His backstory is atypical, in part because of a pitch he hasn’t thrown since his days as an Ohio prep. Moreover, the Mansfield native now has a delivery that is both conventional and consistent. That wasn’t always the case.

“When I was in high school and started to get into pitching, I threw from three different slots,” Blubaugh explained. “An over-the-top arm slot, a sidearm arm slot, and a submarine arm slot. I would differentiate that every single pitch. One pitch would be a curveball from over the top, then I’d drop to sidearm and throw a slider. Then I’d throw a fastball from submarine. I was just a funky junk-ball thrower. I threw a knuckleball a bunch, probably from the time I was 10 years old to the time I graduated. It was probably my main pitch.”

Remarkably, his butterfly wasn’t simply delivered from down under; it came from each of his arm angles.

“I would throw it from all three slots,” the righty told me. “When I would throw it from over the top, it would kind of shake and then drop. When I would throw from sidearm, it would shake and stay true, stay pretty straight. When I threw from submarine, it would shake and almost rise. It’s weird that I would do that, but also kind of cool that I could make the ball do those things. Like I said, I was a junk-ball thrower.”

Until he wasn’t. Blubaugh’s heater began flirting with 90 mph in summer ball following his junior year, attracting the attention of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. One year later, a transformation occurred. He was still throwing from multiple arm slots when he arrived at college, but then came a meeting with his coaches. Believing that Blubaugh could be “really good over the top,” they asked him to trade in cool and funky for what might be called “boring but effective.” Another velocity gain ensued. Training diligently, with a lot of hard work in the weight room, Blubaugh saw his velo climb to 95-96 by the winter of 2021.

And then there is what went unseen. Not only did Blubaugh stop delivering pitches from multiple arm angles, the unpredictable offering that sent Hoyt Wilhelm and Phil Niekro to the Hall of Fame was given a pink slip.

“It’s strictly for catch play now,” said Blubaugh, who last threw a knuckleball in a game during his high school years. “I just kind of mess around with it, because it wouldn’t really work with my arsenal. I’d love to say that it does, but I wouldn’t be able to throw it max effort and have the feel to know where it was going to go. The knuckleball is definitely a pitch you have to practice a lot. I wouldn’t want to say it’s impossible that I would ever throw it again, but as of right now, it’s in my back pocket.”

———

RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS

Jason Heyward went 16 for 42 against Stephen Strasburg.
Jason Giambi went 23 for 37 against Darren Oliver.
Eddie Collins went 23 for 43 against Jack Warhop.
Dave Collins went 20 for 43 against Charlie Hough.
Joe Collins went 15 for 32 against Ellis Kinder.

———

Connor Seabold was a somewhat surprising inclusion on the Detroit Tigers’ Opening Day roster. Signed three days earlier after being released by the Toronto Blue Jays, the 30-year-old right-hander had just 119 big-league innings under his belt, those coming with four teams across parts of four seasons. His won-loss record was 1-11, while his ERA was a no-better 7.79. Even so, he’d had a good spring, and his right arm has always shown promise.

The Tabbies weren’t the only team that showed interest when he became available.

“There were a few,” Seabold told me late April, shortly before he landed on the IL with an ankle issue. “With two or three teams it was like, ‘We might have a spot on the big-league roster, or it might be the minor leagues; we’re not sure yet.’ The Tigers came up with a split deal to be on the big-league roster on Opening Day, and they’ve been in the playoffs the last couple of years, so it was a tough thing to turn down.”

When I’d chatted with him informally in mid-March, Seabold said he had an opt-out clause in the minor-league deal he’d signed with the Jays in January. That played a big part in his becoming a Tiger.

“I tried to force their hand a little bit — me making the roster for Opening Day after having a good spring — and they had other plans,” Seabold explained. “At the end of the day, I’m thankful that it worked out the way that it did. But yeah, you can never predict where you’re going to be.”

Seabold came out of the Detroit bullpen eight times before going on the shelf, allowing five runs over 11 frames and being credited with a win. Reinstated to the roster on Friday after a brief rehab stint, he tossed a one-two-three eighth inning in yesterday’s 3-2 Tigers’ loss to Toronto in 10 innings.

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A quiz:

Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa chased MLB’s single-season home run record in 1998, the former finishing with 70, the latter with 66. Two other batters, one in each league, finished with 50 or more home runs that year. Who were they?

The answer can be found below.

———

NEWS NOTES

Texas Rangers announced on Friday that infielder Josh Smith was diagnosed with viral meningitis and will be in the hospital for up to 10 days. Expected to recover. Smith reportedly could be back in action as soon as next month.

The full schedule is now out for this year’s national SABR Convention, which will be held in Cleveland from July 29-August 2. It can be found here.

Dick Hughes, a right-hander who appeared in 68 games for the St. Louis Cardinals across the 1966-1968 seasons, died on May 6 at age 88. A rotator cuff injury ruined what might have been a long and prosperous career. The Stephens, Arkansas native went 16-6 with a 2.67 ERA in 1967 — his first full season — only to finish 20-9 with a 2.78 ERA over just 307 innings.

Rick Kreuger, a left-hander who appeared in 11 games for the Boston Red Sox across the 1975-1977 seasons, and in six games for the Cleveland Indians in 1978, died on May 7 at age 77. A native of Grand Rapids, Michigan, Kreuger was on the winning end of four decisions, and had a 4.47 ERA over 44-and-a-third innings. He finished his playing career with the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants, counting the legendary Sadaharu Oh as one of his teammates.

———

The answer to the quiz is Ken Griffey Jr., who led the junior circuit with 56 round-trippers, and Greg Vaughn, who finished third in the senior circuit with 50.

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Putting together Wednesday’s Yandy Díaz feature prompted what almost became a quiz question. Given its degree of difficulty — would anyone outside of obsessive Rays fans get it? — I will instead present it in answer form.

Carl Crawford (.296) and Yandy Díaz (.292) have the highest batting averages in Tampa Bay Rays franchise history among hitters with at least 3,000 plate appearances with the team. Which player has the highest batting average among those with at least 1,000 plate appearances with the team? (A hint: he batted an even .300 in his Tampa Bay tenure.)

The answer is Harold Ramírez. “Hitting Harold” logged his .300 average over 1,038 PAs with the Rays from 2022-2024.

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The worst individual pitch — the single bullet he would most like to have back — that Jesús Luzardo has thrown so far this season?

“A 2-0 fastball to Esteury Ruiz, in Miami (on May 3),” the Philadelphia Phillies southpaw told me. “Bottom of the seventh, one out, middle down. He hit it like 400 feet. I was behind in the count to a dead-red fastball guy and threw a four-seam fastball basically down the middle. It was a command thing. I probably should have commanded it a little better, maybe used a different part of the plate. But I needed to throw a strike, and I got bit on it. It happens.”

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FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Seven new members were voted into the Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame earlier this week. Among them were four former MLB players: Erubiel Durazo, Rodrigo Lopez, Miguel Ojeda, and Mike Paul.

Justin Turner is slashing .333/.449/.587 with three home runs in 78 plate appearances for the Mexican League’s Toros de Tijuana. The 41-year-old veteran of 17 MLB seasons counts several former big-leaguers among his current teammates, including Greg Allen, Franchy Cordero, Wilmer Flores, and Junior Lake.

Jae Hyun Park is slashing .316/.368/.526 with seven home runs and a 139 wRC+ in 147 plate appearances for the KBO’s Kia Tigers. The 19-year-old outfielder was taken 25th overall in last year’s draft out of Incheon High School.

Kosei Shoji is 4-3 with a 2.93 ERA and a 2.01 FIP over 46 innings for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. The 25-year-old right-hander’s 29.4% strikeout rate is third-best in NPB.

John Gant is 2-1 with a 1.82 ERA over 29-and-two-thirds innings for the CBPL’s Wei Chuan Dragons. The 33-year-old former MLB hurler signed with the Taipei, Taiwan-based ball club this past winter.

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Last Sunday’s column led with Kai-Wei Teng, whom his Houston Astros teammate Spencer Arrighetti described as having “an insanely good” sweeper that “takes a 90-degree left turn.” Not included in the piece was what Teng told me about the common properties of that pitch in his homeland.

“I noticed that most of the pitchers in Taiwan actually had more of a drop slider, a vertical break slider, rather than a sweepier one,” said the 27-year-old native of Taichung. “But there was one pitcher, C.C. Lee, who used it in MLB and is now back in Taiwan. His slider is a lot more like a sweeper, with a lot of horizontal break.”

Lee appeared in 47 games for the Cleveland Indians from 2013-2015, logging a 4.50 ERA over 34 innings. The 39-year-old righty is currently playing for the CPBL’s CTBC Brothers.

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Left on the cutting-room floor from my spring training conversation with Trey Yesavage is what he said about the work that goes into being a pitcher at the professional level.

“Everything that fans see is on the field,” the Toronto Blue Jays right-hander told me. “What goes on behind the scenes is what gets me, as a starting pitcher, to show up every five days. That would be hitting the weights hard twice a week and being in the training room for an hour every day, just getting the body ready. I’m training more efficiently now than I did in college. I’m not throwing every seven days anymore, so the turnarounds are quicker. You have to get the work in, in a shorter amount of time.”

It was during his time at East Carolina University that he realized he had what it takes to one day stand atop a big-league mound.

“It was always a dream of mine, but I never really thought it would come to fruition,” Yesavage said. “But then, in my sophomore year of college, I became a starter. I kind of flourished from there, so I’d say that’s probably when I thought it would happen.”

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FARM NOTES

Jonah Cox is slashing .420/.468/.696 with four home runs and a 199 wRC+ in 129 plate appearances for the Double-A Richmond Flying Squirrels. Acquired in the 2024 trade that sent Ross Stripling to Oakland, the 24-year-old outfielder in the San Francisco Giants organization swiped 58 bases in each of the previous two seasons. He has 19 steals in the current campaign.

Aidan Cremarosa is 4-0 with a 2.54 ERA, a 2.32 FIP, and a 37.7% strikeout rate over 39 innings for the Low-A Charleston RiverDogs. The 22-year-old right-hander in the Tampa Bay Rays organization was drafted in the eighth round last year out of Fresno State.

