Julio Rodríguez’s Hit Parade Helps Mariners March Into Playoff Position

Peter Aiken-USA TODAY Sports

You could be forgiven for viewing Julio Rodríguez’s follow-up to last year’s AL Rookie of the Year season as something of a disappointment — the numbers certainly bear that out. Even so, the 22-year-old center fielder had already appeared to turn a corner this month before going on a hitting binge for the ages. Over a four-game span from Wednesday through Saturday, Rodríguez collected 17 hits, a major league record. Those hits were hardly afterthoughts, as they helped the Mariners extend their latest winning streak to six games, a run that’s pushed them into a Wild Card spot.

Rodríguez began his jag by going 4-for-6 in Wednesday’s 6-5 win over the Royals. He led off the game with a double off James McArthur, sparking a three-run first inning, and added RBI singles in the second and ninth innings. Then he went 5-for-5 in Thursday’s 6-4 win against the Royals, driving in five runs via an RBI single off Angel Zerpa, an RBI double off Max Castillo, and a three-run eighth-inning homer off Carlos Hernández that turned a 4-2 deficit into a 5-4 lead. He added a solo home run on Friday off the Astros’ J.P. France in a 2-0 win, and then went 4-for-6 in a 10-3 rout of Houston on Saturday, coming around to score on two of his four singles. Read the rest of this entry »


Zack Gelof Is Streaking, but May Need Some Tweaking

Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports

The Oakland A’s have not been shy about calling up their top prospects this season, including a slew of the most highly-ranked young players in their system. Many of those prospects have already begun to sculpt the narrative of their early big league careers, to largely disappointing results. Mason Miller dazzled in his first few outings, but was felled by injury soon thereafter. Kyle Muller has bounced between the majors and Triple-A, with a meager mid-teens strikeout rate and an ERA above 7.00 at both levels. Esteury Ruiz has been as spectacular as expected on the basepaths, but his Triple-A offense was a mirage that has dissipated in the majors. And while Ken Waldichuk’s stuff seemed noteworthy in the lead up to the season, his walk rate has ballooned and his fastball was at one point measured by Statcast as the worst in the league, at 16 runs worse than average. As of now, to borrow a phrase, he’s just Ken.

This past month has seen the promotion of three more of Oakland’s promising young prospects: Tyler Soderstrom, Zack Gelof, and Lawrence Butler. The most recent of those promotions was Butler, who joined the A’s major league roster on August 11 after tamping down his strikeouts and finding himself on an ultra-fast track (he started the season at Double-A). With just a handful of games under his belt, it’s too soon to read much into his performance. Soderstrom and Gelof, meanwhile, both debuted in mid-July. And while Soderstrom is the more highly ranked prospect, his bat has been too quiet to make up for his strikeouts at the big league level. Instead, it’s Gelof whose name is currently accompanied by a string of fire emojis in the Baseball Savant search bar. Read the rest of this entry »


Sunday Notes: Charlie Morton Will Decide When it’s Time To Go Home

Charlie Morton just keeps chugging along. Three months shy of his 40th birthday, and in his 17th big-league season, the right-hander is 12-10 with a 3.54 ERA over 24 starts with the Atlanta Braves. His most recent outing was especially impressive. Relying heavily on his knee-buckling bender, but also topping out at 96.9 mph with his heater, he dominated the New York Yankees to the tune of six shutout innings with 10 strikeouts.

How much longer can he continue to defy Father Time and excel against baseball’s best hitters?

“I don’t think about that,” Morton replied in response to that question. “I think about, ‘When am I going to go home?’ I always thought the game was going to dictate when I went home. If you look at my career, there was no reason why I wouldn’t think that. There was no reason to think that I was going to start having the best years of my career at age 33, or that my best years would be in my late 30s. There was no reason to think I would still be throwing the ball like I am now. It would have been illogical.”

