FanGraphs Baseball

Just because the Athletics are leading their division while the Astros are well below .500 doesn’t mean that the AL West is entirely upside-down. Once again, a catcher is having such an incredible season at the plate that his offense is worth talking about, and if the season ended today, he’d be in the MVP discussion. This time around we’re not talking about Cal Raleigh — who just landed on the injured list shortly after snapping an 0-for-38 slump — but Shea Langeliers. At this writing, the A’s catcher is currently hanging with the big boys on the batting leaderboards and doing things that are worth keeping an eye upon.

The 28-year-old Langeliers entered Friday hitting .340/.397/.623, which is not just great for a catcher, but it’s one of the best lines in baseball. His 179 wRC+ ranks third in the majors behind only Ben Rice and Yordan Alvarez, one point ahead of Aaron Judge, and his slugging percentage is third in the AL, nestled among those same four hitters. He leads all catchers with 12 home runs, tied for eighth among all major league hitters. But what really caught my eye is that his batting average leads the AL.

Yes, batting average is the least important of those slash stats, but as I’ve maintained before, at a time when .300 hitters have become an endangered species — the NL had just one last year, Trea Turner — it’s worth giving a damn about batting average again. Batting average is fun; batting average has entertainment value. When batting averages are low, the game is more static, and right now the 30 teams as a whole are slashing a combined .240/.319/.389, down from .245/.315/.404 last year. If maintained over a full season, this year’s batting average would be the third lowest since 1901, ahead of only 1968 (.237) and 1908 (.239). Read the rest of this entry »

This one’s going to be a little bit of a mashup. Last weekend, I was watching a Dodgers game when Max Muncy made a slick play over at third base. Then he mashed a two-run home run to put the Dodgers on the scoreboard. That got me to thinking about how impressive Muncy’s career has been – never the prime attraction on a Los Angeles team that has employed many of baseball’s best during its reign atop the league, but always a key cog.

But a Muncy article wasn’t the only idea I left that game with. His two-run homer? It only served to narrow the Dodgers’ deficit from five to three. The Braves tacked on more runs late and won 7-2 for a second straight day, taking two out of three from the two-time defending champs. Then the lowly Giants came to town and split a four-game set. The Los Angeles offense, in particular, has been moribund of late. That sounded like an article topic all on its own. But if two articles are good, one article slamming together points from both is better (he said hopefully).

I don’t think there’s anything sneaky or overlooked about Muncy’s excellent start to the 2026 season. When he comes to the plate, he does the same thing every night: He tries to leave the park. That means he’s looking for pitches to clobber, and also trying to clobber those pitches. The looking part, combined with his great batting eye, means plenty of walks and plenty of deep counts. The “trying to clobber” part means plenty of whiffs and plenty of scorched baseballs. It’s an approach that’s easy to describe, but it’s devilishly difficult in practice to strike the right balance between selection and aggression.

Muncy is now in his ninth season of finding that balance. His consistency is remarkable – year in and year out he’s posted a double-digit walk rate, a strikeout rate between 20-27%, and a batting line in the neighborhood of a 130 wRC+. His wRC+ is 21st among qualified hitters over that span, wedged between Hall of Fame hopefuls Jose Altuve and Paul Goldschmidt. His batting line is a dead ringer for Kyle Schwarber’s. This year, Muncy is off to an excellent start, on pace for his best year since 2018. It’s not so much that he’s found a new gear; you’d have a hard time differentiating between his 2025 and 2026 component statistics. That’s basically my point, though. What he’s doing isn’t surprising, because he’s made it commonplace. He’s hit more or less like this for a decade. Read the rest of this entry »

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Cal Raleigh is, apparently, not invincible.

Raleigh landed on the injured list Thursday for the first time in his career. He’d been dealing with “general soreness” in his right side since early May, but seemed to aggravate it on a couple of plays in the eighth inning of Wednesday’s 4-3 loss to the Astros. There’s no timeline for his return.

With the game tied 2-2, nobody out, and Braden Shewmake on first base, Brice Matthews attempted a sacrifice bunt. The ball trickled back to Mariners reliever Eduard Bazardo, who scooped it up and sailed it into center field. Scrambling for the ball, Julio Rodríguez booted it back toward the infield, picked it up near the edge of the dirt, and came up firing home, but Josh Naylor cut it off before it could get there because Shewmake was held at third. However, while getting in position to field the throw, Raleigh made an awkward shuffle, appearing to tweak his already-sore side. He winced in considerable pain, but stayed in the game.

