His M.O. for attacking the strike zone? I asked the 29-year-old southpaw about that following one of his spring training outings earlier this month. As it has become increasingly common for pitchers — particularly power pitchers — to aim middle and let their stuff play from there, I wanted to know how precise he is with intended location.

“My changeup, I throw down the middle, but that’s because when I throw it down the middle, the result is down and away,” replied Skubal. “And when I throw my slider down the middle, the result is glove-side and down. So, there are pitches I throw down the middle, but that’s just visually, as opposed to what I’m actually doing.

“I feel like I do a good job of throwing strikes,” continued Skubal. “As far as really executing every pitch that I throw… I don’t know. There is probably a metric on it. I’d like to think I’m a little bit above average, but I don’t know what the numbers say.“

Measuring command is an imperfect science, so where Skubal ranks depends on your metric of choice. According to our PitchingBot model, he was among the best of the best. Last season, Skubal graded out at 64 (on a 20-80 scale) tying him with Seattle’s Bryan Woo at the top of our botCmd leaderboard.

Stuff+ isn’t nearly as bullish on his command. Asked for their input, my colleagues Ben Clemens and Michael Rosen both pointed out that Skubal is merely a little better than average. Ben’s inclination is to “split the difference [between botCmd and Location+] and say he is solidly above average.”

Regardless of his ranking, Skubal knows that pinpoint precision isn’t a requirement for pitchers — especially ones who possesses a high-90s heater and a bat-missing seam-shift changeup.

“I don’t really care if I hit my spot if I’m competing in the strike zone, getting ahead, getting into leverage [counts],” he explained. “Going right after guys is what matters to me.”

A finesse pitcher he’s not, and in all likelihood, he never will be. Skubal made that clear when asked by another reporter about Toronto’s Max Scherzer, against whom he’d just matched up in a spring training tilt.

“I think every pitcher probably admires him,” Skubal said of the 41-year-old future Hall of Famer “Early in his career…. I think he was told that he was going to break down, when he was 21. And he sure as [expletive] hasn’t. I love that. I love those types of stories like ‘The max effort thing wouldn’t work.” I don’t know. He’s been pretty good. Look at his numbers and what he’s been able to accomplish.”

“I don’t want to ever not be a power pitcher,” Skubal went on to say.

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RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS

Pete Crow-Armstrong is 7 for 9 against Miles Mikolas.

Joe Garagiola went 22 for 49 against Robin Roberts.

Robin Ventura went 16 for 30 against Tim Belcher.

Andre Dawson went 23 for 55 against Phil Niekro.

Rick Manning went 8 for 19 against Mark Fidrych.

———

Jake Bird is looking to get back on track after a train wreck conclusion to his 2025 campaign. When I wrote about the 30-year-old reliever for FanGraphs last July, the first line began, “Jake Bird is having a career-best season.” That was certainly the case. When we’d spoken at Fenway Park a few days earlier, Bird boasted a 2.79 ERA, a 2.64 FIP, and a 28.6% strikeout rate over 38 appearances comprising 48-and-third innings. Given that Coors Field was his home venue, those numbers weren’t simply a personal best, they were flat out impressive.

Things proceeded to go south for the then-Rockies right-hander. Over his final 10 big-league appearances — seven with Colorado and three with the New York Yankees following a trade deadline deal — he allowed 17 hits, six walks, and 21 runs (!) over seven tumultuous innings. A stint in Triple-A wasn’t much better: he registered a 6.32 ERA over 15 outings with the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders.

What happened?

“It’s weird,” Bird told me at Yankees camp a few weeks ago. “When we talked last year was kind of the turning point of my season, in a bad way. I had to do a lot of looking at it, trying to figure out what happened, because I obviously wasn’t able to right the ship. I think a lot of it was about me flying open, versus staying on a line. Other than that… now is really just about having that reset and staying healthy.”

I asked Bird if health became an issue, or if maybe he just ran out of gas.

“I mean, I felt really good,” Bird told me. “It’s something where you look back in the offseason when you’re doing maintenance on your body, and maybe something was making me compensate in a certain way. I felt good, and my stuff was okay on paper, so who really knows. It’s hard to say.”

The path going forward? Is there anything pitch-wise that he needs to improve upon?

“After I got traded over here, we talked about fastball shapes,” Bird replied. “My sinker was really good at getting ground balls at points, but when I started struggling, that pitch is what was getting me hung out to dry. And it’s kind of weird, because it wasn’t too different earlier in the year. It was getting hit more than my breaking balls were, but not as much as they were getting hit in July. So, maybe I want to throw another fastball, with another shape, so that hitters can’t just wait for one.”

Along with sweepers and curveballs, Bird threw 322 sinkers, five four-seamers, and 24 cutters last season. Over his first two outings this year, he has thrown 11 sinkers and eight four-seamers (as well as six sweepers) while retiring six of seven batters. He has three strikeouts and has induced a double play.

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A quiz:

The team with the most sacrifice hits over the past 10 seasons also has the most since the turn of the century (2000). Another team has both the fewest over the past 10 seasons and the fewest since the turn of the century. Who are the teams on opposite ends of the sacrifice-hits spectrum?

The answer can be found below.

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NEWS NOTES

MLB’s 2026 Opening Day rosters included a total of 247 players representing 16 different countries and territories outside of the United States. The Dominican Republic (93) had the most, followed by Venezuela (60), Cuba (20), Canada (17), and Japan (14).

The Carolina League’s Myrtle Beach Pelicans (Low-A Chicago Cubs) have hired Joey Robertson as their new radio play-by-play announcer. The Virginia Tech alum spent last season as a broadcast and media relations assistant for the Double-A Portland Sea Dogs.

Doug Camilli, a catcher who played for the Los Angeles Dodgers from 1960-1964, and for the Washington Senators from 1965-1969, died on March 17 at age 89. His father, Dolph Camilli, won the 1941 NL MVP award with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

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The answer is the Colorado Rockies and the Boston Red Sox. The Rockies have
325 since 2016, and 1,511 since 2000. The Red Sox have 101 since 2016, and 499 since 2000.

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Patrick Wisdom is now in the Mariners system, the 34-year-old corner infielder having signed with Seattle as a free agent over the winter. He spent last season in the KBO with the Kia Tigers. Non-tendered by the Chicago Cubs in November 2024, Wisdom was subsequently playing in Mexico when Kia came calling.

“There were some [MLB] teams in the mix, but Korea seemed like a good opportunity,” Wisdom said of the move to a different continent. “It’s a big commitment to go halfway around the globe, but the family and I decided we should do it. My wife and I have three kids, and we put them in school there. Kia did a great job caring for us; they gave us everything we needed. There was a learning curve — it’s a different culture — but we really enjoyed living there.”

The Tigers certainly enjoyed what Wisdom brought to their lineup. The slugger hammered 35 home runs while logging a .535 slugging percentage and a 126 wRC+. That he also fanned 142 times — the third-highest total in the circuit — made him somewhat atypical in terms of hitting style.

“Kia expressed that they wanted me to hit homers and drive in runs, but overall, the KBO is kind of in the same boat as NPB,” explained Wisdom. “They play the game for what the game calls for. If you need to get a guy over, you bunt him over. They hit-and-run a lot. They steal bases. It’s not all velocity and home runs. They love that too, but at the same time, it’s more the art of baseball.”

One of the cultural differences was fan behavior in ballparks.