Morton’s career has indeed followed an unforeseeable path. From 2008-2016, playing primarily with the Pittsburgh Pirates, he went 46-71 with a 4.54 ERA over 161 starts. Since his 2017 age-33 season, he has gone 82-40 with a 3.54 ERA over 185 starts. Morphing from “Ground Chuck” into more of a power pitcher played a major role in the turnaround, but whatever the reason, Morton went from mediocre to a mainstay in frontline rotations. Since his transformation, only six pitchers have started more games, and only two (Gerrit Cole and Max Scherzer) have been credited with more wins. Read the rest of this entry »


Effectively Wild Episode 2048: Calling Up All Angels

EWFI

Baseball Prospectus’ editor-in-chief Craig Goldstein joins the show to discuss the surging Dodgers (5:26) and what led to their recently concluded win streak, the call-ups of Masyn Winn and Nolan Schanuel (28:07), and the optimal timing of the trade deadline and the draft (44:43), and why Craig doesn’t want to move it back. Plus, Meg and Craig answer emails on keeping relievers in the dark about the score before they enter the game (58:00), how teams might have changed their approach to the offseason and the deadline if they knew that winning the World Series would guarantee that Shohei Ohtani would sign with them (1:03:04), and whether the Padres are trying to save the world by finishing under .500 (1:11:09). Plus, a Future Blast from 2048 (1:22:56).

Audio intro: Xavier LeBlanc, “Effectively Wild Theme
Audio outro: Dave Armstrong and Mike Murray, “Effectively Wild Theme

Link to Craig’s podcast Five and Dive
Link to Michael Baumann on the Marlins, Orioles, and Brewers
Link to the FanGraphs playoff odds
Link to Jeffrey Paternostro and Timothy Jackson’s Masyn Winn Call-Up piece
Link to Eric Longenhagen’s Day One Draft recap
Link to Rick Wilber’s website
Link to Future Blast wiki

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The Padres Have a Complicated Future

Xander Bogaerts Manny Machado Padres
John E. Sokolowski-USA TODAY Sports

Padres fans in 2023 don’t have a ton to be excited about. The Friars have been in win-now mode for the last four seasons and are staring down their second losing campaign during that span. One of the two winning seasons was kind of ruined — for everyone in the world — by a raging pandemic, leaving fans with only one year that was both normal and an enjoyable experience since 2010. Unlike a lot of teams with a similar performance record, it’s not for lack of investment in the team. Just a few months after the gigantic trade that brought Juan Soto to town, the team signed Xander Bogaerts to a $280 million contract and kept Manny Machado from opting out with an even spicier $350 million pact. The Padres also agreed on a $100 million contract for Joe Musgrove and locked up Yu Darvish for $108 million. That’s more than $800 million, so we’re not talking about the case of, say, the White Sox having issues in part because they couldn’t be bothered to fill giant holes in the lineup because that would have required money.

As gloomy as the season feels right now, there are still legitimate reasons to think the Padres are a good baseball team. Their 68–54 Pythagorean record is 10 wins above their actual record, and records derived from run differential are more predictive than win-loss record. The projections all still agree there’s a lot to like and similarly have a good record, relatively speaking, of predicting the future. And this holds true even when talking about teams with the largest disagreement between the projections and the record. Looking at the 25 teams that FanGraphs like better than their seasonal winning percentage the most, coin flips missed their rest-of-season winning percentages by an average of 86 points, season to-date records by 81 points, and FanGraphs records by 65 points. Those 25 teams had played .396 ball through August 14 of their seasons; FanGraphs projected a .476 RoS winning percentage, and the actual RoS winning percentage for those teams was .458. We weren’t imagining things.

But the fundamental problem the Padres face is that it’s simply far too late to be the team they hoped they were. Our projections still believe they are a .572 team, but that’s only good enough for a 19% chance of making the postseason with a divisional probability that rounds to zero; the ZiPS projections have it at 15%. While those are still pretty good odds, especially compared to how the season has felt, it’s still far more likely than not that this year ends up being a dark companion to the 2021 season that also ended in stunningly bleak fashion.

And here’s the problem: the Padres project to be worse in the future than they are now. You could say that about most teams, but the Padres are also a team that has a massive amount of payroll already tied up in a declining roster, an unsigned Soto approaching free agency, and probably not a lot of room left to grow in a payroll sense. Complicating things even further is the financial collapse of Bally Sports, as the team has not yet figured out how to replace that revenue. Forbes estimated the Padres lost $53 million in 2022, and things are likely to get worse from there. Peter (Seidler) actually saw a wolf.

Running some up-to-date projections for players signed long-term demonstrates the enormity of the team’s challenge. I’m going to start with the Padres’ core of six players who have guaranteed contracts with annual salaries of at $10 million or more through at least the 2026 season. Whatever happens elsewhere on the team, these six are almost certainly going to be part of the foundation.

