Mookie Betts entered the year as an eight-time All-Star, six-time Gold Glove winner, the majors’ only active position player with three World Series rings, and a likely future Hall of Famer. Not one to back down from a challenge, he’s turned himself into an exceptional shortstop after spending a good chunk of 2024 battling the position to a bloody draw. Yet after a mysterious illness knocked him out of the season-opening Tokyo Series and sapped his strength, he spent the first four months of this season struggling at the plate due to mechanical compromises and, by his own admission, a spiral of self-doubt. Over the past six weeks, he’s finally come around — and not a moment too soon as the Dodgers cling to a narrow NL West lead.

The offensive decline of the 32-year-old Betts seemed to come out of nowhere. Though he missed eight weeks last summer due to a fractured left hand, and didn’t hit the ball nearly as hard as in 2023, when he set a career high with 39 homers, Betts had an excellent season at the plate. He hit .289/.372/.491, with all three slash stats placing among the NL’s top eight and his 140 wRC+ ranking fifth — down 25 points from 2023, but matching his career mark to that point.

He hasn’t come close to approximating that level this season. Shortly before the Dodgers departed for Japan, Betts contracted a mysterious virus that not only sidelined him for those two games against the Cubs, but also prevented him from eating full meals and caused him to lose 23 pounds, no small matter for a 180-pound athlete. Yet he was back in the lineup for the Dodgers’ stateside opener against the Tigers on March 27, homered twice the next day, and started all but two of the team’s next 54 games. Read the rest of this entry »

PHILADELPHIA — Nostalgia for the 1990s is so back! The Mets are running back Generation K, and at an interesting time. As it stands, their playoff rotation could include three pitchers who were in the minors in mid-August: Nolan McLean, Brandon Sproat, and Jonah Tong. At least, all three should figure somewhere on the postseason roster, should the Mets stop playing with their food and sew up the playoff berth they’ve had a hand on all season.

I’m old enough to remember the 90s the first time around — an era of flared jeans and futurism, much of which was rebadged 1960s nostalgia. Not least in Mets pitching prospects, when Bill Pulsipher, Paul Wilson, and Jason Isringhausen were viewed as the second coming of Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, and Gary Gentry and/or Nolan Ryan.

There is nothing new under the sun. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. That title is quite a mouthful. Every time I submit it, our helpful back end interface informs me that it is “far too long.” You’re not wrong, WordPress. But I lifted the title and the inspiration for this column from Zach Lowe’s basketball feature of the same name, and every time I consider removing the parenthetical part of it, I remember that the frustrations and failures of the game are part of what makes baseball so compelling. If you never disliked anything about sports, they wouldn’t be so fun to follow. So while every item this week involves something I liked, they also all contain an element of something I didn’t care for. Missed plays, bobbled balls, artificially abbreviated outings, below-average defensive units, lengthy injury recoveries – there are things to dislike in each of these. They all brought me extreme joy anyway, though. Let’s get going.

1. Relatable Frustration
Mike Yastrzemski has been everything the Royals could have hoped for since he joined the team at the trade deadline. He leads off against righties, gets platooned against lefties, and plays his habitual right field. He’s been the team’s second-best hitter behind Bobby Witt Jr., a huge boon as they chase slim playoff odds. Also, when he goofs something up, his reactions are very relatable:

You can see what happened there right away. Yaz’s first step was in, but the ball was actually over his head, and tailing towards the foul line so strongly that he couldn’t reach it. Sure, it was only his second start of the year in left field. Sure, he hasn’t played left for more than a handful of games since 2019. And sure, the ball had plenty of slice on it. But he’d probably tell you the same thing you’re thinking: Major league outfielders, particularly solid ones like Yastrzemski, should make that play. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Every year, the Baltimore Orioles turn out a crop of strapping young hitters who just got done obliterating minor league pitching. You’ve probably heard of many of them. Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, Jackson Holliday, Colton Cowser, Jordan Westburg, Samuel Basallo, the list goes on. All six of those guys will be everyday regulars next year; the only reason they aren’t now is because Rutschman and Westburg are on the IL. But lost in that percolation of prospects is Coby Mayo, whose early major league career hasn’t quite gone as expected. I wondered why – and what Mayo could do to capitalize on his promise.

A year ago, Mayo was comprehensively dominating pitchers meaningfully older than him. He posted a 139 wRC+ in Triple-A at age 22, following up on an equally scintillating 2023 season. He was a preseason Top 100 prospect. His raw power was immediately evident to all observers. He looked like he’d be a key piece of the 2025 Orioles’ playoff run. But that run never materialized, and neither did Mayo’s thumping, mid-lineup offense. Instead, he’s hitting .184/.259/.327 and batting ninth for the last-place Birds.

If you watch Mayo play, one thing jumps off the page: his unconventional uppercut swing. I’m not even quite sure how to describe it, but here’s a video of it at its best:

Swing mechanics aren’t my area of expertise, so I’ll just say it has a little funk to it and move on. The point is that he uses that swing to clobber the ball, and he really does accomplish what he sets out to, bad season notwithstanding. He has elite bat speed, and even in this miserable season, he’s posted good raw power indicators; his EV90, barrel rate, and launch angle suggest that he’s going to be elevating and celebrating plenty over the years to come. Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Dan Szymborski: mesdames et messieurs, bienvenue, nobles FanGraphiers et vénérables sabermétriciens!