Jordan Woods is 2-0 with a 1.80 ERA, a 2.68 FIP, and a 33.3% strikeout rate over 30 innings for the Low-A Columbia Fireflies. Signed as a non-drafted free agent by the Kansas City Royals in 2022, the 22-year-old left-hander from Oakville, Ontario threw six perfect innings with 14 strikeouts versus Kannapolis last Sunday.

On Wednesday, a trio of Quad City River Bandits (High-A, Royals) pitchers combined to walk 10 batters, including the first seven, in the sixth inning of a 15-3 loss to the Lansing Lugnuts (Athletics). There were just two hits in the nine-run frame, one by Myles Naylor, the younger brother of Bo Naylor and Josh Naylor, and the other by C.J. Pittaro, the son of former big-league infielder Chris Pittaro.

On Thursday, the South Bend Cubs (High-A, Chicago) collected 20 hits and 15 walks on their way to a 25-6 thrashing of the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers (Brewers). Matt Hallbach, a 23-year-old third baseman out of UC San Diego, went 5-for-5 with a home run and six RBIs

On Friday, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Florida Complex League entry lambasted the Baltimore Orioles’ entry by a score of 28-1. Hyun Seung Lee, an 18-year-old shortstop from Seoul, South Korea, went 3-for-4 with four runs and six RBIs.

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A random obscure former player snapshot:

Chet Kehn is one of two players in Dodgers franchise history with a 1.000 batting average and more than one base hit (Kip Gross, a fellow pitcher, is the other). A right-hander whose career comprised three games for Brooklyn in 1942, Kehn came to the plate three times, all in his MLB debut, drawing a walk and recording a pair of singles. Moreover, both of his hits — the second of which drove in Ducky Medwick — were in the same frame. He never against wielded a bat in the bigs.

His pitching exploits weren’t anything to write home about. The San Diego native tossed a total of seven-and-two-thirds innings, allowing eight hits and six runs, with four walks and three strikeouts. His 1948 season with the California League’s Santa Barbara Dodgers is noteworthy. A player-manager, Kehn went 10-7 with a 5.32 ERA on the mound, and 32-for-87 (.368) at the plate. One of the Class-C club’s outfielders was 19-year-old Dick Williams, who went on to play parts of 13 major-league seasons, then became a Hall of Fame manager.

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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE

Luis Peña — the No. 2 prospect in the Milwaukee Brewers system — is back after missing time due to a serious health scare. MLB.com’s Adam McCalvey has the story.

At CBS Sports, Julian McWilliams wrote about the popularity of Kyle Schwarber.

Five decades ago, Dusty Baker bought Ron Washington his first suit. John Shea wrote about their long-lasting relationship for The San Francisco Standard.

Sports Illustrated’s Stephanie Apstein opined that the Giants’ grim outlook likely goes well beyond this season.

TribLive’s Kevin Gorman wrote about how Pirates right-hander Bubba Chandler has adopted a “Who cares?” attitude toward his high walk rate.

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RANDOM FACTS AND STATS

The Los Angeles Angels have won just four of the 34 games they have played in Cleveland since 2015.

Jesús Luzardo has a 2.93 FIP and a .366 BABIP this season. Ranger Suarez has a 2.93 FIP and a .243 BABIP.

Brandon Marsh has a .369 BABIP since the start of the 2022 season, the highest among qualified hitters. Riley Greene, who is at .459 in the current campaign, has a .354 BABIP over that span.

Kyle Schwarber is slashing .330/.468/.660 with nine doubles and eight home runs in 126 career plate appearances at Fenway Park.

Cecil Fielder, Torii Hunter, and Greg Vaughn combined to go 6-for-116 (.052) with 60 strikeouts against Roger Clemens. Gary Sheffield went 11-for-18 (.611) with one strikeout against Clemens.

On today’s date in 1927, Charlie Grimm drove home the deciding run as the Chicago Cubs edged the Boston Braves 4-3 in 22 innings. Bob Smith went the distance for the loss — he allowed 20 hits and walked nine —while Bob Osborn worked 14 innings of scoreless relief for the win.

On today’s date in 2002, the Minnesota Twins scored three times in the top of the 14th inning, only to have the New York Yankees respond with four in the bottom half to win 13-12. Jason Giambi walked the game off with a grand slam.

Players born on today’s date include Scott Seabol, a second baseman whose MLB career comprised one game for the New York Yankees in 2001, and 59 games for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2005. A native of McKeesport, Pennsylvania who hit his lone round-tripper against his original team — Tanyon Sturtze surrendered the gopher — Seabol was selected in the 88th round of the 1996 draft. A total of 1,717 players were taken in front of him that year.

Also born on today’s date was Ace Parker, an infielder who logged 37 hits, including a home run in his first big-league at-bat, while appearing in 94 games for the Philadelphia Athletics across the 1937-1938 seasons. His success on the gridiron far surpassed what he did on the diamond. Parker is in both the College Football Hall of Fame and the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Claral Gillenwater’s big-league career comprised five games for the Chicago White Sox, for whom he went 1-3 with a 5.48 ERA in 1923. The Sims, Indiana native took the hill for numerous teams down on the farm, including the Evansville Evas, Muskegon Anglers, Peoria Tractors, Petersburg Goobers, Terre Haute Tots, and Wheeling Stogies.

Source

Earlier this week, we crossed the quarter mark of the season, and while 40 games is hardly a large sample size, the round number makes for an easy occasion to reflect on what’s happened thus far and consider how that could impact what’s still to come. My favorite bit of trivia is that it’s been a month since an NL Central team had a losing record. That team, remarkably, was the Cubs, who were last below .500 on the morning of April 15 and are now in first place after rattling off two separate 10-game winning streaks. Meanwhile, both the Brewers and Cardinals have never spent a game below .500. Only three other teams in baseball have not had a losing record this season: the Yankees, Braves, and Dodgers. Notice that quintet includes just one team in the American League, which has been underwhelming overall through the first quarter of the season. Entering play Friday, only five teams in the AL had winning records. In addition to the Yankees, the other four teams, hilariously, are the Rays, Guardians, White Sox, and Athletics. Just as we all expected.

On the individual side of things, many of the usual suspects rank near the top of the offensive leaderboards. There’s Aaron Judge, Yordan Alvarez, Kyle Schwarber, and Matt Olson all within the top 10 for wRC+, with Olson, Judge, and Alvarez also in the top 10 when sorting by WAR, along with Bobby Witt Jr., the leader. But there are also some unexpected names alongside this cohort. Ben Rice (193 wRC+), Shea Langeliers (179), Mickey Moniak (170), Jordan Walker (166), and Brice Turang (166) have emerged as top-10 hitters so far this season, and while it’s not a shock to see a Dodgers duo in the top 10 for position player WAR, it is a surprise that the two players in the pair are Andy Pages and Max Muncy (both at 2.0 WAR). By his standards, Shohei Ohtani has struggled at the plate — he’s slashing .240/.370/.427 with seven home runs and a 122 wRC+ entering Friday — but he’s offset that by turning into the best pitcher in baseball, at least by ERA. Through seven starts and 44 innings, he has a 0.82 ERA and 1.6 WAR, with the latter figure ranking seventh among major league pitchers. He’s the only pitcher with a top-10 WAR who has thrown fewer than 50 innings. Of the six pitchers above him, pitcher WAR leader Cam Schlittler (2.4) and Davis Martin (1.9 WAR) stand as the most surprising.

So the natural question is this: How much of what we’ve seen so far should we expect to continue? I’d say at least one NL Central team will finish the year below .500, as will the White Sox. I said two weeks ago that I wasn’t buying the Rays and A’s as true contenders, and I stand by that. But I do think Langeliers and Walker can sustain most of their production at the plate, and none of us should doubt Ohtani at this point. Otherwise, I’d rather not prognosticate further. We’ve got a mailbag to get to, and that’s way more fun that anything I have to say about Mickey Moniak. 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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Hello FanGraphs team,

Dr. Plantwrench

Michael Baumann: Dear Dr. Plantwrench — 

The second-to-last line of your question flipped a switch in my brain. “Special combination of playability and ineptitude” is a really fascinating combination. I love nothing more than finding new ways to identify and express mediocrity.

So I busted out the trusty old Baseball Savant search engine and looked for plate appearances from the ninth inning or later, with two outs, where the score and state of the bases allowed the batter to tie or win the game with a home run. (I’m aware that a batter could hit into a game-ending double play or triple play, but I limited my search to two outs for simplicity’s sake.)

Now, I’m still riding the high from last week’s mailbag question, where Pat wrote in asking if Tim Hill was the most efficient pitcher in baseball on a per-pitch basis. Turns out that (at least at that moment in time), Hill was indeed the most efficient pitcher in the league, and by a massive margin. Doc, I was hoping your intuition would be similarly vindicated.

Unfortunately, I have some bad news.

Through Monday’s games — I’m tackling the mailbag question early this week — Schanuel has only come up once so far this season in a win-or-go-home moment, and he hit an RBI double.

If it makes you feel better, this is about the wimpiest RBI double you could produce in a potential walk-off situation, and because it only plated one run, the Angels lost the game anyway. But if we’re taking all situations where Schanuel came up with a chance to win, lose, or tie, he’s 4-for-10 with one walk in 11 career plate appearances. Maybe you’re remembering other high-leverage at-bats, but under these strict parameters, he has been extremely clutch.

Win-lose-or-tie plate appearances are pretty rare. I know it’s early in the season, but only 16 hitters have experienced more than two such plate appearances this year. Only five have more than four chances; Jac Caglianone has had five such opportunities. And the big guy has done quite well: 3-for-5.

Riley Greene is 2-for-2 with a walk, giving him the best batting record in baseball under these circumstances. Adolis García and Julio Rodríguez have produced hits in both of their win-lose-or-tie plate appearances. Ian Happ has a hit and a walk in two plate appearances, and Austin Wells has batted twice and walked twice.

Everyone else who’s had multiple cracks at a situation under these parameters has made at least one game-ending out. On the other end, Dillon Dingler, Brayan Rocchio, and Daniel Schneemann are all 0-for-3, making them the only players who have batted more than twice and failed to reach.