“The atmosphere really stood out,” said Wisdom. “They have a lot of passion for the game. I’m not saying that MLB doesn’t play with passion, but every game in the KBO is high energy. All of the fans are chanting. Everyone has a song. Here, sometimes the games can be kind of quiet. That’s not a bad thing, but it is a big difference that I experienced in Korea.”

Wisdom is beginning the current campaign — his 16th in professional baseball — with Triple-A Tacoma. He went 2-for-3 with a home run on Friday as the Rainiers opened their season with a 7-6 win over the Reno Aces.

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FOREIGN AFFAIRS

The NPB season got underway on Friday with the defending champion Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks edging the Hoikkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters 6-5 in one of six Opening Day matchups. Each team homered three times.

Bobby Dalbec went deep in his NPB debut as the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants opened their season with a 3-1 win over the Hanshin Tigers. Trey Cabbage, who homered 17 times for the Giants a year ago, also went yard.

The Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles had the most resounding Opening Day result, routing the Orix Buffaloes 10-0. Carson McCusker and Luke Voit combined for four hits and seven RBIs.

The KBO season got underway on Saturday with the defending champion LG Lions losing 11-7 to the KT Wiz. Sam Hilliard went 3-for-4 with a home run for the winning side, while his teammate, 19-year-old shortstop Gang-min Lee, logged three hits in his debut.

The Hanwha Eagles had the KBO’s most dramatic Opening Day win, tallying three two-out runs in the bottom of the 11th inning to beat the Kiwoom Heroes 10-9. Baek-ho Kang delivered the game-winning hit.

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Johnny King is ranked sixth on our 2026 Toronto Blue Jays Top Prospects list, with a 45 FV. Drafted 95th overall in 2024 out of Naples [Florida] High School, the 19-year-old left-hander has the potential to grow into much more than that. As my colleague Brendan Gawlowski wrote when profiling him in January, “If all goes well, he could well launch himself into the Top 100 discussion.”

King’s numbers last season were along the lines of what you might expect from a talented-but-raw teenager facing professional hitters for the first time. Over 61-and-two-thirds innings between the Florida Complex League and Low-A Dunedin, he logged a 2.48 ERA and 39.5% strikeout rate, but also a 13.9% walk rate. As Gawlowski stated, the youngster will “need to work on the plate a little more.”

An evaluator for an American League team whom I spoke to offered a similar concern, as well as praise, for the young hurler.

“His velocity is up to 98, although he needs to locate better,” the scout told me. “His changeup has made a lot of progress. When he came to pro ball he didn’t really have one — he was basically just fastball-breaking ball — and that pitch will help everything play better. He seems to have the aptitude, and he’s a competitor, so I see a future big league starter if everything comes together.”

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FARM NOTES

The Triple-A season got underway Friday with a slate of games that included the Charlotte Knights riding roughshod over the Durham Bulls by a count of 19-2. The Chicago White Sox affiliate hammered six home runs, three of them in an 11-run fourth inning. Tanner Murray went 4-for-6 with a pair of dingers and five RBIs.

Konnor Griffin went 1-for-3 with a walk and a stolen base in his Triple-A debut as the Indianapolis Indians were outscored 4-2 by the St. Paul Saints. The 19-year-old shortstop in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization proceeded to go 2-for-3 with a pair of walks and another stolen base on Saturday.

Brendan Beck had Opening Day’s best pitching performance. The 27-year-old right-hander in the New York Yankees organization fanned nine batters and allowed just one baserunner over five shutout innings as the Scranton Wilkes-Barre RailRiders blanked the Buffalo Bisons 8-0.

James Tibbs III went 4-for-5 with two doubles and a triple to help lead the Oklahoma Comets (Dodgers) to a 13-6 win over the Albuquerque Isotopes last night. Ryan Fitzgerald went 3-for-5 with a double and a home run.

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A random obscure former player snapshot:

Don Gross grew up in small-town Wedman, Michigan, attended Michigan State University, and went on to have an under-the-radar career. A southpaw who toed the rubber for the Cincinnati Reds from 1955-1957, and the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1958-1960, Gross was a combined 20-22 with 10 saves and a 3.73 ERA over 145 appearances comprising 398 innings.

His most notable outings came with the Reds. On seven occasions, Gross hurled a complete game while allowing one or fewer earned runs, twice while going 10 frames. He was also out-dueled by Warren Spahn in a 1-0 loss to the Milwaukee Braves, with Joe Torre driving in the contest’s lone run. Todd Benzinger, who played for Cincinnati and four other teams across the 1987-1995 seasons, is Gross’s nephew.

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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE

At MSU Today, Melody Kindraka wrote about how former big-league outfielder and college coach (including for the Spartans) Danny Litwhiler revolutionized baseball.

The Athletic’s Jen McCaffrey wrote about how Craig Breslow knows that it is crunch time for his job in Boston.

Also by McCaffrey: CB Bucknor had six pitches overturned by ABS yesterday (it would have been more had the Red Sox not run out of challenges) and he also called out Trevor Story on a questionable checked swing, prompting the ejection of Alex Cora.

SNY’s Chelsea Janes wrote about how the new-look Mets lineup embodied David Stearns’ vision in a dominant Opening Day performance.

MLB.com’s Sarah Langs looked at 10 players who could reach career milestones in 2026.

Dave McNally won 20 or more games for the Orioles in four straight seasons, has four World Series wins on his ledger, and played a leading role in the legal case that brought free agency to baseball in 1975. Montana-based journalist Dennis Gaub believes that the Billings native belongs in the Hall of Fame, and he shared his reasoning at Baltimore Baseballl.

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RANDOM FACTS AND STATS

In the decade of the 2000s, 51.8% of all MLB plate appearances came from players who were at least 29 years old. In the 2010s, that percentage dipped to 45.0%. In the 2020s, it is 42.2%. (Per Baseball America.)

Four players in MLB history have 8,000 or more plate appearances and a batting average of exactly .300: Roberto Alomar, Freddie Freeman, Enos Slaughter, and Michael Young.

Alan Foster was the most successful player selected and signed by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1965’s inaugural MLB draft. A second-rounder out of a Hacienda Heights, California high school, Foster pitched in parts of 10 big-league seasons and logged 48 wins and 5.4 WAR. The Dodgers’ 10th round pick that year was a right-hander out of the University of Southern California they failed to sign: Tom Seaver returned to school, ultimately landed with the New York Mets, and went on to log 311 wins and 92.4 WAR.

Hal Newhouser went 80-27 with a 1.99 ERA and 24.6 WAR for the Detroit Tigers from 1944-1946. “Prince Hal” posted records of 29-9, 25-9, and 26-9 during that three-year stretch, twice capturing AL MVP honors.

Old Hoss Radbourn went 140-57 with a 1.81 ERA and 23.0 WAR for the National League’s Providence Grays from 1882-1884. The Hall of Fame right-hander was at his best in the last of those three seasons, going 60-12 with a 1.38 ERA over an unfathomable-by-today’s-standards 678-and-two-thirds innings.

On today’s date in 2003, the Boston Red Sox traded Javier López to the Colorado Rockies in exchange for a PTBNL (Ryan Cameron). Cameron pitched in 10 professional seasons, all in the minors. López made his MLB debut with the Rockies in April and went on to take the mound 839 times, all in relief, over 14 big-league seasons.

The Montreal Expos signed Greg A. Harris on today’s date in 1985. On September 28 of that same season, the right-hander pitched ambidextrously against the Cincinnati Reds in the 703rd, and final, appearance of his 15-year career.

