FanGraphs Baseball

Unless the Los Angeles Angels win their final six games and somehow figure out how to get Major League Baseball to overturn the results of 15 others, the club will finish below the .500 mark for the 11th consecutive season. This postseason will mark the 12th in a row to not feature any Halos, and it has been 17 years since the last time they won a game in the playoffs. The Arte Moreno era is ending, with Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke taking over the helm. And while Kroenke has a mixed record as an owner, a mixed record would qualify as progress after Moreno. New ownership tends to represent a new beginning for a team, setting up an important question: Can the Angels return to playing October baseball in the near future? After all, while the team doesn’t have the same revenue as the Dodgers, it’s still located in the second-most-populous metropolitan area in the United States; theoretically, they have the resources to speed up the process.

I like to joke about baseball’s Anna Karenina issue, because I think the novel’s first line — “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” — is an even more appropriate observation for baseball teams than it is for families. All great baseball teams look kind of the same, but every lousy team looks different. As bad teams go, the Angels have never been spectacularly lousy; if they fail to at least split their last six games, 2026 will be the first time ever that the franchise has lost 100 games. Still, this is a franchise that hasn’t figured out how to play .500 ball while employing the best player of the 2010s and the likely best player of the 2020s. They even had both of those guys on the team for a while! That the Angels have tended to hover just below mediocre rather than being hilariously awful is probably one of the reasons they’ve never truly blown things up and tried something radically different. The Angels never reached a point where they just threw stuff against the wall to see what sticks, something the White Sox finally accepted a few years ago, and that the Rockies appear to be starting to accept now.

If the Angels were to compete again soon, where would the talent come from? At first blush, there’s no amount of squinting that can make the Angels look like they have the foundation of a solid team. Mike Trout is still pretty good, but he’s a galaxy away from the player he once was, and as hard as it is to believe, he turned 35 last month. Zach Neto is solid, but if you listed the rest of the starting lineup and told me that I was looking at the starting lineup for the Durham Bulls or the Round Rock Express, I might believe you.

To get a more comprehensive look at the team’s offensive future, I ran updated WAR and OPS+ projections for the Angels over the next five seasons. I’ve included pretty much everyone on the roster or in the high minors, as well as those top prospects who are at a minor league level where projections are practical. That leaves out intriguing players like Johnny Slawinski, Joswa Lugo, and Yilver De Paula, but we’re also talking about non-elite prospects at the very low levels, so the median outlook for their projections is going to be fairly low. Still, it’s worth keeping in mind that there are at least a few additional lottery tickets out there for the Angels.

To make a quick read of the table easier, I’ve highlighted all of the 3-WAR projected seasons in red and all of the 2-WAR projected seasons in yellow. I’ve also blacked out the seasons where a player isn’t under team control, or where ZiPS is highly confident that they won’t be in baseball based on their performance. Oh, and I threw in Anthony Rendon for the sake of curiosity:

There… isn’t a lot of color in that chart. ZiPS doesn’t see anyone beyond Neto as a key part of a contending team. Trout is almost certainly going to become less and less of a contributor in coming seasons, and Denzer Guzman and Christian Moore look more like complementary options than guys threatening to attend a string of All-Star games (though Guzman does have some decent projected upside). Even given the very real possibility that ZiPS is underrating Arjun Nimmala, that’s still a stunning lack of offensive talent in the organization.

Let’s move on to the pitching, where things do look a bit better. There are no borderline star seasons projected, so I’ve highlighted all the 100 ERA+ seasons in yellow:

Reid Detmers and Walbert Ureña both project as very good mid-rotation starters, and the latter is a long way from free agency. There may be No Such Thing as a Pitching Prospect©, but ZiPS does think Tyler Bremner is likely to be at least solid. None of the rest of the arms look amazing, but the Angels do have an interesting bunch of plausible bullpen candidates, though nobody who would blow your mind. If the Angels get lucky with either Grayson Rodriguez or George Klassen, and Najer Victor figures out the significance of that white house-shaped pentagon next to the batter, it’s a pitching staff they could make quite decent with a few splashy upgrades.

Sum it all up, and ZiPS sees the Angels as a 70-win team in 2027, with only minor growth from there based on their in-organization options. To that end, the team’s player development absolutely has to improve; the Angels only barely moved out of the bottom third of our farm rankings on the last update, the first time they’ve done so since 2020. That’s particularly concerning for a team that hasn’t contended in more than a decade. Hopefully the team will move on from a draft philosophy that emphasizes high-floor/low-ceiling prospects who can be promoted to the majors very quickly.

As for their options beyond the organization, could the Angels contend with a spending spree next year? I get asked that question fairly regularly in my weekly chats, so at least someone is interested in the answer, or at least wants to trick me into writing about the Angels. Let’s give it a spin.

