Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! I hope you all enjoyed your three-day weekends. I had a lovely one here, one that included a surprise solo parenting job as I took my daughter and her friend to see the Brooklyn Cyclones on Sunday; my wife planned to go instead of the friend, but came down with a migraine (ugh). Fortunately, it all went well, everybody had fun and I came home with the same number of kids I brought.
Lake Bachar was a kicker at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater before turning his full attention to baseball. He had a good leg. An all-conference performer, Bachar booted three field goals in the 2014 NCAA Division III championship game, a 43-34 Warhawks win over the Mount Union Raiders. Along with being a place kicker, he served as the team’s punter and kickoff specialist across his three collegiate seasons on the gridiron.
How good was he in his other sport?
“I was decent,” said Bachar, who now pitches out of the bullpen for the Miami Marlins. “I don’t know about NFL kicker, but at that time I was going to try do whatever I could to at least go to a [tryout] camp. The longest field goal I kicked in practice was 68 [yards] — good conditions, and all that — and the longest in a game was either high 40s or low 50s.”
Baseball has turned out to be a good career choice, although it took him awhile to reach the majors. Drafted by the San Diego Padres in 2016, the fifth-rounder was 29 years old when he debuted with the Marlins last September. His first full big-league season has been impressive. Over 43 relief appearances, the right-hander has a 5-1 record and a pair of saves to go with his 3.39 ERA and 3.77 FIP over 58-and-a-third innings. His strikeout rate is a solid 26.7%.
Selected off waivers by Miami shortly before his debut, Bachar attributes his late-bloomer breakthrough to “being in the right place at the right time,” as well as some fine-tuning of his pitches. A four-seamer that gets ride-run and a splitter that he’s thrown since 2020 comprise half of his arsenal. The other offerings are breakers new to this year. Read the rest of this entry »
Hello, and welcome to this week’s mailbag! Matt Martell is on a well-deserved
vacation, so I’m piloting things in his stead. Matt picked a pretty good time to get some R&R; with about a month left in the season, the playoff field is basically set. As Michael Baumann noted in his piece yesterday, “there has not been a playoff race so settled this early in the season as this year’s National League. At least not in the past 12 seasons. There’s always been someone with some hope in each league, even in the two-Wild Card rounds, and especially in that hateful COVID-necessitated 16-team bracket from 2020. Not this year in the NL. Barely, this year, in the AL.” Entering play on Friday, the Reds trailed the Mets by four games for the final NL Wild Card spot; their playoff odds sat at a paltry 4.4%. The Junior Circuit didn’t offer much more intrigue; the Royals, sitting three games back of the Mariners for the third Wild Card in that league, had playoff odds of just 12.6% as the long weekend loomed.
But that doesn’t mean there’s no fun to be had. Kyle Schwarber hit four home runs in one game this week! Jonah Tong and Payton Tolle made their major league debuts! There’s Hi-Chew aplenty! And while we basically know who will be playing October baseball, both of the West divisions remain unsettled.
Your questions this week don’t specifically concern the playoff race, though two of them involve key players on teams that hope to make deep postseason runs. We’ll also zoom out to contemplate how many teams could finish .500, as well as the future of public pitching analysis. Before we do, though, I’ll remind you all that while anyone can submit a question, 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, be sure to send us an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about John Brebbia’s return to the big leagues, Kyle Schwarber’s four-homer game, the potential for a position-player-pitcher-assisted five-homer game, Heliot Ramos and dingers on extremely slow pitches, an interminable inning, whether the playoff race is over and, if so, whether that’s an indictment of the 12-team format, and the profusion of recently promoted pitchers potentially in line for postseason starts, then (55:50) answer listener emails about season-ending injuries, accounting for player intention in WAR, “rounding home,” giving pitchers tall shoes, making baseball less random, the worst on-field feeling, pitcher aesthetics, and mid-PA pitching changes, plus (1:36:34) follow-ups.
Gary A. Vasquez, Jerome Miron, and Charles LeClaire – Imagn Images
The Rangers really can’t catch a break. Just after I wrote about Nathan Eovaldi’s sneaky great season, the 35-year-old righty briefly took over the official AL ERA lead. Before he could make another start, however, the Rangers announced that Eovaldi would likely miss the remainder of the season due to a rotator cuff strain. As if losing their most effective starting pitcher wasn’t enough, the Rangers also announced on Thursday that Corey Seager, their top hitter, had undergone an appendectomy, putting the rest of his season in doubt.
