Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley share listener solutions to the mystery of why the 12-straight-hits club is such an undistinguished group, the Home Run Derby field, Bryce Harper’s video message (13:28) to a sports-betting addict and sportsbooks’ practice of preying on whales, the disparity (35:54) in the recent treatment of two pitchers who had no-hitters in progress, and Zack Wheeler’s gripe against All-Star selecting, then (1:02:42) answer a listener email about how much a game one has to have seen to claim to have “watched” it, and Stat Blast (1:23:20) about partial home run robberies, games with matching starter pitch and strike counts, historical team no-hitter conversion rates, and prolific “first” strikeout and home-run recorders.

Audio intro: Ian H., “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Justin Peters, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Tolbert record post 1
Link to Tolbert record post 2
Link to Williams 11th hit
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Link to HRD field
Link to Norway rowing pedant
Link to Inquirer article on Harper
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Link to story on Jones 1
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Link to Jones game log
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Link to top 2026 pitch counts
Link to Blum on pulling pitchers
Link to Scott/PCA clip
Link to Ben on no-hitter strike zones
Link to Wheeler quote clip
Link to Wheeler’s agent article
Link to latest Luzardo start
Link to 2025 Phillies ASG complaints
Link to “May I meet you?” meme
Link to Pascal’s wager wiki
Link to “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”
Link to Simpson/Adell robbery
Link to Glavine game 1
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Link to Nola question
Link to Bois on Stieb
Link to Stat Blast data
Link to listener emails database
Link to Cubs fact 1
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Link to MLBTR on Ohtani
Link to MLBTR on Wetherholt

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Here is my final mock draft, which is based on information I’ve continued to gather over the last couple of days. I’ve offered analysis in places where I believed new dope merited it; otherwise, it’s just names. There’s more background for many of these picks in the first mock from a few days ago.

1. Chicago White Sox
Pick: Roch Cholowsky, SS, UCLA
Yesterday, teams picking behind Chicago began to believe the White Sox had narrowed their options down to only Cholowsky and Grady Emerson. If the White Sox view Cholowsky and Emerson as equals and the “tie breaker” becomes about bonus money, such that the player being willing to take the lower bonus will help facilitate a bigger, more robust overall draft class for the White Sox, then the pick should be Cholowsky.

If Emerson doesn’t go here, my information indicates he’s going second to Tampa. If Cholowsky doesn’t go here, it’s believed that the Rays prefer Lackey to Roch, with Roch going third to Minnesota. Multiple people have insinuated to me that the Cholowsky camp would rather that not happen. I don’t think the Twins are going to blink, no matter how much money the Giants are willing to offer Cholowsky. They’ll just take him and dare him to go back to UCLA if he truly doesn’t want to sign with them, which is how I would approach the pick. And so maybe there is some symbiosis here, where Roch can land in a spot he prefers and take more than he’d get at pick three (slot there is $9.74 million), but at enough of a discount below the slot at no. 1 ($11.3 million) that it’s worth it to the White Sox. Chicago acquiring an extra pick from the Pirates last night (34th overall) suddenly makes that kind of savings more relevant to the rest of the White Sox draft class than it was 24 hours ago.

Then again, I’m sitting here thinking about Billy Carlson. The idiosyncrasies and vulnerability of Cholowsky’s swing are similar to Carlson’s. How are the White Sox feeling about Carlson so far? Are they emboldened by the changes they made to Jacob Gonzalez’s swing, and confident they can do something similar with Roch if they need to? They just traded Gonzalez. This is conjecture and speculation, whereas the incentives I outlined in the paragraph above are more concrete. Also worth noting here: Emerson and Cholowsky are both represented by Wasserman. That end of the phone line is operating with perfect information; the two players can’t really be played against one another. This scenario where Roch goes first (for $9.74 to $10 million) and Emerson second is the best Wasserman can do for their both clients.

2. Tampa Bay Rays
Pick: Grady Emerson, SS, Fort Worth Christian (TX)
If Emerson goes first, I’d expect Lackey to go here.

3. Minnesota Twins
Pick: Vahn Lackey, C, Georgia Tech
It sounds like the Twins will take whichever of the three top players remains. Lackey is the top player on my board, but with the same 55 FV grade as Emerson (no. 2) and Cholowsky (no. 3). I did have Drew Burress‘ name mentioned here late last night, at a discount (obviously). Burress’ next realistic homes are rumored to be toward the back of the top 10, so if this is true, Minnesota is looking at a cut of about $2 million and then can flex with their picks in the 70s.

4. San Francisco Giants
Pick: Jackson Flora, RHP, UC Santa Barbara
No change from my first mock, where you can read my reasoning. I think pick nos. 4 and 5 will be Flora and Eric Booth in some order. Jacob Lombard is falling.

5. Pittsburgh Pirates
Pick: Eric Booth Jr., OF, Oak Grove HS (MS)
I think Pittsburgh dealing the 34th pick last night had a little bit to do with them wanting to improve the big league team and a little bit to do with them waving the white flag at the notion that they were going to be able to leverage their bonus pool into a top-tier player. If Booth goes ahead of them, there’s some late buzz about them possibly diverting away from Flora because the Buccos have “too much pitching,” something that you famously can’t have enough of, and that the Pirates know firsthand to be fragile and volatile. I’d be incredulous if they passed on a guy who I consider to be clearly better than the other options, but the rumored names if they go that route are college outfielders Drew Burress or Derek Curiel.

6. Kansas City Royals
Pick: Jared Grindlinger, TWP, Huntington Beach HS (CA)
Kansas City might happily take Booth or Flora here if either of them falls, but I think part of why the Royals have seemingly been kicking the tires on a creative line of play here is because they don’t think that’s likely to happen. Grindlinger’s other homes seem to be in the pick 10-13 range, where the bonus slots are around $6 million. If the Royals can get a deal done with Grindlinger for about that much, their second pick (30th overall) could theoretically be for a nearly $5 million player, though the Giants pick right in front of them and could be a landmine if they try to do that. Grindlinger might be the second- or third-best high school hitter in this class, and to take a player with that kind of upside while simultaneously tee’ing up the rest of your class is a move that takes real moxie given how difficult it is to gauge Grindlinger’s ability compared to the others.

7. Baltimore Orioles
Pick: Drew Burress, OF, Georgia Tech
This might be Eric Booth Jr.’s floor if he’s somehow still here. Burress fits with Baltimore’s style of taking high-performing college hitters with their earliest picks and is also a rumored target of their’s.

8. Athletics
Pick: Ryder Helfrick, C, Arkansas
The loudest feedback following my first mock was that I had Arkansas catcher Ryder Helfrick entirely too low, with the A’s mentioned as the earliest and likeliest landing spot.

