Two weeks ago, Spencer Strider’s arm appeared healthy. One week ago, the Braves placed Strider on the IL after an MRI of his elbow revealed a damaged ulnar collateral ligament. This Friday, Strider had internal brace surgery to support that UCL; he’ll miss the remainder of the season and perhaps some of next year recovering from it. That’s awful news for Strider, the Braves, and baseball as a whole. I know a good article structure when I see it. Let’s walk through each of those in turn, in decreasing order of how much I have to say about them.

For Strider, a second procedure shrouds the remainder of his career in mystery. His career trajectory was already essentially without precedent. He ascended from draft pick to prospect to reliever to ace with blinding speed, whipping unhittable fastballs and mind-bending sliders past batters with ease. He instantly became one of the best five or so starters in baseball, an NL Cy Young favorite, and one of the most exciting arms in the game.

Impressively, he did so without missing much time with injury. He made 32 starts last year and pitched 186 innings, a veritable pillar of durability by today’s standards. But injury was never far away. Strider throws phenomenally hard. In his two years at the top of the game, he had the third-fastest average fastball velocity among all starters, behind only Hunter Greene and Sandy Alcantara. He was only a few years out from Tommy John surgery, to boot; he missed the 2019 season after having his UCL replaced while pitching at Clemson. Read the rest of this entry »

Max Fried is unusual; he’s a good homegrown Braves player who didn’t sign a team-friendly, million-year contract extension. (It feels like this team hasn’t had one of those since Johnny Sain.) As a result, Fried will be a free agent at the end of the season, but insofar as the Braves are preparing for life without Fried eventually, they very much need him now.

Now that Spencer Strider is out for the season, the Braves rotation consists of Fried, two aging big names (Chris Sale and Charlie Morton), one guy who was a reliever next year (Reynaldo López), and we’ll figure out the no. 5 spot when we get there. It’s a lot of upside, and all things considered it’s not that bad when every team seems to be down at least one starter. But suffice it to say that Atlanta has less wiggle room, pitching-wise, than it did two weeks ago.

Therefore it was a bit alarming when Fried came out of his first two starts having completed just five innings total. In those two outings, he allowed 12 hits and 11 runs, 10 of them earned, to bring his ERA up to 18.00. The Braves’ offense is good, sure, but no baseball team ever made could reliably provide 18 runs of support per game for its no. 1 starter. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

Finally, after what felt like the longest less than two weeks of our lives, the moment has arrived: The Baltimore Orioles are calling up shortstop Jackson Holliday, the top prospect in baseball. He will make his MLB debut with the Orioles as soon as Wednesday, sliding in at second base because Baltimore already has Gunnar Henderson, another former no. 1 overall prospect, at shortstop.

The 20-year-old Holliday exceeded even the rosiest of expectations in spring training, hitting .311/.354/.600 with two home runs in 48 plate appearances. But he didn’t make the Opening Day roster despite all that, with general manager Mike Elias citing Holliday’s performance against lefties in the minors and his need to further acclimate to the keystone as reasons to delay his big league career. But, with Holliday off to a bonkers start at Triple-A (.333/.482/.605 with a 189 wRC+) and the Orioles, at 6-4, in need of a jolt, now was the right time to bring him up.

Like both Adley Rutschman and Henderson before him, Holliday is great at everything but perhaps not truly elite at anything. No, he doesn’t have the raw power or speed of Wyatt Langford, the American League’s other tantalizing rookie, but Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin grade Holliday as a future five-tool star with plenty of development still ahead of him.

Ben Clemens wrote that it would be the wrong decision for Baltimore to keep Holliday down past the Super Two deadline (typically 30 or so days into the season), not only because it would be a bad-faith gesture to Holliday, but also because it would be a terrible baseball move. With the Orioles’ offense looking more good than great in the early going, they’re making the right choice to call him up now: Holliday is simply better than the players he’s replacing; Jorge Mateo is best used as a super-utility man and Ramón Urías has struggled to start the season. Moreover, the O’s had little service-time incentive to keep him stashed in the minors; if he wins the AL Rookie of the Year award, they will be rewarded with an additional draft pick and Holliday will receive a full year of service, no matter how long he’s on the big league roster. Assuming he’s ready for the majors, the Orioles stand to benefit more from having him on the roster for as long as possible.

So now, and apologies for what you’re about to read… What a bright time, it’s the right time to call up Holliday.

Blake Snell Will Be Fine

From a results standpoint, Blake Snell’s Giants debut was not a good one. Facing the Nationals at home on Monday, he allowed three runs on three hits and two walks while striking out five, and it took him 72 pitches to get through three innings. But with his late signing, lack of a true spring training, and relatively quick ramp-up, San Francisco should consider the start a muted success. Sure, the Giants lost 8-1, but Snell got through the outing without injury — something that is hardly a guarantee for any pitcher, especially so far this season — and he should be built up for about 90 or so pitches his next time around. Overall, that’s encouraging.

Besides, it wasn’t all bad when you take a look under the hood. Snell’s stuff didn’t look too far off from the arsenal that won him his second Cy Young award last year. As you’d expect, his average velocity for all four of his pitches was down, but none alarmingly so: His fastball dipped just 0.1 mph, while his slider had the biggest velocity drop, at 1.1 mph. As a result, his spin rates also decreased, but again, this shouldn’t be concerning.

Additionally, Snell got 11 misses on 25 swings (44%), and 33% of his pitches resulted in either a called strike or a whiff; both rates were higher than his marks from last year. The quality of contact against him was anemic as well, with the seven balls in play averaging an exit velocity of just 80 mph. This is who Snell is: an elite contact suppressor and whiff-inducer who will more often than not run into high pitch counts because he avoids the middle of the plate.