Bazardo then hit Zach Cole to load the bases, prompting the Mariners to bring the infield in. Christian Vázquez followed with a hard chopper to J.P. Crawford at short, who looked to start a double play with a strong throw home. But in attempting to make the turn, Raleigh’s leg gave out from underneath him. He stumbled to the ground with the ball still in hand, and exited after the inning. Read the rest of this entry »

Trivia question for you: Which active pitcher has the lowest career ERA, with a minimum of 50 innings pitched? Paul Skenes is third, Jhoan Duran is ninth, Jacob deGrom is all the way down in 20th.

The answer is Erik Sabrowski, and by a pretty big margin. Sabrowski’s 1.47 career ERA is 0.41 runs lower than that of second-place Emmanuel Clase, who I guess is still technically an active player. He has Skenes beat by half a run. Read the rest of this entry »

Bryce Harper is Cooperstown bound, and he’ll get there having embraced a relatively straightforward approach. Aggressively selective and with a swing built to do damage, the future Hall of Famer isn’t big on hitting analytics or new-school methods. More than anything, he trusts his raw ability — which he has in great abundance — and basically goes out to bash. It’s hard to argue with his success. Now in his 15th big league season, and eighth with the Philadelphia Phillies, the two-time NL MVP has 373 home runs to go with a .280/.386/.519 slash line and a 141 wRC+ for his career. Moreover, the 33-year-old is showing no signs of slowing down. At the quarter mark of the current campaign, he has 10 round-trippers and a 146 wRC+.

Harper sat down to talk hitting at Fenway Park earlier this week.

———

David Laurila: You told me that you’re more so see-ball-hit-ball than a guy who puts a lot of thought into his craft. Can you elaborate on that?

Bryce Harper: “I take my routine into the cage and kind of let that play out. There are days in the cage where you’re going to feel good, and days in the cage where you’re not necessarily going to feel good. I just need to stick with my routine every day, the same routine, understanding what works for me. That’s kind of how I’ve always been. I’ve got little drills that I like to do, which keep me through the ball and in the same path. But video-wise, pitcher tendencies — all that kind of stuff — I mostly throw out the door. I don’t do too much of that.”

Laurila: That said, have you changed at all from when you first broke into pro ball? Stance, set-up, bat path, etc.

Harper: “I’ve had to evolve. Guys are throwing harder. When I came up in 2012, one of the harder fastballs, Jonny Venters’, was like 98 [mph]. [Francisco Rodríguez] threw pretty hard. But now everybody is 95 to 100, up to 102. Each day you’re facing guys who are throwing really hard, from starters to bullpen. So, I’ve had to make sure I get to the baseball in a certain way, staying on plane. High heaters. Making sure that I’m on plane to get to baseballs thrown at a high level.”

Laurila: You need to do that without cheating on fastballs, otherwise you’re going to get beat by a secondary… Read the rest of this entry »

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, please visit our Patreon.

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about whether Ben cursed Shohei Ohtani’s bat by predicting that Ohtani would win the Cy Young award but not the MVP award, whether Bobby Witt Jr. could win his first MVP award this season, the defensive transformation of Luis Arraez, and more, then (33:16) further interrogate what homoerotic celebrations say about baseball culture, discuss the latest ABS challenge mishaps, answer listener emails (54:30) about an ABS double-or-nothing idea, trading challenges for runs, purchasing challenges midgame, an upside of umpire rotation, boosting offense with double-barreled batters, and a baseball equivalent to the Kelce brothers, plus Stat Blasts (1:28:21) about players with the most inning-ending at-bats in a game, swing rates in debut plate appearances, grand-slam merchants, teams with many MVP vote-getters, and picked-off pinch runners.