That’s some neat trivia, but even I find two plate appearances over six weeks to be thin gruel for a fun fact. So I ran the same search over Baseball Savant’s entire database of competitive games: since 2008, regular season and postseason.

The most frequent customers are the guys you’d expect. Really, this is just another way of asking who’s played the most games since 2008, and this table reflects that.

I almost didn’t include this table because the Yadi Sickos are going to go nuts over his .326 batting average with the game on the line. Someone’s going to cite this stat in a Hall of Fame column in a couple years, I’m sure of it.

But hitting .326 is genuinely impressive, because the league as a whole is hitting .213 with a strikeout rate of 27.8% in these situations. Which makes sense; this is the highest-leverage spot out there, so these at-bats are almost always coming against a really good reliever, if not the actual anointed closer. Chapeau to Yadi.

Unfortunately, the cranky old 2000s ball writers are about to get an even tastier bit of meat on which to feed.

Thank goodness Fire Joe Morgan is defunct.

The list of guys who went oh-fer in decent-sized volume is pretty long, so I’ll spare both you and them and just pick out some highlights. Brian Dozier is 0-for-18, but with six walks. Elly De La Cruz is the active leader in plate appearances without a hit, with 17, but he’s walked five times. Paul DeJong and Martín Maldonado are both 0-for-16 with no walks. DeJong’s a bit of a surprise, but that’s what you’d find in any sample of 16 Maldonado at-bats from the past decade.

What we’re not getting is that Goldilocks zone of hitters who are good enough to stay in the lineup (or at least good enough not to get pinch-hit for) but not good enough to succeed with the game on the line. Ultimately, these situations just don’t come around often enough for that effect to rise to the surface. Andrew McCutchen is the leader in games played since 2008; he’s hitting .162 in just 44 plate appearances in these situations, or an average of a little more than two a year.

My condolences to Dr. Plantwrench, and my apologies to the stereotypical crank national columnist from 2005. Turns out you were right all along.

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Which franchise is the most forgettable? — Chase

Jay Jaffe: That’s a fun question, Chase. I’m sure I could draw the ire of a current fan base by settling on one of the current 30 teams, but even if — speaking hypothetically, of course — I were to nominate the Mariners (the only one never to play in a World Series) or the Rockies (currently on their way to their eighth straight losing season, with just nine .500-or-better seasons out of 34), I’d have to acknowledge that I’ve spilled a lot of ink on their Hall of Famers and their playoff runs over the years. The Marlins have only eight .500-or-better seasons out of 34, and churn their roster so frequently that every spring, The Athletic’s Jayson Stark challenges baseball people to remember who’s on the team in a game he calls Name Three Marlins. That said, they’ve won two World Series and have produced MVP and Cy Young winners, plus the now-relocated seven-story “Homer” sculpture, so even they’re tough to dismiss.

At the other end of the spectrum, a peek at the 1871-75 National Association — the first professional league considered a major league by our site, Baseball Reference, and the Hall of Fame (read the plaques), but not by Major League Baseball — and other bygone 19th-century leagues seems too easy. Did you know that in its inaugural season, the NA had not one but two teams nicknamed the Forest Citys (yes, with that spelling), one in Cleveland and the other in Rockford, Illinois? The former lasted just two seasons but included Hall of Famer Deacon White, who collected the NA’s first hit. The latter evolved out of an “amateur” team — the club wasn’t supposed to pay its players but did, quietly – that included pioneer Al Spalding and infielder Ross Barnes. Both future Hall of Famers were gone by 1871, but the team, which finished last with a 4-21 record and then disbanded, included Cap Anson, who left a huge footprint on the game, and not for the better given his refusal to take the field to face Black players, instigating the “gentleman’s agreement” that segregated top-level baseball for over 60 years. The 1884–85 Union Association, which some experts have argued shouldn’t be considered a major league, included a team called the Wilmington Quicksteps that joined the league late in the season after others dropped out, went 2-16, and then disbanded — but even they rostered an enigmatic phenom known as The Only Nolan. The UA also featured other short-lived teams that entered the season late, none of which included anybody who’s ever been part of a Remember Some Guys session. But really, going this route for an answer is too easy.

In the end, I settled on two franchises as most forgettable because their names were recycled, but not as part of their current franchises: the 1901 Milwaukee Brewers and 1901–02 Baltimore Orioles. Both were part of the original American League, but teams with the same names existed even before then.

A Brewers franchise that had been a staple of the AL’s forerunner, a minor league called the Western League (changed to the American League in 1900 but still considered minor), included future NL batting champion Ginger Beaumont in 1898 and was managed by Connie Mack from 1897-1900. Mack signed pitcher Rube Waddell for the 1900 season, then took him to Philadelphia — where he had become a minority owner in exchange for his investment and an agreement to manage — the next season. The 1901 Brewers did have eight players from the 1900 team and were managed by future Hall of Famer Hugh Duffy. They finished last at 48-89, and after the season relocated to St. Louis, where they became the Browns, who in turn moved to Baltimore after the 1953 season and are now the Orioles. A minor league franchise that ran from 1902–52 while moving between leagues would keep the name Brewers alive for another half-century, but the 1901 team has no relation to the current franchise, which arrived when the 1969 Seattle Pilots moved after their inaugural season. The Pilots, though short-lived, will never be considered forgettable thanks to reliever Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, perhaps the greatest baseball book of all time.

As for the Orioles, like the Brewers, that name has been used by multiple franchises since the 1880s. Most notably, a major league team that began in the American Association in 1882, jumped to the NL 10 years later, and won three straight pennants from 1894–96 with a bunch of future Hall of Famers — John McGraw, Dan Brouthers, Hughie Jennings, Joe Kelley, Willie Keeler, and Wilbert Robinson — leading the way. That franchise disbanded after 1899, at which point all of those players but Brouthers (who was in his 40s by then) scattered to other teams within the NL, which had just contracted from 12 teams to eight. When the AL was founded in 1901, McGraw, who spent 1900 with the St. Louis Cardinals, returned to Baltimore to manage the new team, which went a respectable 68-65 and finished fifth in 1901.

In July 1902, fed up with the frequency with which AL president Ban Johnson fined and suspended him for arguments with umpires, McGraw left the Orioles and joined the Giants, beginning a 31-year run as manager that included 10 pennants and three championships. It was a a shady-as-hell move; McGraw had been part-owner of the Orioles but sold the majority of his stock to Giants owner Andrew Freedman, who by agreement then released all but five players from the Orioles, including McGraw and future Hall of Famers Roger Bresnahan and Joe McGinnity, both of whom went with McGraw to New York. Robinson took over for McGraw as manager, but the team had to forfeit a July 17, 1902 game due to a lack of players. Under the bylaws, the franchise was then taken over by the league and stocked with players from other teams so as to finish their schedules. Those Orioles went just 50-88, finishing last in the AL.

After the 1902 season, the AL and NL made peace, agreeing not to poach each other’s players who were under contract. As part of the agreement, the AL was allowed to put a team in New York to replace the one in Baltimore, which had gone belly-up. The Giants ownership (Freedman and John T. Brush) was the only one in the two leagues that objected. The new New York team was named the Highlanders until 1913, when it became the Yankees.

For the next century, the 1901-02 Orioles were usually considered part of the Yankees’ history, but in 2014, Baseball Reference separated the two entities after years of mulling the prospect and consulting with experts, including Gary Gillette, co-editor of The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, and MLB official historian John Thorn. Years earlier, Gillette had pointed out that just five players appeared with both the 1902 Orioles and 1903 Highlanders, including only a couple of regulars. Thorn concurred, pointing out that the July 17, 1902 forfeit meant the end of the franchise, referring to what came after it as “a walking dead-shell operation” in an August 15, 2014 article in the Wall Street Journal by Jonathan Zalman. The ruling jibed with the view of the Elias Bureau, MLB’s official statisticians (who sometimes differ with Baseball Reference and FanGraphs) and the Yankees, who at the time were counting down to their franchise’s 10,000th victory. “I don’t think something like that has ever happened in another circumstance,” Elias executive vice president Steve Hirdt told Zalman. “That is a powerful enough demonstration that the franchise had been lost.”

So, the 1901 Brewers are one of two 20th- or 21st century franchises who spent only a year in one city (the 1969 Pilots being the other) and the 1901–02 Orioles are the only team in that timeframe considered to have gone defunct. Neither is connected to the current team that bears its name. If those two don’t count as forgettable, I don’t know what does.

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Hello,

Consider the example of a team that has runners on first and second with nobody out. It faces a run expectancy of 1.55 runs in that situation, but just 1.41 runs with the runners at second and third and one out (per the good work of Mr. Clemens last year). The immediate conclusion is that bunting would cost the team, so the batter should swing away. But the decision the team is actually making is more nuanced. The club is really asking, “Do we expect to score more runs with runners on first and second and nobody out when we bunt, or first and second and nobody out when we swing away?” The actual value lost to bunting is therefore two different subsets of the 1.55 figure: the subset of instances where a team did not bunt, and the subset of instances where a team did bunt. In this way, the 1.55 expected runs gives an inaccurate picture of the true value of “swinging away” because it includes the two-on, no-out outcomes in which a team decided to bunt; outcomes that are expressly eliminated by the choice not to do it. Taking the above scenario as an example, my hypothesis is that the true value of swinging away is more than 1.55 runs, and the true value of bunting is less than 1.41 runs. I did OK for myself despite almost a full season of at-bats over my career lost to sacrifice bunts!

Sincerely,
The Ghost of Eddie Collins

Ben Clemens: Ooh, a ghost, spooky. I’m not into being haunted, though, so I better answer this question well enough that I leave no chance of that happening. The first thing I did was try to define the question. I took American League games before the universal DH was instituted and all games since as a sample size. I split the data into three eras – 2000-2009, 2010-2021, and 2022-2025. Then I looked at each situation where a sacrifice bunt was possible – runners on base, fewer than two outs – and divided them up into two groups. In one group, I put all plate appearances that didn’t end with a bunt. In the other, I put every plate appearance that ended in a bunt, whether or not it produced a sacrifice bunt. For example, let’s take the universal DH era and one standard spot for a bunt – runner on first, nobody out. Without splitting into bunts and non-bunts, teams have scored 0.8955 runs per inning after reaching that base/out state. When batters didn’t bunt (40,139 times), their teams scored 0.8963 runs the rest of the inning. When batters did bunt (928 times), their teams scored 0.861 runs the rest of the inning.