A contending Angels team needs a high-end starting pitcher, a veteran bulk arm, and probably three additional good relievers. Here’s one set of potential additions:

Most of the names here are interchangeable with other options, but you can’t really fake signing Tarik Skubal and have to go with the real thing. ZiPS estimates that doing so would make the Angels a 77-85 team, but also one that just added more than $80 million in salary to get there.

As for the offense, it needs a lot of work and there is only so much they can practically do, even in an ultra-aggressive buying frenzy. Assuming that Trout stays at DH, they certainly need a couple of outfielders, and there’s no Aaron Judge to sign. The corner infield spots aren’t the weakest on the roster, but Teruaki Sato is one of the best players (possibly) available, and I’d like a bit more certainty at second base if we’re doing full-on win-now mode:

You may have noted the problem I’m running into for the quick-fix route: There’s a hard limit on just how many difference-makers there are available in free agency. These four signings probably add another $80 million to the payroll, and once you throw in the player benefits, the Angels would have a luxury tax payroll creeping into the $300 million range. Their projection would only improve to 83-79, and while that would be the team’s best year in a decade, it’s a pretty brutal projection to intentionally pay $300 million for.

In the end, the Angels don’t appear to have enough in-house options to make buying their way into contention a real possibility. That means that the road ahead will be a lot harder, with them eating some awful seasons without any pretense of contending, trying some new things, and taking some chances, all of which the franchise has struggled with for the last decade. As it turns out, needing to replace about 20 players on your roster isn’t something you can do quickly. By the time the Angels are good again, we might be talking about the next lockout!

We’ve made it to the final week of the regular season. There are still two divisions in the American League up for grabs, a couple of long-shot playoff hopefuls looking to make a last-minute run, and playoff seeding to fight over. It should make for a dramatic end to a great season.

Our power rankings use a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant ranking format 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 coin flip 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%). The weighted Elo ranks are then displayed as “Power Score” in the tables below. As the best and worst teams sort themselves out between now and October, they’ll filter to the top and bottom of the rankings, while the exercise remains reactive to hot streaks and cold snaps. If you’re looking for a visual representation of the ups and downs of your team throughout the season, look no further than the brand new Power Rankings Board in the FanGraphs Lab.

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 — there are times where I take 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.

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It was a great week for the Brewers. They won their fourth straight NL Central title and sixth in the last nine years, and also set another franchise record for wins in a single season, one year after setting the previous record. They now have a chance to win 100 games for the first time in club history this week and still have the top seed in the NL to play for.

The Rays swept the Athletics and won their series against the Red Sox last week to put some distance between themselves and the Yankees in the AL East race. The gap in the division is now six games, and even though the two rivals play each other four times during the final week of the season, it would take a massive collapse from Tampa Bay to upset the current standings. Because the Rays also currently lead the season series with the Yankees, 6-3, all they need is to win one of the four games in New York to take the division title. With Shane McClanahan still recovering from his forearm injury — his availability for the playoffs is up in the air — Freddy Peralta has stepped up to lead the pitching staff over the last few weeks. Across his last five starts, he’s allowed just three runs in 28 2/3 innings. That’s the kind of production the Rays were hoping to get when they acquired him at the trade deadline.

The Dodgers are getting all their pieces in place for the postseason. Andy Pages and Roki Sasaki will be activated off the IL on Tuesday, and Shohei Ohtani should follow on Wednesday. There’s a lingering question about Blake Snell’s status after he injured his groin last week, but it sounds like he’ll be able to make a start during the final weekend of the season. And even though the majority of the year has been a slog for Kyle Tucker, his bat seems to have finally woken up at the right time; he collected nine hits and three home runs last week.

Having won 13 of their last 14 games, the Padres are peaking at exactly the right moment. They’ve surged five games ahead of the Diamondbacks and one ahead of the Phillies in the NL Wild Card standings, and are now tied with the Cubs for the top spot. San Diego’s final series of the season against Arizona still looms large, especially if the Friars stumble against the Dodgers in the series beforehand. You’re probably familiar with Fernando Tatis Jr.’s hot streak — he blasted four home runs last week to bring his total in September up to eight — but the biggest contributor to the Padres’ success recently has been Ty France. He had 12 hits and a home run last week and has posted a fantastic 168 wRC+ during the second half of the season.

After a couple of years away from the top, the Braves are NL East champions again — it’s their seventh division title in the last nine years. Atlanta’s dominance this year has been a welcome return to form. Even though his season has been a bit up and down, Ronald Acuña Jr. is looking like the superstar that won the MVP back in 2023 again. Last week, he smacked three home runs, including a go-ahead grand slam on Saturday, and is running a 191 wRC+ in September.