9. Atlanta Braves
Pick: Chris Hacopian, 2B, Texas A&M
This is a linchpin pick in this draft that will likely set off a chain reaction for the half dozen or so teams picking immediately behind Atlanta. There’s a scenario where the Braves’ pockets are picked and there’s no one guy left who they love, so they cut an under-slot deal (to buff their options at pick 26) from a short list of players based on which of them would otherwise go latest, as that player has the most incentive to cut. This sequence, where Burress is off the board, spawns that scenario. There’s going to be a run on college hitters immediately following this, and it’s possible Atlanta can get a sense of which of them is falling the deepest throughout the day and make him their target. Hacopian’s injury stuff might be a thing that forces him to the rear of this cluster of college hitters, so I have him speculatively put here. It feels more solid to say that high school lefty Gio Rojas and Virginia outfielder AJ Gracia would otherwise go in the late teens at the earliest, but I think it’d buck Atlanta’s historical trends of caring a lot about pretty deliveries and defensive ability for them to do that. By it’s very nature, the strategy of cutting here to do more at 26 is one of risk mitigation, so taking a guy whose only issue is injury risk feels less scary.

10. Colorado Rockies
Pick: Derek Curiel, CF, LSU
I had Curiel off the board ahead of Colorado in my first mock, with Zion Rose here.

11. Washington Nationals
Pick: Tyler Bell, SS, Kentucky
I have Washington with college bats, with one source indicating to me they aren’t as strong on Hacopian. Bell would be great value here.

12. Los Angeles Angels
Pick: Ace Reese, 3B, Mississippi State
I’m not sure how the late changes atop Los Angeles’ power structure are going to impact this pick, but it feels silly to put the Angels with anything other than college players in the first round until they prove they’re willing to take a high schooler.

13. St. Louis Cardinals
Pick: Zion Rose, OF, Louisville
I think this could be a college pitcher if the contact-oriented college hitters are gone at this point, like if Zion goes the pick before this rather than Reese.

14. Miami Marlins
Pick: Jacob Lombard, SS, Gulliver Prep (FL)
I think enough teams are scared of Lombard’s contact performance for him to slide. Whether this is actually his backstop I don’t know, but the Marlins have taken high schoolers with hit tool risk pretty consistently, and the optics of this pick would be favorable because they’d get a Floridian who some consider to be a top five pick. Lombard terrifies me, but I still have him ranked ninth because of how big the tools are.

15. Arizona Diamondbacks
Pick: Trevor Condon, CF, Etowah HS (GA)
No change.

16. Texas Rangers
Pick: A.J. Gracia, OF, Virginia
17. Houston Astros
Pick: Justin Lebron, SS, Alabama
I think Lebron is gone by one of these two picks. I have very little dope on Texas this year and just consider Gracia as the most stable college hitter left at this point.

18. Cincinnati Reds
Pick: Liam Peterson, RHP, Florida
No change, though Trevor Condon’s name has been mentioned here too. With Gio Rojas is still sitting here in this scenario, I wonder if he’d be in the mix for the same reasons (he’s from Florida, and the Reds have been fine using premium resources on high school arms).

19. Cleveland Guardians
Pick: Cameron Flukey, RHP, Coastal Carolina
Cleveland takes a Bayesian approach, and Flukey was thought of as a top-10 pick entering the year, then dealt with injury. This is a Gavin Williams sequel if it works out for them.

20. Boston Red Sox
Pick: Bo Lowrance, 3B, Christ Church Episcopal (SC)
There have been whispers about Boston cutting here with a contact-oriented college guy, and I wonder if that could be NC State center fielder Ty Head based on their tendencies targeting contact-driven players. This is the middle of where Lowrance’s range is assumed to be.

21. San Diego Padres
Pick: Gio Rojas, LHP, Stoneman Dougles HS (FL)
The Padres have been very open to the high school pitching demo and get even better value than they normally would here with Rojas, who becomes the Mick Abel/Andrew Painter of this draft, where it feels silly that arguably the best high school pitcher falls this far.

22. Detroit Tigers
Pick: Connor Comeau, 3B, Anderson HS (TX)
Detroit likes projectable, left-handed high school hitters. Bo Lowrance is also a fit, but is off the board in this scenario.

23. Chicago Cubs
Pick: Logan Hughes, OF, Texas Tech

24. Seattle Mariners
Pick: Tegan Kuhns, RHP, Tennessee
Seattle seems to be on pitching here, of any demo. Liberty’s Ben Blair might be an interesting option with whom to cut a deal. He’s athletic and throws strikes, which is the Mariners’ type. They can do prep pitching later if they cut, maybe Kaiden McCarthy. Here I have them with a player whose fastball is really going to play, and whose secondary stuff they’ll need to develop.

25. Milwaukee Brewers
Pick: Cade Townsend, RHP, Ole Miss
The Brewers like guys with great breaking balls or hitters with huge power. Either Townsend or Cole Carlon.

26. Atlanta Braves
Pick: Carson Bolemon, LHP, Southside Christian (SC)
No change.

27. New York Mets
Pick: Cole Carlon, LHP, Arizona State
The Mets value breaking ball quality and velocity despite relief risk, and Carlon is like a turbo-charged version.

28. Houston Astros
Pick: Daniel Jackson, C, Georgia
No change

29. San Francisco Giants
Pick: Sawyer Strosnider, OF, TCU

30. Kansas City Royals
Pick: Ethan Wachsmann, RHP, Grandview HS (CO)

31. Arizona Diamondbacks
Pick: Mason Edwards, LHP, USC

32. St. Louis Cardinals
Pick: Ben Blair, RHP, Liberty

33. Tampa Bay Rays
Pick: Jarren Advincula, 2B, Georgia Tech

34. Chicago White Sox
Pick: Landon Thome, INF, Nazareth Academy (IL)

35. New York Yankees
Pick: Jackson Natali, C, Cincinnati

36. Philadelphia Phillies
Pick: Tyler Spangler, SS, De La Salle HS (CA)

37. Colorado Rockies
Pick: Aiden Ruiz, SS, Stony Brook HS (NY)

38. Colorado Rockies
Pick: Dee Kennedy, SS, Kansas State

39. Toronto Blue Jays
Pick: Will Brick, C, Christian Brothers HS (TN)

40. Los Angeles Dodgers
Pick: Taylor Rabe, RHP, Ole Miss

Source

• What Do Real Prospects Think About MLB’s Draft Proposal?
• 2026 Mock Draft 1.0
• The Biggest (Literally) Draft Class Yet
• Jackson Flora's Evolution, Alain Gomez-Gudino's Incredible Journey, and Other Tales from the 2026 Draft Class
• 2026 MLB Draft Preview and Updated Rankings
• Day 1 Draft Chat
• 2026 Mock Draft 2.0: The Day Of
• The MLB Draft Is Once Again for Diehards Only
• Day One Recap
• Draft Potpurri

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Happy Draft Weekend everyone! The draft broadcast begins at 1 p.m. ET today, with the first four rounds scheduled for Day 1. Then, tomorrow, the draft resumes at 11:30 a.m. ET for rounds 5-20.

As always, FanGraphs has you covered with everything you need to know before, during, and after the draft. Eric Longenhagen, Brendan Gawlowski, Michael Baumann, and Meg Rowley are in Philadelphia providing coverage throughout the weekend. You can find all of our draft coverage here, or by using the navigation widget at the top of our homepage and in our draft pieces. Eric and Brendan’s updated draft rankings are available on The Board, where you’ll also find players’ scouting reports and tool grades. You can read Eric’s draft preview here, and his first mock draft here. Provided he has enough new information to merit one, his second mock draft will run today before the first round, so be on the lookout for that, too. Meanwhile, Michael wrote three excellent draft features, which you can read here, here, and here. Also, be sure to join our Day 1 draft chat, where the FanGraphs crew will be answering your questions and providing updates and analysis beginning at 1 p.m ET.

