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 »

Daniel Schneemann’s claim to fame is having played six positions in his first six MLB games — reportedly no player had done so in over 100 years — but a peculiar versatility record hasn’t been the 27-year-old infielder/outfielder’s only noteworthy accomplishment since he debuted on June 2nd. A surprise contributor to a surprisingly-stellar Cleveland Guardians club, Schneemann has slashed .297/.422/.568 with two home runs and a 182 wRC+ over 45 plate appearances.

To say that the Brigham Young University product has come out of nowhere may not be wholly accurate, but at the same time, he kind of has. A 33rd-round pick in the 2018 draft, Schneemann was an unranked prospect throughout his seven minor league seasons, and his numbers — at least prior to this year’s .294/.428/.556 with 10 home runs in Triple-A — were never anything to write home about.

Intrigued by his transformative emergence, I asked the San Diego native about the adjustments he’s made to get to where he is now.

“They were gradual,” Schneemann told me earlier this week prior to a game at Cleveland’s Progressive Field. “I started making the ones that are important to me in the offseason after 2022. I had some success in 2023 (a 102 wRC+ and 13 home runs at Triple-A Columbus), and built off of those adjustments prior to this season. I’ve seen better results this year, as well.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the highlights of the MLB at Rickwood Field game and broadcast, Mike Trout’s unsurprisingly slow return from knee surgery, Matt Waldron’s sustained success, the incredible Royce Lewis, the challenge system’s continued ascendance over full ABS, Barry Bonds as a baseball ambassador, Elly De La Cruz’s stolen-base slump, the Yankees-Orioles AL East race, Michael Jordan and subjective stats, Buck Showalter’s scouting criteria at the MLB Draft Combine, and Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge as MVP candidates.

Audio intro: The Gagnés, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Luke Lillard, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Jackson clip
Link to full Jackson appearance
Link to retro broadcast clip
Link to Smoltz-Alexander trade
Link to Trout update
Link to EW 2158 Trout intro
Link to BP IL Ledger
Link to Waldron leaderboard
Link to Lewis leaderboard
Link to Lewis WAR/600
Link to ABS/challenge story
Link to Bonds/Griffey clip
Link to Bonds allegations
Link to EW 2165 on Elly
Link to Sam on Elly
Link to Trueblood on Elly
Link to Becker on the Reds
Link to Becker on Yanks-Orioles
Link to FG playoff odds
Link to team SP projections
Link to Haberstroh on Jordan
Link to DiMaggio streak scoring
Link to HR rules changes
Link to book on Babe’s HR
Link to errors/scoring Stat Blast
Link to Draft Combine page
Link to Showalter clip
Link to Jim’s Dwight impression
Link to FG WAR leaders
Link to Petriello on Judge
Link to ballpark meetup forms
Link to meetup organizer form

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It’s been five weeks since Major League Baseball unveiled its first trove of bat tracking data. In that time, we’ve learned that Giancarlo Stanton swings hard, Luis Arraez swings quickly, and Juan Soto is a god who walks among us unbound by the irksome laws of physics and physiology. We’ve learned that Jose Altuve really does have the swing of a man twice his size, and that Oneil Cruz has the swing of a slightly less enormous man. Mostly, though, we’ve learned when and where batters swing their hardest. This is my fourth article about bat tracking data, and in gathering data for the previous three, I constantly found myself stuck in one particular part of the process: controlling for variables.

As baseball knowledge has advanced from the time of Henry Chadwick to the time of Tom Tango, we first found better, more descriptive ways to measure results. We went from caring about batting average to caring about OPS. We found better ways to weight the smaller results that add up to big ones, going from ERA to FIP and from OPS to wRC+. Then we got into the process behind those results. We moved to chase rates and whiff rates, and the ratio of fly balls to groundballs. With the advent of Statcast, we’ve been able to get deeper than ever into process. We can look at the physical characteristics of a pitch, just a single pitch, and model how well it will perform. Within a certain sample size, we can look at a rookie’s hardest-hit ball, just that one ball, and predict his future wRC+ more accurately than if we looked at the wRC+ from his entire rookie season.