As recently as a month ago, I was lamenting the state of the Giants rotation, but things are looking up now. Snell joins Logan Webb to give them a formidable frontline duo, one that is as strong as any other in baseball. Meanwhile, their decision to convert offseason acquisition Jordan Hicks into a starter has gone better than anyone could’ve expected, and they also have top prospect Kyle Harrison. And let’s not forget that San Francisco’s staff has more reinforcements on the way. Alex Cobb was initially on track to return from offseason hip surgery ahead of schedule, perhaps as soon as sometime this month, before he suffered a mild flexor strain; the setback will keep him out until early May. Lefty Robbie Ray, the 2021 AL Cy Young winner, could make at least a handful of late-season starts once he’s back from Tommy John surgery; and Tristan Beck and Sean Hjelle could be factors as well.

To be clear, this team still has flaws — its offense has been one of the worst in the National League and its relievers collectively were below replacement level entering Tuesday — but Snell and the starting staff will be just fine.

The Free-Swinging Giancarlo Stanton

I’m confident in saying Snell is the same player he was at last season’s peak, but I have no idea how to evaluate Giancarlo Stanton, the most enigmatic player in baseball. He is still hitting the crap out of the ball despite overhauling his conditioning in the offseason and coming to camp noticeably slimmer, and his surface-level numbers so far are good: .250/.268/.550 with three home runs and a 134 wRC+.

But as the OBP foreshadows, Stanton’s plate discipline has eroded, and I’m just not sure he can make this work. He’s chasing 45.7% of the pitches he sees outside the zone, which is the worst rate of his career by 15 points. His contact rate is also down, and his overall swing percentage is above 50% for the first time in his career. Stanton has always been streaky, but usually his plate discipline is indicative of where his results will be.

The concern here is that this solid start is nothing more than luck, that Stanton is flailing but essentially running into a few homers with guesswork. If that’s the case, it might be wise for pitchers to stop throwing him anything near the zone to see if he’ll keep chasing. In the meantime, it’s too soon to know what to make of Stanton.

The 40-Year-Old Legend

I really thought it might be curtains on Jesse Chavez’s career when he got rocked in his first spring training outing, and I really, really thought it was when the White Sox released him last month. After all, if he couldn’t crack the bullpen that sure looked like it was going to be the worst in baseball, whose would he join?

Well, of course, I discounted both the Braves connection and his apparent comfort pitching in Atlanta. Soon after being released, Chavez signed a minor league deal, and later had his contract selected to give him a spot on the Opening Day roster. And as he’s done whenever he’s worn an Atlanta uniform, he’s piling up outs.

The 40-year-old has allowed just one run in 6.1 innings across three appearances, helping to save the rest of the bullpen in each outing. Indeed, he’s still kicking in what’s set to be his last season, all while pitching with guile and a funky arm action (and wearing sunglasses no matter the lighting or time of day). Each outing brings him closer to retirement, but I’m convinced Chavez’s vibes will live forever.

Well, That Didn’t Last Long

Some quick finality on the Julio Teheran signing, which I wrote about on Friday: He was DFA’d after just one start, in which his former Braves squad trounced him for four runs on just eight outs, with six hits and a couple of walks to boot.

We’ve since learned that his $2.5 million contract is not, in fact, for the full $2.5 million, but that it’s rather a split contract that pays him at that rate in the majors but only $150,000 in the minors. Still, the MLB split makes it implausible that anyone claims him, and it also makes it a near-guarantee that he accepts an outright assignment to Triple-A, since he’d be forfeiting his right to earn that hefty rate if he’s needed back in the bigs again.

If last week’s news that Eury Pérez would need Tommy John surgery was bad, Saturday was a whole lot worse. Within a span of five hours, the baseball world learned that the Guardians’ Shane Bieber, the Yankees’ Jonathan Loáisiga, and the Braves’ Spencer Strider have all incurred significant damage to their ulnar collateral ligaments, with Bieber headed for Tommy John surgery, Loáisiga set to undergo season-ending surgery as well, and Strider headed to see Dr. Keith Meister, the orthopedic surgeon who will perform the surgeries of the other two.

The losses of those pitchers is a triple bummer, not just for them and their respective teams — each of which leads its division, incidentally — and fans, but for the sport in general. Underscoring the seriousness of the issue, by the end of Saturday both the players’ union and Major League Baseball traded volleys regarding the impact of the introduction of the pitch clock on pitcher injuries in general.

Bieber, a two-time All-Star, won the AL Cy Young award and the pitchers’ Triple Crown during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, but missed significant time in two out of the past three years due to injuries. In 2021 he was limited to 16 starts due to a strain of his subscapularis, the largest of the four muscles that make up the rotator cuff, and last year he made just 21 starts, missing 10 weeks due to elbow inflammation. He had pitched very well this season, with a pair of scoreless six-inning outings, each totaling just 83 pitches. He struck out 11 A’s in Oakland on Opening Day and then nine Mariners (without a single walk) in Seattle on April 2.

Bieber experienced more soreness than usual while recovering from the Opening Day start, but the 29-year-old righty and the team decided to proceed without extra rest, according to MLB.com’s Mandy Bell, who wrote, “Bieber wanted to see if he could push through this, considering he hadn’t felt any pain in Spring Training.”

The discomfort persisted during Bieber’s second start, after which the team ordered additional testing, “which revealed the injury to the same ligament he had problems with last year,” wrote Bell. If I’m not mistaken, that last bit of information is new, as previous reports of last year’s injury did not specify as to the inflammation’s cause. “He really put in a ton of work this winter and throughout spring training, and we all felt he was on a good path to stay healthy and contribute for the balance of the season,” said president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti on a Zoom call with reporters. Antonetti additionally lauded the pitcher’s “sheer toughness and grit” in maintaining a high level of performance, while manager Stephen Vogt sounded a similar note in saying, “The amount of work that this guy’s put in over the last few years, the things that he’s pitched through, that’s a testament to who he is.” But those supportive statements raise the question of whether this juncture could have been avoided had Bieber taken a longer time to heal from the damage found last summer, as teammate Triston McKenzie did. Missing from that comparison, however, is information regarding the severity of the two pitchers’ tears, details to which we’re not privy.

