To start things off, here’s a riddle for you. Which of these two batting lines would you prefer?

They’re similar, no doubt. I’m pretty sure you’d pick Batter B, though. He walks a lot more and hits more line drives. He also hits the ball hard more frequently while swinging and missing less frequently. Batter A is Nick Kurtz’s spectacular 2025 season (.290/.383/.619, 170 wRC+). Batter B? Nick Kurtz’s slow start to 2026 (.244/.412/.412, 130 wRC+). Huh?

Kurtz’s early-season power outage is hard to understand. His process statistics all look phenomenal. His xwOBA is up year over year. He’s already posted a higher maximum exit velocity, and his average and 90th-percentile exit velocities are both in the top five in baseball. But they don’t play the game in a Statcast spreadsheet, and Kurtz’s results have dipped meaningfully. In 2025, he hit a homer every 13 plate appearances. This year, that number is above 30. His ISO is down from .329 to .168. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley discuss the late John Sterling, fan affection for local broadcasters, and whether any broadcast institutions don’t inspire such attachment, then banter about Anthony Volpe’s demotion, Tarik Skubal’s elbow injury, the Mets’ decision to stand by Carlos Mendoza, dramatically different results in back-to-back Reds-Pirates games, Riley O’Brien’s success, Nick Kurtz, Roy Cullenbine, and prolific walk-drawers with unimpressive power, whether framing and challenging skills are correlated for catchers, and a Baseball Savant-based guessing game, plus follow-ups on Mexico City’s elevation and Dalton Rushing.

Audio intro: Philip Tapley and Michael Stokes, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Harold Walker, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Brussels sprouts EW episode
Link to Sterling obit
Link to previous Sterling discussion
Link to Sterling on FanGraphs
Link to 2011 Sterling profile
Link to Sterling wiki
Link to Kay wiki
Link to Kay on Sterling
Link to Kay diet piece 1
Link to Kay diet piece 2
Link to Kay diet piece 3
Link to Baumann on Volpe
Link to Clemens on Skubal
Link to Passan post
Link to Tatiana Trumpet story
Link to MLB.com on Skubal
Link to CBS Sports on Skubal
Link to Dan S. on managerial firings
Link to Ball on managerial firings
Link to Stearns on Mendoza
Link to Mendoza’s reaction
Link to seven consecutive walks
Link to worst hitters 2023-26
Link to RP WAR leaders
Link to Clemens on O’Brien
Link to Johnny interview
Link to Johnny and Riley
Link to Mexico City sinking story
Link to status quo bias wiki
Link to 2025 run differentials
Link to 2026 run differentials
Link to Cashman comments
Link to Ben on team turnover
Link to Kurtz streak story 1
Link to Kurtz streak story 2
Link to Cullenbine post 1
Link to Cullenbine post 2
Link to Ben on pre-WAR valuations
Link to Roy Thomas SABR bio
Link to foul-strike rule
Link to Max Bishop SABR bio
Link to Eddie Yost SABR bio
Link to Eddie Joost SABR bio
Link to career + stats
Link to team framing leaderboard
Link to catcher challenges leaderboard
Link to batter challenges leaderboard
Link to Tango’s Soto/Bailey tweet
Link to framing/challenging correlations
Link to Ruiz on framing/challenging
Link to Millas on framing/challenging
Link to Petriello on 2025 challenges
Link to player survey on challenges
Link to Rushing on Lee 1
Link to Rushing on Lee 2
Link to Rushing’s timeout call
Link to Rushing’s challenge
Link to Tango on the challenge
Link to Savantle
Link to other Savant guessing games

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I don’t think many would quibble with me too harshly if I characterized the last two seasons for the Atlanta Braves as dreary disappointments. In 2024, the Braves were generally believed to challenge the Dodgers for the title of best team in baseball. This held true for about six weeks, but for the rest of the season, they suffered myriad injuries and played .500 ball, barely hanging onto a wild card spot before quickly being dispatched by the Padres. Going into 2025 with the hope for a healthier, bounce-back season, nothing of the sort happened. Atlanta finished at 76-86, the franchise’s first losing season since 2017. Expectations coming into this season were more muted. While the Braves were expected to be competitive (the FanGraphs projections were more optimistic than ZiPS), the excitement was certainly dampened compared to the previous two years.