A little more than a week after being activated off the IL, Aaron Judge is back on the shelf, this time with a calf injury sustained on Wednesday. His availability for the playoffs is still up in the air, though he’s confident that he’ll be able to return sooner rather than later. Thankfully, Jazz Chisholm Jr. should be activated off the IL on Tuesday, and there’s some confidence that Trent Grisham will also be ready to return for the postseason. It helps that Ben Rice has bounced back from a rough August to post a 192 wRC+ in September. Still, Judge’s injury is a major blow to the Yankees’ hopes for a deep October run.

Even though the Red Sox lost both of their series last week, they managed to clinch a postseason berth on Sunday. It’s the cap to a remarkable turnaround after the team looked completely lost in mid-June. Boston can officially secure the second Wild Card spot with a couple of wins against the Guardians this week. Then the team can turn its attention to the Yankees and the rematch of last year’s Wild Card matchup between these two historic rivals.

Nothing is going to come easy for the Phillies over the next few weeks. The team placed Jesús Luzardo on the IL last week with a shoulder injury, but thankfully, it sounds like he’ll be ready to pitch in the playoffs. But before they count their chickens, they need to actually clinch a playoff spot. Philadelphia is four games up on the Diamondbacks in the NL Wild Card race, but its upcoming opponents are no cake walk; the Phillies have the Brewers and Rays on the schedule to finish off the regular season. Facing two of the best teams in baseball is quite a test ahead of the postseason, and the Phillies haven’t exactly been playing well lately.

The biggest concern for the Cubs right now is the status of Alex Bregman. He was struck by a foul ball in the face while standing in the on-deck circle during Sunday’s game and was taken to the hospital for further evaluation. Alongside Pete Crow-Armstrong, Bregman has been one of the best hitters in baseball since the All-Star break. It would be a huge blow if the third baseman had to miss any significant amount of time at this point in the season. As for Crow-Armstrong, he’s two stolen bases away from joining the 40/40 club. He put a few finishing touches on his MVP case last week by bopping four more home runs, bringing his season total up to 45.

There was some upheaval in the two division races represented in this tier. Entering last week one game behind the White Sox in the AL Central standings, the Guardians took two of three games against the South Siders in a dramatic series, which included a walk-off on Tuesday and an improbable go-ahead homer on Wednesday. From there, although Chicago took advantage of playing — and winning — on Thursday while Cleveland was off to pull back into a tie atop the division, the Guardians just kept winning, sweeping the the Athletics over the weekend to bring their winning streak to five. José Ramírez finally broke out of his extended slump, tallying nine hits, a home run, and four stolen bases last week.

As for the White Sox, they won three of their four games against the the Tigers, but that one loss was enough to drop them to a game behind Cleveland in the Central. Still, the Sox have a three-game cushion for the final AL Wild Card spot, and they own the tiebreaker over the Guardians, meaning both first place and a potential first-round bye are still in their sights. Miguel Vargas is carrying most of the load for the lineup right now, hitting three home runs last week, but he needs some support if Chicago wants to make some noise in the postseason.

Over in the AL West, the Astros were swept by the Braves this past weekend, allowing the Rangers to jump into first place with a .500 record. Texas enters this week one game up, but crucially Houston holds the tiebreaker. If the Rangers can manage to hang on, it would be just their second postseason appearance in the last decade. The last time they made the playoffs, they won the World Series.

The Houston bullpen was responsible for the backbreaking losses on Saturday and Sunday, but the lack of offense has been a much bigger problem. Over the Astros’ last 10 games, they’ve scored more than four runs in a game just once. Yordan Alvarez looked fine last week (eight hits, including two home runs) after his ankle scare the previous weekend, and Jeremy Peña has been great too (10 hits, three homers), but the rest of the lineup has been struggling. During this 10-game stretch, Houston hitters not named Alvarez or Peña have combined for an ugly 55 wRC+.

The Diamondbacks managed to keep their slim playoff hopes alive with a pair of wins over the Yankees on Saturday and Sunday. The first victory was a walk-off and the second was highlighted by a go-ahead grand slam from Nolan Arenado. Arizona needs to take care of business in Colorado and get some help from the Dodgers to ensure that the final series against the Padres has some stakes. There’s a chance the Phillies could crash out, opening another window for the Snakes, but the direct path is through San Diego.

The Blue Jays’ hopes for a last-minute surge into the playoffs were dashed last week when they lost both of their series to the Tigers and Rangers. They’re three games back and have the Astros to contend with if they want to try and sneak into that final Wild Card spot. It’s probably too little, too late, but the team is activating Trey Yesavage off the IL on Monday as one more reinforcement ahead of a final push.