ZiPS Projection – Manny Machado
Year BA OBP SLG AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB OPS+ DR WAR
2024 .265 .332 .465 533 81 141 27 1 26 90 55 108 6 123 6 4.7
2025 .256 .324 .438 504 73 129 24 1 22 80 52 104 5 114 5 3.7
2026 .251 .319 .423 471 65 118 22 1 19 70 48 98 4 108 4 2.9
2027 .247 .315 .409 430 57 106 20 1 16 60 43 92 3 103 2 2.3
2028 .234 .303 .371 385 48 90 17 0 12 50 38 86 3 90 1 1.3
2029 .227 .295 .353 326 39 74 14 0 9 40 32 76 2 83 0 0.6
2030 .226 .293 .349 261 30 59 11 0 7 31 25 61 1 81 -1 0.3
2031 .223 .290 .342 193 22 43 8 0 5 22 18 46 1 78 -1 0.1
2032 .215 .287 .319 135 15 29 5 0 3 15 13 33 1 72 -1 0.0
2033 .227 .289 .347 75 8 17 3 0 2 8 7 18 0 79 -1 0.0

You may cringe looking at the end of Machado’s contract, but ZiPS already expected that before the season. Machado put together a strong enough July — though he’s slumped since then and is nursing a sore hamstring — and experienced a clear return to defensive form to cause his 2024-and-on projections to tick up slightly. While ZiPS didn’t like the deal, it doesn’t like it any less than it did in February.

ZiPS Projection – Xander Bogaerts
Year BA OBP SLG AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB OPS+ DR WAR
2024 .266 .342 .406 534 75 142 27 0 16 65 58 112 10 111 -1 4.1
2025 .259 .335 .392 505 68 131 25 0 14 59 55 107 8 105 -1 3.3
2026 .252 .327 .375 469 61 118 22 0 12 52 50 101 7 99 -2 2.5
2027 .247 .322 .364 429 53 106 20 0 10 45 45 95 6 94 -3 1.9
2028 .242 .318 .351 376 46 91 17 0 8 38 40 86 4 90 -3 1.3
2029 .232 .307 .331 311 36 72 13 0 6 29 32 75 3 81 -4 0.6
2030 .231 .305 .328 229 25 53 10 0 4 21 23 55 2 80 -3 0.3
2031 .226 .301 .323 155 17 35 6 0 3 14 15 38 1 77 -3 0.1
2032 .231 .302 .327 104 11 24 4 0 2 9 10 26 1 78 -2 0.1

Bogaerts was mired in a deep slump in May and June, aided by a sore wrist, but has hit a more Xanderian .290/.351/.413 since the start of July, in-line with preseason expectations. As with Machado’s recent deal, the Padres go into this contract knowing that they’re paying for Bogaerts to decline.

ZiPS Projection – Jake Cronenworth
Year BA OBP SLG AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB OPS+ DR WAR
2024 .243 .327 .405 538 77 131 30 6 15 69 57 110 5 106 3 2.2
2025 .239 .322 .395 506 71 121 27 5 14 62 53 105 5 102 3 1.7
2026 .237 .320 .385 465 64 110 25 4 12 55 49 98 4 99 2 1.3
2027 .229 .312 .369 406 54 93 21 3 10 47 42 88 3 93 2 0.8
2028 .225 .310 .355 324 42 73 17 2 7 36 34 73 2 88 1 0.4
2029 .224 .306 .355 228 29 51 11 2 5 24 23 53 2 87 1 0.3
2030 .216 .299 .338 148 18 32 7 1 3 15 15 35 1 80 0 0.0

This is a bit of an awkward projection because it highlights an assumption in team construction that turned out not to be true. Typically, a decent defensive second baseman who can credibly fake playing shortstop will usually fare well at first base, but that just has not happened, at least so far, with Jake Cronenworth. With Ha-Seong Kim 김하성 firmly entrenched as a starter, the Padres have a player with value but not a logical place to play him in order to get that value. The difference is extreme enough that ZiPS thinks that Cronenworth is now more than a win per season less valuable at first than second base.

