena has struggled mightily this season, and Brandon Lowe is too injury-prone to be relied upon as a true lineup-lengthener. But how about Josh Lowe? He’s missed some time this year due to injuries, but he’s mashed when healthy and boasts plus power and speed. Like Rooker, Lowe is controllable; he isn’t set to reach free agency until the after the 2028 season. For this reason, the Rays would ask for a lot in return. But Lowe would be an excellent fit for the Mariners, essentially the lite, left-handed version of our next and final trade possibility.

The White (Sox) Whale

Injuries are always going to be at the forefront of any discussion about dynamic White Sox center fielder Luis Robert Jr. Most recently, he missed 55 of Chicago’s first 79 games this season after re-injuring the same hip that limited him to 68 games in 2021. But what he did last year, in his first and only full season, should make teams looking to upgrade their lineup drool at the possibility of acquiring him. Robert has 40-homer power and the speed to swipe 20 bases. He’s also an excellent defensive center fielder with a strong throwing arm, tools that should make him an elite right fielder — where he’d almost certainly slide because Seattle already has Rodríguez in center.

Robert is not without his flaws; in addition to his injury history, he strikes out a ton and doesn’t really take walks. But he would clearly be the second-best position player on the Mariners and the game-changing force they most desperately need. And while he’d cost a king’s ransom that might decimate the Seattle farm system, this is the type of move that fits the Mariners perfectly. They would get a player whose raw talent equals that of Rodríguez and one who is under club control through 2027, courtesy of two $20 million club options that they would surely pick up.

Will the White Sox move him? There doesn’t seem to be anyone untouchable on Chicago’s roster, but general manager Chris Getz has every right to ask for the moon. Are the Mariners willing to fork it over to get another star? They should be.

At this time last year, the Phillies faced a good deal of long-term uncertainty about their rotation. Aaron Nola was a free agent after the season, Zack Wheeler would follow a year later, and the only pitcher with a guaranteed contract past the 2024 season was Taijuan Walker. This time around, their rotation once again leads the league in WAR, but much of that future angst has been alleviated. The Phillies re-signed Nola and extended Wheeler during the offseason, and now they’ve locked up left-hander Cristopher Sánchez, a 2023 sensation who has remained one this season, for at least four more years, with two club options that could keep him around the through 2030 season.

The 27-year-old Sánchez, whom the Phillies acquired in a trade with the Tampa Bay Rays for Curtis Mead back in 2019, has a 2.67 ERA/2.49 FIP over 15 starts this season. That’s good for 2.6 WAR, fourth best among National League pitchers. Sánchez will receive a guaranteed $22.5 million over the next four seasons, buying out all of his possible years of arbitration, plus a $2 million signing bonus. Not bad for someone who had just one full year of service time entering 2024. The two club options come with a $1 million buyout each for 2029 and ’30, bringing the minimum value of the deal to $22.5 million. If the Phillies pick up those two options, for $14 million and $15 million, respectively, and if Sánchez secures top-10 finishes in the Cy Young voting during those option years, his salaries could increase to $16 million for 2029 and $19 million for ’30. That puts the maximum total value of the extension at $56.5 million over six years.

If you didn’t see Sánchez coming, you’re definitely not alone. Mead went on to become one of Tampa Bay’s top prospects – he was still ranked fourth in the Rays’ system and 32nd overall in our preseason prospects rankings – while Sánchez came back from the COVID layoff struggling against Triple-A hitters. Changeup pitchers with command issues generally aren’t highly regarded, and neither Sánchez’s cup of coffee in 2021 nor his larger carafe in 2022 suggested a pitcher who would become a key part of a top rotation a year later. The Phillies certainly weren’t confident in him entering 2023; he had lost weight over the offseason, and the team intended to give him only a single spot start in April after a White Sox doubleheader messed up the rotation’s rest days. From a story from last August by Matt Gelb of The Athletic:

Rob Thomson was transparent with Sánchez: This was one start, and one start only. Sánchez, who had missed most of spring training with various injuries, later said he appreciated the manager’s honesty. He knew where he stood.