Those are basically the same numbers – the headline run expectancy is 0.896, and the run expectancy conditioned on swinging away is also 0.896. In fact, in the situation you mentioned – runners on first and second, no one out – teams have scored 1.513 runs after swinging away and 1.566 runs after bunting. Bunting has increased the run expectancy there. I think the most interesting question here is the gap between headline run expectancy and run expectancy conditioned on no bunts, so here’s a grid of that in the universal DH era. In other words, this is how much better than headline run expectancy teams do by swinging away:

These are all tiny, and they’re not even in the direction you’d expect. Swinging away is “worse” than the headline run expectancy in nine of the 14 base/out states listed here. Even in the 2000-2009 era, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and bunts were far more frequent, run expectancy was frequently lower for swinging away than for all plate appearances including bunts:

I can come up with some sneaky reasons why this isn’t showing you what you think. For example, the guys who have bunted are worse hitters on average. But if you measure by the hitters who come up afterwards, the hitters who bat after bunt attempts are better than the hitters who bat after swing-away plate appearances. That’s because bunts are disproportionately attempted by hitters at the bottom of the lineup – and that particular effect is getting stronger over time.

For example, if you restrict the study to nine-hole hitters, teams have scored 1.564 runs the rest of the inning after they swing away with runners on first and second and no one out, and 1.565 after they bunt in the same situation. That’s the worst hitter in the lineup, in the best situation for a bunt, and even then bunting is only equally as good as swinging away. With a runner on first and no one out, ninth hitters’ teams have put up 0.925 runs the rest of the inning after they swing away and only 0.847 after they bunt. In other words, the reason that bunts appear to outperform swinging away in some situations is a selection effect; the kinds of hitters who sometimes bunt aren’t the same as the kinds of hitters who almost always swing away, so their conditions are just different.

For the record, this doesn’t say anything about the win probability impact of a bunt, and I think that most pure sacrifice bunts these days occur in situations where a single run is very important, which makes win probability a better measure of value than run expectancy. That two-on, no-out bunt is a positive expected value decision when it’s late and close, particularly if the hitter isn’t good.

My final takeaway in all of this is that you don’t need to worry about the effect of bunts on run expectancy tables. They’re relatively rare, and the hitters attempting them aren’t a representative sample. Fun question, though!

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Like many of you, Lilo & Stitch taught me that, “‘Ohana means family,” and Hawaiian Bros, like many businesses, boasts that it has a familial relationship with its employees and customers. But that didn’t stop the fast casual restaurant chain from making a business decision to walk back a promise to its most loyal customers.

At the beginning of the season, Hawaiian Bros announced a Plates for Plates promotion in conjunction with the Royals. Anytime the Royals “plated” six or more runs during a home game, HB Rewards members would be eligible for a free Classic Plate Lunch, redeemable the following day at participating locations. But by May 6, the Kansas City-based restaurant had issued a statement to its rewards members, announcing a change to the Plates for Plates promotion. Now when the Royals score six or more runs at Kauffman Stadium, members of the loyalty program can receive a free Classic Plate Lunch only with the purchase of a Plate Lunch. It’s still a good deal, but going from a no-purchase-necessary perk to one that requires spending a minimum of $12 is a sizable downgrade.

So what prompted the change? In their first 17 home games, the Royals reached the six-run scoring threshold eight times. To start 2025, Kansas City hit the six-run mark just three times over the same number of home games. The promotion’s cashing in at more than twice the rate it would have just one season prior is reason enough for the company to reevaluate, but the Royals amplified the issue for those running the corporate fraternity of Polynesian food by scoring six-plus runs in five consecutive home games from April 21 to April 26.

At this early stage of the season, it is fair to wonder if Hawaiian Bros perhaps overreacted to a hot performance during a soft part of the schedule. Maybe this year’s slate of opponents was less competitive than last year. The Guardians, Orioles, Twins, Rockies, Astros, and White Sox made up the early part of the home schedule in 2025, while this year, the Royals faced the Twins, Brewers, White Sox, Orioles, Angels, and Guardians. Some overlapping opponents and similar vibes across both years, but for the sake of thoroughness, I calculated a weighted ERA- to compare the overall quality of pitching faced in the early going each season. In 2025, that number came in at 103, and in 2026, it was 104, making for a very similar strength of opponent in the visiting dugout.

So without a weak strength of schedule to act as a source of comfort, Hawaiian Bros was forced to issue a statement. The tone of the email that went out to HB Rewards members was very, “Wow, we love the enthusiasm, but we didn’t realize folks would be this stoked about free stuff.” Clearly, whoever authored the release has never been to a sporting event featuring a mascot armed with a t-shirt cannon. Hawaiian Bros also framed the change as an effort to take the heat off restaurant employees who had been, “working around the clock to keep up with the response, the lines, and the wave after wave of Royals fans showing up hungry.” It was purely a pro-labor move, not at all motivated by the way handing out thousands of free lunches was eating into profit margins.

Just kidding. It was about the money. And given that Hawaiian Bros obviously does know how to tabulate revenue and losses and make data-driven decisions, it’s worth considering the following question: Could the restaurant chain have avoided undoing whatever positive PR Plates for Plates generated by employing better forecasting models of the Royals’ offense heading into the season?

In fairness to Hawaiian Bros, the Royals lineup is largely the same as last year, and yet, this year’s iteration of the team has been markedly more productive.

It’s not absurd to assume that a similar lineup would produce runs at a similar clip, but it’s still worth trying to poke a few holes in that assumption. That is, if you’re a company with a bottom line to protect. A basic model might start by looking at recent team seasons and mapping average runs scored per game at home to the average number of home games where the team scored six or more runs. Intuitively, those values should correlate with one another, but I checked just to be safe, and they produced an r-squared value of 0.85 — a strong positive correlation. With that in mind, the table below shows how the relationship plays out.

Last season, the Royals scored 3.7 runs per game at Kauffman Stadium and scored six or more runs in 17 of those games, slightly below the historical average, but still within the error bars. So far this season, Kansas City has scored 5.0 runs per game at home and is on pace for over 38 games of six or more runs, while the historical averages suggest 31 such games. Such a large year-over-year spike in scoring for a fairly static roster feels tough to predict, but there were clues. For one, a very similar Royals lineup scored 4.8 runs per game at home in 2024, introducing the possibility that 2025 may have been more of an outlier than representative of the team’s true talent. Further, preseason position player projections estimated this year’s offense would average 4.7 runs per game overall, and applying Kauffman Stadium’s 2025 park factor bumps the estimate to 4.8 runs per game at home and comes much closer to approximating the current state of reality.

But applying last season’s park factor to this season’s projections isn’t quite right either. The Royals spent part of their offseason tweaking the dimensions of Kauffman Stadium. The right and left field walls both came in about 10 feet and all of the outfield walls got about a foot and half shorter. With the old version of the stadium known for suppressing power, team officials said the goal was to create a park more in line with league averages when it comes to fly ball outcomes. The new setup still leaves plenty of outfield grass for doubles in the gap, while making it easier to hit home runs down the lines.

When Ben Clemens projected how the new configuration might impact offense in Kansas City, he estimated an additional 0.3 runs per team-game. Adding that to a blend of the possible estimates discussed so far (2024 actual RS/G, 2025 actual RS/G, 2026 projected RS/G) approximates the home-field scoring potential of the 2026 Royals at 4.4 runs per game, which historically maps to 26 games with six-plus runs. That per-game average is still lower than the reality we’ve experienced so far, but it’s much more reasonable than assuming a repeat of last season.

Though bringing in the walls at Kauffman Stadium combined with some positive regression seems to provide a clean explanation for the uptick in production, the actual shape of that production may or may not agree. Park factors offer insight on how the dimensions of a stadium (among other things) influence its run scoring environment. Baseball Savant provides the option to look at either single-season park factors or averages across multiple seasons. Generally, a single season of data isn’t enough for park factors to stabilize, and a quarter of a season of data certainly isn’t, but in cases like this, where the goal is to get a feel for the impact of known changes to a ballpark, single-season park factors can at least offer some insight on the directionality of the changes, even if the magnitude of the change still needs some refining.

Park factors indicate an increase in walks, doubles, and home runs, with singles suddenly a bit harder to come by. If the Royals are scoring more runs this year because they moved the fences in, we should see an increase in walks, doubles, and home runs when compared to the first few weeks of recent seasons.

The small, early-season samples of doubles and home runs are a bit murkier to interpret, but the increase in walks is undeniable. This year, the Royals’ walk rate is up over four percentage points relative to last year and 2.4 percentage points compared to 2024. Park factors suggest the updates to the stadium account for roughly half of that change, while the other half is likely attributable to ABS. The introduction of the challenge system has brought with it a narrower zone, and the league-wide walk rate this season is 9.5%, up from 8.4% in 2025.

And if you’re wondering why moving in the fences would lead to such a noticeable increase in walks, my speculative guess is that the increased likelihood of hitting a home run incentivizes hitters to wait for a pitch they can drive in the air. It has to be deflating to put your entire tuchus into a swing and then watch your beautifully arcing fly ball die at the warning track — only to have that happen time and time and time again. Now that the Royals know they don’t have to hit the snot out of a pitch to get it to leave the yard, they probably feel less obligated to go with whatever pitch they get and slap it somewhere for a single. Instead, they’re more inclined to believe good things will happen if they wait for their pitch. The opposite is true for the pitcher, who probably feels a bit less comfortable attacking the zone, knowing the once-cavernous outfield won’t be able to minimize damage the way it used to. Indications of this effect do come through in the data. Royals hitters are seeing fewer pitches in the zone and being more selective with the ones they do get.