ZiPS Projection – Jake Cronenworth (2B)
Year BA OBP SLG AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB OPS+ DR WAR
2024 .244 .325 .409 545 78 133 30 6 16 69 56 109 5 107 3 3.6
2025 .240 .321 .395 517 72 124 28 5 14 64 53 104 4 102 2 2.9
2026 .234 .318 .383 483 67 113 25 4 13 58 50 99 4 98 1 2.4
2027 .231 .313 .371 442 59 102 23 3 11 51 45 92 3 93 0 1.8
2028 .224 .306 .358 388 50 87 19 3 9 42 39 84 2 88 -1 1.2
2029 .216 .297 .332 319 39 69 15 2 6 33 31 72 2 78 -1 0.4
2030 .216 .297 .331 236 28 51 11 2 4 24 23 53 1 78 -2 0.3

Add in the fact that Cronenworth is having a down year (and a pretty odd one in terms of Statcast data), and there’s just a lot less reason to like his future than there was before.

ZiPS Projection – Fernando Tatis Jr.
Year BA OBP SLG AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB OPS+ DR WAR
2024 .264 .336 .537 518 95 137 29 2 36 98 53 128 23 142 7 5.4
2025 .265 .340 .535 529 99 140 30 1 37 101 57 127 22 143 6 5.6
2026 .261 .339 .528 536 100 140 30 1 37 101 60 127 20 141 6 5.5
2027 .258 .338 .518 535 100 138 29 1 36 99 61 125 18 138 6 5.2
2028 .254 .336 .505 527 97 134 28 1 34 94 61 123 15 134 6 4.8
2029 .251 .332 .495 513 92 129 27 1 32 89 59 120 13 130 5 4.4
2030 .253 .334 .494 490 87 124 26 1 30 84 57 116 11 131 5 4.2
2031 .251 .330 .486 467 81 117 24 1 28 78 53 111 10 127 4 3.7
2032 .248 .328 .478 467 80 116 24 1 27 76 53 112 9 125 4 3.5
2033 .245 .324 .463 441 73 108 22 1 24 70 49 107 7 119 3 2.9
2034 .240 .320 .449 408 65 98 20 1 21 62 45 100 6 115 3 2.3

Where the positional gods punished the Padres with Cronenworth, they were far kinder here. Tatis’ bat isn’t quite where it was, but he’s actually turned out to be an excellent defensive outfielder, at least so far. Given his age, he’s the one player who projects to finish out his contract as a plus contributor to the team.

ZiPS Projection – Yu Darvish
Year W L S ERA G GS IP H ER HR BB SO ERA+ WAR
2024 10 10 0 4.20 26 26 160.7 142 75 24 42 154 91 1.4
2025 8 9 0 4.52 23 23 137.3 129 69 23 38 126 84 0.6
2026 6 9 0 4.97 20 20 117.7 117 65 22 37 104 77 -0.1
2027 4 7 0 5.47 15 15 82.3 88 50 17 29 69 70 -0.6

ZiPS was always fairly pessimistic about the Darvish extension, and without him reversing the continued slow decline in his peripherals, it hasn’t changed direction since the start of the season. While I always say “hitters age, pitchers break,” Darvish is at an age where cliffs do, in fact, beckon. ZiPS didn’t even want to project the final two seasons of his extension; I’ll be kind and not force it to, so we’ll call those zero-WAR seasons, which is sunnier than what ZiPS would say if I made it.

ZiPS Projection – Joe Musgrove
Year W L S ERA G GS IP H ER HR BB SO ERA+ WAR
2024 10 7 0 3.38 26 26 154.7 135 58 17 35 148 113 2.9
2025 9 6 0 3.51 24 24 138.3 127 54 17 32 129 108 2.3
2026 7 6 0 3.75 21 21 124.7 118 52 16 31 112 101 1.7
2027 6 6 0 4.02 18 18 107.3 107 48 15 29 93 95 1.1

The performance projections of Musgrove have stayed about the same — hardly surprising considering that when he was healthy, he was having a similar season to last year. But his return this season remains up in the air, and new injuries create new risk for a pitcher, so his projected innings totals have dropped considerably.

OK, let’s throw everybody into one table, complete with their salaries.