As a pending free agent, Bieber is in a tough spot, as he’ll enter the market under a cloud of uncertainty, likely cutting into a payday that’s ceiling has already been reduced by his previous outages. As for the Guardians, their remaining rotation looks so shaky that it ranks 27th in projected WAR via our Depth Charts, and their Playoff Odds have decreased since Opening Day (from 33.5% to 32%) despite the 7-2 start that has put them atop the AL Central.

The 26-year-old McKenzie, who was limited to four starts last season by a teres major strain as well as his UCL sprain, was rocked for five runs (four earned) in 3.1 innings in his first outing on Monday against the Mariners. His four-seam fastball averaged just 90.5 mph, down two miles per hour from 2022, when he was fully healthy. Carlos Carrasco, now 37, is coming off a 6.80 ERA in 20 starts with the Mets. Both Tanner Bibee, a 25-year-old righty, and Logan Allen, a 25-year-old lefty, are coming off strong rookie seasons and have pitched well in the early going, but Gavin Williams, a 24-year-old righty who posted a 3.29 ERA and 4.05 FIP in 16 starts as a rookie last year, began the year on the injured list due to elbow inflammation himself and has not yet been cleared to begin a rehab assignment. Out on rehab assignments are 25-year-old righty Xzavion Curry, and 32-year-old righty Ben Lively, both of whom were sidelined by a respiratory virus during spring training. Both split time between starting and relieving last year but turned in ERAs and FIPs over 5.00, the former with the Guardians, the latter with the Reds. Joey Cantillo, their top upper level pitching prospect, is out for 8-10 weeks with a left hamstring strain.

As for the 29-year-old Loáisiga, he’s been so beset by injuries throughout his career — including Tommy John surgery in 2016 — that he’s thrown 50 innings in a major league season just once (70.2 in 2021) and has totaled 50 innings between the majors and minors just two other times, in 2018 (80.2, mostly as a starter) and ’22 (50 exactly). He was limited to 17.2 innings last year due to in-season surgery to remove a bone spur in his elbow, then less than five weeks after returning was sidelined by inflammation in the joint. Three appearances into this season, he was diagnosed with a flexor strain and a partially torn UCL, though based upon the reporting, it sounds as though he’s a candidate for the internal brace procedure that requires less recovery time. Via MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch:

Meister’s initial reading of an MRI performed on Thursday in New York suggests that Loáisiga could avoid undergoing what would be his second career Tommy John surgery, with the estimated recovery for Meister’s preferred procedure spanning 10-12 months.

It was Dr. Jeffrey Dugas who invented the internal brace procedure, in which collagen-coated FiberTape suture is used to anchor the damaged UCL, speeding up recovery by eliminating the time needed for a tendon to transform into a ligament. Meister has pioneered the combining of traditional Tommy John surgery with the use of the internal brace; when it’s referred to at all as different from traditional Tommy John, it’s as a “hybrid” procedure. It’s what Jacob deGrom had last year (with Meister performing the procedure), and it sounds like what Shohei Ohtani (who was operated on by Dr. Neal ElAttrache) underwent last fall as well. In a March 7 piece in the Dallas Morning News, Meister said he’s done over 300 hybrid surgeries since 2018, which suggests the distinctions are being blurred when we track such surgeries.

Regardless of the type of surgery, Loáisiga’s absence has dealt a significant blow to a bullpen that already looked considerably less formidable than in years past. After ranking third in the majors with 7.2 WAR in 2021 and fifth with 5.9 in ’22, the unit slipped to 16th (4.2 WAR) last year, and ranked 19th in our preseason positional power rankings; Yankees relievers are now down to 22nd. Beyond closer Clay Holmes and setup man Ian Hamilton, it’s a largely unfamiliar if not untested cast, featuring a pair of ex-Dodger southpaws (Victor González and Caleb Ferguson), a trio of righties with career ERAs above 5.00 (Nick Burdi, Dennis Santana, and Luke Weaver). Moreover, the 31-year-old Burdi has never thrown more than 8.2 innings in a major league season, and another righty, Jake Cousins, has just 55.2 career innings, 30 of which came in 2021. Maybe pitching coach Matt Blake and company can find some diamonds in the rough, and maybe the likes of Tommy Kahnle, Lou Trivino, and Scott Effross can recover from their various injuries and surgeries to provide help later this season, but this is a clear weakness for a team off to an 8-2 start.

Strider is coming off a stellar season — his first full one in the rotation — in which he led the NL in strikeouts (281), strikeout rate (36.5%), FIP (2.85), and wins (20) while making his first All-Star team and placing fourth in the Cy Young voting. After throwing five innings of two-run ball while striking out eight on Opening Day against the Phillies, he surrendered five runs in four innings against the Diamondbacks on Friday, then complained about elbow discomfort afterwards. The Braves sent the 25-year-old righty for an MRI, after which the team’s official Twitter account shared the bad news:

Spencer Strider today underwent an MRI that revealed damage to the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. He will be further evaluated by Dr. Keith Meister in Arlington, TX, at a date yet to be determined.

— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) April 6, 2024

Strider already underwent his first Tommy John surgery as a sophomore at Clemson in 2019. While it’s not a guarantee yet that he’ll need a second one, the Braves sound resigned to it, with manager Brian Snitker telling reporters, “The good news is he’s going to get whatever it is fixed and come back and continue to have a really good career.” Strider at least has security even if he’s never the same, having already signed a six-year, $75 million extension in October 2022, the largest pre-arbitration extension ever for a pitcher.