Audio intro: The Gagnés, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Dave Armstrong and Mike Murray, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to preseason predictions episode
Link to Ohtani slump story 1
Link to Ohtani slump story 2
Link to Ohtani slump story 3
Link to Ohtani slump story 4
Link to Ohtani slump story 5
Link to FG WAR leaders
Link to B-Ref WAR leaders
Link to FG post on Arraez
Link to MLB.com on Arraez
Link to FRV leaders
Link to Outsports post 1
Link to Outsports post 2
Link to Outsports post 3
Link to homosociality wiki
Link to Ross memoir
Link to Valentine/Baty incident
Link to Torres challenge denials
Link to Heim play
Link to Ben on accidental challenges
Link to Jake on accidental challenges
Link to Gausman quote
Link to batter challenge leaders
Link to Rumsfeld quote wiki
Link to catcher challenge leaders
Link to team challenge leaders
Link to Clemens on FA $/WAR
Link to Ortiz ump injury
Link to double-barreled BP article 1
Link to double-barreled BP article 2
Link to HUAL segment
Link to ex-athlete pods article 1
Link to ex-athlete pods article 2
Link to Tkachuks pod
Link to Harrisburg vs. Erie game
Link to 1977 Jays-Yanks game
Link to five-inning-ending players
Link to 2003 NL MVP voting
Link to teams with 8+ MVP vote-getters
Link to SABR on WAR and awards
Link to Baumann on WAR and awards
Link to Sam on downballot MVP votes
Link to debut-PA swing rates data
Link to innings 1-3 swing rate
Link to innings 4+ swing rate
Link to grand slams data
Link to listener emails database
Link to highest PR pickoff rates data
Link to Haggerty pickoff game
Link to SABR on PR specialists
Link to Wright on PR specialists 1
Link to Wright on PR specialists 2
Link to Langs Bell fun fact

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Geraldo Perdomo makes me happy. He’s a really good player with an interesting skill set, and he seems like a pleasant person. Last year, he hit .290 with 20 home runs, 27 stolen bases, and more walks than strikeouts. Combined with even adequate shortstop defense, you’d think that would make him one of the most valuable players in the league, and you’d be right.

In a world without Shohei Ohtani, we could’ve had a fun multidirectional NL MVP discussion involving Perdomo, Juan Soto, Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner, Corbin Carroll, and maybe even Paul Skenes. As it stands, Ohtani won in a walk and Perdomo finished fourth. But it’s an honor to even be in the discussion.

What do I want? More Perdomo. We kind of got that last year with Maikel Garcia’s breakout season, but I wasn’t satisfied. Last November, I went on a search for the next Perdomo. I identified young players with elite contact skills, elite plate discipline, rock-bottom bat speed, and the athleticism to play up the middle. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite article genres to produce is “you’ve never heard of this reliever, but he’s great now.” Generally speaking, it’s either some dude who has been in the majors for a while but recently learned something new, or someone who burst onto the scene with some quirky pitch, delivery, or approach. Today, though, I’m trying a slightly different variation. You probably have heard of Dylan Lee. He’s appeared in the majors for six straight years and racked up more than 200 innings pitched in that time. He’s not doing anything particularly new in 2026. But he’s great, and somehow we’ve basically never written about him, so I think it’s time to rectify that shortcoming.

In 19 2/3 innings of work this year entering Wednesday, Lee has posted a 0.92 ERA and 1.08 FIP. He’s striking out a third of the batters he faces and barely walking anyone. And while no one is that good in the long run, Lee’s career stats are very solid, as well. He has a career 2.65 ERA and a 3.24 FIP (2.92 xERA, 3.19 xFIP, 2.79 SIERA). Sure, it’s over only 224 innings, but those numbers are superb. He has the 10th-best ERA of any reliever since his debut, and every other run prevention estimator is similarly situated toward the top of the table.

The simplest way to describe Lee’s game is that he throws a gyro slider as often as possible, plus a fastball and changeup when he needs to switch things up. He’s throwing that slider 56% of the time this year, which is narrowly a career high, but he’s thrown 52.5% sliders in his career, so this is hardly a complete sea change. He leans especially hard on the slider against lefties, using it more than three quarters of the time. But even against righties, he throws 46% sliders and spots his other two pitches off of his breaking ball.

While sweeping sliders are all the rage these days, Lee doesn’t throw one. His slider is most remarkable for how little it breaks. He’s not quite Tatsuya Imai out there, but in 2025, his average slider moved about an inch to his arm side, the “wrong way.” This year so far, it’s moving about an inch to his glove side. Unlike many slow, straight sliders, Lee’s has a tiny bit of induced vertical break; the pitch falls about four inches less on its flight to the plate than your average mid-80s gyro slider.

That sounds terrible, right? “Hey, I throw my slider kind of slow, and also it doesn’t slide, and also it doesn’t have any downward break.” Anyway, on an unrelated note, here’s a leaderboard from 2026:

Huh. Read the rest of this entry »