So far in 2026, the Braves have defied the pundits and computers, dominating the NL East and sporting the best record in baseball, at 25-11. Their 8 1/2-game lead in the NL East isn’t an insurmountable one, but it’s quite impressive for this point in the season. No other division leader has more than a two-game lead right now! As crucially, the two teams expected to be Atlanta’s fiercest competition, the Phillies and Mets, are a bit farther behind, at 9 1/2 and 11 1/2 games back, respectively. Naturally, the success of the Braves and the struggles of Philadelphia and New York have changed how the final standings project to shake out.

That’s quite a sea change from the start of the season. Of course, Atlanta isn’t projected to keep playing this well the rest of the way. We’re only a little over a month into the season, and we should expect some regression from the Braves as they play more games.

But just because things will normalize some does not mean that nothing has changed. I’m not convinced that Dominic Smith is a 157 wRC+ guy, or that Martín Pérez is the first person in history to figure out the secret to maintaining a sub-.200 BABIP, but there are other things about this team that I’m quite ready to believe. Matt Olson has had very big seasons before, and when healthy, Chris Sale is one of the best pitchers in baseball. Ozzie Albies isn’t going to hit .330 for the season, but he did amass the second-most WAR as a second baseman from 2018 to 2023, behind only Jose Altuve, so we have seen enough from him in the past to believe this is a true comeback campaign rather than an early-season mirage.

To get a better idea of what’s real and what’s fake, here are the ZiPS projections for the hitters currently on Atlanta’s Depth Charts roster, compared to their preseason projections.

Even being skeptical of a few players, there are a lot more advancers than decliners here. Of all major league hitters currently projected to get plate appearances over the rest of the season, the Braves have nine of the top 100, more than you would expect from random chance. Only three players — Austin Riley, Ronald Acuña Jr., and Mike Yastrzemski — have taken big hits, but they are still projected to be real contributors, though I’m a bit worried about Riley personally.

How does that compare to other teams? Using the rest-of-season Depth Charts playing time projections and applying both the up-to-date projections and the preseason ones to that projected playing time, we can get an idea of which teams have had something change and which teams have not.

Atlanta’s offensive projection has improved more than that of any other team, so it isn’t just smoke and mirrors producing these results. At the risk of veering off topic, the 14-22 Astros’ having the second-most improved offensive projection is quite an awkward data point for the team’s struggling pitching staff. Conversely, even if you’re generally confident that the Phillies and Mets (and Red Sox) will right the ship, the projections are less optimistic than they were in March.

Let’s repeat the exercise with the pitchers:

ZiPS is confident that Atlanta’s offensive improvements are legitimate, but it’s considerably less so when it comes to the pitching staff. I’ve already made a crack about Pérez, but ZiPS is also skeptical about Bryce Elder’s strides. Overall, it still sees the rotation as risky, though it is more bullish on several of the team’s relievers.

(For those curious, the most improved hitter and pitcher in baseball, from a projection standpoint, is Chase DeLauter and Mason Miller, respectively.)

It’s kind of funny to see the Phillies so high up on this list, but they have allowed a .349 BABIP over 35 games, a freakishly high number that can’t possibly be sustained. One can see why the Yankees and Padres have been so strong in the early going, though their success is a story for another day.

Is the NL East race actually over? The projections and Betteridge’s law of headlines say no. But it is true that the Braves have flipped the script. It’s not as over for the Mets or Phillies as the vibes indicate, but if they are going to mount a comeback, they better start fairly soon. If not, they’ll quickly run out of calendar.

Read the rest of this entry »

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to my first chat of May! Happy Cinco de Mayo to those celebrating, and a belated happy Star Wars Day if that’s your thing.

12:03

Jay Jaffe: On Friday I wrote about the league scoring environment through the end of April, noting that walk rates are up, likely due to the impact of the new ABS Challenge system https://blogs.fangraphs.com/more-walks-more-runs-an-early-look-at-offe…

12:04

Jay Jaffe: On Sunday I had a bizarre gardening accident, but fared better than the average Spinal Tap drummer https://bsky.app/profile/jayjaffe.bsky.social/post/3mkxvubesl22v

12:05

Jay Jaffe: Yesterday, I wrote about Ildemaro Vargas’ unlikely hitting streak. (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/ildemaro-vargas-is-suddenly-a-hitting-mach…), and last night I went up to Yankee Stadium to do some reporting to supplement a tribute to longtime Yankees radio play-by-play broadcaster John Sterling, who passed away at age 87. That will be up tomorrow.