With his seven-inning, nine-strikeout, one-run effort against the Guardians last Friday, Eovaldi lowered his ERA to 1.73 in 130 innings, exactly enough to qualify based on the Rangers’ 130 games to that point. With that, he snuck ahead of Tarik Skubal (2.32), Hunter Brown (2.36) and Garrett Crochet (2.46) on the AL leaderboard, completing a game of catch-up caused primarily by his missing nearly all of June due to posterior elbow inflammation. Unfortunately, post-start soreness led Eovaldi to shut down his regularly scheduled bullpen session and get an MRI, which revealed a rotator cuff strain.
The 31-year-old Seager has hit .271/.373/.487 for a team-high 136 wRC+; his 21 homers and 3.9 WAR are also tops on the Rangers. He already made two trips to the injured list in April and May for a recurrent right hamstring strain and so has played just 102 games, that after being limited to 123 last year by a sports hernia and 119 in 2023 due to a left hamstring strain and a right thumb sprain. He’s been replaced on the roster by infielder Dylan Moore, who was recently released by the Mariners, but the likely replacement for him in the lineup is superutilityman Josh Smith, who has hit .256/.333/.378 (101 wRC+) while playing every position besides pitcher and catcher. Read the rest of this entry »
Wei-En Lin is establishing himself as a prospect to watch in the Athletics system. The reason is largely two-fold. Signed by the AL West club out of Taiwan last summer, the 19-year-old southpaw has been opening eyes with an impressive combination of strike-throwing and an ability to miss bats. Over 77 1/3 innings between Low-A Stockton and High-A Lansing, Lin has logged a 33.8% strikeout rate and a 5.5% walk rate. Recently added to The Board with a 40+ FV, he currently ranks 14th in the A’s system.
His arsenal comprises a four-seam fastball, a slider, a curveball, and a changeup, the last of which Lugnuts pitching coach Dave Burba considers the best of the bunch. The erstwhile big league hurler described the pitch as “dirty,” adding that Lin not only gets good action with it, he delivers it with good arm speed. Eric Longenhagen likes it as well. Asked for his assessment, our lead prospect analyst shared the following:
His changeup is good. It has big parachute action, and it really dies as it reaches the plate. It’s slow, like 76 mph on average, and that’s weird enough to create some uncertainty as to how it will play against big leaguers. It definitely has bat-missing movement, though.
The pitch in question is gripped in an atypical manner. When I talked to Lin last week, I learned that he stopped throwing a splitter at the end of May and now attacks hitters with a Vulcan. Read the rest of this entry »
Eric A Longenhagen: Good morning everyone, let’s dive into your questions immediately.
12:00
Ben: Hey Eric, love these chats! We have two exciting SP debuts tonight. If you only could watch Tong or Tolle tonight, which would you choose and why?
12:02
Eric A Longenhagen: If you have to pick one (both *matchups* tonight are also incredible, Tolle vs Skenes, Tong vs Eury) I’d go Tolle just because we’ll get to learn more about him tonight than I think we will Tong. Tolle’s power fastball will play, how about the other stuff? How does he approach big league hitters the second and third time through? Tong’s question marks are more going to be answered over longer period because it has to do with him sustaining big stuff at his size.
12:03
Drew: Is Eduardo Quintero really a top 50 prospect like I’ve seen in other publications?
12:04
Eric A Longenhagen: That’s rich for me, clearly, or I’d have him in that area.
12:04
Rob: What have your impressions of Cam Cam been this year?
The Mets swept the Phillies this week, which made headlines for two reasons: First, the Mets have now won 10 straight against the Phillies at Citi Field, dating back to last September, and including Games 3 and 4 of last year’s NLDS. If the Phillies don’t win a game there in the playoffs, they don’t face the Mets in New York again until the last weekend of June 2026. A potential 21-month losing streak at a divisional rival is tough to swallow, though it’s good to see that everyone’s being super normal about it.
Second, it kept the NL East race alive. The Phillies entered this division matchup seven games up with 32 to play; had they won the series, they would’ve basically had the division title in the bag. As it stands now, they’re up five, with the Mets coming to Philadelphia for a four-game set in mid-September. The Phillies are still 3-to-1 favorites, according to our playoff odds, but it’s a real pennant race now.