That’s the last you’ll read about the draft in this mailbag. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions about Pete Crow-Armstrong, Aaron Ashby’s propensity for wins, and games with the highest rates of true outcomes for one team. Plus, I’ll provide the answers to last week’s trivia questions about baseball stats featuring the number 250. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.

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We’ll begin with the answers to the four trivia questions from last week’s mailbag:

As of last Thursday morning, July 2, there is one player in MLB history with exactly 250 career home runs. He’s an active player for an NL West team. Can you name him?

The answer was Rafael Devers, who — naturally — smacked his 251st career home run the following night, meaning that by the time last week’s mailbag went live, this stat was outdated. Devers went yard twice in Sunday’s game, too, giving him 253 homers for his career entering last night’s game.

Want another fun fact about Devers and the 250-homer threshold? Of course you do! He’s one of 43 players to hit at least 250 career home runs before his age-30 season. You can find the complete list of players here.

As of July 2, seven players have recorded exactly 250 doubles in their career; only one of them is in the Hall of Fame. The six non-Hall of Famers are Ozzie Albies, Travis Hafner, Deivi Cruz, Bruce Bochte, Irish Meusel, and Jake Daubert. The Hall of Famer is a 19th century catcher. Who is it?

The answer to this question, Buck Ewing, is the only Hall of Fame primary catcher to play his entire career in the 19th century. I didn’t specify primary catcher in my clue, so as to leave open the possibility that you might guess either Deacon White, who played more games at third base than catcher, or King Kelly, who is considered a right fielder by JAWS. Roger Bresnahan debuted in 1897, but the bulk of his Hall of Fame career came in the 20th century.

Another update: Albies has hit five doubles since that Thursday when I ran the query, so there are now only six players with exactly 250 doubles in their career. Dansby Swanson enters play Friday with 247 career doubles, so maybe by the time you read this, the group will be back up to seven.

There are 25 members of the 250 Home Run/250 Stolen Base Club, nine of whom are Hall of Famers. Sorted by home runs, those nine are Willie Mays (660 HR, 339 SB), Andre Dawson (438, 314), Carlos Beltrán (435, 312), Rickey Henderson (297, 1,406), Craig Biggio (291, 414), Ryne Sandberg (282, 344), Joe Morgan (268, 689), Derek Jeter (260, 358), and Robin Yount (251, 271). Two others are active: José Ramírez (295, 311) and Jose Altuve (263, 326). Can you name the other 14 members of the 250/250 Club?

The other 14 members of the 250/250 Club are as follows: Barry Bonds (762 HR, 514 HR), Alex Rodriguez (696, 329), Gary Sheffield (509, 253), Alfonso Soriano (412, 289), Don Baylor (338, 285), Bobby Bonds (332, 461), Reggie Sanders (305, 304), Steve Finley (304, 320), Bobby Abreu (288, 400), Eric Davis (282, 349), Mike Cameron (278, 297), Hanley Ramirez (271, 281), Vada Pinson (256, 305), Kirk Gibson (255, 284).

There are four other active players with at least 200 career home runs and 200 career stolen bases. One of them, Andrew McCutchen, is currently in the Braves organization after getting released by the Rangers earlier this season, and even if he makes it back to the majors for one last hurrah, he almost certainly won’t steal the 30 more bags he needs to reach 250. (He has 330 career home runs.)

The other three players — Mike Trout (422 HR, 221 SB), Francisco Lindor (283, 218), Christian Yelich (239, 227) — all have legitimate shots at joining the 250/250 Club. My guess is Yelich is the next member.

Seven players have tallied at least 250 hits in a season. Six of them — Ichiro Suzuki (262 in 2004), George Sisler (257 in 1920), Bill Terry (254 in 1930), Al Simmons (253 in 1925), Chuck Klein (250 in 1930), and Rogers Hornsby (250 in 1922) — are Hall of Famers. Can you name the one non-Hall of Famer?

Lefty O’Doul is the only player to record at least 250 hits in a single season who is not in the Hall of Fame. In 1929, he led all AL/NL players with 254 hits, a .398 batting average, and a .465 on-base percentage. He also ripped 32 home runs, stole 76 bases, and posted a 156 wRC+. Playing for the fifth-place Phillies, O’Doul finished second in the NL MVP race, behind Cubs second baseman Rogers Hornsby.

O’Doul does have his Hall of Fame supporters, who back him for his contributions to the game as a player and pioneer of Japanese baseball, and he was up for Eras Committee consideration for the Class of 2022. He received votes from five of the 16 members on the committee, seven short of the 12 needed for election.

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Perhaps you do not follow Pete Crow-Armstrong as obsessively as I do, but his prolonged heater has me wondering about his place in the game’s history.

Dan Stark

Davy Andrews: You know what I love, Dan? I love your fervor. Your passion for PCA is matched only by PCA’s passion for, well, everything. He’s a very fiery guy. I think you two might really click.

As such, I’m going to answer all four of your questions and give them 100%. Wait, whoops, I meant to say that I’m going to give each of your questions 25% effort. I’m sorry to say that I don’t have the time or the expertise to answer each of them perfectly, but I will answer them the best that I can given the constraints. Off we go.

1. We only have monthly splits going back to 2002, and our splits leaderboard doesn’t include WAR. However, I did look up the monthly splits for the two highest-WAR seasons in our database over that period, Barry Bonds’ 12.5-win 2001 season and 12.7-win 2002 season. Bonds’ best month over that stretch was August 2002, when he put up 3.0 WAR. I also looked up Bonds’ 2004 season, Aaron Judge’s 2024 season, and the other two highest-OPS months for which we have WAR data: Todd Helton’s May 2000 and Frank Thomas’ May 1994. Nobody matched PCA.

I still can’t say for certain that PCA just put up the best month ever. I mean, in 1923, Babe Ruth averaged 2.35 WAR per month, and his defense graded out well, so I imagine he might have pushed past 3.1 in one of them. In July 1924, Stathead credits Ruth with 64.7 runs created on offense, the highest total of any month in major league history, because he played in an absurd 37 games. In July 1920, he put up an sOPS+ of 335 over 34 games. That seems hard to beat. But I think there’s at least a chance that you’re right, and let’s remember what we’re talking about here. We’re saying that PCA’s competition for best month ever is literally Babe Ruth. Seems good.

2. Unfortunately, we can’t do span searches on our leaderboards, but our friends over at Stathead can! They don’t let us search by WAR, but I looked for the 29-game spans with the highest OPS and at least 140 plate appearances, to maximize production. In May and June 1930, Ruth ran a 1.540 OPS over 29 games and 140 plate appearances. Again, I don’t have the ability to tell you how much WAR he put up over that period, and he obviously didn’t come close to PCA’s defensive value, but Ruth did beat him by 263 points of OPS in an era with a much higher bar for offensive production.