The series between the Orioles and Mets last week in Queens turned out to be more interesting than you’d expect from two teams mired in hugely disappointing seasons. Pete Alonso made his first appearance as a member of the opposing team at Citi Field and wound up hitting his 300th career home run on Tuesday, a game-tying shot in the ninth inning. He received a huge ovation from the hometown crowd, which drew some irksome comments from a few Mets players and staff after the game. Baltimore wound up sweeping New York to cut its deficit in the AL Wild Card race to 2.5 games. Alas, a sweep by the Brewers over the weekend slammed the door shut on any playoff hopes the O’s still had.

Even though the Marlins’ season essentially ended with that 12-game losing streak back in July, they have made some significant progress in their quest to become a contending club. Otto Lopez looks like a star they can build the lineup around, while Eury Pérez and Max Meyer should be strong enough to anchor the pitching staff in the years ahead. There’s also a cohort of young prospects in the upper minors who should be making their debuts soon. The future in Miami is brighter than it’s been in a while.

This is the huge step forward the Reds were hoping to see from Elly De La Cruz. In September, he has blasted seven home runs, including in five straight games earlier this month, and is running a major league-best 236 wRC+. It’s too bad the rest of Cincinnati’s roster is a bit of a mess. Sal Stewart has been excellent as De La Cruz’s sidekick, but the starting rotation has struggled mightily, and the big injury to Hunter Greene has thrown the ceiling of that group up in the air heading into next year. Still, building around a superstar like De La Cruz should make things easier if the resources to improve the rest of the roster are made available.

The AL Central crown runs through Kansas City; both the White Sox and Guardians travel to face the Royals during the final week of the season. Unfortunately, the Royals haven’t been playing well enough recently to act as a spoiler. They ended August with a 13-3 stretch, but they’ve been the worst team in the AL in September, with just five wins in 18 games.

It took a lot longer than expected, but the Twins were finally eliminated from the playoff race last week. It was a drama-filled week, too. They won a wild extra-inning walk-off affair against the Yankees on Wednesday and then were walked-off twice against the Angels between two shutout victories over the weekend. Even though they all made their big league debuts over the last few weeks, Walker Jenkins, Kaelen Culpepper, and Emmanuel Rodriguez never all appeared in a game together. That trio represents the future of the organization, so it’s a little disappointing that that future couldn’t be realized in a small way this year.

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Despite a middling second half, the Nationals have been one of this season’s pleasant surprises. After years of feeling both directionless and punchless, they’ve put together a spectacular offensive group and have won more games than in any year since their 2019 World Series championship. They’ve scored more than five runs a game on the season, the third-best mark in the majors, and it has been a team effort. Unfortunately, the pitching staff hasn’t followed suit; they’ve allowed the third-most runs in baseball themselves. But there has been one shining light in that group: Cade Cavalli, the team’s oft-injured first round draft pick from 2020. And they weren’t about to let a good thing go. Last Friday, Cavalli and the Nationals agreed to a four-year, $47 million contract extension with a club option for a fifth year, as Spencer Nusbaum first reported.

Cavalli is a fascinating pitcher – so fascinating that I wrote about him in late July. I think that piece is worth a read – hey, I wrote it – but if you’re looking for the TL;DR, the gist is that two months ago, Cavalli’s career was at an inflection point. His lengthy struggles with injury had limited him to roughly 50 innings before the 2026 season, and he’d scuffled in the minors in 2025 as he worked to build up his workload again. But he was spectacular in the first half of this season, the best arm on the Nats by a fair margin, particularly when taking his underlying numbers into account. What was to come was uncertain, but there were tons of bright outcomes in the distribution of possible futures.

A few months hence, I think we might be living in the best of those outcomes. Cavalli has made nine starts since I wrote about him, and he’s been spectacular, with 70 strikeouts and just 12 walks across 53 innings en route to a 1.87 ERA. He’s been a rare bright spot as the team has sputtered to an 18-23 record since the trade deadline. Thanks in part to the offensive contributors the Nats traded away, they’ve scored only 4.5 runs per game over that span. But they’re looking to the future, not to the past or even the present, and Cavalli’s phenomenal year has made him an indispensable part of that future. Read the rest of this entry »

With one week to go in the regular season, the playoff field is nearly set in the National League, though it’s anything but settled in the American League, with two of the three division leaders — two different ones since I last checked in — ahead by just one game and those races spilling over into the battle for the third and final Wild Card spot. We’re not going to get any tiebreaker games due to the fun police and the playoff format change put into effect by the 2022 Collective Bargaining Agreement, but it’s entirely possible a playoff spot — and perhaps even a division title — will be decided on the basis of MLB’s tiebreaker procedures.