But this sweep is most important for a reason that went a little under the radar. While the Mets were beating seven shades of you-know-what out of the Phillies, the Dodgers were doing the same to the Reds in Los Angeles. Read the rest of this entry »
“You told me to flump off,” said umpire Derek Thomas. He pulled home plate duty for Monday’s game between the Cardinals and the Pirates, and it turned out to be a tough assignment. In the bottom of the seventh, Thomas rang up designated hitter Willson Contreras on a called strike three. He didn’t like what he heard as Contreras walked back to the dugout, so he ran him too. The flabbergasted Contreras asked why he’d been ejected, then raced back toward home plate and asked Thomas to repeat himself. The debate that ensued was short but spirited, and packed with dazzling rhetorical flourishes.
“You told me to flump off,” Thomas said again before turning to manager Oliver Marmol. “He told me to flump off.”
“No,” said Contreras. “I did not. I did not.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I did not.”
“Yes, you did.”
Diplomatic relations finally reached their breaking point. Contreras decided that if he was going to be punished for telling Thomas to flump off, he might as well get his money’s worth. He told him to flump off with gusto. “How is that?” he shouted. He repeated himself again and again, exploring various intonations while ratcheting up the intensity to make sure the message sank in fully. It was a powerhouse performance. Inspired, Marmol told Thomas where to flump as well. At that point, a less resolute individual probably would’ve just flumped off.
Contreras threw his helmet, then his bat, which ended up hitting a coach. The pièce de résistance came in the form of a large pail of Hi-Chew, which Contreras retrieved from the dugout and tossed onto the field:
Watching all this, I couldn’t help but be amazed. They have Hi-Chew in the dugout! Did you know they have Hi-Chew in the dugout? I watch a fair amount of baseball, and I definitely did not. For the uninitiated, Hi-Chew is Japanese candy that comes in a wide variety of fruit flavors. I love Hi-Chew. Everyone loves Hi-Chew. But it’s candy. It’s not bubble gum, which has storied history in baseball and may even improve athletic performance. And it’s not sunflower seeds, which have their own storied history, not to mention protein and electrolytes that confer their own plausible nutritional benefits. It’s just regular candy.
Every year or two, we get a few articles oohing and aahing at the state of nutrition for professional athletes. I will confess that I eat these articles up. I love them all. A catalog of the new, healthy snacks in the dugout? Don’t mind if I do. A deep-dive into the NBA’s love affair with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? I’ll take a dozen. Puff pieces about the Marlins nutrition team, the Angels dietitian, the Twins dietitians, a minor league dietitian, or the Mets kitchen staff? Keep ‘em coming. Every one of these articles makes me want to be a major leaguer, starting my day with a protein shake designed to suit my exact metabolic needs, drinking tart cherry juice to aid my recovery, and eating healthy meals that are also delicious because they’re designed and prepared by world-class professionals. I’d also get to enjoy the odd bit of cotton candy:
Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images
That part’s actually important. All of the cooks, dietitians and nutritionists interviewed in these articles go out of their way to acknowledge that they’re fine with the occasional treat. They don’t want to be the junk food police, and athletes burn through so much energy between practice, warmups, workouts, and the actual games that they have absurdly high caloric needs anyway. (Left unsaid in most of these articles is the fact that these are hyper-athletic 20-somethings who could probably subsist on a diet of Cocoa Puffs anyway, even if it wouldn’t necessarily optimize performance.) Instead, they detail the many ways they’ve replaced junk with healthy options. Energy comes from sources like fruit, nuts, string cheese, and jerky. Cookies are out; Honey Stinger stroopwafels are in. Nutri-Grain bars, which are essentially a prayer to the god of Type 2 Diabetes, have been replaced by Rx Bars. And so on. With so many lesser evils available, players can indulge without wrecking their carefully-calibrated dietary regimens.
All of this makes sense. None of it is compatible with the big, surprisingly aerodynamic tub of Hi-Chew in the St. Louis dugout. There’s no decades-long history here. Hi-Chew is just a big cube of glucose. I’m going to pull a few quotes from the articles I linked to above, but I’ve doctored them just a little bit. It’s subtle, but see if you can tell what I changed.