As for doubles and home runs, the power numbers are certainly up compared to last season’s showing, but they don’t pop off the page when compared to 2024. Delineating between park effects and natural fluctuations in performance isn’t always possible based on a table of raw data. Instead, I watched all 20 of the home runs hit by the Royals at Kauffman Stadium prior to May 5 to see if any of them were benefactors of the new wall configuration. I counted four that would have been questionable to make it out last season — a solo shot by Salvador Perez on April 4 that only made it a couple of rows into the seats in left, a leadoff home run by Maikel Garcia on April 11 hit to almost the exact same spot, a solo blast off the fair pole in right by Isaac Collins on April 26, and the walk-off homer hit by Lane Thomas later in that same game. The Thomas dinger might have had just enough mustard on it to get out last year, but it was a close enough call to merit inclusion on the list. Four found home runs fits with Ben’s analysis and what Statcast’s park factors have observed in the data thus far. But since all four were solo jobs, their part in the Royals’ sudden scoring surge is more supporting role than main character.

Doubles are somewhat more perplexing. As Ben noted in his piece, several of the “new” home runs would have been doubles under the old configuration, implying a downturn to the frequency of two-baggers. But the early park factors suggest a boost rather than a decline. The Royals’ early-season doubles pace is on par with the numbers they’ve posted in recent seasons, but their opponents, on the other hand, have picked up the pace considerably, hitting a double in around 8% of their plate appearances, whereas in the past that number sat between 4% and 5%. It’s not clear where the increase in opponent doubles is coming from, but since those aren’t contributing to the rising tide of Royals run scoring, that can be a mystery for another day.

Using some napkin math and this year’s wOBA weights, the bump in walks and home runs attributable to ABS and the change in ballpark dimensions was worth somewhere in the neighborhood of 22 runs for the Royals during those first 17 home games. Those 22 runs represent an increase in scoring that should have been easily anticipated by anyone trying to guesstimate how many days they’d be handing out free lunches over the course of a season, since the changes to the ballpark and the introduction of ABS were known in advance. Scoring 22 runs over 17 games is 1.2 runs per game, which if added to, say, the Royals’ 3.7 runs per home game from 2025, creates an estimate much closer to the 5.5 runs per game that Kansas City put up at home from the start of the season to May 5. If the decision-makers at Hawaiian Bros had figured on the Royals’ scoring 4.9 runs per home game, then using the runs per home game mapping above, they would have anticipated around 30 games of six or more runs spread throughout the season. And pro-rating that figure to those first 17 games, they would have anticipated six or so such games over that span. In that event, it still wouldn’t have been ideal for their business model that the actual numbers of games in which the Royals scored six-plus runs was eight, but it certainly would’ve been less of a shock to the system.

And yet, that still leaves a certain amount of the Royals’ newfound scoring (at least relative to last season) unaccounted for. Some of that could be positive regression following a down start to the season last year. Some could be the type of streaky overperformance that is wont to happen in small samples.

There are several members of the lineup currently outpacing their preseason projections, especially when playing at home, raising concerns of how sustainable this all is. Some of those concerns are more easily dismissed than others. The projections were clearly skeptical of the career-best numbers Garcia posted in 2025, but so far in 2026, it appears those numbers were a result of meaningful adjustments to his swing. It’s also not hard to believe that 26 year-old Bobby Witt Jr. might still have some room to grow and evolve his game. However, it remains to be seen if Kyle Isbel can keep slugging .410 despite his .356 xSLG and the lowest hard-hit rate of his career. Likewise, Collins is running a .415 BABIP at home, which calls into question how long he’ll be able to maintain the matching .415 wOBA.

Another BABIP-related cause for concern is the team’s .309 BABIP at home, relative to its .260 BABIP on the road. However, if you scroll back up to the park factors table, you’ll notice that in the new version of Kauffman Stadium, wOBACON gets a bump that xwOBACON does not, suggesting that this iteration of the ballpark has established a pattern of delivering better-than-expected outcomes, which further suggests that a higher BABIP at home is justified, and perhaps not a cause for concern after all.

But even if Isbel and Collins do take a step back, there’s Vinnie Pasquantino, who currently resides at the other end of the BABIP-luck spectrum. His overall BABIP currently sits at .223 (.197 at home), and his .310 xwOBA offers some light in the darkness cast by his .284 wOBA (.272 at home).

So yes, certain members of the Kansas City lineup may be producing above expectations to this point in the season, and they may be doing so in a manner that would have been difficult to predict for a marketing executive or financial officer in the food service industry. But on the other hand, those overperformances are somewhat counterbalanced by underperformance from Pasquantino and Perez (who seems to have one of those aging curves that more closely resembles a cliff).

Overall, a decent chunk of the pain inflicted on Kansas City-area locations of Hawaiian Bros was foreseeable by anyone who knows ball even a little bit. And arguably, if you plan to partner with an MLB team, you should probably know a little bit of ball. But ball knowledge aside, the heads of Hawaiian Bros definitely understand ‘ohana (even if they haven’t seen Lilo & Stitch) because they have an entire glossary of Hawaiian words on the community engagement page of their website. That definition of ‘ohana reads, “Family, but used beyond blood relations to express love and commitment within communities and workplaces.” And yet, they couldn’t commit to Plates for Plates as originally presented to their community. So yes, it’s true that ‘ohana means family, and family means no one gets left behind or forgotten, but Hawaiian Bros was quick to leave an ill-conceived promo behind in the hope that it would soon be forgotten.

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

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

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

It’s true that the league-wide on-base percentage is higher than last year. That’s because walks are up, as I noted earlier this month (9.5%, up from 8.4% last year — for more on why, see Ben Clemens here), but that only increases the extent to which games are (again) slowing down and producing less action. Thus I’m going to continue my batting average boosterism until morale improves.

Plus, catchers leading the league in batting average are only slightly more common than dogs driving cars. You probably already know that it’s a short list of backstops who have won batting titles: four in AL/NL history, namely Joe Mauer (2006, ’08, ’09), Ernie Lombardi (1938, ’42), Bubbles Hargrave (1926), and Buster Posey (2012). It’s far too early to declare that Langeliers is on his way to becoming the fifth, but it’s worth appreciating what’s playing in Small Sample Theater. To return to the metaphor, if you see a dog driving a car, you don’t say, “Nah, he’ll probably get pulled over soon, let’s move along,” you investigate!

First off, given the American League batting average of .239, Langeliers currently has the largest margin above his league of any batting title-qualified catcher:

For that table, I haven’t just stuck to the current threshold for batting title qualification based on 3.1 plate appearances per game, which has been in place since 1957 and which allows for phantom at-bats to be used in determining ranking if a player is short of the mark. Lombardi’s 1942 title and Hargrave’s 1926 title both fit into the table above via an older 100-game threshold, and since more forgiving standards held throughout the high-offense 1920s and ’30s, some other catchers who met those bygone standards are included above. I decided to go this route since it seemed less silly than comparing Langeliers’ sample of 179 plate appearances against a more strict standard.

Anyway, you can see that Langeliers tops the list — that’s .1003 points ahead, which rounds down — with Mauer (.09863 ahead of the league) and Piazza (.09858 ahead) needing to go to the fifth decimal to settle the rankings immediately below him. If you’re wondering why Piazza didn’t win the batting title in 1997, it was because Tony Gwynn hit .372, while Phelps was outdone by Paul Waner’s .373.

Another way to compare a player to his league is to use our Plus Stats, which are indexed in the way that ERA+ is, with park adjustments baked into the calculations and 100 representing league average. Since I didn’t have the luxury of using Baseball Reference’s Stathead to manage the patchwork qualification standards prior to 1957, this one is based on the 3.1-PA per game standard used in our leaderboards.

I like this comparison a bit better, as the park adjustment adds an additional dimension. Langeliers is benefitting from calling Sacramento’s bandbox home, hitting .370/.452/.630 (195 wRC+) in 84 plate appearances there and .315/.347/.618 (165 wRC+) in 95 plate appearances elsewhere — but not enough to distort this comparison entirely. Sutter Health Park isn’t Coors Field or the Baker Bowl.

All of that is a prelude to a deeper look at what Langeliers is actually doing. Now in his fourth major league season, he was originally drafted out of Baylor University by the Braves with the ninth pick in the 2019 draft, and sent to the A’s in March 2022 as one of four players in the return for Matt Olson, who himself is absolutely raking (.294/.371/.629, 174 wRC+). Langeliers reached the majors on August 16, 2022, and for his first two-plus seasons provided solid, but unspectacular offense for the position, albeit with low batting averages; from 2022–24, he hit a combined .215/.276/.432 (98 wRC+), and for the last of those seasons, he hit .224/.288/.450 (109 wRC+) with 29 home runs.

Langeliers jumped to a .277/.325/.536 slash line with 31 home runs and a 132 wRC+ last year. Moving from the pitcher-friendly Coliseum to hitter-friendly Sutter Health Park helped; he went from .197/.270/.406 (96 wRC+) at home to .278/.319/.498 (118 wRC+). But he made other changes as well, some of which show up in Statcast’s measures. Notably, he closed his stance a bit (from 20 degrees open to 18), moved his feet farther apart (from 32.9 inches to 35.7), increased the tilt of his swing (from 29 degrees to 30) but reduced his attack angle (from 12 degrees to 11) and direction (from 6 degrees pull to 3 degrees pull).

Beyond Statcast’s measures, and perhaps more importantly, Langeliers also moved his hands higher, simplifying his swing. Here’s a screenshot from an MLB Network video that shows a progression that carries over into this season (even with the slightly skewed perspective, it’s not hard to spot):

As Langeliers explained to colleague David Laurila last fall, the changes included starting his loading process earlier:

“Everything kind of blends together, so if you’re starting it later you rush through your swing… everybody throws hard, obviously, but the slower and earlier I can be, the swing comes out smoother. It’s not as rushed.

“I want to be at the height of my leg kick before the pitcher releases the ball. If the pitcher has released the ball and my leg is still going up in my load — if I’m starting a little bit late — my launch is going to rush, and a couple of things can happen. I’m either in and out of the zone, or I dump a little early, back here, so I’m under it.”