Players born on today’s date include Tom Tellmann, a right-hander who went 18-7 with 13 saves and a 3.05 ERA over 227 innings while pitching for three teams across the 1979-1985 seasons. In 1983, the Watten, Pennsylvania native notched nine wins and eight saves while logging a 2.90 ERA with the Milwaukee Brewers.

Also born on today’s date was Ferris Fain, a first baseman who slashed .290/.424/.396 with a 127 wRC+ over 4,905 plate appearances while playing for three teams, mostly the Philadelphia Athletics, from 1947-1955. A five-time All-Star who won batting titles in 1951 (.344) and 1952 (327), Fain drew 904 walks and fanned 206 times over the course of his nine-year career. He was known for a hot temper and enjoying a drink.

Clarence Beers is one of the more obscure pitchers in St. Louis Cardinals franchise history. In his lone MLB game, the right-hander faced seven Chicago Cubs batters on May 2, 1948 and retired just two of them. His time down on the farm was far more extensive, and far more successful. Beers’s 13 minor-league seasons included his going 25-8 with the Houston Buffaloes in 1948.

Source

We did it everyone! We made it through the long offseason. Regular season baseball is back, and it has already delivered the goods. I attended Mets-Pirates at Citi Field on Opening Day to witness the highly anticipated pitching matchup between reigning NL Cy Young winner Paul Skenes and new New York ace Freddy Peralta. Naturally, Skenes had the worst game of his career thus far, failing to make it through the first inning, and Peralta didn’t pitch well either. The two teams combined for 18 runs in the 8 1/2 innings of play. I wrote about the Skenes start, the two defensive blunders by Oneil Cruz in center field that contributed to Pittsburgh’s first-inning fiasco, and the lineup’s surprisingly strong showing. You can read that here.

Because I was covering that contest, I didn’t get a chance to watch any of the other early games and saw only a portion of the later ones. That means I missed White Sox catcher Edgar Quero successfully challenge three ball calls in the first two innings before finally getting one wrong in the sixth inning. In that same game, which the Brewers won 14-2, Jacob Misiorowski struck out 11 Chicago batters. I also didn’t catch the pitcher’s duel between Orioles lefty Trevor Rogers and Twins righty Joe Ryan; Baltimore won, 2-1, and Adley Rutschman, not to be confused with Badley, went 2-for-4, though Tyler O’Neill’s Opening Day home run streak was snapped at six. In the later afternoon games, the Cardinals scored eight runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to secure a comeback win over the Rays, after allowing Tampa Bay to plate six runs in the top of the frame. JJ Wetherholt, who went 1-for-4 with a home run and two RBI in that game, was one of a number of prospects who shined in their big league debuts. Kevin McGonigle had four hits in the Tigers’ 8-2 win over the Padres, and Justin Crawford went 2-for-4 in the Phillies’ win over the Rangers. I actually got to see Mets right fielder Carson Benge blast his first homer, this after a dead bird had fallen in front of him in right field. It wasn’t technically his first major league game because he debuted in the postseason last year, but Cleveland’s Chase DeLauter bopped two home runs in a 6-4 win over the Mariners.

I ran through all those games up top because that’s the last we’ll be covering the Opening Day action in this week’s mailbag. Instead, we’ll be answering your questions about Matt McLain’s strong spring, Aaron Judge’s low squared-up rate, players who might benefit the most from ABS, and Tony Vitello. 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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Hi there!

Thanks, and have a great day! – Matthew

Matt McLain had a ridiculous spring. You submitted your question on March 12, two weeks before Opening Day, and by the end of spring training, McLain still led in four of those categories (batting average, hits, runs, home runs), and was top three in the others. His overall line: .509/.559/.981, 1.540 OPS, 27 hits, 18 runs, seven homers, 16 RBI, and a 287 wRC+, which ranked second behind Jake Bauers’ 311.

I should start by saying that even before his otherworldly Cactus League performance, I was expecting some sort of bounce-back from McLain. He missed the entirety of the 2024 season after undergoing surgery to repair a torn labrum, and as he struggled mightily through last year, it looked like he had not yet returned to full strength, though we didn’t know for sure. He didn’t acknowledge that the procedure may have contributed to his 2025 woes until earlier this month.

“[The shoulder] actually felt 100 percent last year,” said McLain, according to C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic. “Everyone told me that you have to give yourself two years. I didn’t want to believe it, but I kind of believe it now.”

It would make sense that, even though his shoulder felt fine physically, he needed a full year and an offseason to return to form. He needed to rebuild all the strength he had lost after suffering such a significant injury and then going through an intensive rehabilitation process following the surgery. From there, he also had to get each intricate component of his swing back into sync with all the others.

If, indeed, that is what caused his underwhelming 2025 campaign, in which he slashed .220/.300/.343 with 15 homers, a 77 wRC+, and 1.4 WAR over 147 games, then I think it’s quite reasonable to bank on McLain to perform at the level he did as a rookie in 2023. Across 89 games (403 plate appearances) that year, he put up a .290/.357/.507 slash line, smacked 16 home runs, ran a 129 wRC+, and amassed 3.2 WAR. That works out to a 650-PA pace of 25 homers and 5.1 WAR. That’s an All-Star-caliber player.

Of course, you didn’t ask for my back-of-the-newspaper math — I actually crunched the numbers on an old copy of The New York Times I have sitting on my desk — to determine what McLain’s rookie numbers might’ve looked like over a full season. You asked for us to run hypothetical projections for McLain and the Reds. I asked Dan Szymborski for assistance here. He told ZiPS to answer your two-part question as of Wednesday afternoon before the Yankees and Giants played the first game of the season. Here are the results:

It’s worth mentioning that ZiPS is much higher on McLain than Steamer is; right now, based on his median projection, ZiPS has the Reds down as the fourth-best team at second base, while in our positional power rankings, which use a 50/50 combination of ZiPS and Steamer, plus the Depth Charts playing time estimates, the Reds ranked 16th. As you can see above, McLain’s 50th-percentile projection, per ZiPS, pegs him for 3.5 WAR; Steamer’s preseason forecast for him was 1.6 WAR. That’s a massive discrepancy.

Nevertheless, we used ZiPS here because 1) that’s Dan’s projection system and I asked him for the data, and 2) it felt more in the spirit of the question to go with the one that favors McLain.

The most notable takeaway here is that, even if the Reds get a 99th-percentile performance from McLain — .327/.404/.590, 7.7 WAR — they would still have a little less than a one-in-three shot to make the postseason. Those odds certainly aren’t nothing; they’re a little less than double Cincinnati’s 16.5% preseason playoff probability if McLain were to hit his median projection. But it does suggest that the Reds are more than a McLain resurgence away from being a bona fide contender.

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Good afternoon,

Thank you,
Domenic

Ben Clemens: The short answer: It’s a product of Judge’s having incredibly high bat speed. Squared-up rate is a relative property, which is confusing to think about. It doesn’t refer to the speed of the ball off the bat; it refers to how close the swing got to hitting the ball at the maximum theoretical exit velocity available given the bat speed and how fast the ball was moving.

For example, imagine Judge taking a cut at a 95-mph fastball down the middle. The rule is that if a ball is hit at 80% of its maximum exit velocity or higher, it’s considered a squared-up ball. A 95-mph fastball is moving around 87.4 mph when it crosses home plate. Judge’s average swing speed is 77 mph. I’ll spare you the math, but the theoretical maximum, according to formula, is a 115-mph batted ball. That means that any ball Judge hits 92 mph or harder is squared up, and anything below it isn’t. Next, imagine Jacob Wilson swinging at the same pitch. With his 64-mph average bat speed, any ball hit 79 mph or harder would be considered squared up.

