When the Cubs signed Nico Hoerner to a six-year contract extension on Opening Day, they knew exactly what they were getting. You see, Hoerner has been remarkably consistent throughout his career; over his four full seasons in the majors, his wRC+ has had a peak of 109 and a low of 102, to go along with sterling defensive metrics. His seasonal WAR marks during that four-year span have ranged from 3.8 to 4.8. The only reason why this isn’t a five-season sample is because, in 2021, three separate IL stints curtailed his campaign to just 44 games. In those 44 games, though, he put up a 106 wRC+ and 1.6 WAR.
However, the Nico Hoerner that has showed up to play this year isn’t the same as before. He’s still playing excellent defense at an up-the-middle position, but he’s also rocking a .320/.393/.515 slash line (a 156 wRC+) with four home runs, meaning that in just 24 games, he’s already nearly halfway to his career high of 10, set back in 2022. Last week, he racked up nine hits, two home runs, and two stolen bases to earn NL Player of the Week honors. It’s still early in the season, but there are enough underlying changes in Hoerner’s performance that it’s worth digging into how he’s been able to power up this year. Read the rest of this entry »
Dan Szymborski: Here! Sorry, I had a weird problem getting int
12:15
thelwynn: The Mets are back, how long until they are in first place?
12:15
Dan Szymborski: It’s hard to say. The Mets will get to first place if there’s sufficient time remaining in the season for another tragic downfall
12:15
Farhandrew Zaidman: Evergreen question – is Shohei a better hitter or pitcher?
12:15
Dan Szymborski: Probably still hitter
12:15
Judge, speed demon: It’s pretty funny Judge’s “slow” start is 9 HR and a 163 OPS+ with 5 steals. With Ohtani and Soto probably taking it easy because of pitching and injury, maybe he’s the next huge slugger with surprising SB totals (he usually does steal 10-15 a year)
In pitching, there’s a fundamental tension between the two best results you can obtain: strikeouts and grounders. Strikeouts are obviously the best, but grounders are incredible too. Batters put up a .232 wOBA when they hit the ball on the ground, as compared to .462 in the air (popups are another category of good batted ball, but I’m lumping them in with aerial contact today for simplicity’s sake). The thing is, the pitches that induce strikeouts tend not to induce grounders, and vice versa. Sinkers don’t miss bats, and four-seamers don’t keep the ball on the ground. It’s quite the bind.
There are, of course, pitchers who can do both. Nolan McLeanspringsto mind. There’s peak Zack Britton, Framber Valdez at his curve-spinning best, some good Cristopher Sánchez games perhaps. For the most part, though, it’s really hard to do both. I came up with a simple rule to measure how good pitchers were at it last year: divide grounders by two, add strikeouts, subtract walks, and divide by total batters faced. Aroldis Chapman, Jhoan Duran, and Andrew Kittredge paced the league in it last year, with Shohei Ohtani and Mason Miller rounding out the top five. Those guys were all incredibly effective.
It’s early in the season, of course, but do you know who’s leading baseball in this ratio in 2026? Well, it’s Mason Miller. Oops. I guess breakingbaseball will do that. If you’re striking out 70% of the guys you face, of course you’ll lead this measure. But the only other player above 50%? That’d be Riley O’Brien, the new Cardinals closer, who has been one of the best stories in baseball so far this year. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m sure you know the joke about the two hikers, the bear, and the running shoes. A bear is chasing two men through the woods; one stops to put on his running shoes. “You fool!” his friend says. “Even in those shoes you’ll never outrun the bear!”
“I don’t need to outrun the bear,” says the man. “I just need to outrun you.”
It’s an old joke, and I tell it a lot because I find it to have the probative value of an actual Biblical parable. You don’t need to be great; just be better than the other guy. For the past week, the Phillies have been mired in a losing streak that would’ve gotten national attention had the bear not been devoting its attention to eating the Mets. But on Wednesday, the Mets finally snapped their 12-game skid and the Phillies dropped their eighth game on the bounce. Now the two rivals both sit at 8-16, the worst record in the National League. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about vagueposting screenshots of Baseball Savant percentiles, a Ron Darling comment during the Mets’ 12th consecutive loss about why pitchers shouldn’t apologize to batters for throwing inside, team-level changes in pitch usage and results this season, why MLB partly escaped the NBA’s tanking epidemic, why relievers are struggling so far, baseball parallels to track’s quest to produce lighter shoes, and an EW listener meetup tool (password: EW2026), then Stat Blast (1:25:12) about player home run totals that outstripped team win totals, winning streaks built from other teams’ losing streaks, and batting orders with jersey numbers that matched lineup slots, plus (1:39:40) a postscript.