“Everything in our clubhouse is geared toward helping promote recovery and reduce inflammation. We try to stick to snacks and foods with good nutrition. That’s why we provide Hi-Chew, which is 61% sugar and 10% fat. What’s the other 29%? I shudder to think.”
…
“How do we get the right energy in them in order to optimize their performance during the game? Also, how do we dispose of this giant tub of Hi-Chew my uncle gave me for my birthday?”
…
“Obviously, not feeding your body with the right stuff is not going to be able to help you maintain your body and your energy levels throughout the whole year, because it’s a long year. Except for Hi-Chew. Hi-Chew is fine.”
This article is not about how Hi-Chew got in the dugout. That article has already been written more than once. The story goes that as the least-tenured reliever on the Red Sox in 2012, Japanese-born Junichi Tazawa was in charge of keeping the bullpen stocked with gum. He added his own supply of Hi-Chew, which proved so popular that he couldn’t find enough to keep up with clubhouse demand. He asked the manufacturer if he could buy in bulk. Instead, the manufacturer sent it for free, then started sponsoring teams. There are big tubs of Hi-Chew in dugouts around the league because the players like it, but mostly because Hi-Chew pays for that privilege. I imagine they’re preparing to send Contreras the world’s sweetest care package in exchange for all the free publicity.
No, this article is my attempt to find out what’s actually being eaten in major league dugouts. Hi-Chew can’t be the only transgressor that somehow failed to come up in the dozens of empty-calorie articles about big league nutrition that I’ve consumed over the years. Here I should confess that this is a subject near to my heart. I was a ravenous child. I ate seeds and chewed gum during baseball games when I was younger. By middle school, I was loading boxfuls of Pop-Tarts and Fruit by the Foot in my bag at the beginning of each week. My spikes would inevitably crush the Pop-Tarts and shred their thin foil wrappers. By the end of the season, my bag would be covered in a fine, inch-deep mélange of dirt, pastry crumbs, and brown sugar filling. It smelled heavenly.
I used a brute force research methodology, hunting for sweets through thousands of photo service pictures of dugouts, bullpens, Dubble Bubble celebrations, and Gatorade baths. The hit rate was infinitesimal. Unless they’re taking a few establishing shots of gum and sunflower seeds during spring training, there’s no reason for photographers to waste their time on the snacks in the dugout. The pictures I found were usually candids, players who happened to be photographed holding a bag of seeds, dumping snacks on the player who just hit a walk-off, resting in front of the Hi-Chew tub, or digging through it looking for a very specific flavor. Behold:
Jayne Kamin-Oncea, Lon Horwedel-Imagn Images
I found enough pictures of Dubble Bubble and sunflower seeds to make your head spin, though that big pail of Dubble Bubble in the dugout has changed with the times too. The next time you see a player hit a walk-off homer and receive a Dubble Bubble shower, keep an eye on the individual pieces of gum. If they’re wrapped in paper with the ends twisted, that’s regular gum, but if it’s in a plastic wrapper, that’s the sugar-free version. The Orioles also stock Dubble Bubble gumballs, along with the largest bucket of Hi-Chew in the entire league. Contreras would’ve thrown out his back trying to toss this monster:
Tommy Gilligan-Imagn Images
It’s hard to account for the ubiquity of Dubble Bubble. It’s not the official gum of Major League Baseball. So far as I can tell, Bubble Yum is the only gum that has ever borne that distinction, taking the mantle in 1998 and presumably setting it back down again at some point in the past couple decades. And it can’t be because Dubble Bubble is a pleasure to chew. If you’ll allow me to editorialize for a moment, Dubble Bubble is trash. It tastes sugary and delicious for approximately two and a half seconds, and then it turns into a tough, bitter lump in your mouth. It’s as poorly suited for blowing bubbles as it is for human consumption. (According to a 2017 Mercury News article by Andrew Baggerly, the trick to creating a wad that produces impressive bubbles is to mix the regular and sugar free versions.)
Matt Kartozian-Imagn Images
I saw more pictures of sunflower seeds than any other dugout snack. However, I was surprised not to see any David brand seeds. David was once the official sunflower seed of MLB. It provided seeds to teams for many years, and it also seemed to be the only game in town. No longer. The brand Giants is now ubiquitous. Apparently, Giants became the official sunflower seed of the Twins in 2004, and visiting players were so taken with them that other teams started ordering them too. Giants took the league by storm, but amazingly, it would take another 11 years before it became the official sunflower seed of the San Francisco Giants. According to a 2019 article, Giants ships two or three pallets of seeds to every major league stadium each year. Why were visiting players so into Giants sunflower seeds? Because they are actually giant. They’re bigger than normal sunflower seeds, and apparently that’s a desirable trait. It also provides the delightfully rare case of a giant David taking down a goliath named David.