Before the call ended, Brian Kaplan had a question. He is the team’s assistant pitching coach and director of pitching development. The Phillies had outlined an offseason plan for Sánchez, a lanky lefty from the Dominican Republic, and it went haywire. Sánchez was supposed to add bulk. But a long illness sapped him of strength. He lost more than 15 pounds. It compromised him in the spring when he failed to make an impression while the Phillies scrambled to fill the back of their rotation.

In truth, Sánchez didn’t dominate for Lehigh Valley last year, either, but he did accomplish one goal the team set out for him; by the summer, he had gained 25 pounds. That coincided with a small window of opportunity to grab the fifth spot in the rotation. The Phillies had used Matt Strahm in the role early in the season, but they were worried about his innings count. Dylan Covey had gotten a couple starts but was bombed by the Braves in his most recent one, and Bailey Falter, who had been in the rotation earlier, was in the minors and out with a neck injury. So Sánchez got the nod on June 17 against the A’s; he went four scoreless innings and allowed one hit. His tumbling changeup — which looks like the world’s least erratic forkball — clicked, and he never gave the Phillies a reason to boot him from the rotation. Even the acquisition of Michael Lorenzen didn’t cost him his job. The Phillies happily went with a six-man rotation rather than deprive themselves of Sánchez’s services.

Over the first half of this season, Sánchez has proven that his performance last year was no fluke. He’s now been up for a full calendar year, throwing 175 1/3 innings with 157 strikeouts with a 3.08 ERA across 31 starts. He surely won’t continue his rate of home run avoidance (just one allowed this season), but even if his home run rate were to regress heavily toward the mean and cause his ERA to jump to the low 3.00s, he’d still worthy of his rotation spot.

So, what’s the projection look like? Suffice it to say, ZiPS was not very excited about him coming into 2023.

That’s not disastrous; with those numbers, he would’ve been a competent spot starter/long reliever. But it wasn’t even a shadow of what he’s accomplished in the last year. So let’s spin up his current, much sunnier projection. How sunny? Let’s just say Tom Glavine pops up in the top 10 on his comps list and leave it at that.

Most teams would be ecstatic to have this projection from their no. 2 starter. From your no. 4, this is like waking up one morning and finding out that your garden hose somehow makes its own IPA. Based on these numbers, ZiPS projects Sánchez to be worth $27.3 million over the four-year extension, making this a decent value from the point of view of the Phils. The deal becomes even better for Philadelphia when you look at the option years; ZiPS projects Sánchez’s value for 2029 and ’30 to be worth a combined $41 million in free agency, $11 million more than the base value of those years if the Phillies pick up his options.

That leaves Ranger Suárez as the only key member of the rotation who might not be around long term. He’s set to hit free agency after the 2025 season, and considering his excellence this year, he probably won’t come cheap if the Phillies try to extend him; a six-year deal would cost them $135 million, according to ZiPS. Having Sánchez around until the end of the decade at such a generous rate could provide Philadelphia the flexibility to dole out more money to keep Suárez.

Before we go, I’ve been looking for an excuse to project the Phillies rotation, so I’m not letting this opportunity slip away! Using the innings allocation in our depth charts, ZiPS currently projects Phillies starting pitchers to accumulate 8.6 more WAR over the rest of the season, which would give their starters a combined 22.7 WAR for the entire 2024 campaign. Here’s how that compares to the best starting staffs in the five-man rotation era, which I’m somewhat arbitrarily starting in 1980:

That’s quite rarified air. Based on these projections, the Phillies would finish the season with baseball’s best rotation in more than a decade, since the 2013 Tigers. And with the Sánchez extension coming on the heels of the deals for Nola and Wheeler, Philadelphia has the chance to keep this party going for several more years.

There were some big shakeups in the AL playoff picture as the Red Sox and Astros charged up the standings, while the NL playoff picture is just as messy as ever.

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 Orioles had a statement series win against the Yankees last week, taking two of the three games, including a dramatic extra-innings affair on Wednesday and an old-fashioned blowout on Thursday. Unfortunately, they followed that triumph up with a pretty ugly sweep against the Astros in Houston. The Yankees weren’t immune to the weekend woes after the high emotions of that intra-divisional series; they dropped two of three to the Braves and lost Giancarlo Stanton to a hamstring injury. He joined Anthony Rizzo on the IL, and suddenly the Yankees’ offensive depth is being tested.