12:02

Dan Szymborski: As I always tell everyone: catchers are weird

12:02

Dan Szymborski: Sometimes they peak weirdly, sometimes they stop developing, sometimes they just blow up late somehow

12:03

Dan Szymborski: I’m not sure we know which weird way Baldwin will age, so just assume something fairly normal and prepared for Mets level tracknessy (tradgety + wackiness)

Read the rest of this entry »

With the NL playoff bracket basically settled (a statement I could live to regret if the Mets keep losing), I’ve started to think about how the various participants match up against each other. Not only did five of these six teams make the playoffs last year, all of those five have made it to October at least three times in the past four postseasons. The Cubs — a recidivist NLCS participant in the mid-2010s who last made the postseason in 2020 — are the closest thing we have to new blood.

Absent some shocking reversal of fortune in the next two weeks, we’re in for an October of sequels. But while there’s often at least one standout team in the bracket — usually the Dodgers, but not always — this year the top six teams in the NL seem fairly evenly matched. At least, every team has flaws.

The most interesting team, at least to me, is the presumptive no. 1 seed: the Milwaukee Brewers. As much of a postseason fixture as the Brewers have become, and as many early-round thrills as they’ve delivered, they’ve only bothered the NLCS once in the past decade, out of six trips to the playoffs. Read the rest of this entry »

Braxton Ashcraft is aiming to join the Pittsburgh Pirates rotation, hopefully as soon as next season. For now, the 25-year-old right-hander is putting up impressive numbers while being used prudently in his first taste of major league action. Since debuting in late May, Ashcraft has made 23 appearances — all but six of which have come out of the bullpen — while logging a 2.47 ERA and a 2.85 FIP over 58 1/3 innings. Moreover, he’s allowed just 49 hits, only two of which have left the yard.

His previous lack of durability is the reason behind the caution. When our 2025 Pirates Top Prospects list came out in the spring — Ashcraft was no. 2 with a 50 FV — Eric Longenhagen wrote that “injuries are an inescapable aspect of Ashcraft’s profile due to his history and the violent nature of his delivery.” Drafted 51st overall in 2018 out of Waco, Texas’ Robinson High School, the righty entered the year having thrown just 235 professional innings, including a career-high 73 frames a year ago. Counting his time in the minors, he is up to 106 2/3 in the current campaign.

His stuff is clearly plus, and not just because his heater averages 96.9 mph. The best of Ashcraft’s five pitches is his slider, which he’s thrown 32.6% of the time to the tune of a .202 batting average allowed and a 30.7% whiff rate. Delivered at 91.8 mph, it was aptly referred to by our lead prospect analyst as the talented young hurler’s bread and butter.

Ashcraft discussed his repertoire, including the angle that makes his pitches so effective, when the Pirates visited Fenway Park at the end of August.

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David Laurila: When I talked to him back in February, Bubba Chandler said that you and he are similar in some respects. Do you agree?

Braxton Ashcraft: “In a lot of ways, yes. I think what drives a lot of our success is leveraging counts. His fastball is a lot different than mine in terms of the perception of hitters; his extension is longer than mine, and obviously the velo is a little bit higher. So is the vert. It’s just a different fastball, one that is pretty unique. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — It’s hard to stay under the radar when you play at Yankee Stadium, but Cody Bellinger is giving it his best shot.

Splitting time between all three outfield positions, the 30-year-old Bellinger is quietly putting up the second-best season of his entire career. With 4.6 WAR entering play Wednesday, he ranks 18th among all position players. Drafted out of high school in 2013, Bellinger debuted with the Dodgers at age 21 in 2017 and immediately looked like a star. He took home Rookie of the Year honors with a four-win campaign, won the MVP in 2019, and then saw his career derailed by a fractured fibula and multiple shoulder dislocations. The Dodgers non-tendered him after he ran a combined 69 wRC+ in 2021 and 2022, and he signed a pillow contract with the Cubs for 2023. He got back on track with a 136 wRC+ and 4.4 WAR, signed a three-year deal to stay in Chicago, and then got traded to New York after he took a step back in 2024. That step back is starting to look like a blip.

This season, Bellinger been the most valuable Yankee not named Aaron Judge. His 129 wRC+ ranks fifth among the team’s regulars, and he’s tied with Austin Wells for the lead with nine fielding runs. Bellinger’s 28 home runs are his most since his 2019 MVP season.

He is having an interesting year at the plate. In some ways, he looks the same as he has for the past three seasons. Deserved Runs Created Plus, a Baseball Prospectus metric that measures deserved performance rather than actual results, had him at 106 in 2023 and 111 in his down 2024 campaign. This season, he’s at 108. In other words, DRC+ thinks Bellinger has performed at pretty much the same level for the past three seasons, despite the dip in his actual performance and his xwOBA last season. That’s the first big piece of news here. DRC+ thought Bellinger’s step back last year was undeserved, and the fact that he’s returned to his 2023 performance level makes that easier to believe. As Dan Szymborski wrote earlier this week, Bellinger has put himself in position to decline his 2026 option and look for a new deal. The idea that, under the hood, he’s been this good for three years in a row makes him that much more attractive a target if he ends up hitting the open market come November. Read the rest of this entry »