12:06

Jay Jaffe: Sterling, of course, is famous in the site’s lore https://x.com/JSterlingCalls/status/1300580776464068608

12:08

Jay Jaffe: and one final programming note: next Tuesday evening I’ll be accompanying MLB.com’s Michael Clair to Word Bookstores in Williamsburg to moderate a discussion of his book on the Czech Republic’s national baseball team and its unlikely rise: https://bsky.app/profile/michaelclair.bsky.social/post/3ml4k6v4zqs2u

Read the rest of this entry »

Jonathon Long has logged a shiny 137 wRC+ since he was selected in the ninth round of the 2023 draft out of Long Beach State. How bright of a future he has is a question not easily answered. Ranked 17th on our recently released 2026 Cubs Top Prospects list with a 40 FV, the 24-year-old first baseman has a profile that is promising, yet in some ways concerning.

Last season’s numbers were particularly strong. Playing at Triple-A Iowa, Long slashed a robust .305/404/.479 with 20 home runs and a 131 wRC+ over 607 plate appearances, which led to his being honored as the organization’s Minor League Player of the Year. His right-handed bat hasn’t been nearly as productive in the current campaign — a .294/.369/.405 slash line with a pair of round-trippers and a 101 wRC+ over 143 plate appearances — but he nonetheless remains a threat to opposing pitchers. Moreover, he has begun to warm up. Over his last nine games with Iowa, Long is 14-for-40 (.350).

A hyperextended elbow caused the Orange, California native to miss time in spring training, a period that coincided with my annual visit to Cactus League camps. Intrigued by his stat sheet and scouting reports alike, I asked Long if he considers himself more of a power hitter, or more of a contact hitter.

“I’m probably a little bit of both,” replied Long, whose 20.3% strikeout rate and 10.5% walk rate this season are slightly worse than last year’s respective marks of 19.7% and 13.2%. “I don’t like striking out, and I have pretty good exit-velocity numbers. If you combine those, you kind of get a high contact rate and a power hitter.”

Our recent prospect report on Long, put together by Eric Longenhagen and James Fegan, is largely in accord with that self-assessment. Bullish in agreement, it nevertheless came with a caveat: Read the rest of this entry »

There are no “good” injuries in baseball. Losing a player to the IL is never a fun time. But there’s still a relative hierarchy – not every injury is an equally big bummer. On Monday, we got one of those big bummers. The Tigers placed Tarik Skubal, the two-time reigning AL Cy Young winner, on the injured list. He’s slated to undergo surgery to remove loose bodies in his pitching elbow, as Evan Woodbery of MLive first reported.

Skubal had dealt with occasional pains in his arm throughout the season, as The Athletic’s Cody Stavenhagen reported. In his start last Wednesday, Skubal grimaced and grabbed his elbow in the seventh inning, sending a bevy of concerned Tigers staffers to the mound. He waved them off and struck out the side, but when his arm didn’t recover as much as expected in the aftermath of that start, the team had imaging done, revealing the need for surgery. This injury could alter the balance of power in the AL Central this year. More than that, it could change the trajectory of Skubal’s career. So let’s walk through the implications for the team, league, and player as we try to make sense of this unfortunate bit of news. Read the rest of this entry »

The best team in baseball will be without its biggest star for a few weeks.

The Braves placed Ronald Acuña Jr. on the injured list Sunday with a strained left hamstring. Acuña exited Saturday’s game after pulling up in considerable pain while running out a groundout. Manager Walt Weiss told reporters that imaging revealed a Grade 1 strain, the least severe grade. According to MLB.com, Weiss said:

“It’s not going to be just a couple days. It’s gonna be more than that, so we need to put him on the IL, and hopefully it’ll be sooner than later. No idea with these soft tissue injuries how long they’re gonna take, but I think the silver lining is that the MRI showed it wasn’t too serious.”

While many players return from Grade 1 hamstring strains in just a couple weeks, or even following the 10-day minimum, this is an injury that can linger and delay a return.

This is, obviously, less than ideal for the Braves. Acuña is their best player and was projected in the preseason as the ninth-best position player in baseball with 5.4 WAR, according to our Depth Charts. Though his performance hasn’t been spectacular thus far, with a 111 wRC+ in 152 plate appearances, his .381 xwOBA and 12.2% barrel rate — along with strong strikeout and walk rates — suggest he hasn’t missed a beat this year, coming off his bounce-back 2025 season.

Of course, last year was a comeback campaign because Acuña missed most 2024 (and the early part of 2025) after tearing his ACL. He also missed chunks of 2021 and 2022 with a torn ACL in his other knee. In 2018, he missed about a month with a mild ACL sprain. That means Acuña’s hamstring strain is his fourth lower body injury requiring IL time in his career. Read the rest of this entry »

It seems like almost every team in baseball is dealing with some sort of injury crisis right now. Of course, key players are bound to get hurt during the long marathon of the regular season, yet these injuries are still having a considerable impact on both the standings and our evaluations of the affected clubs.