Similarly, when I looked at average swing speed and exit velocity from the first week of bat tracking, I found that swing speed was more predictive of future exit velocity. Exit velocity is the result of several processes: You can’t hit the ball hard unless you swing hard and square the ball up, and you can’t square the ball up if you pick terrible pitches to hit. Between 2015 and 2023, our database lists 511 qualified batters. I measured the correlation between their average exit velocity and their wRC+ over that period. R = .63 and R-squared = .40. But because bat tracking takes us one more step away from results and toward process, it’s further divorced from overall success at the plate. The day after bat speed data was first released, Ben Clemens ran some correlation coefficients between some overall metrics of success. He found a correlation of .11 between average swing speed and wRC+. Now that we have more data, I re-ran the numbers and found that correlation has increased to .25. That’s a big difference, but over the same period, the correlation between wRC+ and average exit velocity is .47.

If you want to know how hard a batter is swinging, you’ll find that it’s dependent on the count, the type of pitch, the velocity of the pitch, the location of the pitch, the depth of contact, and whether contact takes place at all. As a result, if you want to measure any one factor’s effect on swing speed, you need to control for so, so many others. The more I’ve sorted through the data, the more I’ve come to appreciate the old adage that pitchers control the action. Bat tracking shows us just how right people are when they say that hitting is reactive. It shows us that different pitches essentially require different swings.

When Tess Taruskin started putting together her Visual Scouting Primer series, she asked around for scouting terms and concepts that people had a hard time picturing. Barrel variability was at the top of my list. I know that Eric Longenhagen is giving a glowing compliment when he says that a player can move his barrel all around the zone, but I’ve always had trouble picturing that. Maybe it’s because of the way I played the game when I was younger, but I’ve never really understood the concept of a grooved swing. When I was digging through the bat tracking data, seeing the effect of the pitch type, the location, and where in space the batter has to get the barrel in order to make solid contact, it finally clicked.

There’s obviously a reason that every hitter has a book, a certain way that pitchers try to get them out. I’m just not sure I ever connected it quite so clearly to the physical act of swinging, the flexibility, quickness, strength, and overall athleticism required to execute a competitive swing on different kinds of pitches in different locations. And that’s before we even get to the processing speed, judgment, and reaction time that comes with recognizing the pitch and deciding not just whether to swing, but how to attack the ball. Bat tracking highlights the how.

There are a million ways to succeed at the plate. Derek Jeter used an inside-out swing to send the ball the other way. Isaac Paredes uses an inside-even-further-inside swing, reaching out and hooking everything he can down the line. Chas McCormick and Austin Riley time their swings in order to drive a fastball to the right field gap and pull anything slower toward left. Arraez, like Tony Gwynn before him, stays back and places the ball in the exact spot that he feels like placing it. Ted Williams preached a slightly elevated swing, making him the progenitor of today’s Doug Latta disciples, who try to get on plane with the ball early and meet it out front, where their bat is on an upward trajectory. Some players talk about trying to hit the bottom of the ball in order to create backspin and carry. I could go on and on. But no matter what school of thought batters subscribe to, they’re not the ones who decide what kind of pitch is coming. Bat tracking data show us just how adaptable their swing has to be. Here’s a map of the 13 gameday zones, broken down by the average speed of competitive swings in each zone for right-handed batters.

The batter can bend at the waist and drop his bat head on a low pitch, especially inside. A high pitch requires a flatter swing, and it’s much more about pure rotational speed. An outside pitch requires hitting the ball deeper, where the bat might not have reached full speed yet, but it also allows the batter to get his arms extended. I just described three different skills, and there are plenty more that we could dive into. Because every batter is an individual, each will be better or worse at some of them than others.

At the moment when all this clicked, I thought of Shohei Ohtani. Ohtani hits plenty of balls that are very obviously gone from the second he makes contact. But he also hits some of the most awkward home runs imaginable, swings that end up with his body contorted in some weird way that makes it seem impossible that he managed to hit the ball hard. He looks like he’s stepping in the bucket and spinning off the ball, he looks like he’s simply throwing out his bat to foul off an outside pitch, or he looks like he’s just not swinging very hard, and yet the ball ends up over the fence. Somehow this ball left the bat at 106.4 mph and traveled 406 feet.

