FanGraphs Baseball

Three years ago, Chris Sale appeared to be pretty close to the end of the line. After missing the abbreviated 2020 season due to Tommy John surgery, he made just 11 starts totaling 48 1/3 innings in 2021–22 while battling further injuries, including a stress fracture of a rib and fractures of his left pinky and right wrist. When he was sidelined by yet another stress fracture — this one in his scapula — in June 2023, he missed 10 weeks, and his ERA ballooned to 4.88 after returning to make half a dozen starts. It was fair to think the 34-year-old lefty’s most productive days were behind him, as his wiry 6-foot-6 frame could no longer withstand the rigors of regular duty.

Lo and behold, Sale made a strong showing over his final three starts of 2023, capturing the attention of the Braves, who traded infielder Vaughn Grissom to the Red Sox in a straight-up exchange in December 2023 and soon restructured his contract. Sale rewarded Atlanta’s faith by winning both the pitching Triple Crown (with 18 wins, a 2.38 ERA, and 225 strikeouts) and the Cy Young award that had long eluded him. Though he was limited to 20 starts last year by a fractured rib, he has continued to dominate; this year, the 37-year-old southpaw ranks second in the NL in ERA (2.20), FIP (2.26), and strikeout rate (30.6%) behind Cy Young favorite Jacob Misiorowski, as well as third in FanGraphs WAR (4.9) behind The Miz and Cristopher Sánchez. And while he’s “only” sixth in Baseball Reference WAR (4.5), Sale’s run with the Braves has pushed his S-JAWS past 2025 Hall of Fame inductee CC Sabathia (50.8). Sale won’t catch any of the big four from this era — Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke, and Max Scherzer, the last of whom may be the only one active after this season — but he’s the only other active or recently retired starter with an S-JAWS above 45.0. As voters scramble to recalibrate their Hall of Fame standards for starting pitchers in an age of diminished workloads, Sale has likely punched his ticket to Cooperstown.

It hasn’t been a great season for veterans vying to shore up their Hall of Fame credentials, as I noted on Monday, with injuries sidelining hopefuls such as Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor, José Ramírez, Juan Soto, and Giancarlo Stanton, and age seemingly catching up to Jose Altuve, Manny Machado, and others. Yet Sale isn’t alone among mid-career players who have advanced their causes. What follows here is a partial position-by-position roundup of some others whose odds of earning a spot Cooperstown have improved this season, at least by my reckoning. Not every position is covered, and at some positions, the top candidates wound up in the previous installment because their chances have taken a hit. I’ve included each player’s JAWS standing, his 2026 WAR (Baseball Reference’s version unless otherwise indicated), and his ZiPS rest-of-season projection. Read the rest of this entry »

With Week Four wrapped, we are now two-thirds of the way through the WPBL’s first season. Each team has just five regular season games remaining on the schedule over the next two weeks. Over this past week, the teams at the bottom of the standings were able to close the gap against the teams at the top. Following Week Three, the California teams had the west coast looking like the best coast, but as we’ll explore, reports of beasts in the east are growing louder all the time.

As a reminder, these weekly roundups are designed to cover each week’s action by highlighting the most notable players, moments, and anything else I deem worthy of further commentary. For each edition of the recap, I re-license the naming rights to this list of highlights to whichever team I feel has won the week. And how does a team win the week? Well, unlike actual wins and losses in baseball, this type of win is purely subjective and will operate under the time-honored tradition of making it up as we go along.

Along with the list of highlights, the Unforced Errors section discusses the more confounding aspects of the prior week because good faith criticism is a necessary component of continuing progress. Rounding things out are the Historic Firsts of Lesser Renown. The league’s momentous firsts will obviously get their shine, but there’s something to be said for the more strange and mundane firsts, the smaller day-to-day occurrences that make a new league feel familiar and complete. Think of these firsts as the knickknacks on a shelf that make a new house feel like a home. Baseball fans won’t really feel settled into a new league until the first time a player on their favorite team commits a TOOTBLAN. Read the rest of this entry »

Summer is nearly over. The Premier League is back in business and the NFL is close behind. Kids are going back to school. The other day, I opened a window and it didn’t feel like sticking my face in a pizza oven.