Whether you catch the ball flush or not, with no regard for swing speed, is more of a contact skill than anything else. That’s why there’s a strong negative correlation between whiff rate and squared-up rate. And as everyone knows, the best way to run a low whiff rate is to be a slow-swinging contact hitter. Out of the 15 players who squared the ball up most frequently in 2025, only three – Maikel Garcia, Jeremy Peña, and Juan Soto – swung the bat faster than league average.

Here’s how I wrapped my head around this: Every hitter is trying to put the fat part of the bat on the baseball each swing. The more accurate you are at doing so, the more likely you are to square it up. At the same time, the more accurate you are, the less likely you are to come up completely empty. If you think of these statistics as measuring “hitting the ball exactly where I want” and “avoiding missing the ball when I try to hit it,” Judge’s position in the rankings makes a lot of sense. He comes up empty fairly often because he swings so hard. Also, because he swings so hard, he doesn’t get the very best part of the bat on the ball quite as often as hitters who swing much more slowly.

Statcast actually measures another statistic called blast rate that combines two things: fast swings and squared-up contact. When you add that second filter, the Wilsons and Arraezes of the world fall away. The top five, in order: Soto, Shohei Ohtani, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Judge, and Oneil Cruz. This might be closer to what you’re thinking about. When you hear that someone squared the ball up, you probably think of them absolutely smashing it. Because it’s measured relative to bat speed, that’s not always the case. But if you limit it to fast swings, Judge does hit it pure way more often than others.

Incidentally, that’s why I like using the Squared-Up Explorer feature in the FanGraphs Lab, instead of just looking at a single number. I’m interested in whether a hitter is more likely to square the ball up into the ground or into the air, and I’m also interested in whether their best contact lines up with their most frequent contact. Context is king when it comes to hitting the ball right on the button, because there’s a big difference between socking it at a -7 degree launch angle off of a 65-mph swing and lofting one at 25 degrees on an 80-mph swing. Judge’s low squared-up rate is real – but it’s certainly not disqualifying, and it mostly just says that he sacrifices some contact to swing as hard as he does, thus allowing him to do so much damage.

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My question for this week’s mailbag is about the ABS system and what to expect this season.

Thanks!
Kevin S.

Davy Andrews: So I was a little confused here at first. Kwan was 1-for-5 in challenges during spring training, and Statcast had his challenge decisions costing him -2.1 calls. But then Matt told me you submitted this question on March 5, two days after Kwan’s first successful challenge, which came on a 3-0 pitch and resulted in a walk. He was 1-for-2 at the time, so I can see why you cited him. Anyway, I pulled the spring training stats for every player. For catchers, I combined their hitting and catching numbers. As you’ll see below, everybody at the top of the list is a catcher. Catchers are going to be the ones who are helped (or hurt) the most because, generally speaking, they will challenge way more than batters at other positions, and then they’ll also get to add in their own challenges as a batter. The answer, by an astonishingly large margin, is Kwan’s fellow Guardian, Austin Hedges.

I’m looking at Total Calls vs. Expected, a column that you don’t see on the Baseball Savant leaderboard unless you click the Show Expected Breakdown button on the right. As a catcher, Hedges’ challenges earned the Gwards 3.2 more calls than an average catcher. But because he’s such a great framer, people challenged nine of his calls. Somehow, they won only one of those nine challenges! Put it all together, and he burned up opponent challenges at an extremely high rate while also grading out well on his own challenges, both as a catcher and a hitter. Hedges was nearly twice as valuable as any other player.

We’ve seen a lot of talk about how the ABS challenge system might even things out for the good and bad framers, but early results seem to indicate that good framers force their opponents to use more challenges, and that certainly looks like it’s going to be a valuable skill.

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As someone who doesn’t follow college baseball, what is Tony Vitello bringing to the San Francisco Giants? Is he noted for some special ability to relate to players? Is he an above-average tactician? Do they like how he looks in orange? — Maurice

Michael Baumann: Matt called this “the perfect mailbag question” for me, and you know what, I think he’s right. Maurice, you’re in luck, because I’ve written not one but two articles about some combination of Vitello’s approach to coaching, his tenure at Tennessee, and his future with the Giants. But I’m happy to summarize my conclusions here, because I — like many people — find Tony V fascinating. In fact, I’ve banked on what you might euphemistically call high public interest in Vitello with my entry in the Effectively Wild predictions game.

To answer your questions in order: Yes, no, yes. Vitello looks great in orange, and the Giants surely must have noticed this. He is not, however, renowned in the college game as a groundbreaking tactical thinker. He’s certainly competent, and I have no doubt in his ability to transition from handling a college roster to a big league roster, but this isn’t the Rams hiring Sean McVay or anything.

Vitello’s greatest strength from where I stand is as a motivator and communicator. He’s very emotional in the dugout, which has gotten him a reputation as a redass and a rah-rah guy that’s only partially deserved. A lot of the skepticism around Vitello that I’ve seen comes from pro baseball people whose touchstone for a college coach is Augie Garrido.

In fact, Vitello has been successful because he’s the antithesis of that approach; he might be loud, but he’s emotionally intelligent, and while he likes big-motor players like Andrew Fischer and Christian Moore, he’s able to work with all kinds of personalities. The former Tennessee players I’ve spoken to about Vitello love him. And I think he’s got enough humility about his own professional inexperience that he’ll be able to get the Giants to buy in, too.

But that’s only worth so much to the Giants. And while that ability to work with players helped Vitello as a recruiter and a developer of talent, he didn’t win at Tennessee because he’s a good hang. He won because Tennessee developed talent at the college level better than any other program in the country. Pitchers would spend nine months in Knoxville and add five miles an hour to their fastball. Hitters would add a grade of power. That, rather than any demonstrations of emotion in the dugout or arguing with umpires, is why the Vols were so good. Everything else was window dressing.

That player development system was obviously not Vitello’s doing alone, and it’s anyone’s guess whether the Giants will be able to replicate that success. If they don’t, it’s hard to see how they can compete in a really tough NL West, because on paper this looks like a .500 team with a load-bearing Luis Arraez in the middle infield, about three years after that stopped being acceptable.

I will say this: The gap in quality between college training and development and professional training and development has never been smaller. More important, the two assistant coaches most responsible for Vitello’s success (pitching coach Frank Anderson and director of sports performance Quentin Eberhardt) followed him to San Francisco. The Vols went 273-83 in Vitello’s last six seasons because they didn’t skip leg day. If not skipping leg day is worth that much in the pros, the Giants will do quite well.

If I had to make a prediction, Vitello will make some rookie mistakes, but in general, he’ll get the Giants to play hard, exciting baseball. And they’ll go 82-80, because they just don’t have the horses. Which is in keeping with the Giants’ general approach to team-building under Buster Posey: They’re thinking outside the box and trying different stuff. Most of the time, they’re going to find out why the box exists, but maybe it’ll work.