Langeliers told Laurila that the extra time helped him “hold the leg kick long enough to be able to read the pitch” and allowed him to be flexible as to how far out front he made contact and where he focused on hitting the ball, direction-wise. He also said he had dialed back how hard he tried to hit the ball, and the data support this, though the year-to-year differences from 2024 to ’25 are slight, with his average bat speed and fast swing rate each dropping a bit (from 74.1 mph to 73.8 for the former, and from 42.0% to 39.6% for the latter). The biggest payoff was a much-improved performance against four-seamers, form a .192 batting average and .364 slugging percentage against them in 2024 to a .242 average and a .576 slugging in ’25. While his whiff rate against four-seamers went up slightly, overall he cut his strikeout rate from 27.2% to 19.7%; his 7.5-point drop was the majors’ second largest among players who qualified for the batting title in both seasons, just below Paul Goldschmidt’s 7.7-point drop.

In the video from which that screenshot was taken, Mark DeRosa illustrated how much more quickly Langeliers can get into his swing with his hands higher — and again, they’re higher now than they were last August, to say nothing of last May.

In 2026, Langeliers is swinging even harder now, with an average speed of 75.1 mph and a fast swing rate of 51.7%, over 12 points higher than last year, with his squared-up and blast rates per swing (24% and 14.3% this year, respectively) virtually unchanged, and his exit velocity and related metrics reflecting even better contact:

Langeliers has not only added over two miles per hour to his average exit velocity (boosting him from the 69th percentile to the 91st), he’s similarly done so for his barrel rate (from 69th to 93rd) and hard-hit rate (from 58th to 88th). He’s elevating the ball more consistently (his groundball rate has dropped from 37.3% to 32.2%), and his expected stats are all in the 99th percentile, up from last year’s 52nd, 73rd, and 58th percentile, respectively, in xBA, xSLG, and xwOBA. His 94-point jump in BABIP, from .290 to .384, is the majors’ fourth largest among players with at least 400 plate appearances last year and 100 this year; it doesn’t hurt that he runs very well (81st percentile, up from an already-impressive-for-a-catcher 65th percentile).

Pitch-wise, Langeliers has built on last year’s advances and is absolutely demolishing four-seamers (.324 AVG/.794 SLG), with his xSLG against them jumping from .515 to .791. In terms of pitch groups, which beef up the sample sizes, his year-to-year improvement against fastballs is less dramatic than it is against breaking balls:

Langeliers was pretty good against breaking balls in 2024 but struggled last year. His average exit velocity against those pitches is up nearly eight miles per hour, with his xSLG increasing by 270 points and his xwOBA by 174 points. He’s giving opposing pitchers fewer places to hide; even in small samples, the only pitch in which he’s not hitting at least .324 is the sweeper (.158 in 21 plate appearances).

All told, Langeliers is now in his second consecutive season with extreme improvements, and I’ll note that they’re not just on the offensive side; he’s improved his pitch blocking from -6 runs in 2024 to 0 last year and 1 this year, with his overall FRV improving from -13 to -2 to 0. His 2.4 WAR is well past his 2024 mark (1.9) and more than halfway to last year’s quite respectable 3.9, tied with Judge for second in the league behind Bobby Witt Jr. Langeliers may not be Cal Raleigh, but right now he looks like something special.

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

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

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

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

That’s impressive enough on its own, but it’s not the most impressive feat Muncy has pulled off in his tenure on the Dodgers. When he joined the team, he was defensively limited. He played his natural position, first base, the majority of the time. He also played second base when the Dodgers were trying to get more offense on the field, but it was the shift-enabled second base role that doesn’t really exist anymore. It involved plenty of standing in shallow right field with a rangy shortstop and a slid-over third baseman to cover the dirt.

When the Dodgers signed Freddie Freeman, though, Muncy couldn’t play first anymore. But instead of shifting him to DH (it was the first year of the universal DH) or back to second, where the overshift was only a year away from being banned, he moved to third base. That was partially out of necessity – an aging and injured Justin Turner played only 66 games at the hot corner, his lowest total since 2014 (excluding 2020, for the pedants out there). But the change was a revelation. Somehow Muncy, who had looked like a position-less slugger for most of his professional tenure, was up to the task.

If you’re a DRS aficionado, Muncy is 20 runs above average since he moved over to third, the fifth-best defensive third baseman in that span. Statcast’s FRV is far more measured; it has Muncy as a -5 defender in that span, though a scratch defender from 2024 onwards. I’ve previously found that FRV works a little better in the infield, but both metrics have predictive value; in other words, you won’t go too wrong thinking Muncy is average or a bit above.

That would be a remarkable feat in and of itself. From age 24, his big league debut, through age 30, Muncy played only about 700 innings at third, and was indifferent at it. Then at age 31, when most players move down the defensive spectrum, he shifted to a tougher position and held his own. He’s 35 now, the oldest primary third baseman in the league. The other guys above 30 are mostly defensive wizards: Nolan Arenado, Manny Machado, José Ramírez, Matt Chapman, and Alex Bregman are the next five oldest. This is not normal.

If the Dodgers listed their players like a movie poster, I’m not even sure Muncy would be famous enough to make the cut. They boast three MVPs, a two-time Cy Young winner, the highest-paid pitcher in baseball history, and the player with the highest ever annual (non-deferred) salary. Muncy would be on the “also featuring” line at best, and even that might be a stretch considering how decorated his compatriots are. But his contributions to their success are massive. The Dodgers are old, and their roster isn’t particularly flexible. But if your 35-year-old slugger can handle third base, both of those limitations ease significantly. How do they keep squeezing more juice into their lineup? It’s at least partially because Muncy lets them.

That brings us back to that lineup and its aforementioned run of poor form. The Dodgers surged out of the gates, scoring six runs per game en route to the best record in baseball on April 20. That day featured a 12-3 victory over the Rockies in Denver – the best offense in the best place for offense. But since then, the Dodgers have been moribund. They’re scoring only 3.8 runs per game, the sixth-worst mark in the majors. While their run prevention has still been superb (3.5 runs allowed per game, fifth best), they’ve scuffled to a 10-12 record. Forget the best record in baseball; they’re locked in a tight race with the Padres for the NL West lead.

I’ll start my evaluation of their slump by telling you one person not to blame: Max Muncy. You know how he’s produced a metronomic 130 wRC+ in his long Dodgers career? His wRC+ over this stretch has been 123. He and Kyle Tucker (122 wRC+) have kept the bases juiced. Andy Pages (108 wRC+, four homers) has helped clear those bases. The rest of the squad, however, has hit one massive slump all at once.

Those three MVPs who form the backbone of the offense? Shohei Ohtani is hitting .203/.329/.333 in this downswing, for a 92 wRC+. It’s one of the worst 20-game hitting stretches of his Dodgers career – he had two similar spans in 2024. Whether it’s a coincidence or not, Ohtani has been dominant on the mound over that stretch, and the Dodgers have started to give him more days off around his starts as a result. He didn’t hit either of the last two days – he pitched on Wednesday and struck out 10 over seven shutout innings, then got a full rest day.

It’s not so much that Ohtani has never slumped like this before – as I mentioned, he had some lulls in 2024. But he wasn’t pitching in 2024, and it wouldn’t exactly be unfathomable if the workload associated with being one of the best starters in baseball acts as a drag on his offensive numbers. Whether that’s true or not is going to be incredibly difficult to untangle mathematically, even when viewed from a 40,000-foot, career-long level. As Ohtani himself put it, “Both my hot streaks and slumps are part of who I am as a player. What’s important is being able to maintain good form for a long period of time.”

That’s a very self-aware statement, not always a given in professional sports, where success generally goes hand in hand with an irrational belief in yourself. But it’s just true! Ohtani has had skids like this before, and he surely will again. Great players aren’t immune from bad stretches – they just have them less frequently, and even their lows aren’t quite so low as your average hitter. That’s why they’re great.

The Dodgers are built to withstand a cold stretch from Ohtani, but Freeman has been just as cold. He’s posted an 88 wRC+ over the same stretch, batting .244/.326/.329, with only one home run and four doubles in 92 plate appearances. Meanwhile, Mookie Betts basically hasn’t even been on the field – he missed almost all of this span recovering from an oblique strain before returning Monday.

The good news is Freeman’s rough patch is already over. He’s been hot since the start of May, in fact, with a 137 wRC+. Those five extra-base hits I mentioned? They’ve all come in that span. Trying to slice hitter performance into arbitrary windows will lead to funny results like that. But in the aggregate, Freeman has been roughly neutral for the Dodgers in their recent malaise – one very cold stretch and one hot one. That’s a big change from his usual form. Last year, those three were a collective 96 runs above average offensively (mostly Ohtani and Freeman, to be fair). During this downstretch, they’ve been two runs below average. That’s a lot of runs to make up!

It’s not all of the runs, though. Those offensive contributions were worth about 0.6 runs per game. The Dodgers are slumping meaningfully harder than that. Will Smith and Teoscar Hernández, All-Star batters both, are off to poor starts to the season, and both have been below average during this downturn. Smith appears to have angered the batted ball luck gods. He’s in the 80th percentile for barrel rate and xwOBA and the 77th for strikeout rate; he’s also walking more than average, albeit less than he did in his superlative 2025 season. His timing looks slightly off, but that’s just my making general statements. If you made me describe exactly what is wrong, I don’t think I could. These are just the normal fluctuations for him; he had a slump this bad last year en route to a 153 wRC+, and a far deeper one in 2024. Catching is hard! Sometimes the guys who do it don’t hit for a few weeks. It happens.

Hernández’s cold stretch is slightly scarier. You might not have noticed it as the Dodgers romped their way to a second straight World Series last year, but he declined significantly from his first season in Dodger blue. He was basically average offensively, and played his usual blah outfield defense en route to a 0.6-WAR season. He’s changed his approach significantly – fewer swings, slower swings, better contact rate, worse power output – but the change hasn’t been great for his overall numbers. He’s never hit for less extra-base power, barreled the ball up less frequently, or made so little hard contact. He’s also still striking out 28% of the time. The adjustments he’s made might work if he slashed his strikeout rate by a ton, but this version of Hernández looks more like a fourth outfielder than a Home Run Derby champion. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a sign that nothing is wrong, how about this? Between the time I started and finished this article, the Dodgers played one game. Smith and Hernández combined for three extra-base hits in a 5-2 victory.