The Braves will certainly feel his loss. Of their remaining starters, 40-year-old righty Charlie Morton has been reliable and durable, taking the ball at least 30 times in each of the past three seasons, but 30-year-old lefty Max Fried was limited to 14 starts last year by hamstring and forearm strains as well as a blister on his index finger. Lefty Chris Sale, 35, missed 10 weeks last year due to a stress fracture in his scapula, which limited him to just 20 starts — nine more than he totaled over the three prior seasons combined while missing time due to Tommy John surgery and a stress fracture in his rib. Thirty-year-old righty Reynaldo López is starting again after spending nearly all of the past two seasons as a reliever. Twenty-four-year-old righty Bryce Elder was an All-Star last season but was optioned to Triple-A Gwinnett to start the year after a second-half fade and a rough spring. Prospects AJ Smith-Shawver, a 21-year-old righty, and Dylan Dodd, a 25-year-old lefty, are also at Gwinnett; the former was no. 63 on our Top 100 Prospects list. Ian Anderson and Huascar Ynoa are both recovering from Tommy John, the former from April 2023 and the latter from September ’22. One way or another, the Braves will cobble things together, but they can’t afford too much else to go wrong.

Saturday’s flood of UCL-related headlines followed a week that featured the bad news about Pérez as well as Tommy John surgery for A’s reliever Trevor Gott. On Saturday evening, Major League Baseball Players Association executive director Tony Clark released a statement that targeted the pitch clock as the culprit for so many arm injuries:

Despite unanimous player opposition and significant concerns regarding health and safety, the Commissioner’s Office reduced the length of the pitch clock last December, just one season removed from imposing the most significant rule change in decades.

Since then, our concerns about the health impacts of reduced recovery time have only intensified.

The league’s unwillingness thus far to acknowledge or study the effects of these profound changes is an unprecedented threat to our game and its most valuable asset – the players.

The league quickly countered:

This statement ignores the empirical evidence and much more significant long-term trend, over multiple decades, of velocity and spin increases that are highly correlated with arm injuries. Nobody wants to see pitchers get hurt in this game, which is why MLB is currently undergoing a significant comprehensive research study into the causes of this long-term increase, interviewing prominent medical experts across baseball which to date has been consistent with an independent analysis by Johns Hopkins University that found no evidence to support that the introduction of the pitch clock has increased injuries. In fact, JHU found no evidence that pitchers who worked quickly in 2023 were more likely to sustain an injury than those who worked less quickly on average. JHU also found no evidence that pitchers who sped up their pace were more likely to sustain an injury than those who did not.

Particularly in the wake of the recent in-house drama that resulted in a challenge to his leadership of the union, Clark’s statement is probably better understood as a political one than a scientific one. The majority of the players he represents are pitchers, and they may be looking for a target for their anger and fears regarding increased injury rates. It’s worth noting that those players — or at least the major leaguers who were part of the union when the most recent Collective Bargaining Agreement was hammered out in March 2022 — agreed to the structure of the Joint Competition Committee, which contains six owners, four players, and one umpire; “unanimous” is more likely referring to those four players rather than the 6,000-plus the MLBPA now represents.

As the league’s statement notes, and as The Ringer’s Ben Lindbergh reported last week, MLB has been conducting a comprehensive study of pitcher injuries since October, and once it’s done (perhaps later this year) “intends to form a task force that will make recommendations for protecting pitchers.” The group will “try to come up with some solutions and implement some solutions,” according to Dr. Glenn Fleisig, who as the biomechanics research director at the American Sports Medicine Institute and as an injury research adviser for MLB is one of the experts being consulted.

To varying degrees, Fleisig, Meister, ElAttrache and the now-retired Dr. James Andrews have all publicly pointed to the extra stress on arms induced by the quest for increased velocity, increased spin, and maximum effort as the primary causes of increased pitcher injury rates, a quest that starts in youth baseball, while players’ bodies are still developing. Leaguewide data from the pitch-tracking era particularly points to the way major league players and teams have chased velocity:

The average four-seam fastball velocity has consistently crept up by 0.1–0.2 mph per year, with a couple jumps of 0.3 mph; while it’s down thus far this year, velocities tend to increase once the weather warms up. The percentage of four-seamers 97 mph or higher more than tripled from 2008–23, and shot up 54% from 2019–23. The average spin rate for four-seamers increased by only about 2% from 2015 — the first year of Statcast — to ’23, and while the average spin rate for all breaking pitches combined increased by about 12% in that span, most of that jump was in the first two seasons. Those spin rates have been pretty consistent since then, but the total volume of breaking balls has increased.

The idea that the pitch clock could be contributing by making pitchers dial up to maximum intensity with less time to recover between pitches has intuitive appeal, but injury rates had already risen before the clock’s introduction last year. As Baseball Prospectus’ Derek Rhoads and Rob Mains noted, the total of 233 pitchers who landed on the injured list last year was about the same as in 2022 (226) and ’21 (243), up from ’19 (192). Likewise for the number of Tommy Johns as measured by year, starting with the day that pitchers and catchers report (as opposed to a calendar year): 28 for last season, compared to 26 for 2022, 31 for ’21, 27 for ’20, and 16 for ’19. In a study published last June, my colleague Dan Szymborski found no meaningful relationship in injury rates with regards to the pitchers whose pace increased the most from 2022 to ’23, at least to that point. The Hopkins study that MLB cited has yet to be published, though it’s hard to believe that the league hasn’t shared its preliminary findings with the union. Notably, Clark did not point to any study that produced a result that reflected his constituency’s concerns.

On the subject of velocity, the link between Strider’s high velo and the propensity for such pitchers to require Tommy John is hard to miss. Of the top 15 starting pitchers in terms of average four-seam fastball velocity from 2021–23, 10 have undergone at least one surgery to repair their UCLs, and Strider is in danger of becoming the fourth to need a second:

Some of those pitchers have had little trouble recovering and maintaining their elite velocities after their first such surgery, but as the sagas of deGrom and Ohtani illustrate, that hardly makes them immune from needing a second procedure. As the big contracts of so many of the pitchers above remind us, velocity gets pitchers paid, and so discouraging them from throwing at maximum effort with such frequency may be a tough sell, particularly when the next guy is willing to do so, damn the consequences.