3. I don’t have the computer power to calculate the prior career walk rate for each of the 5,767 players who have ever put up a qualified season with a walk rate of 10% or more. However, I can tell you that our database features four players who finished their entire careers with a walk rate below 5% and still somehow put up one qualified season above 10%. So this one has definitely happened before, probably several times. Here are our four walk-rate champions:

• John Clapp, 1881
• Deacon White, 1890
• Abner Dalrymple, 1887
• Anthony Cooper, 1941

So we have three players from before the turn of the 20th century and one player who got 105 plate appearances for the Black Yankees in the Negro Leagues. It’s still not a particularly common occurrence.

4. Ok, this one I can answer outright thanks to that amazing tool called Stathead. First of all, congratulations on not jinxing PCA! Once again, I think you guys would really hit it off should you ever find yourself stuck at a gate waiting for a delayed flight or something. PCA knocked two ding-dong doodles against the Orioles on Thursday night, pushing him to 21 home runs. According to Stathead, this is just the 23rd season ever in which a player went 20/20 in the first half. He was already in rarefied air when he achieved this feat last year. He now joins a short list of players who have done it more than once. Bobby Bonds did it in 1969 and 1973, and José Canseco impressively did it 10 years apart, in 1988 and 1998. But only one had gone back-to-back before PCA: Alfonso Soriano, who did it in 2002, 2003, and 2006.

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What’s the chance that Aaron Ashby wins 20 games, and then perhaps becomes the last 20-game winner for a while? Or, if he does, would that actually point toward other relievers joining him? His outlier results and the broad change in pitcher usage are tangled up together. — Jason

Is Aaron Ashby going to lead MLB in wins as a reliever? And if he does, is there any precedent for that? — Jeremy

Dan Szymborski: Looks like we’ve had an uptick in Aaron Ashby interest!

The possibility that Ashby wins 20 games as a reliever is one of those crazy things that is so unfathomable that you may not realize that it actually could happen. He enters Friday night’s game against with a 12-1 record in 44 games (54 2/3 innings).

Projections aren’t great at forecasting reliever win totals because they are tied to usage patterns that are determined by managers during games. It’s hard to predict when a manager will choose to use a reliever, and what the score will be when that reliever takes the mound.

Unless I’ve missed someone, there’s never been a pitcher to win 20 games in relief, the record belonging to Elroy Face with 18 wins in 1959. Six major league pitchers exceeded Face’s win total that year. ZiPS may not have a great deal of insight into Ashby’s win total, but it does think he’ll get to 15 wins this season, which would be the most in relief since Tom Johnson went 16-7 with the 1977 Minnesota Twins. He did not lead the league in wins that year; he didn’t even lead his own team in wins. Teammate Dave Goltz was tied with Dennis Leonard of the Royals and Jim Palmer of the Orioles for the AL lead with 20 wins. Six NL pitchers won at least 20 games in 1977, with Steve Carlton leading the way with 23.

Ashby has experienced just about perfect conditions for snagging decisions. The Brewers haven’t had an inordinate number of starters failing to complete five innings, but they use Ashby in a lot of tie games, 14 already, and that’s a good way for a reliever to rack up some wins. Luck also plays a role, and the Brewers have won 11 of the 14 games in which Ashby took the mound with the score tied, and he was credited with the win in six of them.

As to the death of the 20-game winner, it’s a bit premature. It’s obviously not as common as it used to be, but Spencer Strider won 20 games in 2023, and last year, Max Fried won 19, while Garrett Crochet and Carlos Rodón won 18.

Bottom line: It’s possible that Ashby wins 20 games this year, but because of all the variables that go into whether a reliever will be in the game with a chance to earn the win, it’s difficult to know what the odds are that he’ll get there. That may not be a satisfying answer, but you know what would be satisfying? If Ashby wins 20 games.

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Dear FanGraphs,

Baseball Learner

Ben Clemens: That game was indeed very strange, and in fact you are correct that it’s one of the standout true-outcomes-only games in history. First, there’s the question of what team has scored the most runs while only hitting homers and walking or getting hit by pitches. Our play-by-play database is complete back to 1974, so that’s what I’ll be using for today. The team that has scored the most runs with only homers, walks, and HBPs over that time frame is Cleveland. On June 24, 1989, the club tattooed the Rangers, racking up six homers (three from Joe Carter, plus one each from Pete O’Brien, Andy Allanson, and Cory Snyder) and two walks en route to a 7-3 win. But one of those two walks was left on base without scoring, so that’s not quite what you’re looking for.

Two teams have scored six runs with only homers, walks, and HBPs: the 2012 Orioles (five homers, one walk, one HBP, six runs in the second game of a May 10 doubleheader) and the 2012 Dodgers (four homers, three walks, six runs). But you’re correct that no one has scored more runs than the Yankees while cashing in every single baserunner and recording zero non-homer hits. Their five-runs-on-five-times-on-base mark is unmatched; the previous best mark was four, achieved many times.

Next up is highest true outcome percentage in a win. By this measure, the Yankees are third in our database. Here’s the list:

Those Diamondbacks stuck out 18 times against the Padres. Jake Peavy threw a 16-strikeout gem over seven innings. But the D-backs struck for a solo shot in the eighth and a walk-off, two-run homer against Trevor Hoffman in the ninth. No one has scored more runs than the Yankees with a higher true outcome percentage and won. But shout out to the 1997 Tigers, who struck out 17 times, walked five times, socked two home runs, and turned that into six runs and a win. And that the Rockies are listed above is funny for a different reason – they struck out 24 times!

Finally, I don’t quite understand the last part of this, because this isn’t really how xFIP works; batters exert a lot of control over whether their particular batted balls leave the yard. But I did look at which teams had the largest K/BB ratios, recorded zero non-homer hits, and still pulled off a win. The Yankees are high on that list, but the title goes to the 2012 Orioles, in that aforementioned game. They struck out 13 times, walked only once, and had no non-homer hits on their way to scoring six runs. Not too shabby!

Source

Source

Hello. While on paternity leave, I kept a journal about baseball and my daughter, who is not named Derek Jr., but who will henceforth be referred to as Derek Jr. You can read all of the entries here.

May 17
Yesterday, when Derek Jr. was fussy, my wife played a Black Eyes Peas song on her phone and bounced our daughter on a yoga ball. Today it became clear that she considered this to be a successful experiment and that it will be a thing in our household going forward. The baby is fussy. Let’s bounce her to that Black Eyed Peas song. On repeat. Day after day. The Black Eyed Peas playing in our home. This was not a path I could have foreseen. This is not a path I would have chosen. This already seems like it will not be a path I can escape.