Since the situation is simpler in the NL, I’ll start there. The Brewers (98-58) lead the Dodgers (96-60) in the race for the top seed, and own the tiebreaker there on the basis of a 4-3 season series advantage. According to our Playoff Odds, as of Monday at 9 AM, the Braves (92-64) have just a 0.9% chance of bypassing either Milwaukee or Los Angeles. The Brewers — who have a magic number of one to clinch a first-round bye — finish out with a visit to the Phillies (86-70) before coming home to face the Cardinals (76-80), while the Dodgers host the Padres (87-69) for three and then travel to the Giants (62-90), with the Braves hosting the Reds (72-84) and then visiting the Marlins (76-80).

The Padres have taken advantage of a soft spot in their schedule — series against the sub-.500 Nationals, Giants, Rockies, and Marlins, after taking two out of three from the Yankees — to win 13 out of their last 14 games. Not only did that push them past the Diamondbacks (now 82-74), whom they trailed by half a game before the start of the surge, but they’ve tied the Cubs (87-69) for the top NL Wild Card spot, with the Phillies a game behind them. The Phils have been phlailing lately, going 8-10 in September and failing to win a series since beating the Diamondbacks at the start of the month. Their slide gave the Braves enough room to clinch the NL East title on Sunday. Read the rest of this entry »

Bobby Witt Jr. is having a down year. He’s running his worst batting line in three seasons. He’s in danger of missing the 20-homer threshold for the first time in his career. A lower back injury in July will also limit him to a career low in games played. Put it together, and Witt is on pace to put up his the lowest WAR total since his 5.9-win 2023 campaign. Oh, and he also grabbed hold of the American League lead in WAR back in July and still hasn’t relinquished it. A down year by Bobby Witt Jr.’s standards is still good enough to make him a deserving MVP.

I don’t know if Witt is going to win his first MVP this year. Ours is the only flavor of WAR in which he leads the AL, and he leads by just a quarter of a win. He ranks third by Baseball Reference’s rWAR and is eighth by Baseball Prospectus’ WARP. Yordan Alvarez leads all of baseball in WARP because he’s hitting like, well, Yordan Alvarez and staying healthy like, well, someone other than Yordan Alvarez. Cam Schlittler leads the AL in Baseball Reference WAR, and he’s been so dominant that he deserves consideration for the Cy Young-MVP combo — if only he’d pitched just 23 fewer innings last year, he could’ve gone for the trifecta with Rookie of the Year. Kevin McGonigle has played like an MVP from the moment he arrived in Detroit, and Junior Caminero has surpassed 40 home runs for the second season in a row as a 23-year-old. All of these guys have a case, and they aren’t the only ones who merit inclusion in the discussion:

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Max Muncy is still a work in progress. Four-plus years after he was featured here at FanGraphs in a piece titled, Oakland Prospect Max Muncy is Trying to Find Himself in High-A, the 2021 first-rounder is doing much the same in the majors. Currently slashing a wholly uninspiring 230/.296/.387 with nine home runs and an 83 wRC+ over 284 plate appearances, Muncy remains — as he readily admitted when I spoke to him earlier this summer — in search of his groove.

“It’s one of those things that might be ever-evolving,” said the 24-year-old infielder, who put up not-dissimilar numbers after debuting with the A’s last season. “You have to just keep working at it. Every level presents a new challenge — the pitchers are better, so you have to make adjustments — and luckily there is no level higher than this one. Once I get enough at-bats, get to play consistently, I’m going to do what I know I can do. I’m going to be a good player.”

Muncy said in our 2022 conversation that he had been doing a lot of experimenting, and to a large extent that has continued throughout what is now more than 2,200 professional PAs. Read the rest of this entry »

The most exciting story as we approach the final week of the regular season is, at least by my accounting, the race for first place in the American League Central. On one side, we have the Chicago White Sox, a team that two years ago broke the modern record for the most losses in a season. Their outlook entering this season reflected their recent history. On Opening Day, Chicago had the worst playoff odds in the AL, with a 1.2% chance of making the playoffs, a 0.6% chance of winning the division, and a 0.1% chance of securing a first-round bye. And yet: The White Sox held at least a share of the division lead for 96 days this year, including a 73-day stretch from the start of play on July 5 until the end of the day Wednesday, when the Cleveland Guardians won the rubber match of a three-game set against the South Siders.

Unlike Chicago, Cleveland has seven playoff berths, including six division titles, in the past 10 years. The Guardians are winning the same way they always do, with excellent pitching, defense, and baserunning. Now, their lineup is deeper than it’s been at any point in the 2020s, though it’s still not exactly good.