Here’s Hunter Greene comparing two bags of seeds. In his right hand are roasted and salted pumpkin seeds. In his left are salt and pepper sunflower seeds with grilled steak seasoning:
Sam Greene/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK
What makes this picture fun is that Greene is very clearly comparing the nutrition facts on the back of the bags, and he’s doing so with the help of Ashley Meuser, Cincinnati’s director of major league nutrition. I imagine if you grabbed someone off the street in 1970 and asked them what a major league nutrition director does, this is exactly what they’d picture.
I did find plenty of pictures of honest-to-goodness healthy snacks. We’ve got an apple and a smoothie in an adorable little smoothie pouch:
Troy Taormina-Imagn Images, Sam Greene/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK
And we’ve got bananas. We’ve got lots of bananas. Oneil Cruz’s giant hand absolutely dwarfs this banana, but he nonetheless looks as if he’s about to launch into a soliloquy about its virtues as snack:
Clockwise from top left: Charles LeClaire, Kiyoshi Mio, Kirby Lee, Nick Turchiaro-Imagn Images
What could be more wholesome than that? And just look how happy Adam Engel is to be eating this banana. Surely that’s not the facial expression of a man who wishes it were still acceptable for a professional ballplayer to crush a hoagie between innings:
Thomas Shea-Imagn Images
I also found some pictures of those healthy-ish stroopwafels, but that’s where the health foods stopped. Here’s Alec Marsh eating a salted caramel Honey Stinger stroopwafel (Honey Stinger calls them “energy waffles”) between innings during a game last May. But take a look at what’s in the bin in the foreground:
Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images
There’s a blue bag of seeds of course, but does that yellow package behind it look at all familiar? I am genuinely embarrassed to say that I instantly recognized what it was. That might not say anything good about me. Computer, enhance!
Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images
That’s right. That is a family size bag of Sour Patch Kids. Despite their atrocious taste in gum, major leaguers really know their gummy candies. Also, your eyes are not deceiving you. The back of the package really does encourage you to bake cookies with Sour Patch Kids in them. Even contemplating such a revolting concoction is an affront to the senses, and despite what the package shouts in all caps, it absolutely is not a thing.
Our last batch of pictures comes courtesy of the 2023 Phillies, which shouldn’t be all that surprising, as they were one of the loudest, most fun teams in recent memory. Here’s Jake Cave chowing down on another salted caramel stroopwafel at the urging of Brandon Marsh. While his teammates gave postgame interviews, Marsh made a habit of being the one to dump alarming combinations of foods and beverages on them. He would then pressure them into eating an often-soggy snack, all while the interview was still going on. It was usually easier to give in and eat the thing than to fend off Marsh while on live television:
Eric Hartline-Imagn Images
During Cave’s interview, Alec Bohm heaved handfuls of sunflower seeds at him from the dugout. Someone else lobbed a steady stream of Dubble Bubble at his head. Marsh and Bryson Stott crept behind Cave holding two paper cups each. Marsh held the stroopwafel between his teeth. After he and Sott emptied their cups, and Bohm chipped in a perfectly timed long-distance pumpkin seed strike, he ripped the wrapper open. “Here’s a Honey Stinger,” he said, proffering it to Cave. “You have to eat it.” This picture was taken the moment Cave took a bite, and you can see how happy it made Marsh. But what I really want you to notice Cave’s hat. Marsh dumped water, while Stott dumped solids. You can see the inescapable Dubble Bubble, but I also spy a rainbow, a blue moon, a red ballon, and a green clover. The Phillies have Lucky Charms in the clubhouse! And that’s not all.
