Last week, we got a mailbag question from James, whose glimpses of Luis Arraez during the World Baseball Classic left him looking for one weird trick to vault the three-time batting champion back up to his previous heights. I had so much fun answering the question that its word count moved it out of mailbag territory (non-Jay Jaffe division, anyway) and into regular article territory. The question was on the longer side, but here’s an abridged version:

If [Arraez] could wear a ribbon on his wrist to deter a bad hitting habit, would he be able to avoid something that drags him down?

My first idea was swinging on 3-1 counts… If he spit on 3-1 pitches habitually, until opposing pitchers caught on, what percentage of them would have landed him on first? What impact would that have on his OPS & WAR, and how would that impact his value and employability?

Could there be other commonplace opportunities that may be similarly exploited?

I realize James is asking for a more specific answer here, but I want to start with the overview, because at this point, I think people may have forgotten that once upon a time, Arraez actually had great plate discipline. From 2019 to 2022 he ran a 24% chase rate and a 9% walk rate. That walk rate was 5% higher than the league average. From 2023 to 2025, he had a 34% chase rate and a 4% walk rate. That walk rate is now a staggering 45% below the league average! Over the same period, Arraez’s swing rate on pitches inside the zone fell from 65% to 62%. He wasn’t just chasing more; he was making worse swing decisions all around. That’s a lot of shifts in the wrong direction, and even though Arraez also cut his strikeout rate nearly in half, his wRC+ dropped from 123 to 109. Read the rest of this entry »

A week ago, the Cubs roster was light on long-term commitments. Only Alex Bregman and Dansby Swanson held guaranteed contracts that extended past 2027, and only two others – Phil Maton and Shelby Miller – even had guaranteed years in 2027. But as it turns out, Chicago payroll commitments abhor a vacuum. On Tuesday, Pete Crow-Armstrong signed a six-year extension. On Thursday, Nico Hoerner followed suit with a six-year pact of his own, as Michael Cerami first reported. The deal starts in 2027 and is worth $141 million, with minor deferrals that drop the total present value to the mid-130s.

If you don’t catch many Cubs games, it’s easy to overlook Hoerner. His offensive game is most notable for its lack of extremes. He doesn’t walk much. He doesn’t strike out much. He doesn’t hit for a ton of power. He’s not excessively swing happy like so many contact hitters. He doesn’t pound the ball into the ground, but he equally doesn’t sell out to lift and pull. He’s produced low-power, solid-OBP seasons for four years running, and they’ve been almost metronomically consistent: his seasonal wRC+ marks of 108, 103, 102, and 109 work out to a 105 average.

That’s the 105th-best batting line among hitters over that span. That doesn’t sound particularly impressive. Hoerner is wedged between Jake Cronenworth and Mike Yastrzemski, solidly in nice-but-forgettable territory. He’s 57th in OBP over that span, which is a little bit more exciting, but truthfully, he is not a star at the plate.

The fun starts when you get into the rest of his game. Over that same time frame, from 2022-2025, Hoerner is the sixth-best baserunner in the majors. The guys in front of him – Corbin Carroll, Bobby Witt Jr., Trea Turner, Jarren Duran, and Elly De La Cruz – are famed for their exploits on the bases. Hoerner is the slowest of that group by a fair margin, but he makes up for it with excellent instincts and great reads. He’s fifth in the bigs in steals during that span, and his 85% success rate is better than everyone in front of him on the list. When he gets on base, he’s a threat to steal, and yet he almost never gets thrown out. Read the rest of this entry »

Tarik Skubal commanded the zone while dominating the San Diego Padres on Thursday. Making his third straight Opening Day start for the Detroit Tigers, the reigning back-to-back Cy Young Award winner threw 49 of 74 pitches for strikes, including 17 of 22 to start an at-bat. Moreover, he mixed with aplomb. Skubal garnered 14 called strikes, 10 of them on either his four-seamer or sinker, as well as 11 whiffs, nine coming on changeups. He departed after six innings having surrendered just three hits, with six strikeouts and nary a free pass.