In Wednesday’s game, the Sox had a one-run lead over the Guards, who were batting in the bottom of the sixth with a runner on first, two out, and Austin Hedges — he of the lifetime 54 wRC+ — at the plate against the left-handed Hagen Smith, who had relieved lefty starter Anthony Kay the previous inning. Hedges walked, prompting White Sox manager Will Venable to replace Smith with yet another lefty, Sean Newcomb. Up next for Cleveland was backup center fielder Petey Halpin, a left-handed hitter who was in the lineup for the injured lefty killer Angel Martínez. Halpin entered the game 1-for-35 on the season against southpaws, and though he did record a single in his first at-bat against Kay, what happened next still ranks among the most unexpected events of the 2026 campaign. Facing a 3-1 count, Halpin turned on a belt-high sinker and launched a no-doubt three-run homer to put the Guardians on top for good.

After an off day Thursday, Cleveland began a three-game series at home against the Athletics on Friday, while Chicago played the second of its four-game set against Detroit. As of Friday afternoon, our Playoff Odds gave the Sox a 50.9% chance to win the division and an 80.3% shot to make the postseason; for the Guards, those odds were, respectively, 49.1% and 77.0%.

We’ll talk a little bit more about the Guardians in this week’s mailbag, when we answer a question about shortstop Brayan Rocchio. We’ll also discuss a bonkers idea to get rid of batting lineups and the shortest season-long winning streak for a team that finished with the best record in baseball. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

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With Meg Rowley on vacation, Ben Lindbergh goes long with a few guests and segments. First, Kiri Oler of FanGraphs and Bradley Woodrum of Baseball Prospectus join to banter about how Pete Crow-Armstrong and Jacob Misiorowski illustrate the differences in modern pitcher and hitter usage and value, Sandy Alcantara as the last innings eater, two more baseball movies, Ernie Clement’s post-All-Star-Game decline, and Jefry Yan’s more muted strikeout celebrations. Then (43:34) they break down the inaugural season of the WPBL: what went right, what went wrong, the Kelsie Whitmore-Denae Benites battle, the high-offense environment, their other favorite storylines, the future of the league, and more. After that (1:33:33), Ben brings on the manager of the Pioneer League’s RedPocket Mobiles, former major leaguer Dmitri Young, along with Mobiles co-GM and Pioneer League director of operations Al Maulding, to explain how the Mobiles suffered the longest losing streak in pro baseball history, life on a traveling team, indy-ball oddities, and more. Finally (2:36:23), Ben Stat Blasts about the most times reaching base before a first career hit, players who hit their first homers off position-player pitchers, and lineups composed of players with short surnames.

Audio intro: The Gagnés, “Effectively Wild Theme 2”
Audio outro: The Shirey Brothers, “Effectively Wild Theme”

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The Reds dropped six out of seven games to the Dodgers this season, all within the last two weeks, but Elly De La Cruz no doubt left an impression both on them and the rest of baseball. The 24-year-old shortstop homered in five of those seven games while lighting up Statcast and assembling some eye-opening highlight clips. Although the Reds have regressed after making the playoffs last year, De La Cruz is putting the finishing touches on his best offensive campaign — and he still has a reasonable chance at his first 30-homer, 30-steal season.

Coming as they have while the Reds play out the string of a disappointing season, De La Cruz’s recent feats at the plate and in the field admittedly have a bit of a Tungsten Arm O’Doyle feel. After claiming the third NL Wild Card spot last year with an 83-79 record — the Reds’ first postseason berth in a full season since 2013 — they’ve slipped to 71-82, including 12-20 since August 15, the second-worst record in the NL during that span. But it’s hardly De La Cruz’s fault that Hunter Greene made just five starts before undergoing Tommy John surgery, that starters Nick Lodolo, Rhett Lowder, and Brady Singer are all sporting ERAs well over 5.00, or that TJ Friedl, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Noelvi Marte, and Matt McLain have combined for nearly 1,200 plate appearances and a 49 wRC+.

Against that dismal backdrop, De La Cruz has still kept the Reds worth watching, if only to see what the switch-hitting 6-foot-6 marvel might do next. From September 5–9, he homered in five straight games, the first two coming against the Brewers at Great American Ballpark and the last three at Dodger Stadium. The Brewers broke De La Cruz’s streak, holding him homerless during last weekend’s three-game series in Milwaukee, but he was back at it with homers against the Dodgers in Cincinnati on Monday and Wednesday. Unfortunately, twice during that stretch (September 9 and 14, both against the Dodgers), his homer provided the Reds with their only run of the game. Here are the dingers from the five-game streak:

That streak placed De La Cruz in the company of White Sox rookies Munetaka Murakami (April 17–22) and Tristan Peters (August 22–26), Tigers first baseman Spencer Torkelson (April 22–26), and Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber (May 7-12), all of whom homered in five straight games this season as well, with the Rays’ Junior Caminero going yard in six straight games (June 25–July 1). De La Cruz’s streak tied one by Eugenio Suárez from 2018 (July 23–27) as the second longest by a Red in the last 10 seasons, with the longest a seven-gamer belonging to Joey Votto in 2021 (July 24–31), one short of the major league record shared by Dale Long, Don Mattingly, and Ken Griffey Jr.