The Phillies signed Cristopher Sánchez to a four-year extension over the weekend, and he celebrated by spinning seven shutout innings against the Diamondbacks on Sunday. Philadelphia now has the three best qualified starters in the NL by ERA — and Aaron Nola isn’t one of them. Bryce Harper is producing like he wants to win another MVP. Meanwhile, the calendar says June so Kyle Schwarber is crushing the ball.

The Guardians won their fifth straight game on Sunday, sweeping the Blue Jays and overtaking the Yankees for the best record in the American League (though New York still has the most wins in the majors, with 52). Cleveland travels to Baltimore and Kansas City this week in two pretty big tests of the team’s mettle.

The Dodgers haven’t missed Mookie Betts or Yoshinobu Yamamoto yet thanks to the scorching hot Shohei Ohtani. He blasted four home runs last week and is now up to nine in June to go along with a 207 wRC+ this month.

After falling to 10 games back in the NL East on June 11, the Braves have strung together three series wins in a row and have gone 8-3 in that stretch. That cut the deficit down to seven games. Michael Harris II joined Ronald Acuña Jr. on the IL last week, but the rest of their offensive stars have shown a bit of life recently. But the real reason why they should still be considered one of the better teams in the league is because of their pitching staff; over these last 11 games, they’ve allowed just 2.9 runs per game.

The Mariners’ fun differential was nowhere to be found last week; they lost back-to-back series to the Guardians and Marlins on the road. Seattle has a gauntlet of AL Wild Card contenders on the horizon, beginning this week with series against the Rays, Twins, Orioles, and Blue Jays coming up. The Mariners still have a solid grip on the AL West, but last week showed just how razor thin their margin for error is without any significant upgrades to their lineup.

The Red Sox hovered around .500 for essentially the entire season — never climbing more than four games over and never falling more than two games below that mark. Until last week, that is. Their series win over the Yankees a couple of weekends ago gave them the momentum to sweep the Blue Jays and win their weekend series over the Reds, pushing them six games over .500 and into sole possession of the final AL Wild Card spot.

Perhaps the Astros’ sweep of the Orioles last weekend will end up being the turning point for what has been an otherwise disappointing season. They’ve now won three series in a row and have cut their deficit in the AL West from 10 games to just six in the span of a week. Even so, last week was far from ideal. They finally decided to cut the struggling José Abreu, and their pitching staff suffered yet another injury; this time it was Justin Verlander, who was placed on the IL with neck discomfort on Tuesday. Still, the Astros definitely should not be counted out of the playoff picture yet.

The Cardinals and Mets seem to be the two teams in the NL Wild Card race with the most forward momentum right now. St. Louis swept the Giants over the weekend to pull within five games of the Brewers in the NL Central. And no team has been better this month than the Mets, who are 13-6 in June following their brutal 9-19 May. New York’s bats have awoken during the scorching stretch, with a 142 wRC+ that ranks first in the majors this month. Of course, because they’re the Mets, they capped off their week with a self-inflicted wound. Closer Edwin Díaz was ejected before pitching the ninth inning of Sunday’s 5-2 win over the Cubs for a sticky substance violation; his ejection triggered an automatic 10-game suspension.

Last week, I had this group of fringe AL contenders behind the much larger NL group, but I think these five teams are a bit better than that blob of clubs fighting over the NL Wild Card. Right now, the Rays and Rangers look like they’re trending upward, while the Royals and Blue Jays have had pretty terrible fortnights.

After series wins against the Twins and Pirates, the Rays are tied with the Astros in the AL Wild Card standings, and just like Houston, it’s too early to count Tampa Bay out of the race. The same could be said of the Rangers, who are only a half-game behind the Rays and just swept the Royals over the weekend. Texas also welcomed back Max Scherzer on Sunday, the first of what is expected to be a number of reinforcements from the injured list over the next few months.

The Royals have really floundered these past two weeks, winning just three times in their last 13 games. They’ve lost their grip on a Wild Card spot and are now nine games back in the AL Central. Their Cinderella Story might have been too good to be true, though there’s plenty of season left for them to rediscover some of their magic — after all, they have six more games against the White Sox. For now, Kansas City returns home for three games against the Marlins before hosting the Guardians for a four-game set over the weekend.