Our power rankings use a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings or FiveThirtyEight’s defunct sports section, 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.

…

With a sweep of the Rockies over the weekend, the Braves continued their rampage through the competition. They haven’t lost a series all season long despite facing some significant injury hurdles. Speaking of, Ronald Acuña Jr. was placed on the IL on Sunday with a minor hamstring injury. Thankfully, Sean Murphy and Raisel Iglesias are both on the mend and should be activated off the IL sometime this week.

Aaron Judge and Ben Rice each hit three home runs last week as the Yankees kept setting the pace in the American League. They’ve lost just twice over their last 15 games, and with two key rotation pieces due back from injury soon, it’s possible that they’re about to get even better. Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodón could rejoin the team this weekend or early next week to bolster a starting staff that already leads the majors in 4.9 WAR by nearly an entire win. One notable player who won’t be returning to the big league roster is Anthony Volpe, who just completed a rehab assignment after undergoing offseason shoulder surgery. The Yankees activated him on Sunday and immediately optioned him to Triple-A. It’s a pretty big vote of confidence in José Caballero and a pointed message to Volpe to work toward earning his way back to the majors.

All of a sudden, the Dodgers’ bats have gone cold. They scored just 16 runs in their six games last week as they went 2-4 against the Marlins and Cardinals. Their offensive struggles actually go back to mid-April; over their last 13 games, they’ve scored 4.2 runs per game, with two 12-run outbursts skewing things a bit. In their 11 other games since April 21, they’ve scored just 2.7 runs per game. Thankfully, the Los Angeles pitching staff has been pretty dominant; the team has allowed the fewest runs in baseball. I’m sure the Dodgers will break out of this funk sooner or later, but until then, things will continue to be pretty tight atop the NL West.

After completing a sweep of the Giants over the weekend, the Rays have now won nine of their last 10 games and 16 of their last 21. They’re just 1.5 games behind the Yankees in the AL East, and at 21-12, they boast the second-best record in the AL. Yandy Díaz (158 wRC+) and Junior Caminero (133) have enjoyed strong starts to the season, and the starting rotation has the third-lowest ERA- in baseball. This hot streak has helped the Rays bank a bunch of wins, but they might be out over their skis a bit. Their run differential is just +7, and they’ve outperformed both their Pythagorean and BaseRuns records by three games. Driving this unexpected surge is Tampa Bay’s performance in close games; the team has a 7-1 record in one-run games despite a bullpen that ranks just 21st in ERA-. With all that in mind, the Rays are entering a pretty important stretch that could prove whether they are legitimate contenders, as 19 of their next 22 games come against division rivals.

Like the Rays, both the Padres and Cardinals have outperformed their Pythagorean and BaseRuns records by three games. San Diego seems to be getting by thanks to its lockdown bullpen, though you have to wonder what’s going on with Fernando Tatis Jr. He still hasn’t hit a home run this season, with March/April marking the first homerless month of his career. As for St. Louis, the most encouraging part of the season so far has been the progress of its young hitters. Both Jordan Walker and Alec Burleson collected 11 hits and two home runs apiece last week, and JJ Wetherholt is leading all NL rookies in WAR.

The biggest paper tiger of them all has been the Reds. They’ve outperformed their Pythagorean and Base Runs records by a whopping six games. Their three blowout losses last week didn’t help their run differential either. Nick Lodolo is set to be activated off the IL this Friday, which should give the starting rotation a bit of a boost. After getting swept by the Pirates over the weekend, Cincinnati heads to Chicago for a huge four-game divisional battle against the Cubs, beginning Monday night.

The Tigers and A’s treaded water last week, both going 3-3. That was good enough to stay atop their respective divisions, though neither team is really pulling away from the pack. As for the Pirates, they bounced back after a rough four-game sweep at the hands of the Cardinals by sweeping the Reds this past weekend. The NL Central has continued to be the toughest division in baseball; Pittsburgh is tied for last place despite being three games over .500.