His M.O. for attacking the strike zone? I asked the 29-year-old southpaw about that following one of his spring training outings earlier this month. As it has become increasingly common for pitchers — particularly power pitchers — to aim middle and let their stuff play from there, I wanted to know how precise he is with intended location.

“My changeup, I throw down the middle, but that’s because when I throw it down the middle, the result is down and away,” replied Skubal. “And when I throw my slider down the middle, the result is glove-side and down. So, there are pitches I throw down the middle, but that’s just visually, as opposed to what I’m actually doing.

“I feel like I do a good job of throwing strikes,” continued Skubal. “As far as really executing every pitch that I throw… I don’t know. There is probably a metric on it. I’d like to think I’m a little bit above average, but I don’t know what the numbers say.“

Measuring command is an imperfect science, so where Skubal ranks depends on your metric of choice. According to our PitchingBot model, he was among the best of the best. Last season, Skubal graded out at 64 (on a 20-80 scale) tying him with Seattle’s Bryan Woo at the top of our botCmd leaderboard. Read the rest of this entry »

We did it everyone! We made it through the long offseason. Regular season baseball is back, and it has already delivered the goods. I attended Mets-Pirates at Citi Field on Opening Day to witness the highly anticipated pitching matchup between reigning NL Cy Young winner Paul Skenes and new New York ace Freddy Peralta. Naturally, Skenes had the worst game of his career thus far, failing to make it through the first inning, and Peralta didn’t pitch well either. The two teams combined for 18 runs in the 8 1/2 innings of play. I wrote about the Skenes start, the two defensive blunders by Oneil Cruz in center field that contributed to Pittsburgh’s first-inning fiasco, and the lineup’s surprisingly strong showing. You can read that here.

Because I was covering that contest, I didn’t get a chance to watch any of the other early games and saw only a portion of the later ones. That means I missed White Sox catcher Edgar Quero successfully challenge three ball calls in the first two innings before finally getting one wrong in the sixth inning. In that same game, which the Brewers won 14-2, Jacob Misiorowski struck out 11 Chicago batters. I also didn’t catch the pitcher’s duel between Orioles lefty Trevor Rogers and Twins righty Joe Ryan; Baltimore won, 2-1, and Adley Rutschman, not to be confused with Badley, went 2-for-4, though Tyler O’Neill’s Opening Day home run streak was snapped at six. In the later afternoon games, the Cardinals scored eight runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to secure a comeback win over the Rays, after allowing Tampa Bay to plate six runs in the top of the frame. JJ Wetherholt, who went 1-for-4 with a home run and two RBI in that game, was one of a number of prospects who shined in their big league debuts. Kevin McGonigle had four hits in the Tigers’ 8-2 win over the Padres, and Justin Crawford went 2-for-4 in the Phillies’ win over the Rangers. I actually got to see Mets right fielder Carson Benge blast his first homer, this after a dead bird had fallen in front of him in right field. It wasn’t technically his first major league game because he debuted in the postseason last year, but Cleveland’s Chase DeLauter bopped two home runs in a 6-4 win over the Mariners.

I ran through all those games up top because that’s the last we’ll be covering the Opening Day action in this week’s mailbag. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions about Matt McLain’s strong spring, Aaron Judge’s low squared-up rate, players who might benefit the most from ABS, and Tony Vitello. 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 »

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, please visit our Patreon.

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the pleasures of and precedents for the historic rookie performances on Opening Day, the pains of Netflix’s Opening Night broadcast, an Opening Day disaster for Paul Skenes, Oneil Cruz, and a bird near Carson Benge, Freddie Freeman’s gameday fit, a perplexing (un?)fun fact about the Phillies and Jhoan Duran, why players don’t always challenge when they “should,” Nico Hoerner and Shane Baz extensions, baseball movies being back (thanks to Tom Hanks), and more, plus a Stat Blast (1:28:40) about Black Ink streaks and a postscript (1:37:14) featuring a follow-up and a few bonus Blasts.

Audio intro: Grant Brisbee, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Philip Bergman, “Effectively Wild Theme”

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There’s paint on the field, bunting on the steel, and hoopla in our feels. It’s Opening Day no doubt. Well, the third one, at least.