This is all one big, thorny mess that won’t be solved overnight. The sad fact is that dozens or even hundreds more pitchers will be injured before we see if MLB can introduce meaningful steps to curb injury rates. In the meantime, teams will just turn to the next man up — and if he gets hurt, the next man up after him — to get by.

For my money, the best pitcher in the National League right now is Braves right-hander Spencer Strider. The 25-year-old with the Kurt Russell-in-Tombstone mustache struck out 281 batters last year, which is impressive in any context, all the more so because he did it in just 186 2/3 innings, while using two and a half pitches. He’s got an upper-90s four-seamer, an outrageous slider, and a changeup that he uses sparingly against lefties and basically not at all against righties.

Strider’s slider (which is a top-three Shel Silverstein poem) is clearly capable of serving as a secondary arsenal all on its own. That’s because Strider can add or subtract from the pitch at will. Last year, he threw more than 1,000 sliders in the regular season, and those pitches varied in velocity by 10 mph, in spin rate by more than 500 rpm, in gravity-adjusted vertical movement by 16 inches, and in horizontal movement by 10 inches. In short, it’s technically one pitch, but with a lot of room to change speed and shape.

Nevertheless, Strider has added a curveball this season, and after a soft launch in spring training, he threw it in anger for the first time on Friday. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Giants signing Blake Snell, whether Snell is now underrated, San Francisco’s offseason, Scott Boras’s offseason, leaguewide spending, an MLBPA power struggle, and (39:03) a 150-year-old message about baseball players in spring, then preview the 2024 Atlanta Braves (45:42) with 92.9 The Game’s Grant McAuley, and the 2024 Chicago White Sox (1:24:54) with Sox Machine’s James Fegan.

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Two of the outfielders I would have been most interested in signing this winter (as high-quality backups) both agreed to deals last week. Normally, that wouldn’t be a big deal; that’s what offseasons are for, after all. But both of them signed roughly two weeks away from Opening Day, and for meaningfully less than I would have predicted. That means that you can’t disconnect their deals from the context in which they were signed. That also means they get wrapped up into one article, so here we go. This will be a three-parter: Michael A. Taylor’s signing with the Pirates, Adam Duvall’s signing with the Braves, and the market forces behind both moves.

Taylor to the Pirates
This one was so obvious in retrospect. The Pirates have a lot of interesting young players, but one thing they didn’t have was a complete outfield. They have Bryan Reynolds and Jack Suwinski, both potential pieces of the future and interesting players right now in their own right. But that’s only two outfielders, and Suwinski is more of an emergency center fielder than an everyday one. The options after that – Edward Olivares, Connor Joe – felt more like platoon pieces than everyday starters.

Taylor, who signed a one-year deal worth $4 million, makes the whole picture look a lot better. He’s an elite center field defender, regardless of which system you’re grading him on. That lets Suwinski and Reynolds handle the corners, more natural positions for both. It also means the Pirates won’t have to make a tough decision against lefty pitching: either to play the lefty-hitting Suwinski — who before the Taylor deal was their best defensive center field, even though isn’t really suited to play that position full time — despite the platoon disadvantage, or sacrifice defense. Now they can mix and match far more easily.

Taylor’s offensive game has always been his weak link, and that absolutely limited his market. He’s a career .239/.294/.389 hitter, good for an 82 wRC+, which spells out his upside pretty clearly. He’s an average overall player, give or take a rounding error, so long as he’s an elite defender. In each of the last three years, that’s been almost exactly what happened; his defense has carried him even when his offense hasn’t. When he smacked a career-high 21 homers last year, his production boomed, and he racked up 1.7 WAR in only 388 plate appearances.

We’re projecting a return to career norms for Taylor’s offense, and it’s not hard to see why. He posted easily the best power production of his career, and in a way that doesn’t feel sticky. Before last year, he’d hit 113 doubles and 74 home runs over his first nine seasons. He had 14 doubles and 21 homers in 2023, a meaningful deviation from his normal output. That all comes down to an impressive barrel rate and more aerial contact than ever, but I think it’s reasonable to project a return to career norms there, and Pittsburgh is a terrible park for righty power, which should push that even a bit lower.

If the Pirates are looking for a repeat of last year’s offense in a full-time role, they’ll likely be disappointed. But they absolutely don’t need that. He brings the floor of their outfield up significantly, to a roughly average unit. We think the Pirates will get nearly as many WAR from their outfielders (6.6) as the Mike Trout-led Angels (7.0) — partly because Angels right fielders are projected for 0.4 WAR, the worst total in the majors — with less injury risk. And all of that for $4 million! I love this signing for a team on the fringes of the playoff race thanks to the paper-soft NL Central.

Duvall to the Braves
Now for a signing that will matter far less in the regular season. The Braves signed Adam Duvall, who last year with the Red Sox put together his best season on a rate basis but dealt with plenty of injuries. He’s making $3 million on a one-year deal.

Duvall is the archetypical boom/bust hitter. He strikes out roughly 30% of the time, even in good years. He doesn’t walk a lot. What he does do is put the ball in the air at an absurd rate, and with authority. His career barrel rate, 11.8%, is in the top 10% of all hitters in the Statcast era. If pitchers hang ’em, he can definitely bang ’em.

I’d say that Duvall’s .284 ISO in 2023 was an unsustainable caricature of his offensive game, but his career mark is an also-outrageous .240. He’s never going to get on base much, but his power is as real as it gets, even as he enters his age-35 season. He truly doesn’t do anything else – his career OBP is below .300, a woeful number for a theoretically offense-first outfielder – but I can’t emphasize enough how real his power is.

