Mostly, we treat the Los Angeles Angels like the friend whose life is a wreck but there’s nothing you can do about it because they’ll never ask for help and won’t take advice. So you just check in on the AL West standings every so often and feel a combination of pity and helplessness.
Well, you can take your pity and shove it, because as I write this the Angels are in first place in the division. Tied for first place, at one game over .500, but it still counts. Much as Jo Adell’s three-robbery night on Saturday won fawning headlines, and much as Zach Neto’s four home runs are leading the offense, there is one man driving this train: José Soriano. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Carter Jensen’s several (inadequate) alarms and why big leaguers don’t oversleep more often, Artemis II, Daniel Susac as the sequel to Andrew Susac, the timing of Konnor Griffin’s call-up, the many ways to marvel at (and value) Jo Adell’s home-run-robbery spree, Patrick Corbin the Blue Jay, a quintessentially 2026 half-inning, and follow-up emails, plus (1:40:47) a postscript featuring an Afterball by Ben about national announcer stats.
Robert Edwards, Rick Scuteri, Thomas Shea-Imagn Images
Until this weekend, baseball’s injured list was noticeably bare to start the 2026 season. Then, beginning with Blue Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk on Friday, the stars went down in rapid succession. The Cubs lost two of their top starting pitchers, Cade Horton and Matthew Boyd, in consecutive days. Joining them on the IL are two of the top players in the National League, Mets left fielder Juan Soto and Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts, and one of the best pitchers in the American League, Astros ace Hunter Brown. Each of those three teams has a share of first place at the moment, making these especially high-leverage injuries. Read the rest of this entry »
Brendan Gawlowski: Nice that we have some actual minor league games to go off of. I’m sure we’ll all responsibly digest the first week without getting too excited and overreacting to oh who am I kidding
2:04
Brendan Gawlowski: Housekeeping: Meg has been taking a much deserved few days off, which may complicate the publish dates, but my understanding is that Eric is very close to producing an A’s list and I’m nearly there on Rangers. Look for those soon.
2:04
Brendan Gawlowski: Let’s get to it
2:04
Guest: It’s only 3 innings but apparently Landen Maroudis was back to 94-96 and throwing strikes. How much would that change his outlook to get back to his ‘24 self, top 100 type arm talent?
2:04
Brendan Gawlowski: I don’t know about T100 but very encouraging first start, I was really worried for him. Couldn’t throw strikes, stuff down, looked bad in 2025.
This isn’t how they drew it up on the North Side this winter. The Cubs won 92 games in 2025, and then they made some additions in the winter. The Brewers, meanwhile, subtracted. Chicago had the best playoff odds of any team in the NL Central, whether you’re talking about our odds, PECOTA’s odds, or pretty much any projection system you can name. The Cubs had exciting rookies, battle-tested veterans, and fun vibes. Surely, they’d sail through 2026.
Nearly two weeks into the season, it’s fair to say that things haven’t gone according to plan. There’s the standings, for one thing: They’re in last place in the NL Central. But this early in the year, only four games separate first and last in the division, so that’s not the biggest problem in Wrigleyville. A bigger concern is that Cade Horton and Matthew Boyd, two of Chicago’s top starting pitchers, hit the IL on consecutive days. Seiya Suzuki hasn’t appeared yet this year, though he’s expected back on Friday.
Horton’s injury looks to be the worst of the two. He left last Friday’s start after feeling forearm discomfort, and after getting some scans over the weekend, he’s seeking a second opinion from Dr. Keith Meister. That ominous turn of phrase doesn’t guarantee a long-term injury, of course, but it’s definitely not a good sign. Pitchers don’t generally seek second opinions from famous surgeons unless there’s a decent chance of surgery.
Boyd was supposed to be the safe option in the Cubs rotation. We had him down for the most innings and the most WAR, the staff ace. His bicep strain might not be all that bad; he noted that he could have pitched through the injury if it weren’t so early in the year. But that’s not really the nature of pitcher injuries, in my experience. Sure, sometimes they’re short. But a guaranteed minimum stay doesn’t exist. I think it’s reasonable to be worried about Boyd’s prognosis until he’s back on a major league mound, even though he seems likely to return far sooner than Horton. Read the rest of this entry »
Mark Grant is one of the game’s most entertaining color analysts. Teamed with play-by-play announcer Don Orsillo, the man affectionately known as “Mud” is a big part of why the San Diego Padres TV booth polled as baseball’s best in Awful Announcing’s 2025 local broadcaster rankings. Now in his 11th season alongside Orsillo, Grant first began working Padres games in 1996. His previous partners in the booth include the legendary Dick Enberg.
Grant was a pitcher prior to becoming a broadcaster, toeing the rubber for six teams across the 1984-1993 seasons, including the Padres, with whom he made 126 of his 233 appearances. All told, he went 22-32 with eight saves and a 4.31 ERA over 638 2/3 innings.
How well does he remember his matchups against certain batters he faced? As I’ve done previously with David Cone, Mark Gubicza, and Jeff Montgomery — those pieces can be found here, here, and here — I decided to find out by challenging him to a career quiz. Not only did he oblige, he supplied fun anecdotes along the way.
I began by asking the pitcher-turned-broadcaster which batter he faced the most times. Read the rest of this entry »
The Blue Jays have lost another key player to injury.
Alejandro Kirk left Friday’s game against the White Sox in the 10th inning after a foul tip glanced off his glove hand. He immediately dropped his glove, grabbed his thumb, and hustled into the clubhouse with trainers. The team after the game announced Kirk had fractured his thumb. No timeline for a return was given. Our injury log suggests batters with thumb fractures typically return in about four to eight weeks, although Kirk fractured the thumb on his catching hand, which could require a longer recovery.
Joe Rondone/The Republic-USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
“Gee, Michael Soroka has been pretty good,” is the kind of statement that tells you more about the calendar than Soroka himself, but the point remains: Michael Soroka has been pretty good. The big Canadian steamrolled the Tigers (my pick for the AL pennant) with 10 strikeouts in five scoreless innings in his first start of the year. He followed that up with a solitary earned run over five innings against his former team, the Atlanta Braves.
The total bill, so far, is 13 strikeouts and 13 baserunners allowed (eight hits, four walks, one hit batter) in 10 innings, with a 0.90 ERA and 2.10 FIP. And against reasonably tough competition. So do the Diamondbacks, currently in dire need of pitching with seven big league arms currently on the IL, have something here? Read the rest of this entry »
Last week, Dan Szymborski looked at how much a team’s fortunes can change in the first month of the season. That old truism – you can’t win the World Series in April, but you can lose it – turns out to, in fact, be true. Dan’s research found that even teams we think are good – those projected to win 90 or more games – had meaningfully worse results after a bad April, even if their actual talent remained the same.
In other words, those early losses really do count. But I like to look at things from a glass-half-full perspective, so my takeaway was that there’s still plenty of time to fix a bad start, because it’s still early in the season. But how to fix it? That’s a trickier question. Luckily, “that’s a tricky question” is just FanGraphs for “that’s a fun thing to write an article about,” so I’ve got answers for you. Read the rest of this entry »
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