Even the supporting players for the Dodgers have struggled. Dalton Rushing burst onto the scene this year and still sports a jaw-dropping 189 wRC+. But that’s because he posted a 388 wRC+ (!!!) in his first 28 plate appearances. Since April 20, he’s hitting .179/.304/.179 in 46 times up. Hyeseong Kim, who played nearly every day in Betts’ absence, has followed a similar path: 155 wRC+ in his first 10 games, 72 wRC+ since. If you’re wondering how the Dodgers were scoring six runs per game in the early going, it surely helped that these two guys were playing out of their minds, but reality has reasserted itself. Stupid regression toward the mean. I’m sure both have better days ahead – Ohtani’s wise words about hot streaks and slumps apply to everyone – but the timing of their ups and downs has exacerbated the run-scoring whiplash.

A tiny bit of this downswing can be attributed to their opponents. This lineup has faced pitchers with an aggregate 2026 ERA of 3.90 over this stretch – 3.95 if you exclude their games against the Dodgers. That’s a hair better than league average, but hardly an insurmountable obstacle. It’s been more about Los Angeles’ lack of production than any elite opposition.

So am I here to bury the Dodgers? Not even a little bit. If you go looking for disaster in every slump, you’re going to be disappointed. The Dodgers had two non-overlapping 20-game stretches of scoring four or fewer runs per game last year – and finished second in baseball in runs scored. They had a lengthy stretch below four runs a game in 2024 en route to another second-place finish in scoring. They’re still sixth in runs scored this year! Meanwhile, their pitching staff has allowed the third-fewest runs. I’m fairly certain that the Dodgers are going to be OK.

Baseball is just weird this way. Sometimes what happens today is a great predictor of what will happen tomorrow. Sometimes it’s not even close. But nothing currently afflicting the Dodgers feels structural. While many of their best hitters are struggling at the moment, they’re not doing so in the same way, or for the same reasons. And what could be more Dodgers than Max Muncy walking and slugging his way through it all at the same clip as always? Finding a way to keep Ohtani fresh seems like a very difficult problem. The rest of this will come out in the wash.

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12:27

Eric A Longenhagen:

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Cal Raleigh is, apparently, not invincible.

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

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

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

Raleigh will get imaging Friday when the team returns to Seattle. The official word is “right oblique strain,” which wasn’t always known despite weeks of concern. Raleigh was a late scratch from the Mariners lineup on May 2, sitting out with what was described at the time as “general soreness.” The Mariners are usually forthcoming about the type of injury a player is dealing with, so their lack of specificity on the matter was notable. The night before, Raleigh took a foul ball square in the mask and another off his… self-endorsed cup, underscoring the beating catchers take on a daily basis. It’s not unusual for him to be dinged up, but it is unusual for him to miss time. Raleigh later told Lookout Landing that it was actually his side that was bothering him, and he didn’t know how or when it happened. He sat for three games and the Mariners played down a man.

When he returned, Raleigh found himself in the middle of an 0-for stretch that would eventually reach 43 plate appearances. He broke the slump Tuesday with a pair of singles, flashing a big grin as his teammates celebrated.

That clip struck me, as I’m not sure I’d seen Raleigh smile all season. Big, toothy grins are less common for the always-serious Raleigh than they are for, say, Rodríguez, but he’s appeared especially discouraged early in 2026, often looking for answers that just haven’t been there.

It started before the injury. Raleigh posted a 59 wRC+ through April 19 with very little power. But then, for a moment, it looked like he’d snapped out of it, hitting five home runs in seven games at the end of the month. Then the 0-for began, then the soreness, then the 0-for continued, and now he’ll sit for several weeks. Raleigh will return from the injured list with a 63 wRC+, a .289 xwOBA, a 31.5% strikeout rate, and a 10.9% HR/FB rate.

Exactly what’s plagued Raleigh this year is not obvious. Again, he didn’t report any injury until his line was already under water. Maybe it’s bothered him longer than he’s let on (he played much of 2022 with a broken thumb), or maybe it hasn’t. But there’s no obvious sign of an injury sapping his bat speed or sprint speed, and yet he’s down by pretty much every performance indicator, as Mike Petriello recently pointed out for MLB.com.

My sense is Raleigh’s struggles in the first quarter of the season are mostly related to timing. He’s swinging much deeper in the zone, and is way, way behind on fastballs. For batters with an extreme pull-side uppercut, even a slight timing slump can turn homers into whiffs and weak fly outs. Some have attributed all this to his tumultuous attendance at the World Baseball Classic, but that seems unlikely, given many of his WBC teammates and opponents are having tremendous seasons. I think this is just how it goes sometimes for players relying on the three true outcomes.

In Raleigh’s absence, Mitch Garver will get the bulk of the playing time behind the dish. He signed with Seattle back in 2024 to be the starting DH, and eventually became the backup catcher when he hit his way out of a full-time job. The Mariners brought him back this offseason — at the behest of Raleigh, in fact — and he has a 95 wRC+ in 65 plate appearances. Jhonny Pereda will back up Garver.

As Raleigh has slumped, so too have the Mariners. I wrote in March that the Mariners, on the back of Raleigh and Rodríguez, had the best odds in the American League to advance to the World Series. They weren’t quite the best team in the league by projected WAR, but on paper, they were a good, well-rounded group and cushioned by a weak division.

The Mariners are now 22-23 and struggling to find their footing without their top slugger. Still, they’re just a game behind the Athletics for first place in the AL West, and because nobody seems interested in capitalizing on Seattle’s slow start, as John Trupin recently pointed out for Lookout Landing, the team’s odds to win the division haven’t changed:

It’s worth noting the Mariners have played a bit better than their record suggests. And in general, more has gone right than wrong so far. Randy Arozarena is in the middle of a trademark heater, with a 146 wRC+ (propped up by a .388 BABIP) and 1.6 WAR through the first 45 games. Brendan Donovan has a 152 wRC+ since being acquired via trade this offseason, though he missed nearly three weeks with a groin injury. Crawford has a 119 wRC+ despite underperforming his peripherals (though the less said about his defensive metrics the better). Rodríguez’s 117 wRC+ has dispelled the (generally false) notion of his first-half struggles, especially if a summer surge is in his future. And Luke Raley’s all-or-nothing approach is set to “all” at the moment; he’s clubbed 10 home runs already (including four since I wrote about him last week). The Mariners’ platoon-backed lineup has struggled on the short side (and on defense), but overall they have the majors sixth-best wRC+ (107) and ninth-most WAR (5.8).

The pitching has generally been good, too. The rotation has thrown the most innings in the majors and sits a respectable eighth in WAR. Much of that is thanks to Emerson Hancock, whose nascent success stems from a fundamental shift in ability, as Michael Rosen detailed last month. Bryan Woo, George Kirby, and Logan Gilbert have each been healthy and good, even if their annual tinkering has yet to get them to that elusive next level. And Bryce Miller, whom I often consider the most talented of the bunch, returned from the injured list (again) Wednesday with his best-ever velocity.

The bullpen has also showcased more depth than before. At the moment, Seattle is without Gabe Speier (shoulder inflammation), Matt Brash (minor lat soreness), and Jose A. Ferrer (paternity leave). And I wrote for Lookout Landing last week about the pros and cons of Andrés Muñoz’s new fastball shape. But the so-called “pile” options this year have been more reliable, and they’re not being asked to do as much.

And so the Mariners are ultimately what we thought they would be: Well rounded, imperfect, and probably the best team in the AL West. Most good teams spend large chunks of the year tip-toeing around .500, and there’s nothing here that looks out of the ordinary for a team aiming for 85-90 wins. I suspect their best days lie ahead.

But those days will be harder to reach now without Raleigh. The IL trip is certainly a disappointment following his brilliant 2025 campaign, in which he clubbed 60 homers, won the Home Run Derby, led the Mariners deep into the postseason, and forced us all to consider and reconsider and re-reconsider the true value of catching. It often seemed over the last year that he was invincible, or at least inexhaustible, ascending to levels of performance and celebrity that should be impossible for the self-effacing Raleigh. Now, for the first time in his career, he will have a chance to pause, to rest, to sit on that big dumper and think about what’s next.

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

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

In fact, Sabrowski has the second-best ERA in AL/NL history with that innings minimum. He trails only Chick Brandom, who is not who Yoda accused you of exchanging flirty Instagram DMs with, but rather a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1900s.

If you’re interested in strikeout rate, Sabrowski is fifth among active pitchers at 39.2%, trailing Mason Miller, Josh Hader, Aroldis Chapman, and Edwin Díaz. In other words: Four of the best closers of the past decade, plus a relatively unknown middle reliever. Sabrowski definitely has his boosters — he’s a recidivist star of David Laurila’s Sunday Notes column — but he’s a long way from having Miller or Hader’s star quality.

Great relievers often come from inauspicious origins; that would certainly describe Sabrowski. The 6-foot-4 Canadian left-hander was a 14th-round pick out of Cloud County Community College in Concordia, Kansas. Day 3 picks from Midwestern jucos only occasionally turn into Albert Pujols; Cloud County’s only major leaguer before Sabrowski was Jake Diekman.

Sabrowski got drafted in 2017; by the time he first appeared in David’s Sunday Notes, in November 2023, he’d gone through two Tommy John surgeries and been selected by Cleveland in the minor league phase of the 2021 Rule 5 Draft. That’s not even the fancy Roberto Clemente-and-Shane Victorino version of the Rule 5. That year’s minor league Rule 5 class included 51 players, of whom only 13 (including Sabrowski) have gone on to appear in the big leagues, for an average of 38 games each.

After all that, Sabrowski didn’t reach the majors until he was almost 27. His cup of coffee in September 2024 turned into some postseason experience, which augured a potential high-leverage role in 2025. But then his elbow started barking again, and he didn’t get going until the last week of June.

It’s not a long track record, but it’s a good one. The best since Chick Brandom, some might say.

So how is this rando striking out 46.7% of opponents this year?

Knowing nothing else about a pitcher with that strikeout rate, you’d expect a special fastball. And Sabrowski has one, but not in the way you’d think. His average four-seamer velocity is 94.2 mph this year, which is above average for a lefty, but only in the 45th percentile overall. It’s a pretty normal delivery and arm angle, too. Sabrowski’s extension is better than average, but in no way noteworthy in isolation.