The Red Sox put Duvall in center field in 2023, which caused some excitement about his ability to move up the defensive spectrum. I didn’t completely buy it, though, and it seems like teams didn’t either. At best, he’s a backup to the durable Michael Harris II. The real reason Duvall is headed to the Braves is insurance for their high-risk plan in left field. Atlanta moved a lot of pieces around to bring in Jarred Kelenic over the winter. The ceiling is high for the former top prospect, but let’s be realistic: the floor is unfathomably low.

Kelenic has a lot of prospect shine, but he’s a career 85 wRC+ hitter in 1,000 plate appearances of big league playing time. He’s been one of the worst hitters in baseball this spring, for whatever that’s worth. He has huge platoon splits; he’s been unplayably bad against lefties in a limited sample. I think that the Braves will give him a chance to hit against everyone and establish himself as an everyday player, but there’s no guarantee that he will.

Signing Duvall means that there’s an off ramp if things don’t work out with Kelenic. Until they added him, the alternatives were so bad that Kelenic might have retained his job even if he were to play quite poorly. Now, there’s a limit to how bad that position can get, because Duvall feels like a bankable option. He doesn’t have huge platoon splits, though he’ll surely be taking some of Kelenic’s playing time against tough lefties. But he can also just take playing time, period, if Atlanta decides its gamble isn’t paying off.

That’s really smart team-building, as far as I’m concerned. The Kelenic experiment isn’t a high-leverage one for the Braves, who figure to run roughshod over the NL East regardless of what their left fielders do. But when it comes to building a World Series winner, patching potential holes for cheap in March is a lot better than doing so for a premium at the trade deadline.

Why So Little Money?
Both Taylor and Duvall landed in my top 50 free agents list this offseason. The crowd and I both missed pretty badly on our estimates for both. I had Taylor down for one year and $9 million; the crowd called for two years at $7 million per. I did worse with Duvall; I had him pegged at one year and $10 million, while the crowd went for one year and $8 million. Neither player even got half the guarantees we estimated for them.

It’s all part of the same story that’s been going on in free agency for years. The middle class is getting squeezed. Teams prefer to look internally for roughly average options, confident in their ability to develop cheap alternatives who aren’t much worse than those available in free agency. That doesn’t work for stars – it’s a lot easier to find a minor leaguer who’s 90% of Taylor than one who’s 90% of Mookie Betts, obviously – so great players still sign big deals, but solid regulars feel the pinch.

I’ve tried to account for that in my contract projections by changing the scale that I use to convert WAR into salary. I’ve made the first 1.5 wins progressively less valuable over time to reflect the way teams are behaving. For what it’s worth, I think that behavior is completely logical; in a game of limited resources (an assumption completely worth challenging, but outside the scope of this article), pouring your money into chasing stars and then trying to replicate role players is a good strategy.

These two deals squeeze that distribution down even further. It’s hard to imagine Taylor or Duvall finishing less than a win above replacement, even in a part-time role. Fitting a curve to account for these salaries as well as some of the bigger deals signed in free agency would require making the first win almost completely worthless, even lower than I’ve forced it in recent years.

The question, then, is whether to use these contracts or most of the other contracts signed this offseason as benchmarks of what to expect going forward. You could throw Amed Rosario’s deal into the mix; $1.5 million for a rotation infielder is even a bit cheaper than these two. But then you’ve to contend with Joc Pederson’s getting $12.5 million, Kevin Kiermaier’s getting $10.5 million, and Isiah Kiner-Falefa’ getting two years and $15 million.

I’m going to handle these contracts in my future free agency prediction endeavors by hedging. I’ll use the data points, of course, but I think it’s reasonable to look at both of these as casualties of circumstances rather than perfect harbingers of the new normal. It’s hard to predict which free agents will get squeezed ex ante; every year, someone ends up sitting on the vine longer than expected because there aren’t quite enough teams looking for veterans.

I’m going to resist taking too broad of a lesson here, though. Taylor and Duvall are both outfielders with only one carrying tool, but players like that signed earlier this winter on more reasonable deals. The middle class is still getting squeezed, without a doubt. I just wouldn’t take these two deals as evidence of an acceleration of the trend. More likely, they’re victims of timing who will be huge bargains for the clubs that signed them.

AJ Smith-Shawver started on Monday, and it went rather well: 10 batters faced, 48 pitches, 32 strikes, 2 2/3 innings pitched, five strikeouts, one hit, one walk, no runs allowed. The Braves lost, but the damage came after Smith-Shawver left the game, and at any rate, spring training results have less of an impact on regular season success than what sign the GM was born under. Justin Toscano, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s beat writer, tweeted after the start that Smith-Shawver was “in a better place, physically and mentally, for whatever comes this season. You can see the improvement.”

That’s exciting news. The 21-year-old poked his head into the majors for the first time in mid-2023; he threw 25 1/3 regular-season innings with the big club, plus 2 2/3 more of mopup work in the NLDS. Still rookie-eligible, he made our Top 100 list as the top-rated prospect in Atlanta’s system.

But Plan A for the Braves doesn’t necessarily involve Smith-Shawver. Atlanta starts its rotation with Spencer Strider, one of the best pitchers in baseball. After that: Max Fried, Charlie Morton, Chris Sale, and Reynaldo López. Plus, they have quite a bit of prospect and Quad-A depth: Huascar Ynoa, Bryce Elder, Dylan Dodd. Ian Anderson (remember him?) is due back from Tommy John sometime later this year, and 2023 first-round pick Hurston Waldrep, with his unholy splitter, is being fast-tracked to the majors. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, I took a projection-driven two-part look at the trouble spots on National League and American League contenders. The exercise — a sibling of my annual pre-trade deadline Replacement Level Killers series — primarily highlighted clubs in the middle of the table, based on our Playoff Odds, with many of the best teams, such as the Braves and Dodgers, going completely unmentioned.

