Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a possible Rays franchise sale, the latest on Elly De La Cruz, Oneil Cruz, Sandy Alcantara, and Aaron Judge, Andrew Benintendi as the current face of replacement level, Nats manager Dave Martinez’s comments about coaches, and Clayton Kershaw’s cap on Pride Night. Then (56:10) Ben brings back former guest, podcast host, and major leaguer Ross Stripling for an exit interview about his big league career, covering his greatest regrets and accomplishments, his historic debut, the evolution of the league, his swingman exploits, his future, and much more, followed by (2:04:11) a postscript.

Audio intro: Josh Busman, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio intro: Jonathan Crymes, “Effectively Wild Theme 2”
Audio outro: Benny and a Million Shetland Ponies, “Effectively Wild Theme (Pedantic)”

Link to bold preseason predictions
Link to MLBTR on the Rays sale
Link to Sportico on the sale
Link to Pope’s baseball cap
Link to NYT on tax change
Link to Hang Up on tax change
Link to info on public land sales
Link to Forbes franchise valuations
Link to Sportico franchise valuations
Link to Davy on Cruz
Link to Judge slump stats
Link to BP on Judge vs. Crochet
Link to Posnanski on Judge vs. Crochet
Link to Judge vs. Crochet video
Link to 2023-25 hitter WAR
Link to Tango on Bloomquist
Link to Rockies HR record
Link to Martinez quotes
Link to Martinez video
Link to later Martinez quotes
Link to The Bandwagon on Martinez
Link to Rizzo on Martinez
Link to Kershaw cap story
Link to Bible verse
Link to 2023 Kershaw comments
Link to AP on Supreme Court decision
Link to NYT on the hotline
Link to L.A. Times on Dodgers silence
Link to Kiké Insta post
Link to story on Lakers sale
Link to EW Episode 859
Link to EW Episode 1397
Link to EW Episode 1997
Link to Stripling’s debut game
Link to Stripling’s debut game video
Link to swingman spreadsheet
Link to Ross’s podcast
Link to Ross’s “retirement” post
Link to Adrian Peterson story
Link to Stripling pitch usage
Link to story on Stripling and data
Link to Stripling’s salaries
Link to Stripling vs. batters
Link to Kiké crotch bump
Link to Stripling on investing 1
Link to Stripling on investing 2
Link to Stripling on investing 3
Link to Stripling’s steal
Link to AP story on hustle
Link to Triple-A walk-off video
Link to Triple-A walk-off details
Link to Hill update
Link to Trevor Project info
Link to Trevor Project website

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A week ago, as Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas continued their rehab assignments, reporters and fans wondered how the two hurlers — both of whom suffered injuries before the calendar flipped to March — would fit into a rotation that has been one of the majors’ best thus far. “Usually it plays itself out,” responded Mets manager Carlos Mendoza when asked about it. “We still are at least two weeks away from making those decisions and I’m hoping that by the time we get there it is going to be a difficult decision. That means everyone’s healthy. That means everybody continues to throw the ball well and we have some good problems.”

While the Mets still share the NL’s best record (45-28) thanks to the work of that rotation — which has been unusually durable since the start of the regular season — their decision regarding that pair has become more complicated. In rapid succession, both Kodai Senga and Tylor Megill have landed on the injured list, the former with a hamstring strain and the latter with an elbow sprain. Each is likely to miss at least a month, and so far, neither Manaea nor Montas has shown he’s ready.

On Thursday at Citi Field, Senga absolutely carved up the Nationals, holding them to one hit — a first-inning single by James Wood — and one walk while striking out five. With one out in the sixth, he ran to cover first base after inducing CJ Abrams to hit a sharp grounder to Pete Alonso, whose throw to the pitcher was high. Senga leapt in the air to catch the ball, then extended his right leg far enough for his toe to touch the corner of the bag in time to beat Abrams. It was an impressive, acrobatic play, but the pitcher immediately grabbed his right hamstring upon landing, then tumbled to the ground.

Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Minnesota Twins. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the fifth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Two months ago, I checked in on Oneil Cruz, the center fielder. Things weren’t exactly going well. The Pirates shifted Cruz from shortstop to center at the end of the 2024 season, and the early returns were so discouraging I felt the need to write about the experiment just 17 games into the 2025 season. Here’s where the numbers stood at that point:

Cruz is currently sitting on -8 DRS, -2 OAA and FRV, and -0.1 DRP. Among all outfielders, those numbers respectively rank worst, third worst, fourth worst, and fifth worst. The advanced defensive metrics work on different scales and they often disagree, but on this point they are unanimous: Cruz has been one of the very worst outfielders in all of baseball this season. According to DRS, Cruz is the least-valuable defender in baseball, full stop.