“It seems that the long arc of time has finally bent to my whims,” said the man, sundering the veil of silence in which he had cloistered himself. The luxurious, sovereign growth around his mouth stirred and parted once more as its owner granted himself a fleeting moment of almost rapturous satisfaction. “Those worthy of my ambitions have finally revealed themselves, and now I am compelled to do naught but grind the ambitions of my enemies into pale dust,” he intoned to the unadorned darkness, steepling his fingers in sacerdotal triumph.
At least, that’s what happened in the disordered mind of Dan Szymborski, curious for months where Lucas Giolito would end up in 2026. Since the end of the offseason, with Giolito unsigned, he’s been a source of speculation as the grand Plan B whenever a pitcher has been lost to injury, almost as if he were lying in wait. The rumors finally materialized into fact on Wednesday, as the San Diego Padres signed him to a one-year deal with a mutual option for the 2027 season.
If Giolito had been waiting for a perfect fit, the team with which he’d make the biggest impact, he was correct to join the Padres. In fact, given the rumors that had popped up, I had already started writing a slightly different piece before reality quite rudely interfered; in it, I used ZiPS to estimate his effect on the playoff probabilities for each team in baseball. And the Padres just happened to rank number one in ZiPS-projected Giolito impact, with their playoff probability shifting from 55% to 65% upon his acquisition, ahead of the Cubs (+8.1%), Athletics (+7.9%), Astros (+6.9%), and Braves (+6.4%), in terms of the size of the bump.
San Diego’s rotation has been quite solid in 2026, with a 3.53 ERA in the early going, and 2.4 WAR, placing it eighth in baseball. But there were dangers that the front office could not ignore. While there’s a lot more reason to be optimistic about Randy Vásquez now that his changeup and curveball appear to have evolved into whiff machines, Nick Pivetta’s injury was still extremely unwelcome news given the team’s rather thin depth. At the moment, it looks like Pivetta’s flexor strain will not require season-ending surgery, but he isn’t going to be back anytime soon.
Pivetta’s injury left the Padres to fight with the Dodgers for the NL West title with an almost non-existent margin for error in their rotation. Before his injury, they were already banking on Walker Buehler, a big enough risk that he signed with them on a minor league deal, and Germán Márquez, who hasn’t been both healthy and good since 2021. Griffin Canning is coming back from a significant Achilles injury and hasn’t pitched since June, and there’s no firm timetable yet for Joe Musgrove’s return from the Tommy John surgery he had 18 months ago. Yu Darvish is certainly not going to be back in 2026, or possibly ever. Keeping up with the Dodgers isn’t an easy task, so there are only so many wins you can concede while you wait and hope for some good injury news on one of these fronts.
The simple truth about Giolito is that he’s clearly no longer the pitcher he was when he got Cy Young votes each year from 2019 through 2021. If he were, he probably would have signed a contract north of $150 million during the offseason, instead of waiting to be a reinforcement for a contender in need. Even so, last year represented a successful comeback season for him, as he missed 2024 with internal brace surgery to repair his UCL. Giolito previously had full Tommy John surgery immediately after being drafted in the first round by the Nationals in 2012, those elbow questions being responsible for his falling to the 16th pick.
It’s true that last season was a successful return for Giolito, but there are some important caveats to that statement. His 3.41 ERA in 26 starts was certainly solid, but dark things lurked in his peripheral numbers. His FIP was a more middling 4.17, and his 7.5 K/9 represented a 20% drop-off from his 2022-2023 numbers and a third off his peak. Statcast’s xERA was especially negative, giving him a 5.01 for 2025, and though the ZiPS version was kinder, the zERA of 4.55 was hardly top-free-agent material. The goal here isn’t to add an ace — though I can’t imagine San Diego would object if he channeled his best years — but to get an arm capable of throwing some dependably league-average innings. And I think the Padres have a good chance of getting that.