Beyond the volume of De La Cruz’s homers was their emphatic nature. Six of them had exit velocities of 106 mph or higher, with his solo shot off Evan Phillips of the Dodgers on Monday leading the pack at 114.1 mph, followed by a 112.1-mph solo home run off the Brewers’ Dustin May on September 5. His two-run homer off Tarik Skubal on September 8 had an estimated distance of 444 feet, making it both this season’s longest at Dodger Stadium and also the longest surrendered by the two-time reigning Cy Young winner. The clout off Phillips was estimated at 457 feet, making it the longest hit at Great American this year — it actually left the ballpark after bouncing on the concourse — as well as De La Cruz’s longest since September 26, 2023 (a career-best 467-footer).

De La Cruz’s recent hot streak has been about more than just home runs. Before going 0-for-4 with three strikeouts against the Dodgers on Thursday afternoon, he had reached base in 23 consecutive games dating back to August 22, matching the longest streak of his career, from April 9 to May 4 of last season. Over the course of this year’s streak, he hit .424/.480/.793 with eight home runs, four stolen bases, a 242 wRC+ (tops in the majors over that span, two points higher than that of Rafael Devers), and 2.4 WAR (also tops, 0.3 WAR ahead of an MVP-bound Pete Crow-Armstrong). During that stretch, De La Cruz’s batted balls averaged a sizzling 99.6 mph in exit velocity, with a 29.7% barrel rate and a 67.2% hard-hit rate.

On the other side of the ball, De La Cruz also uncorked the hardest throw for an assist by an infielder in the Statcast era, a 102-mph relay that nabbed the Dodgers’ Teoscar Hernández at the plate as he tried for an inside-the-park home run on September 9. That was the same night De La Cruz homered off Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

Though the velocity on that throw was revised downward upon review, from an initial report of 105.3 mph, it was still 2.2 mph faster than the previous high — which was set by De La Cruz on July 20, 2023 (a relay throw to catch the Giants’ Wilmer Flores at the plate), and matched on August 8 of this season (yet another relay, this one to nail the Nationals’ Nasim Nuñez trying to score). In fact, according to MLB.com’s David Adler, De La Cruz owns the five fastest infielder assists in the Statcast era. The others are also on relays to the plate, with this 99.7-mph one from August 27, 2023 (cutting down the Diamondbacks’ Corbin Carroll trying to complete an inside-the-park homer) and this 99.2-mph one from August 19 this season (extinguishing a none-too-swift Blaze Jordan trying to score) rounding out the top five.

Overall, including Thursday’s 0-fer, De La Cruz is hitting .284/.362/.517 for a 138 wRC+. All of those numbers represent career highs, with his slugging percentage ranking sixth in the league and his wRC+ seventh. Thanks in large part to his on-base streak, his 6.0 WAR ranks second among NL position players behind PCA; he’s still 0.7 behind the combined pitching and offense total for Shohei Ohtani, but could close the gap during the two-way superstar’s stint on the injured list. De La Cruz also remains 0.8 WAR shy of his own career high, set in 2024, but he played 160 games that year, whereas he’s totaled 134 this year, having missed three weeks in June due to a right hamstring strain. He would max out at 143 games if he plays all nine remaining on the Reds’ schedule.

De La Cruz has reason to do just that. While his 28 homers already represents a career high, he’s just two away from reaching 30, and needs four stolen bases to get to 30 in that category as well. He’s not running as often — or as fast — as he used to. In 2024, De La Cruz led the NL with 67 steals (in 83 attempts) with 100th-percentile sprint speed, but this year he’s stolen just 26 in 34 attempts, including only four in August and two in September, with 80th-percentile sprint speed; it’s understandable if he’s not as willing to test his hamstring. If he does reach 30 in both categories, he would join PCA (44 homers, 37 steals) and likely CJ Abrams, who currently has 30 homers and 29 steals, in this year’s club.

The switch-hitting De La Cruz’s big step forward has been driven by significant improvement in his production against left-handed pitching. He’s made adjustments to his right-handed swing that have brought it more in line with his left-handed one, and gained substantial bat speed from both sides of the plate that have resulted in much better contact. Some of this was documented earlier this season, here by Ryan Blake, at MLB.com by Jared Greenspan, and elsewhere, though not everything that was true when they checked in still holds.