There’s great news, though. Last week, reader AJ wrote into our newly introduced mailbag to ask for an update, because Cruz’s stats look totally different now. I decided the turnaround was worthy of a full article instead of a few paragraphs. I’ve broken everything down with my first article as the dividing line. There’s a chasm between Cruz’s first 17 games and his last 48.

Deserved Runs Prevented is inherently more conservative than the other defensive metrics, but all of the advanced numbers agree Cruz has completely turned things around over the past two months. He hasn’t just stopped racking up negative numbers, he’s dug himself all the way out, grading as a net positive in every metric except Defensive Runs Saved. Over the past two months, they pretty clearly see him as one of the better defenders in the league. Put that together with career-best hitting and baserunning numbers, and Cruz is on pace for a career year. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday night in Los Angeles, Shohei Ohtani made his first major league start for the Dodgers. For any other starter signed before the 2024 season, that would be a disastrous sentence to type. Ohtani, of course, became the charter member of the 50/50 club, won the National League MVP, and then helped his team win the World Series. But he came to the Dodgers to hit and pitch, not just to play DH, and last night marked a key step in that process, his first game action as he rehabs from a 2023 elbow surgery.

I watched every pitch of Ohtani’s one-inning outing to compile a report. Obviously, these are the observations of a data analyst, not a scout. I’ve supplemented them with the Statcast and pitch model data generated overnight. I’m not the type to ignore the numbers, but realistically speaking, 28 pitches isn’t enough for a real sample, so the data is more supporting than primary. I’ll start with my first impressions, walk through each of the four pitch types Ohtani threw, and then share some general conclusions. Read the rest of this entry »

If you were only going by raw stat lines, the end of April would have been an understandable time to give up on Jo Adell. After struggling mightily in parts of four seasons with the Angels as well as the first half of 2024, he showed some positive gains in the second half before being shut down due to an oblique strain in early September. He finished in replacement-level territory, with a 90 wRC+ and 0.1 WAR, then was dreadful at the start of this season, sticking out even among one of the majors’ worst offenses. Lately, though, Adell has come around in promising fashion, offering hope that he can be a productive big leaguer after all, if not the star so many once believed he could be.

Originally, I intended to use the 26-year-old Adell to lead off the 2025 version of an article I wrote last year, covering players who had improved the most after dismal starts — even if their overall numbers were camouflaged by their early struggles and still came off as rather ordinary. Using May 1 as a cutoff, with a minimum of 80 plate appearances on either side, I found that Adell had improved the most from the first leg of the season to the second. Here’s the table, with the stats updated through Sunday:

Adell hit just .190/.236/.310 with two home runs in March and April while striking out 27% of the time, but from the start of May through Sunday, he hit .255/.344/.582 with 11 homers while trimming that strikeout rate to 23.2%. He was about half a win below replacement level before May 1, and has been about a full win above since.

I’ll dig into the numbers below, but first, a recap. A 2017 first-round pick out of a Louisville high school, Adell cracked our Top 100 Prospects list in each of the next three seasons, ranking as high as no. 4 in 2020, as a 65-FV prospect, and he was similarly regarded by other outlets thanks to his combination of plus-plus raw power and plus speed. But since debuting early in the 2020 season, he has generally struggled to make good contact, or any contact at all for that matter, with his lack of refinement limiting his opportunity to show off the tools that so tantalized talent evaluators. In a total of 178 major league games from 2020–23, he hit just .214/.259/.366 with 18 homers in 619 plate appearances en route to a grim 70 wRC+. After appearing in 88 games with the Angels but managing just a 77 wRC+ and -0.2 WAR in 2022, he played only 17 games in the majors in ’23 while returning to Triple-A Salt Lake for the fourth year out of five. As I joked early last year, when it looked like he might be breaking out — which proved not to be the case, alas — if he’d spent just a bit more time in my hometown, my parents would have been obligated to invite him over for dinner. Read the rest of this entry »

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Howdy, folks! Welcome to another edition of my weekly chat! It’s a grey day in Brooklyn as we’re amid a week of rainy weather, and I’ve got the occasional sounds of workers demolishing our rotting backyard deck right outside my window (https://bsky.app/profile/jayjaffe.bsky.social/post/3lrst55laqs2y).