ZiPS Projection – Padres 2024-2029
Player 2024 WAR 2024 ($M) 2025 WAR 2025 ($M) 2026 WAR 2026 ($M) 2027 WAR 2027 ($M) 2028 WAR 2028 ($M) 2029 WAR 2029 ($M)
Machado 4.7 $17.1 3.7 $17.1 2.9 $25.1 2.3 $39.1 1.3 $39.1 0.6 $39.1
Bogaerts 4.1 $25.5 3.3 $25.5 2.5 $25.5 1.9 $25.5 1.3 $25.5 0.6 $25.5
Cronenworth 2.2 $7.3 1.7 $11.3 1.3 $12.3 0.8 $12.3 0.4 $12.3 0.3 $12.3
Tatis Jr. 5.4 $11.7 5.6 $20.7 5.5 $20.7 5.2 $25.7 4.8 $25.7 4.4 $36.7
Darvish 1.4 $16.0 0.6 $21.0 -0.1 $16.0 -0.6 $15.0 0.0 $15.0 0.0 $0.0
Musgrove 2.9 $20.0 2.3 $20.0 1.7 $20.0 1.1 $20.0 0.0 $0.0 0.0 $0.0
Totals 20.7 $97.6 17.2 $115.6 13.8 $119.6 10.7 $137.6 7.8 $117.6 5.9 $113.6

If the projections hold true, these six will make up less than a third of the WAR needed to be a 90-win team as soon as 2026, when they combine for $120 million in salary. Unless the team continues to spend more and more money, it’s going to get harder and harder to use dollars to patch holes, which means that the farm system has to get back to producing very quickly. The Padres aren’t likely to be able to win on the backs of these six players for very long, which means that they likely have to come up with a whole new core of talent around these players.

The risk here is one of dynastic failure. I’m not calling the Padres a dynasty in terms of baseball success, but more how the term has been used historically. Lots of warlords in history managed to get a throne, but to establish long-term rule, they had to survive the transition to the next rulers. The Astros are an example of a team that has avoided dynastic failure; only a handful of the players on the team that won the World Series in 2017 were still on the roster when Houston won the World Series in 2022. Only Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman remain among the Astros’ offensive contributors today, and the only pitcher still in Houston, Lance McCullers Jr., won’t pitch again until 2024 [and Verlander who I forgot about for some very odd reason -DS]. They basically came up with nearly an entirely new team in five years.

Baseball history is riddled with successful teams that were unable to transition to the next era without a significant interregnum, such as the Utley-Howard Phillies and the Tigers during the peak Miguel Cabrera years. But those Phillies won a World Series, and while the Tigers didn’t, they had more playoff success than these Padres teams have had. To achieve that success, the Padres are going to have to be extremely creative over the next five years, lest they end up as one of the great “what ifs” in baseball history. Spending money and having a few big stars won’t be enough.


The Guardians Have Yet Another Big League Starter in Gavin Williams

Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports

Among all 30 big league franchises, the Guardians have one of the richest recent histories of developing pitchers. Dating back to the days of CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee, Cleveland always seems to be churning out young pitching from a stockpile of talent acquired through the draft, international free agency, and the trade market. Coming into the 2023 season, the team’s rotation already featured four former Guardians draft picks — Shane Bieber, Aaron Civale, Zach Plesac, and Triston McKenzie — and the onslaught doesn’t show signs of stopping.

In April, the Guardians promoted a pair of top-100 prospects to their starting rotation in Logan Allen (No. 63 on The Board at the beginning of 2023) and Tanner Bibee (No. 74). In June, Gavin Williams (No. 76) made his big league debut. With Bieber, McKenzie, and Cal Quantrill missing time to injury and Civale traded to Tampa Bay at the deadline, a full 47 starts have gone to this trio of 24-year-old rookies – plus another 17 to less-highly touted prospects Peyton Battenfield, Hunter Gaddis, and Xzavion Curry:

Most Starts by Rookies, 2023
Team GS WAR
1 Guardians 64 5.5
2 Athletics 59 -0.4
3 Diamondbacks 57 1.5
4 Astros 46 3.3
5 Reds 37 2.7

Read the rest of this entry »


Let’s Talk About Freddie Freeman, Baserunner Extraordinaire

Freddie Freeman
Matt Kartozian-USA TODAY Sports

Freddie Freeman is a fantastic baseball player. Since the beginning of 2020, he is tied with Juan Soto for fourth in wRC+, sitting at 157. He is also as durable as any other position player in the league, ranking third in games played in that same span. But wRC+ and durability aren’t why I’m here to discuss Freeman today. Instead, I’m interested in his baserunning.