The Brewers are the other team at the bottom of the Central, though they have the best run differential in the division. There’s a lot happening on the injury front in Milwaukee. Brandon Woodruff hit the IL with shoulder inflammation last week, and on Friday, Jacob Misiorowski had to depart his start early — he was in the middle of a no-hitter — with a hamstring issue. Thankfully, it sounds like neither issue is very serious. The Brewers should also soon benefit from the return of two key offensive contributors. First baseman Andrew Vaughn is set to be activated off the IL on Monday, and outfielder Jackson Chourio shouldn’t be too far behind, even after he suffered a minor setback when he fouled a ball off his foot on Saturday. Fresh off series wins against the Diamondbacks and Nationals, the Brewers have two tests ahead of them with series against the Cardinals and Yankees this week.

There’s a big group of AL teams hovering around .500 in this tier. Both the Mariners and Rangers went 2-4 last week, sliding another game back in the thoroughly mediocre AL West. The Guardians went 3-3 against the Rays and A’s last week, managing to keep pace with the Tigers in the AL Central. The big news in Cleveland was the promotion of Travis Bazzana on Tuesday; he collected his first big league hit on Saturday and added two more on Sunday. As for the Blue Jays, they went 4-3 last week and are slowly climbing out of their early-season hole. Kazuma Okamoto led the way over the weekend, blasting four home runs in three games against the Twins.

The Phillies became the second team in as many weeks to fire their manager, dismissing Rob Thompson on Tuesday. It’s unclear whether midseason firings truly provide a wake-up call for teams, or if the struggling teams just see some positive regression, but regardless of the cause here, the Phillies started winning under interim manager Don Mattingly. They swept the cratering Giants and then won two of their first three games in a four-game wraparound series against the Marlins. Those four wins last week equaled what Philadelphia had earned across the previous three weeks combined. It’s small progress for a team that’s still hoping to make some noise in the NL Wild Card race this summer.

The Royals got off to a strong start in May, sweeping the Mariners this past weekend. Their star trio of Bobby Witt Jr. (108 wRC+), Maikel Garcia (107), and Vinnie Pasquantino (72) has underperformed at the plate this season, though there have been some signs of life recently. Pasquantino collected five hits and a home run in that series in Seattle, and Garcia had eight hits — five for extra bases — last week. Meanwhile, after catching fire for most of the second half of April, Witt cooled off some last week. Kansas City faces a pretty critical stretch this week, with the Guardians and Tigers coming to town for series that could shuffle up the AL Central standings.

As if things couldn’t get worse for the Red Sox, they placed Garrett Crochet on the IL with shoulder inflammation last week. It doesn’t seem like a serious issue, but the team now has six starters currently out hurt, a group that doesn’t include Ranger Suarez, who exited his start on Sunday in the fifth inning with hamstring tightness. It sounds like Suarez should be fine, but Boston cannot afford to lose anyone else to injury right now.

The White Sox had a five-game winning streak snapped on Sunday, a surge that helped them clamber to within a few games of .500. In fact, they’ve won 10 of their last 15 games, and suddenly look fairly competent as a ballclub. Munetaka Murakami continues to blast home runs, and Colson Montgomery is trying to match him homer for homer. The bigger storyline during this stretch has been the pitching staff. Chicago has allowed just 3.9 runs per game over its last 15 games, with the unheralded Davis Martin leading the way. He’s given up just one run in each of his last three starts.

The Giants just endured a week from hell. They were swept by both the Phillies and Rays, got shutout twice, lost both legs of a doubleheader on Thursday in walk-off fashion, and suffered another walk-off loss on Sunday for good measure. They managed to score just nine runs in six games and did not hit a home run on this road trip. Things are getting ugly in San Francisco, though there are some positives to cling to: Landen Roupp has taken a big step forward (or to the side) on the mound, and Luis Arraez has played surprisingly good defense at second base. Still, a shake-up is desperately needed to get this team back on track. To that end, the Giants are promoting prospects Bryce Eldridge and Jesus Rodriguez on Monday to hopefully jumpstart the offense.

Two more Mets hit the IL last week: Luis Robert Jr. and Ronny Mauricio, bringing the team total to 12. New York did manage to win its series against the hapless Angels over the weekend. The Astros also won their weekend series against the Red Sox, capping things off with an extra-innings win on Sunday. Neither series win should be seen as a triumph, but it’s definitely forward progress for the two beleaguered teams.

Remember when the Angels were playing really entertaining baseball, going toe to toe with the Yankees? They’ve lost 12 of their last 15 games since that series in New York and have fallen all the way to the bottom of the AL standings. To make matters worse, Yusei Kikuchi and Logan O’Hoppe were placed on the IL last week. It’s not all bad: Mike Trout (a 168 wRC+) and Jorge Soler (120) continue to mash, but the supporting cast for those two sluggers has been severely lacking.

Read the rest of this entry »