That means it’s time for me to look at the Cleveland Guardians’ lineup and wonder what the heck they’re doing in the playoff race. But rather than do a deep dive on whoever this year’s load-bearing Tyler Naquin or Owen Miller is, I want to take a step back and look at this issue from a historical perspective.

Because this year, the Guardians aren’t the only team with playoff aspirations and a lineup full of question marks. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about baseball’s new reigning fun fact (courtesy of Pete Crow-Armstrong and Randy Arozarena), Kade Anderson’s debut and Dan Wilson’s slow hook, a Cal Raleigh rally, and the firing of Astros GM Dana Brown, then Stat Blast (41:51) about a Phillies comeback, a strange Yankees streak, an unusual double play, getting hit by both pitched and batted balls, and consecutive same names in lineups, before finishing by discussing (58:37) follow-ups and errata pertaining to the previous week’s podcasts and (1:18:02) a sign-stealing/unwritten-rules controversy courtesy of the Cubs and Diamondbacks.

Audio intro: Jonathan Crymes, “Effectively Wild Theme 2”
Audio outro: Moon Hound, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to PCA/Randy fun fact 1
Link to PCA/Randy fun fact 2
Link to FG post on Anderson
Link to Sheehan on Wilson/Anderson
Link to Cal homers video
Link to Cal homers article 1
Link to Cal homers article 2
Link to Cal slump analysis
Link to MLBTR on Brown 1
Link to MLBTR on Brown 2
Link to Nightengale on Brown
Link to Clemens on Brown
Link to Wells gear 1
Link to Wells gear 2
Link to Schwarber homer video
Link to FG Phillies post
Link to Twins comeback article
Link to comebacks Stat Blast results
Link to Yankees scoring data
Link to Stanton injury update
Link to Judge injury update
Link to double-play data
Link to triple-Brown name game
Link to Gasper clip
Link to HBP/batted ball instances
Link to listener emails database
Link to sign-stealing article 1
Link to sign-stealing article 2
Link to Sam on unwritten rules
Link to sign-stealing EW episode
Link to Ben on coaching/front offices
Link to Miz/Sale article 1
Link to Miz/Sale article 2
Link to Miz/Sale box score
Link to Randy Johnson EW interview
Link to other case of Miz-taken identity
Link to Kelly/Mikolas article
Link to Mikolas article 1
Link to Mikolas article 2
Link to puck-tracking tech

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Bryan Balzer is arguably the most intriguing prospect in the San Diego Padres system. Currently ranked eighth with a 40 FV, the 21-year-old right-hander had virtually no pitching experience when he entered pro ball in 2023. Moreover, he blew out his elbow and had Tommy John surgery following his lone turn on the mound. That was at Joso Gakuin High School, roughly an hour northeast of Tokyo.

His current season has been somewhat of a mixed bag. Between Low-A Lake Elsinore (60 1/3 innings) and High-A Fort Wayne (32), he has a record of 6-2 to go with a 4.58 ERA, a 5.17 FIP, and a 23.4% strikeout rate. But while at times he’s been all too hittable, he has also shown flashes of high-ceiling potential. When I saw him toe the rubber for Fort Wayne in mid-July, Balzer fanned eight batters — including Tigers top prospect Bryce Rainer with two out and the bases juiced — while holding West Michigan to one run over five frames. A day prior, I asked him about his decision to sign with the Padres rather than joining another MLB organization or staying home to pitch in NPB.

“My goal was to be a professional baseball player; I didn’t care if was Japan or America,” replied the Yokosuka native. “But I grew up watching Yu Darvish and wanted to be on his team.”