While I’m feeding Derek Jr. in the evening, I catch the ninth and 10th innings of the Cubs and White Sox. The 10th inning is one of the most exciting I’ve seen in a while. The Cubs start with Pete Crow-Armstrong as the zombie runner, which already makes it must-see TV. The White Sox broadcast is apparently having some sort of kids’ day celebration, and all of the graphics have a distinctly Backyard Baseball feel to them. If you’ve never played the Backyard Sports games, then this will go right over your head, but as I watch, a realization washes over me: The speedy, lanky, left-handed, red-haired Pete-Crow Armstrong is Major League Baseball’s version of the speedy, lanky, left-handed, red-haired Pete Wheeler. I mean, come on:

As if on cue, PCA steals third base on the fourth pitch. It’s a classic Pete Wheeler move. Then things get scarier for the White Sox. Tyler Davis walks Dansby Swanson, putting runners on first and third with no outs. The infield is in, but Crow-Armstrong will be a tough man to catch at the plate on anything but a perfectly placed grounder. The cameras zoom in on Davis just in time to watch him mutter some curse words. I can’t quite make out what he’s saying, aside from the last word, which is very clearly a compound word one avoids in polite company. But my sense is that Davis isn’t so much castigating himself as he is opining about something specific. Maybe it’s something in his performance, maybe it’s about Swanson or the umpire. I’m open to any theories.

Nico Hoerner, the exact kind of contact hitter the White Sox don’t want to face, is up next. But everything works out, momentarily. Hoerner chops a ball directly to the shortstop, and Crow-Armstrong is hopelessly hung up between third and home. Still he does what he can. He keeps the rundown going long enough for the runners to move up to second and third, so the White Sox aren’t out of the woods yet. They bring the infield in again, but then they decide to walk Michael Busch intentionally. It loads the bases and brings up a struggling Alex Bregman with the possibility of an inning-ending double play.

The Sox move back to double-play depth, and Bregman does indeed ground the ball to shortstop, but he hits it so softly that Colson Montgomery’s only play is to first. The run scores. The Cubs now have an 8-7 lead and two runners in scoring position with two outs. The White Sox again choose to intentionally walk the bases loaded, and I can’t help but feel for Davis, whose walk rate is skyrocketing through not much fault of his own.

Davis buckles down, and then he buckles down again. He strikes out Seiya Suzuki looking with a fastball on the outside corner, but Suzuki challenges the pitch, which turns out to be just off the outside corner. Davis goes right back to the well, shaking off his catcher a couple times because he wants to challenging Suzuki with another outside fastball. Suzuki swings through this one, and the side is retired. The Cubs have scored one run on one walk, no hits. The ball never left the infield. Davis is credited with three walks. Little does he know that he is about to earn the second win of his major league career.

The White Sox start the bottom of the 10th with Chase Meidroth on second. He’s no Pete Wheeler, but he doesn’t have to be. Andrew Benintendi squares and bunts the first pitch he sees right to the center of the triangle composed of the pitcher, the first baseman, and the second baseman. I suppose when the ball ends up right in the middle of three people rather than two, it’s no longer a tweener; it’s an amonger. Busch plays it perfectly. He takes charge, fields the ball cleanly, and turns to toss it to first base, but pitcher Ryan Rolison forgets to cover the bag, and although second baseman Hoerner sprints over, catches Busch’s toss in stride, and hits the bag so hard that he partially rolls his ankle, he starts from so deep that he just can’t get there before Benintendi. Now the White Sox are the team with runners on first and third with no outs, only they’re not. A replay shows that Hoerner did beat Benintendi to the bag, then it shows exactly how far his ankle turned inward before he leaps up into the air in order to get his weight off it as quickly as possible. It’s incredible that Hoerner made it there in time. As the play was developing, it looked like he had no chance.

Still, the White Sox have the tying run on third and one out. It was a lot of action for one pitch. The next pitch contains a lot of action, too. Rolison starts Edgar Quero with another fastball right over the heart of the plate, and Quero does exactly what you’re supposed to do with such a pitch. It lands in the first row of the bleachers in left center. Everybody in the vicinity leaps to their feet to try to grab it – everybody except for the two Cubs fans between whom the ball lands.

Davis earns the win by inducing two grounders, striking out a batter, and walking three, two intentionally. Rolison throws two fastballs in the zone and earns the loss. As Quero crosses home plate in a Gatorade storm, the camera cuts to the stands, where, as if waiting for his cue, a White Sox fan with a glorious moustache in an Aaron Rowand jersey – that’s right, an Aaron Rowand jersey – jumps up and down in jubilation, then remembers his manners, turns to his Cubs fan neighbor, and offers him a gracious handshake.

May 18
There aren’t any day games today, so I catch up on yesterday’s highlights while Derek Jr. is down for an afternoon nap. The very first highlight I see is Junior Caminero’s 12th home run of the year. It’s nuts. Eury Pérez throws him a 2-2 sweeper down and away. And when I say down and away, I mean smack on the bottom edge of the zone, and just an inch or two from the outside corner. It’s a bit of a cement mixer, and it was likely intended to end up a few inches off the corner, but it’s still a fantastic location. Caminero doesn’t mind. He’s way out in front of the pitch, so to slow down, he sells out his lower half completely. With all his weight already on his front leg, he sticks his butt out, bends over at the waist, and reaches out to hook the ball toward the corner. By all rights, this should be a flare into shallow left, but Caminero’s swing is so powerful that even this hamstrung version of it carries enough bat speed to send the ball an absurd 372 feet and into the bleachers.

It immediately makes me think of Kirk Gibson’s homer in the 1988 World Series. The difference there is that Gibson was sitting on a backdoor slider the whole way. The day before, scout Mel Didier had guaranteed that Dennis Eckersley would throw one in such a situation: “When we got to Eckersley, and it was my turn to speak, I used my best Southern drawl and said, ‘Pardners, you can bank on this as sure as I’m standing here. If you’re a left-handed hitter and you get in a tough, tough situation with Eckersley, he’s going to throw you that back-door slider.’” Everyone on the bench was whispering “backdoor slider.” Gibson was so sure of what he was going to get that he stepped directly toward the plate in order to put himself in position to handle that outside pitch. Caminero, on the other hand, pretty clearly gets fooled, and crucially, this slider is breaking away from him rather than toward him. But he’s strong and coordinated enough to send the ball into the stands anyway.

Amazingly, this wasn’t the farthest low-outside pulled homer of the season. On April 10, Javier Báez — who else? — reached out and turned on a Chris Paddack sweeper that was off the plate both low and outside. Since 2008, the indiscriminate Báez is one of just four righties to pull multiple home runs on pitches in Attack Zone 19 (the low-and-outside corner, in the shadow zone). As I’m writing this, I am realizing that maybe after seven weeks of paternity leave, I am suffering from baseball analysis withdrawal.

Source

There’s far more you’re able to do on this page than I could possibly cover in a reasonably sized post, so these highlights will just be a taste to whet your appetite.

Members-Only Features

• Members can export to Excel, while non-Members will have that button grayed out.
• The Pitch% column (i.e., what percentage of pitches thrown by a pitcher or seen by a batter are of the given pitch type) available to Members only. The column is hidden by default but there’s a checkbox at the top:



The Pitch% column will use handedness as the denominator, so if you restrict to lefty pitchers only when looking at batters, it will be percentage of pitches seen from lefty pitchers.