Baserunning is certainly not the most important aspect of Freeman’s game, but he is darn good at it. Before I get into how and why, though, I want to talk about his lack of speed. At 26.6 ft/s on average, Freeman is a 35th-percentile runner; in the landscape of the league and other good baserunners, he is a bit of a tortoise. But that doesn’t stop him on the bases.

When it comes to baserunning, your chances are much better of being above average on the basepaths if you can boogie. If you peruse the BsR or Statcast Runner Runs leaderboards, you’ll see mostly 90th-percentile runners and above, with the bottom line being in the mid-70s. Rarely does a name like Freeman’s pop up, but he ranks 17th of 139 in BsR and 37th of 295 in Runner Runs. For him, these results come about because of other aspects of the game that you don’t need speed for: instincts, reads, and preparation. The further down you are in the speed department, the more important these skills become. This wasn’t always a positive part of Freeman’s game, but in the last few years, he has been consistently above-average. Read the rest of this entry »


Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week, August 18

Ed Szczepanski-USA TODAY Sports

Hello and welcome to another edition of Five Things, a collection of plays I had a blast watching. There was a lot to love in baseball this week: baserunning derring-do, great defense, and tons of exciting young players. There was so much to like, in fact, that I don’t have a single negative thing to say about what I watched on the field. The action was non-stop, and cool plays were everywhere, all the time. I left out an inside-the-park home run, for goodness sake. It might be the dog days of summer, but it was a spectacular week of baseball. So let’s get right to it. Read the rest of this entry »


Effectively Wild Episode 2047: This Podcast Now Competes in the Big Ten

EWFI

With Ben Lindbergh still in Sweden, FanGraphs’ Michael Baumann takes the co-host chair for a spin. He and Meg Rowley begin (2:10) by delighting in a picture of Lance Lynn and Enrique Hernández from Dodgers photo day, then take advantage of Ben’s absence to discuss (7:30) college baseball and how conference realignment might affect the sport (and the athletes who play it). They then turn their attention (32:13) to Cole Hamels, who recently retired, and Félix Hernández, who was recently inducted into the Mariners Hall of Fame. Meg and Michael discuss what Hernández and Hamels meant to each of them, the similarities (and important differences) that marked their respective Hall of the Very Good careers, and what it’s like to have a pitcher ruin a pitch for you. Meg and Michael also discuss (51:00) the most impressive players and tools they’ve seen in person, including Fernando Tatis Jr., Corbin Carroll, and Aaron Judge, plus center field defense and big power. Finally, they close with a Future Blast from 2047 (1 hr 06 min).

Audio intro: The Gagnés, “Effectively Wild Theme
Audio outro: Tom Rhoads, “Effectively Wild Theme

Link to Dodgers photo day photos
Link to Michael on Lance Lynn’s first Dodgers start
Link to Michael on conference realignment
Link to Teddy Cahill on conference realignment
Link to Michael on Cole Hamels’ retirement
Link to Meg on Félix Hernández’s final Mariners start
Link to Hamels and Hernández’s career stats
Link to Rick Wilber’s website
Link to Future Blast wiki

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Those Goshdarn Marlins and/or Orioles Are at it Again

Felix Bautista
Reggie Hildred-USA TODAY Sports

Look at the top of the leaguewide standings and you’ll find both types of elite teams: First, the Braves, an all-conquering, all-chewing-up-and-spitting-out combine harvester that sits atop the standings. After them: an Orioles club that’s outplaying its Pythagorean record by eight games.

That’s not to take anything away from the Orioles, who are dogwalking the hardest division in baseball thanks to a dizzying collection of talented young hitters and the best bullpen in the sport. Besides, they don’t ask how — they ask how many. But this is yet another reboot of a classic from the generation prior; in 2012, the O’s romped to the playoffs with a 93–69 record and the run differential of an 82–80 team. Now they’re doing the same thing, with Félix Bautista as Jim Johnson, Gunnar Henderson as Manny Machado, and Kyle Bradish as… Wei-Yin Chen, I guess?

It’s not just the Orioles: the Marlins (minus-37 run differential) are beating the Cubs (plus-62) to the last Wild Card spot. The Brewers are 10 games over .500 with the run differential of a .500 team. Every year, it seems like a low-payroll team with a good bullpen smashes its expected record to smithereens and barges into the playoffs. Is there an actual pattern here, or is this just trivia? Read the rest of this entry »