ZiPS Projection – Lucas Giolito
Year
W
L
S
ERA
G
GS
IP
H
ER
HR
BB
SO
ERA+
WAR
2026
7
7
0
4.31
26
26
137.7
134
66
20
53
124
95
1.5
2027
5
6
0
4.39
22
22
110.7
107
54
16
42
98
93
1.1
The mutual option has real value to the Padres. If Giolito performs well, he would be a natural fit for their rotation next season should Michael King exercise his an opt-out. (The exact values of Giolito’s option are not yet public.) It’s hard to gauge this kind of thing in a projection, but it’s at least nice that signing Giolito also removes him as an option should the Dodgers or another contender, such as the Cubs, find themselves in dire straits, rotation-wise.
Does signing Giolito drastically change the story of the 2026 San Diego Padres? Probably not, but he’s a supporting character, and if the Padres are able to topple the Big Blue Empire on their seventh try and take the NL West crown, he will likely play a role in writing that happy ending.
Only an act of science could get Jeremiah Jackson to take a walk.
Jackson entered Sunday with 65 plate appearances in 2026. He’d picked up 19 hits, including five homers and a double. He’d also struck out 17 times, grounded into two double plays, lined a sacrifice fly, and taken a wayward breaking ball off his back toe. He’d worked through pretty much every standard outcome for a plate appearance to begin the new season — but he hadn’t drawn a walk. In fact, Jackson entered Sunday as the batter with the most plate appearances in the majors to have not recorded a base on balls.
That was initially the case again Sunday as the Orioles wrapped up their series in Cleveland. Jackson struck out in the second inning, hit a sharp line drive single in the fourth, and reached on an error in the fifth.
Then he stepped to the plate to lead off the eighth. On the mound was nasty lefty Erik Sabrowski, fresh out of the Guardians bullpen. Sabrowski started him with a big curveball in the dirt. Jackson laid off for ball one. Sabrowski pumped his signature fastball, but it ran too far inside for ball two. Sabrowski tried to skim the other side of the plate, but missed too high for ball three.
Then it happened. Sabrowski threw another fastball, this time over the center of the plate. But he again missed too high — way too high — for ball four. Jackson had drawn his first walk of 2026.
Except, he hadn’t. Just as Jackson was prepared to set his bat down, the umpire called strike. Jackson paused, tapped his head, and proceeded with setting down his bat and removing his equipment, with a curious eye toward the video board. In zoomed the animated ball, revealing that the pitch was indeed way up and out of the zone for ball four. Jackson walked to first. Read the rest of this entry »
There hasn’t been much joy in Mudville Queens so far this year. The New York Mets have stumbled hard out of the gate and currently hold the worst record in the National League. That’s far from what was expected before the season, when they were among the betting favorites to win the World Series. You know all that, undoubtedly. We’ve writtenaboutit, as have others. But despite that rough start, it’s not all bad. Mets fans also get to experience my favorite thing in baseball so far this year: thinking along with Nolan McLean as he pitches.
McLean is the kind of pitcher you’d design in a lab if your main goal was sheer whimsical delight (he’s also incredibly good, of course). He imparts a ridiculous amount of spin on the ball, which means his pitches move like they have a tiny rocket booster activating midway to home plate (or a minuscule amount of astrophage, for the Project Hail Mary fans out there). Here’s a visual representation of that in our Paired Pitches tool:
It’s actually hard to fit more than one of McLean’s pitches in the strike zone at the same time. His curveball moves more than any other in baseball, with a comical 48 inches of separation from his sinker. His sweeper isn’t far behind; it breaks to his glove side by 21 inches, while his sinker fades arm side by 18 inches, a 39-inch horizontal gap. Home plate is 17 inches wide. You can do the math. Read the rest of this entry »
Every successful professional athlete has to have a strong drive for self-improvement. You start each morning with the goal of being a little bit better than you were yesterday; I’m sure I’ve seen words to that effect on a ballplayer’s t-shirt or social media bio somewhere.
Brice Turang can do you one better: He gets a lot better every year. As a 23-year-old rookie, he hit .218/.285/.300, which is not the kind of line that ordinarily gets a guy 448 plate appearances’ worth of playing time. Fortunately for Turang, the Brewers (for all their other successes) have been pretty awful at home-brewing hitters over the past decade, and Turang entered 2024 as their starting second baseman. Read the rest of this entry »
Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Kansas City Royals. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the sixth 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 »
Dan Szymborski
Sponsor Us on Patreon
Give a Gift Subscription
Effectively Wild Subreddit
Effectively Wild Wiki
Apple Podcasts Feed
Spotify Feed
YouTube Playlist
Facebook Group
Bluesky Account
Twitter Account
Get Our Merch!