• On the Group By dropdown, the Career/Pitch Type selection is also for Members only:

  

  The grouping by pitch type is necessary to separate different pitch types when selecting multiple pitch types. Here’s Jacob Misiorowski’s fastball and slider with the default grouping:

  

  And when grouping by pitch type:

  

Quick Splits

This is a great spot to start playing around, and you’ll automatically be tabbed between Batting and Pitching depending on which quick split is selected. The pitch types here are automatically mutually exclusive (e.g., selecting cutter will deselect four-seam fastballs), and each pitch type can be combined with a single handedness filter. Consider this Pitch-Type Splits 101, a micro-dose of all this page has to offer.

Split Parameters

These dropdowns represent Pitch-Type Splits 201, where filters can be combined into hundreds, if not thousands of possible leaderboards. Much like Burger King, you can have it your way. Want to look at sliders and curveballs from lefty pitchers to lefty hitters, grouped by batter, sorted by lowest chase rate? We got you:

Righty-on-righty changeups, forkballs, and splitters, sorted by who throws the ostensibly rare combo most often? There are buttons for that:

Timeframes

The leaderboards have data for the entire Statcast era, dating back to 2016, and the Date Range selectors — along with the Season option in the Group By dropdown at the top right — split different seasons into separate rows if you don’t want them combined. The Preset Timeframes dropdown has options for the last seven, 14, or 30 days, or the last one, two, or three calendar years.

All these features are but amuse-bouches for all that can be accomplished with the leaderboards, and as always, I encourage play and exploration. This tool is one of many at FanGraphs that gives plenty of power to the user, especially to our Members, thanks to the added Pitch% column and data export capability.

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The 2026 MLB Draft begins tomorrow. Dreams will come true, and the course of baseball history will be altered not just by the talent of the players, but by the collective decisions of hundreds of hard-working people with teams and agencies who have been preparing for this since long before last year’s draft even began. Even though the current CBA negotiations and the owners’ proposal to maim the draft’s current format casts something of a shadow on this year’s event, it’s an exciting time for everyone, myself included. I not only get to learn about this class of players and share opinions about their baseball futures with our readers, I also get to highlight the strategies teams might use to maximize the talent they come away with. The bonus pool system, and the ways that teams, players, and their representatives navigate the “game” of the draft, is one of the things that separates baseball’s selection meeting from those of other sports. It rewards strategy, creativity and the cultivation of information that has nothing to do with hard baseball data. In this post, I’ll talk about the makeup and quality of this year’s class, take you through the pockets of players that pose difficult questions for clubs, and discuss a couple potential draft strategies, as well as which teams might best be able to execute them.

You’ll find the scouting reports and tool grades of 146 players over on The Board. Of that group, the 75 with a 40+ FV or above grade have an ordinal ranking, with the balance grouped by demographic. Brendan and I may still pepper that space with additional players between now and the draft, but they’ll be guys who fall lower on the list. The hard-ranked players are the ones who we’re most excited about.

Let’s Take the Temperature of the Talent

The industry generally sees this as a bit of a down draft. I agree with that sentiment at the very top, where this class lacks an obviously elite talent and instead has a three-player tier of guys who you’d be thrilled to take with picks three to five in a typical draft, but not necessarily first overall.

There’s also a weird vacuum in the middle of the first round that’s the result of this being an inordinately risky group, mostly due to injuries. It’s one thing to be excited about Texas A&M second baseman Chris Hacopian (the data darling college hitter of this year’s class who dealt with back issues this season) or Arizona State lefty Cole Carlon (who touches 100 and has the best slider in the entire draft, but also was removed from a late-season start after his velo dipped) from our perspective as outside observers, but it’s another matter entirely to use a top 15 pick on (and give $5 million to) someone with a scary injury history or medical report. There are several players, mostly college pitchers, who would ordinarily have the talent to come off the board in the pick 10-20 range of most drafts, but injuries might cause them to slide later in the round.

Still, this isn’t exclusively a health-related issue. There are some incredibly talented and accomplished players whose profiles have one ominous detail that, depending on the team or scout, could reasonably make the drafter apprehensive about them. In this draft in particular there are lots of toolsy prospects who might not be able to hit big league pitching consistently enough to be any good. High school shortstop Jacob Lombard is an unbelievable athlete for his size and might be a plus defender at short with plus-plus power at maturity. He also had a 61% contact rate against decent-to-good high school pitchers on the showcase circuit, a rate lower than any big leaguer. This dynamic also applies to Alabama shortstop Justin Lebron (an elite defender with exciting power projection) and several of the college catchers, including Golden Spikes winner Daniel Jackson from Georgia, who slugged .800 this year.

There’s always a portion of the draft where teams get sufficiently nervous about these sorts of players that they run to safe-feeling college hitters who make a lot of contact, usually in big conferences. This tends to happen in the mid-to-late first round. You draft Sal Frelick, or Nico Hoerner, or Justin Foscue, or Trevor Larnach, or Logan Warmoth (they don’t always work out) and feel at least fine about it. This year, that might start happening inside the top 10. There aren’t enough healthy and exciting college pitchers, or super talented high school players, to push the run on this type of college hitter down toward the middle of the first round. Stable hitters like Hacopian, 5-foot-9 Georgia Tech outfielder Drew Burress, LSU center fielder Derek Curiel and Louisville outfielder Zion Rose are the candidates to fill the vacuum.

The Class Has Impressive Depth

Every year it feels like there are more high school pitchers with light-you-up stuff. We aren’t all that far removed from Tyler Kolek and Riley Pint going in the top couple of picks. Now there are high school righties throwing 100 who won’t even go in the first round. Some of the scouting industry’s adjustment to this demographic comes from the failures of past selections. It’s a risky contingent playing Russian Roulette with their ligaments every week for three or four years between when they’re drafted and when they reach the big leagues. But part of why high school pitchers are being “de-valued” at the very top of the draft is because the talent pool is suddenly flooded with good ones. The understanding and use of science in training, nutrition, biomechanics, and pitch design has flowed from the highest levels of baseball all the way down to whichever Zoomer is curious and motivated enough to apply it to himself. As a result, there are 16 high school pitchers in this draft to whom I’d be tempted to give $2 million or more to. But there are only so many picks, and there are about 75 players in this draft, regardless of position or age, to whom that applies, while there are only about 50 draft slots with bonus amounts of $2 million or more. There might be a few teams that are in a position to take advantage of that talent overage.

Which Teams Have the Power?

Each individual draft pick slot has an assigned bonus amount that contributes to the total pool a team is allowed to spend. Teams with early selections and/or a copious number of picks have the biggest bonus pools, and usually leave the weekend with the most talent. Here are the teams with more than $14 million to spend this year, as well as their total pool amounts:

• Pirates: $19,130,700
• Rays: $19,009,300
• White Sox: $17,592,100
• Giants: $17,350,600
• Twins: $16,929,600
• Cardinals: $16,612,300
• Royals: $15,954,000
• Braves: $15,870,800
• Rockies: $15,557,600

The Braves, Giants, Royals and Cardinals are arguably in the most interesting position of this group because their second picks (26th, 29th, 30th, and 32nd overall, respectively) come before the second picks of the teams ahead of them on this bonus pool leaderboard. If there is an expensive player or two who the Pirates, Rays, White Sox or Twins are hoping to float to their second pick, that quartet above (depending on what they did with their first selections) is in position to spoil the fun and offer that player enough to sign. The Pirates, who have baseball’s best farm system before accounting for prospect graduations, have five picks in the first three rounds and the biggest bonus pool.