He does hide the ball well. I just wrote about another Guardians lefty with an interesting fastball, Parker Messick. Sabrowski, like Messick, starts his motion with a big downward arm stab, but unlike Messick, he keeps his arm bent. This hides the ball behind his thigh until he’s almost ready to release it.

The deception helps, but while Sabrowski’s delivery is compact, he’s not getting down and pushing the way Messick does. The ball, in other words, isn’t coming at the hitter from an odd angle.

There’s one exceptional thing about Sabrowski’s fastball: Spin. When we talk about pitchers spinning the baseball, it’s almost always in the context of a breaking ball. The median spin rate for a slider or curveball in the majors is about 2,500 rpm. Sabrowski throws both of those pitches; each averages a hair over 2,600 rpm.

But the median four-seamer spins at around 2,300 rpm; Sabrowski’s fastball is averaging 2,534 rpm. That’s 20th out of 345 pitchers this year, one spot behind Miller.

There’s not much else to Sabrowski’s fastball. With that three-quarters arm angle, the ball comes off his fingers at an 11 o’clock spin axis, with a 96% active spin rate and zero deviation between spin-based and observed movement. But because he’s throwing that pitch with a lot of spin — and incredibly consistently — the ball gets sucked up and away from a right-handed batter.

Looking at Baseball Savant’s total movement vs. comparable pitches, only four left-handed pitchers are getting more rise on their four-seamer than Sabrowski. What’s interesting about those guys — Alex Vesia, Caleb Thielbar, Jack Dreyer, and Mason Montgomery — is that they’re putting rise on the fastball at the expense of arm-side movement. Messick does this too; he positions his four-seamer between a cutter and sinker, neither of which Sabrowski throws.

Sabrowski, on the other hand, is getting above-average arm-side movement on his fastball; ride instead of cut, if you will. The only other lefty relievers in this neighborhood — in terms of fastball velo and movement — are Jacob Latz and Dylan Lee, the subject of a Ben Clemens article yesterday. (“One of my favorite article genres to produce is ‘you’ve never heard of this reliever, but he’s great now,’” Ben began. Couldn’t agree more.)

Lee and Sabrowski are both big lefties with unusual fastball movement, but they have little else in common. Lee throws more than 50% sliders, while Sabrowski works mostly off his fastball, with a gyro slider and a big, low-80s curveball. Lee throws a changeup; Sabrowski doesn’t.

Sabrowski doesn’t need to lean on his breaking pitches as much because his fastball is giving opponents fits. Only four pitchers have a lower opponent batting average on their four-seamer this year. One is Latz; two of the three others are Skenes and Zack Wheeler. Sabrowski’s four-seamer is getting a 31.1% whiff rate, which is 17th in baseball; his strikeout rate on the pitch is 41.3%, which trails only Jacob Misiorowski’s four-seamer.

The heater is Sabrowski’s out pitch. He throws it 66.2% of the time in all situations, which is the fourth-highest rate in the league, and 60% of the time with two strikes, which is the 13th-highest rate in the league (minimum 50 total two-strike pitches). Out of the 66 two-strike fastballs Sabrowski has thrown, 19 have turned into strikeouts, which is the fifth-highest conversion rate among that cohort of pitchers.

Sabrowski’s fastball, in addition to having freaky movement on its own, interacts with his curveball and slider in an interesting way.

He throws both breakers to both lefties and righties, though the mix is a little more slider heavy to lefties and a little more curveball heavy to righties. The slider has below-average movement on both axes and actually drifts pretty close to the center line; the curveball has more drop than average but less arm-side movement.

You can see here that this gives those three pitches an interesting tic-tac-toe effect. The movement on each runs from one o’clock to seven o’clock, from the batter’s perspective, with the slider in the middle both in terms of movement and velocity. The hitter knows that whatever’s coming is going to break somewhere along that line; he just doesn’t know in which direction or at what speed. And with Sabrowski hiding the ball well, the hitter doesn’t have much time to react.

It’s a neat trick, and so far nobody’s figured out how to counter it. Now, this does not mean Sabrowski is a perfect pitcher. He’s walking 13.3% of opponents, and the massive separation between pitches cuts both ways. He is getting gobs of whiffs, but when the hitter does guess right, the ball gets hit hard.

Sabrowski is currently in the first percentile in both groundball rate (which isn’t a big deal for a pitcher who throws rising fastballs up) and opponent exit velocity (which is somewhat of a bigger deal). That leaves some boom-or-bust risk for Sabrowski.

At least in theory, because he doesn’t blow up that often. The 28-year-old has kept a clean sheet in 20 of his 22 appearances so far this year, and all four of the runs scored against him (including his only home run) came in a pair of consecutive appearances in mid-April.

So maybe he is unhittable after all. Watch out, Chick Brandom. Your record might not last much longer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Laurila: You need to do that without cheating on fastballs, otherwise you’re going to get beat by a secondary…

Harper: “Sure. The great equalizer has always been the changeup, and that pitch is coming back a lot more. A lot of lefties are starting to throw that more often, whereas when I first came up, Cole Hamels was a unicorn. Right? He would throw the sinker down and in, and tunnel the changeup off of that. Nowadays, a lot of guys are throwing hard, but they’ve also got good secondary stuff. They have good offspeed, so like you said, you can’t really cheat on the heater. You have to be aware of their other pitches.”

Laurila: How are you going about that without cheating to the heater?

Harper: “Early, down, and through. That’s a big thing for me. Get ready early, get down on the ball, and stay through it. If I can do those three things and keep my mind on just going in that direction, that keeps me where I need to be, instead of thinking, ‘Hey, I need to change my hands here,’ or change something here. Everybody starts in a certain direction, but then we all end up in the same spot. So, for me it’s just early, down, and stay through.”

Laurila: What about staying on top of elevated fastballs?

Harper: “It’s not too much staying on top of the ball; it’s more or less just trying to get to the heater. If I get to the best inside fastball and hit it to left-center, I’m going to keep on everything. It’s kind of dependent on who I’m facing that day, or what the guy’s got, but if I can stay through the baseball in that sense, I’m good.”

Laurila: Are you ever looking to let the ball travel, or basically just trying to catch it out front?

Harper: “I want to enter the front window the best I can. That’s where I want to hit it. I want to hit the ball in the front window and… I use the phone booth reference a lot: Stay in my phone booth and not get too far this way, not get too far that way, but stay as even as I can and hit the ball in that front window as best I can.”

Laurila: A hitter once told me that letting the ball travel and hitting it out front aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.

Harper: “That’s a little too much for me. I just try to hit the ball out front. If I can do that, and do it the right way, I’m going to be OK where I’m at.”

Laurila: Outside of being older and more experienced, it sounds like you’re basically the same hitter you were when you got to the big leagues.

Harper: “I feel like I’m the same kid I’ve been since I was 10 years old. I’m just going out there and trying to hit the baseball hard. Obviously, you’ve got to change with the times. Like I said, guys are throwing harder, and there are tendencies, but it’s basically see the ball, hit the ball. It’s see the ball, hit the ball, hit it hard. Sometimes you hit it hard and it’s right at somebody. That happened to me twice last night. It’s baseball, the game we play. Nothing that happened yesterday is going to dictate the way I feel. For me, every day is a reset day. Every day is a new day. Like I said, sometimes you feel good in the cage, and sometimes you don’t. You’ve got to just go out on the field and let your natural ability take over, go out there and try to hit the ball hard.”

——

Earlier “Talks Hitting” interviews can found through these links: Jo Adell, Jeff Albert, Greg Allen, Nolan Arenado, Aaron Bates, Jacob Berry, Alex Bregman, Bo Bichette, Justice Bigbie, Cavan Biggio, Charlie Blackmon, JJ Bleday, Bobby Bradley, Will Brennan, Jay Bruce, Triston Casas, Matt Chapman, Michael Chavis, Garrett Cooper, Gavin Cross, Jacob Cruz, Nelson Cruz, Paul DeJong, Brenton Del Chiaro, Josh Donaldson, Brendan Donovan, Donnie Ecker, Rick Eckstein, Drew Ferguson, Justin Foscue, Michael Fransoso, Ryan Fuller, Joey Gallo, Paul Goldschmidt, Devlin Granberg, Gino Groover, Matt Hague, Andy Haines, Mitch Haniger, Robert Hassell III, Austin Hays, Nico Hoerner, Jackson Holliday, Spencer Horwitz, Rhys Hoskins, Eric Hosmer, Jacob Hurtubise, Tim Hyers, Walker Jenkins, Connor Joe, Jace Jung, Josh Jung, Jimmy Kerr, Heston Kjerstad, Steven Kwan, Shea Langeliers, Trevor Larnach, Doug Latta, Dillon Lawson, Brooks Lee, Royce Lewis, Evan Longoria, Joey Loperfido, Michael Lorenzen, Mark Loretta, Gavin Lux, Dave Magadan, Trey Mancini, Edgar Martinez, Don Mattingly, Marcelo Mayer, Kevin McGonigle, Hunter Mense, Owen Miller, Paul Molitor, Colson Montgomery, Tre’ Morgan, Ryan Mountcastle, Cedric Mullins, Daniel Murphy, Lars Nootbaar, Logan O’Hoppe, Vinnie Pasquantino, Graham Pauley, David Peralta, Luke Raley, Julio Rodríguez, Brent Rooker, Thomas Saggese, Anthony Santander, Drew Saylor, Nolan Schanuel, Marcus Semien, Giancarlo Stanton, Spencer Steer, Trevor Story, Fernando Tatis Jr., James Tibbs III, Spencer Torkelson, Mark Trumbo, Brice Turang, Justin Turner, Trea Turner, Josh VanMeter, Robert Van Scoyoc, Chris Valaika, Zac Veen, Alex Verdugo, Mark Vientos, Matt Vierling, Luke Voit, Anthony Volpe, Joey Votto, Ryan Waldschmidt, Christian Walker, Jared Walsh, Jordan Westburg, Jesse Winker, Bobby Witt Jr. Mike Yastrzemski, Nick Yorke, Kevin Youkilis

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

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

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

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