It’s probably too late for the Blue Jays to regain any ground in the playoff race at this point; they lost all six games they played last week and have won just three times over their last 12 games. Making matters worse, their no. 2 prospect, Orelvis Martinez, was suspended 80 games on Sunday for violating the league’s performance-enhancing drugs policy.

The Tigers took advantage of Toronto’s losing streak to leap the Jays in the Wild Card standings. Detroit’s -6 run differential and +9 Base Runs differential paints a much better picture than its actual record 36-41 record. The biggest issue for the Tigers is their lackluster offense; their 11-run outburst on Sunday broke a stretch of six games in which they had scored two or fewer runs. Their starting rotation has been carrying them for essentially the entire season, and they’re approaching the point where they need to make a decision about whether they want to keep Jack Flaherty for the stretch run or try to get a haul of prospects for the resurgent starter.

Going .500 in a given week is the measuring stick of success for the teams in this tier. That bare minimum means they’re sticking around in the crowded NL Wild Card race without actually pulling too far ahead or falling too far behind. The Diamondbacks, Nationals, Pirates, and Cubs all met that meager mark last week. Meanwhile, the Padres won three of four against the Brewers over the weekend to cap off a 4-3 week and maintain their loose grip on the final Wild Card spot. It feels like the whole NL playoff picture is like a giant Pepe Silvia bulletin board.

The Reds lost both of their series last week and have dropped in the standings just as quickly as they climbed them a few weeks ago. Their youngsters are still battling though plenty of inconsistency as they work out the growing pains of trying to develop in the big leagues. They’ll welcome back Noelvi Marte from his 80-game suspension soon — he’s eligible to be activated on June 27 — and Matt McLain has shown some recent progress in his rehab from his shoulder injury. Those two should provide some support for the lineup whenever they rejoin the club.

Despite playing in the Rickwood Field game on Thursday night and honoring franchise icon Willie Mays after he died at 93 on Tuesday, the Giants had a week to forget on the field. They were swept by the Cardinals over the weekend and now carry a five-game losing streak into Monday night’s series opener against the Cubs in San Francisco. This is a huge four-game set; Chicago is one of the teams immediately ahead of the Giants in the Wild Card standings. And yet despite these woes — because this is the middling National League — San Francisco is only three games behind the Padres for the final playoff berth.

The Angels may have avoided a serious injury scare last weekend: Zach Neto had to be removed from Saturday’s game, but it doesn’t appear to be a serious issue. That’s good, because Neto has been one of the precious few bright spots for the Halos this year.

The Marlins had three walk-off victories in a row last week — and won both of their series to boot — but that’s pretty much the only thing to celebrate in Miami. They had to scratch both Jesús Luzardo and Braxton Garrett from their scheduled starts last weekend, and now their starting rotation is devoid of any of the young, promising starters they’ve developed over the last few years. With so many injuries decimating their youth movement, it’s starting to feel like this season is a complete lost cause, without any hint of momentum to look forward to next year.

There is one problem with putting the White Sox in their own tier below that group of four rebuilding clubs above them: I have to write something about them each week. They won twice last week, which should be considered a moral victory given the historically bad pace they were on a few weeks ago. They’re still on track to lose 119 games, which would match the modern record.

JJ Wetherholt is in an unusual position. A third-year finance student at West Virginia University with an interest in math who once considered going to law school, Wetherholt is leaving college early, and says his parents couldn’t be more proud.

As prestigious and lucrative as a career in law or finance can be, neither holds a candle to professional baseball, and Wetherholt is one of the leading candidates for the top pick in this year’s draft.

In addition to academic All-Big 12 and All-American honors, Wetherholt hit .373/.471/.632 with 29 homers, 56 stolen bases, and more walks than strikeouts in 143 career college games. A compact, sinewy 5-foot-10, 190-pound second baseman with great bat speed from an open, left-handed stance, he’s a lock to become WVU’s highest draft pick ever. (The record is currently 11th overall, shared by Alek Manoah in 2019 and right-hander Chris Enochs in 1997.) Read the rest of this entry »