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the pleasures of and precedents for the historic rookie performances on Opening Day, the pains of Netflix’s Opening Night broadcast, an Opening Day disaster for Paul Skenes, Oneil Cruz, and a bird near Carson Benge, Freddie Freeman’s gameday fit, a perplexing (un?)fun fact about the Phillies and Jhoan Duran, why players don’t always challenge when they “should,” Nico Hoerner and Shane Baz extensions, baseball movies being back (thanks to Tom Hanks), and more, plus a Stat Blast (1:28:40) about Black Ink streaks and a postscript (1:37:14) featuring a follow-up and a few bonus Blasts.

Audio intro: Grant Brisbee, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Philip Bergman, “Effectively Wild Theme”

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There’s paint on the field, bunting on the steel, and hoopla in our feels. It’s Opening Day no doubt. Well, the third one, at least.

The most iconic trapping of Opening Day is the fleet of excellent starting pitchers who take the mound. Each team sends their best, or at least, their healthiest. For some, it’s the reigning Cy Young winner. For others, it’s a precocious prospect. These starters, true to their name, carry the burden of the new season in their shoulder.

Few carry a burden greater than Luis Severino’s.

The Athletics are on the cusp. They rank 20th in FanGraphs Depth Charts projected WAR and enter Opening Day with about a 16% chance of making the postseason, per our playoff odds. It seems unlikely that this is their year, but they are indeed young and talented and rising. It wouldn’t be too surprising if they stayed in the playoff picture well into September.

If they do, it’ll be because of their lineup. It’s good. They finished 10th by wRC+ last year and have returned mostly the same group. In his rookie season, Nick Kurtz made a case for being the game’s next great slugger. Shea Langeliers finished with the second-highest wRC+ by a catcher at 131. Brent Rooker notched his third straight 30-plus home run season. Jacob Wilson and Tyler Soderstrom each played well enough to earn early-career extensions, and Lawrence Butler got one the year before.

Our Depth Charts project the A’s batters 14th overall by WAR, but they’re less than a win from breaching the top 10, right in that next tier behind the Dodgers and the handful of truly great lineups throughout baseball. It’s a playoff-worthy group.

The issue? The A’s are lopsided:

Their pitching is bad. They finished last year in the bottom five by WAR, and we project them no better in 2026: Their starters ranked 24th in our positional power rankings, while their bullpen ranked 26th. I don’t know that I’d call them terrible — they’re still a clear rung or two above the Rockies — but there’s not much there to distinguish them.

To be fair, it’s difficult to project groups of pitchers over a season, as injuries and small samples spur attrition. The bottom of the A’s staff doesn’t look much different than the bottom of many staffs in the mushy middle of our projections. I could totally buy Luis Morales having a breakout season, just like I could buy Jeffrey Springs and Aaron Civale being decent backend guys. And, you know, bullpens are weird, sometimes in ways that works in your favor! Still, there isn’t someone who’s an obvious candidate to post above-average value and carry this group to that next, bare-minimum level.

Except maybe Severino. He’s done it before.

Severino was once a big deal, albeit nearly a decade ago. He was a highly touted prospect, and a top-five pitcher by WAR in 2017 and 2018. He had the simple, classic arsenal of a guy with big time stuff: a 98-mph four-seam fastball, a wipeout slider, and a changeup just to keep you honest. Nobody threw harder, and few struck out more batters. In 2018, he was only 24.

Then, as these things go, he got hurt. Severino missed almost all of 2019 with a shoulder injury. Then he missed all of 2020 and most of 2021 with Tommy John surgery. He pitched pretty well for half a season in 2022 before being sidelined with a lat strain, then pitched pretty poorly for a half a season the following year while dealing with the lat strain and an oblique strain. He threw just 209.1 innings over five years.

Severino signed a prove-it deal with the Mets before the 2024 season, and he proved to be… well, good enough to sign a three-year deal with the A’s that December. It was a surprising move because the A’s are notoriously stingy. But it was also kind of a perfect move because the A’s needed someone who could potentially be a frontline starter to lead the staff. And there just aren’t many pitchers available in the A’s price range who have proven capable of posting five-win seasons, especially ones willing to play in a minor league ballpark.

That minor league ballpark, of course, was a big part of Severino’s first season in Sacramento. He really didn’t like pitching there, and he told The Athletic as much in June.

“It’s not the same atmosphere. We don’t have a lot of fans. Our clubhouse is in left field. So, when we play day games, we have to just be in the sun. There’s no air conditioning there, too. It’s really tough.”

Now, I’m not going to call Severino a liar. I’m sure he truly didn’t like pitching in Sacramento. When he offered that quote, he had a 6.79 ERA in 10 starts at home and a 3.04 ERA in eight starts on the road. That’s a big split! But Severino also had a 4.36 FIP at home and a 4.34 FIP on the road over the same stretch — his fundamental ability wasn’t much different. As the season progressed, so did he; he posted a 4.26 ERA and 4.28 FIP in five starts at home from July onward, compared to a 3.00 ERA and 3.20 FIP on the road. I’m willing to chalk up much of Severino’s early-season home performance to poor luck: His .342 BABIP and 58.2% LOB rate were bottom five among starters through June. That seemed to self-correct as the season wore on.

In other words, yes, Severino was generally worse at home, and we might expect him and the rest of the Athletics’ staff to be worse while working against what ended up being the fifth-highest park factor in the majors last year. It’s a minor league park, it’s very warm, and the wind blows out — it isn’t easy to pitch there. But there’s maybe a tendency to exaggerate the extremity of Sutter Health Park. What we saw in 2025 was nowhere close to Coors Field, and I think I’d classify it as being more of a nuisance, rather than a barrier to a season of quality pitching.

No, Severino’s merely decent performance in 2025 was his own doing. He posted the lowest strikeout (17.6%) and whiff (18.3%) rates of his career. It’s part of a years-long downward trend in either category.

Why?

A great pitcher who declines after injury is typically dealing with some sort of velocity dip. That’s sort of the case with Severino, but also not really. Again, he was once the hardest-throwing starting pitcher in the game, averaging 97.6 mph on his four-seam fastball in 2018. He was down to 96.1 mph on his four-seamer in 2025. That’s a meaningful difference, but he still boasted one of the 15 fastest four-seamers in baseball last year. In fact, Severino’s whiff rate on the pitch jumped from 20.2% in 2018 to 21.9% in 2025 (though still shy of his 24.0% mark from 2017).

But he isn’t just throwing four-seamers anymore:

Severino now has a contemporary arsenal. He still throws a lot of fastballs, but some of them are now sinkers to righties and cutters to lefties. These tend to be a bit slower. If we look at his average velocity on all fastballs, he was actually down to 95.4 mph, or 2.4 mph lower than 2018; his total fastball whiff rate last year was just 16.7%. Severino also ditched his sharp, biting slider in favor of a slower, looping sweeper. The pitch produced a mere 22.8% whiff rate in 2025. It’s still a good pitch overall, and it does seem to produce poor contact (namely popups and weak fly balls). But it’s just not “2018 Luis Severino 37.6% whiff rate” good.

Now, maybe these tradeoffs are worth it. It’s not entirely fair to compare Severino in 2025 to himself from seven years ago. It’s possible that continuing to throw the same three-pitch mix wouldn’t have the same effect today as it did when he had that extra, tip-top gear. But the sum total of these changes is a slower, more contact-oriented approach. Severino last year struggled to get ahead in counts and finish off batters.

If this is who he is going forward, that’s fine. He remains an average-ish pitcher worth giving 30 starts a season to in just about any rotation. Still, I can’t help but feel there’s room for something more. He throws hard, he has good command, and he’s still Luis Severino. He looked electric for the Dominican Republic at the World Baseball Classic, pumping upper-90s fastballs and dominating the fearsome Team USA lineup.