It might appear that this swing was all upper body. However, a swing is a little bit like cracking a whip, where you’re working from the bottom up to send all of the energy to the very end of the line. Some hitters are better than others at manipulating their bodies to time that energy transfer perfectly. Here’s another way of looking at this.

On the left are the 26 homers that Cody Bellinger hit in 2023. On the right are Ohtani’s 44 homers. I realize that because Ohtani hit 18 more, his chart looks more robust. But it’s not just about the number of dots. It’s about the spread. I’m not trying to pick on Bellinger. I used him in part because he had a great season. I found his pitch chart by searching for players with the highest percentage of home runs in the very middle of the strike zone. At 46%, Bellinger had the highest rate of anyone who hit 20 home runs. If you make a mistake in the middle of the zone, he’ll destroy it. On the other hand, Ohtani is capable of hitting the ball hard just about anywhere. It’s even clearer if you look at the two players’ heat maps on hard-hit balls from last season.

Bellinger has never been the same player since his 2019 MVP campaign, and it’s generally assumed that the significant injuries that followed affected his swing. He can still do major damage, but on a smaller subset of pitches. This is one of the reasons that scouts focus so much on flexibility and athleticism and take the time to describe the swings of prospects as grooved or adaptable, long or short, rotational or not, top-hand or bottom-hand dominant. These things may not matter much in batting practice, but if there’s any kind of pitch you can’t handle, the game will find it. The best hitters find a way to get off not just their A-swing, but a swing that can succeed against whatever pitch is heading toward them.

Things aren’t particularly bright in Anaheim right now, but even amidst the Angels’ struggles, some of the team’s young players are thriving. One of those players is Zach Neto, who in his sophomore campaign looks like an improved version of himself at the plate. His full-season wRC+ is up to 107, a mark that has been propelled by continued improvement as temperatures have gotten warmer. In the first month of the season, Neto posted a meager 79 wRC+, but in the two that have followed, he has looked like an All-Star, with a 130 wRC+ in May and a 123 so far in June. Despite not having big raw power, he’s been able to consistently drive the ball.

Last year, Neto was abysmal in the top third of the strike zone. He simply couldn’t handle high heaters, with his .194 wOBA in that area of the zone in the bottom decile of the league. It’s a hole that is too easy to expose. Any pitcher with a decent four-seamer that features at least average ride could live there when facing Neto and not be worried the shortstop would do any damage. It was a problem that held back his entire offensive profile, and without mitigating it, his prospects as a hitter weren’t promising. But as struggling young players often do, Neto looked to make a change. Read the rest of this entry »

These are the saddest of possible words,
Bryant to Báez to Rizzo.
Seeing projected WAR cut into thirds,
Bryant to Báez to Rizzo.
Quickly declining in other team’s hats,
by plate discipline or by powerless bats,
concussions and sore backs turn comebacks to splats,
Bryant to Báez to Rizzo.

The 2016 season was one of the greatest in the history of the Chicago Cubs, a franchise that dates back to 1870, before the National League even existed. After winning the World Series and ending a championship drought that dated back to 1908, there were a lot of reasons to think this team would continue to make deep playoff runs for another five or six years. Sure, they had a fairly old starting rotation, with only Kyle Hendricks expected to stick around for a while, but the lineup looked like it was equipped for a long stretch of dominance. Addison Russell was 22, Javier Báez and Kyle Schwarber were each 23, Kris Bryant, Jorge Soler, and Willson Contreras were all 24, and Anthony Rizzo was still just 26. The team’s big free agent signing from the previous winter, Jason Heyward, didn’t have a good first season in Chicago, but at 26, a bounce-back campaign wasn’t out of the question. Still, this version of the Chicago Cubs would turn out to only have four postseason wins and a single playoff series win (the 2017 NLDS) left in them. What’s more, the three brightest stars in that constellation, Bryant, Báez, and Rizzo, were all traded at the 2021 deadline ahead of reaching free agency. Now, years later, each faces a very uncertain future. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) this week. I’m not sure if this is by design or simply a scheduling coincidence, but this week was full of compelling matchups between current rivals. The Cubs and Cardinals squared off. So did the Yankees and Orioles. The Guardians and Mariners aren’t exactly rivals, but their series rocked too, and I’m sad I couldn’t find a way to squeeze them in this week. That said, there’s a ton to talk about, so let’s get to it, after our usual nod to Zach Lowe of ESPN, who is surely enjoying a well-deserved vacation after the conclusion of the NBA season. To baseball!
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 most encouraging thing about the Reds entering spring training was their depth. Noelvi Marte, Jeimer Candelario, Jonathan India, Christian Encarnacion-Strand, Elly De La Cruz, and Matt McLain would shuffle around the four infield spots, and TJ Friedl, Jake Fraley, Spencer Steer, and Will Benson would get the lion’s share of the outfield time. Hunter Greene, Andrew Abbott, Nick Lodolo, Frankie Montas, Brandon Williamson, Nick Martinez, and Graham Ashcraft were battling for five rotation spots, and the experienced bullpen would be headlined by 2023 All-Star Alexis Díaz. The most talented of those players would make up the core, with more than enough depth to weather underperformance and injuries. Well, that’s what we thought, anyway.