Though he’s a natural right-hander based upon both his throws and his self-description, De La Cruz’s production against lefties lagged before this season, as both Blake and Greenspan pointed out. Updating the numbers:

From 2023–25, De La Cruz hit .271/.351/.497 for a 128 wRC+ against righties, placing him the 83rd percentile among lefties with at least 300 plate appearances in that context. Meanwhile, he hit just .220/.278/.329 for a 66 wRC+ against lefties, landing him in the third percentile among righties with at least 300 plate appearances in that context. With more than twice as many plate appearances against righties, he was still above average overall, with a 109 wRC+ during that span, but the split was jarring; that’s the kind of production that gets lefties benched against same-side pitching.

This year is a different story, as De La Cruz has has improved his wRC+ by 112 points against lefties. If that sounds like a lot, it is. Our Splits Leaderboard data only goes back to 2002, but of the 2,615 player-seasons in which a right-handed batter took at least 100 plate appearances against lefties in back-to-back seasons, it’s the 16th-largest gain, placing him well inside the 99th percentile. The largest gain was made by switch-hitting Orioles catcher Matt Wieters, who jumped from a 44 wRC+ in 127 plate appearances against lefties in 2010 to a 201 wRC+ in 142 plate appearances against them in ’11. The median wRC+ within the top 20 was 58 in year one and 172 in year two; qualitatively, that looks like a turn from total incompetence to total mastery, but a lot of fluky things can happen from year to year over the course of 100 or 150 plate appearances, and figuring out the whys of all those big gains, and the extent to which they were maintained, is outside the scope of this piece. For De La Cruz, at least, the improvement is founded in much better contact:

De La Cruz’s average exit velocity against lefties has jumped 7.4 mph from 2025, with his barrel rate nearly tripling, his hard-hit rate increasing by almost 20 percentage points, and his expected slugging percentage surging by almost 130 points. What’s more, his actual production from that side has exceeded his expected numbers by a fair bit. He’s not only producing his highest pulled-air rate of his career from that side (though a comparatively low one in the grand scheme), he’s also poked five homers to right (opposite field) from among 24 batted balls, for a 1.435 slugging and an .806 xSLG; in three previous seasons, he had just one such home run.

Meanwhile, De Le Cruz’s average exit velo against righties has improved by 2.3 mph, with his barrel and hard-hit rates and xSLG jumping as well, but not by as much as from the other side. He’s underperforming those numbers, in part because of that very low pulled-air rate, but it’s still very good production from that side.

Underlying those higher exit velocities are better swing decisions and improved bat speed from both sides. On the former front, he’s cut his chase rate from 28.5% to a career-low 25.8%, with his swing rate falling from a career-high 45.6% to a career-low 40.9%. As for the latter front:

I ditched the small-sample 2023 data, when he was swinging even faster, but here you can see that relative to the last season, De La Cruz’s bat speed against lefties has improved by 2.3 mph, with his fast-swing rate against them increasing by 21 points and his squared-up and blast rates really jumping. Earlier in the season, he had shortened his right-handed swing relative to last year, but that no longer holds. From both sides of the plate, the position of his feet has varied so widely from month to month over that three-season stretch that I didn’t even try to get more granular, but he has closed up his stance on both sides relative to last season, and increased the distance between his feet. During this current tear, in September he’s averaged a 13-degree open stance with his feet 34.9 inches apart from the right side of the plate (versus lefties) and a 19-degree open stance with his feet 35.7 inches apart from the left side (versus righties).

The increased distance between his feet, or the season-to-season variation, owes to De La Cruz’s moving from a leg kick (2024) to a toe tap (2025), and back to an even bigger leg kick this year, with refined mechanics helping him to be more explosive and produce greater power. On MLB Network on Thursday, Yonder Alonso and Mark DeRosa broke down the slugger’s progression and the changes with video examples better than I can muster. This is four minutes from a segment that’s over nine minutes long.

The two former major leaguers disagree on some points, but as Alonso explains it, with the toe tap, De La Cruz’s swing was “two-step” and he was “a hair late” to the ball. The leg kick creates “a much better angle to the baseball and better bat speed,” and as shown near the end of this excerpt, his swings from both sides of the plate are much more similar than they were before.

As you can see from the table presented near the end of that excerpt, De La Cruz’s overall year-to-year increases in barrel rate and hard-hit rate are the largest in the majors, with his increased exit velocity the second largest. Including updated stats from Thursday, here are the top 10s for each of those:

In that context, De La Cruz’s improvements in those two rate stats particularly stand out. The distance between him and the second-ranked hitter is about the same as those between the second- and 10th-ranked hitters. The same is more or less true in terms of exit velocity, in that the distance between him and the third-ranked hitter is even greater than that between no. 3 and no. 10.

With his huge frame and exceptional speed, power, and arm, De La Cruz has always been one of the majors’ most compelling players to watch. As he’s refined his game, that’s become even more true — and to think, he’s just 24 years old. I can’t wait to see where these improvements take him.