In that regard, the exercise worked as I had intended, focusing on the teams and spots where a marginal addition from outside the organization or even a modest breakout from within it could have a sizable impact on their chances of making the postseason. To be considered contenders, teams needed Playoff Odds of at least 25%, and roughly speaking, all but one of those mentioned fell in the range of 80-85 wins. Under the 12-team playoff format, that certainly counts as contention once you consider that two of last year’s NL Wild Card teams, the Diamondbacks and Marlins, qualified with just 84 wins, nosing out the 83-win Cubs and the 82-win Padres and Reds. At each position, I highlighted the two lowest-ranked teams from within that subset, so long as they projected to produce less than 2.0 WAR, after an adjustment: I applied a 20% reduction to counter the general tendency to overestimate playing time at this point in the season. In other words instead of having a total of 1,000 WAR projected across the 30 teams, and 57% of that (570 WAR) allocated to position players, our Depth Chart values currently add up to about 682 WAR, an inflation of about 20%.

Because the mid-table teams almost invariably had some glaring weakness, seven teams escaped scrutiny. The Braves (98.5% odds), Dodgers (94.6%), and Cardinals (53.5%) — three of the NL’s top four teams by those odds, each favored to win their respective divisions — were absent from the Senior Circuit roundup, while the Yankees (75.6%), Rays (62.5%), Orioles (50.6%) and Rangers (36.3%) missed out on the fun in the Junior Circuit piece. Only one of the top four NL teams showed up with trouble spots (the Phillies at 58.5%), but the AL distribution was more haphazard, in that the Astros (86.8%), Twins (64.9%), Mariners (58.6%), and Blue Jays (47.4%) each had at least one representative within my roundup.

In response to the feedback I received, I thought it would be worthwhile to do one more roundup in this format, this time limiting it to those otherwise unexamined teams and going only one layer deep at each position. I couldn’t quite call this “The Weakest Spots Among the Powerhouses” or “… Among the Top Contenders,” hence the title. Note that not every position had a team fall below the threshold, though I do mention the lowest-ranked ones in passing for those spots. It’s worth keeping in mind the tendency for even the game’s top prospects to have fairly tepid projections based upon limited minor league data and a higher risk of being farmed out if they start slowly; those players don’t always hit the ground running. For team totals, I’ve cited the adjusted WARs, but where I reference individual player projections I’ve stuck to the published figures.

Catcher

Rays (21st, 1.9 adjusted WAR)

My AL roundup contained only the Red Sox catchers, and while I’m not sure what happened since I composed the list to move the Rays from right at the 2.0 minimum to below it, here we are. Since landing on last summer’s Replacement Level Killers list, they’ve basically turned over their tandem, with René Pinto and Alex Jackson replacing Christian Bethancourt and Francisco Mejía. The 27-year-old Pinto did the bulk of the catching in the second half, hitting .252/.267/.456 (98 wRC+) in 105 PA, with an eye-watering 34-to-2 strikeout-to-walk ratio. It’s true that he hits the ball hard, but the Rays seem to like him more for his defense than his offense — or, more specifically, his framing, which was 1.7 runs above average by our framing metric and two above by that of Statcast. Meanwhile, the latter system rated him at seven runs below average in blocking and one below in caught stealing.

The 28-year-old Jackson didn’t play in the majors last year, and he owns a .141/.243/.227 line and 48.1% strikeout rate in 185 PA in the majors, mostly from 2021. Nonetheless, he tore up Triple-A (.284/.347/.556 with 16 homers in 248 PA) with the Brewers and Rays’ affiliates before being sidelined by a shoulder injury. Defensively, he’s been a bit below average in framing but is otherwise average-ish. The 28-year-old Mejía, back in the organization on a minor league deal after a brief odyssey with the Angels, probably has his work cut out to regain a share of his old job. He hit just .227/.258/.400 (80 wRC+) last year and hasn’t come close to fulfilling the promise he showed at the plate in the minors.

First Base

Yankees (17th, 1.4 WAR)

Anthony Rizzo got off to a hot start in 2023, hitting for a 146 wRC+ through May 28, when he collided with Fernando Tatis Jr. and missed his next three games due to what the Yankees called a neck injury. Upon returning, he hit for just a 43 wRC+ over the next two months before the team shut him down with post-concussion symptoms; he didn’t play again, and finished at .244/.328/.378 (100 wRC+). The 34-year-old Rizzo is said to be healthy now, but he projects for just a .238/.332/.426 line, a 111 wRC+ — right at the major league average for first basemen last year — and 1.3 WAR, which won’t be a huge help to the Yankees lineup. The most likely backup is DJ LeMahieu, who’s slated to be the starting third baseman and who’s coming off his second 101 wRC+ in three years, though he did post a 129 wRC+ after the All-Star break compared to a 77 before, when he was still dealing with the effects of a right big toe injury. Oswaldo Cabrera, a switch-hitting utilityman who was very good in a late-2022 stint and terrible last year, is another alternative for first.

Second Base

Oddly enough — or perhaps fittingly, as we are talking about good clubs — none of these teams has a second base situation that falls below the threshold. Orioles second basemen project to rank 14th in the majors with an adjusted 2.4 WAR, the lowest mark from among this group, but that’s with 20-year-old Jackson Holliday, the no. 1 prospect on our Top 100 list, 25-year-old Jordan Westburg, and 29-year-old Ramón Urías projected to account for most of the playing time, with all projecting to be average or better — which particularly for Holliday would be no small achievement, even with his pedigree. Note that this is Baltimore’s only appearance within this exercise, even though the team has a lower projected value at the first base and DH slots than it does at second base; the O’s just don’t stand out relative to their competition’s weaknesses.