Balzer, who was mostly raised in Nippon but spent a few years stateside while in grade school, went on to say that his decision was also influenced by his Tommy John surgery; the Padres expressed less concerned than other MLB teams about his having gone under the knife. As for the NPB teams he might have landed with — this via the league’s draft process — the Hanshin Tigers were the first to have a scout approach him after his lone pitching appearance. In terms of overall interest, he recalls the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants having been “the main ones.” Read the rest of this entry »

Sunday afternoon, the Astros gave up seven unanswered runs to lose to the A’s 7-6. That loss, against the team with the worst record in the American League, dropped Houston below .500 for the first time this month, and into a tie with the Texas Rangers for the AL West division lead. That was the last game of a 3-9 homestand. The capper to this bummer of a fortnight in Houston followed promptly; the team and GM Dana Brown mutually agreed to part ways Sunday evening, which is team-and-manager speak for firing him.

Boy, am I bummed that I’ve already made an Apollo 13 reference about the Astros this year. Two in the same season would just be too many. So allow me to use some Shakespeare instead: Something is rotten in the state of Texas. While a 12-game stretch of poor play is a strange reason to change GMs, this move wasn’t about a couple of poor weeks of play. Instead, it’s about the last couple of years of poor play; the once-dominant Astros missed the playoffs in 2025, and this year they’re on track for their worst record since 2014 (excluding the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, when they went 29-31 but still made the playoffs). The farm system is one of the worst in baseball – 29th in our farm system rankings. The big league team has been outscored by 44 runs this year, and BaseRuns suggests Houston has played even a bit worse than that. Things really have deteriorated in Space City.

What’s meaningfully less clear is how much of that blame should be apportioned to Brown. He joined the Astros immediately after their 2022 World Series victory, replacing the departing James Click. Not many incoming GMs inherit a roster that just won the whole ball of yarn, but that cuts both ways. Brown inherited a great roster as well as the kind of dysfunction that leads a team and its GM to split up while simultaneously reaching the peak of the sport. Read the rest of this entry »

The Phillies won their ninth straight game on Sunday. Cristopher Sánchez started and Kyle Schwarber hit a game-winning home run.

There are home runs and then there are home runs, and even by Schwarber’s standards, this one was a tank: straight out to dead center, over the batter’s eye. Read the rest of this entry »

It was a wild week across baseball, with walk-offs, blowouts, and a playoff picture in the American League that’s still incredibly crowded. With one week left in August, there’s not much time left for those teams on the fringe of the AL Wild Card race to make a move.

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. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, though he missed the first two and a half months of this season due to bilateral epicondylitis, Giancarlo Stanton bashed 24 homers in 77 games while hitting for a 158 wRC+ and 1.8 bWAR. Despite its half-season nature, the campaign was his strongest since 2021, and it appeared as though he had enough momentum to reach 500 home runs and, quite likely, secure a spot in the Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, Stanton has once again been unable to stay on the field. After straining his right calf in late April and then reinjuring it while rehabbing in mid-June, he suffered a moderate-grade left calf strain last week, one that may very well prevent him from playing again this season.

Manager Aaron Boone said on Saturday that Stanton strained his left calf while running the bases earlier in the week. He didn’t offer a timetable for the slugger’s return, but conceded, “We’re at a point in the calendar where it gets challenging… You all know how bad he wants to be on that field and contributing to a championship… Hopefully we just continue working to get him right and healthy.”

The 36-year-old Stanton has played in just 24 games this season, batting .256/.302/.422 (103 wRC+) with just three homers in 96 plate appearances. Those three homers boosted his career total to 456, the most of any active player, but they’ve run critical time off of his clock, so to speak. By colleague Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS-driven estimate, Stanton had a 71% chance of reaching 500 homers coming into the season, but per Dan’s hot-off-the-presses estimate, those odds are down to 51%, and to these eyes that still feels high. Stanton’s MVP award, two home run titles, five All-Star appearances, postseason performance (.254/.322/.605 with 18 homers) and otherworldly Statcast numbers might be enough to overcome a slight shortage in JAWS, but with just 47.0 career WAR (the Baseball Reference version, which is true for all of the figures cited here unless otherwise indicated), 35.4 peak WAR, and 41.2 JAWS, he’s just 37th among right fielders, 14.8 points below the standard. I don’t think that’s going to cut it. Read the rest of this entry »