The Impact of NIL Money

A growing dynamic affecting the signability of players is the money college programs are able to offer them. This is less of an issue for the top-of-the-class talents, and more a source of tension for established college players in rounds 6-10. There are some players who are more impactful in the college game than they are valued in pro ball, mostly the big, positionless mashers and the pitchers who are rotation staples in college but have fringe stuff compared to big leaguers. These are the sorts of players who schools are offering $500,000 in NIL money to, while the slot value of picks after the fifth round dips below that figure. Though there are definitely good players drafted after the fifth round every year, you could argue this issue mostly impacts the quality of org guys rather than those who we’d consider to be actual prospects. But even if that’s true, it’s contributing to the degradation of the overall level of play in the minors.

How Will Teams Under New Leadership Behave?

The thought processes of successful teams tend to permeate the rest of the league over time as executives a level or two below the GM/POBO are hired to run other orgs. There are several teams that have changed leadership during the last couple of years, and those new folks might bring their old team’s strategy to the draft room. It sometimes takes a couple of years to suss out whether that’s happened, and if so, what those tendencies are. Sometimes teams copy the approach of others without there being connective tissue like this; they just see the strategy being used and decide it’s a good idea to try it themselves. For example, for the last several years, the Brewers have employed a strategy where they save bonus space early on so they can keep taking mid-six-figure type players at a point late in the draft when the rest of the league is mostly drafting organizational filler. But part of their ability to continue to do so successfully might depend on them being the only ones with this approach. I’m curious if anyone else will start to try this since the Brewers are a team that’s generally very highly regarded.

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With the MLB Draft just a day away, there is more information left in my notebook from the Combine than I have time to dispense. So, in the spirit of my post-draft grab bag from last season, here are some players who caught my eye (or at least my microphone) in Phoenix, whose names you ought to know come Draft Day.

Foremost among these is Jackson Flora, a right-handed pitcher out of UC Santa Barbara. I think he’s the top pitching prospect in the class. Eric Longenhagen and Brendan Gawlowski put him fourth overall on The Board; he’s the only pitcher in the top nine. And not that we care too much what other people think, but that’s very much the consensus position.

This draft has a clear top tier of Roch Cholowsky, the UCLA shortstop and presumptive top pick dating back 12 months, plus Georgia Tech catcher Vahn Lackey and Texas prep shortstop Grady Emerson. The prospect team has Future Value grades of 55 on all three of those players, then Flora with a 50, then the rest of the class starting at a 45+.

In his media scrum on Day 1 of the Combine, Flora said he was meeting with seven teams — the ones holding picks two through eight. If he doesn’t go in the first five or six picks, it’ll be a big deal.

Why? Well, I know I just wrote a big thing about how there’s no such thing as an ideal baseball body, but you can forget all that: It looks like Flora. The California right-hander is a lean 6-foot-5, 205 pounds, with mid-to-upper-90s heat that plays up due to extension and hits 100 on the gun from time to time. For hitters who get too comfortable sitting on the heater, Flora can break out a variety of pitches across the cutter-slider continuum. He also debuted a potential plus changeup during this past season.

“That pitch changed my life, made it a lot easier to get outs, so it was awesome,” Flora said. But that’s not the only improvement he made this year. “I think I was just more of a polished pitcher. Instead of throwing the ball as hard as I could all the time and just spinning it, I think I learned a lot about pitching backwards, how to execute pitches, how to pitch to my strengths and a hitter’s weaknesses… I worked a lot on the mental side of the game and my routine during the week off the field. I think that helped me a lot.”

This season, Flora went 12-0 in 16 starters, with an ERA of 1.06. Now, the run-scoring environment in college baseball has changed a lot over the past 15 years, so if you’re just dropping in for the draft, you might not have a good handle on exactly how good a 1.06 ERA is.

It’s incredibly good. The second-best ERA among qualified pitchers belonged to Oregon reliever Tanner Bradley. The only full-time starter to get within a run of Flora, Oregon State’s Dax Whitney, who only made 11 starts. Flora also held opponents to a .153 batting average, which was fourth in Division I and first among starting pitchers. Paul Skenes had a 1.69 ERA and .164 opponent batting average in his draft year, albeit against tougher competition, in way more innings, and with a much higher strikeout rate. Flora might not be quite that good, but he was basically unhittable.

It’s not surprising that Flora improved quite a bit over his time in college, because UCSB is a pitching factory. Flora is likely to be the third Gauchos pitcher selected in the top five picks since 2015, after Dillon Tate went fourth overall in 2015 and Tyler Bremner was picked second last year. Cardinals right-hander Michael McGreevy was also a first-round pick out of UCSB, and then there’s the school’s crown jewel, Cy Young winner Shane Bieber.

Gauchos head coach Andrew Checketts has made a career of recruiting smart, athletic pitchers, then coaching them up as they develop physically. None of those five pitchers, including Flora, were drafted out of high school.

“I think it’s just the culture there, just being able to have a lot of trust in the coaches and the team,” Flora said. “There’s so much respect for Coach Checketts and [assistant coach Dylan] Jones, who helped the pitchers so much. So many guys come through here, maybe I should listen to the coaches, maybe they do know what they’re doing.”

Flora was a late bloomer; he said he grew a foot over his four years of high school, and was throwing 89 to 92 mph during his senior year, but got up to 94 by the time he got to campus. Once there, he started putting on weight and gaining strength as he underwent a regimented weight training program for the first time in his life, and the velo kept ticking up.

Having Bremner as an example helped as well. Flora credited his older teammate with making him internalize how good he’d become.

“He’s telling me: ‘Dude, when you’re out there, you need to understand dudes don’t want to face you,’” Flora said. “He was also good at — and we preach this a lot at school — faceless hitters, and just working on controlling the controllables. When the ball leaves your hand, there’s nothing you can really do unless he hits the ball right back to you.”

Armed with that newfound mental strength, plus triple-digit velocity and a new changeup, Flora is set up to make the leap to the pros with ease.

…

Flora is one of the best prospects in this draft, but the best story in the class belongs to Arizona high school catcher Alain Gomez-Gudino.

Jesús Cano profiled Gomez-Gudino for Baseball America back in March, and the tale of how Gomez-Gudino came to be a draft prospect is worth reading in full. In August 2023, Gomez-Gudino, then 15 years old, left Caracas, Venezuela with his mother, sister, and stepfather. After months of planning in secret, they slipped out of town and crossed the border to Colombia, hoping to leave behind Venezuela’s repressive government and economic turmoil. They carried one bag of clothes and food, plus Gomez-Gudino’s catcher’s mitt.

Over the next 17 days, they made their way north through Central America. At one point, Gomez-Gudino had to reach into a river to save his mother, who’d been pulled under by the current, from drowning. Later, they were captured by uniformed strangers of unknown origin in Mexico, and had to plead with them to keep one of their cellphones so they’d be able to stay in contact with family.