The most iconic trapping of Opening Day is the fleet of excellent starting pitchers who take the mound. Each team sends their best, or at least, their healthiest. For some, it’s the reigning Cy Young winner. For others, it’s a precocious prospect. These starters, true to their name, carry the burden of the new season in their shoulder.

Few carry a burden greater than Luis Severino’s. Read the rest of this entry »

Nine days after the end of the World Baseball Classic, more than three weeks since he was hit by a pitch, and just hours before his team’s Opening Day game, another WBC participant landed on the injured list. Jackson Chourio, who served as the regular center fielder for Venezuela’s championship-winning squad and who is slated to be the starting left fielder for the Brewers, was placed on the IL on Thursday morning due to a fracture in his left hand.

Chourio, who turned 22 on March 11, was hit on the hand by a heater from Clayton Beeter in Venezuela’s exhibition game against the Nationals on March 4. Initial X-rays were negative, and he was diagnosed with a contusion. He sat out Venezuela’s first two games of pool play while the Marlins’ Javier Sanoja started in center field, but Chourio returned to the lineup on March 9, playing the final two pool games and the three knockout round games. For the tournament, he hit just .200/.278/.200 in 19 plate appearances, though he did barrel a few balls.

When Chourio returned to the Brewers, according to manager Pat Murphy, he underwent a scan of some sort — I’d guess a CT scan, which is much quicker than an MRI — but it did not show a fracture. He continued to play regularly, and even homered off the Padres’ Randy Vásquez on March 21, but after he felt pain in his hand during a check swing in an exhibition against the Reds on Tuesday, the Brewers sent him for an MRI, which reportedly revealed a small hairline fracture at the base of his third metacarpal. While the fracture has begun to heal, Murphy said the team is understandably “worried that there could be further injury if he doesn’t take care of it now.” Thus the IL move, which is retroactive to March 25. He’s expected to miss two to four weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

On September 12, 2004, Eli Manning made his NFL debut. The Giants were down three touchdowns in the fourth quarter, and starting quarterback Kurt Warner had taken four sacks and fumbled twice; maybe let the no. 1 overall pick take a spin.

On Manning’s very first play from scrimmage, he handed the ball to Tiki Barber, who ran for a 72-yard touchdown. Now, Manning would go on to have a very, very good career: 16 years in the league, four Pro Bowls, 366 touchdown passes, two Super Bowls, and untold hundreds of millions of dollars in career earnings. But if you look at Manning’s career through a certain lens, he peaked with that first snap.

A quarterback’s job is to advance the ball down the field and score. And while Barber did most of the work, a one-play, 72-yard touchdown drive is about as good as a debut gets. Manning’s career productivity would never be better than it was after that first play. So it proved, and quickly; on the very next possession, Manning coughed up a fumble of his own on a nightmarish three-way hit. Welcome to The Show, kid. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — It started out so well.

In their Opening Day game against the Mets at Citi Field, the Pirates jumped out to a two-run lead two batters into the game. Their next three batters struck out, but they had National League Cy Young winner Paul Skenes starting for them. It was the first time in his career that Skenes, who entered the game with a 1.96 ERA, took the mound in the first inning with a lead of two or more runs. Heck, it was just the fourth time in his 56 career starts (29 on the road) that he’d thrown his first pitch with any lead at all. Maybe this year would be different after all.

It’s too early to say anything about this year, but this sure was a different game. Just not in the way the Pirates had hoped. For the first time in his career, Skenes did not make it through the first inning. When manager Don Kelly went to the bullpen with two outs in the inning, his ace had thrown 37 pitches, recorded just two outs and allowed five runs. He struck out just one batter, walked two, and hit one with a pitch. The impromptu bullpen game ended about two and a half hours later in an 11-7 Mets win. Read the rest of this entry »

1:10	Dan Szymborski: It’s a chat!

1:11	Jay Jaffe: Hey hey, Happy Opening Day!

1:11	Dan Szymborski: And I’ll be here for more than expected as I my brother-in-law is already home from his procedure, so I don’t have to spend part of Opening Day wrangling a six-year-old and a four-year-old

Read the rest of this entry »