What will we get in 2026? Well, we’re about to find out. Severino will begin his 11th season in the majors Friday at age 32. The odds of him posting another ace-level season are growing longer, but he wouldn’t be the first or even the most unlikely pitcher to have a late-career resurgence. If he can find that next level again, the A’s are sure to follow. Such is the beauty — and burden — of Opening Day.

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Nine days after the end of the World Baseball Classic, more than three weeks since he was hit by a pitch, and just hours before his team’s Opening Day game, another WBC participant landed on the injured list. Jackson Chourio, who served as the regular center fielder for Venezuela’s championship-winning squad and who is slated to be the starting left fielder for the Brewers, was placed on the IL on Thursday morning due to a fracture in his left hand.

Chourio, who turned 22 on March 11, was hit on the hand by a heater from Clayton Beeter in Venezuela’s exhibition game against the Nationals on March 4. Initial X-rays were negative, and he was diagnosed with a contusion. He sat out Venezuela’s first two games of pool play while the Marlins’ Javier Sanoja started in center field, but Chourio returned to the lineup on March 9, playing the final two pool games and the three knockout round games. For the tournament, he hit just .200/.278/.200 in 19 plate appearances, though he did barrel a few balls.

When Chourio returned to the Brewers, according to manager Pat Murphy, he underwent a scan of some sort — I’d guess a CT scan, which is much quicker than an MRI — but it did not show a fracture. He continued to play regularly, and even homered off the Padres’ Randy Vásquez on March 21, but after he felt pain in his hand during a check swing in an exhibition against the Reds on Tuesday, the Brewers sent him for an MRI, which reportedly revealed a small hairline fracture at the base of his third metacarpal. While the fracture has begun to heal, Murphy said the team is understandably “worried that there could be further injury if he doesn’t take care of it now.” Thus the IL move, which is retroactive to March 25. He’s expected to miss two to four weeks.

This is the second year in a row Chourio has landed on the IL; last year, he missed a month — basically all of August — due to a right hamstring strain suffered while legging out a triple on July 29. He wasn’t as productive after returning, though a peek under the hood shows that he actually hit the ball harder, only to suffer some regression:

Chourio has 93rd-percentile sprint speed; we don’t have monthly splits, but the general observation around the Brewers was that he didn’t get up to full speed again until late in the season. The numbers show that he collected just one of his 16 infield hits and three of his 21 stolen bases after the injury, all in his final four games in late September. That, and his reversal from overperforming his expected stats before the injury to underperforming afterwards, suggests a reluctance to test the hamstring, costing him some extra bases here and there. Recall that he reaggravated the injury running out an infield single in the Division Series opener against the Cubs; though it was just the second inning, it was already his third hit of the game. With the benefit of an off day, he returned to the lineup the next game and homered, and ended up playing all nine of the Brewers’ postseason games while batting .303/.314/.576.

Still, relative to his rookie season, Chourio’s .270/.308/.463 (111 wRC+) line last year represented a loss of 19 points of on-base percentage, though just a one-point drop in slugging percentage. His walk rate eroded from 6.8% to 5.1% with a more aggressive approach; both his 53.2% swing rate and his 36.8% chase rate were around four and a half percentage points above his 2024 numbers, with his chase rate placing in the eighth percentile among qualifiers. His chase rates against curves and sliders both increased by about 10 points relative to 2024, though he was still very effective against the latter, hitting .302 and slugging .615.

Despite the missed time, Chourio hit 21 homers and stole 21 bases, and after becoming the youngest player to go 20/20 as a rookie, he became the youngest player to do it twice:

Note that while Pinson and Trout both went 20/20 in their age-20 and age-21 seasons, as well, they were about seven months older than Chourio when they accomplished the feat. Chourio’s performance put himself in some tremendous company, though as you can see by my inclusion of wRC+ and WAR in the table above, his seasons were at the lower end of that group in terms of overall performance. He dropped a full win in value from 2024 to ’25, from 3.9 WAR to 2.9.

As for 2026, to replace Chourio on the active roster, the Brewers recalled Blake Perkins, a 29-year-old switch-hitter who had been optioned to Triple-A Nashville just a week earlier. Perkins served as Milwaukee’s regular center fielder in 2024, but he missed the first half of last season after fracturing his right shin by fouling a ball off it during batting practice in late February. Upon returning, he hit .226/.298/.348 (83 wRC+) in 171 plate appearances.

The Brewers have done a fair bit of mixing and matching in the outfield in recent years, for platoon purposes, to cover for injuries, and to keep Christian Yelich in the mix on the days that catcher William Contreras serves as their designated hitter. Chourio’s ability to play all three outfield positions has fit well within that plan. Last year, with Perkins and Garrett Mitchell both injured – the latter played just 24 games due to an oblique strain and left shoulder surgery — Chourio played 89 games in center, 40 in left, and 20 in right. With Mitchell healthy, the plan coming into this season was to have Chourio spend the bulk of his time in left, with the lefty-swinging Mitchell platooning in center with righty Brandon Lockridge, who beat out Perkins for the final outfield spot, and Sal Frelick in right field, with lefty-swinging Jake Bauers also logging time at the corners in addition to backing up Andrew Vaughn at first base.

With Chourio out, the 30-year-old Bauers, who hit .235/.353/.399 (114 wRC+) last year, is the most likely candidate to log additional playing time. The Brewers are particularly eager to find at-bats for him following a spring in which he hit an absurd .462/.571/1.154 while tying for the major league lead in home runs, with seven — for whatever that’s worth. Bauers started in left field against the White Sox on Opening Day, going 2-for-5 with a three-run homer off Jedixson Paez, a 22-year-old Rule 5 pick making his major league debut.

Chourio isn’t the only player injured during the WBC or its run-up to miss Opening Day due to injuries. The Cubs’ Seiya Suzuki opened the season on the IL after suffering a minor sprain of the posterior collateral ligament in his right knee during the WBC quarterfinals with Japan; technically, he could be activated as soon as April 1, but as of Thursday, his timeline wasn’t clear. The Astros’ Jeremy Peña, who fractured his right ring finger in a March 4 exhibition while playing for the Dominican Republic, was not placed on the IL to start the season, but he wasn’t in the lineup on Thursday. He’s still getting his timing back by taking live at-bats with the team’s Triple-A Sugar Land affiliate, though general manager Dana Brown said he’s “very close” to returning to action.

Hopefully, Chourio’s not far from returning himself. Still, hand injuries are pesky things, and as last year’s hamstring injury suggests, it may take some time for him to regain full confidence in what he can do once he is back in the lineup.

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On September 12, 2004, Eli Manning made his NFL debut. The Giants were down three touchdowns in the fourth quarter, and starting quarterback Kurt Warner had taken four sacks and fumbled twice; maybe let the no. 1 overall pick take a spin.

On Manning’s very first play from scrimmage, he handed the ball to Tiki Barber, who ran for a 72-yard touchdown. Now, Manning would go on to have a very, very good career: 16 years in the league, four Pro Bowls, 366 touchdown passes, two Super Bowls, and untold hundreds of millions of dollars in career earnings. But if you look at Manning’s career through a certain lens, he peaked with that first snap.

A quarterback’s job is to advance the ball down the field and score. And while Barber did most of the work, a one-play, 72-yard touchdown drive is about as good as a debut gets. Manning’s career productivity would never be better than it was after that first play. So it proved, and quickly; on the very next possession, Manning coughed up a fumble of his own on a nightmarish three-way hit. Welcome to The Show, kid.