Eventually, they arrived in Mexico City, where they waited another three months to get an interview for political asylum in the United States. It’s far from the most perilous part of the tale, but most high school baseball prospects train incessantly. I was curious how Gomez-Gudino had stayed in practice during the four months he and his family were on the road.

“I brought my catcher’s glove all the way here, and I found a ball next to a park in Mexico City,” Gomez-Gudino explained. “I gave my glove to my stepfather, and I’d warm up a bit. I didn’t play that much, just for two weeks before I came here, on a summer team in Mexico.”

Grant of asylum in hand, Gomez-Gudino’s family settled in Scottsdale. He joined the baseball team at Saguaro High School, and his baseball career took off. The webbing of that catcher’s mitt, which had made the trip all the way from Caracas, finally gave out under the force of a fastball from Cam Caminiti, Gomez-Gudino’s high school batterymate. (When they make a movie of Gomez-Gudino’s life story, they’re going to have to break the fourth wall here to reassure viewers that no, this really happened.)

Caminiti went 24th overall to Atlanta in the 2024 draft, and the scouts who’d swarmed over the young left-hander soon took notice of the switch-hitting sophomore backstop. Invites to showcases followed quickly, as did college offers, and two years later, he’s one of the top high school catchers in the class.

All this happened while Gomez-Gudino was still adjusting to life some 3,200 miles and eight countries from home.

“It’s way different [in the U.S.], because you got to go to school,” Gomez-Gudino said. “In Venezuela, it’s just baseball, baseball, baseball.”

Among the many things Gomez-Gudino lacked when he left Venezuela: Any kind of working command of English.

“I had to learn a lot, because when I came here two years ago, I had literally nothing,” he said. “Just, like, ‘Hi, how are you?’ Now, I’m still practicing. It’s not 100%, but I’m trying to get there.”

Going from zero to graduating high school and giving interviews in English in two years is no small task; Gomez-Gudino said there’s no real secret, he just listened as much as he could and asked questions when he didn’t know a word. Music and Adam Sandler movies filled in the rest of the gaps, he said.

Having been through an ordeal I could scarcely contemplate, and despite being on the older side for a high school senior, Gomez-Gudino seems noticeably youthful. He looks like a kid, an impression that was only reinforced by the fact that he smiles all the time. I found myself getting excited, because he’s committed to my alma mater, the University of South Carolina, whose baseball program is in dire need of talent.

Eric had to let me down gently with the truth: He’s probably too good to make it to campus.

Legit switch-hitting catching prospects are rare, and among Gomez-Gudino’s highlights at the Combine was a batting practice round in which he hit an exit velocity of 104 mph from the right side and 106 mph from the left side. Which isn’t in Caden Bogenpohl’s territory, but it’s not bad for an 18-year-old with some physical development left.

And who plays a premium position. As you might have guessed by how far Gomez-Gudino carried his mitt, this kid loves catching.

“I used to pitch a lot when I was a kid, but when I heard pitchers don’t hit, I [switched] to third base,” Gomez-Gudino said. “But when I saw Salvador Perez play, I just liked how he commanded the game, how he called the game, how he talked to his teammates and everything. I just said I want to be like him, to be the captain on the field, call pitches every play, every game, and be in command there.”

Someone is going to take Gomez-Gudino fairly high, and in about five years we’re going to hear this story on Sunday Night Baseball. It’s good enough to bear repeating.

…

Outside the first round, the draft can get unpredictable and mysterious, but one of the guys I’m willing to stick my neck out on is Lucas Nawrocki, a high school two-way player out of Aledo, Texas.

At just 5-foot-11, Nawrocki is a little short for a pitcher — or a power hitter, for that matter, but he put on a terrific batting practice round: 18 pitches, 10 of them put in play at 105 mph or harder, topping out at 109.7.

On the mound, the velocity isn’t especially impressive, but Nawrocki’s secondary stuff is nuts. He’s got a mid-80s kick change that drops in around 1,000 rpm, with a low-80s slider with top-shelf spin numbers: 3,000 rpm at minimum, up to 3,200 pretty easily. This breaking ball he can either throw like a sweeper and get a plate’s worth of horizontal movement, or drop vertically like a curveball. That latter version is just nasty. I don’t know how anyone hits it.

“It works really well. I can manipulate and shape my slider really easily, with that crossfire action,” he said. “I can get more depth on it whenever I want, or I can get more sweeping action whenever I want, so it’s a really neat thing… Last offseason, I was playing with it. I wanted to try to find a curveball, but then I [realized] I can get the same grip and maybe preset my wrist a little bit differently and get a lot more depth, instead of switching up the grip.”

That combination of high-spin/low-spin is incredibly rare. In the majors, only four pitchers have a breaking ball with an average spin rate of 2,900 or higher, and either a changeup or splitter with an average spin rate of 1,300 or lower: Nolan McLean, Matthew Liberatore, Clay Holmes, and Anthony Nunez.

Plus Adrian Morejon, whose average slider spin rate is 2,899 rpm as I write this now, but it was above the cutoff point two weeks ago when I found this bit of trivia and presented it to Nawrocki. I mentioned Morejon because here’s the center field camera angle for Nawrocki at PG National:

And here’s Morejon from the same angle:

A 5-foot-11 left-handed pitcher can get outs if he can kill spin on his changeup while ramping it up on his breaking ball.

Actually, with that foot position and low arm slot, Morejon was not the first name that came to mind: It was Billy Wagner. And because Nawrocki is from Texas, I thought he might’ve been inspired by watching Wagner pitch for the Astros. Obviously I asked him about it, and realized mid-sentence that by the time Nawrocki was born in December 2007, Wagner had already not been an Astro for more than four years.

Time is a cruel mistress.

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Audio intro: Jonathan Crymes, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Alex Glossman and Ali Breneman, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to McCourt’s new league
Link to McCourt wiki
Link to show jumping wiki
Link to Vladimir Shpunt article
Link to NPR on Fitzgerald’s quote
Link to Nickelodeon Guts wiki
Link to “Let’s go to Mo”
Link to “Aggro Crag piece
Link to Slippery Stairs video
Link to Murphy/Chourio quote
Link to Rendon lefty dinger
Link to Mr. Baseball wiki
Link to Mr. Baseball scene
Link to FG post on Skenes
Link to Sheehan on Skenes
Link to Skenes mechanics post
Link to Skenes velo tweet
Link to Skenes velo data
Link to Skenes on his velo
Link to Skenes on O’Hearn
Link to O’Hearn article
Link to Skenes hot dog ad
Link to Skenes on EW
Link to Griffin injury article
Link to sagittal band info
Link to FG post on Kwan
Link to Verlander’s retirement post
Link to Verlander Legend pick
Link to 2025 ASG box score
Link to Wheeler leaderboard
Link to Wheeler ASG article 1
Link to Wheeler ASG article 2
Link to McCutchen tweet
Link to Orioles record post
Link to Orioles WAR leaders
Link to “great call from the haters”
Link to LLHR article
Link to LLHR video
Link to Sam on the LLHR
Link to Posnanski on the LLHR
Link to BP on the LLHR
Link to FG post on the LLHR
Link to Tolbert record post 1
Link to Tolbert record post 2
Link to Dodgers extra-inning game

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