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I wrote about Cole Ragans’ rotator cuff strain and the state of the Royals’ rotation https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-royals-have-lost-cole-ragans-for-awhil…

12:03

Jay Jaffe: Today I’ve got a piece on Jo Adell that should be published sometime during this chat. He had a dreadful March/April but has been very good since the start of May, and especially good in June.

12:06

Jay Jaffe: Good question. This deal is a noteworthy exception to my recent declaration about how few substantial trades happen in May or June, with everybody looking to the deadline. I’ve seen conflicting reports about the extent to which the Red Sox tried to trade Devers — how many teams they spoke to besides the Giants. Given the underwhelming return, it sure doesn’t feel as though they dealt him to the highest bidder, and they’d have gotten more for him at a higher-leverage period in late July. Then again, this trade appears to be primarily about dumping his salary and sending a my-way-or-the-highway message to the impressionable youths in the Red Sox clubhouse.

12:07

Jay Jaffe: I don’t think there would have been much harm for the Sox in waiting at least until the end of June, but if they had continued winning, they might have talked themselves out of it. This way they get to look like hardasses, which as we know is the most important part of being a baseball executive.

Read the rest of this entry »

Alright, Dodgers bullpen! This is what we’ve been training for. They hit our guy. This is not a drill. I know it was an accident. I know it would have been the world’s worst time to throw at a hitter, down by a run in the fourth inning, a runner already on base, ahead in the count with the platoon advantage, unprovoked. But none of that matters right now. It’s time to look tough.

Everybody crowd up against the fence like you can’t wait to burst through the door. Time to posture. Strike a pose. This moment right here? This is the reason we watched The Warriors so many times. It’s time to get mean. It’s time to maybe, possibly, not really but you never know just in case, shove somebody a bit. We’re ready to jog out there. We’re ready to flex. Everybody ready for a fight?

Read the rest of this entry »

Below are two changeups. Can you tell which one is better?

First up is Griffin Jax’s power changeup. He throws it over 92 mph; at two inches of induced vertical break (IVB) and 15 inches of arm-side run, it almost resembles a filthy left-handed slider:

Second is Hunter Gaddis straight change, floating up to the plate with 10 inches of IVB at an average velocity of 78 mph:

So, which one would you take? That’s a bit of a trick question: By whiff rate, these two pitches are virtually identical. Jax’s changeup ranks second in all of baseball with a 57.3% whiff rate; Gaddis’ is right behind him in third. Stylistically, they’re opposites; by the results, they are indistinguishable.

If you were creating the perfect fastball or the perfect slider in a video game, it’d be a straightforward process. Crank up the velocity, max out the vertical break, and those pitches will generally improve in a roughly linear fashion. Not so with changeups. Pitch models struggle to accurately grade these pitches because their quality can’t as easily be captured by velocity and movement in a vacuum. The Cole Ragans changeup, for example, gets a roughly average grade by Stuff+ despite performing like the best changeup in the sport over the last handful of seasons. It’s slow, and it barely moves — what makes it so good?

Thanks to new data from Baseball Savant, I think the answer might soon be clear. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley discuss the Rafael Devers trade in depth, covering why Boston made the move, the resulting fan frustration, and the Giants impact. Then (57:56) they cover bad news about Christian Montes De Oca, John Brebbia, and Johnny O’Brien before bantering about Shohei Ohtani’s return to the mound, the Rays rotation, Charlie Morton’s turnaround, Patrick Corbin, why the Astros are still good, Aaron Boone, and tennis-style boundary reviews.

Audio intro: Beatwriter, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Andy Ellison, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Ben L. on Devers
Link to Ben C. on Devers
Link to MLBTR on Devers
Link to MLBTR on Devers fallout
Link to other teams report
Link to Mookie reaction
Link to MLBTR on Van Belle
Link to MLBTR on Montes De Oca
Link to MLBTR on Brebbia
Link to Brebbia on EW
Link to EW Episode 1153
Link to Jeff on Johnny
Link to Johnny obit
Link to Ohtani article
Link to Ohtani cleaning clips
Link to Laurila on the Rays
Link to team SP IP
Link to Rangers IP
Link to Morton splits
Link to boundary call article
Link to Pope tweet

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