On Thursday, Opening Day — or whatever comes after Opening Night in MLB’s inscrutable season-opening branding — was very good to four high-profile debutants.

Kevin McGonigle, JJ Wetherholt, and Carson Benge were our no. 5, no. 12, and no. 21 prospects, respectively, on the global Preseason Top 100. McGonigle and Benge were minor leaguers on Wednesday, but now they’re both key starters on World Series contenders. So is Justin Crawford, who also made his major league debut on Opening Day.

And all four of them came up big, right away. Actually, it was even better than that. No. 26 overall prospect Chase DeLauter took Logan Gilbert deep in his very first regular season plate appearance in the big leagues, then added a second home run in the ninth inning. Wild stuff.

But as you might remember, DeLauter got into two games for the Guardians last postseason. He might technically still be a rookie, but those two games and seven plate appearances in the playoffs mean he’s basically Carl Yastrzemski next to the other guys. Homering off a pitcher like Gilbert is no mean feat, but it’s less newsworthy from a grizzled vet like DeLauter.

The four actual debutants all had a terrific first taste of big league action. So much so that while one or more of these kids might become an All-Star, a World Series winner, even a Hall of Famer, the median day in the big leagues is not going to be this good.

Let’s start with Crawford, who went 2-for-4 and scored on Alec Bohm’s fifth-inning home run, much to the delight of his father, four-time All-Star Carl Crawford. Crawford wasn’t the headline player in the Phillies’ 5-3 win over Texas. That would be Cristopher Sánchez, who cakewalked to 10 strikeouts over six scoreless innings. Or Kyle Schwarber, who homered in his first at-bat of the season. Or Bohm, who in addition to homering himself, is apparently suing his parents for allegedly stealing millions of dollars while they managed his earnings through an LLC.

The Phillies don’t need Crawford to be a superstar, which is good, because the ceiling for him is lower than it is for McGonigle, Wetherholt, or Benge. Crawford is a plus-plus runner who torched the minor leagues, but he hits the ball on the ground at a rate that has historically just not been survivable in the big leagues. That’s not to say he will fail, or even that I expect him to fail. Rather, if he does turn out to be a valuable player on a contender, one of two things will have had to have happened: Either Crawford will have to change something about his game — hit the ball harder, hit it in the air more, or both — or he will have to turn grounders into hits at a rate hitherto unprecedented in the majors. Crawford’s first major league hit is representative of what we’ve come to expect from him:

The good news is that Crawford reached base twice and put the ball in play four times. Odds are, his career OPS will end up lower than 1.000, which is what it’s at as I write. The bad news is that all four of those batted balls came off the bat between 80.3 mph and 87.2 mph, and only one of them — a sixth-inning lineout off Jalen Beeks — was hit at a launch angle that usually leads to damage.

Still, a seeing-eye single looks like a line drive in the box score. I don’t want to nitpick a guy who genuinely had a terrific first day in the big leagues — it’s just something to keep an eye on going forward.

Benge went 1-for-3 with two walks and two runs scored as the Mets beat the Pirates, 11-7, in one of the weirdest games of the opening slate. I thought the Pirates’ defense was going to be godawful this season, but they were even worse than I could possibly have anticipated. That, plus sun, wind, and Oneil Cruz’s decision to leave his sunglasses at home, led to the worst start Paul Skenes has had… maybe ever, like, dating back to throwing a tennis ball at a wall when he was in school.

Before Benge got his first big league hit, a bird fell out of the sky, stone dead, and landed next to him in the outfield. Credit to the reporter who asked the obvious question about whether Benge thought it was an omen:

Carson Benge on The Bird:

— Tim Britton (he/him) (@timbritton.bsky.social) 2026-03-26T21:30:23.394Z

Clearly not; in the sixth inning, Benge came to the plate against a tough right-handed reliever, Justin Lawrence. I mean, Lawrence is usually tough. This pitch was an absolute cement mixer:

And to Benge’s credit, this is what you’re supposed to do with a hanging breaking ball: Hit it 385 feet to center field, off the bus shelter thingy in the home bullpen. I don’t know if Benge’s even going to see a pitch that fat in most of his future games, but it’s good to see that he knows how to strike when opportunity comes knocking.

You know who didn’t see a pitch that fat all game? Wetherholt, who went 1-for-4 with a sacrifice fly out of the leadoff spot for St. Louis.

Wetherholt is not a big guy; he’s listed at 5-foot-9, 190 pounds, and when I interviewed him at the Draft Combine in 2024, he didn’t carry himself with the bearing of someone with plus-plus power. To be clear, this is a strong guy, and he’ll hit the ball hard, but in more of an all-fields line drives kind of way. In 109 minor league games last year, Wetherholt hit .306 with 17 home runs and 28 doubles — that’s the kind of hitter we’re talking about.

So while I’m not surprised in the least to see that he drove in two runs and got his first major league hit in his first game, I did not expect said hit to look like this:

This is a tank, 425 feet to center field. And as if the distance weren’t impressive on its own, look where that pitch is! That’s a four-seamer at 94.5 mph at least a clear ball’s width off the outside corner, and Wetherholt yanked it back to just barely pull-side of center. That takes some strength. Also, this was the 0-2 pitch in an at-bat in which Wetherholt had just swung through a cutter on the outside corner that was designed to tunnel with the pitch he eventually hit out.

That’s pretty sweet. The Cardinals might not be that good this year, but Wetherholt’s going to be a blast to watch.

But no debutant had as good a day as McGonigle.

The Tigers’ top prospect became the just the 25th player in major league history (and the first Tiger since 1987) to record four hits in his first major league game. He either scored or drove in half of Detroit’s runs in an 8-2 victory over the Padres. And it’s not just that he went 4-for-5 with two doubles. McGonigle drove in two runs on the very first pitch of his career:

Next time up, he pulled another line drive down the first base line, missing his first homer by a couple feet. McGonigle’s first three hits — two sliding doubles and an infield single — all showcased his speed, as he beat out strong throws to reach safely each time.

You can see the whole package in this sampling of hits — the quick hands, the legs, the strong lower half — and understand why McGonigle is regarded as a superstar in the making.

Sam Dykstra of MLB Pipeline posted video of McGonigle’s hit from the first base dugout, which is cool because you can see the Tigers’ reaction. But you can also see where McGonigle gets his power from:

Fun reaction from the Tigers dugout on Kevin McGonigle's first MLB hit:

[image or embed]

— Sam Dykstra (@samdykstramilb.bsky.social) March 26, 2026 at 4:26 PM

Don’t skip leg day, kids.

Even a talent like McGonigle might not have another game like this for a while. You know who played 130 games last year and didn’t get four hits in any of them? Mike Trout. Cal Raleigh also didn’t have a four-hit game last year. Neither did Corbin Carroll.

So enjoy these stellar debuts from McGonigle and friends. It’s all downhill from here.

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NEW YORK — It started out so well.

In their Opening Day game against the Mets at Citi Field, the Pirates jumped out to a two-run lead two batters into the game. Their next three batters struck out, but they had National League Cy Young winner Paul Skenes starting for them. It was the first time in his career that Skenes, who entered the game with a 1.96 ERA, took the mound in the first inning with a lead of two or more runs. Heck, it was just the fourth time in his 56 career starts (29 on the road) that he’d thrown his first pitch with any lead at all. Maybe this year would be different after all.