Instead, Marte was suspended 80 games after testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug. McLain underwent shoulder surgery and is expected to miss the vast majority — if not the entirety — of the season. Encarnacion-Strand could meet the same fate after fracturing his wrist after an anemic 37 wRC+ through his first 123 plate appearances. Williamson is on the IL with a strained shoulder that could keep him off the mound for the whole season without throwing a single pitch in the majors. Ashcraft is in Triple-A after posting a 5.05 ERA across 12 starts this season. Bullpen stalwarts Ian Gibaut, Emilio Pagán, and Tejay Antone are all on the IL. All this misfortune has added up to a 35-39 record that has the Reds in the basement of the NL Central.

It hasn’t been all bad, of course. Cincinnati posted a winning record through April, and is 10-7 since the start of June, a stretch that includes a seven-game winning streak from June 2-8. It’s a promising turnaround after the team’s brutal 9-18 May. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh, Rany Jazayerli, and Neil Paine discuss the death of Willie Mays, Mays as the last legendary link to an earlier era, the statistical cases for Mays as the greatest all-around player and greatest player, period in major league history, and (36:45) baseball’s new greatest living player, plus (46:02) banter about Kansas courting the Royals with public funding and (50:38) the competitive trajectories of the Royals and Mets. Then (1:01:08) Ben brings on frequent Stat Blast correspondent Ryan Nelson for Blasts about teams that hover near .500, pitchers replacing same-surnamed pitchers, prolific umpire-player ejection combos, the most players with the same first name in the same game, and Alex Verdugo’s grounders.

Audio intro: Jonathan Crymes, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Jimmy Kramer, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Rany’s Mays article
Link to Neil’s Mays article
Link to FG’s Mays obit
Link to Mays statement
Link to Manfred statement on Mays
Link to Carig on Mays
Link to Mays fielding slump
Link to EW 1927 on Mays
Link to Mays stumble story 1
Link to Mays stumble story 2
Link to B-Ref career WAR leaders
Link to Ben on quality of competition
Link to Posnanski on the GLP
Link to EW 2161 on public funding
Link to Kansas funding details
Link to deMause on Kansas funding
Link to race to the bottom wiki
Link to FG playoff odds
Link to BP playoff odds
Link to BaseRuns standings
Link to Grimace explainer
Link to Neil on team true talent
Link to Neil on Witt and Brett
Link to Neil’s Substack
Link to Podracing podcast
Link to Kauffman Corner podcast
Link to Mike Conte’s Stat Blast cover
Link to Wolf of Wall Street quote
Link to Langs on .500 teams
Link to Ben on .500 teams
Link to .500 teams/Ryne Stat Blast
Link to Kelly/Alexander game
Link to Retrosheet ejections data
Link to ejections Stat Blast data
Link to ejections-per-G graph
Link to SABR on ejections
Link to Evers wiki
Link to “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon”
Link to “Luis” game
Link to The Bob Emergency
Link to same-names data
Link to swimmer David Young
Link to 2024 grounder leaders
Link to 2021-4 grounder leaders
Link to 2019-24 grounder leaders
Link to ballpark meetup forms
Link to meetup organizer form

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