Shortstop

Braves (24th, 1.6 WAR)

The Braves project to be the majors’ top team, but they do have their weaknesses, and this is one. After letting Dansby Swanson depart as a free agent, they turned shortstop duties over to Orlando Arcia, who had spent five and a half seasons with diminishing returns in Milwaukee, plus another season and a half as a utilityman for Atlanta, playing a grand total of 24 innings at shortstop. The team nonetheless signed him to a three-year, $7.3 million extension — practically peanuts — and he handled the position reasonably well, hitting .264/.321/.420 (99 wRC+) with a career-high 2.3 WAR despite a mixed bag of defensive metrics. Given that he netted just 0.2 WAR from 2018–22, the projection systems are understandably skeptical he can sustain such production; if he can’t, who knows what kind of magic pixie dust the Braves can sprinkle on backups Luis Guillorme and David Fletcher to try and turn them into league-average regulars.

Third Base

Here’s another spot where none of these teams falls below the threshold, with the Dodgers (15th at 2.1 WAR) the lowest ranked. Neither Max Muncy’s fielding at third base nor his low batting averages are pretty, but he’s a disciplined hitter who can absolutely crush the ball and justify his spot in the lineup; last year, he matched his career high of 36 homers while netting 2.9 WAR. Chris Taylor and the freshly re-signed Enrique Hernández are around for those times when Muncy’s banged up or the team could use more defensive support.

Left Field

Dodgers (21st, 1.4 WAR)

This is the NL West juggernaut’s weakest spot, even after taking steps to address it. Newcomer Teoscar Hernández, who joined the fold on a one-year, $23.5 million deal, hits the ball very hard… when he makes contact. In 2023 he posted an average exit velocity of 91.3 mph (80th percentile), a 13.8% barrel rate (88th percentile), and a 49.4% hard-hit rate (90th percentile). The problem was that he struck out 31.1% of the time opposite a 5.6% walk rate, so he hit an uninspiring .258/.305/.435 (105 wRC+). To be fair, he did say he had trouble seeing the ball at the Mariners’ T-Mobile Park, where he slugged just .380, so it’s hardly out of the question that a change of scenery could drive a rebound for the 31-year-old slugger. The aforementioned Taylor and Enrique Hernández will see time here as well, but both are a few years removed from their best work. Taylor rebounded from a bad season and a slow first half to hit .237/.326/.420 (104 wRC+) but struck out 32.6% of the time himself, while Hernández perked up after returning to Los Angeles, posting a 59 wRC+ with the Red Sox and a 96 wRC+ with the Dodgers.

Center Field

One more where everybody is above the threshold, with the Rays (19th at 2.1 adjusted WAR) the lowest ranked among those here, based primarily on the projections’ skepticism that Jose Siri can repeat last year’s extreme performance. (See Davy Andrews’ piece on Tromps Per Womp.)

Right Field

Cardinals (14th, 1.8 WAR)

Given his plus-plus raw power, few people doubted Jordan Walker’s offensive ability, hence his no. 12 ranking on last year’s Top 100 Prospects list. At age 21, with no Triple-A experience, he made the Cardinals out of spring training and immediately reeled off a 12-game hitting streak. But when the league quickly adjusted, he struggled briefly and was sent to Memphis to work on his approach, particularly so he could elevate the ball with greater consistency. Even with a 46.9% groundball rate, he finished at a respectable .276/.342/.445 (116 wRC+), but his defense was another matter. Blocked by Nolan Arenado at third base, he moved to the outfield and was absolutely brutal according to the metrics (-16 DRS, -12 RAA, -11.8 UZR), and the visuals weren’t much better, even with the occasional impressive play. Thus he netted just 0.2 WAR. He does project to improve to 1.6 WAR, with Dylan Carlson getting time in right field as well — presumably when the Cardinals mercifully slot Walker at DH — and I’d bet that Walker far outhits the 116 wRC+ for which he’s projected.

Designated Hitter

Rangers (13th, 1.2 WAR)

With all but the Dodgers and Yankees projected to produce less than 2.0 WAR out of the DH spot (that’s after adjustment), this category is shooting fish in a barrel, and with the Cardinals and Rangers virtually tied, I’m focusing on the defending champions. This is hardly a bad situation, not only because Texas ranks among the upper half of the 30 teams, but also because about half the playing time projects to go to 22-year-old Wyatt Langford, who was chosen fourth in last year’s draft and rocketed through four levels to reach Triple-A, hitting .360/.480/.677 (190 wRC+) with 10 homers in 200 PA along the way. He just placed second only to Holliday on our Top 100 list as “perhaps the most complete hitter in the minors.” The problem is that he’s a 30-grade defender, with the speed for center field but a fringe-average arm and a poor feel for outfield play in general, at least at this stage; meanwhile, the outfield of Evan Carter, Leody Taveras, and Adolis García features strong defenders at all three spots. Langford could make the roster out of spring training, but it’s not a guarantee. With the possible exception of Corey Seager, who’s working his way back from January hernia surgery, no other Ranger projects to have much impact at this spot, hence the middling ranking.

It’s almost March! It’s time for the weather to feel like it should be changing, only for it to not really change for a couple more weeks. It’s time for the very first baseball of the year. It’s time for massive overreactions to the tiniest sample sizes imaginable. With that in mind, sound the alarm: Spencer Strider threw three curveballs! “What’s that,” you say? “Spencer Strider doesn’t throw a curveball,” you say? Welcome to 2024, my friend, where anything is possible (except for opaque pants, apparently).

Earlier this month, there was some confusion about the pitch, as Strider indicated that he was simply playing with the shape of his slider. However, since then, both he and Brian Snitker have confirmed that the pitch is a curveball. He’s thrown it in live batting practice and in Saturday’s spring training game against the Rays. It’s the second pitch in the video below:

Olson and Strider.

Nice battle. pic.twitter.com/X5F0NXb0ue

— Grant McAuley (@grantmcauley) February 19, 2024

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