It’s too early to say anything about this year, but this sure was a different game. Just not in the way the Pirates had hoped. For the first time in his career, Skenes did not make it through the first inning. When manager Don Kelly went to the bullpen with two outs in the inning, his ace had thrown 37 pitches, recorded just two outs and allowed five runs. He struck out just one batter, walked two, and hit one with a pitch. The impromptu bullpen game ended about two and a half hours later in an 11-7 Mets win.

Skenes called his performance “a little frustrating,” but he also said, “I’m not as upset about this for me personally as people would probably think. They did a really good job. It was an abnormal outing.”

Abnormal is an apt description of what went down here on Thursday. Skenes did not pitch well; he lacked his typical command of his fastball, and his secondaries weren’t sharp. His first three pitches were balls. He didn’t get a whiff until his 20th pitch, and he didn’t get his second one until his 30th. But he also didn’t get shelled. Kelly went to his bullpen when he did not because he thought Skenes couldn’t get out of the inning, but because the most important player on his team was pushing 40 pitches in an inning before the beginning of April.

But for as much as Skenes struggled, his final line makes it look like he pitched much worse than he actually did. None of the balls put in play against him registered as hard hit; one was an unexpected bunt single by cleanup hitter Jorge Polanco in his first plate appearance with the Mets. Skenes was most upset that he walked leadoff batter Francisco Lindor to set up the big inning. Lindor advanced to third on Soto’s single to center (83.3 mph exit velocity), then scored on Bo Bichette’s fly out to right. Skenes was a double play ball from getting out of the inning with the lead, even after Polanco reached.

That brought up Luis Robert Jr., who has been one of the best underwhelming players in baseball over the last two years. Despite his MVP skill set, he’s put up just 1.8 WAR with an 84 wRC+ since the start of 2024. Skenes started him off with a slider that Robert swung through, then missed low and away with a sweeper. He followed up with another one. Robert fouled it off to fall behind 1-2. He then fouled off the next three pitches — four-seamer, slider, four-seamer — before Skenes spiked a sweeper for ball two. Robert fouled off the eighth pitch, a sinker. Skenes went to his changeup, which he bounced in front of home plate for ball three. He went back to the slider. It glided across the plate and missed a bit off the plate for a walk.

Robert had a 36.6% chase rate against sliders, including sweepers, last year, and a 56.3% whiff rate on those chases. Opposing batters chased 25.4% of Skenes’ sliders and sweepers last season, whiffing on 53.3% of those swings. When Robert of all people spits on a slider just off the corner to work a 10-pitch walk, it isn’t your day.

“One, they got to a couple balls that I thought I did execute,” Skenes said when asked about his inability to put away hitters with two strikes. “And two, there were a couple balls that I didn’t execute that they either took or fouled off.”

But even then, Skenes still could’ve gotten out of the inning with minimal damage. He got Brett Baty to swing over a nasty first-pitch changeup. He went back to the changeup, but this one was just above the knees and out over the plate. Baty lined it to center for what should have been a game-tying sacrifice fly. Instead, center fielder Oneil Cruz completely misplayed it. He hesitated, then crashed hard, realized it was over his head and then, finally, turned and broke backward. It rolled to the wall. He bobbled the carom, then threw it to cutoff man, Jared Triolo.

The mistakes compounded from there, as Triolo turned and relayed home to try and get Robert, even though he had no play. Robert, whose sprint speed was in the 90th percentile last year, got a great jump off first upon seeing Cruz get turned around. Baty, meanwhile, was only a few steps past second base. First baseman Spencer Horwitz saw this and signaled for the throw to go to third. Had Triolo done that, Baty would’ve been toast. The Mets still would’ve cleared the bases and taken a 4-2 lead, but Skenes would’ve had two outs and nobody on with the bottom of the order due up. Instead, there was a runner on third with one out.

The next batter, Marcus Semien, lifted a routine fly ball to center field that Cruz lost in the sun. It plopped to the ground about an arm’s length away from him. Hustling all the way, Semien made it to second with what was officially scored as a double.

Cruz is now beginning his second full season in center field after shifting there from shortstop in August 2024. He led all center fielders last year with 11 errors. He was worth -14 Defensive Runs Saved, though he did get better as the season went on, and by FRV, he was actually +4 runs because of his arm. There was hope that this super athlete would figure things out with more reps.

“He’s gotta keep working,” Kelly said of Cruz. “That ball straight at him, came in, got a bad read. He’s been working hard out there. He just needs to continue to get better. Then the one in the sun, just lost it in the sun.”

The first one was a tougher play; it should’ve been caught, but it can be difficult to judge whether line drives hit directly at center fielders are going to sail overhead or drop in front. But losing the ball in the sun was preventable. He was not wearing sunglasses. When asked why Cruz didn’t have his shades on, Kelly said diplomatically, “Yeah, we need to make sure that we’re prepared right there.”

Skenes had maybe his worst stuff ever, yet if he had had even an average center fielder behind him, he likely would’ve escaped the inning with just two runs allowed and the game tied.

He tried not to put the blame on Cruz, but he also didn’t shoulder it all himself.

“You gotta look at it for what it is,” Skenes said. “There wasn’t a ton of hard contact. Leadoff walk is not great. But yeah, some balls landed that, err, you know, the Polanco groundball. Stuff like that. It’s like the batting average on balls in play thing was super high today. That’ll go down as the season goes on.”

That’s true; the BABIP gods will surely be in Skenes’ favor as the season goes on. But also, the Pirates defense was disastrous beyond just Cruz. Catcher Henry Davis clanked a slider that might’ve clipped the zone had he caught it; instead, Yohan Ramírez’s first pitch in relief of Skenes went to the backstop for a passed ball. With one out in the third, Semien lined a ball back up the box that deflected off Ramírez’s glove; that wouldn’t have been a problem, except the pitcher picked it up, twirled, and threw wide to first, allowing Semien to advance to second. Then, as part of the Mets’ three-run fifth inning, reliever Isaac Mattson — who’d already walked two batters, including one with the bases loaded — got Robert to tap a soft grounder to the Bermuda Triangle between the mound, first and second base. Mattson initially went for and missed it before heading to the bag; that slight delay prevented him from getting to the base in time to receive the throw from Horwitz.

It wasn’t all bad for the Pirates. Their offense, which has been their biggest weakness for years, kept scoring, even as the Mets pulled away in the later innings. Brandon Lowe, acquired from the Rays in a three-team trade in December, became the first Pirates player since Garrett Jones in 2010 to hit two home runs on Opening Day. The first was the most popup-to-first-base home run since they stopped playing games at the Polo Grounds. It had a 47-degree launch angle and somehow carried into the pocket corner just beyond the right field wall. With two outs in the third inning, he clobbered a solo shot to center field to bring Pittsburgh within two. Ryan O’Hearn, another offseason addition, lifted an opposite-field home run in the sixth.

Even when they were trailing by six runs in the ninth, the Pirates put together a rally. They plated two runs with one out, forcing Mets manager Carlos Mendoza to get closer Devin Williams up in the bullpen. Pittsburgh’s offense registered 12 hard-hit balls in the game, double New York’s total.

In the end, of course, the story of this game is Skenes. It was the shortest outing of his career. It was abnormal for Skenes, but the Pirates are hoping that at least some of their Opening Day performance sticks. Perhaps we’ll look back in 161 games to see that those three homers and seven runs marked the start of a new normal.

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