Here’s Trea Turner 10 days later, on the receiving end of gum, water, dried mango from Whole Foods, Lucky Charms, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch:
Bill Streicher-Imagn Images
As someone who has literally recorded an entire album about the monster cereals, I was genuinely taken aback by this picture. There is a big gap between having some candy available in the dugout and stocking multiple sugar cereals in the clubhouse. Candy can be an occasional indulgence. Having both Lucky Charms and Cinnamon Toast Crunch on hand is something else entirely. I have no idea whether the Phillies are a little laxer in the kitchen or whether they’re the only team whose sugar cereal habit we know about because they’re the only ones raiding the pantry every time they celebrate a win. Either way, it’s possible that big league clubhouses aren’t exactly the high-performance cathedrals that they’re made out to be.
I never would not have expected Cinnamon Toast Crunch to be anywhere near a major league baseball team. It’s genuinely hard to think of something that could be worse for a human body. Even as a child, you felt like you were getting away with something when you had Cinnamon Toast Crunch for breakfast. Or at least you felt that way until 10:30 AM rolled around and the sugar crash kicked in. It doesn’t stop at Lucky Charms and Cinnamon Toast Crunch, either. After a victory a few weeks later, Marsh and Stott dumped a cooler of Gatorade on Turner, then Stott handed him a stick of beef jerky.
After the celebration ended, photographer Bill Streicher had the presence of mind to capture a shot of the unholy accumulation of makeshift confetti that had rained down on Turner and settled into the dirt like a pop art depiction of the night sky:
Bill Streicher-Imagn Images
You can see crushed ice, various Dubble Bubble flavors, the wagyu wrapper, and a packet of energy gel. You can see cookies-and-cream flavored Made Good granola minis, a classic example of the replace-something-terrible-with-something-not-so-bad approach. But you can also see a Cinnamon Toast Crunch breakfast bar. I didn’t even know such a thing existed, but allow me to say the most damning thing I possibly can about it: This is the kind of thing I would’ve put in my baseball bag as a high schooler. It’s basically a brick of loose Cinnamon Toast Crunch squares that have been glued together with sugar. There’s nothing less healthy that it could have possibly replaced, except maybe an actual brick, but apparently it’s part of a complete breakfast over in Philadelphia.
You might also notice some green and brown rectangles in that picture. Those are sugar and stevia packets, the kind you’d put in your coffee. Unsurprisingly, the people who get the most joy out of dumping comestibles on their teammates also get a lot of joy out of making whatever they’re dumping both as eclectic and as gross as possible. Here’s MJ Melendez emptying an entire coffee urn into a cooler of Powerade that will soon unleash its repulsive contents on the Royal unfortunate enough to have been the star of the game:
William Purnell-Imagn Images
I still love those those puff pieces about the nutritional advances in the big leagues. I will always love them, and I genuinely believe that the nutritionists, dietitians, and chefs involved do great work. They have dragged the game past the days of between-innings hot dogs. I’m just as certain that the vast majority of players put a huge amount of thought into how they fuel themselves. Still, it’s nice to know that in addition to all the healthier options, you can also walk into a clubhouse and get your fill of the very worst the culinary-industrial complex has to offer. Besides, it could be worse. They could start feeding the players Sour Patch Kids cookies.
Justin Verlander’s 2025 season isn’t going to be one for the history books. After his second stint with the Astros ended with a whimper (17 starts and a 5.48 ERA in 2024), he signed a one-year deal with the Giants that felt like a potential career capstone. At 42 and with a résumé that’s already a stone cold lock for Cooperstown, this year was never going to be about accumulating more statistics. When he started the year 0-8 with a 4.99 ERA, it felt like the final act of his career. No one fights off time forever, not even the seemingly ageless Verlander.
Anyway, here’s a leaderboard of the pitchers with the most WAR in the last 30 days:
Now, did I leave ERA out of this table on purpose? I sure did – ERA is noisy in small samples anyway, but mostly Verlander’s is just less impressive than the rest of this group. He’s at 4.18 in that span and 4.55 for the season, despite solid strikeout, walk, and home run numbers. He’s certainly not one of the best 10 starters in baseball, regardless of what that leaderboard says. But he’s been a solid big league starter, undoubtedly, and that in itself is pretty remarkable given how things looked a few months ago. Read the rest of this entry »
Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! I hope you all enjoyed your three-day weekends. I had a lovely one here, one that included a surprise solo parenting job as I took my daughter and her friend to see the Brooklyn Cyclones on Sunday; my wife planned to go instead of the friend, but came down with a migraine (ugh). Fortunately, it all went well, everybody had fun and I came home with the same number of kids I brought.
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